Hindenburg had acted?

I was wondering what if Hindenburg had acted against Hitler in 1933 by calling out the army, could Hitler had been stopped or was it to late?

 

Never too late I suppose but Hindenburg probably wanted to end the restless period and as well Papen was sure he could handle the man. Actually it seems everybody around at the time believed they could take care of Hitler and not let things go too far. How wrong they were!

 

When exactly do you think Hindenburg should have acted? Hindenburg put Hitler in power when he didn't have to so it would be seen as quite wishy washy to attempt to depose him shortly thereafter. And the more Hitler acted the more popular he became. The Reichswehr was suspicious of the SA but liked Hitler's priority for rearmament. Attempting to depose the legitimate and popular leader Hitler would have likely entailed a lot of bloodshed and the SA greatly outnumbered the army, even if they weren't as well armed or effective a fighting force. However, a lot of the armed forces had Nazi leanings and given that in 1933 he was eliminating all the liberal and communist parties and pushing forward rearmament and favoring the army to a greater degree than any other German leader since the war it is doubtful that Hindenburg, in this scenario, would enjoy complete support of the armed forces.

 

Personally I was thinking of the period before Hitler was made the chancellor but unfortunately that was not in my posting. It was more or less Papen who convinced Hindenburg to accept Hitler because mr Hindenburg did not like Hitler at all.

And Papen was quite disillusioned how he could control AH: "Within two months we will have pushed Hitler so far in the corner that he'll squeak."


Also we must remember on Hindenburg: the President was the Supreme Commander-In-Chief of the German armed forces. And if it was almost impossible to "attack" Hitler later on how could the generals turn against Hindenburg?
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Then again it might have been "quite easy" to stop Hitler, at least for a while:

Following the Nazi electoral triumph in the Reichstag elections held on 31 July 1932, there were widespread expectations that Hitler would soon be appointed Chancellor. Moreover, Hitler repudiated the "gentleman's agreement" and declared that he wanted the Chancellorship for himself. In a meeting between Hindenburg and Hitler held on 13 August 1932, in Berlin, Hindenburg firmly rejected Hitler's demands for the Chancellorship.

The minutes of the meeting were kept by Otto Meißner, the Chief of the Presidential Chancellery. According to the minutes:

"Herr Hitler declared that, for reasons which he had explained in detail to the Reich President that morning, his taking any part in cooperation with the existing government was out of the question. Considering the importance of the National Socialist movement, he must demand the full and complete leadership of the government and state for himself and his party.

The Reich President in reply said firmly that he must answer this demand with a clear, unyielding No. He could not justify before God, before his conscience, or before the Fatherland the transfer of the whole authority of government to a single party, especially to a party that was biased against people who had different views from their own. There were a number of other reasons against it, upon which he did not wish to enlarge in detail, such as fear of increased unrest, the effect on foreign countries, etc.

Herr Hitler repeated that any other solution was unacceptable to him.

To this the Reich President replied: "So you will go into opposition?"

Hitler: "I have now no alternative".

After refusing Hitler’s demands for the Chancellorship, Hindenburg had a press release issued of his meeting with Hitler that implied that Hitler had demanded absolute power and had his knuckles rapped by the President for making such a demand. Hitler was enraged by this press release.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_von_Hindenburg

 

Thanks for the clarification, Kai-Petri. In 1932 I do believe it was possible. One possibility was to try and undermine Hitler's control of the Nazi party. I believe this was actually tried, and obviously failed, as Hitler's underlings weren't about to betray him even for a chance at the top, probably because they realized that Hitler really was the heart of the party and without him, and especially against him, the party would simply implode.

They could have tried to simply assasinate Hitler; a plan not unknown to German politicians in that era. Of course, Hitler did have a knack for escaping assasination attempts, so whether this would work is anyone's guess.

And then we again are figuring that Hitler needed to be eliminated because of the things we know he did once he actually gained power. I don't buy the claims that everyone should have known what he was going to do before he got into power because he wrote it all down in Mein Kampf. Many people write extreme things that they never actually carry out. At the time Hitler may have been offensive but he did seem to have a chance at unifying Germany and dealing with its problems. Of course, he was quite adept at causing the problems that he promised to solve.