The backroom deal — how Hitler was handed power he couldn't win at the ballot box

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The backroom deal — how Hitler was handed power he couldn't win at the ballot box

A small group of formally dressed conservative politicians conferring in a panelled Berlin office in January 1933, with a torch-lit procession visible through the window behind them

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By late 1932, Nazi vote share was actually falling - the party had peaked in July. Hitler became Chancellor not because he won an election outright, but because conservative politicians (above all Franz von Papen) convinced President Hindenburg that they could control him. It was one of the most catastrophic miscalculations in political history.

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