Hitler required the vote of the Centre Party and Conservatives in the Reichstag to obtain the powers he desired. Many of these joined the Nazi Party. Hitler countered their attempts to curb him by threatening resignation, and because the future of the party depended on his power to organize publicity and to acquire funds, his opponents relented. In 1920 he was put in charge of the party’s propaganda and left the army to devote himself to improving his position within the party, which in that year was renamed the National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi). The Jewish German newspaper Jüdische Rundschau wrote on 31 Jan:[82]. After less than a month the law was repealed on 30 May by Franz von Papen, Chancellor of Germany. In May 1923, elements loyal to Hitler within the army helped the SA to procure a barracks and its weaponry, but the order to march never came. After his release, Hitler faced difficulties that had not existed before 1923. After the fighting on the front ended in November 1918,[c] on 19 November, Hitler was discharged from the Pasewalk hospital[d] and returned to Munich, which at the time was in a state of socialist upheaval. The party became the second largest in the country, rising from 2.6 percent of the vote in the national election of 1928 to more than 18 percent in September 1930. Around this time the German military command released an edict that the army's main priority was to "carry out, in conjunction with the police, stricter surveillance of the population ... so that the ignition of any new unrest can be discovered and extinguished. "[7] In May 1919 Karl Mayr became commander of the 6th Battalion of the guards regiment in Munich and from 30 May the head of the "Education and Propaganda Department" of the General Command von Oven and the Group Command No. In Bavaria the party gained 17.9% of the vote, though for the first time this percentage was exceeded by most other provinces: Oldenburg (27.3%), Braunschweig (26.6%), Waldeck (26.5%), Mecklenburg-Strelitz (22.6%), Lippe (22.3%) Mecklenburg-Schwerin (20.1%), Anhalt (19.8%), Thuringen (19.5%), Baden (19.2%), Hamburg (19.2%), Prussia (18.4%), Hessen (18.4%), Sachsen (18.3%), Lubeck (18.3%) and Schaumburg-Lippe (18.1%). He was sentenced to prison for five years but served only nine months, and those in relative comfort at Landsberg castle. As a result, the KPD, following orders from Moscow, rejected overtures from the Social Democrats to form a political alliance against the NSDAP. As an army political agent, he joined the small German Workers’ Party in Munich (September 1919). He used the time to write Mein Kampf, in which he argued that effeminate Jewish-Christian ethics were enfeebling Europe, and that Germany needed a man of iron to restore itself and build an empire. After his release from prison, he often went to live on the Obersalzberg, near Berchtesgaden. For five to six years, there would be no further prohibitions of the party. In September Goebbels led his men into Neukölln, a KPD stronghold, and the two warring parties exchanged pistol and revolver fire. Hitler, in hospital at the time, was informed of the upcoming, As a socialist journalist, he organised the. From the first he set out to create a mass movement, whose mystique and power would be sufficient to bind its members in loyalty to him. Toland suggests that Hitler's assignment to this department was partially a reward for his "exemplary" service in the front lines, and partially because the responsible officer felt sorry for Hitler as having no friends, but being very willing to do whatever the army required. Overview of the crises facing the Weimar Republic after World War I. Adolf Hitler's campaign for chancellor is aided by Joseph Goebbels's promotion of propaganda and terror. The notion of "Breaking Interest Slavery" was, by Hitler's account, a "powerful slogan for this coming struggle.". It was anti-Marxist and opposed to the democratic post-war government of the Weimar Republic and the Treaty of Versailles, advocating extreme nationalism and Pa… [28], In June 1921, while Hitler and Dietrich Eckart were on a fundraising trip to Berlin, a mutiny broke out within the Nazi Party in Munich, its organizational home. Held, like so many meetings of the period, in a beer cellar, this time the Sterneckerbrau. Being one of its best speakers, he was made leader after he threatened to leave otherwise. Overview of Adolf Hitler's rise to power. [26] By the autumn of 1921 the group was being called the Sturmabteilung (Storm Detachment) or SA, and in November 1921 the group was officially known by that name. [62] Papen dissolved Parliament, and the Nazi vote declined at the November Election. Within a matter of years, the Nazi Party was transformed from an obscure group to the nation's leading political faction. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. [73] Energised by the success, Hitler asked to be made chancellor. Hitler used the time to dictate the first volume of Mein Kampf, his political autobiography as well as a compendium of his multitudinous ideas. With Germans who opposed Nazism failing to unite against it, Hitler soon moved to consolidate absolute power. Finding himself in a strong position by virtue of his unprecedented mass following, he entered into a series of intrigues with conservatives such as Franz von Papen, Otto Meissner, and President Hindenburg’s son, Oskar. He also drew a vital lesson from the Putsch—that the movement must achieve power by legal means. [59] He had fallen out with the Centre Party. He accepted its program but regarded it as a means to an end. It is this event that would become termed Hitler's Machtergreifung ("seizure of power"). I registered as a member of the German Workers' Party and received a provisional membership card with the number 7". On the orders of his army superiors, Hitler applied to join the party. It was the rival Weltanschauung, Marxism (which for him embraced social democracy as well as communism), with its insistence on internationalism and economic conflict. [53] From 1931 to 1933, the Nazis combined terror tactics with conventional campaigning – Hitler criss-crossed the nation by air, while SA troops paraded in the streets, beat up opponents, and broke up their meetings. Some time later Eva Braun, a shop assistant from Munich, became his mistress. It assumed the equality of individuals that for Hitler did not exist and supposed that what was in the interests of the Volk could be decided by parliamentary procedures. On 10 March 1931, with street violence between the Rotfront and SA increasing, breaking all previous barriers and expectations, Prussia re-enacted its ban on Brownshirts. The Great Depression was also a factor in Hitler's electoral success. The Nazis and the Communists made great gains at the 1930 federal election. However, a growing number of keen observers, like Sir Horace Rumbold, British Ambassador in Berlin, began to revise their opinions. Rise to power Discharged from the hospital amid the social chaos that followed Germany ’s defeat, Hitler took up political work in Munich in May–June 1919. In fact, there were … Hitler was convicted and on 1 April sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg Prison. [31] In the following days, Hitler spoke to several packed houses and defended himself, to thunderous applause. The Barmat Scandal was often used later in Nazi propaganda, both as an electoral strategy and as an appeal to anti-Semitism. Moreover, he believed that the state existed to serve the Volk—a mission that to him the Weimar German Republic betrayed. The League was led by Otto Ballerstedt, an engineer whom Hitler regarded as "my most dangerous opponent". Rather, the conservatives that helped to make him chancellor were convinced that they could control Hitler and "tame" the Nazi Party while setting the relevant impulses in the government themselves; foreign ambassadors played down worries by emphasizing that Hitler was "mediocre" if not a bad copy of Mussolini; even SPD politician Kurt Schumacher trivialized Hitler as a "Dekorationsstück" ("piece of scenery/decoration") of the new government. The German referendum of 1929 was important as it gained the Nazi Party recognition and credibility it never had before. Foremost among them was Ernst Röhm, a staff member of the district army command, who had joined the German Workers’ Party before Hitler and who was of great help in furthering Hitler’s rise within the party. In 1932 Hitler opposed Hindenburg in the presidential election, capturing 36.8 percent of the votes on the second ballot. At Berchtesgaden, his half sister Angela Raubal and her two daughters accompanied him. He would not consider marriage on the grounds that it would hamper his career. Hitler’s personal life had grown more relaxed and stable with the added comfort that accompanied political success. Hitler was later discharged from the army in March 1920 and began working full-time for the Nazi Party. With his charismatic personality and dynamic leadership, he attracted a devoted cadre of Nazi leaders, men whose names today live in infamy—Johann Dietrich Eckart (who acted as a mentor for Hitler), Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and Julius Streicher. On 14 September 1921, Hitler and a substantial number of SA members and other Nazi Party adherents disrupted a meeting at the Löwenbräukeller of the Bavarian League. The Communists were excluded from the Reichstag. Following the Reichstag fire, the Nazis began to suspend civil liberties and eliminate political opposition. In 1921 these squads were formally organized under Röhm into a private party army, the SA (Sturmabteilung). [5] There he would stay until the camp dissolved January 1919. [54], The Centre Party's Heinrich Brüning was Chancellor from 1930 to 1932. One resulting battle in Silesia resulted in the army being dispatched, each shot sending Germany further into a potential civil war. ... Don't forget how people laughed at me 15 years ago when I declared that one day I would govern Germany. [56] With Schleicher's backing, and Hitler's stated approval, Hindenburg appointed the Catholic monarchist Franz von Papen to replace Brüning as Chancellor in June 1932. His propaganda and his personal ambition caused friction with the other leaders of the party. Unemployment in Germany rose to 6 million. This was especially sharp in Bavaria, due to its traditional separatism and the region’s popular dislike of the republican government in Berlin.