Today is Thursday 8 December 1932. History tells us something that seemed impossible on that date was soon going to happen. That was that in just under two months, Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, would be the Chancellor of Germany and in under 13 years after that, 60 million people who were alive then, or were born during those next 13 years, would be dead. Countless millions of other people would have their lives shattered beyond anything that was imaginable.

In this programme I’m taking a close look at what happened in those few days that were destined to send the world to a new kind of hell. What was impossible on that Thursday, 8 December 193, on Monday 30 January 1933 would become the new reality as Hitler was handed the keys to the gates of hell.

Hitler was the supreme gambler, it was the reason he came to power and it was the reason that he almost dragged the entire world to hell with him. In July he’d refused to accept the office of Vice-Chancellor that had been offered to him. He would only agree to being the Chancellor. That didn’t happen. One of Hitler’s most important lieutenants, Gregor Strasser, then resigned from the Nazi Party. Many of the top political people and political commentators in Germany saw this as the end of the Nazi Party. A sane betting man would have to have agreed with them.

Tag words: Gregor Strasser; Adolf Hitler; Nazi Party; Goebbels; Kaiserhof Hotel; Reichschancellory; Himmler; Tägliche Rundschau; Kurt von Schleicher; Reichstag; Hindenberg; Otto Meissner; Frederic Sackett; Franz von Papen; Mein Kampf ; Woody Allen; Third Reich; Herman Göring; Emperor Nero; Kurt Freiherr von Schröder; SA; Nazi storm troopers; Keppler

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