 By the time of the 1933 Reichstag elections, after Hitler had already seized power, local support for the Nazis had swollen to 70.9%.Hitler’s success in these elections paved the way for his Enabling Act of 1933 ("Ermächtigungsgesetz"), thus starting the Third Reich in earnest.After the Second World War, the old Bavarian exclave, which had continued to exist even after the 1871 Unification of Germany and through Imperial times, the First World War, Weimar times, the Third Reich and the Second World War, was now grouped into the then newly founded state of Rhineland-Palatinate.