I really must thank you for this, you have made my case better than I could have dreamed. Hitler was in fact an anomaly that got power despite how the majority felt.
The choice of three "conservative" parties. DELIGHTFUL
I doubt anyone here would call Hitler or those who put him in power, "conservative"
You should be aware, he was powerful. he did not have a clear majority, so he could become chancellor of his own, but he was already one of the major players in the parliament. Mostly because there was a strong streetfighting between Nazis and communists at that time (especially the bloody sunday of Altona, which led to the end of the SPD government of that time in a conservative coup), polarizing the nation. How he got rid of the communists, is history...All it needed was a
act of terrorism.
The parties which had been involved had been the national-conservative DNVP and the catholic-conservative center party, which also contained the Bavarian party (today active as political flow inside the CSU). Important is also general von Schleicher, who had no party himself, when he became appointed chancellor, but cooperated with the SPD on forming a minority government, which should be backed up by the military to fight the massive street fighting between Nazis and Communists. What Schleicher did not know: von Papen of the DNVP and Hitler had been secretly meeting the president of the Weimar Republic for instead of the next dissolition of parliament, install Hitler as chancellor as replacement of von Schleicher. Which he did, when von Schleicher asked for more emergency powers and support of the military. The most important reason for that: President Hindenburg hated the SPD and feared a communist Germany, when SPD and KPD form a coalition.
No elections. At the peak of his public support, Hitler had 37% of the votes (enough today for becoming chancellor), while this dropped to 33% in the final elections.
The composition of the parliament should make pretty clear what was the problem:
National socialists (NSDAP): 33.6%
Social Democratic Party (SPD): 20.7%
Communists (KPD): 17,1%
Center Party : 12.0%
National-conservative party (DNVP): 8.9%
Bavarian Party (BVP): 3.4%
German national party: 1.9%
All together, the left-wing parties had 37.8% of the votes and the conservatives (without the more extreme Nazis) only 28.1%. There was a tiny ordoliberal party around... a single seat. The only way to get a majority in the parliament at that time would have been either an alliance of the conservatives with the Nazis or with the communists. And the communists had been no option for the conservatives. And the SPD leadership was also against an alliance with the in their eyes "social-fascist" communist party.
You can say, the end of the Weimar republic was not the vote of the people, but the believe of the political leadership of all parties at that time, that their fundamental believes are more important as the decisions of the voters.
After Hitler was chancellor, he forcefully absorbed the national conservative party into his own, used the Reichstagsbrand for crushing the communists and finally banned all other political parties, after he got outfitted with massive legislative powers with the "Ermächtigungsgesetz" - which came into power with only the SPD voting against it (The communists had already been removed). Thus, they are also today the only party which can claim to be the oldest democratic party in Germany. All other parties (except the KPD) needed a new name and a new agenda after WW2 - especially the many conservative parties which gave Hitler his powers.
