How did Hitler change Germany from democracy to dictatorship?

Answer 1

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Answer 2

By not allowing freedom of speech, people could not rebel alone against him.

He systematically took away rights from specific groups of people such as Communists, homosexuals, and Jews. Media was systematically controlled through a public Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Thugs and public officials were used as force behind these measures, and common citizens were used through nationalism to further enhance public loyalty to the state. He used a narrative of the German people being strong people to play on the German people's insecurities.

Following President Hindenburg's death, Hitler imposed unconstitutional laws combining the Presidency with the position of Chancellor. He made German public officials swear an oath of loyalty to him. A plebisicite was run to the people to approve of these new powers, which they overwhelmingly did, effectively solidifying his position as Fuhrer and dictator.

Answer 3

Hitler wanted to control Germany and once he had decided this there was nothing anyone could have done, short of killing him, to make him change his mind.

Firstly there was the Munich Putsch in 1923. At the time the Weimar government were unpopular, Hitler was also the leader of the German workers party (renamed the Nazi Party). He thought that with bad conditions in Germany that the Nazi's had a good chance of success; he thought the German army could be persuaded to desert the Government and support the Nazi's.

When it came to it in in 1923 Hitler arrived at a beer hall in Munich where Kahr (the leader of the right-wing Bavarian Government) was addressing a meeting. He had 600 storm ropers with him. Hitler stopped the meeting and held Kahr at gunpoint until he agreed to support the Putsch.

The next day, Stormtroopers seized key positions in Munich and more began to arrive from other parts of Bavaria, however, Kahr had gone against his word alerted the army and police. As the Nazi's marched to the city centre, they were stopped but police and soldiers.

The result of this was that 16 Nazi's and 3 policemen were killed. Hitler had failed. He had over estimated the support he had and the army and police had, to his surprise, stayed loyal to the government. It was at this point Hitler, Ludendorff and other Nazi leaders were arrested.

Whilst in prision Hitler wrote his book "Mien Kampf" ("My Struggle"). It was during this time he decided he was going to take the democratic approach to taking control of Germany and came up with a plan to get elected.

First before Hitler could become a dictator he needed to become Chancellor. There were 5 main factor which contributed to this.

The first was the rise of the Nazi Party. In the elections of September 1930 the Nazi Party became more popular. The number of seats for Nazi's increased from 12 to 107. More people were turning to the Nazis and other extremist parties after the death of Stressemann and the Wall Street Crash; with the economy in a poor state people lost faith in the governemt.

Another influencial factor was Propaganda. Hitler spents huge sums of money on propaganga to win support and the man behind all this was Geobbels. The Nazis put up posters and used their 8 Nazi owned newspapers and millions of leaflets to spread their ideas across the country. Hitler was a brilliant public speaker and so their mass rallies and public meetings won them a lot of support.

However, they also used violence as well. Hitler had created his own personal army, known as Brownshirts (because of their uniform). They would protect him at rallies but also beat people up. By intilling fear into people Hitler could be sure they would vote for him; they'd be too scared not to.

The Wall Street Crash and Depression also helped Hitler become Chancellor. It was during this time that the Nazi's promised they would get jobs for the unemployed and they would help employers increase their profits; they were prepared to promise anything to get votes.

During this time there were also some problems in the Reichstag. In 1932 in an election, the Nazi's became the biggest party in the Reichstag, at this point Hitler demanded that he become Chancellor. However, Hindenburg, who was President at the time, said no because he didn't trust Hitler and thought Nazi's were too violent.

At this point Hindenburg asked Papen, who was Chancellor at the time, to stay in office but in the November elections he got even fewer seats and the Reichstag did not support him. As the constitution says the Chancellor must have support from the majority of the Reichstag Papen suggested closing down Reichstag and using Army to crush any opposition. But General Schleicher said no because it would cause a civil war and Papen was warned army could not be trusted. Papen stepped down as Chancellor.

Then Schleicher then became chancellor but Reichstag didn't agree with him and after 2 months he resigned.

With no other option Hindenburg had to offer the position to the party with the most seats in the Reichstag, this was the Nazi Party and so Hitler became Chancellor on 30th Januray 1933.

However, this is not where it ends. Because as Chancellor Hitler still had to go through the Reichstag with all major decissions, he had to go further before he could become Dictator.

In February 1933 the Rechstag building was set on fire. Nazi's blamed Communists for this as they found a Communist man, Marinus van der Lubbe, inside with matches. As a result Hitler was able to convince people that the Communists (who also happened to be his biggest rivals) were plotting to take power by terrorism. The result of this was that the Communists were banned from the Reichstag.

In March 1933 Hitler introduced the Enabling Act. Now that the Communists were banned from the Reichstag the Nazi's had an overwhelming majority and could pass any law they wanted, for example: Hitler can rule for four years. There is no need to consult the Reichstag.

Now that he was able to make his own laws Hitler banned all other parties from the Reichstag, claiming they had Communist links or couldn't be trusted. During this time he got rid of the SPD, KPD, Zentrum and DDP amongst others.

June 1934 saw the Night of the Long Knives. Previous to this Hitler had decided he no longer needed the SA, he thought the were undisciplined thugs and most importantly; a threat to his control. Furthermore, their leader, Roehm, had more Socialist views that Hitler did not agree with; Roehm wanted to take over all big businesses but Hitler had won over the support of the leading industries and did not want to loose this support now.

Also, Roehm wanted the SA to take control of the German Army. Hitler hated the thought of this because it would make Roehm more powerful than him. Hitler's solution was the Night of the Long Knives, on this night the SS killed over 1,000 members of the SA, including Roehm who was shot. Hitler also used this opportunity to remove other opponents such as von Schleicher, the former Chancellor.

Then in August 1934 Hindenburg died. This gave Hitler an opportunity to combine the role of Chancellor and President. He left Germany with no Reichstag and no President he was just the Fuher - the Dictator.

Answer 4

The democracy in place before Hitler became Fuhrer was very fragile, making it all that much easier for Hitler to "reform" the country and it's government as he saw fit. Hitler created jobs, helped the economy and generally made things seem better for the people, which helped him gain their support. It also made that all much easier for him to make the changes he wanted to make without much resistance. When Hitler began killing Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the crippled, etc., many people turned the other cheek or chose not to ask questions about what was going on because economically, they were better off as a result of his policies.

Answer 5

Very good question! I'll have to say that Hitler is the best example of how an immoral person can use a democratic system to gain power. That is the greatest weakness of democracy -- because he was able to use emotionally based speeches to fuel his rise to power.

But back to the question: Hitler used democracy (the 'republic' that sprung-up after WW1) to rise to the office of the Chancellery, and then, using his SA zealots, slowly integrated a policy of racism and socialism into the democracy.

However! -- after the burning of the Reichstag (the parliamentary building) in 1933, Hitler used his executive power as chancellor to fully integrate the policies that he explained in his best-seller: 'Mein Kampf.' Now, these two things are not the only events that destroyed the democracy in early 20th century German, but all throughout his rein, Hitler implemented tyranny onto the citizens of Nazi Germany through fear, power, and a perverted sense of patriotism.

Answer 6

After his failed attempt to overthrow the government in a sort of popular uprising (the Munich Putsch), he decided to take over the government of Germany through legal means.

Germany's "Weimar Republic", between 1919 and 1933, was a republic where it was difficult for the government to get anything done due to the many small political parties. No single party was ever really able to take a majority of the seats in the parliament, and parties generally refused to work together. Radical parties, like the Nazis and the Communists, gained popularity as the government was able to accomplish little. Compounding the problem was that the economy of Germany after World War I was in bad shape; the Great Depression at the end of the 1920's undid the positive progress their economy was able to make.

Long story somewhat short, Hitler was eventually able to get other right-wing parties (mainly the Center Party and the National Party) to work with his own Nazi party, and in January 1933, manuevered so that the President of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg, would have to make him chancellor.

In March 1933, there was to be a parliamentary election- a few days before the election, the parliament building (Reichstag) in Berlin was set on fire. A Dutch communist sympathizer was captured and blamed for the incident, however, it is possible (and maybe even likely) that the Nazis were involved. But the Nazi government was able to use the incident to get a law passed, the Reichstag Fire Decree, which allowed the Nazis to eliminate left-wing political parties, especially the rival Communist Party.

Once that was done, and with little resistance from what was left of the left-wing parties, the Nazis won a majority in the parliament. With their other right-wing allies in support and the left-wing parties still weakened by the Reichstag Decree, at the end of March 1933 the Nazis passed the Enabling Act, which gave Hitler's government broad powers and allowed it to suspend many civil rights.

In the first year, Hitler began a process called "Gleichschaltung", or "synchronization", whereby he had rival parties (and even allied parties) eliminated, dissidents arrested, and Nazi institutions made officially part of the government. Laws were also passed to harm Jewish people, and other people the Nazis had decided weren't worth having around. Propaganda, brainwashing, and indoctrination programs became more and more pervasive, and political parties that weren't the Nazi Party began to quietly disappear.

The only check on Hitler's power at that point was Paul von Hindenburg, who was a very popular war hero and general from World War I. As President, he could technically fire Hitler at any time; if had he done so, as a war hero, he probably would've had full support from the German military, and Hitler couldn't risk that, so he generally sought to avoid annoying von Hindenburg or the military.

When von Hindenburg died in the summer of 1934, Hitler had the presidency merged with the chancellorship, creating the new position of "Führer" ("leader"). Just prior to von Hindenburg's death, Hitler carried out the "Night of the Long Knives", where he had (real and potential) rivals in the government and in the Nazi Party murdered.

Thus, with Hitler now "Führer", he had no limits on his power and the Weimar Republic was officially destroyed.

Answer 7

shortly after Hitler became chancellor there was a fire at the reichstag (parlement) it was supposedly set ablaze by a dutch communist. After this hitler demanded extra powers essentialy overriding the constitution. these powers were then used by hitler to forbid free speech ban party's elections etc. After this germany became a police state and after the death of hindenburg an totalitarian regime.

Answer 8

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