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All 647 seats in theReichstag 324 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Registered | 44,685,764 ( 0.7%) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Turnout | 88.7% ( 8.1pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Results by electoral constituency Seat distribution by electoral constituency Results bydistrict and independent city | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| This article is part of a series on the |
| Politics of Germany |
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Head of state |
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Federal elections were held inGermany on 5 March 1933, after theNazi seizure of power on 30 January and just six days after theReichstag fire. The election sawNazi stormtroopers unleash a widespread campaign of violence against theCommunist Party (KPD),left-wingers,[1]: 317 trade unionists, theSocial Democratic Party[1] and theCentre Party.[1]: 322 They were the last multi-party elections in a united Germany until theall-German vote in 1990, though by 1933, the democratic process had ceased to be free or fair.
The 1933 election followed the previous year's two elections (July andNovember) andHitler's appointment asChancellor. In the months before the 1933 election,SA andSS displayed "terror, repression and propaganda ... across the land",[1]: 339 and Nazi organizations "monitored" the vote process. InPrussia 50,000 members of the SS, SA andDer Stahlhelm were ordered to monitor the votes by acting Interior MinisterHermann Göring, asauxiliary police.[1]: 345
TheNazi Party (NSDAP) experienced a sharp rise in support compared to the November 1932 election, and together with its coalition partner, theGerman National People's Party (DNVP), secured a majority in the Reichstag. This marked the first time since 1930 that agoverning coalition held a clearparliamentary majority. However, the election was far from fair. Carried out in an atmosphere of intimidation and violence against political opponents, it was skewed heavily in the Nazis' favour. Even so, they alone received only 43.9 percent of the vote, falling short of the numbers needed to govern without a partner.
Though now in possession of a working majority, Hitler pushed further. On 23 March, just two weeks after the vote, he passed theEnabling Act of 1933 with the support of the DNVP and the Centre Party, granting him the power torule by decree. This act effectively dismantled parliamentary democracy and gave Hitler dictatorial authority. In the months that followed, the Nazi regime banned all other political parties and turned the Reichstag into arubberstamp body composed solely of Nazis and their pro-Nazi "guests", extinguishing all remaining traces of democratic governance. This would be the last contested election held in Germany until afterWorld War II.
The Nazis came to power on 30 January, when PresidentPaul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor, who immediately urged the dissolution of the Reichstag and the calling of new elections. On his second day as Chancellor, Hitler opened his campaign with a nationwide radio address pledging to save the nation from the communists, which he castigated as "politicalnihilism."[2] In early February, the Nazis "unleashed a campaign of violence and terror that dwarfed anything seen so far".[3]Sturmabteilung stormtroopers began attacking trade union andCommunist Party (KPD) offices and the homes of left-wingers.[1]: 317
In the second half of February, the violence was extended to theSocial Democrats, with gangs ofbrownshirts breaking up Social Democrat meetings and beating up their speakers and audiences. Issues of Social Democratic newspapers were banned.[1]: 318–320 Twenty newspapers of theCentre Party, a party ofCatholic Germans, were banned in mid-February for criticising the new government. Government officials known to be Centre Party supporters were dismissed from their offices, and stormtroopers violently attacked party meetings inWestphalia.[1]: 322 Only theNazi Party and theGerman National People's Party were allowed to campaign untouched.
Six days before the scheduled election date, the German parliament building was set alight in theReichstag fire, allegedly by the Dutch CommunistMarinus van der Lubbe. That event reduced the popularity of the KPD and enabled Hitler to persuade Hindenburg to pass theReichstag Fire Decree as an emergency decree according toArticle 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The emergency law removed many civil liberties and allowed the arrest ofErnst Thälmann and 4,000 other leaders and members of the KPD[1]: 331 shortly before the election, suppressing the Communist vote and consolidating the position of the Nazis.
Although Hitler could have banned the KPD outright, he opted not to do so. He feared a violentCommunist uprising in the event of a ban, and he also believed the KPD's presence on the ballot could siphon off votes away from the Social Democrats. Instead, he opted to simply have Communist functionaries jailed by the thousands. The courts and prosecutors, both already hostile to the KPD long before 1933, obligingly agreed with the line that since the Reichstag fire was a Communist plot, KPD membership was an act of treason. As a result, for all intents and purposes, the KPD was "outlawed" on the day the Reichstag Fire Decree took effect and "completely banned" as of the day of the election.[1]: 335–336 While the Social Democrats (SPD) were then not as heavily oppressed as the Communists, the Social Democrats were also restricted in their actions, as the party's leadership had already fled toPrague, and many members were acting only from the underground. Hence, the Reichstag fire is widely believed to have had a major effect on the outcome of the election. As a replacement parliament building and for 10 years to come, the new parliament used theKroll Opera House for its meetings.
The resources of big business and the state were thrown behind the Nazis' campaign to achieve saturation coverage all over Germany. Brownshirts and SS patrolled and marched menacingly through the streets of cities and towns. A "combination of terror, repression and propaganda was mobilized in every... community, large and small, across the land".[1]: 339 Irene von Goetz wrote, "In a decree issued on 17 February 1933, Göring ordered the Prussian police force to make unrestrained use of firearms in operations against political opponents (the so-calledSchießerlass, or shooting decree)".[4]
To ensure a Nazi majority in the vote, Nazi organisations also "monitored" the vote process. InPrussia, 50,000 members of theSS,SA andDer Stahlhelm were ordered to monitor the votes as so-called deputy sheriffs or auxiliary police (Hilfspolizei) in another decree by acting Interior MinisterHermann Göring.[4]
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| Party | Votes | % | +/– | Seats | +/– | |
| Nazi Party | 17,277,180 | 43.91 | +10.82 | 288 | +92 | |
| Social Democratic Party | 7,181,629 | 18.25 | –2.18 | 120 | –1 | |
| Communist Party of Germany | 4,848,058 | 12.32 | –4.54 | 81 | –19 | |
| Centre Party | 4,424,905 | 11.25 | –0.68 | 73 | +3 | |
| Black-White-Red Struggle Front[a] | 3,136,760 | 7.97 | –0.37 | 52 | +1 | |
| Bavarian People's Party | 1,073,552 | 2.73 | –0.36 | 19 | –1 | |
| German People's Party | 432,312 | 1.10 | –0.76 | 2 | –9 | |
| Christian Social People's Service | 383,999 | 0.98 | –0.16 | 4 | –1 | |
| German State Party | 334,242 | 0.85 | –0.10 | 5 | +3 | |
| German Farmers' Party | 114,048 | 0.29 | –0.13 | 2 | –1 | |
| Agricultural League | 83,839 | 0.21 | –0.09 | 1 | –1 | |
| German-Hanoverian Party | 47,743 | 0.12 | –0.06 | 0 | –1 | |
| Socialist Struggle Community | 3,954 | 0.01 | New | 0 | New | |
| Workers' and Farmers' Struggle Community | 1,110 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 39,343,331 | 100.00 | – | 647 | +63 | |
| Valid votes | 39,343,331 | 99.21 | ||||
| Invalid/blank votes | 311,698 | 0.79 | ||||
| Total votes | 39,655,029 | 100.00 | ||||
| Registered voters/turnout | 44,685,764 | 88.74 | ||||
| Source:Gonschior.de | ||||||
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Despite achieving a much better result than in theNovember 1932 election, the Nazis did not do as well as Hitler had hoped. In spite of massive violence and voter intimidation,[1][4] the Nazis won only 43.9% of the vote, rather than the majority that he had expected.
Therefore, Hitler was forced to maintain his coalition with the DNVP to control the majority of seats. The Communists (KPD) lost about a quarter of their votes, and the Social Democrats suffered only moderate losses. Although the KPD had not been formally banned, it was a foregone conclusion that the KPD deputies would never be allowed to take their seats. Within a few days, all KPD representatives had been placed under arrest or gone into hiding.
Although the Nazi-DNVP coalition had enough seats to conduct the basic business of government, Hitler needed a two-thirds majority to pass theEnabling Act, which allowed the Cabinet, and effectively the Chancellor, to enact laws without the approval of the Reichstag for four years. With certain exceptions, such laws could deviate from the Weimar Constitution. Leaving nothing to chance, the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to arrest all 81 Communist deputies and to keep several Social Democrats out of the chamber.
Hitler then obtained the necessarysupermajority by persuading the Centre Party to vote with him with regard to theEnabling Act. The bill was passed on 23 March with 444 votes for and 94 against. Only the Social Democrats, led byOtto Wels, opposed the measure, which came into effect on 27 March. The bill's provisions turned the government into ade facto legal dictatorship.
Within four months, the other parties had been shuttered by outright banning or Nazi terror, and Germany had become formally a one-party state. Asnap election was called for November by Hindenburg, in which voters were presented with a single list of Nazis and guest candidates, and voting was not secret: the new Reichstag thus included only NSDAP and supporting members, effectively liquidating what was left of Weimar democracy.
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