What is Hitler's Rise To Power?

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Hitler's rise to power was marked at first by a period of the NSDAP as a fringe party before the events of the Beer hall putsch and the release of Mein Kampf introduced Hitler to a wider audience. These years were characterised by the electoral battles Hitler participated in, and the street battles between the Rotfrontkämpferbund and the Sturmabteilung (SA) that raged across Germany.

Once in power the Nazis mythologised the events as the Kampfzeit (the time of fighting) and similarly the Kampfjahre (years of struggle).

Early years (1919 - 1926)

In September 1919 the army assigned Adolf Hitler, in his new position as investigative officer, to a meeting of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party, abbreviated DAP). During the meeting Hitler took umbrage with a speaker arguing that Bavaria should be wholly independent from Germany, and two days later on 14 September, Hitler joined the party as member 555 (he was actually only the 55th member, the DAP added a digit to make itself look more popular than it was). By early 1920 the DAP had 190 members (this was listed as 1,900 by the party).

Hitler began to transform the party, renaming its militia from the Rollkomando to the Zeitfreiwilligen (at the end of the year it was renamed the Ordnertruppen, and later again to Sportabteilung, or Sports Section) and on 20 February, the party added Nationalsozialistische to form the initials NSDAP, or Nazi Party. Four days later Dr Gottfried Feder and Hitler announced the 25-point programme of the party. Throughout the year Hitler began to lecture at Munich's beer halls, particularly the Hofbrauhaus, Sterneckerbrau and Burgerbraukeller. By this time the police were already monitoring the speeches, and their own surviving records reveal Hitler delivered lectures with titles such as Political Phemenenon, Jews and the Treaty of Versailles. At the end of the year party membership was recorded at 2,000.

On 11 July 1921, Hitler resigned from the party after Anton Drexler, the party's leader, proposed dissolving the party into a larger Kampfbund coalition. Hitler rejoined once the policy was abandoned as a result of his withdrawal and on 28 July assumed control of the party.

On 14 September 1921, Hitler and a small number of Sportabteilung disrupted a meeting of the Bayernbund lead by Otto Ballestedt. Hitler himself was violent during this time, and was arrested. He was sentenced to 3 months imprisonment, of which he ended up serving a little over a month.

On 4 November] 1921, the Nazi Party held a large public meeting in the Munich Hofbräuhaus. After Hitler had spoken for some time the meeting erupted into a melee in which a small company of Sportabteilung distinguished itself by thrashing the opposition. After this point, the Sportabteilung was renamed and came to be called the Storm Division (Sturmabteilung) or SA.

In the few months between the end of 1922 and the beginning of 1923, Hitler formed two organisations that would grow to have huge significance, the first was the Jungsturm and Jugendbund, which would later become the Hitler Youth and the Stabswache, the first incarnation of what would later become the Schutzstaffeln.

Inspired by Mussolini's March on Rome Hitler decided that a coup d'état had to be instigated to seize control of the country. In May, elements loyal to Hitler within the army helped the SA to procure a barracks and its weaponry but the order to march never came. When the beer hall putsch was attempted it was something of a disaster and saw Hitler sentenced to five years imprisonment, time which he used to dictate the first volume of Mein Kampf. After the putsch the party was banned, but contested 1924's two elections by proxy as the National Socialist Freedom Movement. In the German election, May 1924 the party gained 32. In Bavaria the NSDAP took 15.9% and in Thuringen 10.5% of the vote. The lowest vote tally was in Schaumburg-Lippe with just 2.48% of the total vote. Overall 6.55% (1,918,329) voted for Movement. In the German election, December 1924 gained only held on to 14 seats. The highest total of votes in areas where the Movement stood independently is again Bavaria (5.11%). Overall 3% (907,242) of the electorate vote for Hitler's party.

Hitler was released from Landsberg Prison on 20 December 1924 and less than three months later on 16 February 1925 – prompted by Hitler’s promise to aim at attaining power only through legal means – the ban on the Nazi party was lifted. For six years there would be no further prohibitions of the party (see Rise to power: 1925-1933).

Move towards power (1927 - 1930)

In the German election, May 1928 The party achieved just 12 seats (2.8%) of the vote in the Reichstag elections. The highest provincial gain is again in Bavaria (5.11%) though in three areas the NSDAP fail to gain even 1% of the vote. Overall the NSDAP gain 2.63% (810,127) of the vote. Largely due to the poor results Hitler decides that Germany needs to know of his aims more. To this end he writes a second book (his publisher apparently advised him not to release it) that is discovered and released posthumously as Zweites Buch. At this time the SA began a period of deliberate antagonism to the Rotfront by marching into Communist strongholds in the hope of sparking a violent altercation, which it often did.

At the end of 1928 party membership was recorded at 130,000. In March 1929 Erich Ludendorff represented the Nazi party in the Presidential elections. He gained 280,000 votes (1.1%), and was the only candidate to poll less than a million votes. Outside of electoral methods the battle on the streets grew increasingly violent, after the Rotfront interrupted a speech by Hitler the SA marched into the streets of Nuremberg and killed two bystanders. In a tit-for-tat action the SA stormed a Rotfront meeting on August 25 and days later the Berlin HQ of the KPD itself. In September Goebbels led his men into Neukolln, a KPD stronghold, and the two warring parties exchanged pistol and revolver fire.

On 14 January 1930 Horst Wessel got into an argument with his landlady – the Nazis said it was about rent, but the Communists alleged it was over Wessel’s soliciting of prostitution on her premises – which would have fatal consequences. The landlady happened to be a member of the KPD, and contacted one of her Rotfront friends, Albert Hochter, who shot Wessel in the head at point-blank range. Wessel had penned a song months before his death (it would go on to become Germany’s national anthem for 12 years as the Horst-Wessel-Lied) and Goebbels seized upon the slaying, helped by the fact Wessel actually took two weeks to die from his horrific injuries. Goebbels premiered the song and orchestrated a thousand-man airing. The funeral, a propaganda coup, was marred from a Nazi perspective only by the Rotfront stealing Wessel’s wreath and daubing ‘pimp’ onto it. 1930 resulted in more deaths than the previous two years combined. On 1 April Hannover enacted a law banning the HitlerJugend (the Hitler Youth), and Goebbels was convicted of high treason at the end of May. Bavaria banned all political uniforms on 2 June and on 11 June Prussia prohibited the wearing of SA brown shirts and associated insignia. The next month Prussia passed a law against its officials holding membership of either the NSDAP or KPD. Later in July Goebbels was again tried, this time for ‘public insult’, and fined. The government also placed army officers on trial for 'forming national socialist cells'.

Against this violent backdrop Hitler sent shockwaves through the Reichstag obtaining 107 seats (18.3%, 6,406,397 votes) and becoming the second largest party. In Bavaria the party gained 17.9% of the vote though for the first time this total is outnumbered by most other provinces: Oldenburg (27.3%), Braunschweig (26.6%), Waldeck (26.5%), Mecklenburg-Strelitz (22.6%), Lippe (22.3%) Mecklenburg-Schwerin (20.1%), Anhalt (19.8%), Thuringen (19.5%), Baden (19.2%), Hamburg (19.2%), Prussia (18.4%), Hessen (18.4%), Sachsen (18.3%), Lubeck (18.3%) and Schaumburg-Lippe (18.1%).

An unprecedented amount of money was thrown behind the campaign. Well over one million pamphlets were produced and distributed; sixty trucks were commandeered for usage in Berlin alone. Furthermore in areas where NSDAP campaigning was less rigorous the total was as low as 9%. The Great Depression was also a factor in Hitler's electoral success. Yet against this legal backdrop the SA began it's first major anti-Jewish action when on 13 October 1930 groups of brownshirts smashed the windows of Jewish-owned stores at Potsdamer Platz.

Seizure of control (1931 - 1933)

In March 1931, with street violence between the Rotfront and SA spiralling out of control, breaking all previous barriers and expectations, Prussia re-enacted its ban on brown shirts. Days after the ban SA-men shot dead two communists in a street fight, which led to a ban been placed on the public speaking of Goebbels, who side-stepped the prohibition by recording speeches and playing them to an audience in his absence.

Ernst Rohm, in charge of the SA, put Count Heinrich von Helldorff, a convicted murderer and vehement antisemite, in charge of the Berlin SA. The deaths mounted up, with many more on the Rotfront side, and by the end of 1931 the SA had had 47 men killed, and the Rotfront recorded losses of approximately 80. Street fights and beer hall battles resulting in deaths occurred throughout February and April 1932, all against the backdrop of Adolf Hitler’s competition in the presidential election which pitted him against the monumentally popular Hindenburg. In the first round on 13 March Hitler had polled over 11 million votes but was still behind Hindenburg. The second and final round took place on 10 April: Hitler (36.8% 13,418,547) lost out narrowly to Paul von Hindenburg (40% 19,359,983) whilst KPD candidate Thälmann gained a meagre percentage of the vote (10.2% 3,706,759).

At this time the Nazi party had just over 800,000 card-carrying members but in a turbulent climate and economic malaise was seen once more as a viable option. Three days after the presidential elections, the German government passed the Law for the Maintenance of State Authority which banned the NSDAP and its paramilitaries. This action was largely prompted by details which emerged at a trial of SA men for assaulting unarmed Jews in Berlin. The law was repealed by Franz von Papen on 30 May after barely a month's enaction.

Dwarfed by Hitler’s electoral gains the KPD turned away from the legal approach and increasingly towards violence. One resulting battle in Silesa resulted in the army been dispatched, each shot sending Germany further into a potential all-out civil war.

By this time both sides marched into each others strongholds hoping to spark rivalry. At nearly 5pm the Rotfront ambushed a column of 7,000 SA men who had marched into red Altona. The armed SA took up positions and a gunbattle ensued. The police arrived, and because shots had been fired were authorised to use brutal force. 18 people died, the Nazis claimed 19, later investigations revealed 2 of those killed were national socialists shot by communists, the rest civilians caught in the crossfire once the police arrived. Hermann Goering, as speaker of the Reichstag, asked the Papen government to prosecute the shooters, who six days later passed laws which made political violence a capital crime.

The attacks continued, and reached fever pitch when SA storm leader Axel Schaffeld was assassinated. At the end of July the Nazi party gained almost 14,000,000 votes securing 230 seats in the Reichstag. Energised by the incredible results Hitler asked to be made Chancellor. Papen offered the position of Vice Chancellor but Hitler refused.

Hermann Goring, in his position of Reichstagpresident, asked that decisive measures to be taken by the government over the spate in murders of national socialists. On 9 August amendments were made to the Reichstrafgesetzbuch statute on ‘acts of political violence’ increasing the penalty to ‘lifetime imprisonment, 20 years hard labour or death’. Special Courts were announced to try such offences, when in power less than half a year later, Hitler would use this legislation against his opponents with devastating effect.

The law was applied almost immediately but brought to trial not, as most had expected, the perpetrators behind the recent massacres, but five SA men who were alleged to have murdered a KPD member in Potempa. Adolf Hitler appeared at the trial as a defence witness but on 22 August the five were convicted and sentenced to death. On appeal this sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in early September. They would serve just over four months before Hitler freed all imprisoned Nazis in a 1933 amnesty. The Nazi party lost 34 seats in the November 1932 election but remained the Reichstag's largest party.The most shocking move of the early election campaign was to send the SA to support a Rotfront action against the transport agency and in support of a strike.

In November Papen left office and two months later secretly told Hitler that he still held considerable sway with Hindenburg and that he would make Hitler chancellor as long as he could be the vice chancellor. On 30 January Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of a coalition government comprised of the NSDAP-DNVP-Centre Party. The SA and to a lesser extent the SS lead torchlight paraded throughout Berlin. In the coalition government three members of the cabinet including Hitler and also Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick and Hermann Goering as Minister Without Portfolio were Nazis.

Hitler soon moved to consolidate absolute power, see: Gleichschaltung and the Night of the Long Knives.

References and further reading

Abel, Theodore Fred • Why Hitler Came To Power

Abraham, David • The Collapse of the Weimar Republic: Political Economy and Crisis

Allen, William Sheridan • The Nazi Seizure of Power, The Experience of a Single Town

Childers, Thomas (editor) • The Formation of the Nazi Constituency, 1919 - 1933 Croom Helm, London, 1986.

Dietrich, Otto, 1897-1952. •With Hitler on the Road to Power

Dixon, Joseph Murdock • “Gregor Strasser and the Organization of the Nazi Party 1925 - 1932” Doctoral Dissertation - Stanford University University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Ehrt, Adolf • Enfesselung der unterwelt: ein querschnitt durch die bolschewisierung Deutschlands Eckart-verlag, Berlin-Leipzig, 1932. Bewaffneter Aufstand! : Enthüllungen über den kommunistischen Umsturzversuch am Vorabend der nationalen Revolution Eckart-Verlag, Berlin, 1933. Totale Krise--Totale Revolution? Die "Schwarze Front" des völkischen Nationalismus. Eckart-Verlag, Berlin, 1933. Communism in Germany: Communist Conspiracy on the Eve of the 1933 National Revolution

Evans, Richard • The Coming of the Third Reich

Kershaw, Ian • Hitler: 1889 – 1936

Krebs, Albert, 1899- • The infancy of Nazism: the memoirs of ex-Gauleiter Albert Krebs, 1923-1933

von Papen, Franz • Appell an das deutsche Gewissen : Reden zur nationalen Revolution.

Ruhle, Gerd • Kampfjahre 1918 – 1933 [The Years of Fighting] Official Institute for Statistics of the NSDAP/ Hans Eugen Hummel Verlag

See also

• Early Nazi Timeline
• Weimar paramilitary groups
• Weimar political parties