Hindenburg appointed Hitler as chancellor and von Papen as vice chancellor.
Factor 2
Once Hitler was installed as chancellor, Hitler insisted on new Reichstag elections. They were called for 5th march. He was determined to win an absolute majority for the Nazis, and as chancellor he was now in a position to use all the powers of the state against his opponents.
On 4th February he got President Hindenburg to pass a decree supposedly to ensure free and peaceful elections. All election meeting had to be notified to police at least forty eight hours in advance. In theory this was to ensure that meetings could be adequately policed. In fact it allowed Nazi controlled police to come and break up the meetings themselves.
Factor 3
Nazi terror tactics reached a peak in the days after the Reichstag fire. Thousands of political opponents were arrested.
Only the Nazis were allowed to campaign for the forth coming election a flood of propaganda was unleashed, urging Germans to vote for them. On Election Day itself each polling station was policed by a mass of uniformed Nazi who watched each ballot paper being marked.
Workers were no longer allowed to join trade unions, opposition politicians were arrested and imprisoned, enemies of the Nazis, especially communists, could be executed, the SA could search and ram sack the homes of suspected opponents, many opponents were driven into exile also the Nazis intimidated voters by watching over them as they crossed their ballot papers.
Factor 4
Throughout the rise of the Nazis Hitler depended on the SA to put his policies into action. They had fought loyally for Hitler against the communists and had helped him come to power. By 1934 the SA was an enormous organization with more than 2 million members. It was also very powerful. In fact its leader Ernst Rohm was a potential rival to Hitler.
Rohm wanted Hitler to continue the Nazi program such as taking over major industries. Rohm also wanted the SA to take control of the army.
The army was much smaller than the SA, it had only 100,000 soldiers.
Rohm had an unruly temper. He was on bad terms with other Nazi leaders, particularly Goering whom he disliked for his aristocratic manner, and Himmler, commander of the SS.
In 1924 Rohm had quarreled with Hitler about it. Rohm wanted to replace the German army when Nazis won power.
By 1930 Hitler was having problems controlling the SA, most of them were simply thugs, so he asked Rohm to return to take control of them. Rohm made them a more disciplined body but still wanted them to become the most powerful force in Germany.
Factor 5
In the election on 5th march the Nazis got their best ever result. Yet despite that, the election still failed to give the Nazis an overall majority.
What Hitler wanted now was an “enabling law” which would place all power in his hands, allow him to pass laws without consulting the Reichstag, and effectively allow him to establish a dictatorship. The nationalist were prepared to support him in this, but even two thirds of Reichstag seats that needed to pass a change to the constitution. So the first step was to ban the communists from serving in the Reichstag. That was relatively simple under emergency powers. But he still needed to convince the members of the other parties. The newly elected Reichstag members met for the first time in the Kroll opera house in Berlin on 23rd march. Despite this pressure many social democrats still voted against the enabling act, but to no effect. All the other parties gave in the Nazi pressure. The enabling act was passed by 444 votes to 94.
The act gave Hitler the power to make laws without the approval of either the Reichstag or the president. The Reichstag had in effect voted itself out of existence. It had voted to introduce a Nazi dictatorship. Through the next eleven years of Nazi rule the Reichstag met twelve times, but simply to listen to Hitler speaking. They never held a debate. They had no say on policies. The Weimar republic was over.
The Enabling Act triggered a six month period of rapid change thought Germany, which is known as the Nazi revolution.
