Pearson Edexcel International GCSE in History · 4HI1 · Free · no account needed

1932 to January 1933: Papen, Schleicher and Hindenburg

How did a party whose vote had just fallen by two million supply the Chancellor?

Option 3 · Germany: development of dictatorship, 1918–45 › Key topic 3 · The rise of Hitler and the Nazis to January 1933 — one of 6 lessons in this key topic. Paper 1 — depth study: Germany: development of dictatorship, 1918–45, key topic 3 (30 marks: 6 · 8 · 16).

Learn 1932 to January 1933: Papen, Schleicher and Hindenburg, teach it to an AI pupil, then defend it in a marked debate — this lesson carries all three.

What the specification asks for

“Events of 1932 to January 1933, including the role of von Papen, von Schleicher and von Hindenburg” — examined through causation and significance. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

Thirteen months, five governments

In April 1932 Hindenburg was re-elected President, defeating Hitler 53 to 36.8 per cent in the run-off. In May, Schleicher persuaded him to drop Brüning. Franz von Papen — a Catholic aristocrat with almost no parliamentary support, whose cabinet of barons contained one Reichstag deputy — became Chancellor in June. He lifted the ban on the SA to buy Nazi toleration, and in July deposed the Prussian state government by decree, removing the largest remaining SPD power base in Germany.

The July election gave the Nazis 37.3 per cent and 230 seats. Hitler demanded the chancellorship; Hindenburg refused, offering the vice-chancellorship, which Hitler rejected. Papen dissolved the Reichstag again. In November the Nazi vote FELL to 33.1 per cent and they lost 34 seats, while the KPD rose to 100 seats.

Papen now proposed governing without the Reichstag at all, by decree and if necessary by force. Schleicher told Hindenburg the army could not simultaneously suppress a Nazi rising, a Communist rising and defend the eastern frontier, and Papen fell. Schleicher himself became Chancellor on 3 December and tried to split the Nazis by offering Gregor Strasser the vice-chancellorship. Strasser accepted and was overruled by Hitler; he resigned from the party on 8 December, and Schleicher's strategy died with it.

Cologne, 4 January 1933

Papen, humiliated and wanting back in, met Hitler at the house of the banker Kurt von Schröder in Cologne on 4 January 1933. Over the following weeks they assembled the arrangement: Hitler as Chancellor, Papen as Vice-Chancellor with the right to attend all meetings with the President, and a cabinet of twelve in which only three posts went to Nazis — Hitler, Frick at the Interior and Göring as minister without portfolio.

Hindenburg, who had called Hitler the Bohemian corporal and had refused him twice, was persuaded by his son Oskar and his state secretary Otto Meissner, and by the argument that the arrangement boxed Hitler in. On 30 January 1933 he appointed him. Papen told a doubter that within two months they would have pushed Hitler so far into a corner that he would squeak, and later, that they had hired him.

Why the conservatives wanted him at all

They needed a mass base. Papen and Schleicher wanted an authoritarian government free of the Reichstag, and they had the President's confidence and no votes. The Nazis had thirteen million votes and no route to office. The arrangement was a trade: Nazi popular support in exchange for conservative access to power, with the conservatives believing that a cabinet of nine to three and a vice-chancellor with access to Hindenburg would let them do the governing.

Behind the manoeuvre lay two structural facts. Article 48 had made a chancellor without a majority normal, so appointing one more was not a rupture. And the Reichstag arithmetic after July 1932 meant that the Nazis and the KPD together held a majority against any government, so no parliamentary alternative existed unless the SPD and the KPD combined, which the KPD's 'social fascist' line forbade.

What January 1933 shows

Hitler was appointed after his vote had fallen, by a President who disliked him, into a cabinet where he was outnumbered nine to three, through an arrangement made in a banker's house by a politician he had helped destroy. Nothing about it was electoral inevitability, and nothing about it was a seizure of power.

That is why the two halves have to be held together. Without thirteen million votes the conservatives have no reason to want him. Without the intrigue those votes deliver nothing, because a party can be the largest in a chamber that no longer legislates. The specification's question about January 1933 is precisely which half you weight, and a candidate who has only one cannot answer it.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

April 1932
Hindenburg re-elected, defeating Hitler 53 to 36.8 per cent. Why this date: Hitler had been beaten in a national vote nine months before he took office.
31 July 1932
Nazis take 37.3 per cent and 230 seats; Hindenburg refuses Hitler the chancellorship. Why this date: The peak, and the refusal. Votes alone did not open the door.
6 November 1932
The Nazi vote falls to 33.1 per cent; they lose 34 seats. Why this date: The single fact that defeats the inevitability argument, and almost no candidate produces it.
8 December 1932
Gregor Strasser resigns after Hitler overrules his deal with Schleicher. Why this date: The last attempt to split the Nazis fails, which is what makes Papen's offer the only route left.
4 January 1933
Papen and Hitler meet at Schröder's house in Cologne. Why this date: The arrangement begins here, in private, between two men with no mandate to make it.
30 January 1933
Hitler appointed Chancellor; three Nazis in a cabinet of twelve. Why this date: The cabinet arithmetic is the evidence for the 'we have hired him' misjudgement.

The figures, and how far to trust them

  • 37.3% (230 seats) → 33.1% (196 seats) — The Nazi vote in July and November 1932.
  • 3 of 12 — Nazi posts in the cabinet of 30 January 1933.
  • 100 — KPD seats after November 1932, up from 89.
  • 1 — Reichstag deputies in Papen's June 1932 'cabinet of barons'. (Counts of the cabinet's parliamentary membership vary slightly with how ministers without party are classified.)

The people to place

  • Franz von Papen — Chancellor June–November 1932; brokered the January deal and became Vice-Chancellor believing he had hired Hitler.
  • Kurt von Schleicher — The general who made and unmade three chancellors and then failed as one; murdered on 30 June 1934.
  • Paul von Hindenburg — President; refused Hitler twice in 1932 and appointed him in January 1933.
  • Alfred Hugenberg — DNVP leader who joined the cabinet as economics minister, supplying the conservative respectability.
  • Kurt von Schröder — The Cologne banker in whose house the arrangement began on 4 January 1933.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

  • Karl Dietrich Bracher: Weimar's collapse was a process of destroying democracy from within, in which the presidential governments after 1930 removed parliamentary rule and Hitler's appointment completed a vacuum the conservatives had created. Contested by Accounts that give more weight to the Nazi electoral surge and to Hitler's own refusal of anything short of the chancellorship, and read January 1933 as the conservatives being forced to buy a mass movement rather than choosing to..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: Hitler was elected Chancellor.

This: Chancellors were appointed by the President, not elected. Hitler lost the only national election he stood in personally, in April 1932, and his party's vote was falling when he was appointed.

Not this: The Nazis won a majority in 1932.

This: Their best free-election result was 37.3 per cent. They never won a majority in a free election, including March 1933, when they took 43.9 per cent under conditions that were no longer free.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Largest party and majority.

The distinction: 230 of 608 seats is the largest bloc and nowhere near half. Coalition or presidential appointment was still required, which is exactly why the intrigue mattered.

Blurred: Appointment and seizure of power.

The distinction: The 30 January appointment was constitutional and made by the President. The seizure of power is what happened afterwards, between February 1933 and August 1934. Collapsing them removes the whole of key topic 4.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer holds the two halves in one sentence and gives each its job: the Depression is what made a fringe party into thirteen million votes, and the intrigue is what converted votes into an office the electorate could not award. Neither is sufficient, and the answer that says which one it is weighing, and why, is the one that reaches Level 4.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 1 (b) (8 marks — “Explain two effects of … on ….”); Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “'[A statement about the period.]' You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own. How far do you agree? Explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: The November decline and the cabinet of three in twelve. Those two facts are the difference between an answer that describes a rise and an answer that explains an appointment.

The cap that bites here: The 16-mark question here almost always needs three aspects: the Depression, the intrigue, and either the Nazi movement itself or the constitutional position. Two aspects is a 10-mark ceiling.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

  1. Explain two reasons why Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January 1933. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
  2. Explain two effects of the November 1932 election on German politics. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
  3. Describe two features of the government appointed on 30 January 1933. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
  4. 'The main reason Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933 was the impact of the Great Depression.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
  5. 'Hitler's appointment as Chancellor was inevitable by the end of 1932.' How far do you agree? Explain your answer. [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Decide it

This lesson feeds a Decide History judgement — a position you commit to, an objection you answer, a criterion you name: Who put Hitler in power?.

Think you understand it?

Reading is the start. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have taught it and defended it — the two things a revision guide cannot ask of you.

Incandio this topic → Prove it. Teach it. Defend it. What does “Incandio it” mean?

  1. Prove it — five questions on 1932 to January 1933: Papen, Schleicher and Hindenburg, marked on the spot, that tell you what was missing rather than just what was wrong.
  2. Teach it — Explain 1932 to January 1933: Papen, Schleicher and Hindenburg — what happened, why, and what it made possible — to Ember, an AI pupil who asks the awkward question. Understanding is credited; wording is not required.
  3. Defend it — Argue 1932 to January 1933: Papen, Schleicher and Hindenburg against the historical mind with the strongest claim on it — three rounds, marked against descriptors you can read before you begin.
  4. Then the exam — 15 authored exam-style questions on this option, marked on Incandio with the mistake you actually made named.

Completely free. No subscriptions, no paywalls, no account needed to start.

The debate is against The Case That Weimar Was Doomed — the case itself, argued at its strongest, because on this strand there is no single person whose position the learner has to defeat.

The same people, elsewhere in the option

Carry on through the option