On January 30, 1933, the president of Germany appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of the Weimar Republic. Hitler's National Socialist Party had won a majority in the general elections the year before, and thus Hitler's ascension to power and the rise of German national socialism, or Nazism, began under the color of "legitimacy." The rise of Nazism was rooted in the crisis in German society following the post-World War I economic collapse of the late 1920s. Germany's already weak democratic institutions had been further undermined by continuing political attacks, and therefore the impact of Hitler's party was even greater. The following years would see the inexorable establishment of Germany's totalitarian state, with the consolidation of full dictatorship between 1934 and 1938. This process occurred through the continuous creation and use of repressive instruments and a powerful ideology, rooted in racism and imperialism, that led finally to the years of Nazi terror during World War II. Understanding the rise of Hitler and Nazism remains key to understanding today's Germany, today's Europe and today's world.
