silenced and neutralised all opposition to estab-
lish a totalitarian regime. The destruction of
Weimar democracy, and the civic rights that were
guaranteed to all German citizens was accom-
plished behind a legal façade which stilled con-
sciences of all those in the state who should have
resisted. The reasons for the lack of opposition
had their roots in the past. The elites who led the
German state – the majority of administrators,
civil servants, the army, the churches too – had
followed a long tradition of defaming democracy;
Hitler’s anti-Semitism and his attacks on minori-
ties were nothing new in their thinking. All the
more honour to the minority who refused to
accept the changes and actively resisted or left the
country. Almost half the German electorate was
prepared to support Hitler in the hope of better
times, to be brought about by a ‘national revolu-
tion’ and an end to Weimar and disunity.
The Nazis occupied only three posts in the
coalition Cabinet. Hitler was chancellor; Hermann
Göring was placed in charge of Prussia as minister
without portfolio and Prussian minister of the
interior under vice-chancellor Papen; and Wilhelm
Frick was minister of the interior. The government
posts had been carefully arranged so that the army
and the Foreign Ministry, as well as other key min-
istries, were not under Nazi control. Papen and the
Nationalists soon discovered that Hitler was not
inhibited from exercising control by the constitu-
tional niceties that had been devised to restrain
him. This was no Weimar coalition government!
The easy, almost effortless path to total dicta-
torial power makes melancholy reading. The
setting alight of the Reichstag on 27 February
1933, probably by the unbalanced Dutchman van
der Lubbe alone – though there can be no cer-
tainty – became the pretext for an emergency
decree signed by Hindenburg suspending per-
sonal liberties and political rights.
Hitler had insisted on new elections as a con-
dition of accepting office, intending to gain an
absolute majority, and he meant to make sure of
it. Accordingly, despite Papen’s supposed senior-
ity, Göring seized control of Prussia, which com-
prised two-thirds of Germany, and under cover of
the emergency decree terrorised the opponents of
the Nazis. After an electoral campaign of unpar-
alleled violence and intimidation, with Joseph
Goebbels manipulating press and radio to help
secure a Nazi victory, the Nazis just failed to
gain the expected overall majority. Their votes
rose to over 17 million; the Socialists held on to
over 7 million votes and the Communists, despite
the Nazi campaign, polled 4.8 million votes; the
Centre Party secured nearly 4.5 million and the
Nationalists (DNVP) a disappointing 3.1 million.
But, together with the Nationalists, the Nazis
could muster a majority against all other parties,
sufficient to govern with the support of the
Reichstag. This was obviously not Hitler’s aim.
He sought dictatorial power and a change of the
constitution, but this required a two-thirds
majority and shrewdly he wished to proceed in a
pseudo-legal way to assure himself of the support
of the country afterwards.
Not a single communist deputy of the 81
elected could take his seat. All were already in the
hands of the Gestapo or being hunted down.
More than twenty of the Socialists also were
under arrest or prevented from attending. Still
Hitler needed the support of the Nationalists
and so to reassure them and the army and the
president, he staged an opening ceremony of
the Reichstag in the shrine of monarchical
Junkerdom, the old garrison church of Potsdam
where Frederick the Great lay buried. But even
with the communists prevented from voting and
the Nationalists voting on his side, Hitler still
lacked the two-thirds majority he needed. It will
always be to the shame of the members of the
once great Centre Party that they tempered their
principles and threw in their lot with Hitler, and
agreed to vote for his dictatorial law. They lost
the will to resist, and the leadership later came to
an agreement to secure Catholic interests. It was
left to the Socialist Party alone to vote against
Hitler’s so-called Enabling Law, which acquired
its two-thirds majority on 23 March 1933 with
the storm troopers howling vengeance outside
the Reichstag on anyone who dared to oppose
Hitler’s will.
Now Hitler was able to put his aims into prac-
tice with far less restraint. Under the sinister appli-
cation of the term Gleischaltung (coordination
or, literally, a switch used to bring one current in