Ben Wilson

It wasn't the overwhelming mandate Hitler had wanted.

He had hoped that the NSDAP would win over 50% of the vote, but it was enough, especially with the communist deputies excluded from the Reichstag under the terms of the emergency decree.

With the leftist parties declared illegal, Hitler and his allies had an overwhelming majority in the Reichstag and the numbers to do essentially whatever they wanted.

Over the following months, Hindenburg's health declined and he died in August of 1934.

In the hours after his death, Hitler combined the offices of Chancellor and President into a single new title, Führer and Reich Chancellor.

The military, as previously arranged, swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler himself rather than to Germany or the Constitution.

The transformation was complete.

Kershaw's summation of Hitler as a politician in the end is this, quote, "'Hitler rejected all compromise, but he did not in the end overdo it.

Hitler was not infallible, but he indeed made the fewest mistakes.

He settled for just enough, securing not so much power itself as the power to achieve power.'"

all right the power to achieve power that is the key to understanding everything he didn't seize power in one dramatic coup he maneuvered himself step by patient step into the position from which power could be assembled and from that position he assembled it with terrifying efficiency all right so

Let me land the plane here.

So we start the episode with Hitler flat on his back, dragged to the ground, thinking he's been shot, but with his arm dislocated as the Beer Hall Putsch is failing.

We end with the same man sitting in the chancellor's office, having just signed away the last freedoms of the German Republic.

What happened in between?

Four things, four lessons.

Number one,

Know your key objective and never compromise on it.

Hitler understood early and clearly that the chancellorship was the key that unlocked everything else.

Not a ministry, not the vice chancellorship, not participation in a coalition.