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Appointed by Men Who Thought They Could Control Him: January 1933
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
On January 30, 1933, a small circle of aristocrats and generals handed Hitler the chancellorship — convinced they could manage him. This is the story of the most catastrophic miscalculation in modern history.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The old man signs the paper. He's eighty-five years old, a field marshal of the Great War, the most revered soldier in Germany.
We've covered in previous episodes how Hitler rebuilt the Nazi Party after the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch in nineteen twenty-three. He abandoned the idea of seizing power through force and chose the ballot box instead.
The September nineteen thirty elections changed the political landscape overnight. The Nazis went from twelve seats in the Reichstag to one hundred and seven.
This is where the back-room story begins. The men who would ultimately put Hitler in power were not naive.
Franz von Papen had been removed as chancellor in December nineteen thirty-two, replaced by Schleicher, and he was furious about it. He wanted back in.
The men who made this deal shared a fundamental error in judgment. They assessed Hitler as a politician.
The appointment was legal. That matters, and it's worth holding onto.
The men gathered in Hindenburg's study that morning in January nineteen thirty-three had lived through one world war. They were governing a country still scarred by it.
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