Ben Wilson

The parties just can't agree within the Reichstag.

And so they have what's called a president's cabinet, which is to say that von Hindenburg puts together his own cabinet of chancellor and surrounding ministers without reference to the results of the elections and who the biggest parties are.

So there's this guy, Brüning, who is the chancellor for quite a while.

And then Brüning gets voted out because of the unpopularity of his government due to the Depression, naturally.

So the Reichstag devolves into chaos and they can't come up with a coalition.

And so von Hindenburg appoints a friend.

Von Papen is his name, sort of an old aristocratic conservative friend.

to be chancellor and to run the government.

Okay, so in 1932, the party takes some hits.

There's a presidential election, so they have to put someone up for president, which is tough because everyone knows von Hindenburg is going to win.

So they end up putting Hitler as the candidate for president.

And he is the first presidential candidate in German history to travel by airplane, which at the time is extremely modern, right, and exciting.

Not very many people flew.

The airplane is a brand new invention.

But he flies from city to city giving all these speeches.

so the presidential election happens in april of 1932 hitler receives 37 of the vote to hindenburg's 53 and the communists get 10 so it's a clear loss for hitler obviously less popular than hindenburg but it did cement the nsdap as the dominant force on the german right

And it gave people a good impression of Hitler, you know, with this flying tour around the country.

The image of Hitler stepping off a plane in city after city, speaking to massive rallies, then flying to another city, it gave a feeling of vitalism, of youth, and of modernity of looking towards the future.

And by the way, something I want to note, something that you may have noticed from what I talked about earlier in the episode, Hitler has just become a German citizen.

So this whole time, this whole time, up until 1932, he is technically stateless.