During the mid-1920s, the DNVP maintained a more moderate profile, accepting republican institutions in practice while still calling for a return to monarchy in its manifesto, and participating in centre-right coalition governments on federal and state levels. It broadened its voting base—winning as much as 20.5% in the December 1924 German federal election—and supported the election of Paul von Hindenburg as President of Germany (Reichspräsident) in 1925. Under the leadership of Alfred Hugenberg in 1928, the party moved to the far-right and reclaimed its reactionary nationalist and anti-republican rhetoric and changed its strategy to mass mobilization, plebiscites, and support of authoritarian rule by the president instead of working through parliamentary means. At the same time, it lost many votes to Adolf Hitler's rising Nazi Party. Several prominent Nazis began their careers in the DNVP.
After 1929, the DNVP co-operated with the Nazis, joining forces in the Harzburg Front of 1931, forming coalition governments in some states and finally supporting Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany (Reichskanzler) in January 1933. Initially, the DNVP had a number of ministers in Hitler's government, but the party quickly lost influence and eventually dissolved itself in June 1933, giving way to the Nazis' single-party dictatorship with the majority of its former members joining the Nazi Party. The Nazis allowed the remaining former DNVP members in the Reichstag, the civil service, and the police to continue with their jobs and left the rest of the party membership generally in peace. During the Second World War, several prominent former DNVP members, such as Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, were involved in the German resistance to Nazism and took part in the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944.
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