Why was Adolf Hitler Appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30th, 1933?

On 30 January 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany. The reasons for this come into two categories: the opportunity, and the opportunists. These two components are inseparable, like two incredibly complex jigsaw puzzle pieces, that only when united fit together to form a full picture. If the opportunity and the opportunists had been even slightly incompatible, Hitler would never have been appointed Chancellor.

The opportunities the Nazis took can also be categorized into two parts. Firstly, there was a background of factors which could be used to persuade people to support the NSDAP, such as the Treaty of Versailles, the rise of Communism (both in Germany and the Soviet Union) and 'Weimar decadence'. Secondly, in the early 1930s, the Great Depression hit Germany. Partly as a result, power in Germany shifted from the balance between President and Reichstag prescribed by the Constitution, to a Chancellor who ruled by decree, with Hindenburg's consent, under Article 48 of the constitution. Both of these, along with the background of discontent with the Weimar government, gave Hitler and the NSDAP the opportunity to take power.

All this, however, would not have put Hitler in power. Hitler and the Nazi Party had first to be shaped into the perfect opportunists to take advantage of the opportunity. Many things helped to shape Hitler and the Nazi Party. Since Hitler eventually took control of the Party as a dictator, the development of Hitler's own ideas are equivalent to the development of the Party's ideas. These were developed throughout his years in Vienna, and during World War I, in which Hitler fought. The Party was shaped not only by Hitler's guiding influence, but through two events: the failed Munich Putsch and the Bamburg Conference. Out of the latter came the loyalty to Hitler of another character in the NSDAP who was also a key figure in his rise to power: Dr Josef Goebbels, who masterminded the Party's propaganda and election campaigns. Also, the formation and growth of the SA and SS fitted the opportunity very well, providing a viable alternative to other parties' similar groups.

One of the events which the Nazis were able to use to manipulate people into supporting them in various ways was the Treaty of Versailles. In 1918, General von Ludendorff realized that Germany could not win World War I, and recommended an armistice. Following the abdication of the Kaiser, the Allies were able to dictate terms to the Central powers, and the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919. Germany lost land to Poland in the east, France and Belgium in the west, and Denmark in the north. Also, Germany and Austria were forbidden to unite, or form an alliance (Anschluss), her armed forces were limited to 100,000 men, a small navy and no air force, the Rhineland was to be demilitarized and large reparations were to be paid. This was a massive blow to Germany's pride, and members of the German population started looking for someone to blame. The generals never admitted in public that they had agreed to the armistice, and the obvious candidates to take the blame were the politicians in the newly formed Weimar government, who had signed the Treaty, and continued to state their apparent approval of it by agreeing to the Dawes and Young plans.

When World War I broke out in 1914, Hitler joined a Bavarian regiment. He was awarded an Iron Cross, First Class, later that year, reputedly for capturing a group of 12-15 enemy soldiers. When the war ended in 1918, Hitler was recovering from an injury in a hospital. For him, as for many other German soldiers (even though Hitler himself was Austrian), the war did not look as if it had ended. The German armies were still in enemy territory and were still fighting. Hitler saw the reasoning behind Dolchstoßlegende first hand.

Versailles was an opportunity, as was the 'Dolchstoßlegende' it produced. It enabled the blame for all that had happened to Germany since 1918 to be placed on the Weimar government. It placed Weimar in the wrong, and any party that wished to overthrow it in the right. Hitler, the opportunist, was shaped into someone who could empathize with a proportion of the German population in this matter by his own experiences in World War I. He then used it to great effect to make people support him in his attempt to overthrow Weimar, by speaking of the 'November criminals', and how he wished to reverse the Treaty of Versailles.

The War also helped Hitler to come to power by causing the formation of the Freikorps and other paramilitary groups, some affiliated to political parties. These were originally made up of ex-soldiers who had enjoyed the order, discipline and companionship that being a soldier in the trenches had supposedly offered. These movements gradually grew, creating, by the early 1930s, a street war as the rival groups fought each other. The three main groups in 1933 were the Nazi SA, the more conservative Stahlhelm, and the Communist Red Front (Rotfrontkämpferbund). This meant that the NSDAP could been seen to be doing something about the perceived threat from Communism, as the SA were fighting the Red Front. The Nazi party were caused to have a military wing by the War; they were moulded into an organization which could use the rise of Communism to gain power for themselves.

The rise of Communism had started in October / November 1917 (depending on which calendar one is using) when the Bolsheviks, under Lenin and Trotsky, seized power in Russia. Towards the beginning of the War, the KPD (German Communist Party) had split from the Socialist SPD as it had voted in favour of going to war. Under Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, the Spartacist League and the KPD joined in an attempt to seize power in Berlin in 1919. The revolution was promptly put down by the Freikorps, but it demonstrated the threat posed by Communism to Germany. In Germany, as politics grew increasingly polarized, the Communist party grew. This was perceived as a threat, both by the rich (whose wealth would be taken away under a Marxist system) and by the powerful (as a central Marxist idea is Dialectial Materialism, the belief that one regime (thesis) fights another regime (antithesis) to form something better (synthesis). This meant that the Communists wished to remove the current government from power, replacing it with a Communist government which would be supposedly perfect, and so not need replacing). Hitler and the SA took this opportunity, standing in opposition to the KPD. This was a factor in Hindenburg's appointment of Hitler as Chancellor; Hitler was the only alternative to the Communist party who appeared to have a chance of gaining the confidence of the Reichstag in the near future. The Nazi party had been formed by the War into the perfect opportunist to take advantage of the opportunity the rise of Communism gave.

Another thing which made people discontented with the Weimar government, and hence more likely to support a revolutionary party like the NSDAP was 'Weimar decadence'. Pornography, dancing girls, drunkenness, feminism and modern art, although not widespread, were well-publicised. To the rest of the population, who had at least slightly higher moral standards, this signified a major problem with the country. To the nationalist, it couldn't be a problem with the German Volk in general, so it must be a problem with someone else. As Carsten says, “What was easier than to blame the Jews for all the ills of Germany?”¹ Hitler did not care who he blamed; anyone within the group he classed as Untermenschen (sub-men) was eligible for mention in Nazi propaganda as the cause of all the misery in the world, including ‘Weimar decadence’. Most importantly, the Nazis blamed the Weimar government, and were in turn able to offer the alternative of a disciplined party organization.

So, this party organization was one of the things that suited the opportunists to the opportunity, but even this was caused by something external to the Party: the failure of the Munich Putsch. This was when, in November 1923, Hitler led an attempt to seize power by force. The Nazi procession was stopped by police in the Odeonsplatz, and Hitler was put on trial (which he used as platform on which to proclaim his views to the entire nation) and sentenced to 5 years in jail. In reality, Hitler served just over 8 months before being released. This changed the Nazi Party by forcing Hitler to leave it alone in a way he would not normally have been psychologically capable of. He appointed Rosenberg as temporary leader of the Party, which promptly fell apart. Hitler, when released, had to re-build the Party from scratch, with a far more efficient and disciplined organization in which Hitler was in supreme command of everything. This was important as, previously, the SA, under Ernst Röhm, had been semi-autonomous. Now, it came under the control of the Führer. Also, the Putsch made the Nazi Party enter legal politics. To this end, Germany was divided into Gaues (under Gauleiters), and these were divided into steadily smaller areas of land as the Party grew. Hitler had realised that he could not come to power via a putsch, as he did not have the support of the army, but that he did have the support of the judiciary (who had given him an extremely lenient sentence, as they had for all right-wing agitators, while, at the same time, sentencing Communists heavily). The Putsch showed him that to be appointed Chancellor by the President was the only way forward. The opportunist was being shaped to match the opportunities that would come.

The Party was strengthened further in the Bamberg Conference in 1926. Here, Hitler stage-managed what was supposed to be a debate between his supporters and Gregor Strasser's, turning it into a 5-hour monologue. The Party members emerged from the conference either completely under Hitler's control or no longer part of the Party. This was particularly important in 1926, as the Party was on the verge of a split between the Socialists (under Otto Strasser, who was to form the Black Front after his expulsion from the Party in 1930) and the Nationalists, and as the popularity of the Party had fallen as Germany grew more prosperous under Stresseman's economic strategy. The Bamberg Conference kept the opportunists an organized party which could take advantage of the rising Communist threat, background of discontent with Weimar government and the coming Depression.

Also, at Bamberg, Hitler succeeded in convincing Dr Josef Goebbels, who had previously been losing his faith in Hitler. Ian Kershaw writes that “Goebbels was openly courted by Hitler”² at Bamberg. Goebbels, the son of a factory clerk, was to become to the Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda in the Third Reich. Before Hitler came to power, he was the Gauleiter for Berlin, and was in charge of the Party's propaganda, playing the most vital role in the Party's rise to power except for that of Hitler himself. Joachim Fest called propaganda “the genius of National Socialism”³ It was Goebbels who masterminded every one of Hitler's election campaigns, ensuring that the steady indoctrination of the German people proceeded in an organized fashion. Without Goebbels, it is likely that Hitler would never have gained such a large proportion of seats in the Reichstag. Without these seats, Hindenburg would not have even considered Hitler for the post of Chancellor.

The final reason why Hitler was the perfect opportunist for the situation in Germany in the early 1930s was the time he spent as a tramp in Vienna. During this time, his political ideas developed and he also realised his own ability as a demagogue. After having failed to pass the entrance examinations to the Academy of Fine Arts once, and barred entrance to the examinations on a second occasion, Hitler spent the years 1908-1913 scraping together a living from a mixture of short-term jobs involving manual labour, and from selling poor quality sketches and watercolours. During this time, his utter poverty made him look for someone to blame for the unfair nature of life. His association with those who were, like himself, at the bottom of society, gave him this someone. As Hitler himself wrote, “In this period my eyes were opened to two menaces of which I had previously scarcely known the names ... Marxism and Jewry.”⁴ Hitler's hatred for these two groups of people would make him the perfect opportunist to take advantage of both the rise in Communism and Germany's economic situation. Both of these, according to Hitler, could be blamed on the Jews. Hitler offered the German people the chance to share in his blame shifting, putting the blame for Germany on those who were in the minority, thus gaining more support in the Reichstag than any other political party.

The opportunity which Hitler took was mainly caused by the depression. The Wall Street Crash in 1929 had effects throughout the world. In Germany, where Stressemann's economic policies had involved borrowing large amounts of money in order to get German industry back on its feet, the effects were worse than in most of the rest of the world, as other countries canceled their loans. Unemployment rose to over 6,000,000 by 1933, and Brüning's government (which lasted from 1930-1932) had to raise taxes and cut expenditure in order to cope with the economic situation and avoid hyperinflation like that of the early 1920s (Brüning's only alternative, that of printing more money, would have led to this, and was banned as part of the Young Plan). The depression caused the rich and influential, such as the industrialists and Junkers, to support Hitler with both money and influence, putting pressure on Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. This support increased dramatically following a meeting between Hitler and the industrialists, arranged by the businessman Fritz Thyssen in 1932. Both these effects of the depression led to discontent with the Weimar system, resulting in political polarization⁵. Due to the system of proportional representation, the number of seats held by extremist parties (such as the KPD and NSDAP) rose rapidly. This meant that the Reichstag was permanently divided, so majority coalitions could not be formed. Brüning, von Papen and von Schleicher could only govern by Presidential decree. Hitler, propelled to the position of leader of the largest party in the Reichstag by the depression, could now use the opportunity this position provided to seize power, as Hindenburg's only hope of creating a majority government in the Reichstag. Combined with the revolutionary threat of the SA, this exerted a powerful persuasive force on the aging President.

Article 48 of the constitution, stating that in a state of emergency the President could rule by decree, meant that, in the state of emergency caused by the depression and its resultant political polarization, power in Germany shifted from the Reichstag to the President. Due to Hindenburg's age, he was easy to manipulate, so in reality, power in Germany was held by the people who surrounded Hindenburg. These included Weimar Germany's final two Chancellors, Papen and Schleicher, and Hindenburg's son, Oskar. Hitler worked to convince these people that he should be Chancellor, and it was eventually the ousted von Papen who convinced Hindenburg that he could control Hitler, if he were to be Vice Chancellor with Hitler as Chancellor. Hindenburg agreed, and, on 30 January, 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.

So, Hitler and the Nazis, the opportunists, took advantage of the situation in Germany to become Chancellor and the single party in Germany, respectively. Hitler's own experience in Vienna, the War and the Munich Putsch transformed someone who would not even have dreamed of political power into a man who could manipulate 17,277,000 people into voting for him, and could transform Germany into a dictatorship. The party itself was well equipped to take the opportunities the situation in Germany offered as well, due to the Bamburg conference, the formation of the SA and SS, and Goebbels' role in producing propaganda and running election campaigns. If one of these things had not happened, Hitler and the Nazis would not have matched the opportunity in Germany in the early 1930s, and so would not have come to power. Hitler being formed into the perfect opportunist is unlikely in itself, but the perfect opportunity occurring at exactly the right time for Hitler to take it makes Hitler's rise to power even more unlikely. The background of the Treaty of Versailles, 'Weimar decadence' and the rise of Communism, and the more immediate factors, such as the depression and the failure of Weimar democracy all coincided to form the perfect opportunity for Hitler to take.

This, combined with Hitler's survival of numerous attempts on his life, survival on next to nothing in Vienna, survival throughout the War, and being let off the death sentence following the Munich Putsch mean that the chances of Hitler coming to power were infinitesimally small. Hitler was not appointed Chancellor merely as the result of a “backstairs intrigue”⁶, as Alan Bullock believes. Hitler came to power because he was there, formed into the right person, at the right time, to create one of the greatest wrongs in modern history.