It’s unfortunate that Timothy Ryback’s piece in The Atlantic is behind a paywall. It’s “a step-by-step account of how Hitler” after becoming Chancellor on January 30, 1933, “systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes.” It’s essential reading.
It’s really a story about how a very vulnerable Chancellor Hitler was able to get a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag to pass an “empowering act” that did away with the Weimar Republic’s separation of powers and created a dictatorship. The short answer is that the Reichstag building was set on fire, a communist was blamed, and the Communist Party was banned along with its elected parliamentarians. But it was a minor miracle that Hitler’s government even lasted long enough to exploit the Reichstag fire. There were several points at which his coalition might have failed, as had quickly happened to the three prior chancellorships. But those chances were missed.
Things began in a familiar Trumpy way:
Hitler found his dictatorial intentions getting thwarted within his first six hours as chancellor. At 11:30 that Monday morning, he swore an oath to uphold the constitution, then went across the street to the Hotel Kaiserhof for lunch, then returned to the Reich Chancellery for a group photo of the “Hitler Cabinet,” which was followed by his first formal meeting with his nine ministers at precisely 5 o’clock.
Hitler opened the meeting by boasting that millions of Germans had welcomed his chancellorship with “jubilation,” then outlined his plans for expunging key government officials and filling their positions with loyalists. At this point he turned to his main agenda item: the empowering law that, he argued, would give him the time (four years, according to the stipulations laid out in the draft of the law) and the authority necessary to make good on his campaign promises to revive the economy, reduce unemployment, increase military spending, withdraw from international treaty obligations, purge the country of foreigners he claimed were “poisoning” the blood of the nation, and exact revenge on political opponents. “Heads will roll in the sand,” Hitler had vowed at one rally.
But making demands doesn’t guarantee success, especially when the numbers don’t add up in the legislative branch. Hitler already had a solution in mind, though, even if he did not yet have a rationale for carrying it out.
But given that Social Democrats and Communists collectively commanded 221 seats, or roughly 38 percent, of the 584-seat Reichstag, the two-thirds vote Hitler needed was a mathematical impossibility. “Now if one were to ban the Communist Party and annul their votes,” Hitler proposed, “it would be possible to reach a Reichstag majority.”
At this early point, on his first day in office, he recognized that if he annulled the votes of Communist lawmakers it would result in a national labor strike that would be very bad for the economy, so he instead sought to call for new elections, with the thought that his right-leaning coalition could gain the needed seats for a two-thirds majority. Unfortunately, this wasn’t in the interest of the Nazis’ coalition partner and rival, the German Nationalists. They had gained many seats in the prior election, at least 14 of which came at the Nazis’ expense, and did not want to put them at risk.
Seemingly stymied, Hitler asked Defense Minister Werner von Blomberg if the army would help crush labor strikes and was told that that was not an appropriate use of the military. With that option off the table, Hitler ignored the German Nationalists. and the next day announced new elections. According to Ryback, the squabbling with the German Nationalists delayed a meeting with President Von Hindenburg and if had gone on for a few more minutes Hindenburg would have cancelled the meeting and Hitler’s government probably never would have taken root. This is but one of the unfortunate events that failed to prevent Nazi Germany.
Had Hitler’s predecessor in the chancellery, Kurt von Schleicher, remained in office another six months, or had German President Paul von Hindenburg exercised his constitutional powers more judiciously, or had a faction of moderate conservative Reichstag delegates cast their votes differently, then history may well have taken a very different turn.
As it happened, Von Hindenburg only awarded the Nazi Party two cabinet positions. But Hitler utilized them to maximum advantage. Wilhelm Frick became the minister of the interior and immediately went to work suppressing the left-wing press. Hermann Göring was technically a minister without portfolio, but he was also appointed as the acting state interior minister of Prussia. Göring used this latter position to unleash the brownshirts.
Göring was tasked with purging the Prussian state police, the largest security force in the country after the army, and a bastion of Social Democratic sentiment.
Rudolf Diels was the head of Prussia’s political police. One day in early February, Diels was sitting in his office, at 76 Unter den Linden, when Göring knocked at his door and told him in no uncertain terms that it was time to clear house. “I want nothing to do with these scoundrels who are sitting around here in this place,” Göring said.
A Schiesserlass, or “shooting decree,” followed. This permitted the state police to shoot on sight without fearing consequences. “I cannot rely on police to go after the red mob if they have to worry about facing disciplinary action when they are simply doing their job,” Göring explained. He accorded them his personal backing to shoot with impunity. “When they shoot, it is me shooting,” Göring said. “When someone is lying there dead, it is I who shot them.”
Göring also designated the Nazi storm troopers as Hilfspolizei, or “deputy police,” compelling the state to provide the brownshirt thugs with sidearms and empowering them with police authority in their street battles. Diels later noted that this—manipulating the law to serve his ends and legitimizing the violence and excesses of tens of thousands of brownshirts—was a “well-tested Hitler tactic.”
But meanwhile, Hitler needed to show that he was keeping his campaign promises and making progress on the economy.
On February 18, the center-left newspaper Vossische Zeitung wrote that despite Hitler’s campaign promises and political posturing, nothing had changed for the average German. If anything, things had gotten worse. Hitler’s promise of doubling tariffs on grain imports had gotten tangled in complexities and contractual obligations. [German Nationalist leader] Hugenberg informed Hitler during a cabinet meeting that the “catastrophic economic conditions” were threatening the very “existence of the country.” “In the end,” Vossische Zeitung predicted, “the survival of the new government will rely not on words but on the economic conditions.” For all Hitler’s talk of a thousand-year Reich, there was no certainty his government would last the month.
Nearly all of this should look familiar. Trump has promised more than his narrow margins in Congress can deliver. He is facing a national credit default and a government shutdown, and divisions within his right-wing coalition are preventing him from resolving these crises. His idea that tariffs will magically fix the economy and raise needed revenue is facing resistance. Enormous pressure is being put on media owners who are bending to his will to avoid punishment and confrontation. The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, refused to rule out using lethal force against citizens during his confirmation hearing and is best known for believing that military rules of engagement make soldiers “worry about facing disciplinary action when they are simply doing their job.” One of Trump’s first actions was the mass pardoning of approximately 1,500 brownshirts who have been charged or convicted of helping attempt a coup on January 6, 2021.
On February 27, the Reichstag fire broke out.
When Hitler convened his cabinet to discuss the crisis the next morning, he declared that the fire was clearly part of a Communist coup attempt. Göring detailed Communist plans for further arson attacks on public buildings, as well as for the poisoning of public kitchens and the kidnapping of the children and wives of prominent officials. Interior Minister Frick presented a draft decree suspending civil liberties, permitting searches and seizures, and curbing states’ rights during a national emergency.
When the decree was put into effect, one week before the elections, Frick and Göring ramped up their efforts.
The Communist Party was banned (as Hitler had wanted since his first cabinet meeting), and members of the opposition press were arrested, their newspapers shut down. Göring had already been doing this for the past month, but the courts had invariably ordered the release of detained people. With the decree in effect, the courts could not intervene. Thousands of Communists and Social Democrats were rounded up.
On March 5, in an historically high-turnout election, the Nazis won only 44 percent of the electorate. The Social Democrats, overcoming massive intimidation, lost only one seat. But “the banning of the Communist Party positioned Hitler to form a coalition with the two-thirds Reichstag majority necessary to pass the empowering law.”
And, with that, the Third Reich was born.
The next day, the National Socialists stormed state-government offices across the country. Swastika banners were hung from public buildings. Opposition politicians fled for their lives. Otto Wels, the Social Democratic leader, departed for Switzerland. So did Heinrich Held, the minister-president of Bavaria. Tens of thousands of political opponents were taken into Schutzhaft (“protective custody”), a form of detention in which an individual could be held without cause indefinitely.
Hindenburg remained silent. He did not call his new chancellor to account for the violent public excesses against Communists, Social Democrats, and Jews. He did not exercise his Article 53 powers. Instead, he signed a decree permitting the National Socialists’ swastika banner to be flown beside the national colors. He acceded to Hitler’s request to create a new cabinet position, minister of public enlightenment and propaganda, a role promptly filled by Joseph Goebbels.
What about all those Nazis who had committed crimes on the path to power?
That same Tuesday, March 21, an Article 48 decree was issued amnestying National Socialists convicted of crimes, including murder, perpetrated “in the battle for national renewal.” Men convicted of treason were now national heroes. The first concentration camp was opened that afternoon, in an old brewery near the town center of Oranienburg, just north of Berlin. The following day, the first group of detainees arrived at another concentration camp, in an abandoned munition plant outside the Bavarian town of Dachau.
Does this not echo almost precisely Trump’s pardon of people who were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their effort to keep him in power despite losing the 2020 election?
Hitler was vulnerable at every stage before the Reichstag handed him dictatorial powers. Afterwards, it would take tens of millions of lives to remove him from power.
There are still people who can stop Trump’s fascist regime. But the window of opportunity is closing. If people wait around, a new national emergency, whether manufactured or not, may serve as the last straw that breaks the back of our freedom and autonomy.
Do not tolerate accommodation, appeasement or weakness toward the fascist regime.
