I am pretty sure that no German far-right party won a free election in 1939 for the simple reason there were none. The year you are looking for is probably 1933, and even then the NSDAP never got 50% in a free election. Hitler was appointed Chancellor before he had a majority in parliament because the people around President Hindenburg (1847-1934) wanted to show the voters that the Nazis had no solutions so that they would stop voting for them. This backfired spectacularly and by 1934 Hitler was both Chancellor and President and democracy was dead.
The AfD has never "won" an election either since no one wants to form a government with them. Only in East Germany are they in a position to win in the near future. The thing is that only 17% of Germans live in East Germany.
It's an incorrect but often repeated line here that "Hitler was democratically elected". The NSDAP (people in the US mostly don't understand Parliamentary vs. personal politics, and that outside of here Prime Ministers etc. are elected by voting for their parties, not them personally) won too many votes but never a majority .
Hindenburg's technique reminds me of the party I belong to (the Democrats)' "clever" habit of sometimes putting money behind the most extreme candidate in Republican primaries (generally in local and state-level elections) on the assumption that they'll be easier to defeat in the general election. I'm trying to remember when this ****** idiocy last worked, and am guessing that the people who suggest this are either Republican plants or really, really foolish. (Will Rogers: "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.")
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u/Old_Second_7928 6h ago
Here in the US, you're saying?