Dorothy Thompson was a rock star foreign correspondent in the interwar years of 1919-1939. Her focus was the European beat. She was among the first American journalists to warn of the danger posed by Hitler, Mussolini, and other dictators.

Thompson spent enough time in Nazi Germany to have a good feel for who goes Nazi. She distilled her opinions in an August, 1941 piece for Harper’s Magazine, Who Goes Nazi?

Here’s how Dorothy Thompson began this classic piece:

“It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.”

She nails the type of people who would or would not become Nazis. The article is 83 years old but feels ripped from the 2024 headlines.

Here’s how Thompson ended this must-read piece:

“It’s fun—a macabre sort of fun—this parlor game of “Who Goes Nazi?” And it simplifies things—asking the question in regard to specific personalities.

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.

Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi. It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big party you go to.”

The same analysis applies to the most vexing question of our time: Who Goes MAGA? I’ve been perplexed by some of the people I know who have gone MAGA. I’m less puzzled after reading Who Goes Nazi? I recognize some of the archetypes laid out by Dorothy Thompson.

Who Goes Nazi? remains an important and relevant article. Please share this post or the article itself with your friends and family. Beware, take care.