July, 06, 2004

How many people know how Adolf Hitler actually became a dictator? My bet is, very few. The story is set forth in detail in William Shirer’s book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, on which this article is based.

A few weeks after he was appointed chancellor of Germany by President von Hindenberg in January 1933, Hitler was enjoying supper at the home of his friend Joseph Goebbels, when the telephone rang with an emergency message: “The Reichstag is on fire!” Hitler and Goebbels rushed to the fire, where they found Hermann Goering shouting at the top of his lungs, “This is the beginning of the Communist revolution! We must not wait a minute. We will show no mercy. Every Communist official must be shot, where he is found. Every Communist deputy must this very day be strung up.”

The day after the fire, the Prussian government announced that it had found communist publications stating,

“Government buildings, museums, mansions and essential plants were to be burned down.... Women and children were to be sent in front of terrorist groups.... The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a bloody insurrection and civil war.... It has been ascertained that today was to have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and also the beginning of general civil war.”

The day after the fire, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to issue a decree entitled, “For the Protection of the People and the State.” Justified as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,” the decree suspended the constitutional guarantees pertaining to civil liberties:

“Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”

Two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Hitler requested the Reichstag to temporarily delegate emergency powers to him so that he could adequately deal with the crisis. Denouncing opponents to his request, Hitler shouted, “Germany will be free, but not through you!” When the vote was taken, the result was 441 for and 84 against, giving Hitler the two-thirds majority he needed to suspend the German constitution. On March 23, 1933, what has gone down in German history as the “Enabling Act” made Hitler temporary dictator of Germany, freed of all legislative and constitutional constraints.

One of the most dramatic consequences was in the judicial arena. Shirer points out,

“Under the Weimar Constitution judges were independent, subject only to the law, protected from arbitrary removal and bound at least in theory by Article 109 to safeguard equality before the law.”

Within a month of the Reichstag terrorist case, in which some of the accused had been acquitted, the Nazis transferred jurisdiction over treason cases from the Supreme Court to a new People’s Court, which, as Shirer points out, “soon became the most dreaded tribunal in the land. It consisted of two professional judges and five others chosen from among party officials, the S.S. and the armed forces, thus giving the latter a majority vote. There was no appeal from its decisions or sentences and usually its sessions were held in camera. Occasionally, however, for propaganda purposes when relatively light sentences were to be given, the foreign correspondents were invited to attend.”

The Nazis also set up the Special Court, which handled cases of political crimes or “insidious attacks against the government.” The Nazis also implemented a legal concept called Schutzhaft or “protective custody” which enabled them to arrest and incarcerate people without charging them with a crime.

For their part, the German people quickly accepted the new order of things. As Shirer put it,

“The overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of culture had been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work had become regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation.... The Nazi terror in the early years affected the lives of relatively few Germans and a newly arrived observer was somewhat surprised to see that the people of this country did not seem to feel that they were being cowed.... On the contrary, they supported it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow it imbued them with a new hope and a new confidence and an astonishing faith in the future of their country.”

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va., author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine.

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