• Hitler, Goebbels, Goring and the rest of the Nazi leadership had gone all out to get a majority in the March 1933 elections.
• They had used the media extensively to spread pro-Nazi and anti-Communist propaganda; they had abused powers given to the police to intimidate the voters and to silence their opposition.
• They had run a misinformation campaign against the Communists after the Reichstag fire, and tried to scare the population into believing that the Nazi Party was their only hope.

However, all these efforts were in vain.

• In the elections the Nazi Party won 288 out of the 647 Reichstag seats.
• Although the Party received over 17 million votes, and was the biggest in the Reichstag, it was still 36 seats short of an overall majority.