The Hitler Government and New Elections
Meanwhile von Papen had formed an intrigue to oust his successor. He conferred with Hugenberg and industrial magnates and bankers and after a feverish night, in which the outcome was unclear to all participants. On 30 January 1933 Hitler was appointed Chancellor with Franz von Papen as Vice-Chancellor and Hugenberg as minister for economics. President of the Reichsbank under the Weimar Republic was Hjalmar Schacht.
Though seeing their adversaries Papen and Hugenberg join forces with Hitler, the Centre Party still did not give up building a broad coalition government. Since the new administration was still lacking a majority in parliament, the Centre was ready to support it, either by toleration or by coalition. Hitler intended to minimize non-Nazi participation, but feigned a willingness to cooperate with the Centre and blamed Papen and Hugenberg for denying cabinet posts to the Centre. When Kaas requested a broad outline of his government's objectives, Hitler used his questionnaire to declare the talks a failure and obtain the President's approval for calling for new elections for the third time in about half a year.
These elections in March 1933 were already marred by the SA's terror, after the Reichstag fire and civil rights had been suspended by President Hindenburg through the Reichstag Fire Decree. Still the Centre Party campaigned hard against the Hitler administration and managed to preserve their former vote of roughly 11%. The government parties NSDAP and DNVP however jointly won 52% of the vote.
This result shattered the Centre Party's hopes of being indispensable for obtaining a majority in parliament. The party was now faced with two alternatives – either to persist in protesting and suffer reprisals like Communists and Social Democrats, or to declare their loyal cooperation, in order to protect their members. As shown by subsequent events, the party, though deeply uncomfortable with the new government, opted for the latter alternative.
Read more about this topic: Centre Party (Germany)
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