Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933, not elected
On this day · 30 January 1933
Hindenburg handed Hitler power on 30 January 1933, after the Nazi vote had begun to fall, in a cabinet conservatives thought they controlled.
Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933 because President Paul von Hindenburg appointed him, not because he won an election or seized power, and the appointment came after the Nazi vote had started to fall.
Was Hitler elected chancellor?
No. Under the Weimar constitution the president chose the chancellor, and the Nazis never won a majority in a free national election. According to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, they took 37% of the vote in July 1932, then slipped to 33% in November 1932. Hindenburg had refused Hitler the post before giving in. A decade earlier Hitler had tried the illegal route, in the failed Beer Hall Putsch; this time the door was opened for him.
Who thought they could control him?
The deal was brokered by former chancellor Franz von Papen, who became vice-chancellor and filled the cabinet with national conservatives. Aside from Hitler, only two Nazis joined it: Wilhelm Frick as Reich interior minister and Hermann Göring as minister without portfolio and acting Prussian interior minister. Papen was heard to boast:
“Within two months we’ll have pushed Hitler so far into the corner that he’ll squeak.” — Franz von Papen, 1933
Foreign observers shared the illusion. Two weeks into the new government, US Ambassador Frederic Sackett reported to Washington that while Hitler set policy on paper, Papen and the nationalist press baron Alfred Hugenberg were “in reality” the guiding spirits. Yet the same dispatch, dated 13 February 1933, spotted what mattered: with Frick and Göring holding the interior ministries, the Nazis already controlled the administrative machinery, including the police, of the Reich and of Prussia, its largest state.
Those posts did the work. The Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 suspended constitutional rights, and the Enabling Act of 23 March let the government make law without parliament. When Hindenburg died in August 1934, Hitler absorbed the presidency, a step confirmed by plebiscite weeks later.
Sources & references
4 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 3 independent sources.
