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Was the Depression the Decisive Factor That Led to the Nazi Seizure of Power? Many factors combined to make the Nazi seizure of power possible including, it has to be said, a certain amount of luck. Obviously in considering how the Nazis came to power there is the traditional split between long term and short term factors. This split has been a particularly contentious area of historical research in relation to Nazi Germany. Some of …

…was absent or not. Hitler had achieved his goal of a legal assumption of power. In conclusion, the depression probably was the decisive factor that led to the Nazi seizure of power, the existence of 6 million unemployed unquestionably radicalised German democracy. But focussing on this one element in a long campaign by Hitler against the Weimar Republic, misses the subtleties and pitfalls Hitler had to avoid in order to become the undisputed dictator of Germany.