How did Hitler come to power?
Hitler came to power through a combination of democratic elections, backroom political dealing, and the exploitation of constitutional emergency powers. The Nazi Party became Germany's largest party by 1932 amid economic crisis, and conservative elites persuaded President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933, fatally miscalculating that they could control him.
Adolf Hitler's path to power was neither a violent revolution nor a straightforward electoral victory — it was a complex process that exploited the weaknesses of democratic institutions, the miscalculations of political elites, and the desperation of a population in economic crisis.
Hitler's early political career gave little indication of future success. The Nazi Party was a fringe movement in the 1920s. Hitler's attempt to seize power through force — the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923 — was a farcical failure that landed him in prison, where he wrote Mein Kampf. After his release, he rebuilt the party as a mass movement organized for electoral competition, with a paramilitary wing (the SA) that intimidated opponents through street violence.
The Great Depression was the turning point. Before the crash, the Nazis received just 2.6% of the vote in 1928. By July 1932, they were the largest party in the Reichstag with 37.3%. Millions of desperate, unemployed Germans responded to Hitler's promises of national revival, economic recovery, and the destruction of the Versailles order. The Nazi message combined something for everyone: anticommunism for the middle class and industrialists, nationalist pride for veterans, promises of work for the unemployed, and antisemitism as an explanation for Germany's suffering.
The Weimar Republic's proportional representation system made it impossible for any party to govern alone, producing unstable coalitions and governmental paralysis. Between 1930 and 1933, Germany was governed largely by presidential emergency decree, bypassing the Reichstag — a practice that normalized the concentration of executive power that Hitler would later exploit.
The final act was backroom politics. In January 1933, a group of conservative politicians and industrialists — including former Chancellor Franz von Papen — persuaded the elderly President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. They believed they could use Hitler's popular support to stabilize the government while controlling him through a cabinet dominated by conservative ministers. 'We've hired him,' Papen reportedly said. Within two months, Hitler had used the Reichstag Fire to declare emergency powers, passed the Enabling Act that allowed him to rule by decree, banned opposition parties, and begun constructing a totalitarian state. The conservatives who thought they could control him were swept aside like everyone else.
Hitler's rise demonstrates how democracy can be destroyed from within — not through a coup but through the exploitation of democratic processes by forces that hold democracy in contempt.