I don't know much about German leadership process through the ages, so forgive me my ignorance, but I'm curious given all of the "Trump is Hitler" talk that I hear, what are the parallels? Was Hitler's opponent seen as a corrupt member of an out of touch elite, thus making Hitler more interesting? Is there a parallel to draw here? (ie. History rhyming)
First of all it's important to mention that german politics work a bit different from american politics. Elections generally aren't a duel between two parties but a bit more diversified. Here are some statistics for the votes in 1933. How parallels are drawn to this year's election in the US i leave up to you. In 1933 the voter turnout was a lot higher than all the previous years. And the NSDAP managed to mobilise a lot of non-voters from previous years. 1928 31 million people went to the ballots while 1933 it was 39 million. One fourth of all the voters for the NSDAP didn't vote two years before. The NSDAP also managed to mobilize the rural population. Most important voters for the NSDAP were the middle class and the protestants. The rhetoric of Hitler in his political rallies was open critique against parliamentarism and against the political establishment. One of the main political opponents could be the, at that time, current Reichskanzler Franz von Papen who has been appointed by Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg. Papen had no support in the population and his party(center) was severely underrepresented with just 15% of the votes against 20.4% for the SPD(moderate left), 16.9% for the KPD(far-left) and 33.1% for the NSDAP. Von Papen eventually resigned, new chancelor Von Schleicher failed with his plan to contain Hitler's political power and quickly resigned aswell making Hitler the new chancelor.
However let's not forget that a big chunk of Hitler's power came from the systematic terror all his political rivals were experiencing at the hands of the SA. Something that, hopefully, no western politician will ever be able to do.
Source: Information zur politischen Bildung (Heft 314). Nationalsozialismus: Aufstieg und Herrschaft.
Edit: A few words.
In the November 1932 federal elections, the last ones held before the Nazis seized power, the second largest share of seats went to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), led by Otto Wels. Wels was an opponent of Hitler and actually spoke out against the Enabling Act after the Reichstag Fire. He died in exile in France in the early days of World War II.