"The political situation now is so complicated and is subject to so many psychological factors that it is impossible to make any definite forecast," George S. Messersmith, the United States consul general in Berlin from 1930 to 1934, wrote in a dispatch to the State Department on Feb. 3, 1933.
Four days earlier, Reich Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher had been dismissed just weeks after his election. His replacement was Adolf Hitler. "It may, I believe, be accepted," wrote Messersmith, "that whether the Hitler regime lasts for a few months or for a longer period, it is only a phase in the development towards more stable political conditions and that this government will be followed by one which will show greater elements of stability than any which Germany has had for some years. The people are politically tired."
Along with other observers, diplomats in Berlin in 1933 did not immediately recognize that the appointment of the new government marked a historical turning point. At that early stage, no one predicted that the Nazi regime would last for 12 years and end with a disaster on the scale of World War II. Initially, Hitler's cabinet was viewed as just another in a series of more or less short-lived German governments.
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