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 gained full power. The document suspended several provisions of the Weimar Constitution and allowed broad restrictions on personal freedoms, speech, press, assembly, and the secrecy of communications by mail, telegraph, and telephone. It lifted limits on issuing search warrants and orders to seize property. Officially, it cited Article 48 as the basis for emergency measures, but in practice no written limits accompanied the decree, making it possible to apply measures arbitrarily for the sake of control. The decree set a tone that officials could interpret in any way that seemed necessary.
President Paul von Hindenburg was compelled to sign the decree after the Reichstag fire the day before. The fire remains a subject of debate to this day, but the Nazi leadership quickly spun a narrative that helped them consolidate power.
In the federal elections of November 1932, the Nazi Party won 33.1 percent of the vote. That share exceeded the Social Democrats at 20.4 percent and the Communists at 16.9 percent, but it fell short of a parliamentary majority. The result was a coalition government, and on January 30, von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as the leader of the largest party. The first move of the future dictator was a call to dissolve the Reichstag and hold new elections on March 5. The Nazi project rejected the idea of sharing power within a democratic framework; their ideology favored a total dictatorship without legal constraints.
The Chancellor promised to shield the population from communism. Across the country, stormtroopers began raiding union and Communist Party offices, beating and killing left-wing politicians. In the latter half of February, terror extended to Social Democrats, former opponents of the communists who had crushed the Spartacist uprising in 1919. The Spartacus League, a Marxist group active at the time, had murdered Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg outside of due process.
When the Reichstag fire occurred, Hitler felt his political capital rise. Standing before the blaze and trying to project calm, he asserted that those who opposed him would not understand that the people stood with his movement.
The government’s official statement framed the fire as the start of a communist rebellion and civil war.
An official communique claimed that a large-scale conspiracy in Berlin had been planned for that Tuesday morning. It warned that terrorist acts against prominent individuals, private property, and the safety of civilians would begin across Germany from that day forward.
The final push toward absolute power
In practice, state terror did not await the February 28 decree. The day after the fire, dozens of communists were imprisoned, and Hermann Goering, head of the Prussian Interior Ministry, discussed with colleagues the legal grounds for arrests. Soon after, the minister authorized lethal force in the event of the arrest of political criminals and removed many checks and procedures governing police action.
About 10,000 people, mostly communists, were detained in the two weeks after the fire. Ernst Thälmann, leader of the Communist Party, was arrested, and future East German leaders Wilhelm Pieck and Walter Ulbricht were exiled. Interestingly, Hitler did not ban the Communist Party entirely, fearing that a total purge might provoke a real uprising. He also needed to win Social Democrat votes in the March elections. Judges and prosecutors remained hostile to the Communist party even if they were not Nazis, so the process of removing communist influence continued largely unabated.
Meanwhile, the Nazi Party began to fuse with the state. Brown-shirt stormtroopers stood alongside police in the streets, major businesses contributed to the NSDAP in the name of stability, and SA and SS units maintained order during the March elections.
In the March vote, the Nazis received 43.9 percent of the vote, a share far from what they desired. The semi-underground communists managed 12.3 percent, but most of their deputies were arrested and barred from attending sessions. Hitler sought extraordinary powers to rule beyond parliamentary or legal constraints. While 43.9 percent did not provide an outright majority, he managed to secure the backing of the Center Party, then led by Ludwig Kaas, by promising protections for the party and Catholic rights. Some accounts place Kaas under pressure from stormtroopers who stood nearby during the negotiations.
As a result, Hitler obtained emergency powers on 23 March 1933 by a vote of 444 to 94, with a sizable portion of the opposition absent. From that moment, a dictatorship was formalized, with the state devoted to conquering power and aligning the German people with Nazi racial ideals.
Why did the Germans accept power for a fanatic?
German historians identify two broad sets of reasons behind Hitler’s ascent.
The nation carried the sting of defeat in World War I and suffered through the Great Depression, with widespread economic hardship and unemployment shaping a desperate mood.
Additionally, in the immediate postwar climate, the “stab in the back” myth took hold. It claimed that socialist traitors had betrayed Germany and forced surrender, rather than military defeat. The proponents of this theory, including former general staff leader Erich Ludendorff, argued that peace could not be achieved while the Allies maintained their terms. The argument leveraged both wartime fatigue and a sense of reverberating national humiliation.
This mindset mattered, but alone it did not guarantee a Nazi victory. Since 1929 the global economy had collapsed into the Great Depression, leaving people impoverished and jobless. The Nazis offered simple, digestible remedies, blaming minorities and political enemies for the country’s ills, and insisting that restoration of national pride would come through decisive action.
A second factor involved the political environment. With democrats disenchanted and moderate parties demoralized, many voters saw democracy as ineffective in solving the crisis. Both communists and Nazis harbored dictatorship as their long-term aim, but the Nazis appeared more palatable to big business and conservative elites, who preferred a strong, orderly regime to chaos. The perception that communists posed a greater threat helped tilt support away from the left, and the Nazi movement leveraged that fear to build power.
In the end, the world misread Hitler, misread the stakes, and underestimated the pull of a radical, totalizing project that promised quick, dramatic transformation.