Before we start communist terror, let’s respond with our own terror
The Reich President’s decree of 28 February 1933 on the protection of the people and the state was issued before the Nazis and Adolf Hitler came to full power. The document suspended half a dozen articles of the Weimar Constitution and allowed any restrictions on personal freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the secrecy of postal, telegraphic, and telephone communications. Restrictions on the issuance of search warrants and orders to seize property were lifted. Officially, this was done in accordance with Article 48 of the constitution, which allows emergency measures in case of a critical threat to the stability of the state, but the decree was not accompanied by written restrictions and therefore in fact everything was allowed for the sake of it. a target arbitrarily interpreted.
President Paul von Hindenburg had to sign the decree after the fire broke out in the Reichstag the day before. To this day, no one knows why it actually caught fire, but the Nazis quickly made up a story to help them seize power.
In the federal elections of November 1932, the Nazis received 33.1% of the vote; This rate was higher than that of the Social Democrats (20.4%) and the Communists (16.9%), but it was not enough to form a parliamentary majority and form a government. The government therefore turned out to be a coalition, and on January 30, von Hindenburg appointed its chairman, Hitler, as leader of the largest party. The first action of the future Fuhrer was a call to dissolve the Reichstag and repeat elections on March 5: the Nazis were not interested in democratic power as part of a coalition, their ideology implied a complete dictatorship without any restrictions.
Chancellor Hitler promised to save the people from communism, and across the country storm troops began destroying union and Communist Party offices and beating and killing left-wing politicians. In the second half of February, terror spread in a milder form to the Social Democrats, former enemies of the communists who had suppressed the Spartacist uprising in 1919. (“Spartacus League” is a Marxist organization based in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century) and murdered Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg without trial.
Therefore, when the Reichstag burned down, Hitler felt his victory. While standing in front of the fire and trying to shout, aforementioned: “These non-humans don’t understand that the people are on our side. “They’re stuck in their mouse hole and won’t come out, so of course they don’t hear the crowd cheering.”
The government’s official statement about the fire stated that it signaled the beginning of the communist rebellion and civil war.
“The large-scale robbery in Berlin was planned at four o’clock on Tuesday morning. “It has been determined that as of today, terrorist acts against famous people, private property, and the lives and safety of civilians will begin throughout Germany.” it was said in the notification.
The final push towards absolute power
In practice, Nazi officials did not even need to wait for the February 28 decree to launch state terror. The morning after the fire, dozens of communists were imprisoned, and only then the head of the Prussian Ministry of Internal Affairs (Germany’s largest state) Hermann Goering discussed with his colleagues what legal basis could be used for arrests. Shortly thereafter, the minister authorized shooting to kill in the event of the arrest of political criminals, and also abolished all other rules and procedures for police officers.
About 10,000 people, mostly communists, were arrested in the two weeks after the fire. Ernst Thälmann, head of the Communist Party of Germany, was arrested, and future leaders of East Germany, Wilhelm Pieck and Walter Ulbricht, were exiled. Interestingly, Hitler did not completely ban the KKE, despite the arrest of thousands of its members: he feared that the communists would then start a real uprising. They also needed to win the votes of the Social Democrats in the March elections. Judges and prosecutors were hostile to the KKE, even if they were not Nazis themselves, and therefore the conveyor of sending communists to prisons continued without stopping.
In parallel, the Nazi Party began to merge with the state – stormtroopers in brown shirts patrolled the streets along with the police, large businesses voluntarily and forcibly donated to the NSDAP in the name of the stability of the state, and SA and SS units maintained order in the March elections.
However, in the March vote, the Nazis received only 43.9% of the vote; this was much less than Hitler wanted. The semi-underground communists managed to win 12.3%, but this did not help them because all the deputies were arrested and not allowed to attend a single meeting.
Hitler had to cross the final frontier; to receive extraordinary powers to rule without regard to parliament or any law. 43.9% was not enough for this, but Hitler was able to persuade the head of the Center Party (now Christian Democrats) to support him.
According to one version, Ludwig Kaas accepted this offer in exchange for the security of his party and the protection of the rights of Catholics; According to another version, he was persuaded by stormtroopers who were standing around during the negotiations.
As a result, the head of the Nazis received emergency powers on March 23, 1933, by a vote of 444 to 94 (a significant part of the opposition could not attend the meeting). From that moment on, a dictatorship was officially established in Germany, as it entered the history books. The state was now subordinated to two main tasks: to conquer world domination and to bring the German people into line with the racial ideals of the Nazis.
Why did the Germans agree to hand over power to a fanatic?
German historians see two sets of reasons for Hitler’s rise to power.
The German people were deeply affected by the defeat in World War I and the economic hardships of the Great Depression.
In addition, in the military-patriotic environment immediately after the end of the World War, the “stab in the back theory” arose – allegedly the German people did not lose to the Entente on the battlefield, but instead socialist traitors staged a revolution. and forced the country to surrender. Psychiatrists need to analyze this theory, since one of its main proponents is Erich Ludendorff.
He was chief of the German general staff and in October 1918 he personally requested The government was not allowed to make peace under any circumstances until the Allies crossed the front and imposed it unconditionally. The arguments in support of this were the same as those of every military historian who has studied the subject: German divisions suffered huge losses, were exhausted, and massively refused to obey their commanders, and the Entente had just eagerly thrown in hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. fighting to maintain their balance. Almost all residents knew that Germany had failed in the war, but like Ludendorff, they chose to forget this and pass the responsibility on to abstract traitors.
This theory alone was not sufficient for a definitive victory of Nazism, but since 1929 the world had been in the grip of the Great Economic Depression. People were massively impoverished and lost their jobs, while the Nazis offered simple recipes and answers: the guilty enemies and the Jews are enough to give us the power to solve all the problems and we will avenge the First World. War.
Finally, the second group of reasons played a role: There is no democracy without democrats. Both communists and Nazis saw dictatorship as their goal, in which they could try any means and make any sacrifice. Moderate political parties were demoralized and believed that democracy and the Weimar Republic were worth nothing if they could not respond to the people and overcome the economic crisis. All that remained was to choose between two radical parties, and it is easy to explain why the German elite chose non-communists. His ideas imply the Red Terror, the redistribution of property, the violent restructuring of society – everything seen in Soviet Russia. From this perspective, the Nazis seemed less evil, especially to big businessmen and aristocrats, to whom Hitler appeared to be a bourgeois clown and windbag, incapable of anything serious.
Unfortunately, the whole world was very wrong about him.