Hitler Gradually Consolidated Power, Part One

First... Adolf Hitler did not "seize" power. Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany very legally on January 30, 1933 by President Paul von Hindenburg, a major German military figure and field marshal during the "Great War" (later to be called "World War One").*//** Hindenburg was an old time conservative, and he had resisted appointing "the Bohemian corporal," as he referred to Hitler at least on one occasion. He also appointed more traditional conservatives to the cabinet, with the idea that they would "control" Hitler. But with Hitler as chancellor, he and his Nazi inner circle began to outmaneuver the conservatives and to circumvent the German constitution and to consolidate power for himself and for the Nazi Party in general. Conservative opposition began to melt, as more conservatives became complicit in Nazi rule, if not outright accomplices. Does this sound familiar Americans?

In the Reichstag election of November 1932, the last truly free German election before Hitler became chancellor, the Nazis received 33% of the vote, a drop from 37% in the prior election, but the Nazis still remained the largest German political party in terms of the number of votes. After Hitler was appointed chancellor on January 30, 1933, new elections were authorized for March 5. On the evening of February 27, the Reichstag building in Berlin was reported to be on fire. Police arrested a mentally unstable Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe, who admitted he set fire to the building. The Nazis screamed "communist conspiracy," and some other known communists were arrested and put on trial with van der Lubbe. Hitler got President von Hindenburg to sign a decree to "protect" against a communist conspiracy. The decree suspended virtually all civil liberties in Germany, including freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. Further, the decree turned over many state powers to the national government.*** The law essentially gave the Nazis a free hand to arrest about anyone who opposed them by accusing the person of being a communist. "Generally," the German courts were still outside Nazi control. While van der Lubbe was convicted of the Reichstag fire, and then beheaded, the other main communists were acquitted, a verdict by the judge that led Trump... I mean Hitler, to establish a new Nazi court, the People's Court (German: Volksgerichtshof), to get around the not yet Nazified constitutional courts.

To be clear, the situation with the Reichstag fire has been, and still is, contentious. Van der Lubbe admitted to starting the fire by himself, but there are those who feel the fire was too big for one person to start, and that van der Lubbe had help, either from the communists, or from the Nazis, who, some quite logically believe, wanted an incident to provide them with a reason to crack down on opponents prior to the approaching election. There have also been theories that Hermann Göring, who was then the president of the Reichstag, had helped to plan the fire and to provide aid by sending Nazi stormtroopers through a tunnel that connected his office and residence to the Reichstag, which were across the street from one another. Whether such a tunnel existed, I don't know, but regardless of who started the fire, or who participated in the fire, the Nazis used the Reichstag fire to full effect. On election day the Nazis stationed Stormtroopers throughout the country. Even the strong arm tactics could not win the bastards a majority, and the Nazis received just shy of 44% of the vote. Less than three weeks later, the Reichstag was to vote on what is usually called "the Enabling Act" in English (German:  "Ermächtigungsgesetz"). The law allowed Hitler and the cabinet to make changes to the German constitution WITHOUT the consent of the Reichstag. Because the law changed the constitution, it needed support from two-thirds of the delegates, with two-thirds of the delegates needing to be present. All Communist delegates had been locked up after the post Reichstag fire decree and this removed a block of "no" votes. Still, Hitler lacked votes to get to the necessary two-thirds affirmative vote, and he turned to the Center Party, a Catholic-based political party. After Hitler's promise to protect Catholic religious practices and Catholic schools, the Center Party, although skeptical about Hitler's promises, voted with the Nazis and the Reichstag became irrelevant for the rest of the Nazi era. Hitler periodically used the Reichstag as a forum for important speeches, and to rubber stamp his policies, but it actually held no importance.

By the way, the fire destroyed much of the main meeting hall in the Reichstag, and thereafter, meetings were held in the nearby Kroll Opera House (German: Krolloper), and if you've seen photos or films of Hitler speaking to the Reichstag, almost all of the films and photos were taken in the Kroll Opera House, not in the actual Reichstag building itself. The Kroll Opera House was badly damaged by bombing during the war and it was torn down a few years after the war ended. The damaged Reichstag building remained, and it was a focal point in the fighting between Soviet and German troops in late April and early May of 1945, during the street fighting in Berlin, but it was not used for any legislative meetings until after German reunification in the 1990s. When Berlin was divided into "occupation zones" after World War Two, the Reichstag building was in the British zone, essentially right on the line with the Soviet zone. The (Communist) East German government erected a wall to divide Berlin in the early 1960s, "officially" to keep other people "out," a propaganda ploy that fooled no one. The Reichstag building was substantially renovated in the 1990s and it has kept its name, "Reichstag Building," but since the post World War Two years until the present, the German national parliament is called the Bundestag; that is, the Federal Parliament or Diet.

This is a picture of the Reichstag from a postcard I bought in Berlin back in the mid 1980s. The infamous "Berlin Wall" and Communist East Berlin was right behind the building. 

* The German president was the head of state; the German official, elected by a vote of the German people, who represented Germany in public ceremonial events. He also had the tremendous powers to appoint the chancellor and cabinet ministers, to dissolve the Reichstag (the German representative parliament) and to call for extraordinary national elections for delegates to the Reichstag (Note: this means the president could call for elections to be held outside the normally scheduled election dates). He was also the supreme commander of the armed forces, a very substantial power, as the army, especially, was held in very high regard in those days in German society, as the army was limited by the Versailles Treaty to 100,000 men, meaning that likely EVERY soldier was a veteran of the Great War. The chancellor of Germany was the head of the German government and its various departments (called ministries in German terminology and in many other countries, too).

** Hitler and the Nazis always wanted to present themselves as "strong," and the idea of "seizing power" was part of that effort, with the further idea that they were "revolutionaries," wanting to overthrow the then constitutional German government, and to prevent the Communists from taking power. The failed Nazi putsch (coup) of November 9, 1923, which was truly an attempt to "seize power," became a sacred event to the Nazis year after year, and a virtual holiday to them, complete with a Nazi banner carried during the coup attempt, and a solemn ceremony officiated by Hitler. You would likely be hard pressed to find elsewhere so much time and effort expended in celebration of a failure, but it was a failure Hitler and the Nazis turned to their advantage; thus, covering up just what a colossal failure it had actually been. A similar effort was made with the expression "seizure of power" ("die Machtergreifung"), which in reality, was simply the legal appointment of Hitler as chancellor by President von Hindenburg, but the terminology was used to make it sound strong and to show it as the realization of the putsch from 1923. As Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels said, "Truth isn't truth" ... oh wait, Rudy Giuliani said that.       

*** Germany had a federal system; that is, a system where the states had many powers delegated to them and where the national government had other powers for the entire country. By allowing the national government, then under Hitler's authority, to control many powers within the individual states, the Nazis took control of much of the authority in all states, including in those states where they were in a distinct minority. 

WORD HISTORY:
Cough-While the ancient origin of this word is uncertain, its "likely" an Old Germanic attempt to imitate the "sound of the act of coughing, throat clearing, forcefully expelling air from the mouth or gasping," as "kokh." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "cohhetan," meaning, "to cough, to make noise by forceful expulsion of air." This then became "coughen," with the "gh" pronounced similarly to "ch." The noun developed from the verb (between 1200 and 1300?). Words spelled with "ough" in them gradually began to change in pronunciation, as English speakers got further away from the more guttural sounds of before. As with "laugh," "cough" came to be pronounced as if "coff." Relatives in the other Germanic languages: German "keuchen" ("to wheeze, to huff and puff, to gasp for air"),^ Low German "seemingly" does not use a form in modern times, but it once had "küchen" (cough, clear the throat), Dutch "kuchen" ("to cough, to clear the throat"), Swedish "kika" (breath heavily, but its use seems to be limited today).

^ German also has "hauchen," meaning, "to breath (through the mouth)." It's a word not used by everyone, but initially it carried the idea of "to breathe audibly through the mouth," and it was spelled with a beginning "k." While I'm not totally certain, it could well be another form of the modern German form "keuchen" (once spelled "keichen"); thus, this would make it, too, a relative of English "cough."