Hitler didn’t legally rise to power. He never once had a majority before abolishing democracy. He instead was instated by the conservative centrist party, in order to “control” him.
His party and their paramilitary arm then illegally detained members of the opposition, showed up armed and blocked the exits during the parliamentary election for the emergency laws that gave them far-reaching powers, and then took control of the country in a way that even violated those new emergency laws they themselves had pushed through.
The problem wasn’t the voters, the problem was the conservatives who didn’t stop him and actually enabled him, hoping he’d push through some undemocratic reforms they wanted as well, pull the workers’ votes, prevent communism, and then fuck off.
The parallels to Trump and the Republicans are astounding.
That’s not quite true. The NSDAP did get the largest percentage of the vote, just not the absolute majority. So they needed other parties to form a coalition for a government. The conservative party and their figurehead Von Hindenburg made that move thinking they could control the Nazis this way.
Hitler still won the election, democratically (although their thugs did intimidate a lot of people to vote for them).
He got the most votes in a few (three?) elections in the space of a few months. But not a majority.
He didn’t win the presidential election (Hindenburg won that).
But as leader of the biggest number of seats he had to be considered for chancellor.
He didn’t really get what we might think of as his total control until the enabling act was passed.
All the commie/ union/ socialist persecution in 1933 was not enough to get the supermajority needed in the March election for him to pass the enabling act on his own. He was still a minority chancellor.
. . . but it turns out he needn’t have worried because all the Centrist/Conservative Niemollers banded together and voted for the enabling act anyway.
Presumably they thought Hitler might favour them in the new post-Weimar government.
So you could argue that the dissolution of the weimar government was a product of (representative ) democracy.
The reps in parliament just voted the parliament itself out of exitence for some reason.
It was all part of the democratic system until that act was passed.
Very few people in the country were happy with Weimar though pretty much since the wall st crash.
Hitler didn’t legally rise to power. He never once had a majority before abolishing democracy. He instead was instated by the conservative centrist party, in order to “control” him.
His party and their paramilitary arm then illegally detained members of the opposition, showed up armed and blocked the exits during the parliamentary election for the emergency laws that gave them far-reaching powers, and then took control of the country in a way that even violated those new emergency laws they themselves had pushed through.
The problem wasn’t the voters, the problem was the conservatives who didn’t stop him and actually enabled him, hoping he’d push through some undemocratic reforms they wanted as well, pull the workers’ votes, prevent communism, and then fuck off.
The parallels to Trump and the Republicans are astounding.
That’s not quite true. The NSDAP did get the largest percentage of the vote, just not the absolute majority. So they needed other parties to form a coalition for a government. The conservative party and their figurehead Von Hindenburg made that move thinking they could control the Nazis this way.
Hitler still won the election, democratically (although their thugs did intimidate a lot of people to vote for them).
Those 2 statements contradict each other.
He got the most votes in a few (three?) elections in the space of a few months. But not a majority. He didn’t win the presidential election (Hindenburg won that).
But as leader of the biggest number of seats he had to be considered for chancellor. He didn’t really get what we might think of as his total control until the enabling act was passed.
All the commie/ union/ socialist persecution in 1933 was not enough to get the supermajority needed in the March election for him to pass the enabling act on his own. He was still a minority chancellor. . . . but it turns out he needn’t have worried because all the Centrist/Conservative Niemollers banded together and voted for the enabling act anyway.
Presumably they thought Hitler might favour them in the new post-Weimar government.
So you could argue that the dissolution of the weimar government was a product of (representative ) democracy. The reps in parliament just voted the parliament itself out of exitence for some reason. It was all part of the democratic system until that act was passed. Very few people in the country were happy with Weimar though pretty much since the wall st crash.