AAs the presidential election enters the homestretch, Democrats are growing increasingly nervous about the outcome. Memories of 2016 – and Hillary Clinton’s defeat despite her lead in the polls – make it impossible for supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris to be complacent.

At the same time, the constant drumbeat of conspiracy theories and wild lies about immigrants And natural disastersas well as Donald Trump’s threat to unleash retaliation against his enemies if he is re-elected, have contributed to a sense of chaos and terror among some citizens.

More that A commentator has compared the sense of crisis and fear that permeates America’s fragmented political culture to the situation in Weimar Germany in the years before that democratic government gave way to authoritarianism. Yet even beyond the risks inherent in a historical comparison that equates any modern political figure with Hitler, there is a crucial difference that makes the comparison inaccurate: Americans today who believe their country is at risk of losing its democracy collapse. forged a crucial interideological coalition that was lacking in Weimar Germany.

After Germany’s defeat in World War I, the Weimar Republic replaced the imperial government of Emperor Wilhelm II. This represented a seemingly welcome change in Germany’s political and social order: an effort to establish a democratic parliamentary regime. However, this was hampered from the start.

At the root of the new government’s problems was a myth told by the German high command at the end of the First World War: the “legend of Dolchstoss.” When Germany requested an armistice in November 1918, it was on the ropes. Yet the high command wanted to avoid the German people being blamed for the loss of the war. Thus, this created a myth to explain Germany’s defeat: the government stabbed its people in the back. Military leaders claimed that Germany had indeed won the war but had been betrayed by the socialists and liberals in the new government.

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Worse still, after these “November criminals” surrendered to the Allies, they allegedly sold out the country at the Versailles Peace Conference, accepting territorial losses and crippling reparations. Among their concessions: the humiliating “War Guilt Clause,” which forced Germany to accept full responsibility for the First World War.

The great lie of the Dolchstoss legend was entirely false: even the concessions of Versailles had been reluctant. Yet it damaged the nascent Weimar Republic and made it difficult for the new government, now labeled traitorous by many Germans, to establish legitimacy.

During the 1920s, the crushing weight of reparations along with polarization led to economic and political instability. For the most part, the government remained in the hands of more centrist politicians, although these parliamentary alliances regularly collapsed when the government faced both domestic and international challenges. Among the most serious: the French occupation of German industrial sites while Germany fell behind in its reparations payments, leading to catastrophic inflation in 1923.

It was in this context that Hitler first attempted to seize power in November of the same year. Brewery Putsch. While the coup failed, a corrupt judiciary openly sympathetic to the political right handed down light sentences to Hitler and his supporters; he spent less than a year in prison.

In the years following Hitler’s release from prison, the Nazis fanned out across Germany to strengthen the party organization, particularly in rural areas and small towns, where people were receptive to their calls for racism and xenophobia as well as their party’s attacks on Marxists and socialists. the urban cultural elite.

When the Great Depression hit in the early 1930s, Hitler and his supporters were ready to take advantage of the despair of the German people and focus their attention on a scapegoat – the political left and the Jews – while supporting centrist political parties was eroding.

There was no unified opposition to the Nazis. During the 1920s, social democrats regularly allied with centrist parties. However, by the early 1930s, these parties’ vote share was far below the combined majority they needed to govern. Worse still, the Social Democrats were engaged in bitter infighting with the growing Communist Party, making it impossible for the left to resist a reinvigorated and extremist right. The country was so polarized that no viable interideological political coalition was possible, and the political center rapidly shrank as the far right and far left grew. Many resigned themselves to the end of a democratic regime that did not seem to be working.

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Today’s political culture can seem fragmented and chaotic, echoing the unrest of the final months of Weimar. Trump and the Republican Party warn that Democrats want “to destroy our country,” with Trump repeatedly calling Harris a “Marxist, communist, fascist person.” His billionaire ally Elon Musk warned in a podcast interview published Monday, if Trump loses, it will be the “last election” and Trump’s campaign shared this on social media. Meanwhile, those who support Harris and the Democrats point out that Trump didn’t promise accepting the results of the election and looking with apprehension at some of his right-wing supporters it seems like i’m getting ready for post-election violence.

Although it is difficult to compare any modern political figure to those of this era, Weimar Germany remains one of modern history’s most infamous examples of the collapse of a democracy and of the rise of authoritarianism. Donald Trump’s attitude toward a peaceful transfer of power – was most notably manifested on January 6, 2021, and again on Sunday, when he said at a rally in Pennsylvania that he “should not have left” his position – and other Certain elements of his program raise the specter of systemic collapse. But a close look at the events of the early 1930s suggests that the United States is far better positioned than Germany to avoid falling into authoritarianism, for one crucial reason.

Americans on the left, center and even parts of the right, who see an existential threat in a Trump victory, have united in a way that the parties of the Weimar Republic did not. Former Republican Party stalwarts like Liz and Dick Cheney and leftists like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have all come out against Trump and pledged their support for Harris. Harris’ Republicans are also out in force, toning down their political disagreements for the moment.

Under Weimar, internal political struggles made it impossible to present a united front against rising authoritarianism. Today, the center right and center left are united in their efforts to prevent this change. They might still fail, but it won’t be because they have resigned themselves to defeat.

Christine Adams, former member of the American Council for Learned Societies and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Newberry Library, is professor of history at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and author of The creation of the French royal mistress with Tracy Adams.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the TIME editors.