Facts : 1 1 End 1.1 Hitler s chancellorship (1933) 1.2 Hitler cabinet meeting in mid-March 1.3 Enabling Act negotiations 1.4 Passage of the Enabling Act 1.5 Consequences End Hitler s chancellorship (1933) Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor on the morning of 30 January 1933 in what some observers later described as a brief and indifferent ceremony
Facts : 2 By early February, a mere week after Hitler s assumption of the chancellorship, the government had begun to clamp down on the opposition
Facts : 3 Meetings of the left-wing parties were banned and even some of the moderate parties found their members threatened and assaulted
Facts : 4 Measures with an appearance of legality suppressed the Communist Party in mid-February and included the plainly illegal arrests of Reichstag deputies
Facts : 5 The Reichstag fire on 27 February was blamed by Hitler s government on the Communists
Facts : 6 Hitler used the ensuing state of emergency to obtain the presidential assent of Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree the following day
Facts : 7 The decree invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution and indefinitely suspended a number of constitutional protections of civil liberties, allowing the Nazi government to take swift action against political meetings, arresting and killing the Communists
Facts : 8 Hitler and the Nazis exploited the German state s broadcasting and aviation facilities in a massive attempt to sway the electorate, but this election yielded a scant majority of 16 seats for the coalition
Facts : 9 At the Reichstag elections, which took place on 5 March 1933, the NSDAP obtained 17 million votes
Facts : 10 This was the last multi-party election of the Weimar Republic and the last multi-party all-German election for 57 years
Facts : 11 Hitler addressed disparate interest groups, stressing the necessity for a definitive solution to the perpetual instability of the Weimar Republic
Facts : 12 He now blamed Germany s problems on the Communists, even threatening their lives on 3 March
Facts : 13 Hitler s successful plan was to induce what remained of the now Communist-depleted Reichstag to grant him, and the Government, the authority to issue decrees with the force of law
Facts : 14 The hitherto Presidential Dictatorship hereby was to give itself a new legal form
Facts : 15 On 15 March, the first cabinet meeting was attended by the two coalition parties, representing a minority in the Reichstag: The Nazis and the DNVP led by Alfred Hugenberg (288 + 52
