Word: hitlering
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...economic crisis provided Hitler not only with a strong message but also with manpower. He recruited the unemployed as his Storm Troopers, put them in brown shirts and boots and sent them out to do battle. "Hate exploded suddenly, without warning, out of nowhere, at street corners, in restaurants, cinemas, dance halls," wrote Christopher Isherwood in The Berlin Stories, which eventually became Cabaret. "Knives were whipped out, blows were dealt with spiked rings, beer-mugs, chair-legs or leaded clubs." In September 1930 the Nazis won 6.5 million votes, and their 107 Reichstag seats made them the second strongest party...
...Nazis kept winning elections. In the summer of 1932, the Nazis doubled their Reichstag seats, to 230 out of 608; Hitler's blustering, barrel- shaped lieutenant, Hermann Goring, became president of the legislature. Hindenburg despised Hitler, "that Austrian corporal," but he asked him to serve as Vice Chancellor under Hindenburg's protege, Franz von Papen. Hitler rejected any compromises...
...first week in January, everything suddenly changed. Papen, bent on revenge for having been replaced as Chancellor by General Kurt von Schleicher, decided to make a deal with Hitler. At a secret meeting, several prominent financiers promised credit to the financially pressed Nazis. Once again, Hindenburg proposed a Papen-Hitler coalition, only with Hitler as Chancellor. & This time Hitler agreed. And so, on Jan. 30, 1933, this half-educated ex- Austrian with a genius for manipulation and deceit became, quite legally, the leader of Germany...
Hindenburg and the other conservatives were confident that they could keep Hitler under control. They held eight of the eleven Cabinet seats, including such power centers as the Foreign Ministry and the Economics Ministry. What they did not seem to appreciate was that Goring was not only a national Minister Without Portfolio but also the Prussian interior minister; that put him in charge of the police in the state of Prussia, which covered Berlin and two-thirds of Germany...
...Hitler had no sooner taken office than he had Hindenburg dissolve the Reichstag and order new elections. With Goring in charge of the police, 40,000 Nazis became special officers, invading opposition meetings, beating and arresting opposition speakers. Just a week before the election, Berliners saw a red glow in the night sky and learned that the Reichstag was on fire. At the scene, Goring was shouting wildly: "This is a Communist crime against the new government! We will show no mercy! Every Communist deputy must be shot...