Listen to more stories on the Noa app. N inety-two years ago this month , on Monday morning, January 30, , Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. The minutes, as we will see, mattered. Invoking Article 1 of the Weimar constitution, which stated that the government was an expression of the will of the people, Hitler informed the court that once he had achieved power through legal means, he intended to mold the government as he saw fit.
It was an astonishingly brazen statement. By January , the fallibilities of the Weimar Republicβwhose article constitution framed the structures and processes for its 18 federated statesβwere as obvious as they were abundant. Having spent a decade in opposition politics, Hitler knew firsthand how easily an ambitious political agenda could be scuttled. He had been co-opting or crushing right-wing competitors and paralyzing legislative processes for years, and for the previous eight months, he had played obstructionist politics, helping to bring down three chancellors and twice forcing the president to dissolve the Reichstag and call for new elections.
When he became chancellor himself, Hitler wanted to prevent others from doing unto him what he had done unto them. Though the vote share of his National Socialist party had been risingβin the election of September , following the market crash, they had increased their representation in the Reichstag almost ninefold, from 12 delegates to , and in the July elections, they had more than doubled their mandate to seatsβthey were still far from a majority.
But he knew that in a multiparty political system, with shifting coalitions, his political calculus was not so simple. The process proved to be even more challenging than anticipated. Hitler found his dictatorial intentions getting thwarted within his first six hours as chancellor. From the March issue: Hitler and Hitlerism: a man of destiny. But given that Social Democrats and Communists collectively commanded seats, or roughly 38 percent, of the seat Reichstag, the two-thirds vote Hitler needed was a mathematical impossibility.
Alternatively, Reichstag percentages could be rebalanced by holding new elections. Economic Minister Alfred Hugenberg disagreed. Ultimately, Hugenberg argued, if one wanted to achieve a two-thirds Reichstag majority, there was no way of getting around banning the Communist Party. New elections threatened to lose his party seats and diminish his power. He responded as he invariably did when confronted with dissenting opinions or inconvenient truths: He ignored them and doubled down.
