The German election in September of 1930 did not go as expected. Tired of the incompetence of the dominant Social Democratic Party (SPD) and coalition of moderate and conservative parties in handling the growing Great Depression, voters went another direction. While the SPD remained the largest party, the coalition of conservative parties collapsed, with the Nazi and Communist parties becoming the second and third largest parties in the country respectively. For the conservative Chancellor Heinrich Bruning, this was a complete and utter disaster. As groups seeking to end the democratic system, both the Nazis and Communists had a vested interest in seeing Bruning and his allies fail, since pushing the country further into economic collapse increased their memberships. Often times working together, they capitalized on political divides between the SPD and the remains of the conservative coalition, blocking needed legislation. With the country going down the tubes, Bruning began forcing through changes via the conservative President von Hindenburg, who was allowed to make emergency decrees as needed as long as the parliament did not nullify them with a majority vote, which was highly unlikely given all the parliamentary squabbling. This basically made Bruning a dictator, which eroded what little support Bruning still had. Even worse, none of his reforms helped the economic situation.
Both the Nazis and Communists responded to this chain of events with mass marches and protests that often turned violent. Though initially opposed to each other, the two parties often collaborated together, seeking to destabilize the German government by any means necessary. One of their favorite tricks was to hold political rallies in areas where they had little support in order to instigate attacks from counter protesters. As violence in the streets escalated, Nazi and Communist members of the German parliament railed against Bruning’s inability to keep the streets safe. Things became so bad, that eventually members of the SPD formed a militant wing, known as the Iron Front, for the specific purpose of fighting the Nazis and Communists. In response, the Communists founded their own militant wing, called Antifascist Action, or Antifa, for short. The Communists referred to everyone that was not them as fascists, and though they were not big fans of the Nazis, they saw the SPD as the greater fascist threat.
The German presidential election took place in March of 1932. After two rounds of voting, Hindenburg managed to win re-election by a wide margin versus Hitler and the Communist candidate. However, Hindenburg was greatly disappointed with the results of the election, with many conservatives abandoning him in favor of Hitler due to Bruning’s more liberal policies. As a result, Hindenburg re-asserted his conservative credentials by forcing Bruning to resign in May, appointing into his place the more conservative Franz von Papen. However, Papen was so unpopular that the German parliament threatened to unify enough to nullify his appointment by decree. Rather than let this happen, Hindenburg dissolved parliament and ordered new elections to take place in July.
The run up to the July election was perhaps the most violent political cycle in Germany’s history. Nazi paramilitaries openly attacked rival party rallies and things quickly degenerated into three way street battles between Nazi, SPD, and Communist supporters, though the Communists still largely focused on the SPD, still seeing them as the greater “fascist” threat. Attempts to unite the two parties against the growing power of the Nazis came to nothing. When the election finally took place, the Nazis won 37 percent of the vote thanks to swallowing up the majority of the remaining conservative parties, catapulting them to the country’s largest political party, though still far short of a clear majority. Papen attempted to placate Hitler by offering him a choice leadership role, but Hitler refused, declaring that he would either be Chancellor or nothing. Not willing to step down, Papen convinced Hindenburg to dissolve parliament again, resulting in a second election in November. However, though this resulted in the Nazis losing some of their newly acquired seats, they still won 33 percent of the vote.
Fed up with such nonsense, Hindenburg forced Papen to resign soon afterwards, appointing in his place as Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, a military general who promised to gain the majority support of the parliament in order to finally end the destabilizing period of political shenanigans. At this point Hindenburg had been appointing chancellors and effectively ruling by emergency decree for two years, which from Hindenburg’s point of view had resulted in the erosion of the conservative parties who supported putting the monarchy back into place. The Nazi party was suffering from growing pains, with infighting between the long standing members of the party and the conservatives who had joined it in the most recent elections. Schleicher hoped to exploit this weakness by splitting the party in half via a convoluted political strategy, but his efforts fell short as Hitler re-consolidated his power. Rather than succeed in his political machinations, Schleicher instead alienated pretty much everyone, including Hindenburg, who removed him only two months after appointing him.
The removal of Schleicher, left Hindenburg in a bit of a bind given he was quickly running out of people he trusted to appoint as Chancellor. Unsure what to do, and knowing he definitely didn’t want the Communists or SPD in power, he allowed Papen to talk him into appointing Hilter, with representatives of other parties, led by Papen, holding the majority of other leadership positions. From Papen’s point of view, popular support for the Nazis was waning, which would leave Hitler easy to control. So it was that at the end of January in 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany.