What were the significant events that took place as Nazism became powerful?

The first significant event in the rise of National
Socialism ("Nazi" was a pejorative term) was the failed Beer Hall Putsch in which Hitler
and other National Socialists attempted to take over the government of Munich by coup,
much as Mussolini had taken over the Italian government. Upon the failure of the Putsch,
Hitler was sent to prison where he wrote his political testament, Mein
Kampf. The National Socialists were aided by the Great Depression when German
unemployment reached 43 per cent.

Other political
ideologies at the time were the Communists and the Social Democrats.The Communists
refused to cooperate with the Social Democrats even though the two parties together
outnumbered the Nazis in the Reichstag.  German Communists were blinded by the hatred of
socialists and by the belief that Hitler’s fascist ideas represented the last throes of
capitalism and a communist revolution would soon follow. Social Democratic leaders
pleaded with the Communists for a temporary alliance to stop Hitler, at one point even
posing their pleas at the Soviet Embassy, but there was no use. This lack of cooperation
was exacerbated by a fire which destroyed the Reichstag. The fire was blamed on a young
Communist radical who was subsequently guillotined. There was substantial thinking among
historians for many years that the Nazi’s had started the fire to intensify the dispute
with the Communists; however recent historical evidence indicates that the young man was
indeed a Communist agent intent on bringing down the government by any possible means.
Ironically, his actions played into the hands of
Hitler.

Hitler was an expert in dirty backroom politics. He
gained the support of people in the army and big business, who thought they use him to
their own advantage. Conservative and nationalistic politicians also thought that they
could use him. Thus, when Hitler demanded that he be named Chancellor as a condition of
joining the government, they accepted his demand. On January 30, 1933, President
Hindenburg named Hitler as Chancellor. The Reichstag fire, after a particularly raucous
election, played easily into Hitler’s hands. He used the fire to persuade President
Hindenburg to invoke the Emergency Powers provision of the Constitution, which allowed
rule by decree. Emergency acts were passed which practically abolished freedom of speech
and assembly as well as most personal liberties. When the Nazi’s won only 44 per cent of
the Reichstag seats Hitler outlawed the communist party and had its representatives in
the Reichstag arrested. On March 23, 1933, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act which
gave Hitler absolute dictatorial power for four years. Under the guise of legality, the
Nazi’s slowly dismantled the opposition, and Germany was soon a one party state in which
only the National Socialist Party was legal.