The classic monograph by the famous German historian Heinrich Winkler, professor of modern history at the Humboldt University of Berlin (1991–2007), is dedicated to the fate of the Weimar Republic, the first German democratic state. The central problem of fundamental research is development alternatives and the limits of freedom of action of power elites, political parties and the masses. The author gives his answer to the most important question from his point of view in German history of the 19th and 20th centuries, if not German history as a whole: how Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.