Democracy Destroyed

1. Day 1 30 January Hindenburg appoints Hitler Reich Chancellor at the head of a coalition cabinet Reich President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Reich Chancellor of a cabinet in which only two other National Socialists sat. That evening SA, SS and Stahlhelm columns carried torches through the government quarter, and late that night a police officer and an SA man were shot dead in Charlottenburg. Elsewhere in Berlin a flu epidemic was closing school classes and the police caught two long-sought robbers.
2. Day 3 1 February Reichstag dissolved and Hitler asks the nation for four years in his first radio address At Hitler’s request Hindenburg dissolved the Reichstag and set new elections for 5 March. The cabinet agreed to make life harder for new parties, and at 22:00 every German station broadcast the government’s “Appeal to the German People”, read by Hitler. In Berlin a damp spell drove the flu epidemic higher, a new bus route opened to Lankwitz, and a landlord collecting rents in Pankow was shot dead by car-borne robbers.
3. Day 6 4 February Hindenburg signs a decree allowing bans on newspapers and political meetings Hindenburg signed the “Decree for the Protection of the German People”, which let the authorities ban political meetings and newspapers and hold suspects in police custody for up to three months. The Prussian Landtag refused to dissolve itself, and the Reich’s commissioners in Prussia dissolved every municipal council instead. Two young Communists were shot dead in Berlin overnight, and that evening the Social Democratic mayor of Staßfurt was shot in front of his house. In Berlin, new flu cases passed a thousand a day.
4. Day 24 22 February Göring makes the SA, SS and Stahlhelm an auxiliary police in Prussia Göring signed a decree allowing the Prussian police to call up “auxiliary police” from the ranks of “nationally minded” Germans: in practice men of the SA, SS and Stahlhelm, wearing a white armband over their own uniforms and holding full police powers while on duty. The Prussian commissioners pensioned off another wave of senior officials and began closing the secular schools, and Hitler told his followers that the enemy to be beaten on 5 March was “Marxism”. In Berlin the first film directed by Friedrich Hollaender, Ich und die Kaiserin, opened at the Gloria-Palast.
5. Day 29 27 February The Reichstag burns, and the Nazi leadership blames a Communist uprising On the evening of Monday 27 February the Reichstag building in Berlin was set alight; a young Dutchman, Marinus van der Lubbe, was arrested inside, and before the night was out Göring had declared the fire the signal for a Communist revolt, banned the left-wing press in Prussia and ordered arrests. Earlier that day the cabinet had approved a harsh new decree against ‘treason’, and SA men had fired into the flat of a Social Democratic deputy in Neukölln. In Cologne the Rosenmontag carnival procession went ahead in the sunshine.
6. Day 30 28 February The Reichstag Fire Decree suspends basic rights ‘until further notice’ The morning after the fire the cabinet met twice, and by the end of the day Hindenburg had signed and the government had published the decree ‘for the protection of people and state’, which suspended the Weimar constitution’s guarantees of personal liberty, free speech, a free press and assembly. Across Prussia the police and their SA auxiliaries arrested Communists and left-wing intellectuals, among them Carl von Ossietzky and Hans Litten, and the SA hoisted the swastika over the Communist headquarters. It was Shrove Tuesday: Cologne’s carnival corps paraded once more, while in Berlin Göring had the museums closed.
7. Day 35 5 March Reichstag election under the emergency decree: 43.9 per cent for the NSDAP On a grey, rainy Sunday nearly 89 per cent of Germany’s voters went to the polls in an election held under the emergency decree, with Communist leaders in prison or in hiding and the left-wing press silenced. The NSDAP won 43.9 per cent, short of an absolute majority, but with the nationalist ‘Combat Front Black-White-Red’ the government had a majority of seats; the Social Democrats held 18.3 per cent and the Communists 12.3. That night the Reich interior minister ordered Hamburg’s police handed to a Nazi, and SA men raised the swastika on town halls. In Hamburg, Altona 93 won the city football championship in the rain.
8. Day 43 13 March Goebbels appointed Reich Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda Hindenburg signed the decree creating a Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda and appointed Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party’s propaganda chief, as its minister. In Prussia, Göring suspended the mayors of Cologne, Frankfurt, Magdeburg, Altona and Kiel and several Berlin city councillors. In Berlin the manslaughter trial of a banker accused of shooting his wife, the soprano Gertrud Bindernagel, opened before packed public benches.
9. Day 50 20 March Himmler announces the first concentration camp, at Dachau; cabinet adopts the Enabling Act At a midday press briefing in Munich, Heinrich Himmler announced that a concentration camp for 5,000 Communist, Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries would open near Dachau on Wednesday. In Berlin Hitler met Centre Party leaders and the cabinet approved the final text of the Enabling Act, which went to the Reichstag as a bill. Berlin renamed Reichskanzlerplatz after Hitler, Jewish prosecutors were barred from courtrooms, Robert Siodmak’s last German film opened, and the publisher Louis Ullstein died.
10. Day 51 21 March The Day of Potsdam: the new Reichstag opens in the Garrison Church The new Reichstag was opened with a state ceremony in Potsdam’s Garrison Church, where Hindenburg and Hitler spoke above the tombs of the Prussian kings. In the afternoon the deputies met in Berlin’s Kroll Opera House and re-elected Göring as president, and in the evening a torchlight procession filled the city centre while Wagner’s Meistersinger was performed at the State Opera. The same day Hindenburg signed decrees creating special courts, punishing ‘malicious’ criticism of the government and amnestying crimes committed for the ‘national uprising’.
11. Day 53 23 March The Reichstag passes the Enabling Act; only the Social Democrats vote against In the Kroll Opera House, ringed by the SS and watched from inside by armed SA men, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, giving Hitler’s government the power to make laws without parliament. Otto Wels explained the Social Democrats’ ‘no’; the Centre and the smaller middle parties voted yes. The former Prussian interior minister Karl Severing was arrested on his way into the building, and the Reichsrat gave its consent that evening.
12. Day 61 31 March First coordination law dissolves state parliaments; SA drives Jewish judges from courts The Reich government enacted the provisional law to ‘coordinate’ the states with the Reich, dissolving every state parliament except Prussia’s and refilling them by the Reichstag vote without new elections. In Berlin crowds and SA men forced Jewish judges and lawyers out of the courts, and that evening Kerrl ordered Jewish judges in Prussia to take leave. Goebbels announced that the boycott would start next morning. In the cinemas Lamprecht’s Spione am Werk opened, and Erich Pommer left Ufa.
13. Day 62 1 April Nazi boycott of Jewish shops, doctors and lawyers: SA pickets stand across Germany At 10:00 SA and SS men took up posts outside Jewish-owned shops, department stores, surgeries and law offices throughout Germany, carrying placards reading ‘Germans! Defend yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!’. In Berlin some 60,000 to 70,000 SA men were deployed; Tietz, Wertheim and Israel shut their doors, and only a small quota of Jewish lawyers was readmitted to the courts. In Kiel the Jewish lawyer Friedrich Schumm was murdered in police custody. The flags also flew for Bismarck’s birthday, and Viktoria 89 won a football final.
14. Day 68 7 April Civil Service law purges Jews and opponents; Reich governors take over the states In a cabinet session lasting into the night, Hitler’s government adopted the law ‘for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service’, which forced officials ‘not of Aryan descent’ into retirement and allowed political opponents to be dismissed, and a second coordination law placing Reich governors over the states. Berlin’s new Special Court gave its first sentence, a year in prison for a Jewish market trader. Unemployment was reported down by 337,000 in a fortnight, and Berlin radio chose a Nazi fighting song for its interval signal.
15. Day 87 26 April Göring’s Prussia creates the Secret State Police Office, the Gestapo A Prussian law dated 26 April set up the Secret State Police Office (Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt, Gestapa) under Göring as interior minister, separating political policing from the ordinary administration; Rudolf Diels led it. The same day the Social Democrats held a Reich conference in their group’s rooms in the Reichstag building and elected Otto Wels and Hans Vogel as chairmen. Goebbels toured the Ufa film studios at Neubabelsberg, and in Munich Arno Penzias, a future Nobel laureate, was born into a Jewish family.
16. Day 93 2 May SA and SS occupy the trade union offices across Germany; union leaders arrested At ten in the morning, the day after the “Day of National Labour”, SA and SS men occupied every building of the free trade unions in Germany, together with their newspapers and their bank. Theodor Leipart, Peter Graßmann and other leaders were taken into “protective custody”, the unions’ property was seized and Nazi commissioners took over. In Duisburg four union officials were murdered. The Hoppegarten racecourse opened its season the same afternoon.
17. Epilogue 10 May Books burn on the Opernplatz as the German Labour Front is founded Late on Wednesday evening Berlin students burned an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 books on the Opernplatz, in pouring rain and in front of newsreel cameras; the works of Marx, Heinrich Mann, Kästner, Remarque, Tucholsky, Ossietzky and many others went into the fire, and Goebbels declared the age of “Jewish intellectualism” over. Books were burned in 21 other university towns the same night. That afternoon Hitler had addressed the first congress of the German Labour Front, which took the place of the destroyed trade unions under Robert Ley, and it was announced that the assets of the SPD, its newspapers and the Reichsbanner had been seized.

• Turning point
• Notable day
• Ordinary day

• Taking power 40 days Appointments, the cabinet, Hindenburg, and the government’s own moves.
• Laws and decrees 53 days The emergency decrees and laws that took apart the Weimar constitution.
• Terror 51 days SA and SS violence, arrests, improvised camps and Dachau.
• Persecution of Jews 45 days Boycott, dismissals and exclusion from professions, schools and clubs.
• The opposition 50 days Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists and others, banned and arrested.
• Elections and parliament 24 days The March election, the Reichstag, the state parliaments, the Enabling Act.
• Propaganda and the press 68 days Goebbels, newspaper bans, radio and staged events.
• Coordination 58 days Bringing the states, associations and institutions into line (Gleichschaltung).
• Culture and science 53 days Purges of universities and the arts, and the start of emigration.
• Churches 19 days The Protestant and Catholic churches and the new regime.
• Work and the economy 37 days Unemployment, business, wages and the destruction of the trade unions.
• Everyday life 98 days Cinema, sport, weather, shops and radio: life carrying on.
• The world watching 53 days Foreign reaction, and what was happening elsewhere at the same time.
• Refusal and exile 14 days People who resisted, refused or fled.

Laws and decrees

61 measures in the order they were made, from the decree that curbed the press to the law that purged the civil service, with the German text as published and an English translation.

Berlin today

59 places in Berlin and Potsdam where these days happened, on a map, with what stands there now.

How this was made: sources, how dates and photographs were checked, and how to send a correction.