Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany
On this day · 30 January 1933
Conservative politicians thought they could control him; instead they handed the keys of a republic to a dictator.
On 30 January 1933, German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, as Chancellor of Germany. The move came not from an election victory but from a backroom political deal struck by conservatives who believed they could harness Hitler’s popularity and keep him in check.
They were catastrophically wrong. Within weeks, the burning of the Reichstag gave Hitler the pretext to suspend civil liberties; by March, the Enabling Act let him rule by decree. The Weimar Republic’s democratic institutions were dismantled with startling speed.
A republic voted, schemed, and bargained its way into a dictatorship in a matter of months.
The appointment is now seen as one of the pivotal turning points of the twentieth century, opening the road to the Nazi police state, the Holocaust, and the Second World War. What began as a calculated maneuver to contain an extremist instead delivered an entire nation into his hands.
Sources & references
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