The rise to power of Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany during the Nazi era from 1933 until his suicide in 1945, began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919, when Hitler joined the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP; German Workers' Party). He quickly rose to a place of prominence and became one of its most popular speakers. In an attempt to more broadly appeal to larger segments of the population and win over German workers, the party name was changed to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP; National Socialist German Workers' Party), commonly known as the Nazi Party, and a new platform was adopted. Hitler was made the party leader in 1921 after he threatened to otherwise leave. By 1922, his control over the party was unchallenged. The Nazis were a right-wing party, but in the early years they also had anti-bourgeois elements. Hitler later initiated a purge of these elements and reaffirmed the Nazi Party's support for collaboration with German businesses. This included killings of Hitler's critics within the party during the Night of the Long Knives, which also served as a tool to secure power.
In 1923, Hitler attempted a coup in Bavaria, known as the Beer Hall Putsch. He was arrested and put on trial, which garnered him national fame. He was sentenced to five years in fortress confinement, but served only nine months. During this time, he wrote Mein Kampf, which became the handbook of his ideology of Nazism. Once released, Hitler switched tactics, opting to instead seize power through legal and democratic means. During the 1920s, he and the Nazis ran on a platform of anti-communism, antisemitism, and ultranationalism. Party leaders vociferously criticized the ruling democratic government and the Treaty of Versailles, while promising to turn Germany into a world power. Most Germans were indifferent to Hitler's rhetoric as the German economy began to recover, in large part due to loans from the United States under the Dawes Plan. The German political landscape was dramatically affected by the Wall Street crash of 1929. The Great Depression severely weakened the German economy and further polarized German politics. During this tumultuous time, the German Communist Party also began campaigning and called for a revolution. Some business leaders, fearful of a communist takeover, began supporting the Nazi Party.
Hitler ran for the presidency in 1932 and was defeated by the incumbent Paul von Hindenburg, but achieved a strong showing of second place in both rounds. In July 1932, the Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag, albeit short of an absolute majority. Traditionally, the leader of the party who held the most seats in the Reichstag was appointed Chancellor. However, President von Hindenburg was hesitant to appoint Hitler. Following several backroom negotiations, which included industrialists, Hindenburg's son Oskar, former chancellor Franz von Papen, and Hitler, Hindenburg acquiesced and on 30 January 1933, he formally appointed Hitler as Germany's new chancellor.
The groundwork for Hitler's dictatorship was laid when the Reichstag was set on fire in February 1933. Communists were blamed for the arson and Hitler convinced Hindenburg to pass the Reichstag Fire Decree, which severely curtailed the liberties and rights of German citizens. Subsequently, he began arguing for more drastic means to curtail political opposition, and proposed the Enabling Act of 1933. This law gave the German government the power to override individual rights prescribed by the constitution, and vested the chancellor with emergency powers to pass and enforce laws without parliamentary oversight. The law came into force in March, and by April, Hitler held de facto dictatorial powers and ordered the construction of the first concentration camp in Germany at Dachau for communists and other political opponents. Hitler's rise to power was completed in August 1934 when, after Hindenburg's death, Hitler merged the chancellery with the presidency into the title of Führer ("leader").
Hitler's rise to power was aided by his willingness to use violence in advancing his political objectives and to recruit party members willing to do the same. In addition to electoral battles in which Hitler participated as a speaker and organizer, violent street battles took place between the Communists' Rotfrontkämpferbund and the Nazis' Sturmabteilung (SA). Once the dictatorship was firmly established, the Nazis themselves created a mythology surrounding their rise to power. German propaganda described this time period as either the Kampfzeit (the time of struggle) or the Kampfjahre (years of struggle).
Historians have commented on the influence of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's process of "negative integration" as setting a tone of exclusion in early Germany, which had a lasting influence on later German nationalism. Bismarck sought to overcome the religious and political divisions in early Germany by rallying the populace against a common enemy. Initially Bismarck ran a campaign against the Catholic church from 1873 to the late 1870s, referred to as Kulturkampf, questioning whether they were loyal to Berlin or other Catholic states. Rather than uniting the German people, it instead resulted in a bolstering of support to the Catholic church, alienating an important religious minority. In 1878, Bismarck then introduced a number of anti-socialist laws that would be in effect from 1878 to 1890 in an attempt to alienate the Social Democratic Party. While some sections of German society were united by this, many industrial workers rallied to the SDP. Historians have expressed that as the German state was still very new at the time, it was therefore impressionable; Bismarck's strategy of confrontation rather than consensus set a tone of either being loyal to the government or an enemy of the state, which directly influenced German nationalist sentiment and the later Nazi movement.
Adolf Hitler became involved with the fledgling German Workers' Party after the First World War. He did not like the name of the organisation and proposed to call it the 'Social Revolutionary Party.' He later transformed it into the Nazi Party and set the violent tone of the movement early, by forming the paramilitary Sturmabteilung (SA). Catholic Bavaria resented rule from Protestant Berlin, and Hitler at first saw revolution in Bavaria as a means to power. An early attempt at a coup d'état, the November 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, proved fruitless, and Hitler was imprisoned for leading the putsch. He used this time to write Mein Kampf, in which he argued that effeminate Jewish–Christian ethics were enfeebling Europe, and that Germany was in need of an uncompromising strongman to restore itself and build an empire. Learning from the failed coup, he decided on the tactic of pursuing power through legal means rather than seizing control of the government by force.
From Armistice (November 1918) to party membership (September 1919)
In 1914, after being granted permission from King Ludwig III of Bavaria, the 25-year-old Austrian-born Hitler enlisted in a Bavarian regiment of the German Army, although he was not yet a German citizen. For over four years (August 1914 – November 1918), Germany was a major participant in World War I. After fighting on the Western Front ended in November 1918, Hitler was discharged on 19 November from the Pasewalk hospital and returned to Munich, which at the time was in a state of socialist upheaval. Arriving on 21 November, he was assigned to 7th Company of the 1st Replacement Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment. In December he was reassigned to a prisoner-of-war camp in Traunstein as a guard. He remained there until the camp dissolved in January 1919, after which he returned to Munich and spent a couple weeks on guard duty at the city's main train station (Hauptbahnhof) through which soldiers had been traveling.
During this time a number of notable Germans were assassinated, including socialist Kurt Eisner, who was shot dead by a German nationalist on 21 February 1919. His rival Erhard Auer was also wounded in an attack. Other acts of violence were the killings of both Major Paul Ritter von Jahreiß and the conservative MP Heinrich Osel. In this political chaos Berlin sent in the military – called the "White Guards of Capitalism" by the communists. On 3 April 1919, Hitler was elected as the liaison of his military battalion and again on 15 April. During this time, he urged his unit to stay out of the fighting and not to join either side.