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Let’s start with what I hope does not come next: a dramatic event like the 1933 Reichstag Fire that became an excuse for declaring a national emergency and suspending civil liberties.

This was no accident: The previous year had seen the Reichstag fire and Adolf Hitler’s rise to full power.

Also watching on from the Reichstag's visitors' gallery was Merz's old political rival from within the CDU, former chancellor Angela Merkel.

The party had spent down its reserves on a now-historic election campaign earlier that year in which it won a plurality, though not a majority, of seats in the Reichstag, Germany's parliament.

After the Nazis won a plurality of Reichstag seats in July 1932, a group of conservative elder statesmen from the Weimar government, largely representing business and aristocratic interests, collaborated to have Hitler appointed as chancellor the following January.