The communist rise to power was an actual civil war. Hitler rose to power by democratic election (assisted by violent thugs and demagoguery and ultimately corruption but still an election).
Some of the unwritten standards by which we judge an election democratic or not are things like "do people get beaten up for campaigning". When we see violence and then a leader who wins 97% of the vote in places like Africa, we don't hesitate to call it a sham democracy. Why would we do differently for Germany?
May 1924: 6.6%
December 1924: 3.0%
May 1928: 2.6%
September 1930: 18.3% (second largest party)
July 1932: 37.4%
November 1932: 33.1%
March 1933: 43.9% (last free election)
November 1933: 92.1%
March 1936: 98.8%
April 1938: 99.1%
Also note that by that point the government had been destabilized since the 1920s, ruling only with an absolute minority of the votes.
In 1930 the left-wing parties (KPD and SPD) actually campaigned against ever having another war with very successful demonstrations.
The NSDAP campaign in 1930 was the first campaign organised by Goebbels. It was based on conspiracy theories like the economical crisis being an international conspiracy against Germany, appeals to national identity, scaremongering against communism and capitalism. They actually toned down the anti-semitism on Goebbels' orders.
This was a "small government" democracy in action. An unstable one, yes, but the elections were democratic. The Nazis exploited the instability of the government and the economy and they used scaremongering and demagoguery to get the relative majority, but they won democratic elections and they had a significant share of the votes before being in a position to force the outcome.
Even in the last election you label as "free" the Nazis had stormtroopers on the street, no? And a significant reason they were able to win the Enabling Act was because they simply blocked other politicians from turning up at all, and violently threatened the ones who did? Or am I misremembering history?