How did Hitler rise to power?

The rise of fascism in Germany in the interwar years can be seen as a failure of liberal democracy, rather than solely as the success of a new ideology, and must be framed within its European context. Although the fear of communism created by the 1917 Russian Revolution and the various socialist uprisings in Germany in the early 20s pushed people towards National Socialism, these would not have lent so much support to Nazism had the underlying problems with the Weimar constitution disaffected so many. Proportionally representative electoral systems (PR) meant that majorities were rare, couple this with the fact that many political parties served very narrow sections of society (a 'peasnats' party', 'industrialists party') meant that coalition governments were formed of many parties unwilling to cooperate. This in turn made governments unstable and ineffective, pushing people towards the simple message of stability from the political fringes.