The Main Reason for the Rise of the Nazi Party to Power in 1933 was Hitler Himself How Far do you Agree With This Statement?

them – for example, saying that Jews were ‘taking over German farmland’ and that if they voted for the Nazi party then they would save the farmer’s land from being ‘taken over’ by the Jews.    Hitler was also very good at making incredibly influential speeches – he knew exactly how to make the crowd of Germans before him listen and support what he had to say. He would tell them what he was going to do, (get them jobs, stop hyperinflation, etc) but fail to mention how exactly he intended to do it, but this did not matter. People believed him and they loved him for what he was saying about how he was planning to fix Germany.  This leads me on to how it was certainly not Hitler alone that got the Nazi party to power – the German public must also take a large part of the blame for it. However, they probably did not do it out of hate for the Jews – Hitler’s propaganda and advertising campaigns made them think that it would be the best thing that could happen to Germany and its people, and they needed a way out of their economic depression.  Hitler was also seen as a very brave, hard working man, who fought for what he believed in – the Germans recognised the fact that he had been in prison (for the beer hall putsch of 1923) and saw him as a brave man who was wrongly accused. This no doubt garnered him some sympathy which would have pushed up the votes he got even further. In campaigns and advertisements, he was seen as a family man, who genuinely wanted the best for the German family. This made people want to vote for him because they thought that he understood how they felt, trying to run a family and hold down a job with barely any money coming in.  Apart from Hitler himself and the German public, there were other people who could be seen as the reason that the Nazi’s eventually came to power. When Hindenburg appointed Kurt von Schleicher as the chancellor in 1932, he still found it hard to secure a large amount of votes. Because of this, Von Papen (the previous Chancellor) made a secret agreement with Hitler that he would ask Hindenburg if Hitler could be chancellor on the condition that he (von Papen) would be given a place in the government along with his supporters. However, in January 1933 Hindenburg refused Von Papen’s proposal at first.  Then, only a week later, Von Schleicher resigned as chancellor because he did not have enough support in the Reichstag. Hindenburg then wanted to re-appoint von Papen, but could not because he did not have enough support from the public, and appointing him as chancellor would cause a movement against Hindenburg. Therefore, a few days later, Hindenburg appointed Hitler as chancellor and Von Papen as vice chancellor. Von Papen persuaded Hindenburg to do this by saying that as long as the number of Nazi’s in the cabinet was limited. Then the most extremist Nazi policies could be restricted, due to the fact they would have to vote. They thought of Hitler as a puppet that they could control because they outnumbered him (there were two of them but only one of him).  The fact that Hitler had now been made chancellor brought his popularity right back up from the slight depression it had just been going through, as people probably thought that only a great leader would be able to be appointed as chancellor. Because of this popularity boost, in 1933 the Nazi party got more votes than ever before, and were now safely above every other party – they were already in power by the previous July, but now they were safe to carry out their policies without fear of being outvoted in the near future. This means that, due to peer pressure, we can put some of the blame for the Nazi’s rise to power on the president of Germany at the time, Hindenburg. He secured the Nazi’s place as the highest ranking party of the time for definite, and so he must take some of the blame for it.   I definitely do not believe that Hitler himself was the sole reason for the Nazi party’s rise to power, simply because one person alone could never have got that far without the support from others, coupled with a certain amount of luck. If the Germans were not so desperate for some way out of their economic situation at the time, and if Hindenburg had not been pressured into appointing Hitler as chancellor, and if Germans understood what was behind the veil when it came to Hitler’s policies, the Nazi party may never have come to power at all. Over the five years from 1928 to 1933, the Nazi party grew from just 12 seats in the government to in 1928 to 288 in 1933. This was the biggest increase of votes in the whole of German history, and this is largely due to the fact that over these five years, the Germans simply didn’t know what to do about the troubles they faced, and as everybody else seemed to be voting for the Nazi party – word of mouth no doubt helped them to grow – they would vote for them too. This would have caused a snowballing effect with the votes, as word got out and everybody decided to vote for them. Therefore in conclusion, I think that many factors and people contributed to the Nazi party’s rise, and that although Hitler was the driving force behind it, he was not the main reason they came to power. No matter how clever he was or how many influential speeches he made, if the Germans had not been in such a depressed state, they may never have chose to vote for them, and the holocaust may never have happened.