happened in two phases. The first ended with Hitler’s nomination as Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933. This was no ‘seizure of power’. Indeed, the Nazis themselves did not use this term to describe the appointment, since it smacked of an illegal putsch. They were still careful at this stage to refer to an ‘assumption of power’ and to call the coalition a ‘government of national renewal’ or, more generally, a government of ‘national uprising’, depending on whether they wished to stress the legitimacy of the cabinet’s appointment by the President or the legitimacy of its supposed backing by
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