Hitler Appointed Chancellor
Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on 30 January 1933, in a cabinet of eleven in which only two others were Nazis. That arithmetic was the whole of the calculation. Franz von Papen, who had arranged it and took the vice-chancellorship, told his associates that they had hired Hitler and that within two months they would have pushed him so far into a corner that he would squeak. The Nazis had done badly in the most recent election. Their vote had fallen from 37 per cent in July 1932 to 33 per cent in November, the party was in financial trouble, and Gregor Strasser had resigned in December arguing that they should take office on any terms available. Hitler had refused every offer short of the chancellorship, and Hindenburg had refused to appoint an Austrian corporal to it. What changed was that Kurt von Schleicher's government could not command a majority either, and Papen — dismissed by Schleicher and wanting back in — persuaded Hindenburg that a Hitler cabinet hemmed in by conservatives was manageable. It took eight weeks to be proved wrong. The Reichstag fire on 27 February produced an emergency decree suspending civil liberties; the March election, held with the opposition being arrested, gave the Nazis 44 per cent; and the Enabling Act of 23 March let the cabinet legislate without the Reichstag or the president. The other parties were dissolved by July. Papen was nearly killed in the purge of June 1934 and served the regime as an ambassador until 1944.
- Year: 1933 CE
- Category: Political
