The Day All the Liberals Voted for Hitler
An urgent discussion of the 1933 Enabling Act and its supporters
“No Enabling Act in the world gives you the power to exterminate ideas, which are eternal and indestructible.” — Otto Wels (SPD), Reichstag speech against the Enabling Act, March 23rd 1933
In Weimar Germany’s final multi-party election in March 1933, the National Socialist Party (NSDAP) won 43.9% of the vote, giving them a clear plurality in the Reichstag parliament.
A plurality, but not an absolute majority.
Was this a last shimmer of hope for the dying liberal democracy? Hardly. Its foundations had already been shattered and were built on thin ice from the very start.
It may have been a multi-party election, but not a ‘free’ election—even by the limited standards of liberal democratic institutions.
Only a week earlier Hitler’s first government convinced the aged President Hindenburg to pass the so-called “Decree for the Protection of the German People” more commonly referred to as the Reichstag Fire Decree.
After the Reichstag was set on fire on February 27th—the exact circumstances are still debated by historians to this day, but I’ll go with ‘the nazis did it’—Hitler’s government fabricated evidence for a communist plot and demanded emergency powers. Hindenburg relented with little resistance.
Article 1 of the Reichstag Fire Decree read:
“Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom, freedom of expression, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications. Warrants for House searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.” — Order of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State, February 27th 1933
The Nazis’ enemies, the communists of the KPD chief among them, became the first victims of the newborn fascist state in motion.
Despite winning a relatively impressive result of 12.3%—relatively impressive considering their active persecution and slander as ‘subhuman terrorists’—they could never take their seats in the new parliament.
Instead, they were arrested, packed into the first concentration camp in Dachau, had to flee the country, or in some cases were murdered outright by roving SA paramilitary gangs.
This was the new Germany the nazis imagined, for all the world to see—one of open terror against the working class and their representatives.
Nothing about this election was free. Intimidation was commonplace, and the police patrolled the streets together with militants of the NSDAP ready to disrupt, ban or beat down dissenting voices against Hitler’s emerging dictatorship.
These were the results:
The KPD had been removed by force, the national and social liberal parties (DVP, CSVD, DStP) were reduced to irrelevancy by the ballot, and the anti-republican old right alliance (KSWR) backed Hitler’s dictatorship.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Zentrum and their Bavarian electoral allies (Z/BVP) were divided over their stance regarding Hitler. They hated the communists as much as any God-fearing German Christian, but the NSDAP was no friend to Catholics, and certainly an enemy to the republic.
And finally, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), who were defamed as “November criminals” (referring to their signing of the Versailles treaty) and "traitors to the people” by the nazis. They had every reason to suspect they were next on the chopping block right after the communists.
All the Hitlerites needed was an excuse.
This was the environment in which the Enabling Act, a constitutional revision handing full dictatorial powers to Hitler, was introduced into the Reichstag on the 23rd of March.
In order to change the constitution, the NSDAP needed an absolute majority of votes—something they couldn’t reach even with the support of their nationalist allies. They needed liberal support, especially the catholic Zentrum, to give themselves a semblance of legality.
Let’s look at what happened, and what it says about liberalism in the face of fascist pressure. Spoilers: It’s not a good look. Not. Good. At. All.
Ineffective Resistance, Cowardly Compliance and Terror
I’ll walk you through the justifications, the banalities and the horror, faction by faction.
The Nazis — Terror for the Führer
It goes without saying, that all members of the NSDAP enthusiastically voted for the Enabling Act. Hitler held his first-ever speech in the Reichstag parliament, for which he held such contempt.
There were no dissenters, no holdouts, not even those who hesitated to grab power too soon. This had been the Nazis’ goal from the very start: To hand dictatorial powers to Hitler, dismantle the bourgeois republic, and unleash mass violence against their enemies.
Even on the day of the vote, they were prepared for violence: At the beginning of the debate armed members of the SA entered the chamber alongside Hitler while the SS surrounded the building, sending a clear message to every man and woman in attendance—vote for the Enabling Act, or face the consequences.
The Old Right — Unequal Partners
The KSWR—an alliance of the anti-republican Stahlhelm paramilitary with the monopoly capitalist Alfred Hugenberg’s ‘German-National People’s Party’—supported Hitler’s dictatorship.
Once the primary far-right organisation in Germany, they had steadily been losing supporters to the nazi movement. They were on the way out, and the nazis knew it.
Hugenberg on the other hand believed that they would be a necessary and independent part of the new Germany, once parliamentary institutions had been crushed. Surely, the nazis would not forget their old allies?
He wouldn’t last for more than three months in government, before being forced to step down—the nazis had no more use for him.
The Liberal Democrats — Cowardly Pragmatism
By 1933 the liberal parties in Germany had disintegrated. Once able to boast results in the double digits, they were barely holding on with 1% of the vote, and a handful of deputies. Where had those voters gone? To the nazis, of course.
Their position on the Enabling Act wouldn’t sway the vote, but maybe there could be something more important than that—principles.
Together with the Zentrum and SPD the liberal parties actually believed in the institutions of the bourgeois republic. Surely this would guide their behavior? Surely, they wouldn’t all vote for abolishing the republic? Surely…
Okay, I’ll drop the act: All deputies of the DVP, the DStP and the CSVD voted for the Enabling Act, among them Theodor Heuss, the first president of West Germany.
Why? Officially they argued that they felt like the situation in Germany demanded firm leadership. It was in the “Interests of the people and the fatherland”. They sucked up to Hitler.
Internally? They feared that an illegal dictatorship would be more brutal—likely even to them—so maybe it was better to just hand it to the nazis, and hope they would be constrained by the law.
History proved them wrong.
The Catholics—Fear and Loathing
The votes of the Zentrum were decisive for the nazis to reach a supermajority, so naturally backroom talks were held, trying to sway their leaders.
Ludwig Kaas, only recently elected as party leader, shared the anti-republican sentiments of the nazis. The majority of the Zentrum’s Reichstag deputies, represented by the failed and loathed former chancellor Brüning, were less sure about such a voting alliance.
Hitler had personally promised them all kinds of assurances, both for the catholic church and the republican institutions while focusing on the ‘necessary struggle’ against the communist menace.
Critically, Hitler hesitated to put these promises into writing, and when the day of the vote came he rebuffed their urgent demands to do so. The message was clear: If they didn’t vote for him, they would see the consequences.
And vote they did—every member of the Zentrum and the BVP voted for the Enabling Act, giving the nazis the supermajority to change the constitution.
Fritz Baade, Reichstag deputy of the SPD, later recalled in his memoirs:
“If the entire Center had not been forced by physical threat to vote for this Enabling Act, there would not have been a majority in this Reichstag either. I remember that members of the Center Party [...] came to me crying after the vote and said that they were convinced that they would have been murdered if they had not voted for the Enabling Act.”—Fritz Baade, 1949 (translation by author)
And with that, they had voted for Hitler’s dictatorship, either by threat of violence or false hopes. The republic was dead.
The Social Democrats—Hopeless Resistance
When Otto Wels, party leader of the SPD, ascended the podium it was already clear that the nazis had won their absolute majority—the cause was lost.
The SPD had often and consistently rejected the idea of defending the Weimar Republic by force, and at the latest by July 1932 they had lost that ability with the illegal dissolution of their Prussian state government.
They had resolved to fight them in the institutions, with only auxiliary help from their paramilitary Iron Front alliance.
It failed.
But Wels still ascended the podium and declared that the Social Democratic Party would vote against the Enabling Act. Their 94 votes—more than thirty of their seats remained empty, either due to persecution or flight—would not go to the nazis.
Wels famously stated:
“Our freedom and life can be taken, but not our honor.”
The Social Democrats would soon be persecuted, banned, beaten, exiled and murdered all over Germany.
Once the votes were cast, furious applause broke out among the deputies of the NSDAP and armed SA thugs in the hall and they began singing the national socialists' unofficial anthem, the “Horst-Wessel Song”.
Its second stanza goes:
Clear the road
For the brown battalions
Clear the road
For the stormtrooper!
The “brown battalions” were ready to strike.
The Communists—Meanwhile in Dachau Concentration Camp
After the Reichstag Fire, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was banned, and its leading members declared enemies of the state.
Naturally, they had no chance to cast their vote against the Enabling Act.
Some of their members, like the terminally ill Clara Zetkin, a heroine of the German feminist movement, had already made their way into the Soviet Union, to escape the nazi terror.
Others, like the party’s leader Ernst Thälmann, had no such luck and had already been arrested by the nazi regime. They would be taken to the first concentration camp in Dachau, where they went on to spend years in gruesome conditions—until their freedom or murder. Thälmann was executed in 1944 on Hitler’s orders.
The Communists had been the first victims of the nazi terror and despite tactical failures its most principled enemies.
They were the first, but would not be the last. Not even close.
Why Liberalism Can’t Beat Fascism
So, what is there to learn from this tragedy?
There are many concrete lessons, like the weakness of liberals towards fascism, the ineffectiveness of institutional boundaries, and the mistake of tactical alliances with fascists.
But this is perhaps the most important one:
Liberals will find an excuse to support fascism if the movement is powerful enough; if their uniformed murderers are intimidating enough; if their seemingly reasonable concessions are enticing enough.
In short: Liberals will support fascism when it is convenient—when it is the easier way.
In a time when fascism is on the rise at an alarming rate, and the world’s prime monopoly capitalists are cheering them on with a salute to Hitler, we shouldn’t be surprised when liberals show their true face.
Historically, the only sections of society that showed genuine resilience to fascism were those of the organized working class and their leadership. The vast majority of class-conscious workers didn’t vote for Hitler in the elections, and when the time came their leaders rejected his dictatorship—many of them paid for it with their lives.
Today’s working class does not need feckless liberals who will bow to fascism at the first sign of resistance.
Instead, we need organisations of the working class for the working class. Otherwise, it is only a question of time before the Enabling Acts of our time will be passed—the terror is already here.
Resist.
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The part name changed. I've seen and heard people says. Liberals/democrats were to blame for Hitler being in power. My response was… the party name has changed… look at what was happening…. That's the gop/republicans now. They couldn't get past the party name. Because their egos wouldn't let them.
In this vein, it seems timely to note that there’s a meme going around in the liberal cinematic universe about how, on the ‘Day of Potsdam’, Hitler pardoned 8,000 Nazis and assorted other right-wing goons, except:
A. No he didn’t. That was Hindenburg. In the title (Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten, not Verordnung des Reichskanzlers) and on the signature line, it was Hindenburg. Mr Lesser Evil himself.
B. This wasn’t exactly the first time that right-wing death squads got off scot free. Between Hindenburg’s own amnesties and the German courts, who bent the law into all sorts of innovative non-Euclidean geometries to avoid convicting Nazis for murders there was no doubt they’d committed.