-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Matthew Stibbe, Ein Tag im März. Das Ermächtigungsgesetz und der Untergang der Weimarer Republik, German History, Volume 42, Issue 3, September 2024, Pages 456–458, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghae012
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
In 1964, in an interview with the journalist and later diplomat Günter Gaus for the television programme Zur Person, the German-born American academic and public intellectual Hannah Arendt was asked to recall the point at which she first ‘became political’:
Yes, in a sense I’d say 27 February 1933, the Reichstag Fire [Decree], and the illegal arrests that followed that same night […] People were taken to Gestapo cellars or concentration camps […] And [although] today it has often been overshadowed by later events, [it] was an immediate shock for me.
Most historians of the Third Reich follow the same view, namely that 27 February was a more important turning point in the establishment of the National Socialist dictatorship than 23 March, the day that the Reichstag approved the Enabling Act. The 4 February ‘decree for the protection of the German people’, which suspended key rights in the areas of freedom of assembly and the press, is likewise often seen as especially noteworthy. Both ‘February’ measures were issued by Reich President Paul von Hindenburg under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution and were directed in reality against anti-government voices and demonstrations as opposed to illegal anti-state or anti-constitutional activities. Political opposition to the new regime was to be destroyed by means of physical force.
