[hirn_man]

Is a semi-free election kinda like being a little pregnant?

[aristeides]

Before the semi-free election of 1933, there was government-sponsored propaganda, violence, and -- in the last days before the election, after the Reichstag Fire -- arrests. But an awful lot of people still felt free to vote for the non-government parties.

And it was quite consonant with democratic principles to give the government to the Nazis as the biggest party after the free elections of 1932. Eventually, Hindenburg did just that, at the end of January 1933, after attempts to avoid that path failed.

So, is it your position that Germans were obliged to abide by the results of the 1932 elections? And if Bavaria, say, had tried to secede in early 1933, is it your view that that would have been wrong, and rightly put down with force by the new government in Berlin?