How did Hitler come to power legally?

After the good news for the Nazi's in the 1930 Reichstag elections, Hitler set about improving his position. He may have got 107 seats but the Social Democrats still had 143 seats, and Hitler needed total control. Hitler's whole campaign was made up of Propaganda. This was a good way of winning votes as it got messages across to mass amounts of people. Hitler put a man called Joseph Goebbels in charge of that particular part of his master plan. Goebbels set about to this task starting with records and films about Hitler's speeches, posters and flags all over the country. But the thing that gathered the most support was the mass rallies that Goebbels arranged in sport arena's where Hitler could make his notorious speeches. Though propaganda was a very effective way or raking in votes, violence and terror was also another effective way. Hitler's private army, the S.A, went around beating up communists, ruining their meetings and any chances of publicising themselves. Outrageous crimes were committed by the S.A on communists, but as the police were all on the Nazi side, nothing was done to stop this; this helped Hitler weave his web tighter on Germany. In 1932 the violence and propaganda increased as there were to be three very important elections that year, two for the Reichstag and one for presidency. Hitler upped his propaganda by flying from one mass rally to another, which enabled him to make speeches all over Germany; this campaign was called 'Hitler over Germany' another brilliant idea of Goebbels. In 1932 Hindenburg won the election with 19,359,000 votes , but Hitler didn't do too badly with a close 13,418,000.Of course the communists were firmly out of the running with a pitiful 3,706,655, the Nazi's had made sure of that. In the Reichstag elections later that year, after a great deal of street fighting, killing 99, the Nazi's won hands down with 230 seats to the Social democrats 133 seats.

Now Hitler had got a step closer to total control, he did the next thing he could to get more power. He demanded the job of chancellor for himself. But Hitler wasn't president; Hindenburg was, so he made the decisions. Hindenburg turned down Hitler's request to be chancellor by saying that the Nazi's were intolerant and undisciplined and it was too much of a risk. Instead Franz von Papen was allowed to stay in office, and made emergency laws through the president, so he didn't have to have the Reichstag's consent. In September 1932, the Reichstag met and voted on whether they thought Papen's government were trustworthy and whether they had faith in it. Only 32 out of 545 members thought that it was. In November another election was arranged. Though the Nazi's fell by around 30 seats, it didn't help Papen, but it didn't convince Hindenburg to make Hitler chancellor either. But then Hindenburg was faced with a new problem. One of his closest advisors Kurt Von Schleicher said the army wouldn't agree to Papen staying in office and this could start a civil war or a general strike. Hindenburg knew that no government could exist without the armies support so he had no choice but to fire Papen and appoint Schleicher instead.

This was a very short lived career for Schleicher; he was chancellor for a brief fifty-seven days before Hindenburg got rid of him, after Schleicher had asked him to make emergency laws for him, after Scheleicher had told him that the army would rebel if the country was ruled by emergency laws. What choice had Hindenburg now? He called Hitler to his office, and he was sworn in on 30th of January 1933.

But Hindenburg was more careful, he and Papen planned that he would be vice-chancellor, and only a few members of the government would be Nazi. They thought this guaranteed control over Hitler but it didn't last for over a few days. Hitler managed to persuade them that another election was necessary (his idea was to get the majority of the Reichstag Nazi). They agreed to this. Goebbels really pushed the boat out in a huge effort to win the very important election. The flags and banners returned along with the huge rallies, radio broadcasts, and of course the S.A fighting.

Whether this was a Goebbels trick we will never know, but if it was, it was the best one of all. On the 27th January 1933 the Reichstag building was set alight. Goebbels was spotted running to the scene and shouting that it was an act of communism to trash the new government, and it's clear that that's what many people thought. It was later discovered that a young communist called Marianus Van der Lubbe was caught with matches and firelighters on his person. But it is now suspected that Hemann Goering, the chief of the police, ordered the S.A to do it. Who ever it was, it gave Hitler the perfect opportunity to end the reign of communism. He later persuaded Hindenburg to sign an emergency law called the ' Law for the protection of the people and state' which stated about restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression, freedom of the press, the rights of assembly, violations of the privacy of post and telephonic communications and many more.

This was around the time that the true 'Brown terror' started. It was called this as it was acted out by the S.A who wore brown shirts. It is thought up to 4000 communists were put in prison; communist papers were shut down, and meetings broken up. Many S.A members drove around beating up Anti-Nazi's or breaking into peoples homes, inflicting terror everywhere. Goebbels was still perfecting his master plan and it was all out yet again. Giant Swastikas, major parades, mass rallies, and radio flashes which all encouraged or forced 'Vote Nazi'! In the 1933 March elections of the Reichstag, it looked like an easy Nazi victory with the Nazi's getting 288 seats, but this is not necessarily true. All the other votes for other parties added up to the same as the Nazi's meaning that about half of Germany's voters didn't actually vote Nazi. So they didn't have the majority. Luckily for the Nazi's the Nationalist party stepped in and joined forces with them adding 53 extra seats to their 288. This confirmed the fact that the Reichstag would now vote for whatever Hitler wanted. To confirm this and get closer to his goal of total power Hitler proposed an ' Enabling Law ' to the Reichstag on the 23rd March 1933 which enabled him to make laws for the next four years without the Reichstag's approval. Of course he easily won the law now most of it was Nazi.

He now had total (legal) control over Germany.

Hitler used the enabling law as best as he could to his advantage, destroying anything that limited his power. He then did two major things. On 7th April 1933, Nazi officials were appointed by Hitler, to be in charge of local governments, which decided and ran Germany's provinces. Then on the 2nd of May he shut down trade unions, stripped them of their funds and the leaders were chucked into jail. Then, and maybe the most important of all, he made another law. This one was called ' Law against the Formation of New parties.' This ensured that the Nazi's were the only political party in Germany, so no one could go up against them, and anyone who did had severe punishments of years of hard labours. This now made Germany a one party state.

Even though Hitler had cancelled out problems of other parties, he now started having problems in his own party. Two million of the party members were 'Storm troopers' who had gone around trashing and smashing communism in the famous 1933 violence of the Reichstag elections. Like every sector of the Nazi's they had a leader. The leader of the Storm troopers was called Ernst Roehm, and his desire was to make the storm troopers part of the German army. This was not a popular idea, it worried Hitler as he feared Roehm turning into the most powerful man in Germany, and the army generals weren't exceedingly happy about it either, because they were busy building up the army in case of rebellions or future invasions and said they didn't need thieves, drunks and sods to be involved in it. At three o clock in the morning on 30th June 1934, Roehm and any other S.A leaders were taken away to prison and then shot. This continued over the next few days, and it is believed that no less than 400 people were executed. These killings were of course on the orders of Hitler and carried through by his private and perfected army the S.S. This is known as 'The Night of Long Knives.'

A month later President Hindenburg died aged 87. Presidency was immediately swapped over to Hitler and he had himself be known as ' Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor'. On the 2nd August 1934, officers and men of the army took an oath swearing their loyalty to Hitler and how they were willing to die for him and their country. The only people that could oppose Hitler, had been those men, and now they'd just sworn an oath to him.

In conclusion Hitler managed to gain power by keeping himself the talk of Germany, using as much propaganda as he could to publicise himself, keeping a constant reign of terror with his private army, and legally working his way up to power through elections. He then managed to keep hold of this power by inserting new laws which made any other competition against the Nazi's impossible (and illegal),killing any competitors, any threats and any Anti-Nazi's. Hitler was a very clever man, and he managed to persuade most people at first that he was pleasing everyone, but I'm sure when their friends and family began being thrown into jail or shot, that they realised what they'd done, but then it was too late, Hitler had total control, and no one to oppose him.

John McArthur