Why a Dictatorship Emerged in Germany in 1933 and Not Before
The Weimar Republic was bound to fail sooner or later given its
weakness at birth and the values it was associated with however as to
why Hitler was able to take power in 1933 and not before is an
interesting question that requires much thought and attention. It has
being proven throughout history that for extreme parties such as the
NSDAP or the Communist party to gain mass support there has to be an
economic crisis. The Nazi party was the one which eventually turned
out ahead of the others, partly because of their leader, Adolf Hitler
and partly because of their wider appeal and superior organisation.
After it was proven that to rise to power through revolutions and
coups (Spartacist revolt, Munich Beer Cellar putsch) was not
practicable, economic crises offered these groups their only means to
rise to power. There were economic crises in 1923 and during the 1929
- 1933 period, the earlier period was simply too early in the extreme
parties histories for them to gain any serious support however the
later one provided these parties with real opportunities to gain
popularity. Statiscally, Hitler was most popular in 1932, yet it was
in 1933 that he became chancellor, to explain this one must look at
the political context of the time which suggests that Hitler rose to
power not because he was destined to as the Nazi propaganda suggest
but because he was greatly aided by circumstances and other people’s
errors.
The only secure way to power is legal and for a normal political party
to rise to power it must either get a majority in the Reishtag thus
establishing it’s own government and leader or set up an alliance with
other parties so that between them they have a majority; extreme
groups failed to do this in the years preceding 1933 and that is why
no dictatorship emerged in those years. It is a fact that extreme
parties need an economic recession to do well during an election, in