Hitler Becomes Chancellor (1933): How the Nazis Took Power

Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, when the elderly President Paul von Hindenburg appointed him head of a coalition government in Berlin. Hitler did not win power through a majority vote or a coup. He was brought into office through intrigue among conservative politicians, above all former chancellor Franz von Papen, who believed they could use the Nazi leader’s popularity while keeping him under control. Within eighteen months Hitler had destroyed German democracy.

Background: a republic in crisis

The Weimar Republic, founded after Germany’s defeat in the First World War, faced hostility from the start. Many Germans blamed it for the Treaty of Versailles, and it was shaken by uprisings, political murders and the hyperinflation of 1923. In that year Hitler, leader of the small National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), tried to seize power in Munich in the failed Beer Hall Putsch. After a short prison term he decided to win power by legal means.

In the relatively stable years of the late 1920s the Nazis remained a fringe party, winning just 2.6 per cent of the vote in 1928. Everything changed with the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression. German unemployment rose from about 1.3 million in 1929 to over six million in early 1932. Banks failed and farmers faced ruin.

The Nazi breakthrough

In March 1930 the last parliamentary coalition collapsed. Hindenburg appointed Heinrich Bruning chancellor, and Bruning governed mainly through emergency decrees signed by the president under Article 48 of the constitution. The Reichstag lost influence, and power shifted to the president and his advisers.

In the election of September 1930 the Nazis leapt to 18.3 per cent and 107 seats. Their message combined attacks on the “November criminals” who had signed the armistice, the Versailles settlement, Marxism and the Jews with promises of national revival, work and order. Their paramilitary wing, the SA, fought street battles with Communists.

In the presidential election of spring 1932 Hindenburg, then 84, was re-elected in a run-off on 10 April with about 53 per cent, but Hitler won about 37 per cent. In the Reichstag election of 31 July 1932 the Nazis became by far the largest party with 37.3 per cent and 230 seats. Together, the Nazis and the Communists held a majority of seats, making any democratic government impossible.

Who voted for the Nazis?

Research on Weimar elections, notably by the political scientist Jurgen Falter, shows that the Nazis drew support from almost every social group, which made them unusual among German parties. They were strongest among Protestants, in small towns and the countryside, and among farmers, shopkeepers, artisans, civil servants and white-collar employees who feared losing their status. Many first-time voters and former non-voters also backed them.

Catholic regions remained more loyal to the Catholic Centre Party and its Bavarian ally, and many industrial workers stayed with the Social Democrats or the Communists, although a substantial minority of Nazi voters were workers too. Unemployed men were more likely to vote Communist than Nazi.

Propaganda played a major role. The party, led in this field by Joseph Goebbels, used mass rallies, posters, films and aeroplane tours that carried Hitler to several cities in a single day. It presented itself as a young, dynamic “people’s movement” above class and religious divisions, promising to end both the Depression and the humiliation of defeat.

Papen, Schleicher and the backroom deals

Bruning was dismissed in May 1932. His successor, Franz von Papen, a Catholic aristocrat with almost no support in parliament, was the choice of General Kurt von Schleicher, an influential political officer close to Hindenburg. Papen’s “cabinet of barons” deposed the Social Democratic government of Prussia in July 1932.

After the July election Hitler demanded the chancellorship. On 13 August 1932 Hindenburg refused, offering only the post of vice-chancellor, which Hitler rejected. In a new election on 6 November 1932 the Nazi vote fell to 33.1 per cent, and the party was short of money and morale. Papen still could not govern, and on 3 December Schleicher himself became chancellor. He tried to split the Nazis by courting Gregor Strasser, the party’s organisational chief, but Strasser resigned his party posts on 8 December without bringing others with him.

Papen, resentful at being pushed aside, now worked to bring down Schleicher. On 4 January 1933 he met Hitler secretly at the Cologne home of the banker Kurt von Schroder. The two men began discussing a joint government. Further talks followed, including a meeting at the Berlin villa of Joachim von Ribbentrop on 22 January, attended by Hindenburg’s son Oskar and the head of the presidential office, Otto Meissner.

Schleicher, unable to win a majority, asked Hindenburg for powers to dissolve the Reichstag and postpone elections. The president refused, and Schleicher resigned on 28 January 1933.

30 January 1933

Hindenburg was persuaded that a cabinet led by Hitler but dominated by conservatives would be safe. Papen would be vice-chancellor and Reich commissioner for Prussia. Alfred Hugenberg, leader of the nationalist DNVP, took the economics and agriculture ministries. The army was placed under General Werner von Blomberg, the foreign ministry remained with Konstantin von Neurath, and Franz Seldte of the veterans’ league Stahlhelm became labour minister.

Only two other Nazis joined Hitler in the cabinet: Wilhelm Frick as Reich interior minister and Hermann Goring as minister without portfolio, who also took charge of the Prussian interior ministry and therefore of the largest police force in Germany. Hitler was sworn in just before midday on 30 January 1933, in a brief ceremony in Hindenburg’s office on the Wilhelmstrasse.

That evening tens of thousands of SA men, SS men and Stahlhelm members marched in a torchlight parade through the Brandenburg Gate and past the Reich Chancellery, where Hitler and Hindenburg watched from the windows. Papen is reported to have boasted to a friend that within two months Hitler would be pushed into a corner; the remark, whatever its exact wording, captured the conservatives’ confidence.

Key people

• Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), leader of the Nazi Party, appointed chancellor at the age of 43.
• Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934), First World War field marshal and Reich President from 1925, who appointed him.
• Franz von Papen (1879–1969), chancellor in 1932 and Hitler’s vice-chancellor, the chief architect of the deal.
• Kurt von Schleicher (1882–1934), general and the last chancellor of the Weimar Republic; murdered in 1934.
• Alfred Hugenberg (1865–1951), press magnate and leader of the DNVP, Hitler’s main coalition partner.

How Hitler turned office into dictatorship

Hitler moved fast. The Reichstag was dissolved on 1 February and new elections were called for 5 March. After the Reichstag fire of 27 February, an emergency decree suspended civil liberties, and thousands of Communists and other opponents were arrested. In the election the Nazis won 43.9 per cent, still short of a majority.

On 23 March the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which allowed the government to make laws without parliament. Trade unions were dissolved in May, the Social Democrats banned in June, and by July 1933 the Nazis were the only legal party. The conservatives who had expected to tame Hitler were sidelined: Hugenberg resigned in June 1933, and in the purge of June–July 1934 Schleicher was murdered and Papen’s close aides killed. When Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, Hitler merged the offices of president and chancellor and became “Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor”.

Myths and facts

“Hitler was democratically elected.” Hitler was appointed, not elected, as chancellor. The Nazis were the largest party, but they never gained a majority in a free national election, and in November 1932 their vote was falling.

“Big business put Hitler in power.” Some industrialists and bankers, such as Schroder, supported a Hitler government, and the Nazis later received large donations. But most historians, including Henry Ashby Turner, conclude that big business as a whole was cautious about the Nazis before 1933, and that the decisive role was played by the small circle around Hindenburg.

“Hitler’s rise was inevitable.” Historians stress that it was not. In late 1932 the Nazi movement was in difficulty, and different decisions by Hindenburg, Papen and Schleicher could have led to another outcome, though probably not to a return of full democracy.

Timeline

• 1930, 14 September: The Nazis win 18.3 per cent and 107 Reichstag seats.
• 1932, 10 April: Hindenburg defeats Hitler in the presidential run-off.
• 1932, 31 July: The Nazis become the largest party with 37.3 per cent.
• 1932, 13 August: Hindenburg refuses to appoint Hitler chancellor.
• 1932, 6 November: The Nazi vote falls to 33.1 per cent.
• 1932, 3 December: Kurt von Schleicher becomes chancellor.
• 1933, 4 January: Papen and Hitler meet secretly in Cologne.
• 1933, 28 January: Schleicher resigns.
• 1933, 30 January: Hindenburg appoints Hitler chancellor.
• 1934, 2 August: Hindenburg dies; Hitler becomes head of state.

Why it matters

Hitler’s appointment shows that democracies can fall not only through revolutions but through the choices of established elites who underestimate extremists. The decision of 30 January 1933 led directly to dictatorship, the persecution of Jews and political opponents, the Second World War and the Holocaust.