re hilter and homosexuals cramer optilink com clayton cramer writes ericsc x k apz netcom com erics netcom com eric smith writes gsmith lauren iwr uni heidelberg de gene w smith writes are you saying that people voted for hitler and he became reich chancellor in good part because he used bully boys to attack communists hitler did not become become reich chancellor because people voted for him i m not sure if you meant to imply that or not but i just thought i d bring that up hitler became chancellor because people voted for his political party that s not a huge difference in a parliamentary system your statement is a common misconception but it just isn t true in the german weimar system the chancellor was not necessarily the leader of the largest reichstag party the chancellor was appointed by the president and generally was the leader of a coalition of parties who could form an effective majority in the reichstag beyond that the implication that hitler rose to the chancellorship because a majority of germans wanted nazi rule is false as well before president hindenburg appointed hitler chancellor in january the german people did not show a particular desire to be led either by hitler or by the nazi party these are the results of the march election for president the closest hitler ever came to direct election hindenburg hitler thaelmann duesterberg in the runoff election in april the results were hindenburg hitler thaelmann so we can see that hitler personally was supported by only about a third of german voters similarly the nazi party never received more than of the vote in reichstag elections that occurred in july in the november election the nazis lost two million votes and seats down from to out of the in the reichstag comparitively the socialists had and the communists the communists had gained seats and the german national party which had supported the previous government had picked up a million of the nazis lost votes to gain seats up to i think the other large party was the catholic center party i don t know how many seats they had but i think they were declining and there were numerous other small parties thus the nazi vote was on the decline at the time hitler was appointed chancellor what brought hitler to power was not the demand of the german people for hitler or the nazis to run things but the inability of the other parties to put their differences behind them in favor of forming an effective government for the country germany did not have an enduring democratic tradition and their parliamentary system lacked effective center parties that favored the interests of the majority of the population instead what they had was a number of small parties who were unable to put aside their own specific objectives in order to combine against the nazis who were out to end the democratic process in fact part of the problem was that some of the other parties with substantial representation like the communists were also out to end the democratic process but with different results in mind and generally didn t mind seeing parliamentary democracy go under germany had already had a non nazi chancellor with a majority coalition for five months while the nazis had been the largest reichstag party and there certainly was no danger of a revolution in favor of the nazis if anything the nazis were starting to get desperate because they had failed to get enough support to make hitler president and their popular vote had begun to decline hitler was not hindenburg s first choice to be chancellor not even his second choice first von papen had been chancellor since june after the november election when the nazis lost seats hindenburg first prevailed on von papen to remain as chancellor but there were intrigues behind his back and support for him was lacking so then hindenburg turned to von schleicher who became chancellor for two months eventually he too was unable to hold together a working coalition of parties to oppose the nazis who refused to participate in any government that was not led by a nazi chancellor some of the nazi leadership particularly gregor strasser who was the man in the party at the time wanted to participate in a coalition government but others knowing the party s support was waning figured that their best hope to gain power lay in undermining the democratic process nevertheless the country was governed for seven months by chancellors who were not nazis even though the nazis were the largest reichstag party the failure of these men to achieve a working coalition was due to the inability of their coalition parties to work together here s how william shirer puts it in the rise and fall of the third reich the cardinal error of the germans who opposed nazism was their failure to unite against it at the crest of their popular strength in july the national socialists had attained but percent of the vote but the percent of the german people who expressed their opposition to hitler were much too divided and shortsighted to combine against a common danger which they must have known would overwhelm them unless they united however temporarily to stamp it out true the german people supported hitler after he became chancellor but that doesn t change the fact that there was not overwhelming support for him before he was in power the german people were not crying out for hitler to take over no matter how bad economic conditions were the leftist parties socialists communists probably had more support in total than the nazis hitler used the fact that others were passively or actively willing to see the government paralyzed as a means to taking it over eric smith erics netcom com erics infoserv com ci
