Other Parties could not place forward such as strong leader and so would never have been able to challenge the Nazis in the eyes of the German people who wanted a strong leader, they also couldn’t get there message across as effectively as the Nazis did, Hitler was a very skilful speaker and trained others to be like him, however other parties didn’t pay this attention to detail and so were unable to persuade the voters that their leader was in fact as strong as Hitler.
Another reason could be that the other political parties were too busy working to make a strong economical policy during the run up to elections, due to the severe economical problems that Germany had suffered since 1923, hyper inflation and the great depression, meant that German people were looking for a party who could offer reasonable economic stability. The parties knew that the economical policy was a place to hit the current government if they were going to be able to take power of the Reichstag, and so they were often too busy to even realise that the Nazis were such a big threat, the Nazis pulled in voters from parties like the social democrats who believed that they had an undisputed vote from. This preoccupation lead to them not realising the threat from the Nazis and so the Nazi policies often went unchallenged, and so people voted for them because they promised them what they wanted and none of the other parties were even thinking about, an example of this could be the closing down of large department stores to help small local businesses prosper. This lead to the Nazi votes snowballing, by September 1930 the Nazis had increased their share of the vote by over 7 times that of what they had received during the previous elections and it was up to 18.3% of the vote, then by the elections two years later they had doubled the share of their votes to 37.4%, during these years we can see a drop in seats gained by the SPD, leading me to suggest that the Nazis managed to sway voters towards their party.
We know that the Nazi party did face some opposition by the Reichstag cabinet, although the Nazis had a majority in the Reichstag in 1932 von Papen refused to hand the chancellorship over to Hitler, the Reichstag was dissolved after a vote of no confidence and new elections were held, Nazis votes did fall however they were still the largest party in the Reichstag for both parties to be happy a coalition government had to formed, Papen was sacked by Hindenburg and then Schleicher became chancellor and Strasser was given vice-chancellorship on 3rd December the Nazis were pleased with this however Strasser resigned after just 12 days due to an argument with Hitler. In the end due to the sheer power of the Nazi government Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30th January 1933, 3 days after Schleicher’s resignation. Hindenburg obviously realised Hitler as a threat to the republic otherwise he wouldn’t have spent his time trying to prevent Hitler becoming Chancellor, however it became near impossible to run a government when the majority are always going to vote against any bill that doesn’t suit them, by putting Hitler into a position of power, but under himself, Hindenburg believed he could control Hitler, however after his death no one could stop Hitler using article 48 to turn Germany into a dictatorship.
The Munich Putsch of 1923 lead many of the other political parties to believe that Hitler and the Nazis were badly organised and were no real contender to get into power, they underestimated them, because they didn’t realise that in fact the Nazis would now learn from their mistakes. The first step was Hitler’s organisation of his thoughts, whilst he was in jail, he wrote Mein Kampf, here he put all of his thoughts into the book so that his followers could read it and know what sort of person they were backing. Because people didn’t realise the power of the Nazis they didn’t think that they would do well in elections, however the publicity from the trials and the fact that the Nazis learnt the best way to get into power was democratically they restructured and fought in the elections, after an initial peak and fall they gradually gained more votes each election and became a strong political power. Therefore the ignorance of the other political parties towards the Nazis meant that they could continue to expand, and due to the gradual increase in their votes it meant that the Nazis never really shocked anyone by their gains and so were not viewed as a party who were on the verge of taking over the government.
If Hindenburg had held out and not appointed Hitler as chancellor, there is a chance he may never have got into power, although he made great gains in the election of 1930 and the July election in 1932, in the second election of 1932, in the November, Hitler lost 4.3% of the votes, this could be a sign that things had started to stabilise after the Wallstreet Crash, and if Hitler hadn’t been given the Chancellorship that year his votes would have progressively deteriorated and he would never have seized power in Germany! However at the time preventing Hitler from becoming Chancellor was leading to unrest within the country, the Reichstag couldn’t pass any legislation due to the nazi coalition blocking it and so Hindenburg believed it was best to have him on side.
I believe that Hitler being a strong leader was the most important reason as to why the Nazis gained power in Germany, this is because he could captivate German people with his speeches and also make people believe that the Nazi policies were what they wanted, he repeated and applied them to people’s lives, to make them believe that they would benefit their lives! No other party had such a strong leader, and as you can see no other party had such an impact on the German people, it was near impossible to challenge Hitler, he had a fiery temper and a strong will!
