德国艺术家兼作家菲利普·鲁赫在新书中指出，如果透过第三帝国的视角审视希特勒的纳粹党（NSDAP）如何崛起，就会扭曲我们对法西斯主义赢得选举突破的理解。你曾与“政治之美中心”艺术团体合作，在一名德国选择党（AfD）政客住所旁边的一块土地上仿建了大屠杀纪念碑，并因此广为人知。如今，你又写了一本关于纳粹如何掌权的历史书。关于1932年选举、国会纵火事件和1933年《授权法》，我们不是已经知道了一切吗？
In a new book, German artist and writer Philipp Ruch argues that viewing the ascent of Hitler’s NSDAP through the prism of the Third Reich has distorted our understanding of fascism’s electoral breakthrough With your art collective Centre for Political Beauty you famously built a replica of the Holocaust memorial on a property next to the home of an AfD politician. Now you’ve written a history book about the Nazis’ rise to power. Don’t we already know everything there is to know about the 1932 elections, the Reichstag fire and the Enabling Act of 1933?
大约三年前，我开始关注希特勒的德国国家社会主义工人党（NSDAP）如何在德国仍是民主国家时迅速崛起，因为我希望这段历史能告诉我们一些关于当今右翼极端运动成功之道的信息。在查阅历史资料时，我意识到，1930年9月14日的国会选举在许多方面都比1932年和1933年发生的事情更重要。我原以为这件事的结论已经板上钉钉。然而，我研究得越深入，就越意识到，我们用来解释纳粹崛起的多数理论都站不住脚——数据讲述的是一个完全不同、也黑暗得多的故事。
About three years ago I became interested in how Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ party (NSDAP) rose to prominence when Germany was still a democracy, because I hoped it could tell us something about the success of rightwing extremist movements today. From looking at historical sources, I realised that the Reichstag elections of 14 September 1930 were in many ways more important than what happened in 1932 and 1933. And I expected it to be an open-and-shut case. But the more I looked into it, the more I realised that most of the theories we have to explain the rise of the Nazis don’t make sense – the data tells a completely different, far darker story.