The Reichstag Fire and the Enabling Act
-23 June 2020
Recent political unrest, demonstrations, and reactions to them have made me start to think about connections to the events leading up to Adolf Hitler’s exploitation of the Reichstag Fire on 27 February 1933. The destruction of the German Parliament building allowed Hitler to declare a permanent state of emergency inside Germany and ban political parties that were opposed to his Nazi Party.
Labeling one’s own citizens as enemies of the state is a step towards the “legal” persecution, and in many cases, ultimate destruction, of political opposition parties. This concept can be traced to both the far left (Lenin/Stalin’s persecution and destruction of non-Bolshevik parties) and far right (Hitler and Mussolini’s persecution and expulsion of Communist, Socialist, and Democratic opponents) beginning in the 1920s. Silencing political opponents is a key element in how an extremist government both seizes and exercises control.
Hitler and the Nazi Party had won a large majority of votes, but not an overwhelming one, in the 1932 election. This allowed for Nazi Party members to join the Reichstag in large numbers, but also put Hitler in a position to become Chancellor. Under German parliamentary law, the composition of the Reichstag was equivalent to the number of seats won through elections. By the end of 1932, the Nazi Party held only thirty-seven percent of the seats in the Reichstag, but still had a larger block than any other party. The Nazi Party was balanced by roughly sixty-three percent of the non-Fascist elements of German society, but that sixty-three percent was divided between a number of different, disagreeing, parties.
The German Communist Party (KPD) was a cornerstone opposition party against the Nazis before and after the election. While possessing only around seventeen percent of the Reichstag members after November 1932, the KPD had major blocks of supporters throughout Germany. Because of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, fear of a communist takeover of Germany had been a constant specter for the Weimer Republic. Most moderate political parties, and even the German Socialist Party (SPD), would not openly cooperate with the KPD for legal political reform. The German police and right-wing paramilitary groups, composed of discharged soldiers, known as Friekorps ( Free Corps), crushed the Spartacist Uprisings in 1919. The Friekorps were supplied with military grade weapons by the German police and were used to put down local uprising and demonstrations.
During the 1920s, the KPD’s paramilitary group, the Red Front Fighters League, and Nazi SA, or Sturmabteilung (Stormtroopers or Storm Detachment) engaged in vicious, and oftentimes deadly, street clashes throughout Germany. The political instability of the Weimar Republic was matched by the inefficiency and biased enforcement by most of the German police forces. Those police forces would investigate the street fights and make arrests but would usually allow members of the Nazi Party and other far-right paramilitary groups off with a warning and imprison the KPD members involved.
Hitler did not have ultimate control over Germany in 1932 and early 1933. Paul von Hindenburg, a former World War I Field Marshal, was President of the Weimer Republic. Hindenburg and his Vice Chancellor, Hans von Papen, were not impressed by Hitler and the Nazi Party’s electoral victories. Both viewed Hitler as an aberration and political opportunist who sought to upend German society. Even though Hitler had run against Hindenburg for the presidency and lost, he was able to become Chancellor due to the Nazi Party’s majority in the Reichstag. As a means of limiting Hitler’s power, Hindenburg was persuaded by powerful industrialists, the German military, and others that Hitler could be “contained” by having a mixed cabinet who would curb his radical political aims. In hopes of maintaining stability amidst the Great Depression, Hindenburg finally relented and met with Hitler to hammer out a coalition government.
Hitler and the Nazi Party were yet able to implement many of their more radical and destructive policies until after the Reichstag Fire. Most Germans did not initially buy into the Nazi programs for the expulsion, and later extermination, of “non-desirable” elements of society (German Jews, LGBTQ people, etc.). Hitler had to pretend to be a democratically elected leader and work across party lines to pass any legislation.
The other political parties in Germany attempted to work with the new Chancellor and hoped that his past fiery, and often violent, rhetoric would not destroy democracy. The KPD was not fooled by Hitler’s attempt at showing his mature side. They had been continually attacked before, during, and after the elections of 1932. The German Socialist Party, or SPD, was also wary of Hitler and the Nazi Party. They shared no love for either the Nazi Party[1] nor the KPD. Even though both the SPD and KPD in theory were politically left-oriented, the SPD regularly condemned the KPD and actively sought its suppression. The Center Party, which was the one of the largest political parties in Germany, sought to cooperate with the Nazi Party and Hitler for the sake of ending the crippling economic effects of the Great Depression.[2]
The effects of the Great Depression were a major reason why the Nazi Party had won such a commanding stake in the Reichstag. German unemployment hovered around forty percent, and that economic despair was exploited by the Nazi Party because they provided targets for why the economy had crashed: ineffective political parties, and their leaders, had betrayed the German people. The Nazis used the fact that the Weimar Republic had never been well received by many in Germany. The myth of the “Stab in the Back,” the betrayal of regular Germans by communists, socialists, democrats, and Jews, was created because of the dissatisfaction of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler’s election was seen by some as a remedy for this “disastrous” governing.
Beginning in early February 1933, Hitler sought legislation that would destroy opposition to his rule through attacks on the German press and unfriendly political parties. On 4 February 1933, the Decree for the Protection of the German People effectively declared any opposition newspaper, radio station, and eventually political party harmful to the German people, and moved towards naming these as “enemies of the state.”
The Decree was quickly used to suppress the political opponents Hitler had targeted throughout his early career: German Communists. An opportunity for the destruction of the KPD happened on the night of 27 February 1933. A witness heard windows being broken in the Reichstag building and shortly thereafter a fire broke out. Even though the Dutch anarchist named Marinus van der Lubbe was quickly arrested and ultimately charged with the arson, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels flooded the airwaves and newsstands declaring the German Communists were beginning a revolt by which they sought to overthrow the government.
Hitler went to Hindenburg and convinced him to declare a state of emergency, which he did. This allowed Hitler and his cabinet to create what would become known as the Reichstag Fire Decree, thereby suspending the right to assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, as well as removing all restraints on police investigations.
With this new law supporting his efforts, Hitler went to Ernst Rohm, Herman Goring, and Heinrich Himmler insisting that the SA and SS round up KPD leaders throughout Germany. They worked hand in hand with German police throughout the country that night arresting the leadership of the KPD, as well as thousands of others who opposed Hitler and the Nazis. The German police had maintained dossiers about the KPD and its members, putting them in a position to enable in the purge of the German communists.
Regional and local German communist headquarters were raided and destroyed. The newspapers that supported communist ideologies were targeted and destroyed that night as well. Temporary prisons sprang up all over Germany on night of 27 February: abandoned factories, schools, military academies, etc. were transformed. These first German concentration camps were created to hold communists (many of whom would be still be in prison when World War II ended in 1945). Thousands of German communists were arrested while others fled their homes and the country itself.
On 28 February, the frenzied attacks sparked by the Reichstag Fire calmed into an uneasy and ominous future. Hitler attempted to show restraint and some horror in public regarding the excesses of the SA, but privately he was elated: his largest opposition party had been shattered. The KPD blamed Hitler and the Nazis for starting the fire, but this only made them look more guilty. Hitler did not blame the KPD itself, rather he let his Propaganda Minister Goebbels lay the blame on the communists. Since freedom of the press had been revoked by the Reichstag Fire Decree, very few German newspapers could, or were willing to, argue the communists’ case.
The final nail in the coffin for German democracy came on 23 March 1933 when a temporary location for the Reichstag was established at Kroll Opera House in Berlin. This was a sham meeting as only three political parties could enter the Opera House in full strength: the Nazi Party, the Center Party, and the German National People’s Party (a small right-wing group). The KPD could not even attempt to send representatives, as the party had been outlawed. In addition, the building was surrounded by SA stormtroopers who refused to allow most members of the SPD from entering as well. The vote went, unsurprisingly, in Hitler’s favor: he passed the Enabling Act. The Enabling Act allowed Hitler to pass any legislation he wanted without having to go to the Reichstag for approval.
Shortly after this the SPD disbanded itself and would no longer meet in the Reichstag. The Center Party voted to give Hitler permanent dictatorial powers and then voted itself vote of existence. It would take twelve brutal years of Nazi rule before the Center Party, KPD, and SPD reemerged from the ashes.
—Jason
[1] The addition of the word “Socialist” to the German Workers Party, or NSDAP, was simply to draw more moderate voters to the party on 24 February 1920.
[2] The Center Party was a moderate party and did not generally agree with either the far-left or far-right.
For Further Reading
Richard Evans, Coming of the Third Reich (Volume One in The History of the Third Reich Trilogy).
Richard Evans, The Third Reich in Power (Volume Two in The History of the Third Reich Trilogy).
Richard Evans, The Third Reich at War (Volume Three in The History of the Third Reich).
Benjamin Carter Hett, The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic.
Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889-1936, Hubris.
Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945, Nemesis.