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The party had spent down its reserves on a now-historic election campaign earlier that year in which it won a plurality, though not a majority, of seats in the Reichstag, Germany's parliament.

After the Nazis won a plurality of Reichstag seats in July 1932, a group of conservative elder statesmen from the Weimar government, largely representing business and aristocratic interests, collaborated to have Hitler appointed as chancellor the following January.

The aid that Goebbels and other Nazi leaders needed soon arrived, along with 20 or so bankers and industrialists who arrived in chauffeured cars at the official residence of Reichstag president Hermann Göring on the night of Feb. 20.

It's as if Hitler made up the fact that the Reichstag was on fire and his Nazi followers all nodded their heads and insisted they smelled the smoke.

In March of 1933, with the National Socialist Party shy of a majority in the Reichstag, Hitler sought and obtained a two-thirds majority vote in the chamber that passed what we know as the Enabling Act.