World War II Day by Day

Berlin, Germany · February 28, 1933

On this date in 1933, with the Reichstag (German parliament building) still smol­dering following the fire set by 24-year-old Dutch Com­munist Marinus van der Lubbe the day before, Ger­man Chan­cellor Adolf Hitler per­suaded 87-year-old Pre­si­dent Paul von Hinden­burg to sign the Reichs­tag Fire Edict. The emer­gency decree sus­pended key civil liberty sec­tions of Ger­many’s Wei­mar con­sti­tu­tion, among them the right to free expres­sion of opin­ion, in­cluding a free press, and free­dom of assem­bly and asso­ci­a­tion. The signa­ture of the ailing, senes­cent Hinden­burg quickly con­verted Ger­many from a par­lia­men­tary demo­cracy led by a would-be dic­ta­tor into an abso­lute total­i­tar­ian state. It happened so fast—in less than a month. With par­lia­men­tary elec­tions sched­uled for March 5, five days away, Hitler, who had dis­solved parlia­ment two days after being named chan­cellor on Janu­ary 30, ordered the arrests of thou­sands of opposi­tion Com­munists, in­cluding the party’s head, and rank and file Social Demo­crats, whose leader­ship had already fled to the safety of the Czech capi­tal, Prague. Hitler’s para­military SA (Sturm­ab­teilung, or “Storm Detach­ment”) goons, nick­named “brown­shirts,” wreaked havoc every­where they could, breaking into homes and busi­ness all across the coun­try and beating and tor­turing the vic­tims they dragged out and jailed. On March 5 Nazi organi­za­tions “moni­tored” polling places. Despite their best efforts to emas­cu­late and intim­i­date their oppo­nents, the Nazis failed to gain an ab­so­lute major­ity of the 39.6 mil­lion votes cast, gar­nering just under 44 per­cent to control 288 seats in the Reichs­tag; the Nazis needed the con­ser­vative Ger­man National Peo­ple’s Party, which had 52 seats as well as posts in Hitler’s coali­tion cabi­net, to govern the coun­try. To for­mally and legally place the whole power of govern­ment in his hands, Hitler on March 23 urged the Reichs­tag to enact and Hinden­burg to sign the En­abling Act (Er­maech­tigungs­gesetz). The act, known formally as Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Nation, granted Hitler’s cabi­net the autho­rity to en­act laws with­out the partic­i­pa­tion of the Reichs­tag or his coali­tion part­ners. Thus using the tools of parlia­men­tary demo­cracy, Hitler gained un­restricted free­dom to ban all poli­tical parties except his own and to ter­rorize, arrest, beat, im­prison, torture, and kill any and all of his opponents.

Tightening the Nazis’ Grip on Germany, February and March 1933

Above: Before the Reichstag burned: Joseph Ferdinand Klemm’s painting of the Ger­man Reichs­tag and the Bis­marck Memo­rial in the Koenigs­platz (“Square of the King”), Berlin, 1910. After the fire Reichs­tag members met in the Kroll Opera House (Kroll­oper), at the oppo­site end of Koenigs­platz, which is now a large grassy expanse called Platz der Republik (“Square of the Republic”). Both the Bismarck Memorial and Kroll Opera House are gone.

Left: Tasked with keeping peace and order on election day, March 5, 1933, a Berlin police­man and a Nazi SS (Schutz­staffel) Hilfs­polizist (literally, “help­ful police­man”) walk the streets of the capi­tal. These March elec­tions were the last freely contested elec­tions held until the col­lapse of Hitler’s Third Reich in May 1945. Between early March and mid-July 1933, Hitler banned all poli­ti­cal par­ties except his own Nazi Party, formalizing the ban on July 14 by promul­gating a law making the Nazi Party the only legally permitted party in the country.

Right: Hitler speaking to Reichstag members prior to their “dis­em­powering” them­selves by passing the En­abling Act on March 23, 1933. In part because Hitler’s Brown­shirts swarmed in­side and out­side the Reichstag cham­ber, the bill met little resis­tance. The final vote was 444 supporting the En­abling Act to 94 opposed (all center-left Social Demo­crats). By then the Com­munist Party (the third largest party in the March 5 elec­tions) had been banned and 26 SPD (Social Demo­crat) depu­ties had been arrested or were in hiding. From that date on, the defanged Reichs­tag only met inter­mit­tently until the end of the war, held no debates, en­acted few laws, and mainly served as a stage for Hitler’s set piece speeches. Since 1992 a memo­rial to 96 Reichs­tag mem­bers mur­dered by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945 has a place of promi­nence next to the rebuilt Reichs­tag. The mur­dered mem­bers were chiefly Com­munists (42) and Socialists (40), and their murders took place in concen­tration camps such as Sachsen­hausen (11), Buchen­wald (8), Bergen-Belsen (7), Dachau (7), Ravens­brueck (4), and Maut­hausen (4), to name the better known camps.

From Reichstag Fire, February 27, 1933, to the Enabling Act, March 23, 1933, and Its Immediate Consequences (You May Want to Mute the Horst Wessel Song [aka “Die Fahne hoch”], the Nazi Party’s Anthem)