Exactly at noon on 30 January 1933 Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Reichskanzler of Germany by President Paul von Hindenberg. This moment marked the beginning of the end of the only 14 year old Weimar Republic. The groundwork for his dictatorship was laid with his arson attack on the Reichstag the following month. Hitler’s rise to power was completed in August 1934 with the death of President Hindenburg, as this is when he merged the Chancellorship with the Presidency and became Führer of Germany. The photographs in this album document the time period of his Chancellorship between January 1933 and August 1934.

This next trio of portraits was taken for publications used in Hitler’s campaign for the presidency in early 1932. The first photograph was featured on the cover of a March 1932 election pamphlet titled “Tatsachen und Lügen um Hitler” (“Facts and Lies about Hitler”) Issue 9 of a brochure series of the Reich Propaganda Directorate of the NSDAP published for the 1932 presidential campaign which was held on 10 April.

The following photograph is always captioned as Adolf Hitler marching to the Reichstag in Berlin on the day Hitler took his seat as Chancellor of the Reich on 30 January 1933. It was actually taken in Bad Harzburg during the founding of the Harzburg Front on 11 October 1931. Hitler didn’t wear his SA uniform on the day he was appointed chancellor, he wore a dark blue suit that is featured in the next set of photographs below.

This is the actual very first photograph taken of Adolf Hitler after having been sworn in as Chancellor…

A celebration was held in the Hotel Kaiserhof, where Hitler showed himself on the balcony, saying “No power in the world will ever bring me out of here alive”.

Heinrich Hoffmann took all of the following photographs at the Hotel Kaiserhof immediately following Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. The Hotel Kaiserhof was one of Berlin’s most luxurious and exclusive hotels and became a favorite haunt of the elite of the Nazi regime because it was located right next to the Reich Chancellery. Joseph Goebbels, Ernst Röhm and several other high ranking Nazi officials met in the Kaiserhof as Hitler was being sworn in as Chancellor. They were not aware if Hitler had indeed been appointed Chancellor until he had returned to the hotel to inform them that he had been sworn in. These photographs were all taken on the afternoon and evening of January 30, 1933.

Adolf Hitler visits President Paul von Hindenburg at his estate Gut Neudeck, East Prussia (now Poland) on 29 June 1933. They spend time conversing while on a horse drawn carriage ride around the estate.

This next set of 6 portraits was taken by Hoffmann in August of 1933, the summer after Adolf Hitler became chancellor. These were taken in the Wintergarten room and on the outside terrace at his Obersalzburg home Haus Wachenfeld. Hitler had not yet worn this visor cap in public, and he was testing it out photographically as he often did before approving any changes to his wardrobe or uniform.

Becoming the Führer

Adolf Hitler had also declared a national holiday on Friday 17 August 1934 so that he could personally address the German people through the over four million registered radio sets just two days before the referendum vote. Some in the Nazi leadership were actually disappointed by the results of the referendum, even though Hitler received close to 90 percent of the vote. Joseph Goebbel’s diary entry for 22 August referred to the referendum as a failure: “Initial results: very bad. Then better. Finally over 38 million for the Führer. I expected more.”

After the successful campaign for the abolition of the presidency, Hitler waves from the balcony of the Reich Presidential Palace during the diplomatic corps reception on the occasion of the official unification of offices of Reich President and Chancellor on 12 September 1934. No longer would he be addressed just as ‘Lord Chancellor’, but henceforth ‘My Führer’ became his official title.