Hitler becomes Chancellor
President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany. The Reichstag Fire Decree (February 28) and the Enabling Act (March 23) dismantled Weimar democracy within eight weeks. Fascism joined communism as a second modern ideological state rejecting the liberal-democratic model.
Hitler's Nazi Party had never won a majority in a free German election. In November 1932 they lost two million votes compared to July. The legal path to dictatorship ran through coalition and emergency law, not mass popular support. That is worth remembering.
05 · Ideology & State
The 20th century proposed a different answer: legitimacy flows from alignment with the correct ideology. Parties — Bolshevik, Fascist, single-party democratic — claimed to represent 'the people' or 'history itself,' often without asking. It was a century-long, bloody test of what happens when consent is asserted instead of counted.
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