Reply #68

In a winner-take-all system, they would have been in power immediately. Because of proportional representation, they were blocked from taking power until they found a willing partner in January 1933. So you're making the opposite point: the only effect of PR per se was to delay the seizure of power.

This is important, because the mere association of a PR system with the almost unique case of a popular extremist movement determined to take power by any means regardless of law has been used (wrongly) as a propaganda bludgeon against PR.

As for the industrialists and bankers who chose to back the Nazis and write the letter to Hindenburg urging Hitler's appointment, whatever they may have imagined about their ability to control Hitler once he was chancellor is irrelevant to the fact that their support was key in getting him there.