Hitler pledged to make Germany great again!

ON JANUARY 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed German chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg. Hitler became head of a “National Coalition government” containing only two other Nazis, interior minister Wilhelm Frick and minister without portfolio Hermann Göring. Hindenburg feared the leader of the National Socialist German Workers, or Nazi Party, would use the office to turn the country into a dictatorship. But former chancellor Franz on Papen convinced him Hitler could be “tamed” by a cabinet full of traditional conservatives.

- By Frank McDonough

It was a disastrous miscalculation with earth-shattering consequences.

Germany’s military defeat in the First World War had cast a huge shadow over the democratic Weimar Republic. A myth developed that Germany had not been defeated on the battlefield but “stabbed-in-the-back” by Liberals, Jews and Socialists.

These negative feelings fed a hatred of the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which saddled Germany with massive compensation payments until 1983. And the politicians who signed the 1919 peace treaty became known as the “November Criminals”.

The period from 1918 to 1923 was politically and economically unstable, culminating with the “Great Inflation” as prices soared - but German democracy survived the various assaults from right and left. Between 1924 and 1929 the rule of law was never seriously threatened and the economy showed some signs of recovery.

Even after 1930, during the era of the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression, Germany remained democratically stable.

Yet the Constitution signed in the spa town of Weimar in the wake of the First World War was badly flawed.

Its voting system, based on proportional representation, allowed small parties to win representation in the Reichstag.

In July 1932 alone, 27 different political parties contested the election. All of them appealed to narrow class or economic interests. This made creating stable coalition governments difficult.

There were no less than 20 different Weimar coalitions from 1918 to 1933, with no single political party ever commanding an overall majority.