President Hindenburg appoints Hitler as Chancellor

Whilst a global economic crisis had plunged the Weimar Republic into severe economic turmoil, the election of July 1932 translated economic crisis into political disaster. With the democratic parties now in the minority in Parliament, President Hindenburg appointed Franz von Papen to lead a minority government that ruled by presidential decree. Fresh elections in November 1932 weakened the parliamentary position of the National Socialist Workers’ Party (NSDAP), but together with the Communists, they continued to constitute an anti-democratic majority.

When the new Chancellor, Kurt von Schleicher, also failed to solve the crisis, the ambitious von Papen developed a new plan: Adolf Hitler, leader of the NSDAP, was to be appointed to head a new government, but Papen himself and a majority of non-National Socialist ministers in the cabinet would keep him under control. Papen boasted: “In two months, we will have pushed Hitler so far into the corner that he will squeal.” The 86-year-old Reich President von Hindenburg believed von Papen and assented to the plan, appointing Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933.

Although the Nazis had only two ministers in government, they still claimed to have seized power and staged a night-time torchlight march through the Brandenburg Gate to signal their triumph. Events followed thick and fast: the Reichstag was dissolved, Goebbels staged a diabolic campaign of propaganda, and announcements raised expectations and gave the impression of dynamic action. When the Reichstag burned on the night of 27/28 February, the Nazis claimed that the Communists had tried to seize power. Subsequent legislation suspended basic rights and allowed for the arrest of thousands of political opponents, the majority of whom were Communists. The Nazis were now within touching distance of erecting a dictatorship.