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January 30, 1933: How Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany

Adolf Hitler is cheered on by his National Socialist Party supporters, January 30, 1933, after his appointment by President Von Hindenburg as Chancellor of Germany.

© AP

Text by: Olivier Favier Follow

5 mins

The end of the First World War, which the United States of President Wilson would like to place under the sign of peace and the right of peoples to self-determination, is marked by the emergence of totalitarianisms.

Like Russia in 1917 and Italy in 1922, Germany experienced a deep political, economic and social crisis which it seemed to overcome at first.

But in 1933, she entrusts her destiny to a party and a man who will precipitate her into war, genocide and destruction.

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On November 11, 1918, after more than four years of a war which it declared on Russia and France in August 1914, Germany was forced to sign an armistice in the

, in the forest of Compiègne.

In March, she obtained a peace from Bolshevik Russia that was all to her advantage, but her Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian allies laid down their arms in the fall, leaving her alone against the Allied powers.

Since 1916, the General Staff of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, nicknamed "the dioscures", has held political power.

In September 1918, he let it be known that the war was lost and prepared for the armistice.

The army retreated everywhere, but remained in enemy territory, with the exception of a tiny part of Lorraine ceded by France in 1871. Exhausted, the country had been crossed since October by revolutionary unrest, which brought Emperor William II to abdicate on November 9.

From the Spartacist Revolution to the Munich Putsch

The socialist Friedrich Ebert is elected chancellor the day before the armistice.

In his statement to the armies, Hindenburg blames the new power for an inevitable military defeat: “

A year later, he would say more clearly: "

.

"

The so-called Weimar Republic, which opened the interwar period, began in a bloodbath: the Spartacist revolt in Berlin and

were harshly repressed by the Social Democrats.

Three new uprisings of Marxist obedience in the early 1920s were also crushed.

The forces of the left were torn apart and the first four years after the war were marked by more than 35,000 political assassinations.

The infamous responsibility for the Treaty of Versailles, very hard on defeated Germany, is entirely thrown on the democratic parties by the extreme left and the extreme right.

In November 1923, with the Munich putsch, the latter threatened the young power in place.

The NSDAP – National Socialist German Workers' Party – supported by Ludendorff is still unable to embody its ambitions.

Its leader Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison but released in 1924.

, its political strategy would henceforth mix legality and illegality.

From

Mein Kampf

to the mass party

In prison, he began writing

, published in 1925 and 1926. Poorly written and confusing, this program-book enjoyed modest success at first.

He explicitly proclaims there his hatred of socialism and "Judeo-Bolshevism", his faith in an "Aryan race" which must defeat its sworn enemy, France, and extend its "living space" to the east, to the detriment of the Slavic sub-humans.

To the powerful but not very docile paramilitary organization, the SA (

, assault section), which the Nazi party set up to impose itself in the streets by terror, which it dresses in brown shirts on the model of Italian squadrons, Hitler added in 1925 a close guard, much more disciplined and elitist, the SS (

, “protection squadron”), which he entrusted to his deputy Himmler in 1929. It would be at the heart of the future regime.

In 1925, he urged Ludendorff, his far-right rival, to run for president, foreseeing his failure.

It barely exceeds 1% of the votes.

In the second round, Hitler supported the victorious nationalist candidate, Hindenburg, whom he met in 1931. "The old madman", as he called him, hardly believed in the future of the "Austrian corporal".

From the crisis of 1929 to the seizure of power

The 1929 crisis hit Germany hard, which experienced a recovery as spectacular as it was dependent on US capital.

The budget deficit is impressive and a third of the GDP comes from exports.

Faced with recession and unemployment, the Communist Party and especially the NSDAP made a breakthrough in the elections by promising full employment.

In this context, the democratic forces do not have the support of the army, which considers them responsible for the defeat, and of the police embittered by the unrest and criminality.

Adolf Hitler walking towards the Reichstag in Berlin, accompanied by one of his main lieutenants Rudolf Hess (D), to take his seat as Reich Chancellor there, January 30, 1933. © General Photographic Agency/Getty Images

In the presidential elections of 1932, Hitler asserted himself as the main rival of Hindenburg, who was re-elected.

The communist Thälmann is largely left behind.

In July, new early elections make the NSDAP the first party in Germany.

Faced with Hindenburg's refusal to let them gain power, the Nazis dissolved the Reichstag – the Chamber of Deputies.

Hindenburg ends up appointing Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933 at the head of a government which has only two Nazi ministers.

Like their Italian counterparts a decade earlier, many German politicians believe that the Nazis will not have a free hand and that the exercise of power will cause them to moderate their speech.

Less than a month later, the Reichstag fire enabled Hitler to accuse the Communists and emerge stronger after new elections marred by violence.

The chancellor will keep power until his suicide in destroyed Berlin, on April 30, 1945, at the end of a war which will have caused between 60 and 70 million deaths.

Our selection on the subject:

► To listen

• Translating Hitler or how to transcribe the monstrosity of the Nazi language?

• Thinking and dreaming under the Third Reich

• Kristallnacht by Hannah and Paul

► To read

• Munich, the cradle of Nazism, finally confronts its past

• Sebastian Haffner

  ,

  Story of a German, Souvenirs 1914-1933

  , Actes Sud, 2003. By the same author, the essay

  Germany, 1918: a betrayed revolution

  , Complexe, 2001 can be read with profit.

• Ian Kershaw

  ,

  Hitler: 1889 - 1945

  , Flammarion, 2020 (for the latest edition) or the synthetic essay by Christian Ingrao and Johann Chapoutot,

  Hitler

  , Puf, 2018.

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