The Enabling Act Makes Hitler a Legal Dictator
Parliament votes away its own power, and Hitler no longer needs anyone's approval to make law
Quick facts
- Passed
- 23 March 1933
- Proclaimed
- 24 March 1933
- Full name
- Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich
- Opposing vote
- Social Democratic Party only
What happened
On 23 March 1933, with SS troops stationed inside the makeshift Reichstag chamber (the former Kroll Opera House) to intimidate the remaining opposition, the German parliament passed the Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich, universally known as the Enabling Act. Proclaimed the following day, the act allowed the Reich government under Hitler to enact laws, including laws that violated the Weimar Constitution, without the consent of either the Reichstag or President Hindenburg. Only the Social Democratic Party voted against it; the Communist Party's deputies had already been arrested or barred following the Reichstag Fire Decree weeks earlier.
Why it matters
The Enabling Act is described by the Holocaust Encyclopedia as the cornerstone of Hitler's dictatorship, the single legal instrument that let the Nazi regime dismantle the rest of Germany's constitutional and legal order over the following months and years without further parliamentary votes. Within months Germany moved from a multi-party republic to a one-party state, an outcome made legally possible by this act.
How we know
The act's full text survives as a primary government document, preserved by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum alongside contemporary photographs of the intimidating SS presence at the vote.
Sources
- Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Enabling Act of 1933 · Primary source (author-declared)encyclopedia.ushmm.org · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Enabling Act of 1933 (full text, Article 1-2) · Primary source (author-declared)encyclopedia.ushmm.org · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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