From a formal point of view, January 30, 1933 was a day like relatively many in the short history of the German Republic, which was proclaimed in 1918.

Reich President Paul von Hindenburg instructed the leader of the strongest party in the Reichstag to form a new government.

Peter Storm

Editor in politics, responsible for "political books".

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There had been a number of chancellor changes in previous years.

But this move was different.

Adolf Hitler, the new head of government, was determined to push through his political agenda - literally by any means necessary.

The word “compromise”, indispensable for a democracy, did not appear in Hitler's political vocabulary.

At most he was willing to make tactical concessions.

One of these tactical maneuvers was the composition of Hitler's first government.

Apart from the chancellor, only two National Socialists belonged to the cabinet.

However, they were in key positions.

countries are brought into line

Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick purposefully reorganized the state in the spirit of his "Fuhrer".

For example, two months after the government took office, the “Law for the Co-ordination of the States with the Reich” was passed.

The following year, the countries finally lost their sovereignty.

Their parliaments no longer existed either.

In 1930, Frick was the first minister with a NSDAP party book.

In Thuringia, as Minister of the Interior, he “cleansed” the police of democratically minded officials.

Hermann Göring was a minister without portfolio in Hitler's government, which sounds unspectacular at first.

As Reich Commissioner for the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, however, he had power over the police in by far the largest state in the Reich.

Göring's "performance record" in Prussia included the inclusion of thousands of members of the National Socialist party army SA and the SS in the Prussian police force.

Through reorganization, Göring was also instrumental in founding the “Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt” (Secret State Police Office), which was to develop into one of the most feared instruments of domestic repression in the National Socialist state.

Theory: "frame" Hitler

This thwarted the political calculations of Hitler's German nationalist coalition partners.

Like the National Socialists, they wanted to replace the democratic republic with an authoritarian state.

But in this process they had given themselves supporting roles.

The National Socialists, despised by quite a few in the German Nationalist camp as rioters, were supposed to help push the Democrats aside.

But then, according to the plan, they should step back into the ranks.

According to the theory, they wanted to “frame” this Hitler and his comrades.

However, the sensible ones among Hitler's partners soon realized that they had criminally underestimated the native Austrian.

But even among Germans of Jewish faith, whose physical annihilation was one of Hitler's tenets of faith, the view persisted for a frighteningly long time that things would not turn out so badly in the end.

At the time of the "seizure of power" on January 30, 1933, very few could have guessed how bad things would get for Germany, Europe and the world.

Of course there were people at home and abroad who admonished and warned.

However, the permanent underestimation of Hitler as a person and his fanatical determination had made it easier for the leader of the National Socialists to come to power.

This attitude also prevailed at the international level during the first years of his rule.

Resistance very late

A world still traumatized by the horrors of World War I was only too happy to believe Hitler's verbal declarations of peace.

As a result, he achieved foreign policy successes comparatively easily, which the victorious powers of the First World War had not wanted to concede to the democratic Weimar Republic.

Domestic political terror, whose first prominent victims included the Social Democrats and Communists as well as Hitler's predecessor, Kurt von Schleicher, interested the experienced "Realpolitiker" in Paris, London and elsewhere only marginally anyway.

They only found themselves ready for resolute resistance when it became clear to everyone that Hitler was on a war course.

By this time he had armed his country to the point where he could dare to go into arms.

On the other side, until the outbreak of war in September 1939, the fear of a repeat of the devastation of 1914 to 1918 dominated.

The price that everyone then had to pay for the formally unspectacular event of January 30, 1933 ultimately exceeded everything that had previously existed and been imaginable.

The world in which Adolf Hitler had become Chancellor no longer existed when the dictator met his end twelve years later.

Germany, which according to National Socialist ideology as the leading power should dominate at least Europe, still bears the legacy of the "Führer" heavily.

There is a consensus among all democratic forces that something like the seizure of power must never happen again.

However, opinions quickly differ on how to counteract any beginnings.

At least the West German democracy has managed to do what the Weimar democracy failed to do: it kept extremists out of the control levers of power.