On January 30, 1933, German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler as the country's new Chancellor, the third attempt in less than a year to create a stable German government. The result of course was dictatorship, war and eventually genocide.

But was Hitler's appointment inevitable? For as historians such as Henry Ashby Turner have argued, on the immediate eve of his appointment Hitler's Nazi Party was broke and its electoral support was waning. Could Hindenburg have made other choices?

This episode walks us through the complicated political intrigues of the summer and winter of 1932-33, showing how the actions of ambitious and short-sighted men paved the way for Hitler's rise to power. At the center of the drama lie the politician Franz von Papen and General Kurt von Schleicher - men who viewed the political chaos of the early 1930s as a ladder for their own path to power. Of course, like many characters from the HBO show Game of Thrones, their misunderstandings would prove fatal.

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