Answer: President Paul Hindenberg, to offer Hitler the position of chancellor as a way of bringing the Nazis into a coalition government of right-wing parties that lacked a mass base. They feared that otherwise Germany, suffering massive unemployment and social distress, would fall under the control of socialists and Communists.They thought that the Nazis were just another right-wing, nationalist party and that Hitler would be 'tamed' by power. But Hitler had a radical ideology that went beyond restoring Germany's national pride.The new chancellor wanted to reconstruct Germany on a racial basis, and believed that Germany had to conquer other countries to secure its future. He had no interest in democracy or legality, other than as a façade, and at the earliest opportunity he used the 'Reichstag Fire' (when the German parliamentary building was attacked by arsonists) as an excuse to suspend the civil rights of the German people (see next entry).The last 'free' election in Germany for many years was held in March 1933, in an atmosphere of violent intimidation, and even then the Nazis got only 43 per cent of the vote. Soon afterwards Hitler created a one-party state by brutally suppressing rival political organisations.
