Yes, I do consider this is splitting hairs. First, yeah, I do not think explicitly making the separation between Hitler and the Nazi party makes any practical difference to the argument. Let me know if you can think of one.
Second, Hitler did get into power through democratic means -- definitely not the presidency, but he was made chancellor, which is, to the best of my knowledge, equivalent to a PM and therefore head of the executive. Don't move the goalpost and claim that "Hitler didn't get into power until he illegally made himself president", because he was into power before that; as much as you could within the limits of the constitution. They voted him into office and he was made chancellor through legal means. For the last 2/3 elections that can still be considered "somewhat" free, his party got the largest number of votes.
He won the elections, and legally speaking had every right to be put into power and made chancellor. Or at least to try until he was voted out by a no confidence or failing to pass laws. He had no right to become president, much less to become dictator.
> This is like saying the SCOTUS is elected because the President that appointed them was elected. They are not, they are appointed. Hitler himself never won an election.
In a lot of democratic countries, the PM-equivalent figure is NEVER directly elected. Would you call Italy, Spain, etc. non-democratic countries just because the PM is appointed by parliament instead of elected directly? The PM is the actual head of the government; the head of state (monarch/president) is a figurehead.
> FWIW, here are the 1932 election results:
_Presidential_ election. President is much less important than you think if you see this from a US-centric view, because the actual head of government is the chancellor! The secretaries/ministers are appointed from the majority parties in parliament, not arbitrarily by the president as in the US. This is still pretty common in many European democracies...
And in all parliament elections, Hitler's party won with a comfortable margin:
1932 July elections : Nazis 230 seats (out of 608) ; next party 133. Almost 2x distance. Hitler's coalition : 267 seats and 43% of vote. Won by simple majority.
1932 November elections (arguably last fair elections in Germany) Nazis 196 seats ; next party 120. In coalition: 247, 42% of vote. Simple majority.
1933 March (definitely last free elections in Germany): Nazis 288 seats; next party 120. Coalition: 340, ~52%, absolute majority .
There's no other way to put this, even if you ignore 1933 results: the Nazis _and Hitler_ were put into power by the (simple) majority of the population. If they had lost even in % of votes to a second party, or something to the effect, then I would also argue that voters didn't put Hitler into power. But as it is...
And you can't really argue that someone could be voting for the Nazis (or coalition parties) without knowing you'd be voting for Hitler, considering how personalistic they were by 1932.
> Please don't feel like I'm scolding you, I really enjoy historical conversations, so thanks for this one.
This has been discussed ad-nauseum, even on wikipedia...
Disclaimer: I already mentioned that results of an election when there is literal vote coercion going on (intimidation, control of the press, etc.) cannot be considered fair. This doesn't negate the fact that he did win elections, and therefore this is still a valid lesson for generations to come.