Federal elections were held in Germany on 5 March 1933, after the Nazi seizure of power on 30 January and just six days after the Reichstag fire. The election saw Nazi stormtroopers unleash a widespread campaign of violence against the Communist Party (KPD), left-wingers, trade unionists, the Social Democratic Party and the Centre Party. They were the last multi-party elections in a united Germany until the all-German vote in 1990, though by 1933, the democratic process had ceased to be free or fair.

The 1933 election followed the previous year's two elections (July and November) and Hitler's appointment as Chancellor on 30 January. In the months before the 1933 election, SA and SS displayed "terror, repression and propaganda ... across the land", and Nazi organizations "monitored" the vote process. In Prussia, 50,000 members of the SS, SA and Der Stahlhelm were ordered to monitor the votes by acting Interior Minister Hermann Göring, as auxiliary police.

The Nazi Party (NSDAP) experienced a sharp rise in support compared to the November 1932 election, and together with its coalition partner, the German National People's Party (DNVP), secured a majority in the Reichstag. This marked the first time since 1930 that a governing coalition held a clear parliamentary majority. However, the election was far from fair. Carried out in an atmosphere of intimidation and violence against political opponents, it was skewed heavily in the Nazis' favour. Even so, they alone received only 43.9 percent of the vote, falling short of the numbers needed to govern without a partner.

Though now in possession of a working majority, Hitler pushed further. On 23 March, just two weeks after the vote, he passed the Enabling Act of 1933 with the support of the DNVP and the Centre Party, granting him the power to rule by decree. This act effectively dismantled parliamentary democracy and gave Hitler dictatorial authority. In the months that followed, the Nazi regime banned all other political parties and turned the Reichstag into a rubberstamp body composed solely of Nazis and their pro-Nazi "guests", extinguishing all remaining traces of democratic governance. This would be the last contested election held in Germany until after World War II.

The Nazis came to power on 30 January, when President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor, who immediately urged the dissolution of the Reichstag and the calling of new elections. On his second day as Chancellor, Hitler opened his campaign with a nationwide radio address pledging to save the nation from the communists, which he castigated as "political nihilism." In early February, the Nazis "unleashed a campaign of violence and terror that dwarfed anything seen so far". Sturmabteilung stormtroopers began attacking trade union and Communist Party (KPD) offices and the homes of left-wingers.

In the second half of February, the violence was extended to the Social Democrats, with gangs of brownshirts breaking up Social Democrat meetings and beating up their speakers and audiences. Issues of Social Democratic newspapers were banned. Twenty newspapers of the Centre Party, a party of Catholic Germans, were banned in mid-February for criticising the new government. Government officials known to be Centre Party supporters were dismissed from their offices, and stormtroopers violently attacked party meetings in Westphalia. Only the Nazi Party and the German National People's Party were allowed to campaign untouched.

Six days before the scheduled election date, the German parliament building was set alight in the Reichstag fire, allegedly by the Dutch Communist Marinus van der Lubbe. That event reduced the popularity of the KPD and enabled Hitler to persuade Hindenburg to pass the Reichstag Fire Decree as an emergency decree according to Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The emergency law removed many civil liberties and allowed the arrest of Ernst Thälmann and 4,000 other leaders and members of the KPD shortly before the election, suppressing the Communist vote and consolidating the position of the Nazis.

Although Hitler could have banned the KPD outright, he opted not to do so. He feared a violent Communist uprising in the event of a ban, and he also believed the KPD's presence on the ballot could siphon off votes away from the Social Democrats. Instead, he opted to simply have Communist functionaries jailed by the thousands. The courts and prosecutors, both already hostile to the KPD long before 1933, obligingly agreed with the line that since the Reichstag fire was a Communist plot, KPD membership was an act of treason. As a result, for all intents and purposes, the KPD was "outlawed" on the day the Reichstag Fire Decree took effect and "completely banned" as of the day of the election. While the Social Democrats (SPD) were then not as heavily oppressed as the Communists, the Social Democrats were also restricted in their actions, as the party's leadership had already fled to Prague, and many members were acting only from the underground. Hence, the Reichstag fire is widely believed to have had a major effect on the outcome of the election. As a replacement parliament building and for 10 years to come, the new parliament used the Kroll Opera House for its meetings.