Enabling Act of 1933

Although with the distance that time gives, it seems to us today that the Nazis quickly gained power in Germany, the truth is that they took, and even once in charge of the government, they had to skip the laws and mold them to their needs for the force to achieve the dictatorial dominance they sought.

On that road, the Law Enabling 1933 played an essential role.

The Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich, title translated as Law to solve the dangers that threaten the People and the State, although better known as the Enabling Law of 1933, it allowed the government and the chancellor (occupied respectively at that time by the NSDAP and Adolf Hitler) the passing of laws without going through the parliament.

Anyone can see that a government that can make and break at will without going through a parliament where it can be challenged by the opposition, it becomes dictatorial.

In order to pass the new legislation that gave absolute power to Hitler and his henchmen, the Nazis needed the votes of two-thirds of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in favor.

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Although even with the results of the elections of March 1933, for which the leadership of the KPD had been beheaded, the party German Communist, the National Socialists could not, they managed through pacts and a ruse to reach the number of seats necessary.

The negotiations consisted of tilting the DNVP, a party of ideology nationalist very close to the NSDAP to vote in favor of the bill, and to negotiate with the Catholics of the Zentrum formation I respect to religious and social principles for the German Catholic community.

The ruse I referred to earlier consisted in suppressing, by decree, the need for a minimum quorum of Members present for the vote to be valid.

As the deputies of the social democratic party, the SPD, had planned to absent themselves from parliament to avoid a enough quorum to validate the approval of the new law, the Nazi ruse made this ploy not valid for nothing.

Finally, the Enabling Law was approved with almost 85% of the votes in favor, well above the 66% necessary thanks to all these factors explained. The parties that supported Hitler, like the SPD that had not, were banned in June 1933, and the founding of new parties was also banned.

In practice, the Enabling Law of 1933 gave full powers to the government and left the parliament in a place that was hardly symbolic.

In fact, the Reichstag building itself was almost abandoned to its fate, used during the war as a hospital and as a factory. of ammunition, without any will to re-enable it as a parliament that, rather than not being necessary, would have been annoying.

The law itself allowed, in its second article, that the German government could pass laws that were against those dictated by the Constitution of Weimar (which, because of this, was not officially repealed, but simply languished like wet paper), always and when these were not against the will of the Reichstag (which we have already said was a puppet in Nazi hands... How could he contradict the chancellor ???).

The fourth article gave the government a wide berth to close agreements and treaties with other countries that became mandatory. compliance for the country.

The role of the President, occupied by the octogenarian Paul von Hindenburg, did not lose powers.

Hitler knew that Hindenburg, whose state of health was very weak as well as being highly manipulable, would not suppose any threat and, in fact, the old military man would die the following year. Upon his death, the Führer I would add the obligations of the office of President of the country to those of the Chancellor, assimilating both positions in his person.

Now, nothing could stop the Nazis from dragging the world into a warlike conflagration of Dantean proportions.

Photo: Fotolia - kuco

Issues in Enabling Law of 1933