Beneath the milquetoast paeans to stability and certainty, the linked post is pretty much rubbish. This statement in particular is especially problematic:

Basically, the Nazi party gained power because the Socialists and Communists attacked people on the streets, and the Nazis turned it back on them, destroying the Communists and Socialists again and again and again.

There are a number of problems with this statement.

• Firstly, the author omits one of the important elements in the escalation of street violence: the NSDAP. The SA and other right-wing paramilitaries took to the streets in the crisis years of 1929-33 and they certainly played a major role in the chaos the author laments. The SA in particular was quite violent and to omit them from any narrative is just plain wrong. Much of the SA's actions in the street battles was about asserting control over territory, such as marching in districts that were political strongholds of the KPD, and as such was deliberately provocative. Of the paramilitaries active in these years, the SA was arguably the most "military" with a strong hierarchical structure, uniforms, and martial ethos.

• Neither the SPD nor the KPD were innocent lambs in these years, and both had their own paramilitaries, the main ones being Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold and Roter Frontkämpferbund (RFB- note, although banned in 1929, there were various successor organizations and rather than throwing out more acronyms, RFB will stand as a placeholder). Both of these paramilitaries engaged in battles with the SA and between each other and justified their violence as serving ultimate political ends, whether preserving the Republic or carrying forth the workers' revolution. However, to portray them as " attacked people on the streets" is a rather myopic way to view their actions that obscures the very specific context violence on the left often had and makes them out to be thugs accosting non-political Germans on the streets. Street-brawls between factions often had collateral damage for bystanders, but such brawls were typically a consequence of trying to disrupt another groups' rally or defend/reclaim territory perceived to be taken by the enemy. Violence was both real and symbolic, such as stripping insignia or destroying banners, which meant that a hypothetical apolitical German in regular clothes had little signifiers of their political loyalty.

• Both the Reichsbanner and the RFB were also as much at odds with each other in this period as they were with the SA. Lumping them together as the author did loses the very real and important distinctions between the two. The Reichsbanner was caught in a very peculiar bind of being a defender of the Republic, but through extralegal methods. This actually proved detrimental for the Reichsbanner's internal cohesion as it became increasingly unclear what they were fighting for in these street battles. The RFB hemmed and hawed between local activism and wider calls for revolutionary discipline from the KPD leadership. This actually made it rather difficult to parse out what exactly was the RFB's strategy in this period. After the state ban, the RFB briefly abandoned its strategy of confrontation against fascist and cell-based organization and sought to recruit among elements in the SA as part of "organized mass struggle," leading to a brief period of strange political bedfellows between the SA and RFB. This move was unpopular among the rank and file of KPD activists and violence continued at the local level despite moments of seeming cooperation like the 1932 Berlin transportation strike.

The Nazis largely gained power by bringing violence and stability where the police had been ineffective.

• This statement is a bit of a half-truth, but it obscures an important facet of German policing. The Republic's police forces were increasingly impotent to stop the street battles, and this did undermine the popularity of the Republic for some Germans. However, the German police force was not a neutral, apolitical force in Weimar. Police leaders were notoriously sympathetic to the right-wing political spectrum and they devoted a considerable effort to bringing down KPD groups. Statistics gathered by the Berlin police for Prussian Ministry of Interior over police intervention in political assemblies in 1931 shows the police disproportionately targeted KPD assemblies. Such a tilt against the KPD and the left was typical for Weimar law enforcement and extended into the judicial system; Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch ended with a slap on the wrist for the conspirators even though they committed treason. Not placing the NSDAP as an active political force and instigator in the street violence is a crucial oversight, especially since after Hitler's seizure of power, the police, along with the NSDAP, proved to be quite ruthless in stamping out left-wing paramilitaries.

The fact that you have trouble understanding that the Nazis didn't come to power because you think the Leftists didn't do enough to oppose them, only dooms you to repeating the same mistakes that let the Nazis come to power in the first place.

Ah, the lessons of history... see side-note at the end

• The right-wing sympathies of the German police were also mirrored in various elements of the German political establishment. Although the NSDAP had considerable, and in many cases, unprecedented, success in the polls, Hitler had the benefit of a right-wing cabal that actively sought to undermine the Republic. Electoral success, again, is only part of the picture, and counterfactuals in which Hitler loses at the polls for whatever reason have to take into account that the increasingly senile Hindenburg had a conservative camarilla surrounding him that had little love for either the Republic or democracy.

One has to understand that the Nazis were considered the political and economic saviors of Germany. Their social and foreign policies were controversial even at the time.

• This statement is somewhat oversimplified and that oversimplification obscures a lot on the historical nature of the NSDAP's popularity. One of the strengths the NSDAP had both in the seizure of power and its rule over Germany was its ideological platform was often incredibly hazy and quite contradictory. This allowed itself to graft onto existing ideas, institutions, and mentalities within German society. For example, the phrase Volksgemeinschaft which became ubiquitous during the Third Reich was one of the favorite catchphrases of the great SPD leader and one of the founders of the Republic, Friedrich Ebert. Some ideas were indeed controversial, but they also found resonance among a broad swath of German society. This growth in support alarmed many within the Republic, whether among conservatives like the DNVP or left-wing parties like the SPD and KPD. Both Hitler and the NSDAP were not the only political actors promising the German people that they were the saviors from political paralysis of 1929-33 and economic dislocation caused by the Depression. The late Weimar period saw a renewal of this type of millenarian form of politics; returning Germany to stability was only one plank in the NSDAP's platform and its political discourse often stressed law and order as an integral component of the new order. One of the important questions for historians of modern Germany is why the NSDAP managed to succeed here when other parties failed.

And therein lies a considerable that this skewed and incomplete view of late Weimar politics does to understanding how events unfolded between 1929-33. The linked author has managed to put the onus on Hitler's seizure of power not on the SA street brawlers, the conservative camarilla, or even the voters that cast ballots for the NSDAP, but rather on the cardinal political opponents of the NSDAP. This absolves the former groups of responsibility for Hitler and this exculpatory narrative dates back to 1945. Many postwar Germans of all political stripes would claim that their support for the NSDAP was often conditional and predicated support for Hitler as the only real alternative. This obscured many German's active support and co-option of Nazi ideals and participation in the dictatorship. The choice of "Hitler or chaos" was a highly politicized historical narrative that in many ways was more about providing an alibi than understanding the actual mechanics of Hitler's seizure of power.

This was not to say violence and chaos were unimportant factors in Hitler's ascent, but they were far from the only ones and focusing only on chaos runs the danger of justifying Hitler's dictatorship and denying that many ordinary Germans* supported the NSDAP for reasons other than law and order.

*side-note too, it also bears stressing many Germans did not support Hitler either, some on ideological grounds, others for moral ones. The collapse of the Republic is a highly complicated historical event, which is why trying to derive historical lessons from it for present-day politics is a very fraught and unsound enterprise.

There are some misconceptions here, for sure.

First this writer conflates "Communism" and "Socialism." These two movements were represented by the radical KPD and the moderate-centrist SPD respectively, and the two parted ways decisively during the 1918-1919 Revolution, when the SPD under Frederich Ebert cooperated with the Freikorps and other conservative elements to crush the various Communist uprisings. The rift widened further after the general strike in 1920 when, once more, the SPD coordinated a violent crackdown on the Communists...and further still in 1923 after the Ruhr crisis. So, "the Nazi party gained power because the Socialists and Communists attacked people on the streets," gets it wrong twice. The socialist SPD was never involved in these sorts of attacks, and the Communist uprisings that did take place were comparatively tame and quickly quashed. That's not to say there wasn't some real bloodletting, ie in Munich in 1919, but the reaction against the Reds was usually quite a bit bloodier than anything the Reds did. Also, by 1929 the Communists were not by any stretch "indiscriminately attacking people on the streets" (the way the Nazis attacked Jews for instance), though they were increasingly locked into a cycle of street violence against the Nazis and right wing groups like the Stalhelm, the identity of these groups being based largely on hatred of Bolshevism and liberalism more generally.

The Nazis and their right wing allies consciously and deliberately fanned the flames of violence as much as possible in order to create the conditions of instability they needed to gain support and to make a popular enemy out of the Communists and Socialists. This is most apparent in Chancellor Von Papen's un-banning of the SA in the summer of 1932 against the advice of the SPD ministers of the states, leading to a spiral of violence that did much to sweep Hitler into power. You can probably trace the misconception in this post back to Papen's deposing of the SPD government of the state of Prussia, when he blamed the Socialist government for failing to control the violence his own policies had caused.

Many if not most Germans did dislike the SPD and the KPD, but the hatred had more to do with prejudices that can be traced back two generations to the anti-socialist coalition Bismarck used to tame the Reichstag in 1878, when he blamed the Socialists for attempting to murder Wilhelm I. Anti-socialism was a tenet of German conservative thought. From 1919 on there were right-wing firebrands attacking the Republic's existence, ie Hellferich of the DNVP, and right wing terrorism was, especially in the early days, far more widespread than terrorism from the left, e.g. the assassinations of Walther Rathenau and Matthias Erzberger.

And, no, it wasn't just a flight to safety and order. Yes, there was an aspect of that, but the political impetus for it came not from any real, organic threat - where it was in control the SPD ran completely responsible governments with capable, professional police forces - but from the fear mongering and manipulations by figures on the right. The Nazis were not responding to a real threat of Communist takeover when they advanced the Reichstag Fire Decree and Enabling Acts in 1933, but it was helpful indeed for them to claim that they were. Then there is a long list of reasons the Nazis won so many seats in 1932-1933 and, ultimately, the Chancellorship, beginning with the machinations of Papen and Schleicher to hitch the conservative wagon to Hitler's populist horse, and further explained by long term trends and prejudices (anti-liberalism, anti-socialism, hatred of the Versailles treaty, a feeling of unfulfilled unity stemming from the shared struggle of the war years, a sense that outsiders, the ostjuden controlled Germany) and more immediate concerns that would be recognizable to a modern pollster, such as economic woes.

Disregarding the overall tone of the comment, this is pretty biased in favor of the Nazis, because during the Weimar Republic literally every major political force had a militia, especially the Nazis. The Nazis used the SA during this time, the Rotfront was the arm of the left-wing radicals, the social democrats relied on the Reichsbanner Scharz-Rot-Gold, and there was also the reactionaries with the Stahlhelm and the various Freikorps paramilitaries on their side. The professional military, the Reichswehr, claimed neutrality in these political battles (while conducting foreign policy behind the government's back), which essentially meant that they could not be relied upon by the government to enforce order. When the author refers to violence conducted by the Socialists and Communists, this is likely referring to the 1919 Spartakist Uprising, the 1919 short-lived Bavarian Socialist Republic, and the 1920 Ruhr uprising by Socialist and Communist elements.

The problem with the poster's theory, that:

The Nazis largely gained power by bringing violence and stability where the police had been ineffective. Socialists and Communists ran the Streets of Germany, once the government failed and the Police were an ineffective force. Several failed attempts at revolution(some violent) by Socialists and Communists resulted in growing Nazi power.

Is that the Nazis were not around as a real political force during this time. Most anti-government support coalesced around the DNVP, the reactionary party, who ALSO launched an attempt to seize power via the Kapp Putsch (which in turn led to the Ruhr uprising). The Nazis, for their part, also launched a coup attempt (the infamous Beer Hall Putsch in 1924). It failed miserably. So any claim that the Nazis were a stabilizing force after street violence by the socialists and the communists is... absolutely false.

That isn't to say that there wasn't conflict between the two, however. The SA would intentionally provoke the Rotfront (and vice versa) into so-called "Zusammenstöße," or street fights, that were often bloody and terrorized the streets. Hardly the spitting image of restoring order, I would think. Meanwhile, up until the Great Depression, Germany was actually doing quite well for itself under the Grand Coalition of pro-democracy parties, who had managed to reverse the mismanagement of the Kaiserreich and the immediate post-war period.

Ultimately, the greatest argument against the author's argument-namely, what really cemented the alliance between the conservative military and the Nazis-was the Night of the Long Knives, where the Nazis, using the SS, intentionally purged the SA. In other words, the Nazi party literally "restored order" by suppressing elements of their own party, which would certainly imply that the Nazis were a radical and destabilizing faction to begin with.