In the general election of September 1930, the Nazis won 6.5 million votes, took 107 seats in the Reichstag and became the second largest party in the country. But the social democrats remained the largest party in still contained the majority of the vote. There was a coalition government at this time which was made up of the Social Democrats, Catholic Centrists and Democrats. The unpopularity of the government was shown in the presidential election of April 1932 where Hitler and Hindenburg both stood. Hindenburg was reelected with 19.4 million votes but Hitler did receive 13.4 million of the votes which shows the support for the Nazi party was ever rapidly growing with them gaining nearly 36.8% of the vote.
In June 1932, Von Papen was appointed to be the new Chancellor. In the next six months, Papen tried to get a Reichstag majority for the government by holding two elections. The first took place in July Von Papen failed to receive any more significant support but the Nazis power was growing and with great pace. The Nazis won 230 Reichstag seats and became the largest single party within the Reichstag. At this point Hitler asks Hindenburg to become chancellor but he refuses to do so. On November 6th the second Reichstag elections take place. Unfortunately the Nazis lost 2 million votes and only gained 33.1% of the vote to win 196 seats in the Reichstag. The communists had won 11 seats in the elections and many of the influential business men became scared of a Bolshevik revolution and many of the conservative Nationalists decided that it would be a good idea to support Hitler. This is because the large business men did not want the wealth they had created to be lost. Von Papen, who had just joined the Nationalist Party, wanted to utilize the strength of the Nazis to rid Germany of the Communist threat. He made a political bargain with Hitler. According to the bargain, Hitler would be made Chancellor and Von Papen be made Vice-Chancellor. Hindenburg, despite his contempt for Hitler, readily agreed to the bargain because the Nazis appeared to be the only well-supported right-wing party which could protect Germany from the onslaught of the Communist Revolution. On January 28, 1933, Hindenburg invited Hitler to be the Chancellor.
The reasons for their immediate success was that the old Weimar republics were not trusted they failed in both domestic and foreign affairs. And hated grew quickly towards them for signing the treaty of Versailles as many Germans saw it as a harsh punishment. The amount of political parties in Germany at the time meant there was a weak government. The high unemployment meant many people looked to the more right winged parties and the Nazis prevailed. Also many people saw Hitler as an able leader due to his charisma and his powerful speeches in which he made promises for everybody.
When Hitler was appointed chancellor he was only allowed to appoint three Nazi members within his cabinet. He gave positions to Wilhelm Frik as minister of the interior and Herman Goring as minister without portfolio. This coalition government meant Hitler did not have enough power to pass any law he wanted. But it still did have its strengths; because of the scare of a communist coup the conservatives supported Hitler closely and with Goring being in control of the police fore of Prussia and he could hassle opposition parties. Goebbles also used exploited propaganda on behalf of the Nazi party such as articles in newspapers. Hitler didn’t lose any time and immediately called on another election for March 5th 1933. Hitler used Goring in Prussia to arrest and kill many people and he also put 50 000 extra men into the police force. This created the atmosphere of terror within the German people. There greatest propaganda occurred on 27 February, when the Reichstag building was burned down. The Communists were falsely accused of using the fire as a signal for Communist insurrection. This only hyped the fear of terror within the nation. On the next day Hindenburg signed ‘the decree for the protection of German people and the state’. This decree suspended civil and political liberties and the power of central government was strengthened. This was justified to help German people to stop the communist coup and once Hitler had the power he arrested hundreds of anti-Nazis. All this helped Hitler gain more votes within the election and they got 49.3% of the vote which meant they had 288 seats.
Poor electoral result could not deter Hitler from 'destroying' the Weimar Constitution. Hitler wanted to transfer all legislative power of the Reichstag to himself, which he called the enabling act, but any change in the Constitution required a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag before they could become effective. He managed to get the two third majority by firstly gaining the support of conservatives which was easy due to their common interest of hatred toward communist. He then got the vote of the catholic center party by promising them that he would uphold the rights of Catholic Church and moral values. The enabling act was passed with a massive majority off 444 votes to 94 with only the socialist democrats voting against him. This legally made Germany a one party state.
Hitler also wanted power of the army and he saw the SA and Ernst Rohm to be in the way of this. He knew know it was only the army that had enough power to create a revolution. Hitler felt threatened although still in power so he used the SS to kill un-trusted Nazi member or oppositions. This resulted in ‘the night of the long knives’ which occurred on June 30th 1934. The killing of Rohm put the Himmler’s SS into much greater power and Himmler also controlling the Gestapo and secret police they could take full control. It meant opponents to the Nazis could be killed and people lived in fear of the Nazi party and any threat of a revolution had been eliminated. The death of President Hindenburg on august 2 1934 meant that Hitler could now take complete power. Hitler abolished the office of president and assumed the president powers. The members of the armed forces had to take an oath to Hitler and this finally consolidated his dictatorship in the country and he was now the absolute leader of Germany. Now this power had been handed to Hitler he wanted to revive Germany back into a superpower.
Germany was still in a state of economic crisis and it was up to the Nazi party to resolve this. By this time Unemployment – this had risen to over 6 million by 1932. Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire.
Germany had faced devastating hyperinflation in 1923 when $1 = 4,200,000,000,000 marks. Self-sufficiency, autarky, was needed Germany relied on overseas trade for vital raw materials and food supplies. Part of the reason Germany had lost the Great War was because it hadn’t been able to maintain these supplies. Hitler hoped to make Germany self-sufficient. A pay freeze was introduced in 1933 and this was enforced by the Labor Front. Wages were now decided by the Labor Front and compulsory deductions made for income tax. This helped put money back into the German economy. To bring down the rate of unemployment the Nazi government gave work contracts to those companies that relied on manual labour rather than machines. This was especially true of the government's massive autobahn (motorway) programme. This had been inspired by Roosevelt’s new deal in America. Many public work programmes were introduced to bring down the unemployment and also to increase the German infrastructure.
Most jobs were created by the increase in re-armament and strengthening of the German army. The building in factories of weapons created many jobs and conscription into the army lowered the unemployment. The Four Year Plan favored both the protection of and . To achieve these, Germany needed to put forth an aggressive policy in order to reduce reliance on raw materials. On was put in charge of the Four Year Plan. During the following years, Germany began building , plants, and factories for the development of synthetic-materials. This was firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw materials through barter agreements. In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security and food given to the people after years of economic depression was enough to make the general population happy. This helped with Hitler’s idea of German self-sufficiency and trying to get them ready for war and the country was now gaining a large army with a good infrastructure and morale of the country was increasing as people was getting work. By 1939 unemployment had dropped to 30 000. Now industrial production was larger than that before the Wall Street crash of 1929 and Germany were ready for like they said they would be within the four year plan.
