How did Hitler come to power? The steps, explained

Hitler did not come to power by winning a majority; he got there in two stages. First, his Nazi party grew from a fringe group into Germany's largest party during the Great Depression, and on 30 January 1933 President Paul von Hindenburg appointed him chancellor, on the advice of conservatives who thought they could control him. Then, within about 18 months, Hitler used emergency decrees, a law passed under intimidation and outright murder to destroy the democracy that had let him in.

In short

• Hitler never won a majority in a free election; the Nazis' best result was 37% in July 1932, and he was appointed, not elected, chancellor.
• Conservative elites made him chancellor in a backroom deal, expecting to use him; within weeks he was using them.
• The Reichstag fire decree and the Enabling Act of March 1933 gave him dictatorial power by apparently legal means.

What was wrong with the Weimar Republic?

Germany became a democracy, known as the Weimar Republic, after its defeat in World War I in 1918. It began with burdens. Many Germans blamed it for the Treaty of Versailles, which took territory, limited the army and demanded reparations, and the right spread the false "stab-in-the-back" myth that the army had been betrayed at home rather than beaten. In 1923, inflation destroyed the currency, wiping out savings. That November, Hitler, leader of the small National Socialist German Workers' Party, tried to seize power in Munich in the Beer Hall Putsch. It failed, and he wrote Mein Kampf in prison.

The constitution had a weakness that would matter later. Article 48 let the president rule by emergency decree, a power meant for crises. And the Reichstag, the parliament, was split among many parties, so governments were fragile coalitions. In the calmer years from 1924 to 1928, the republic steadied, and the Nazis won only 2.6% of the vote in 1928.

How did the Nazis win votes?

The Great Depression changed everything. After the crash of late 1929, German unemployment soared, reaching about 6 million by early 1932, roughly one worker in three. In March 1930 the coalition government broke up, and from then on chancellors governed less through parliament than through Hindenburg's Article 48 decrees. Democracy was already being hollowed out before Hitler took office.

The Nazis offered something for every grievance: jobs, national pride, the overturning of Versailles, and scapegoats, above all Jews and communists. They campaigned with modern propaganda, rallies and street violence by their paramilitary wing, the SA. The table shows their results in Reichstag elections, from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the German Historical Institute's election map.

Election	Nazi share of the vote	Nazi seats	What it meant
May 1928	2.6%	12	A fringe party
September 1930	18.3%	107	The second-largest party, almost overnight
July 1932	37.3%	230 of 608	The largest party, but far from a majority
November 1932	33.1%	196 of 584	Votes and money falling away
March 1933	43.9%	288 of 647	Held after Hitler took office, amid terror against opponents; still short of a majority alone

Two things stand out. At their peak in a free election, nearly two in three German voters chose someone else. And by November 1932 the Nazis were losing ground. Hitler did not ride a rising tide into office; he was handed it as his support was ebbing.

Why was Hitler made chancellor?

Because a small circle of conservatives around the 85-year-old Hindenburg decided to use him. Through 1932, Hindenburg refused to appoint Hitler, whom he disliked. Two chancellors in a row, Franz von Papen and then Kurt von Schleicher, failed to find a stable majority. Papen, pushed out by Schleicher, struck a deal with Hitler in January 1933: Hitler would be chancellor, Papen vice chancellor, and conservatives would hold most cabinet posts. Only three of the eleven cabinet members were Nazis.

According to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hindenburg and his advisers "felt confident that they could control Hitler and limit his power." Papen is reported to have boasted that within two months they would have pushed Hitler into a corner. On 30 January 1933 Hindenburg appointed him. It was a legal appointment under the constitution, and it was the single most important decision on the road to dictatorship.

How did Hitler destroy democracy so fast?

Once in office, Hitler moved in steps, each one using the last. The timeline shows how little time it took.

Date	Step	What it did
30 January 1933	Hitler appointed chancellor	Legal, through the president
1 February 1933	Reichstag dissolved, new elections called	A campaign run with state power behind it
27 February 1933	The Reichstag building burns	The Nazis blame a communist plot
28 February 1933	The Reichstag fire decree	Suspends free speech, press and assembly and allows arrest without charge
5 March 1933	Elections	Nazis 43.9%, with conservative allies a bare majority
23 March 1933	The Enabling Act	Lets the government make laws without parliament
14 July 1933	Other parties banned	Germany becomes a one-party state
30 June to 2 July 1934	The Night of the Long Knives	SA leaders and other rivals murdered
2 August 1934	Hindenburg dies	Hitler merges the offices of president and chancellor as Führer

The Reichstag fire decree, issued under Article 48, was never lifted for the rest of the Nazi era. Thousands of communists and other opponents were arrested and held in early concentration camps. The Enabling Act needed a two-thirds majority to change the constitution. The Nazis got it by barring the 81 Communist deputies and 26 Social Democrats, who had been arrested or had fled, by filling the chamber with SA and SS men, and by winning over the Catholic Center Party with promises Hitler soon broke. The vote was 444 to 94; only the Social Democrats voted against.

The Röhm purge of mid-1934 removed the last threats inside his own movement and reassured the army, whose leaders then swore an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler. Within 18 months of his appointment, there was no institution left that could remove him.

Which institutions failed?

Looking back, historians point to failures at every level, not just one man's will. The president used emergency powers for years to bypass parliament, normalizing rule by decree. Conservative politicians invited Hitler in to serve their own ends. The courts were lenient to the right: after the 1923 putsch, Hitler served about nine months of a five-year sentence. The parties of the center and left never united against him, and the Communists treated the Social Democrats as their main enemy. Much of the civil service, the army and the business world went along once he held power. A democracy depends on its institutions being willing to defend it, and in Weimar Germany too few were.

Still argued

Historians still debate several points. Who voted Nazi? Studies of the vote, notably by the political scientist Jürgen Falter, find support across classes, stronger among Protestants, the rural and the middle classes, and weaker among Catholics and organized workers. Was his appointment avoidable? Historians such as Henry Ashby Turner argued that it came down to the choices of a few men in January 1933 and was not inevitable. And who set the Reichstag fire? A Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was convicted and executed; whether he acted alone or the Nazis were involved is still disputed, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum calls responsibility unclear.

What followed was the fascist dictatorship that rearmed Germany, started World War II and carried out the Holocaust.

Check yourself

• Why is it wrong to say Hitler was elected to power, and what actually put him in office?
• How did the Reichstag fire decree and the Enabling Act each turn a crisis into lasting power?
• Name three institutions that failed to stop him, and how.

Sources

• The Nazi Rise to Power — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
• The Reichstag Fire — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
• The Enabling Act — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
• Röhm Purge — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
• Interactive map: Reichstag elections in the Weimar Republic, 1919–1933 — German History in Documents and Images, German Historical Institute