1933: Legal Revolution or Coup?
A student must decide whether 1933 in Germany should be called a 'legal revolution' or a coup. On the table: NSDAP vote shares of 2.6 per cent in 1928, 18.3 in 1930, 37.3 in July 1932, 33.1 in November 1932, and 43.9 in March 1933; the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February 1933, suspending the Weimar civil liberties; the Enabling Act of 24 March 1933, which required a two-thirds majority of members present and passed by 444 votes to 94, after the Communist Party's 81 seats had been annulled and 26 Social Democratic deputies were in custody or in hiding; and the fact that the March 1933 election was held under the Fire Decree with the SA in the streets. The student's draft reads: 'Hitler came to power legally because the Enabling Act was passed by the Reichstag.'
1. Use the vote figures to test the word 'legally', and identify which part of the draft is an inference rather than a fact.
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The figures do three jobs.
They destroy the mandate claim. The NSDAP never won an absolute majority in a free election. The March 1933 figure of 43.9 per cent was produced under the Fire Decree, so it cannot be used as evidence of consent; and the fall from 37.3 to 33.1 per cent between July and November 1932 shows the party was losing ground, not sweeping to power, before the deal-making of January 1933.
They relocate the legality. Hitler's appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 was procedurally regular but politically a backstairs arrangement among Papen, Hindenburg and the conservatives, not the product of the vote.
They expose the inference. 'Because the Enabling Act was passed by the Reichstag' assumes the Reichstag that voted was freely constituted. The KPD's 81 mandates annulled and 26 SPD deputies absent mean the two-thirds threshold was met by subtraction as well as by persuasion. The fact is the vote count; the inference is that the count expressed consent.
2. What counter-argument should you expect from a strict marker, and how do you meet it without abandoning your position?
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The expected counter-argument: the Enabling Act was a constitutional amendment under Article 76, duly passed; a genuine coup would have suspended the constitution by decree, as the later regimes of the 1920s and 1930s did. On this view 'legal' describes the form correctly and the student's phrase is accurate.
The answer: concede the form and narrow the claim. Do not write 'the seizure of power was illegal'; write 'the transfer of power was procedurally legal and substantively coerced'. The Enabling Act's passage depended on the Fire Decree (an emergency measure under Article 48), on the exclusion of elected deputies, and on the intimidation of the Centre Party, whose vote supplied the two-thirds.
Then pre-empt the 'it was a revolution' line too: a revolution claims a rupture with legal continuity, and the regime took care to keep the forms - which is precisely why 'legal revolution', as the regime's own propaganda phrased it, is the load-bearing claim to interrogate rather than the fact to repeat.