On this date eight decades ago, the last gasp of Germany’s post-war Weimar Republic was heard. Assailed from left and right, Communists, Spartacists, Monarchists, and National Socialists, the 14-year Republic fell amidst the torchlight parades in honor of Germany’s new Chancellor, Adolf Hitler. Just three and a half weeks later, the burning of the Reichstag signaled a crisis upon which the new Reich Government would eagerly act. The issue of the so-called “Reichstag Fire Decree”, properly titled Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat (“Order of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State”), quickly followed:
On the basis of Article 48 paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the German Reich, the following is ordered in defense against Communist state-endangering acts of violence:
Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom [habeas corpus], freedom of (opinion) expression, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications. Warrants for House searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.
Next, of course, came the dissolution of the Reichstag under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, all but cementing Adolf Hitler as dictator of Germany. Signed by the elderly Hindenburg, whose death in August of 1934 allowed Hitler to subsume the title of Reich President, the so-called Enabling Act began twelve years of virtual martial law inside Germany. Hitler, of course, soothed those who were alarmed by promising restraint:
“The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures…The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one.”
A mania to act, to “do something”. Taking advantage of a crisis for political gain. Assigning collective guilt to a segment of society. A state-controlled media eager to help make the case that political opponents represented domestic enemies. An unchecked overreach of government power toward its people and the dissolution of civil liberties. And, finally, in the late summer of the next year, complete subservience of the Army and its leadership, whose oath had previously been to the Constitution of the Republic now dissolved.
Eighty years ago today, it all began in earnest.