Hitler Outlaws All Parties: Nazi Dictatorship Sealed

Germany's last pretense of democratic governance vanished when the Nazi regime declared itself the only legal political organization in the country, completing a six-month demolition of the Weimar Republic's constitutional order. The Law Against the Establishment of Parties, enacted on July 14, 1933, made the formation or maintenance of any political party other than the NSDAP a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison. Democracy in Germany was officially dead. The speed of the Nazi seizure was breathtaking. Hitler had been appointed chancellor on January 30, 1933, leading a coalition government in which Nazis held only three of eleven cabinet seats. Conservative politicians believed they could control him. Within six weeks, the Reichstag fire provided the pretext for emergency decrees suspending civil liberties. The Enabling Act of March 23 gave Hitler the power to enact laws without parliamentary approval. The Social Democrats were the only party to vote against it; the Communists had already been arrested or driven underground. Through April and May, the regime dismantled the remaining parties one by one. Trade unions were dissolved on May 2 and their assets seized. The SPD was banned on June 22 after its leadership fled to Prague. The remaining parties, including the Catholic Centre Party, the German National People's Party, and the Bavarian People's Party, dissolved themselves under pressure during late June and early July, their leaders calculating that voluntary dissolution was safer than forcible suppression. By the time the July 14 law was enacted, no opposition parties existed to ban. The same day's legislation also included a eugenics law authorizing forced sterilization of people with hereditary disabilities and a law stripping citizenship from political emigrants. Taken together, the July 14 laws established the legal architecture of the totalitarian state. Germany would not hold a free election again until 1949. The ease with which a functioning democracy was dismantled from within remains the most studied and cautionary political collapse of the twentieth century.