An account of how Hitler came to power in Germany?

Answer 1

Thousands of pages have been written on that subject alone, so a description here can only be very brief. Until the early Thirties, Hitler's NSDAP party had been mostly a political force in south Germany's Bavaria area. His effort to grab power there (the so-called Beer Hall Putsch in 1923) had ended in failure.

The ensuing Court trial however gave him much national exposure, and since the NSDAP's activities were now banned in Bavaria, he sought to expand the party's activities into northern Germany.

He was then helped by the Great Depression that started in 1929 and that hit Germany especially hard. It discredited the mainstream political parties that proved unable to stop the depression, while Hitler gained much popularity by cleverly playing a blame game, accusing those parties plus Germany's victors in WW I plus an international 'conspiracy' of Jewish bankers, politicians and behind-the-scenes power brokers of being the cause of all Germany's problems.

A number of leading German industrialists and bankers, aided by the prominent German politician Franz von Papen then pushed Hitler forward on the national political stage, supplying him with much-needed and generous finincial support. Their mistaken idea of Hitler was that he was just a brilliant 'propagandist' but not much more, and the kind of personality who would do their bidding. They succeeded in having Hitler appointed as Germany's Chancellor.

At the time Hitler's party did not have a majority in Parliament. But in 1933 the parliament building (the 'Reichstag") was burned down by a Dutch Communist. Whether or not he was helped by the Nazis is still unclear, but the result was that Hitler could now ban the Communist party and discredit the Socialist party. Using the powers granted to him by the "Reichtag Fire Decree" issued by Germany's President he then managed to push through legislation (the so-called Enabling Act) that gave him and the SDAP absolute power in Germany in 1933.