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In 1928 the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) received just 2.6% of the vote in Reichstag elections and held only twelve seats. Four and a half years later, in January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany — not by coup, but through the constitutional mechanisms of the Republic he despised. No part of the Edexcel specification demands a sharper analytical grasp than this: candidates must be able to explain both why the Nazis were such a minor force in the "Golden Years" and how they became the largest party in Germany by 1932. This lesson traces that trajectory from the founding of the DAP in 1919, through the failed Munich Putsch and Hitler's reorganisation of the party in prison and afterwards, to the collapse of Weimar politics after 1929 and the backstairs intrigue that put Hitler in power.
On 5 January 1919, a Munich locksmith called Anton Drexler co-founded the tiny German Workers' Party (DAP). It was one of dozens of ultra-nationalist, antisemitic fringe groups spawned by defeat and revolution. In September 1919, an army intelligence officer called Adolf Hitler was sent to spy on one of its meetings. He was unimpressed with its organisation but attracted by its ideas, joined as the party's 55th member, and within months had become its most effective speaker.
In February 1920 the party's name was changed to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei — NSDAP), and Hitler and Drexler unveiled the 25-Point Programme. The programme combined three main strands:
The party adopted the swastika as its symbol and the "Heil Hitler" greeting. In 1921 Hitler pushed Drexler aside and became party chairman (Führer — "leader") with dictatorial authority. A paramilitary wing — the SA (Sturmabteilung — "Storm Detachment"), organised by Ernst Röhm from demobilised Freikorps men and nicknamed "Brownshirts" — was founded to protect Nazi meetings and disrupt those of opponents. From the very beginning the NSDAP combined electioneering with street violence.
By 1923 the NSDAP had around 55,000 members, concentrated in Bavaria. Emboldened by the hyperinflation crisis and by Mussolini's March on Rome the previous year, Hitler attempted on 8–9 November 1923 to seize power in Munich and then march on Berlin. At a mass meeting in the Bürgerbräukeller beer hall he declared a national revolution; when the Bavarian police opened fire on the Nazi column advancing into the Odeonsplatz the next morning, sixteen Nazis and four police officers were killed. Hitler briefly fled, was arrested, and in February 1924 was tried for treason.
The Munich Putsch was a military failure but a political gift. Hitler turned his trial into a four-week propaganda spectacle, making nationally reported speeches from the dock. Sympathetic judges gave him a lenient five-year sentence, of which he served just over nine months at Landsberg Prison. There he dictated to Rudolf Hess the first volume of Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), published in 1925. The book set out the core ideology: "racial" antisemitism, Lebensraum ("living space") to be seized in the east, the "Jewish-Bolshevik" conspiracy theory, and the leadership principle (Führerprinzip).
From his time in Landsberg Hitler also drew a strategic lesson: power must be taken legally, through elections, not through armed revolt. The point was not to win a majority sincerely — it was to use the Republic's own procedures to destroy it from within.
Released in December 1924, Hitler found a Nazi Party that had splintered during his imprisonment. Over the next four years he built a highly disciplined national organisation.
The strategy was long-term infiltration of German society. In the 1928 election the NSDAP received just 2.6% of the vote and 12 seats — a near-failure by any normal measure. But the machine was in place.
Exam Tip: For a 12-mark "Explain why" question on the rise of the Nazis, a Grade 4 answer lists events (Wall Street Crash, Hitler's speeches, propaganda) with little link between them. A Grade 6 answer explains how each factor helped the Nazis — for example, how the Crash created the unemployment that Nazi propaganda exploited. A Grade 9 answer also shows how the factors interacted (the party machine built in 1924–28 was what enabled them to exploit the post-1929 crisis) and reaches a substantiated judgement about which factor was most important.
On 24 October 1929 — "Black Thursday" — the US stock market began to collapse. Within three weeks American banks were calling in their short-term loans to Germany. The effect on the German economy was immediate and devastating.
| Indicator | 1928 | 1930 | 1932 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industrial production (1928 = 100) | 100 | 87 | 58 |
| Unemployed (millions) | 1.4 | 3.1 | 6.0 |
| Nazi Reichstag seats | 12 | 107 | 230 |
By early 1932, roughly one in three German workers was unemployed. The social insurance system, expanded in 1927, could not cope. Successive governments, from Heinrich Brüning (from March 1930) onwards, responded with deflationary austerity — cutting wages, cutting benefits, raising taxes — on the grounds that Germany could not afford fiscal stimulus and that its gold-backed currency must be defended. Brüning's policy made the depression deeper. He earned the nickname "the Hunger Chancellor".
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