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must employ legitimate democratic means in his struggle to seize power. However, he
and his associates left no doubt about their belief in democratic freedoms as mere tools
with which power might be attained. After his release Hitler reorganized the party.
In the 1924 Reichstag elections, the Nazi Party received three percent of the votes cast
and was represented in the parliament by fourteen delegates. In the 1928 elections, its
support declined; the party was able to send only twelve delegates to the legislature.
The turnaround came in 1930, the first elections after the economic crisis began.
Surprisingly, the Nazis received 18.3 percent of the vote and sent 107 delegates to the
Reichstag, the German Parliament. In July 1932, with 230 mandates, they became the
largest faction in the House a political force that made an impact and acceded to
power legitimately. President Paul von Hindenburg gave Hitler the mandate to form a
government, and Hitler became Chancellor on January 30, 1933.
The Beginning of the Persecution of Jews in Germany
In the 1930s, Germanys Jews some 500,000 people made up less than one
percent (0.8%) of the German population. Most considered themselves loyal patriots,
linked to the German way of life by language and culture. They excelled in science,
literature, the arts, and economic enterprise. 24% of Germanys Nobel Prize winners
were Jewish. However, conversion, intermarriage, and declining birth rates, led some to
believe that Jewish life was doomed to disappear from the German scene altogether.
The paradox was that Nazi ideology stemmed from Germany and the German people,
among whom Jews eagerly wanted to acculturate. Indeed, there was a widespread
belief amongst many Jews in the illusion that the role they played within industry and
trade and their contributions to the German economy would prevent the Germans from
completely excluding them.
Nazi anti-Jewish policy functioned on two primary levels: legal measures to expel the
Jews from society and strip them of their rights and property while simultaneously
important role in this campaign of dispossession and party labeling of literature, art, and
science. Some scientists and physicians were involved in the theoretical underpinnings
of the racial doctrine.