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Was the Reichstag Fire More Important Than the Enabling Act in Allowing Hitler to Increase His Power?

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Was the Reichstag Fire more important than the Enabling Act in allowing Hitler to increase his power? Explain your answer. [10]

The Reichstag Fire happened on 27th February, 1933. Inside the burning building was found a Dutch communist called Marinus van der Lubbe. He was accused for starting the fire in the Reichstag and was arrested, and after an unfair trial, he was executed. Hitler immediately blamed communists for this. He went to Hindenburg and persuaded him to pass a law called the “Emergency Decree”. This meant that the government were very powerful and that power was wide-ranged. It also took away civil rights and freedom, giving the police a lot of control. But the reason Hitler managed to convince Hindenburg to do this was because he said that this could be the start of a communist revolution which no one wanted. When the next elections took place, in March 1933, over 4 000 communists were arrested by the SA. They also shut down the communist newspaper, broke up any communists meetings and this could all happen because the Emergency Decree was around. Hitler had a lot of control at this point. He had power all over, especially in the police force. If there was someone he didn’t like then he could have them killed. He could do nearly anything he wanted and Hindenburg agreed as he didn’t want a communist attack either. The Enabling law was a part of the Weimar constitution that stated, if two thirds of the Reichstag agreed, that the Chancellor could rule alone. But the difficulty for Hitler was that the Nazi’s didn’t have a majority vote in March 1933, meaning it would be very hard to get even more to vote for this law to be passed. To make it work, he had all the communists removed from the Reichstag. On top of this, the nationalists and socialists agreed with this law. `` On 23rd March 1933, the Enabling Law was passed, with 444 yeses and only 94 no’s. This therefore meant that Hitler didn’t have to go to Hindenburg or the Reichstag but could pass laws on his own. But Hitler couldn’t go too far as Hindenburg could remove him from the position. Hitler could now do anything he wanted unless it would strongly upset Hindenburg, which was unlikely. Hindenburg still believed that he could heep Hitler ‘reigned in’. Hitler’s power grew immensely after the Reichstag fire. He was allowed to kill communists and get rid of any opponents that may pose a threat. He already had a lot of power from this but when the Enabling Law was passed, Hitler could practically do anything he wanted without judgement or anyone to hold him back. I think that he was a lot stronger when he could rule alone, but his power grew the most after the Reichstag Fire.

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