German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has warned that democracy is under threat again today in his country in an ever-worsening political climate.

On the 90th anniversary of the Enabling Act, which paved the way for Hitler to become a dictator, Steinmeier said that in Germany, and worldwide, there is an alarming increase in antisemitism and extremist attacks on MPs, the judiciary, the press and systems of checks and balances.

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Adolf Hitler (Picture: Getty Images)

Writing in the newspaper Die Welt, he said that in the Weimar Republic, from 1918 to 1933, “the many murders of democrats by right-wing extremists, of which the Jewish foreign minister Walther Rathenau was the most prominent victim, showed how words turned into bloody deeds”.

He went on: “Violence as a means of conflict should have formed an insurmountable dividing line from the extremists, but even a convicted putschist like Hitler and his NSDAP were welcome allies for the national conservatives.

"It is also a lesson from Weimar that the state must defend itself against its enemies in state offices.

“Police officers or soldiers who spread misanthropic hatred in right-wing extremist chat groups must not be protected or promoted, but should face disciplinary punishment or dismissal.”