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      The Enabling Act of 1933 (German: Ermächtigungsgesetz), officially titled Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich (lit. 'Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich'), was a law that gave the German Cabinet – most importantly, the Chancellor – the power to make and enforce laws without the involvement of the Reichstag or the Weimar President Paul von Hindenburg, leading to the rise of Nazi Germany. Critically, the Enabling Act allowed the Chancellor to bypass the system of checks and balances in the constitution.
      In January 1933, Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, was appointed as Chancellor, the head of the German government. On 27 February, the Reichstag building of the German parliament caught fire. Acting as chancellor, Hitler immediately accused the Communists of being the perpetrators of the fire and claimed the arson was part of a larger effort to overthrow the German government. Using this justification, Hitler persuaded Hindenburg to enact the Reichstag Fire Decree. The decree abolished most civil liberties, including the right to speak, assemble and protest, and the right to due process.
      Using the decree, the Nazis declared a state of emergency and began a violent crackdown against their political enemies. As Hitler cleared the political arena of anyone willing to challenge him, he contended that the decree was insufficient, and required sweeping policies that would safeguard his emerging dictatorship. Hitler submitted a proposal to the Reichstag that, if passed, would immediately grant all legislative powers to the cabinet and, by extension, to Hitler. That would, in effect, allow Hitler's government to act without regard to the constitution.
      Despite Hitler's government having outlawed the Communist Party and repressed other opponents, the passage of the Enabling Act was not a certainty. Hitler allied with other nationalist and conservative factions, and they steamrolled the Social Democrats in the March 1933 German federal election. Germans voted in an atmosphere of extreme voter intimidation perpetrated by the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) militia. However, contrary to popular belief, Hitler did not win an outright majority in the Reichstag, because the majority of Germans did not vote for the Nazi Party.
      The election was a setback for the Nazis, but it did not stop the ratification of the Enabling Act. In order to obtain the passage of the act, the Nazis implemented a strategy of coercion, bribery, and manipulation. Hitler removed any remaining political obstacles to the coalition of conservatives, nationalists and Nazis instituting the Nazi dictatorship. Once the Enabling Act was introduced, it was hastily passed by the Reichstag and Reichsrat on 23 March 1933. Later that day, the Enabling Act was signed into law by President Paul von Hindenburg. Unless extended by the Reichstag, the act would expire after four years. With the Enabling Act in force, the cabinet (in practice, the chancellor) could pass and enforce laws without legislative oversight.
      The combined effect of the Enabling Act and the Reichstag Fire Decree transformed Hitler's government into a legal dictatorship and laid the groundwork for his totalitarian regime. By July, the NSDAP was the only legally permitted party in Germany. From 1933 onward, the Reichstag effectively became the rubber stamp parliament that Hitler desired. The German conservative elite, including the vice-chancellor Franz von Papen, miscalculated the true intention of the Nazis to monopolize state power, and were soon marginalized by the Nazi regime. By mid-March, the government began sending communists, trade union leaders, and other political dissidents to Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp.
      The passing of the Enabling Act marked the formal transition from the democratic Weimar Republic to the totalitarian Nazi dictatorship. From 1933 onward, Hitler continued to consolidate and centralize power via purges and propaganda. In 1934, Hitler and Heinrich Himmler began removing non-Nazi officials, together with Hitler's rivals within the Nazi Party, culminating in the Night of the Long Knives. Once the purges of the Nazi Party and German government concluded, Hitler had total control over Germany. Empowered by the Enabling Act, Hitler could begin German rearmament and achieve his aggressive foreign policy aims, which ultimately resulted in World War II.
      The Enabling Act was renewed twice but was rendered moot when Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies in 1945, and it was repealed by a law passed by the occupying powers in September of that year. The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany of 1949 stipulated that only bodies that were constitutionally endowed with legislative power could enact laws, so the German constitution does not allow the adoption of legislation such as the 1933 Enabling Act.


      Background


      After being appointed Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, Hitler asked President von Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag. A general election was scheduled for 5 March 1933. On 20 February 1933, at the official residence of Hermann Göring in the Reichstag Presidential Palace, a secret meeting was held, involving Hitler and 20 to 25 industrialists, aimed at financing the election campaign of the Nazi Party (NSDAP).
      The burning of the Reichstag was depicted by the Nazis as the beginning of a communist revolution, and Hitler urged Hindenburg to issue the presidential Reichstag Fire Decree. The decree significantly curbed civil rights for German citizens, and suspended freedom of press and habeas corpus rights, just five days before the election. Hitler used the decree to have the office of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) raided and its representatives arrested, effectively eliminating them as a political force.
      Although they received five million more votes than in the previous election, the Nazis failed to gain an absolute majority in parliament, and depended on the 8% of seats won by their coalition partner, the German National People's Party (DNVP), to reach 52% in total. To free himself from that dependency, Hitler had the cabinet, in its first post-election meeting on 15 March, draw up plans for an Enabling Act which would give the cabinet legislative power for four years. The Nazis devised the Enabling Act to gain complete political power without the need of the support of a majority in the Reichstag, and without the need to bargain with their coalition partners. The Nazi regime was unique compared to its contemporaries, most famously Joseph Stalin's because, unlike Stalin, Hitler did not seek to draft a completely new constitution. Technically, even after the Enabling Act, the Weimar Constitution of 1919 remained in effect, only being nullified when Germany surrendered in 1945, at the end of World War II, and ceased to be a sovereign state.


      = Preparations and negotiations

      =
      The Enabling Act allowed the National Ministry (essentially the cabinet) to enact legislation, including laws deviating from or altering the constitution, without the consent of the Reichstag. Because this law allowed for departures from the constitution, it was itself considered a constitutional amendment. Thus, its passage required the support of two-thirds of those deputies who were present and voting. A quorum of two-thirds of the entire Reichstag was required to be present in order to call up the bill.
      The Social Democrats (SPD) and the Communists (KPD) were expected to vote against the Act. The government had already arrested all Communist and some Social Democrat deputies under the Reichstag Fire Decree. The Nazis expected the parties representing the middle class, the Junkers and business interests to vote for the measure, as they had grown weary of the instability of the Weimar Republic and would not dare to resist.
      Hitler believed that with the Centre Party members' votes, he would get the necessary two-thirds majority. Hitler negotiated with the Centre Party's chairman, Ludwig Kaas, a Catholic priest, finalizing an agreement by 22 March. Kaas agreed to support the Act in exchange for assurances of the Centre Party's continued existence, the protection of Catholics' civil and religious liberties, religious schools and the retention of civil servants affiliated with the Centre Party. It has also been suggested that some members of the SPD were intimidated by the presence of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) throughout the proceedings.
      Some historians, such as Klaus Scholder, have maintained that Hitler also promised to negotiate a Reichskonkordat with the Holy See, a treaty that formalized the position of the Catholic Church in Germany on a national level. Kaas was a close associate of Cardinal Pacelli, then Vatican Secretary of State (and later Pope Pius XII). Pacelli had been pursuing a German concordat as a key policy for some years, but the instability of Weimar governments, as well as the opposition of some parties to a treaty, had blocked the project. The day after the Enabling Act vote, Kaas went to Rome in order to, in his own words, "investigate the possibilities for a comprehensive understanding between church and state". No evidence has surfaced for a link between the Enabling Act and the Reichskonkordat signed on 20 July 1933.


      Text


      As with most of the laws passed in the process of Gleichschaltung, the Enabling Act is quite short, especially considering its implications. The full text, in German and English, follows:

      Articles 1 and 4 gave the government the right to draw up the budget, approve treaties, and enact any laws whatsoever without input from the Reichstag. By the rules of pre-1933 German legal interpretation, and post-1945 if such a law were not now unconstitutional, this means that such laws are put to vote in the Cabinet and there decided by majority vote, which was not followed (see the position of the Chancellor in Article 3). In the years immediately preceding, the government had relied on Article 48 emergency decrees; those had to be decided by the President; all laws issued in the regular manner were not decided but still enacted by the President. In the passing of Enabling-Act-based laws, the President had no role to play at all, thus creating, until Hitler effectively became President in 1934, the unique situation in German history that laws were passed entirely without any contribution by the head of state.


      Passage



      Debate within the Centre Party continued until the day of the vote, 23 March 1933, with Kaas advocating voting in favour of the act, referring to an upcoming written guarantee from Hitler, while former Chancellor Heinrich Brüning called for a rejection of the Act. The majority sided with Kaas, and Brüning agreed to maintain party cohesion by voting for the Act.
      The Reichstag, led by its president, Hermann Göring, changed its rules of procedure to make it easier to pass the bill. Under the Weimar Constitution, a quorum of two-thirds of the entire Reichstag membership was required to be present in order to bring up a constitutional amendment bill. In this case, 432 of the Reichstag's 647 deputies would have normally been required for a quorum; Göring reduced the quorum to 378 by not counting the 81 KPD deputies. Despite the virulent rhetoric directed against the Communists, the Nazis did not formally ban the KPD right away. Not only did they fear a violent uprising but they also hoped the KPD's presence on the ballot would siphon off votes from the SPD; however, it was an open secret that the KPD deputies would never be allowed to take their seats, and they were thrown in jail as quickly as the police could track them down. Courts began taking the line that since the Communists were responsible for the fire, KPD membership was an act of treason. Thus, for all intents and purposes, the KPD was banned as of 6 March, the day after the election.
      Göring declared that any deputy who was "absent without excuse" was to be considered as present, in order to overcome obstructions. Leaving nothing to chance, the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to detain several SPD deputies. A few others saw the writing on the wall and fled into exile. Later that day, the Reichstag assembled under intimidating circumstances, with SA men swarming inside and outside the chamber. Hitler's speech, which emphasised the importance of Christianity in German culture, was aimed particularly at appeasing the Centre Party's sensibilities and incorporated Kaas' requested guarantees almost verbatim.
      Kaas gave a speech, voicing his party's support for the bill amid "concerns put aside", while Brüning notably remained silent. Only SPD chairman Otto Wels spoke against the Act, declaring that the proposed bill could not "destroy ideas which are eternal and indestructible". Kaas had still not received the written constitutional guarantees he had negotiated but, with the assurance it was being "typed up", voting began. Kaas never received the promised letter.
      At that stage, the majority of deputies already supported the bill, and any deputies who might have been reluctant to vote in favour were intimidated by the SA troops surrounding the meeting. In the end, all parties except the SPD voted in favour of the Enabling Act. With the KPD banned and 26 SPD deputies arrested or in hiding, the final tally was 444 in favour of the Enabling Act against 94 (all Social Democrats) opposed. The Reichstag had adopted the Enabling Act with the support of 83% of the deputies. The session took place under such intimidating conditions that, even if all SPD deputies had been present, it would have still passed with 78.7% support. In the evening of the same day, the Reichsrat also gave its approval, unanimously and without prior discussion. The Act was then signed into law by President Hindenburg, with Hitler as Chancellor, Wilhelm Frick as Interior Minister, Konstantin von Neurath as Foreign Minister, and Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk as Finance Minister.


      = Voting on the Enabling Act

      =


      Consequences



      Under the Act, the government had acquired the authority to enact laws without either parliamentary consent or control. Those laws could, with certain exceptions, even deviate from the Constitution. The Act effectively eliminated the Reichstag as an active player in German politics. While the existence of the Reichstag was protected by the Enabling Act, for all intents and purposes it was reduced to a mere stage for Hitler's speeches. It only met sporadically until the end of World War II, held no debates and enacted only a few laws.
      Within three months of the passage of the Enabling Act, all parties except the Nazi Party were banned or pressured into dissolving themselves, followed, on 14 July, by a law that made the Nazi Party the only legally permitted party in the country. With that, Hitler fulfilled what he had promised in earlier campaign speeches: "I set for myself one aim ... to sweep these thirty parties out of Germany!"
      During the negotiations between the government and the political parties, it was agreed that the government should inform the Reichstag parties of legislative measures passed under the Enabling Act. For that purpose, a working committee was set up, co-chaired by Hitler and Centre Party chairman Kaas. However, the committee met only three times, without any major impact, and had become a dead letter even before all other parties were banned. Although the Act had formally given legislative powers to the government as a whole, those powers were, for all intents and purposes, exercised by Hitler himself. After the passage of the Act, there were no longer serious deliberations in Cabinet meetings. After 1934, its meetings became more and more infrequent, and it did not meet in full after 1938.
      Due to the great care that Hitler took to give his dictatorship an appearance of legality, the Enabling Act was renewed twice, first in 1937 and then in 1941. Its renewal was practically assured because all other parties were banned. Voters were presented with a single list of Nazis and Nazi-approved candidates under far-from-secret conditions. In 1942, the Reichstag passed a law giving Hitler power of life and death over every citizen, effectively extending the provisions of the Enabling Act for the duration of the war.
      At least two, and possibly three, of the penultimate measures Hitler took to consolidate his power in 1934 violated the Enabling Act. On 14 February 1934, the Reichsrat, representing the states, was abolished by the "Law on the Abolition of the Reichsrat", even though Article 2 of the Enabling Act specifically protected the existence of both the Reichstag and the Reichsrat. It also can be argued that the Enabling Act had been breached two weeks earlier by the "Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich" (30 January 1934), which dissolved the state parliaments, transferred the states' sovereign powers to the Reich, and effectively rendered the Reichsrat irrelevant. Article 2 stated that laws passed under the Enabling Act could not affect the institutions of either chamber.
      In August 1934, Hindenburg died, and Hitler seized the president's powers for himself in accordance with the Law Concerning the Head of State of the German Reich, passed the previous day, an action confirmed via the 1934 German referendum later that month. Article 2 stated that the president's powers were to remain "undisturbed" (or "unaffected", depending on the translation), which has long been interpreted to mean that it forbade Hitler from tampering with the presidency. A 1932 amendment to the constitution made the president of the High Court of Justice, not the chancellor, first in the line of succession to the presidency—and even then on an interim basis pending new elections, but the Enabling Act provided no remedy for any violations of Article 2, and those actions were never challenged in court. The Enabling Act was formally declared to be repealed by the Allied Control Council in Control Council Law No. 1, following the surrender of Germany at the end of World War II.


      = In the Federal Republic of Germany

      =
      Article 9 of the German Constitution, enacted in 1949, allowed for social groups to be labeled verfassungsfeindlich ("hostile to the constitution") and to be proscribed by the federal government. Political parties can be labeled enemies to the constitution only by the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) according to Art. 21 II. The idea behind the concept is the notion that even a majority rule of the people cannot be allowed to install a totalitarian or autocratic regime such as with the Enabling Act of 1933, thereby violating the principles of the German constitution.


      Validity


      In his 2003 book, The Coming of the Third Reich, British historian Richard J. Evans argued that the Enabling Act was legally invalid. He contended that Göring had no right to arbitrarily reduce the quorum required to bring the bill up for a vote. While the Enabling Act only required the support of two-thirds of those present and voting, two-thirds of the entire Reichstag's membership had to be present in order for the legislature to consider a constitutional amendment. According to Evans, while Göring was not required to count the KPD deputies in order to get the Enabling Act passed, he was required to "recognize their existence" by counting them for purposes of the quorum needed to call it up, making his refusal to do so "an illegal act". Even if the Communists had been present and voting, the session's atmosphere was so intimidating that the Act would have still passed with at least 68.7% support. He also argued that the act's passage in the Reichsrat was tainted by the overthrow of the state governments under the Reichstag Fire Decree; as Evans put it, the states were no longer "properly constituted or represented", making the Enabling Act's passage in the Reichsrat "irregular".


      In popular culture


      The 2003 film Hitler: The Rise of Evil contains a scene portraying the passage of the Enabling Act.


      See also


      Streitbare Demokratie


      References

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    Enabling Act of 1933

    Enabling Act of 1933

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    History - The Enabling Act 1933 | Teaching Resources

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    March 23rd 1933: Enabling Act passed On this day...

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