Nazi Victory Marches: Hitler Gains Power After German Election

Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party won 43.9 percent of the vote in the Reichstag elections of March 5, 1933 — their best result ever, yet still short of a majority. The fact that the Nazis could not win an outright democratic mandate even after five weeks of holding power, controlling the police, and terrorizing the opposition made what followed all the more chilling: Hitler simply bypassed democracy entirely, and within eighteen days Germany was a dictatorship. Hitler had been appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933, heading a coalition government with the conservative German National People's Party. He immediately called new elections, aiming for a two-thirds parliamentary majority that would allow him to pass an Enabling Act transferring legislative power from the Reichstag to his cabinet. The campaign was conducted under conditions of systematic intimidation. The Reichstag fire on February 27, six days before the election, provided the pretext for suspending civil liberties. The Reichstag Fire Decree, issued the following day, abolished freedom of speech, press, and assembly, authorized indefinite detention without trial, and allowed the central government to override state authorities. Communist Party offices were raided, leaders arrested, and their press shut down. Social Democrats faced similar harassment. SA brownshirts attacked opposition rallies and polling stations. Even under these conditions, the Nazis won only 288 of 647 seats. Their coalition partner, the DNVP, contributed another 52, giving the government a bare working majority but not the two-thirds needed for constitutional amendments. Hitler achieved that threshold on March 23 by barring Communist deputies from the Reichstag and pressuring the Catholic Centre Party to support the Enabling Act. Only the Social Democrats voted against it. The March 5 election was the last multi-party election held in Germany until 1946 in the western zones and 1990 for reunified Germany. It demonstrated that Hitler could not have achieved power through democratic means alone. Democracy in Germany did not collapse from popular enthusiasm — it was dismantled by men who used democratic institutions to destroy democratic institutions.