As his party grew in strength and influence, it started to receive support from industrialists, fearful of his influence among the nation’s workforce. With the massive influx of funds, Hitler, a relative newcomer in national politics, utilized the latest technological marvel of the time, radios, to effectively dominate the national election, and in January 1933, the most dangerous man in Europe, took over from Paul von Hindenberg to become the Chancellor of Germany.

Adolf Hitler consolidated his position immediately after that, following a suspiciously fortunate incident, where a fire destroyed a portion of the Reichstag (Parliament) building in February 1933. He capitalized on the incident by claiming the involvement of the Communist ideologues, which were planning a campaign of destabilization to take over the country. He railroaded an emergency decree in the Reichstag granting him broad powers to combat the supposed threat of these counter-revolutionaries.

The ‘cleansing’ began immediately after. Politicians, federal officials and public figures were implicated with the threat of Communism with almost comical frequency and immediately whisked to detention centers without even going through the formality of a trial. Adolf Hitler has finally arrived on the national scene - a formidable, ruthless, cruel, deluded megalomaniac – and with it, the Third Reich.

The following half a decade saw Hitler further consolidating his position both nationally and internationally. While he could be a charming diplomat when the occasion calls for it, he was never hesitant on using force, even on his own party members. In 1934, in what is now referred to as the Rohm Putsch, he ordered the capture and murder of hundreds of SA officers from his Storm Troopers regiment for openly questioning his policies.

Benefiting from the fragile culmination of the a world-wide downturn, Hitler at the same time launched an overwhelming program of fiscal recovery, based on full employment and significant public works schemes (including the construction of cross country freeways, fixed remuneration and prices, enforced through the discipline of concentration camps for serious offenders) and military expansion.

Adolf Hitler April 1937

The armed forces not only grew in size, but also in technical know-how, as Hitler created a pioneering air force and armored divisions of a kind advocated by military progressives, but as yet broadly looked upon with skepticism by the bulk of the military establishment. From 1934 onward, there was a coordinated and savage repression and censorship in the world of literature, art, and science, so as to make all intellectual endeavors be consistent to the precepts of National Socialism; there was continued oppression of Hitler’s remaining opponents and of the Jews, although not as yet on anything like the scale soon to be seen in World War II.