The emergency decrees and laws that took apart the Weimar constitution.
53 days
Day 2 Tuesday 31 January 1933
Hitler met the leaders of the Catholic Centre Party, failed to win their consent to a year-long adjournment of the Reichstag, and told his cabinet that new elections were unavoidable; he promised that they would be the last. A presidential decree handed Papen the Reich’s powers over Prussia. In Berlin the flu epidemic accelerated, and Ufa’s U-boat film Morgenrot had its premiere in Essen.
Day 3 Wednesday 1 February 1933
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.
Day 4 Thursday 2 February 1933
Göring banned all Communist demonstrations in Prussia, and the cabinet discussed a sweeping emergency decree against the press and public meetings. In the Reichsrat, the chamber of the states, a Prussian official answered Hitler’s first address by reminding him of his oath to the constitution. Berliners paid sharply more for potatoes, and Ufa’s U-boat film Morgenrot opened at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo before an audience full of officers.
Day 5 Friday 3 February 1933
At a dinner in the army commander’s residence in the Bendlerstraße, Hitler spoke for two and a half hours to the generals and admirals, naming rearmament, conscription and perhaps the conquest of “living space in the East” as his aims. The Berlin police banned the Social Democratic Vorwärts for four days, and the cabinet approved its emergency decree. Two new films opened, one a Frederick the Great epic, the other a Berlin underworld comedy by Richard Oswald.
Day 6 Saturday 4 February 1933
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.
Day 8 Monday 6 February 1933
Hindenburg transferred the last powers of Otto Braun’s elected Prussian government to the Reich Commissioner, Papen, who then dissolved the Prussian Landtag together with its president, Kerrl, over the objection of Konrad Adenauer. The same day Hindenburg assured Bavaria that no one planned to override the states. In Staßfurt a headmaster told his school of the murdered mayor; in Berlin the flu began, briefly, to ebb.
Day 9 Tuesday 7 February 1933
In rain and wind, the Social Democrats and the Iron Front marched into the Lustgarten for their largest rally of the campaign, where Otto Wels declared that the workers’ front stood unbroken. Outside Berlin, the Communist Party’s central committee met secretly in an inn at Ziegenhals to hear Ernst Thälmann. In the Reichstag building, Nazi deputies broke up the committee meant to guard parliament’s rights. In Berlin the flu returned with more than a thousand new cases in a day.
Day 10 Wednesday 8 February 1933
In cabinet Hitler declared that rearmament must come first in every public works decision for the coming years, and advised ministers to say nothing specific about economic policy before the election. A decree sharply raised the duties on imported livestock, meat and lard. In Staßfurt thousands of workers downed tools to bury their murdered mayor. Berlin’s six-day cycle race was postponed because of the election, and the motoring clubs cancelled their rally to the motor show.
Day 16 Tuesday 14 February 1933
The cabinet approved, and Hindenburg signed, a decree stopping forced auctions of farms until the end of October. In the Reichstag, Nazi members drove the chairman of the committee that guarded parliament’s rights from his seat and Julius Streicher struck a People’s Party deputy; that evening the political police searched Communist rooms in the building. Neunkirchen in the Saar buried the victims of the gas-holder explosion, Göring opened a show of modern Italian painting and the geneticist Carl Correns died in Dahlem.
Day 19 Friday 17 February 1933
Göring sent all Prussian police authorities a circular telling them to cooperate with the SA, SS and Stahlhelm, to act against “enemies of the state” with the harshest means and to use their firearms without hesitation, promising to cover any officer who did. The Bavarian People’s Party leader Fritz Schäffer warned Hindenburg against Reich commissioners in the states, and uniformed students broke up an examination at the State Art School in Schöneberg. In the evening 4,000 people watched boxing at the Sportpalast.
Day 20 Saturday 18 February 1933
Hindenburg signed a decree softening the 1932 cuts to war-disability and insurance pensions, and the government published steep new duties on farm produce, fish and timber. Berlin’s police president banned Germania, the leading Centre Party daily, for three issues. In Leipzig, Magdeburg and Erfurt, Kurt Weill and Georg Kaiser’s play with music Der Silbersee had its premiere, the German ice hockey team opened the World Championship in Prague with a 6–0 win, and Prussia warned against eating undercooked duck eggs.
Day 22 Monday 20 February 1933
At Göring’s official residence opposite the Reichstag, Hitler told about two dozen leading industrialists and bankers that private enterprise could not survive in a democracy; Göring added that the coming election would surely be the last for ten years, perhaps a hundred, and Hjalmar Schacht proposed a three-million-mark election fund. The same day the Prussian press service released Göring’s “shooting decree”. Göring also banned the sale of spirits on polling days, and the perjury trial of a former Berlin transport director in the Sklarek scandal opened to packed public benches.
Day 23 Tuesday 21 February 1933
Rust ordered the reorganisation of the Karl-Marx-Schule in Neukölln, one of the Weimar Republic’s leading reform schools, sent its head Fritz Karsen on leave and suspended three senior Berlin school officials. Frick used the decree of 4 February to ban Communist open-air meetings and marches in Saxony, and the trade union federation protested to Hindenburg against Göring’s police decree. In Berlin, thermometers on the city’s edge fell to 18 degrees below zero overnight, and the creditors of the theatre impresarios Rotter learned they would get nothing.
Day 24 Wednesday 22 February 1933
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.
Day 25 Thursday 23 February 1933
In the afternoon the political police occupied and searched the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus, the Communist Party’s headquarters; in the evening a police officer dissolved the KPD’s rally in the Sportpalast while Wilhelm Pieck was speaking. Overnight men in Nazi uniform had shot a Reichsbanner leader in Großbeeren and burned down the poorhouse where he lived. Göring ordered tougher action against the opposition press. In Berlin the motor show closed after more than 400,000 visits, and Prussia relaxed its rules on men’s bathing trunks.
Day 26 Friday 24 February 1933
The police closed the Communist headquarters, the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus, “until further notice”, and the official Prussian press service released Göring’s decree creating an auxiliary police. Rudolf Diels took charge of the political police with its own new strike squads, and the jurist Robert Kempner was removed from the Prussian Interior Ministry. Hitler spoke to a huge crowd in Munich on the anniversary of the party programme. In Geneva the League of Nations condemned Japan’s actions in Manchuria and the Japanese delegation walked out; Max Ophüls’s Liebelei opened in Vienna.
Day 29 Monday 27 February 1933
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.
Day 30 Tuesday 28 February 1933
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.
Day 31 Wednesday 1 March 1933
On Ash Wednesday the decree against ‘treason against the German people’ appeared in the Reichsgesetzblatt, Frick asked every state to ban the Communist press and meetings, and the Prussian press service claimed that at least ten men had set the Reichstag fire. Göring told radio listeners that the government’s aim was the extermination of Communism, Hitler spoke to some 20,000 people in Breslau, and Cardinal Bertram begged Hindenburg to protect the freedom of the vote. In Berlin, Leopold Jessner bade farewell to the State Theatre with Billinger’s Rosse, while Max Reinhardt reopened the Deutsches Theater with Hofmannsthal’s Great Theatre of the World.
Day 37 Tuesday 7 March 1933
Two days after the election Hitler told his ministers that 5 March had been a revolution, that Marxism would disappear and that an Enabling Act with a two-thirds majority was needed; he and Frick demanded that van der Lubbe be hanged, retroactively if need be. At Hindenburg’s residence the Reichstag’s opening in Potsdam’s Garrison Church was planned in detail. In Dresden, Nazi supporters whistled the conductor Fritz Busch off the podium of the State Opera. Abroad, Dollfuss began governing Austria without parliament, and the Netherlands reinforced its border against German refugees.
Day 42 Sunday 12 March 1933
On Remembrance Day, with black-white-red flags at half-mast, Hindenburg decreed that from the next day the old imperial flag and the swastika flag were to be flown together on public buildings. Hitler announced the decree on the radio and told the SA and SS that the struggle to ‘cleanse’ the Reich would now be directed from above and that all individual actions must stop. Hindenburg and Hitler attended the Volksbund ceremony in the State Opera in Berlin. In Prussia’s municipal and provincial elections the government parties won majorities in most places, including Berlin. In Washington Roosevelt gave his first fireside chat.
Day 43 Monday 13 March 1933
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.
Day 44 Tuesday 14 March 1933
Berlin’s police president banned the left-wing weekly Die Weltbühne for half a year, Munich banned Das Tage-Buch, and the ban on the Social Democratic press in Prussia was extended overnight. Hindenburg swore in Goebbels as Propaganda Minister, while the Berlin papers reported that Theodor Wolff and Rudolf Olden had left for Paris. The Reichsbahn announced spring track work for some 90,000 men, and in London the Hamburg-born operetta star Anny Ahlers died after a fall.
Day 45 Wednesday 15 March 1933
The cabinet discussed how to pass an enabling law: Interior Minister Frick counted the deputies needed for a two-thirds majority and suggested that Communists might be put in labour camps. Police and SA auxiliaries sealed off the artists’ colony in Wilmersdorf, searched flats and arrested fourteen people, while Goebbels told the press that its task was to ‘instruct’. In the auction rooms, Kändler’s Meissen porcelain birds went under the hammer at what a reporter called crisis prices.
Day 47 Friday 17 March 1933
Julius Lippert, the Nazi state commissioner for Berlin, ordered that the contracts of doctors denounced as ‘Jewish Communists and Social Democrats’ be terminated at the city’s hospitals. Hugenberg suspended Ernst Wagemann, head of the Statistical Reich Office, and the decrees creating the Propaganda Ministry and the double flag were published. That evening Kurt Gerron’s comedy Heut’ kommt’s drauf an, starring Hans Albers, had its premiere at the Gloria-Palast.
Day 48 Saturday 18 March 1933
Hindenburg signed two emergency decrees: one shortened procedure in treason cases, the other bundled financial, economic and legal measures, including a reform of the coinage that withdrew the four-pfennig piece. Goebbels opened the exhibition ‘Die Frau’ at the Kaiserdamm halls, Schacht spoke on the radio as the new Reichsbank president, and Frick banned the Soviet papers Izvestia and Pravda. Berlin and Potsdam were declared closed airspace for the day of the Reichstag’s opening.
Day 50 Monday 20 March 1933
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.
Day 51 Tuesday 21 March 1933
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’.
Day 52 Wednesday 22 March 1933
The first transports of prisoners reached the new concentration camp at Dachau, set up on the grounds of a disused powder and munitions factory. In Berlin the Prussian Landtag opened under its 84-year-old Nazi senior member, who called it ‘the Landtag of the Hitler spring’, and a Reichstag committee changed the rules so that absent deputies could be counted as present. The decrees on ‘malicious attacks’ and special courts were published, and the Deutschlandsender began using the Garrison Church carillon as its interval signal.
Day 53 Thursday 23 March 1933
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.
Day 54 Friday 24 March 1933
Hindenburg signed the ‘Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich’, countersigned by Hitler, Frick, Neurath and Schwerin von Krosigk; it was printed in the Reichsgesetzblatt that evening and came into force on promulgation. The Centralverein, the largest Jewish organisation, denied foreign atrocity reports while acknowledging ‘political excesses’ against Jews. Labour exchanges counted about 5.9 million unemployed, and a Berlin jury sentenced the banker Hintze to twelve years for killing the singer Gertrud Bindernagel.
Day 59 Wednesday 29 March 1933
Back from Munich, Hitler told his ministers that the boycott of Jewish businesses had to be organised, and the cabinet discussed the bill to ‘coordinate’ the states. A law dated this day made the death penalty retroactive, clearing the way to hang the alleged Reichstag arsonist. In the film world the censors banned Fritz Lang’s Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, and Ufa’s board decided in principle to end its contracts with Jewish employees.
Day 61 Friday 31 March 1933
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.
Day 63 Sunday 2 April 1933
From Munich Streicher’s committee announced that the boycott was suspended until Wednesday morning and told local committees to take down their posters. The coordination law appeared in the Reich Law Gazette, to take effect the next day, and the chairmen of 85 labour exchanges were suspended. Berlin mourned the actor Paul Biensfeldt, who had died overnight; Hertha BSC and BSV 92 drew 2–2 before 15,000 spectators, a tram rammed a Stahlhelm lorry in Neukölln, and an operetta ended in uproar at the Schiller-Theater.
Day 64 Monday 3 April 1933
The management of the Deutsches Theater announced, after a meeting with a Prussian ministry commissioner, that Max Reinhardt would have no further part in its artistic direction. The coordination law came into force, and the Interior Minister required every German leaving the country to obtain an exit visa. The pro-Nazi ‘German Christians’ opened their first national conference in Berlin. Hindenburg presented the aviator Elly Beinhorn with the Hindenburg Cup.
Day 65 Tuesday 4 April 1933
The government announced that the boycott would not be resumed, claiming it had silenced the foreign ‘agitation’. Hindenburg wrote to Hitler that Jewish judges and lawyers who had been wounded in the war should not be dismissed, and the cabinet adopted a law extending the death penalty for political violence and a ban on slaughter without stunning. Police sealed off Berlin’s Jewish Scheunenviertel; the Jüdische Rundschau told its readers to wear the ‘yellow badge’ with pride. The rail Zeppelin ran to Hamburg at 130 km/h.
Day 66 Wednesday 5 April 1933
The Hitler Youth occupied the offices of the Reich Committee of German Youth Associations in Berlin, and Baldur von Schirach took over its leadership. Einstein wrote to the Prussian Academy rejecting its charges; Hitler answered Hindenburg on the Jewish veterans and spoke to the farmers’ council; Kerrl told Jewish notaries to stop working. In Liechtenstein the Berlin theatre impresarios Alfred and Fritz Rotter were ambushed; Alfred and his wife fell to their deaths. Prussia ordered a strict Good Friday.
Day 68 Friday 7 April 1933
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.
Day 69 Saturday 8 April 1933
Before almost 18,000 SA and SS men in the Sportpalast, and by radio to the rest of the country, Hitler called the storm troopers the unshakeable fighting troop of the ‘national revolution’. The Civil Service law came into force, and Berlin’s bar commissioner published the list of only 35 Jewish lawyers still allowed into the city’s courts. The body found near Baruth was identified as that of the clairvoyant Erik Jan Hanussen, and the publisher of the Berliner Tageblatt gave up the running of the Mosse house.
Day 71 Monday 10 April 1933
Hitler, Frick and Goebbels signed a law making 1 May, the labour movement’s own day, a public holiday under state control, while the official gazette published the law allowing Jewish lawyers to be struck off. Franz Ritter von Epp was appointed Reich governor of Bavaria, and in Rome Papen met Cardinal Pacelli and Mussolini as Göring flew in. On a rainy Monday in Berlin, radio listeners could hear Furtwängler conduct the Eroica, and the theatre director Viktor Barnowsky left the Komödienhaus.
Day 72 Tuesday 11 April 1933
Police and SA searched the Bauhaus school in its converted telephone factory in Berlin-Steglitz, sealed the building and arrested 32 students; the school never taught there again. The first implementing ordinance of the Civil Service law defined anyone with a single Jewish grandparent as ‘non-Aryan’, Göring was named Prussian Minister President, and the SS took over the Dachau camp. Newspapers printed Goebbels’s reply to the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who had objected to artists such as Bruno Walter being driven from the platform, and most Jewish members of the Berlin club Tennis Borussia left it.
Day 73 Wednesday 12 April 1933
On the second day of SS control at Dachau, guards led away four Jewish prisoners and shot them: Rudolf Benario, Ernst Goldmann and Arthur Kahn died, Erwin Kahn survived for four days. The same day the German Student Union opened its month-long ‘Action against the Un-German Spirit’, Prussia ruled that only students of ‘German descent’ could belong to the student body, and Theodor Lewald stood down as head of German sport. In cinemas, Frank Wisbar’s film Anna und Elisabeth had its premiere.
Day 74 Thursday 13 April 1933
From Maundy Thursday the German Student Union began posting its twelve theses ‘against the un-German spirit’, which declared the Jew the most dangerous enemy and demanded that Jewish writers publish only in Hebrew. Prussia suspended sixteen university teachers, among them Kelsen, Tillich, Horkheimer and Mannheim, and the main Jewish organisations founded a joint committee for help and reconstruction. In the House of Commons, Austen Chamberlain attacked the new regime, while restaurants learned they would have to post notices declaring whether they cooked with margarine.
Day 80 Wednesday 19 April 1933
In Munich’s Circus Krone the justice ministers of Bavaria and Prussia, Hans Frank and Hanns Kerrl, spoke with Julius Streicher at a rally under the slogan ‘Out with the Jews from the administration of justice’, as Bavaria issued its rules for removing Jewish lawyers. Hindenburg received the Stahlhelm leader Seldte to hear about plans to ‘coordinate’ (gleichschalten, bring into line) the Stahlhelm with the SA. Abroad, Britain banned most Soviet imports after the Moscow engineers’ verdict and Roosevelt took the dollar off gold; at home the government threatened to act against the flood of ‘national kitsch’, from Horst Wessel pencils to swastika ice-cream parlours.
Day 82 Friday 21 April 1933
A Reich law banning the slaughter of animals without prior stunning, and with it Jewish ritual slaughter, was signed and published, and Hitler named Rudolf Hess his deputy in the NSDAP. In Berlin the Reichskanzlerplatz became Adolf-Hitler-Platz, the university’s rector objected to the students’ anti-Jewish theses, and police officials put the number of Communists in custody at 18,000; in Freiburg, Heidegger was elected rector. On the Rot-Weiss courts the visiting King of Sweden played doubles with Daniel Prenn, Germany’s leading player, whom the press already expected to be replaced in the Davis Cup team.
Day 83 Saturday 22 April 1933
Labour Minister Seldte signed a decree ending the work of ‘non-Aryan’ and Communist panel doctors with the health insurance funds, and the cabinet passed a Reich law limiting university student bodies to students of ‘German descent and mother tongue’, a law excluding Jews from the patent bar and a tenants’ protection law for farmers. Bavaria’s justice minister, Frank, was proposed as Reich Commissioner for bringing justice in the states into line. After the meeting Hitler and Goebbels flew to Munich for the party leaders’ conference, while in Berlin the Davis Cup candidates trained in cold rain and London counted the cost of a great fire in its docks.
Day 85 Monday 24 April 1933
The official gazette published the Reich Labour Minister’s ordinance of 22 April, which told the doctors’ associations to withdraw health-insurance admission from “non-Aryan” doctors and from those accused of communist activity. Hitler handed two of his powers as Reich governor of Prussia to Göring’s cabinet, and the Mecklenburg church dispute reached the Chancellery. The sports pages reported that Germany’s Davis Cup team had been named without Daniel Prenn, after the tennis federation declared that Jewish players could no longer be members.
Day 86 Tuesday 25 April 1933
Hitler’s cabinet sat until after ten at night and passed a law that limited admissions to secondary schools and universities and capped the share of “non-Aryan” pupils and students. Prussia’s culture minister suspended 25 more professors, and Hitler named the army chaplain Ludwig Müller his liaison to the Protestant churches. The labour exchanges reported unemployment down by 69,000 in the first half of April, and Berlin’s university rector explained why he had objected to two of the students’ anti-Jewish posters.
Day 87 Wednesday 26 April 1933
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.
Day 89 Friday 28 April 1933
The cabinet passed and published a one-sentence law putting SA and SS men under a disciplinary code to be issued by Hitler as supreme SA leader, approved the return of military courts and turned the aviation commissariat into a ministry for Göring. In the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung the psychologist Wolfgang Köhler defended his dismissed Jewish colleagues in what was later called the last openly anti-Nazi article published in Germany. Frick named von Tschammer und Osten Reich Sports Commissioner, and the Reichsbahn showed off a road trailer that could carry railway wagons to the door.
Day 90 Saturday 29 April 1933
In bright sunshine at Tempelhof airport, Göring christened a new four-engined Junkers airliner “Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg” in front of the President, on his first visit to the airport. The Interior Ministry ordered German merchant ships to fly the swastika flag from 1 May, the new Secret State Police Office took over the power to ban Berlin newspapers, and Göring founded an Air Defence League. Goebbels inspected the stands going up on the Tempelhofer Feld for Monday’s rally.
Day 95 Thursday 4 May 1933
A second ordinance under the civil service law told public employers to give “non-Aryan” salaried employees and workers one month’s notice. At its first and last full meeting the new SPD executive decided to send Otto Wels, Hans Vogel and other members abroad to build an office in exile. Ley’s committee declared that the “German Labour Front” now stood, Hitler called for a foundation for the families of workers killed at work, and an ADGB leader escaped from “protective custody”.
Day 96 Friday 5 May 1933
On Hitler’s proposal Hindenburg appointed seven Reich governors (Reichsstatthalter), all of them Nazi leaders, for Württemberg, Baden, Saxony, Hesse, Bremen and Oldenburg, Anhalt and Brunswick, and Thuringia. The cabinet passed laws on tax advisers, sales premiums and a six-month freeze on new shops, and in Moscow Germany and the Soviet Union brought the extension of the Berlin Treaty into force. On the Avus the French racing driver Count Czaykowski set a world one-hour record of 213.8 km/h; Berlin’s Jewish community bulletin reported hundreds seeking help every day.
