essay on how hitler came to power

The Rise of Hitler to Power Essay

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Introduction

The weimar republic, anti-semitism, reference list.

Adolf Hitler rose to power as the chancellor of Germany in 1933 through a legal election and formed a coalition government of the NSDAO-DNVP Party. Many issues in Hitler’s life and manipulations behind the curtains preceded this event.

Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power propelled by various factors that were in play in Germany since the end of World War I. The weak Weimar Republic and Hitler’s anti-Semitism campaigns and obsession were some of the factors that favored Hitler’s rise to power and generally the Nazi beliefs (Bloxham and Kushner 2005: 54).

Every public endorsement that Hitler received was an approval for his hidden Nazi ideals of dictatorship and Semitism regardless of whether the Germans were aware or not.

Hitler’s pathway to power was rather long and coupled with challenges but he was not ready to let go; he held on to accomplish his deeply rooted obsessions and beliefs; actually, vote for Hitler was a vote for the Holocaust.

Hitler joined the German Worker’s Party in the year 1919 as its fifth member. His oratory talent and anti-Semitism values quickly popularized him and by 1920, he was already the head of propaganda.

The party later changed its name to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartel (NSDPA) and formed paramilitary groups in the name of security men or gymnastics and sports division.

It was this paramilitary formed by Hitler that would cause unrest later to tarnish the name of the communists leading to distrust of communism by the Germans and on the other hand rise of popularity of the Nazi (Burleigh 1997: 78).

A turning point of Hitler took place when he led the Beer Hall Putsch, in a failed coup de tat and the government later imprisoned him on accusations of treason. The resulting trial earned him a lot of publicity, he used the occasion to attack the Weimar republic, and later while in prison, he rethought his approach to get into power.

The military defeat and German revolution in November 1918 after the First World War saw the formation of Weimar republic.The military government handed over power to the civilian government and later on revolutions in form of mutinies, violent uprisings and declaration of independence occurred until early 1919.

Then there was formation of constituent assembly and promulgated of new constitution, which included the infamous article 48. None of the many political parties could gain a majority vote to form government and therefore many small parties formed a coalition government.

What followed were a short period of political stability mainly because of the coalition government in place and the later the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919. Many factors caused the rise of the Nazi party to power.

The most notable factor was his ability to take advantage of Germany’s poor leadership, economical and political instability.

The Weimar’s Republic collapse under pressure due to hyperinflation and civil unrest was the result of Hitler’s ability to manipulate the German media and public while at the same time taking advantage of the country’s poor leadership (Schleunes 1990: 295).

The period between 1921 and 1922, Germany was struggling with economic instability due to high inflation and hyperinflation rates prior to the absolute collapse of the German currency. The German mark became almost useless resulting into instability-fuelled unrest in many sectors of the economy. To counter the effects, the government printed huge amounts of paper money.

Germany had to sign the unforgiving treaty of Versailles, which the Weimar Republic was responsible for and was later to become the ‘noose around Germany’s neck’, a situation that caused “feelings of distrust, fear, resentment, and insecurity towards the Weimar Republic” (Bartov 2000: 54).

Hitler built on these volatile emotions and offered the option of a secure and promising leadership of the extremist Nazi party as opposed to the weak and unstable coalition government of the Weimar republic. Dippel notes, “Hitler’s ability to build upon people’s disappointed view of the hatred of the treaty of Versailles was one of the major reason for the Nazi party’s and Hitler’s rise to power” (1996: 220).

The Treaty of Versailles introduced the German population to a period of economic insatiability and caused an escalation of hard economic standards. The opportunistic appearance of an extremist group that promised better options than the prevailing situation presented a temptation to the vulnerable Germans to accept it (Dippel 1996: 219).

During the period of hyperinflation, unemployment rose sharply and children were largely malnourished. The value of people’s savings spiraled downwards leading to low living standards and reduction in people buying power.

People became desperate and started a frantic search for a better alternative to the Weimar Government. Germany in a state of disillusionment became a prey to the convincing promises of Hitler. Hitler promised full employment and security in form of a strong central government.

The Weimar republic also faced political challenges from both left-wingers and right-wingers. The communists wanted radical changes like those one implemented in Russia while the conservatives thought that the Weimar government was too weak and liberal.

The Germans longed for a leader with the leadership qualities of Bismark especially with the disillusionment of the Weimar republic. They blamed the government for the hated Versailles treaty and they all came out to look for a scapegoat to their overwhelming challenges (Thalmann and Feinermann 1990: 133).

In their bid to look for scapegoats, many Germans led by Hitler and Nazi party blamed the German Jews for their economic and political problems.

Hitler made a failed attempt to seize power through a coup de tat that led to his arrest and imprisonment. In prison, he wrote a book that was later to become the guide to Nazism known as Mein Kampf (My Struggle).

The book reflected Hitler’s obsessions to nationalism, racism, and anti-Semitism and he insisted that Germans belonged to a superior race of Aryans meaning light-skinned Europeans. According to Hitler, the greatest enemies of the Aryans were the Jews and therefore the Germans should eliminate them at all costs since they were the genesis of all their misfortunes.

These views on Semitism could trace its genesis in history from which it Historians suspect that Hitler’s ideas were rooted. In this view, Christians persecuted Jews mainly because of their difference in beliefs.

Nationalism in the 19 th century caused the society to view Jews as ethnic outsiders while Hitler viewed Jews not as members of a religion but as a unique race (Longerich 2006: 105). Consequently, he blamed the German’s defeat on a conspiracy of Marxists, Jews, corruption of politicians and businesspersons.

Hitler urged the Germans on the need to unite into a great nation so that the slaves and other inferior races could bow to their needs (Bergen 2003: 30). He further advocated for removal and elimination of the Jews from the face of the earth to create enough space for ‘great nation’.

He spread propaganda that for Germany to unite into one great nation it required a strong leader one he believed to be destined to become.

These Semitism views contributed to the sudden change of fortunes for the Nazi party and Hitler because the conditions were appropriate. The Germans were desperate for some hope in the midst of frustrating times due to the failure of the Weimar republic and rising communism (Stone 2004: 17).

They involuntarily yielded to the more appealing Nazism values especially with the promises of destroying communism and improved living standards.

However, in accepting the Nazi party and Hitler, the Germans were giving in to Semitism, which was deeply rooted in the core values of Nazism, and Hitler had clearly outlined them in the Mein Kampf, which laid out his ideas and future policies.

Hitler’s well timed and precise way of “introducing the secure option of Nazism at an appropriate time and taking advantage of a disjointed Weimar republic that faced unprecedented challenges” (Cohn-Sherbok 1999: 12) was one of the many reasons that underscored Hitler’s fame.

He promised a strong and united German nation very timely when the German nation had suffered a dent to their pride and union due to the defeat in the First World War. Hitler’s promise of a strong and powerful nation began to look very appealing causing a large proportion of Germans, who were in disillusionment, to divert their support the Nazi Party (Gordon 1987: 67).

Hitler’s opportunistic approach and perfectly timed cunning speeches as well as his manipulation of certain circumstance were significant reasons for the rise of Nazism and Hitler in Germany.

During the Great depression and release from prison, Hitler introduced large-scale propaganda and at the same time manipulated the media with his ideas. This led to the Nazi supporter’s increase of detests against their opposition and many Germans believed in the cunning lies of Hitler (Kaplan 1999: 45).

He managed to spread lies against the communist society and a case in point is when a communist supporter set the Reichstag building ablaze in one of the civil unrests in Germany, supposedly.

This event caused the communism society to loose popularity and allowed Hitler to activate the enabling act when he came to power. The act marked a turning point in the success of Hitler’s dictatorship and Historians accredit it as the foundation of the Nazi rule.

The communists later realized that the Nazis were responsible for the act at Reichstag building and the act meant to provoke hatred between the communists and Nazi supporters.

Hitler had a very charming personality that made him very easy to get along with people. His likable character and oratory skills enabled him to put forward the strong sense of authority that the Weimar Republic lacked.

This, in combination with other factors, made him very appealing to the desperate Germans, making them believe in the Nazi ideals like Semitism and supporting the Nazi party while concurrently fueling hatred of the ruling Weimar Republic.

Hitler’s ability to manipulate circumstances and situation in the favor of himself and his Nazi Party was reason for their success to rise to power. Hitler waited patiently to take hold of the realms of power before unleashing his full force of dictatorship and hatred for the Jews, which led to the holocaust. It is therefore just to state that every Hitler’s vote was a vote for the holocaust.

Bartov, O., ed., The Holocaust: origins, implementation, aftermath , Routledge, London/New York, 2000.

Bergen, D. L., War & Genocide: a concise history of the Holocaust , 2 nd ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.

Bloxham, D. & T. Kushner, The Holocaust. Critical historical approaches , Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2005.

Burleigh, M., Ethics and Extermination. Reflections on Nazi Genocide, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997.

Cohn-Sherbok, D., Understanding the Holocaust , Cassell. London/New York, 1999.

Dippel, J. H., Bound upon a Wheel of Fire. Why so many German Jews made the tragic decision to remain in Nazi Germany , Basic Books, New York, 1996.

Gordon, A. S., Hitler, Germans and the ‘Jewish Question’ , Blackwell, Oxford, 1987.

Kaplan, M., Between dignity and despair: Jewish life in Nazi Germany , New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Longerich, P., The Unwritten Order. Hitler’s Role in the Final Solution, Tempus, The Mill, GLS, 2006.

Schleunes, K. A., The Twisted Road to Auschwitz. Nazi Policy towards German Jews, 1933-9, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1990.

Stone, D., Histories of the Holocaust , Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2004.

Thalmann, R. & E. Feinermann, Crystal night, 9-10 November 1938 , Thames and Hudson, London, 1990.

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Adolf Hitler

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 30, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany’s  Nazi Party , was one of the most powerful and notorious dictators of the 20th century. After serving with the German military in World War I , Hitler capitalized on economic woes, popular discontent and political infighting during the Weimar Republic to rise through the ranks of the Nazi Party.

In a series of ruthless and violent actions—including the Reichstag Fire and the Night of Long Knives—Hitler took absolute power in Germany by 1933. Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 led to the outbreak of  World War II , and by 1941, Nazi forces had used “blitzkrieg” military tactics to occupy much of Europe. Hitler’s virulent  anti-Semitism  and obsessive pursuit of Aryan supremacy fueled the murder of some 6 million Jews, along with other victims of the  Holocaust . After the tide of war turned against him, Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin bunker in April 1945.

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn, a small Austrian town near the Austro-German frontier. After his father, Alois, retired as a state customs official, young Adolf spent most of his childhood in Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.

Not wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps as a civil servant, he began struggling in secondary school and eventually dropped out. Alois died in 1903, and Adolf pursued his dream of being an artist, though he was rejected from Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts.

After his mother, Klara, died in 1908, Hitler moved to Vienna, where he pieced together a living painting scenery and monuments and selling the images. Lonely, isolated and a voracious reader, Hitler became interested in politics during his years in Vienna, and developed many of the ideas that would shape Nazi ideology.

Military Career of Adolf Hitler

In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, in the German state of Bavaria. When World War I broke out the following summer, he successfully petitioned the Bavarian king to be allowed to volunteer in a reserve infantry regiment.

Deployed in October 1914 to Belgium, Hitler served throughout the Great War and won two decorations for bravery, including the rare Iron Cross First Class, which he wore to the end of his life.

Hitler was wounded twice during the conflict: He was hit in the leg during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and temporarily blinded by a British gas attack near Ypres in 1918. A month later, he was recuperating in a hospital at Pasewalk, northeast of Berlin, when news arrived of the armistice and Germany’s defeat in World War I .

Like many Germans, Hitler came to believe the country’s devastating defeat could be attributed not to the Allies, but to insufficiently patriotic “traitors” at home—a myth that would undermine the post-war Weimar Republic and set the stage for Hitler’s rise.

After Hitler returned to Munich in late 1918, he joined the small German Workers’ Party, which aimed to unite the interests of the working class with a strong German nationalism. His skilled oratory and charismatic energy helped propel him in the party’s ranks, and in 1920 he left the army and took charge of its propaganda efforts.

In one of Hitler’s strokes of propaganda genius, the newly renamed National Socialist German Workers Party, or  Nazi Party , adopted a version of the swastika—an ancient sacred symbol of  Hinduism , Jainism and Buddhism —as its emblem. Printed in a white circle on a red background, Hitler’s swastika would take on terrifying symbolic power in the years to come.

By the end of 1921, Hitler led the growing Nazi Party, capitalizing on widespread discontent with the Weimar Republic and the punishing terms of the Versailles Treaty . Many dissatisfied former army officers in Munich would join the Nazis, notably Ernst Röhm, who recruited the “strong arm” squads—known as the Sturmabteilung (SA)—which Hitler used to protect party meetings and attack opponents.

Beer Hall Putsch 

On the evening of November 8, 1923, members of the SA and others forced their way into a large beer hall where another right-wing leader was addressing the crowd. Wielding a revolver, Hitler proclaimed the beginning of a national revolution and led marchers to the center of Munich, where they got into a gun battle with police.

Hitler fled quickly, but he and other rebel leaders were later arrested. Even though it failed spectacularly, the Beer Hall Putsch established Hitler as a national figure , and (in the eyes of many) a hero of right-wing nationalism.

'Mein Kampf' 

Tried for treason, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, but would serve only nine months in the relative comfort of Landsberg Castle. During this period, he began to dictate the book that would become " Mein Kampf " (“My Struggle”), the first volume of which was published in 1925.

In it, Hitler expanded on the nationalistic, anti-Semitic views he had begun to develop in Vienna in his early twenties, and laid out plans for the Germany—and the world—he sought to create when he came to power.

Hitler would finish the second volume of "Mein Kampf" after his release, while relaxing in the mountain village of Berchtesgaden. It sold modestly at first, but with Hitler’s rise it became Germany’s best-selling book after the Bible. By 1940, it had sold some 6 million copies there.

Hitler’s second book, “The Zweites Buch,” was written in 1928 and contained his thoughts on foreign policy. It was not published in his lifetime due to the poor initial sales of “Mein Kampf.” The first English translations of “The Zweites Buch” did not appear until 1962 and was published under the title “Hitler's Secret Book.” 

Obsessed with race and the idea of ethnic “purity,” Hitler saw a natural order that placed the so-called “Aryan race” at the top.

For him, the unity of the Volk (the German people) would find its truest incarnation not in democratic or parliamentary government, but in one supreme leader, or Führer.

" Mein Kampf " also addressed the need for Lebensraum (or living space): In order to fulfill its destiny, Germany should take over lands to the east that were now occupied by “inferior” Slavic peoples—including Austria, the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia), Poland and Russia.

The Schutzstaffel (SS) 

By the time Hitler left prison, economic recovery had restored some popular support for the Weimar Republic, and support for right-wing causes like Nazism appeared to be waning.

Over the next few years, Hitler laid low and worked on reorganizing and reshaping the Nazi Party. He established the Hitler Youth  to organize youngsters, and created the Schutzstaffel (SS) as a more reliable alternative to the SA.

Members of the SS wore black uniforms and swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler. (After 1929, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler , the SS would develop from a group of some 200 men into a force that would dominate Germany and terrorize the rest of occupied Europe during World War II .)

Hitler spent much of his time at Berchtesgaden during these years, and his half-sister, Angela Raubal, and her two daughters often joined him. After Hitler became infatuated with his beautiful blonde niece, Geli Raubal, his possessive jealousy apparently led her to commit suicide in 1931.

Devastated by the loss, Hitler would consider Geli the only true love affair of his life. He soon began a long relationship with Eva Braun , a shop assistant from Munich, but refused to marry her.

The worldwide Great Depression that began in 1929 again threatened the stability of the Weimar Republic. Determined to achieve political power in order to affect his revolution, Hitler built up Nazi support among German conservatives, including army, business and industrial leaders.

The Third Reich

In 1932, Hitler ran against the war hero Paul von Hindenburg for president, and received 36.8 percent of the vote. With the government in chaos, three successive chancellors failed to maintain control, and in late January 1933 Hindenburg named the 43-year-old Hitler as chancellor, capping the stunning rise of an unlikely leader.

January 30, 1933 marked the birth of the Third Reich, or as the Nazis called it, the “Thousand-Year Reich” (after Hitler’s boast that it would endure for a millennium).

HISTORY Vault: Third Reich: The Rise

Rare and never-before-seen amateur films offer a unique perspective on the rise of Nazi Germany from Germans who experienced it. How were millions of people so vulnerable to fascism?

Reichstag Fire 

Though the Nazis never attained more than 37 percent of the vote at the height of their popularity in 1932, Hitler was able to grab absolute power in Germany largely due to divisions and inaction among the majority who opposed Nazism.

After a devastating fire at Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag, in February 1933—possibly the work of a Dutch communist, though later evidence suggested Nazis set the  Reichstag fire  themselves—Hitler had an excuse to step up the political oppression and violence against his opponents.

On March 23, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, giving full powers to Hitler and celebrating the union of National Socialism with the old German establishment (i.e., Hindenburg ).

That July, the government passed a law stating that the Nazi Party “constitutes the only political party in Germany,” and within months all non-Nazi parties, trade unions and other organizations had ceased to exist.

His autocratic power now secure within Germany, Hitler turned his eyes toward the rest of Europe.

In 1933, Germany was diplomatically isolated, with a weak military and hostile neighbors (France and Poland). In a famous speech in May 1933, Hitler struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone, claiming Germany supported disarmament and peace.

But behind this appeasement strategy, the domination and expansion of the Volk remained Hitler’s overriding aim.

By early the following year, he had withdrawn Germany from the League of Nations and begun to militarize the nation in anticipation of his plans for territorial conquest.

Night of the Long Knives

On June 29, 1934, the infamous Night of the Long Knives , Hitler had Röhm, former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and hundreds of other problematic members of his own party murdered, in particular troublesome members of the SA.

When the 86-year-old Hindenburg died on August 2, military leaders agreed to combine the presidency and chancellorship into one position, meaning Hitler would command all the armed forces of the Reich.

Persecution of Jews

On September 15, 1935, passage of the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of German citizenship, and barred them from marrying or having relations with persons of “German or related blood.”

Though the Nazis attempted to downplay its persecution of Jews in order to placate the international community during the 1936 Berlin Olympics (in which German-Jewish athletes were not allowed to compete), additional decrees over the next few years disenfranchised Jews and took away their political and civil rights.

In addition to its pervasive anti-Semitism, Hitler’s government also sought to establish the cultural dominance of Nazism by burning books, forcing newspapers out of business, using radio and movies for propaganda purposes and forcing teachers throughout Germany’s educational system to join the party.

Much of the Nazi persecution of Jews and other targets occurred at the hands of the Geheime Staatspolizei (GESTAPO), or Secret State Police, an arm of the SS that expanded during this period.

Outbreak of World War II

In March 1936, against the advice of his generals, Hitler ordered German troops to reoccupy the demilitarized left bank of the Rhine.

Over the next two years, Germany concluded alliances with Italy and Japan, annexed Austria and moved against Czechoslovakia—all essentially without resistance from Great Britain, France or the rest of the international community.

Once he confirmed the alliance with Italy in the so-called “Pact of Steel” in May 1939, Hitler then signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union . On September 1, 1939, Nazi troops invaded Poland, finally prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany.

Blitzkrieg 

After ordering the occupation of Norway and Denmark in April 1940, Hitler adopted a plan proposed by one of his generals to attack France through the Ardennes Forest. The blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) attack began on May 10; Holland quickly surrendered, followed by Belgium.

German troops made it all the way to the English Channel, forcing British and French forces to evacuate en masse from Dunkirk in late May. On June 22, France was forced to sign an armistice with Germany.

Hitler had hoped to force Britain to seek peace as well, but when that failed he went ahead with his attacks on that country, followed by an invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor that December, the United States declared war on Japan, and Germany’s alliance with Japan demanded that Hitler declare war on the United States as well.

At that point in the conflict, Hitler shifted his central strategy to focus on breaking the alliance of his main opponents (Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union) by forcing one of them to make peace with him.

Concentration Camps

Beginning in 1933, the SS had operated a network of concentration camps, including a notorious camp at Dachau , near Munich, to hold Jews and other targets of the Nazi regime.

After war broke out, the Nazis shifted from expelling Jews from German-controlled territories to exterminating them. Einsatzgruppen, or mobile death squads, executed entire Jewish communities during the Soviet invasion, while the existing concentration-camp network expanded to include death camps like Auschwitz -Birkenau in occupied Poland.

In addition to forced labor and mass execution, certain Jews at Auschwitz were targeted as the subjects of horrific medical experiments carried out by eugenicist Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death.” Mengele’s experiments focused on twins and exposed 3,000 child prisoners to disease, disfigurement and torture under the guise of medical research.

Though the Nazis also imprisoned and killed Catholics, homosexuals, political dissidents, Roma (gypsies) and the disabled, above all they targeted Jews—some 6 million of whom were killed in German-occupied Europe by war’s end.

End of World War II

With defeats at El-Alamein and Stalingrad , as well as the landing of U.S. troops in North Africa by the end of 1942, the tide of the war turned against Germany.

As the conflict continued, Hitler became increasingly unwell, isolated and dependent on medications administered by his personal physician.

Several attempts were made on his life, including one that came close to succeeding in July 1944, when Col. Claus von Stauffenberg planted a bomb that exploded during a conference at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia.

Within a few months of the successful Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the Allies had begun liberating cities across Europe. That December, Hitler attempted to direct another offensive through the Ardennes, trying to split British and American forces.

But after January 1945, he holed up in a bunker beneath the Chancellery in Berlin. With Soviet forces closing in, Hitler made plans for a last-ditch resistance before finally abandoning that plan.

How Did Adolf Hitler Die?

At midnight on the night of April 28-29, Hitler married Eva Braun in the Berlin bunker. After dictating his political testament,  Hitler shot himself  in his suite on April 30; Braun took poison. Their bodies were burned according to Hitler’s instructions.

With Soviet troops occupying Berlin, Germany surrendered unconditionally on all fronts on May 7, 1945, bringing the war in Europe to a close.

In the end, Hitler’s planned “Thousand-Year Reich” lasted just over 12 years, but wreaked unfathomable destruction and devastation during that time, forever transforming the history of Germany, Europe and the world.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich iWonder – Adolf Hitler: Man and Monster, BBC . The Holocaust : A Learning Site for Students, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum .

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The Nazi Rise to Power

The Nazi Party was one of a number of right-wing extremist political groups that emerged in Germany following World War I. Beginning with the onset of the Great Depression it rose rapidly from obscurity to political prominence, becoming the largest party in the German parliament in 1932.

The Nazi Party’s meteoric rise to power began in 1930, when it attained 107 seats in Germany’s parliament, the Reichstag. In July 1932, the Nazi Party became the largest political party in the Reichstag with 230 representatives

In the final years of the Weimar Republic (1930 to 1933), the government ruled by emergency decree because it could not attain a parliamentary majority. Political and economic instability, coupled with voter dissatisfaction with the status quo, benefitted the Nazi Party.

As a result of the Nazis’ mass support, German president Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933. His appointment paved the way to the Nazi dictatorship after Hindenburg’s death in August 1934.

• Nazi rise to power
• Third Reich
• Weimar Germany

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[caption=dba36e5a-5e80-4e91-bd79-2e5ed2f06776] - [credit=dba36e5a-5e80-4e91-bd79-2e5ed2f06776]

Before the onset of the Great Depression in Germany in 1929–1930, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (or Nazi Party for short) was a small party on the radical right of the German political spectrum. In the Reichstag (parliament) elections of May 2, 1928, the Nazis received only 2.6 percent of the national vote, a proportionate decline from 1924, when the Nazis received 3 percent of the vote. As a result of the election, a "Grand Coalition" of Germany's Social Democratic, Catholic Center, German Democratic, and German People's parties governed Weimar Germany  into the first six months of the economic downturn.

During 1930–1933, the mood in Germany was grim. The worldwide economic depression had hit the country hard, and millions of people were out of work. The unemployed were joined by millions of others who linked the Depression to Germany's national humiliation after defeat in World War 1 . Many Germans perceived the parliamentary government coalition as weak and unable to alleviate the economic crisis. Widespread economic misery, fear, and perception of worse times to come, as well as anger and impatience with the apparent failure of the government to manage the crisis, offered fertile ground for the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.

Hitler and other Nazi speakers carefully tailored their speeches to each audience. For example, when speaking to businessmen, the Nazis downplayed antisemitism and instead emphasized anti-communism and the return of German colonies lost through the Treaty of Versailles. When addressed to soldiers, veterans, or other nationalist interest groups, Nazi propaganda emphasized military buildup and return of other territories lost after Versailles. Nazi speakers assured farmers that a Nazi government would prop up falling agricultural prices. Pensioners all over Germany were told that both the amounts and the buying power of their monthly checks would remain stable.

Using a deadlock among the partners in the "Grand Coalition" as an excuse, Center party politician and Reich Chancellor Heinrich Bruening induced the aging Reich President, World War I Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, to dissolve the parliament in July 1930 and schedule new elections for September 1930. To dissolve the parliament, the president used Article 48 of the German constitution. This Article permitted the German government to govern without parliamentary consent and was to be applied only in cases of direct national emergency.

Bruening miscalculated the mood of the nation after six months of economic depression. The Nazis won 18.3 percent of the vote and became the second largest political party in the country.

For two years, repeatedly resorting to Article 48  to issue presidential decrees, the Bruening government sought and failed to build a parliamentary majority that would exclude Social Democrats, Communists, and Nazis. In 1932, Hindenburg dismissed Bruening and appointed Franz von Papen, a former diplomat and Center party politician, as chancellor. Papen dissolved the Reichstag again, but the July 1932 elections brought the Nazi party 37.3 percent of the popular vote, making it the largest political party in Germany. The Communists (taking votes from the Social Democrats in the increasingly desperate economic climate) received 14.3 percent of the vote. As a result, more than half the deputies in the 1932 Reichstag had publicly committed themselves to ending parliamentary democracy.

On January 30, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Hitler was not appointed chancellor as the result of an electoral victory with a popular mandate, but instead as the result of a constitutionally questionable deal among a small group of conservative German politicians who had given up on parliamentary rule. They hoped to use Hitler's popularity with the masses to buttress a return to conservative authoritarian rule, perhaps even a monarchy. Within two years, however, Hitler and the Nazis outmaneuvered Germany's conservative politicians to consolidate a radical Nazi dictatorship completely subordinate to Hitler's personal will.

Critical Thinking Questions

How did the German constitution contribute to the Nazi rise to power?

What pressures and motivations led some officials to arrange for the appointment of Hitler as chancellor?

What do you consider to be the ideal priorities of government officials to uphold, particularly in times of crisis?

How can knowledge of the events in Germany and Europe before the Nazis came to power help citizens today respond to threats of genocide and mass atrocity in the world?

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• Introduction
• Founding of the Nazi Party and the Beer Hall Putsch

The Nazi Party and Hitler’s rise to power

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• Table Of Contents

Upon his release Hitler quickly set about rebuilding his moribund party, vowing to achieve power only through legal political means thereafter. The Nazi Party’s membership grew from 25,000 in 1925 to about 180,000 in 1929. Its organizational system of gauleiters (“district leaders”) spread through Germany at this time, and the party began contesting municipal, state, and federal elections with increasing frequency.

However, it was the effects of the Great Depression in Germany that brought the Nazi Party to its first real nationwide importance. The rapid rise in unemployment in 1929–30 provided millions of jobless and dissatisfied voters whom the Nazi Party exploited to its advantage. From 1929 to 1932 the party vastly increased its membership and voting strength; its vote in elections to the Reichstag (the German Parliament) increased from 800,000 votes in 1928 to about 14,000,000 votes in July 1932, and it thus emerged as the largest voting bloc in the Reichstag, with 230 members (38 percent of the total vote). By then big-business circles had begun to finance the Nazi electoral campaigns, and swelling bands of SA toughs increasingly dominated the street fighting with the communists that accompanied such campaigns.

When unemployment began to drop in Germany in late 1932, the Nazi Party’s vote also dropped, to about 12,000,000 (33 percent of the vote) in the November 1932 elections. Nevertheless, Hitler’s shrewd maneuvering behind the scenes prompted the president of the German republic, Paul von Hindenburg , to name him chancellor on January 30, 1933. Hitler used the powers of his office to solidify the Nazis’ position in the government during the following months. The elections of March 5, 1933—precipitated by the burning of the Reichstag building only days earlier—gave the Nazi Party 44 percent of the votes, and further unscrupulous tactics on Hitler’s part turned the voting balance in the Reichstag in the Nazis’ favour. On March 23, 1933, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act , which “enabled” Hitler’s government to issue decrees independently of the Reichstag and the presidency; Hitler in effect assumed dictatorial powers.

On July 14, 1933, Hitler’s government declared the Nazi Party to be the only political party in Germany. On the death of Hindenburg in 1934 Hitler took the titles of Führer (“Leader”), chancellor, and commander in chief of the army, and he remained leader of the Nazi Party as well. Nazi Party membership became mandatory for all higher civil servants and bureaucrats , and the gauleiters became powerful figures in the state governments. Hitler crushed the Nazi Party’s left, or socialist-oriented, wing in 1934, executing Ernst Röhm and other rebellious SA leaders on what would become known as the “ Night of the Long Knives .” Thereafter, Hitler’s word was the supreme and undisputed command in the party. Its vast and complex hierarchy was structured like a pyramid, with party-controlled mass organizations for youth, women, workers, and other groups at the bottom, party members and officials in the middle, and Hitler and his closest associates at the top wielding undisputed authority.

The history of the Nazi Party after 1934 can be divided into two main phases. The years between 1934 and 1938 were used by the party to establish virtual total control of all political, social, and cultural activities in Germany. This phase began in earnest with the death of Hindenburg on August 2, 1934. The functions of the military and government were subsumed into the party, and all troops and officials were forced to take the oath of fidelity to Hitler personally. Subordination of the broader German populace was achieved primarily through the unification of all the police , security, and Schutzstaffel ( SS ) organizations under the direction of Heinrich Himmler and his chief lieutenant, Reinhard Heydrich .

A core element of the Nazi Party ideology was anti-Semitism , and Hitler used this period of consolidation to mobilize the power of the Nazi police state against Germany’s Jewish citizens. Jews were deprived of virtually all legal rights under the Nürnberg Laws of September 15, 1935, and prewar state-sponsored persecution of Jews reached its climax on Kristallnacht (November 9–10, 1938). Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels ordered these pogroms , in which SS-directed rioters damaged or destroyed more than 1,000 synagogues and ransacked some 7,500 Jewish-owned homes and businesses. Scores of Jews were killed in the violence, and tens of thousands of Jewish men and boys were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps . After Kristallnacht, the bulk of all Jewish property was confiscated, and Germany’s Jews were effectively erased from public life.

The years between 1938 and 1945 witnessed the effort to impose Nazism on territories outside the Third Reich . This phase was initiated in 1938 with the suppression of the last conservative influences in the two remaining bulwarks of an older, authoritarian but civilized Germany—the army and the foreign office. In that year Hitler began German territorial expansion, carried out through threats and diplomatic pressure, by “peaceful” means. In such a way he incorporated into the Third Reich first the republic of Austria and then the Sudetenland (the German-speaking parts of the republic of Czechoslovakia ).

By 1939 the military preparations, including the militarization of German life and education and the establishment of a war economy, had made such progress in Hitler’s opinion that he could challenge the European order even at the risk of a second great war. On August 23, 1939, Hitler, without consulting his Italian and Japanese allies, concluded a pact of friendship and nonaggression with the Soviet Union . The agreement contained a secret treaty between Germany and Russia partitioning Poland and dividing the whole of eastern Europe into spheres of influence . It opened the road into the heart of central Europe to Joseph Stalin and was the immediate prelude to World War II, which began in Poland on September l.

When Germany started World War II , it came as the logical outcome of Hitler’s plans—known to Germans since the publication of Mein Kampf (1926)—and of his systematic preparations since 1933. From the beginning, the Nazis did not intend to establish a new order of authoritarianism and inequality for Germany alone. Therein Nazism imitated communism . Its dynamism was bound to expand and to spread. By its own nature it could not recognize any limits to its own volition, only limits set by opposed superior forces. To a certain extent World War II repeated the pattern of World War I: great initial German military successes, the forging of a large-scale coalition against Germany, the loss of the war because of German overreaching and conduct.

Prior to Germany’s invasion of Poland, local Nazi affiliates had been present in areas outside the Reich , typically where there existed a sizable population of German descent. One notable group was the German-American Bund , a pro-Nazi paramilitary organization in the United States that was secretly funded and organized by the German government. These Nazi client organizations typically existed on the fringes of political life, but Germany’s early military successes brought them to the fore, especially in occupied territories. On April 9, 1940, German troops invaded Norway, and Vidkun Quisling , the leader of the small Norwegian National Socialist (Nasjonal Samling, or National Union) party immediately proclaimed a “national government.” Quisling’s party had virtually no domestic support, and his government collapsed within a week. Nevertheless, Quisling continued to serve the Nazi occupation forces, and he was named “minister president” in February 1942. German troops also occupied Denmark; although the Danish Nazi Party never managed to achieve a position of political prominence, it was able to orchestrate the creation of a Danish “Free Corps” of volunteers who fought on the Eastern Front as members of the Waffen-SS .

The outbreak of war also saw the full implementation of the Nazi Party’s “final solution to the Jewish question” in all areas controlled by the Third Reich. The ultimate goal of the Nazis’ anti-Semitic ideology was nothing less than Vernichtung (“annihilation”) of Europe’s Jewish population. Jews in occupied territories were forced into ghettoes or systematically killed. Mass shootings by Einsatzgruppen units gave way to the industrialized murder of millions in concentration and extermination camps . The Nazis killed victims from other groups—homosexuals, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles, and political opponents were chief among them—but the destruction of European Jewry remained paramount in the eyes of the Third Reich. In German-occupied Europe, out of a prewar population of about 8.3 million Jews, some 6 million were killed or died in extermination camps of starvation or disease.

Hitler’s dream of a “Thousand-Year Reich” came to an end with Germany’s defeat in 1945, after almost six years of war. Out of the ruins there arose a divided and occupied Germany. The Nazi Party was banned, and its top leaders were convicted of crimes against peace and against humanity. Remnants of Nazi ideology remained in Germany, however, and former Hitler Youth leader Artur Axmann was arrested by Allied forces in December 1945 while attempting to reorganize the Nazi Party. A small number of Nazi-oriented political parties and other groups were formed in West Germany from the late 1940s, though some were later banned.

The American Nazi Party was active in protests against the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and in 1978 the National Socialist Party of America won court approval to hold a demonstration in Skokie , Illinois, a city that was home to a large Jewish population, including individuals who had survived the Holocaust . In the 1990s gangs of neo-Nazi youths in eastern Germany staged attacks against immigrants, desecrated Jewish cemeteries, and engaged in violent confrontations with leftists and police. In the 21st century, small neo-Nazi parties were to be found in many European countries as well as in the United States, Canada, and several Central and South American countries. They were rare, but not unheard of, in the rest of the world. After 1945, however, Nazism as a mass movement was virtually nonexistent.

How did the Nazi consolidate their power?

Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.

Following Hitler’s appointment as chancellor the Nazis were finally in a position of power.

However, this power was limited, as the Nazis were just one party in a three party coalition government, under President Hindenburg.

This topic will explore how the Nazis managed to eliminate their opposition and consolidate ultimate power over Germany, whilst maintaining an illusion of democracy.

It will first explore this topic in chronological order, from the Reichstag Fire through to the death of President Hindenburg, and then explore it thematically in the last section.

The Reichstag Fire

On the 31 January 1933, Hitler, conscious of his lack of a majority in the Reichstag, immediately called for new elections to try and strengthen his position. The Nazis aimed to increase their share of the vote so that they would have a majority in the Reichstag. This would allow them to rule unopposed and unhindered by coalition governments.

Over the next two months, they launched themselves into an intense election campaign.

On 27 February 1933, as the campaign moved into its final, frantic days, the Reichstag, the German Parliament building, was set on fire and burnt down. An atmosphere of panic and terror followed the event.

This continued when a young Dutch communist, Van der Lubbe was arrested for the crime.

The Nazi Party used the atmosphere of panic to their advantage, encouraging anti-communism. Göring declared that the communists had planned a national uprising to overthrow the Weimar Republic. This hysteria helped to turn the public against the communists, one of the Nazis main opponents, and 4000 people were imprisoned.

The day after the fire, Hindenburg signed the Emergency Decree for the Protection of the German People.

Emergency powers

On the 28 February 1933, President Hindenburg signed the Emergency Decree for the Protection of the German People. This decree suspended the democratic aspects of the Weimar Republic and declared a state of emergency.

This decree gave the Nazis a legal basis for the persecution and oppression of any opponents, who were be framed as traitors to the republic. People could be imprisoned for any or no reason.

The decree also removed basic personal freedoms, such as the freedom of speech, the right to own property, and the right to trial before imprisonment.

Through these aspects the Nazis suppressed any opposition to their power, and were able to start the road from democracy to a dictatorship.

Elections 1933

The atmosphere of uncertainty following the Reichstag Fire secured many voters for the Nazi party.

The SA also ran a violent campaign of terror against any and all opponents of the Nazi regime. Many were terrified of voting of at all, and many turned to voting for the Nazi Party out of fear for their own safety. The elections were neither free or fair.

On the 5 March 1933, the elections took place, with an extremely high turnout of 89%.

The Nazis secured 43.9% of the vote, an improvement of almost 10% on the previous November’s election. Despite this improvement, the Nazis still did not command a majority in the Reichstag.

The Enabling Law

On the 23 March 1933, Hitler proposed the Enabling Law to the Reichstag. This new law gave Hitler the power to rule by decree rather than passing laws through the Reichstag and the president. If passed, the law would establish the conditions needed for dictatorial rule.

The atmosphere of terror that had followed the Reichstag Fire, and Hindenburg’s and von Papen’s support, made the proposal seem legitimate and, to some, necessary.

The law needed two thirds of the Reichstag to vote for it to pass. The Nazi’s had the support of the DNVP, and had banned the communist party, the KPD, from attending.

The SA and the SS had also been on a month long campaign of violence to scare or imprison other opponents to the party. They had placed many in the first concentration camp , Dachau , which opened just a few days before the vote on the 20 March 1933.

The Centre Party’s vote was crucial. After Hitler had promised to protect the interests of the Catholic Church, the party conceded and supported the bill. Only the SPD opposed it.

The Bill passed by 444 votes for to 94 against on the 24 March 1933.

Although President Hindenburg and the Reichstag continued to exist, Hitler could now govern by decree.

The Night of Long Knives

The Night of Long Knives, also known as the Röhm Putsch, was the purge of the SA leadership and other political opponents from 30 June 1934 to 2 July 1934. Carried out primarily by the SS and the Gestapo, over 150 people were murdered and hundreds more were arrested.

In August 1932 there were approximately 445,000 members of the SA. By June 1934 this had grown to over 3,000,000 members. They were often given a free rein on their activities and were violent and difficult to control.

Hitler feared that the SA and Ernst Röhm, their leader, were a potential threat to his leadership. This fear was intensified by Göring and Himmler, who gave Hitler news of Röhm organising a potential coup .

In addition to this, there was a mutual dislike between the traditional conservative elite – who maintained many key positions in the government and the army during the first years of the Third Reich – and the SA. During the years of the rise of the Nazi Party, the SA had been instrumental in helping the party to gain support.

However, following Hitler being elected chancellor, the SA, and particularly Röhm, were keen to continue the ‘revolution’ and replace the traditional conservative elite with Nazis. Hitler and the rest of the Nazi leadership disagreed with their approach. They understood the need to appear moderate and take over slowly by democratic means where possible, maintaining the stability and illusion of a democracy. The tension between the SA and the Nazi leadership grew.

On 30 June 1934 these tensions came to a head. The leaders of the SA were ordered to attend a meeting at a hotel in Bad Wiesse, Bavaria. Hitler arrived and personally placed Röhm and other high ranking SA leaders under arrest.

Over the next two days, most of the SA leadership were placed under arrest and murdered without trial. Röhm, who was initially pardoned , was then given the choice of suicide or murder. Refusing to take his own life, he was shot on 1 July 1934 by two SS guards.

Whilst the purge focused on the SA, the Nazis also used the event to eliminate other political opponents, such as the former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher.

The Night of the Long Knives (in addition to Hindenburg’s death  a few months later) helped Hitler and the Nazi Party to consolidate absolute power in Germany by removing their political opposition.

From 20 August onwards, the Reichswehr , who had previously been a separate organisation, now swore a personal allegiance to Hitler. The SA were dramatically reduced in size, dropping by 40% to 1.8 million by 1935.

Goebbels engineered the media coverage following the attack to present it as a preventative measure, in response to the SA’s ‘plan to overthrow the government’. As the SA were known for being violent and unruly, many saw this as a legitimate move by the government to ensure public order.

On 13 July 1934 the Reichstag retrospectively approved a bill legalising the purge as emergency defence measures.

Gleichschaltung

Gleichschaltung was the process of the Nazi Party taking control over all aspects of Germany. It is otherwise known as coordination or Nazification. The process primarily took place between 1933-1934.

The Nazi’s started with the Civil Service , issuing the Act for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service on the 7 April 1933. This act legalised removing anyone of non-Ayran descent from the civil service.

In the judicial system specifically, this act removed any judges that were deemed non-compliant with Nazi laws or principles. This act was reinforced by the German Civil Service code of 26 January 1937, which retired any judges or judicial official who would not intervene in cases and rule in favour of the Nazis. The People’s Court, a court created by the Nazis in April 1934 with judges chosen specifically for their Nazi beliefs, replaced the Supreme Court. With these measures in place, the Nazification of the judicial system was complete.

Gleichschaltung was applied across every possible aspect of government policy.

To take control of cultural policy, the Nazis appointed Joseph Goebbels as Minister for Public Engagement and Propaganda on the 13 March 1933. Goebbels became responsible for controlling the national media, film, theatre, arts, and other cultural aspects. Goebbels soon radicalised each of these areas, ensuring that they advocated Nazi ideas.

Whilst Gleichschaltung aimed to reach every aspect of rule in Germany, this was not always possible. Local governments proved more difficult to infiltrate, and even at the end of 1945 only 60% of local mayors were Nazi Party members.

Despite this, on the whole, Gleichschaltung was largely successful. By the end of 1934, the Nazis had managed to infiltrate and take control of every major aspect of German government.

The death of President Hindenburg

President Hindenburg died at the age of 87 on 2 August 1934.

Shortly after Hindenburg’s death, Hitler announced that offices of the chancellor and the president were to be combined to create one position, the Führer and chancellor. Hitler announced that he would occupy this new role.

On 19 August 1934, the German people were asked to vote on whether or not they approved of the merging of the two offices and Hitler’s new role as Führer. 95.7% of the population voted. 89.93% voted in favour of Hitler.

With Hindenburg gone, there was no longer a limit to Hitler’s power. He was now a dictator.

Themes of Nazi consolidation

The Nazis consolidation of power can be grouped into three main themes: pseudo-legality, terror and intimidation and pseudo-moderation.

Pseudo-legal

Germany feared revolution. As such, the Nazis’ consolidation of power relied on maintaining the illusion of a stable democracy. This essentially meant that the Nazis used the atmosphere of panic following the Reichstag Fire  to put forward the Enabling Law . Once the Enabling Law was in place, the Nazis could bypass the Reichstag and rule by decree – seemingly creating laws that stabilised Germany and got rid of its ‘internal enemies’. In reality, the laws that the Nazi’s put forward secured their future as the sole ruling party in Germany.

The support of respected individuals such as von Papen and Hindenburg’s son, Oskar von Hindenburg, gave the Nazis further legitimacy for these actions.

The Nazis immediately used the Enabling Law to remove civil rights. This meant, as well as removing other personal freedoms, that the Nazis could now imprison their political opposition for an indefinite period for any, or no, reason. The Enabling Law allowed them to do this under the guise of legality. As such the Nazi’s justified this measure as implementing necessary security measures, rather than revealing their true motive – to remove opposition.

The Nazis’ also took several more steps to reduce their political opposition ‘legally’. On the 2 May 1933 trade unions were banned. Just two months later, on 14 July 1933 the Nazis used the Enabling Act to ban all political parties except the Nazi Party.

The Nazis also took steps to ensure they couldn’t be openly opposed in the press. On the 4 October 1933, it was declared that all editors must be Aryan. Censorship was heightened, and any person publishing actively anti-Nazi material was threatened or imprisoned. By 1935, over 1,600 newspapers had been closed.

These acts removed people’s ability to oppose the Nazi Party, in any form. However, it did so under the guise of legality, and ‘protecting’ the German people and their democracy.

Terror and intimidation

Whilst the pseudo-legal measures were one factor that helped the Nazi’s to consolidate power, another was terror and intimidation.

The Nazi’s used the SA and the newly expanded SS to harass and imprison any potential opponents of the Nazi Party. Following the Enabling Law, much of this harassment and imprisonment was legal.

In 1933, up to 200,000 people were seized and imprisoned by the SA and the SS. Prisons soon became stretched for space. The Nazis improvised. They used any space they could get their hands on to create temporary ‘camps’. The first concentration camp, Dachau, opened in a broken-down munitions factory on the 20 March 1933, imprisoning primarily political prisoners.

The camps were brutal and had extremely unsanitary conditions. Many of the prisoners were tortured and abused.

Many of those that were harassed by the SA and the SS or imprisoned in camps were terrified to speak out about their ordeal – fearing that they would be further abused or re-imprisoned.

Terror and intimidation became one of the main ways that the Nazis sought to control or suppress their opposition, and German’s in general.

Pseudo moderation

The Nazis used the guise of moderation  to conceal their rapid consolidation of power.

One key example of an event posed as moderate was the Night of Long Knives.

The Night of Long Knives was the purge of the SA leadership and other political opponents from the 30 June 1934 to the 2 July 1934. Over 150 people were murdered and hundreds more were arrested.

Following the purge, the Nazi’s sculpted the media coverage to portray the event as a preventative measure against a revolutionary, violent, and uncontrollable force, rather than a series of political murders.

Continue to next section

Life in Nazi-controlled Europe

What happened in june.

On 22 June 1933, the Nazis banned the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

On 30 June 1934, the Night of Long Knives, a purge of the Nazi leadership by Hitler, took place.

On 28 June 1935, Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code was revised. This heightened the persecution of gay men.

On 22 June 1941, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.

On 9 June 1942, the Nazis liquidated the Czech village of Lidice in response to the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague.

On 6 June 1944, British, Canadian, French and US troops landed on the beaches of German-occupied France. This became known as D-Day.

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Hitler's Rise to Power: 1933-1934

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Hitler's Rise to Power: 1933-1934 Viewing Guide

Hitler's rise to power viewing guide pdf, hitler's rise to power: 1933-1934.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in January 1933. But his maneuvering for authoritarian control of the country was not yet complete, nor was his success inevitable.

Hitler's government was fairly fragile at that point. He had been appointed chancellor by the President of Germany, who had appointed and dismissed three chancellors in the previous 12 months. And there was nothing stopping him from doing the same with Adolf Hitler. No one anticipated-- really could have anticipated what was to come.

So this is the end of January 1933. And by the end of June 1933, it's a one-party system. And I think that's so important to look at. How do you get from this democracy to a one-party dictatorship in six months? It's a combination of the weaknesses of the existing system and opportunities. By opportunities, I mean the Reichstag fire.

February 27, 1933, the German Reichstag explodes in flame from an arson attack. There's crashing glass, there's twisted steel, there's surging flames. This was an attack on the very symbol of German democracy and was traumatizing.

The Nazis found three Bulgarians, put them on trial, and claimed that this was the communists' attempt to destroy Germany and destroy the Reichstag. And it gave Hitler the opportunity to draft emergency legislation that Hindenburg signed. It suspended civil liberties, including habeas corpus, knowing why you're arrested. It deputized the SA, the Stormtroopers, and made them effectively a police who could arrest people, arrest enemies.

So they immediately target both the communists, the socialists, male and female state delegates, and often their spouses.

In Bavaria alone, they round up 10,000 people. Now suddenly, the prisons are over capacity, and the jails are filled. They're using schools. They're using sports halls.

It led directly to the first concentration camp in Dachau outside of Munich. And so this was a crucial step in the Nazis' consolidation of power. The Nazis built on this. Most crucially, I think, was the Enabling Act of March 23, 1933. And this is when the Reichstag amended the Weimar Constitution-- they required a 2/3 votes to do so-- and gave Hitler emergency powers for four years.

That's a period of time of great violence. People want law and order, calmness and legitimacy. They don't want violence every day. And we've seen, in the United States even, that whenever there are eruptions of violence, people are prepared to say, we will take law and order and even the sacrifice of some of our basic freedoms-- in order to what? Eliminate the violence.

So it all seems like order is being restored from a standpoint of an ordinary German. When you take a peek-- and as historians, we can look back and look at all these decrees-- no, this is the dismantling of democracy. This is the establishment of a one-party dictatorship. And this is the beginning of a terror.

After exploiting the chaos of the Reichstag fire and using the law to eliminate democratic checks on his power, Hitler used his new found authority to go after those he claimed were damaging the social fabric of German society, which included homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, the mentally handicapped, Germans of African descent, and Jews.

April 1, you have the boycott of Jewish businesses. April 7, you have the expulsion of Jews from the civil service. May 10, literally the 100th day in office, you have the book burning. And the book burning, what, sets out the idea that Jews have no place in German cultural life-- not only Jews, but people who support the idea of democracy itself.

By July 14, 1933, Hitler takes a step of banning all other political parties. And suddenly, the Nazis, it's a one-party state. And one thing is okay, so now, the seizure of power is completed. But no, not the case.

There's a year interval after that when the principal challenges to Hitler are from inside his own party rather than from outside. He's managed to crush most of the opposition. But within the party, there are people who want to proceed even more radically than he does, particularly people in the Stormtroopers, the SA, who are interested in acquiring influence over the German military. And so between 1933 and 1934, his principal challenge is, how do I manage these people? He manages them in June of 1934, basically by killing them.

We don't know exactly how many individuals were killed. Most historians now say 200 or more. And it was a really bloody affair. It was not just a purge of SA leaders who threatened Hitler. Hitler used it as an opportunity to settle scores. And what's so important is that Hitler was completely upfront about this. He went to the public, and he said, I'm responsible for Germany. I take responsibility. I have executed these people who I'm charging with treason. I mean, these are extrajudicial murders. These are murders with no trial. It was a way to intimidate the German population, to say we will use violence if you oppose us.

And that is the coup that puts him finally in power. President Von Hindenburg died about a month and a half later. And that meant that there was no one who could effectively challenge Hitler for any power in the state-- certainly, no one who could have influenced the army to be opposed to Hitler. And the army was the only force that was still strong enough to have done that.

Please note that this video contains dehumanizing imagery. We have chosen to include it in order to honestly communicate the images that the public saw at the time.

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Facing History & Ourselves, “ Hitler's Rise to Power: 1933-1934 ,” video, last updated November 15, 2016.

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Hitler's Rise to Power: A Timeline

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Adolf Hitler's rise to power began during Germany's interwar period, a time of great social and political upheaval. Within a matter of years, the Nazi Party was transformed from an obscure group to the nation's leading political faction.

April 20: Adolf Hitler is born in Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary. His family later moves to Germany.

August: Hitler joins the German military at the start of World War I. Some historians believe this is the result of an administrative error; as an Austrian citizen, Hitler should not be allowed to join the German ranks.

October: The military, fearing the blame from an inevitable defeat, encourages a civilian government to form. Under Prince Max of Baden, they sue for peace.

November 11: World War I ends with Germany signing an armistice.

March 23: Benito Mussolini  forms the National Fascist Party in Italy. Its success will be a huge influence on Hitler.

June 28: Germany is forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles, which imposes strict sanctions on the country. Anger at the treaty and the weight of reparations will destabilize Germany for years.​

July 31: A socialist interim German government is replaced by the official creation of the democratic Weimar Republic .

September 12: Hitler joins the German Workers’ Party, having been sent to spy on it by the military.

February 24: Hitler becomes increasingly important to the German Workers’ Party thanks to his speeches. The group declares a Twenty-Five Point Program to transform Germany.

July 29: Hitler is able to become chairman of his party, which is renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or NSDAP.

October 30: Mussolini manages to turn luck and division into an invitation to run the Italian government. Hitler notes his success.

January 27: Munich holds the first Nazi Party Congress.

November 9: Hitler believes the time is right to stage a coup. Aided by a force of SA brownshirts, the support of WW1 leader Erich Ludendorff, and browbeaten locals, he stages the Beer Hall Putsch . It fails.

April 1: Having turned his trial into a grandstand for his ideas and become known across Germany, Hitler is given a derisory five-month prison sentence.

December 20: Hitler is released from jail, where he has written the beginning of " Mein Kampf ."

February 27: The NSDAP had moved away from Hitler's influence during his absence; now free, he reasserts control, determined to pursue a notionally legal course to power.

April 5: Prussian, aristocratic, right-leaning war leader Paul von Hindenburg is elected president of Germany.

July: Hitler publishes "Mein Kampf," a ranting exploration of what passes as his ideology.

November 9: Hitler forms a personal bodyguard unit separate from the SA, known as the SS.

May 20: Elections to the Reichstag yield just 2.6 percent of the vote to the NSDAP.  

October 4: The New York Stock Market begins to crash , causing a great economic depression in America and around the world. As the German economy was made dependant on the United States by the Dawes plan, it begins to collapse.

January 23: Wilhelm Frick becomes the interior minister in Thuringia, the first Nazi to hold a notable position in the German government.

March 30: Heinrich Brüning takes charge of Germany via a right-leaning coalition. He wishes to pursue a deflationary policy to counter economic depression.

July 16: Facing defeat over his budget, Brüning invokes Article 48 of the constitution, which allows the government to pass laws without Reichstag consent. It is the start of a slippery slope for failing German democracy, and the start of a period of rule by Article 48 decrees.

September 14: Boosted by the rising unemployment rate, the decline of center parties, and a turn to both left and right extremists, the NSDAP wins 18.3 percent of the vote and becomes the second-largest party in the Reichstag.  

October: The Harzburg Front is formed to try to organize Germany’s right wing into a workable opposition to the government and the left. Hitler joins.

January: Hitler is welcomed by a group of industrialists; his support is broadening and gathering money.

March 13: Hitler comes a strong second in the presidential elections; Hindenburg just misses out on the election on the first ballot.

April 10: Hindenburg defeats Hitler at the second attempt to become president.

April 13: Brüning’s government bans the SA and other groups from marching.

May 30: Brüning is forced to resign; Hindenburg is talked into making Franz von Papen chancellor.

June 16: The SA ban is revoked.

July 31: The NSDAP polls 37.4 percent and becomes the largest party in the Reichstag.  

August 13: Papen offers Hitler the post of vice-chancellor, but Hitler refuses, accepting nothing less than being chancellor.

August 31: Hermann Göring, long a leading Nazi and a link between Hitler and the aristocracy, becomes president of the Reichstag and uses his new power to manipulate events.

November 6: In another election, the Nazi vote shrinks slightly.

November 21: Hitler turns down more government offers, wanting nothing less than to be chancellor.

December 2: Papen is forced out, and Hindenburg is influenced into appointing the general, and prime right-wing manipulator, Kurt von Schleicher, chancellor.

January 30: Schleicher is outmaneuvered by Papen, who persuades Hindenburg than Hitler can be controlled; the latter is made chancellor , with Papen vice-chancellor.

February 6: Hitler introduces censorship.

February 27: With elections looming, the Reichstag is set on fire by a communist.

February 28: Citing the attack on the Reichstag as evidence of a mass communist movement, Hitler passes a law ending civil liberties in Germany.

March 5: The NSDAP, riding on the communist scare and aided by a now tame police force boosted by masses of SA, polls at 43.9 percent.   The Nazis ban the communists.

March 21: During the "Day of Potsdam," the Nazis open the Reichstag in a carefully stage-managed act which tries to show them as heirs of the Kaiser.

March 24: Hitler passes the Enabling Act; it makes him a dictator for four years.

July 14: With other parties banned or splitting up, the NSDAP becomes the only political party left in Germany.

June 30: During the "Night of the Long Knives," dozens are killed as Hitler shatters the power of the SA, which had been challenging his goals. SA leader Ernst Röhm is executed after trying to merge his force with the army.

July 3: Papen resigns.

August 2: Hindenburg dies. Hitler merges the posts of chancellor and president, becoming the supreme leader of Nazi Germany.

O'Loughlin, John, et al. “ The Geography of the Nazi Vote: Context, Confession, and Class in the Reichstag Election of 1930. ”  Annals of the Association of American Geographers , vol. 84, no. 3, 1994, pp. 351–380, doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.1994.tb01865.x

" Adolf Hitler: 1924-1930. " Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

" Adolf Hitler: 1930-1933. " Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Von Lüpke-Schwarz, Marc. " Voting in the Midst of Nazi Terror. " Deutsche Welle. 5 Mar. 2013

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• Interwar Germany: The Rise and Fall of Weimar and the Rise of Hitler
• Pictures of Adolph Hitler
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• Causes of World War II
• How the Treaty of Versailles Contributed to Hitler's Rise
• Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch
• Who Were Hitler's Supporters? Who Backed the Führer and Why
• Was Adolf Hitler a Socialist?

Why did women vote for Hitler? Long-forgotten essays hold some answers

Ph.D. student, Florida State University

Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University

Dorothy and Jonathan Rintels Professor of Holocaust Studies, Florida State University

Disclosure statement

Sarah R. Warren received funding for a portion of this work from the Florida State University Center for Undergraduate Research and Academic Engagement.

Daniel Maier-Katkin receives funding from National Science Fondation, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of State

Nathan Stoltzfus does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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The rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party in the 1930s came on the back of votes from millions of ordinary Germans – both men and women.

But aside from a few high-profile figures, such as concentration camp guard Irma Grese and “concentration camp murderess” Ilse Koch , little is known about the everyday women who embraced the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, known more commonly as the Nazi Party. What little data we do have on ordinary Nazi women has been largely underused, forgotten or ignored. It has left us with a half-formed understanding of the rise of the Nazi movement, one that is almost exclusively focused on male party members.

And yet more than 30 essays on the subject “Why I became a Nazi” written by German women in 1934 have been lying fallow in the archives of the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto for decades. These essays were only unearthed three years ago when three Florida State University professors arranged to have them transcribed and translated. They have since been made available digitally , but have not received widespread attention.

Not all Cabaret

As scholars of Holocaust studies , crimes against humanity and political behavior , we believe the accounts of these women give an insight into the role of women in the rise of the Nazi party. They also point to the extent to which women’s attitudes on feminism differed after the Great War – a time when women were making gains in independence, education, economic opportunity and sexual freedom.

The German women’s movement had been among the most powerful and significant in the world for half a century before the Nazis came to power in 1933. Top-quality high schools for girls had existed since the 1870s, and German universities were opened to women at the beginning of the 20th century. Many German women became teachers, lawyers, doctors, journalists and novelists. In 1919, German women got the vote . By 1933, women, of whom there were millions more than men – Berlin had 1,116 women for every 1,000 men – voted in roughly the same percentages as men for Hitler and National Socialist candidates.

‘Everyone was everyone’s enemy’

The essays unearthed at the Hoover Institution give an insight as to why some of them did.

Dissatisfaction with the attitudes of the Weimar era, the period between the end of World War I and Hitler’s rise to power, is clear in the women’s writing. Most of the essay writers express distaste with some aspect of the political system. One calls women’s voting rights “a disadvantage for Germany,” while another describes the political climate as “haywire,” and “everyone was everyone’s enemy.” Margarethe Schrimpff, a 54-year-old woman living just outside of Berlin, describes her experience:

“I attended the meetings of all … parties, from the communists to the nationalists; at one of the democratic meetings in Friedenau [Berlin], where the former Colonial Minister, a Jew by the name of Dernburg, was speaking, I experienced the following: this Jew had the audacity to say, among other things: ‘What are the Germans actually capable of; maybe breeding rabbits.’ "Dear readers, do not think that the heavily represented stronger sex jumped up and told this Jew where to go. Far from it. Not one man made a sound, they stayed dead quiet. However, a miserable, frail little woman from the so-called ‘weaker sex’ raised her hand and forcefully rejected the Jew’s brazen remarks; he had in the meantime allegedly disappeared to attend another meeting.”

These essays were originally collected by an assistant professor at Columbia University, Theodore Abel, who organized an essay contest with generous prizes with the cooperation of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry. Of nearly 650 essays, roughly 30 were written by women, and Abel set them aside, explaining in a footnote that he intended to examine them separately. But he never did. The men’s essays formed the basis for his book, “ Why Hitler Came To Power ,” published in 1938, which remains an important source in the global discourse about the Nazi rise to power.

Summarizing Abel’s findings, historian Ian Kershaw wrote in his book on Hitler’s rise to power that they showed that the “appeal of Hitler and his movement was not based on any distinctive doctrine.” He concluded that almost a third of the men were attracted by the indivisible “national community” – Volksgemeinschaft – ideology of the Nazis, and a similar proportion were swayed by nationalist, super-patriotic and German-romantic notions. In only about an eighth of the cases was anti-Semitism the prime ideological concern, although two-thirds of the essays revealed some form of dislike of Jews. Almost a fifth were motivated by the Hitler cult alone, attracted by the man himself, but the essays reveal differences between men and women in the reason for the enthrallment with the Nazi leader.

The cult of Hitler

For men, the cult of personality appears to center around Hitler as a strong leader charging toward a Germany which defined itself by those it excluded. It’s not surprising that women, on the cusp of exclusion themselves, were less captivated by this component of Nazism. Rather, the women’s essays tend to refer to religious imagery and sentiment conflating piety with the Hitler cult. The women appear to be moved more by Nazism’s proposed solutions to problems such as poverty rather than the supposed grandeur of Nazi ideology in the abstract.

In her essay, Helene Radtke, a 38-year-old wife of a German soldier, describes her “divine duty to forget about all my household chores and to perform my service to my homeland.”

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Agnes Molster-Surm, a housewife and private tutor, calls Hitler her “God-given Führer and savior, Adolf Hitler, for Germany’s honor, Germany’s fortune and Germany’s freedom!”

Another woman replaced the star on her Christmas tree with a photograph of Hitler surrounded by a halo of candles. These men and women shared the message of National Socialism as if it was gospel and refer to new party members as “converts.” One such woman describes early efforts to “convert” her family to Nazism as falling “on stony soil and not even the slightest little green sapling of understanding sprouted.” She was later “converted” through conversations with her mailman.

The essays do not only serve as historical curios, but as a warning as to how ordinary people can be attracted to extremist ideology at a time of social distress. Similar language has been used to describe the current political climate in the United States and other countries. Perhaps, as some do today , these women believed all their society’s ills could be solved by the restoration of their nation to a perceived state of former glory, no matter the cost.

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Why Hitler Came into Power

Theodore Abel

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Publication date: 10/08/1986

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In 1934 Theodore Abel went to Germany and offered a prize, under the auspices of Columbia University, for autobiographies of members of the National Socialist movement. The six hundred essays he received constitute the single best source on grassroots opinion within the Nazi Party, and they form the empirical foundation for Abel’s fascinating yet curiously neglected 1938 book. Although a number of scholars have drawn on these reports, Abel’s own treatment has never been surpassed. Of particular value is his presentation of the life histories of a worker, a soldier, an anti-Semite, a middle-class youth, a farmer, and a bank clerk, all of whom explain in their own words why they joined the NSDAP. In the vast literature on National Socialism, no more useful or revealing testimony exists.

In a new Foreword, Thomas Childers discusses how the past half-century of research and writing on Nazi Germany has upheld Abel’s original insights into the broad appeal of the National Socialist movement, thereby reaffirming this work’s enduring value for students of the topic.

The book’s main purpose is to measure, in the light of the author’s unique personal data, the relative importance of each of the main factors to which [Hitler’s] rise to power has hitherto been ascribed, including Hitler’s own leadership, the strategy of the party tacticians, and the favorable circumstances of popular discontent. The results are highly important… There can…be no doubt that the book makes one of the most original contributions to an understanding of Nazism which has yet been written. —Arnold J. Zurcher, American Political Science Review

Extremely interesting and significant. —Clifford Kirkpatrick, American Sociological Review

One year after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, Theodore Abel, a Columbia University sociologist, went to Germany and offered small cash prizes for political autobiographies by Nazi party members. With the cooperation of the government, he was able to collect about seven hundred essays… It was on the basis of an analysis of these documents that Why Hitler Came into Power was written. Now, half a century later, this book is still very much worth reading. More than a testimony to the excellence of some of the early efforts at describing the Nazi phenomenon…Abel’s study is at the heart of the current debates on fascism, national socialism, and the coming of Hitler to power. —David B. King, German Studies Review

Book Details

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• Harvard University Press
• Foreword by Thomas Childers

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How Hitler and The Nazi Party Came to Power

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Hitler's Rise to Power. (Undergraduate)

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