Was Hitler even a Nazi? Dishonest question. He did win democratically so he must have had some good points.
Pretty sure hitler was known to have rigged the pols.
Because America only has two parties. The national socialists won the election and formed a government through coalition as it is standard procedure for democratic European governments until today.
That's not what happened, though. Getting 33% of the vote didn't win Hitler anything. In 1932 Hitler refused to from a governing coalition and Hindenburg refused to make him Chancellor. Kurt von Schleicher (independent) became Chancellor in November 1932. After Schleicher's goverment failed, Hitler was appointed chancellor, without any new prior election. The way Hindenburg appointed chancellors was absolutely not standard procedure for democratic governments anywhere.
Right, they then still needed a conservative coalition to install emergency measures before annulling thedemocracy, because it still happened under pseudo-legality and not some kind of coup or invasion. Either way, your persistence on discrediting his democratic victory makes no sense. 33% (let alone 37%) was a bigger majority than the current chancellor's (and many other majorities in multi-party systems), the German chancellor is still appointed by the president and theoretically the president still has the power to terminate the government/replace the chancellor. You vote for parties, but elections are still personality-driven and voting for national socialists obviously went hand in hand with voting for the Führer much stronger. The majority of the populace made him the strongest force in the parliament, so this wasn't a random military made chancellor based on nothing.
Look, we need to take care of some bookkeeping here. Hitler never formed a coalition government. He managed to outlaw the rest of the parties because the Social Democrats and Communists weren't yet allowed to form a Popular Front. (This was the only potential numerical coalition available in the Bundestag.)
What Germany had and this is endlessly important, was a
negative majority in the Bundestag. The Nazi's and Communists were the governing "coalition" even though they were entirely opposed to each other and everyone else. Their coalition was that they were opposed to a functioning democratic government. The President (and prior Chancellors with his approval) had been ruling by decrees for years in Weimar (even when the Nazi's weren't or had like ten seats in the body) because of this situation continuing to increase in the Bundestag not just with the Nazi's and Communists but with regular everyday electoral politics disputes. At the same time, this failure meant that the democratic parties were being pushed out by two parties that wouldn't work together except in this regard. Legislation couldn't be passed. A government literally could not be formed.
Hitler's masterstroke was coming down from demanding the Presidency and claiming he would merely accept the Chancellorship and getting the center-right and center-left to believe him. Then they outlawed the Communists and barred them physically from the Bundestag, which gave the Nazi's enough of a majority to then outlaw the rest who didn't capitulate.
It's arguably one of the greatest practical electoral politics moves of all time. The Nazi's (and Mussolini also it should be noted) mostly played
by the rules of the time and perfectly, they were legal sticklers because of the legitimacy it conveys. A lesson that many of their successor aspirants thankfully have never realized. (But Stalin did, hence, the Popular Fronts.)
Ok, Mr. Fun-At-Parties.
