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When Hitler took the oath of office as Chancellor on 30 January 1933, the conservatives around President Hindenburg believed they had "hired" him: with only three of eleven Cabinet seats in Nazi hands and Franz von Papen as Vice-Chancellor, Hitler was supposedly boxed in. Within nineteen months he had destroyed that arrangement and every serious check on his personal power. The Reichstag had surrendered its legislative authority; every political party other than the NSDAP had been banned or dissolved; the trade unions had been crushed; the SA had been purged by its own side; and on the death of President Hindenburg in August 1934, Hitler combined the offices of Chancellor and President and required the army to swear a personal oath of loyalty to him by name. This lesson examines how that consolidation was achieved — through a calculated combination of legal manoeuvre, emergency decree, intimidation and selective violence — and why so many Germans, from conservative politicians to Catholic bishops to army generals, acquiesced in it.
On the night of 27 February 1933, less than a month after Hitler became Chancellor, the Reichstag building in Berlin was set alight. A young Dutch Communist called Marinus van der Lubbe was found inside and confessed. Historians still debate whether he acted alone or whether Nazi agents assisted or even staged the fire, but what matters politically is that the Nazi leadership presented it immediately as the signal for a Communist uprising.
The following day, 28 February 1933, President Hindenburg signed the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State — the Reichstag Fire Decree — drafted by the Nazi Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick and invoking Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. In a single stroke, it suspended the civil liberties guaranteed by the Weimar Constitution:
| Article of the Constitution suspended | Effect |
|---|---|
| Freedom of the press | Non-Nazi newspapers could be shut down |
| Freedom of speech and expression | Public criticism of the government became illegal |
| Freedom of assembly and association | Opposition meetings and rallies could be banned |
| Privacy of post and telephone | Surveillance of opponents legalised |
| Protection against arbitrary arrest | "Protective custody" (Schutzhaft) — indefinite detention without trial — introduced |
| Inviolability of the home | Police searches without warrant permitted |
The decree was issued as a temporary emergency measure. It was never rescinded. For the next twelve years it served as the legal basis of the Nazi police state: every concentration-camp inmate held in "protective custody" was technically detained under a decree originally meant to deal with a single night's arson.
Within days, around 4,000 Communist Party (KPD) officials and activists were arrested. Communist newspapers were shut. Social Democratic meetings were attacked by the SA. The campaign for the Reichstag election of 5 March 1933 was conducted in an atmosphere of orchestrated intimidation.
The election of 5 March 1933 was the last multi-party Reichstag election in Germany until after the Second World War. Despite the ban on Communist campaigning and the SA's street violence, the Nazis still did not win a majority.
| Party | Vote share | Seats |
|---|---|---|
| NSDAP | 43.9% | 288 |
| SPD | 18.3% | 120 |
| KPD | 12.3% | 81 (banned from taking seats) |
| Centre Party | 11.2% | 74 |
| DNVP | 8.0% | 52 |
The NSDAP had 288 seats out of 647 — well short of the 50% it needed for a normal majority, and far short of the two-thirds majority required to amend the constitution. Hitler needed that two-thirds majority to pass the law that would finish the work of the Reichstag Fire Decree: the Enabling Act.
Formally titled the "Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich", the Enabling Act gave the Cabinet — in practice, Hitler — the power to issue laws without the Reichstag's approval, including laws that deviated from the constitution, for a renewable period of four years. In effect, it dissolved the separation of powers.
To secure a two-thirds majority, Hitler did three things:
The vote was 444 to 94. Only the remaining Social Democrats, whose leader Otto Wels gave a courageous speech in opposition, voted against. The German parliament had voted away its own sovereignty.
Grade 4 / Grade 6 / Grade 9 contrast — "Why was the Enabling Act important in Hitler's consolidation of power?"
Grade 4 (basic): "The Enabling Act was important because it gave Hitler power to make laws. This meant he could do what he wanted without the Reichstag."
Grade 6 (explained): "The Enabling Act was important because it let Hitler rule by decree for four years, bypassing the Reichstag. This allowed him to ban other parties and trade unions legally, which he could not have done before."
Grade 9 (analytical): "The Enabling Act was the decisive legal instrument of the consolidation. By transferring legislative power to the Cabinet, it converted every subsequent act of coordination — the banning of the SPD in June 1933, the dissolution of the unions in May, the Concordat with the Vatican in July — from a coup into a 'lawful' measure. Its significance is therefore double: it destroyed parliamentary government and gave the appearance of legality to that destruction, which was essential in keeping conservative allies, the civil service and the army on board. Without it, Gleichschaltung would have required open violence against the constitution rather than legislation under it."
With the Enabling Act in place, the regime moved rapidly to "coordinate" (Gleichschaltung) every significant institution in German life under Nazi control.
| Date | Measure | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| March–April 1933 | First Law for Coordination of the Länder | Regional state parliaments reorganised to match Reichstag results; Nazi Reichsstatthalter (Reich governors) installed |
| 7 April 1933 | Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service | Jews and political opponents dismissed from the civil service |
| 2 May 1933 | Dissolution of trade unions | SA and SS occupied union offices; leaders arrested; assets seized |
| 10 May 1933 | Creation of the German Labour Front (DAF) under Robert Ley | Single state-controlled organisation replacing independent unions |
| 22 June 1933 | SPD banned | Social Democratic Party outlawed; many leaders fled or were arrested |
| June 1933 | DNVP and other nationalist/liberal parties "voluntarily" dissolved | Only the NSDAP remained |
| 20 July 1933 | Concordat with the Vatican | Catholic Church agreed not to interfere in politics in return for protection of Church schools |
| 14 July 1933 | Law Against the Formation of New Parties | Germany declared a one-party state |
| January 1934 | Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich | Länder parliaments abolished entirely |
On 2 May 1933 — the day after a Nazi-organised May Day celebration to which union leaders had been invited — the SA and SS occupied union offices across Germany, arrested officials and seized union funds. The 4.5 million members of the ADGB federation were forcibly enrolled a week later in the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront — DAF) under Robert Ley. The DAF had no right to strike, no right to negotiate wages, and effectively subordinated workers to state-appointed "Trustees of Labour".
The Communist Party had already been crushed by the Reichstag Fire Decree. The SPD was banned on 22 June 1933 as "hostile to the people and state"; its assets were confiscated. Over the following weeks the DNVP, the Centre Party, the DVP and the State Party all dissolved themselves under pressure. On 14 July 1933 the Law Against the Formation of New Parties declared the NSDAP the only legal political party in Germany.
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