On January 30, but in 1933, Adolf Hitler came to powerthe person who marked the history of the 20th century with his anti-communist, anti-Semitic and racist policy with which he justified the persecution and extermination of the Jews.
Although Hitler is considered a dictator, he assumed power legitimately, but without being popularly elected. In fact, his assumption of power was driven by political pressure.
The National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), known as the Nazi Party, emerged with a far-right ideology in 1920 after the German defeat in World War I and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. In his early years, Nazism did not have great support and, in 1923, Hitler even carried out a failed coup.
By 1924, the NSDAP delimited the points of its national program, in which it proposed to revoke the Treaty of Versailles, the death penalty for criminals, as well as had several anti-Semitic points.
In that sense, the Jews were not considered Germans, since they They did not have “German blood”; On the contrary, they were “guests” to whom other laws applied and had to be expelled from the country.
Years passed and his popularity grew rapidly. She reached 18% of the vote in 1930 and two years later became the political party with the most votes by reaching 37.3% and becoming the force with the highest parliamentary representation.
Hitler’s assumption of power
The great electoral victories of the NSDAP made it difficult to govern without their support. Consequently, Hitler demanded to be appointed chancellor, but then-President Paul Von Hindenburg was unwilling to cede that power to him.
However, the pressures continued, as the economic consequences of the stock market crash became more and more noticeable. For this very reason, On January 30, 1933, Von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as chancellor and began one of the bloodiest periods in world history..
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In this way, the Nazi leader came to power in a legitimate way, since the chancellor is appointed by the president and had to have the approval of Parliament. Similarly, the recent official did not immediately become a dictator.
“It seems like a dream: Wilhelmstraße is ours”, wrote Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s propaganda minister some time later, recalling the party’s rise to power.
From chancellor to “Führer”: this is how Hitler became a dictator
By assuming, Hitler only had two NSDAP members in the cabinet, but they held key positions. One of them was Hermann Göring who headed the Prussian Police, the largest area in Germany.
Little by little, the Nazi Party began to manipulate the German democratic political system for convenience, agglutinating political power. The road to the dictator began a month later, on February 24, 1937 with the burning of the Reichstag, the German Parliament.
The next day, Von Hindenburg suspended the civil rights of the population, so that freedom of expression became not an inherent right and the police had the power to stop and search houses arbitrarily. A) Yes, a great persecution of the opponents began a month after the legislative elections were held.
In the March elections of that year, they gave a good cushion of votes to the left-wing parties, so days later the communist party was banned and thousands of its members were arrested.
Later, Parliament authorized Hitler to enact laws, without the need for these laws to have the endorsement of the president or parliamentarians.
The measures taken were already typical of a dictatorship, but the process culminated in 1934 after the death of Hindenburg, when Hitler unified the offices of the president and the chancellor to create the figure of the “Führer”, which translates as “leader”.
Holocaust, World War II and the fall of Hitler
Despite the fact that his anti-Semitic policies had already been put into practice with a great persecution of the Jewish people and the communists, with the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Hitler further radicalized his actions and began to mass murder members of these groups, as well as Poles.. It is estimated that more than 6 million jews were murdered.
With the lie that a group of Poles “took” a German station and send a message against the Reich, Hitler started the war against Poland and thus took all the territory. Nevertheless, he did not think that Britain and France would stand up to him And thus began the Second World War, in which the objective was not only to gain land but to exterminate the opponent.
On March 18, 1940, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini agreed to an alliance.
For six years, Hitler tried to destroy the United Kingdom and the French territory, as well as wanted to advance on Russia, at the time, the Soviet Union, but his failed escalation against the Soviets was the beginning of the end. USSR troops began to advance on the territory won by the Nazis and in February 1945 they bombarded Dresden..
In parallel, the Americans did the same. By the end of April, Hitler had lost a lot of power and territory, so committed suicide in Berlin before falling into the hands of his enemies and Germany was defeated soon after.
In little more than two decades, Hitler went from being a politician with very little support, to being the “Führer” and falling defeated before the Soviets after carrying out one of the largest massacres in history.
ground floor / ds
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