Word: hindenburg
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...first week in January, everything suddenly changed. Papen, bent on revenge for having been replaced as Chancellor by General Kurt von Schleicher, decided to make a deal with Hitler. At a secret meeting, several prominent financiers promised credit to the financially pressed Nazis. Once again, Hindenburg proposed a Papen-Hitler coalition, only with Hitler as Chancellor. & This time Hitler agreed. And so, on Jan. 30, 1933, this half-educated ex- Austrian with a genius for manipulation and deceit became, quite legally, the leader of Germany...
...Hindenburg and the other conservatives were confident that they could keep Hitler under control. They held eight of the eleven Cabinet seats, including such power centers as the Foreign Ministry and the Economics Ministry. What they did not seem to appreciate was that Goring was not only a national Minister Without Portfolio but also the Prussian interior minister; that put him in charge of the police in the state of Prussia, which covered Berlin and two-thirds of Germany...
Hitler had no sooner taken office than he had Hindenburg dissolve the Reichstag and order new elections. With Goring in charge of the police, 40,000 Nazis became special officers, invading opposition meetings, beating and arresting opposition speakers. Just a week before the election, Berliners saw a red glow in the night sky and learned that the Reichstag was on fire. At the scene, Goring was shouting wildly: "This is a Communist crime against the new government! We will show no mercy! Every Communist deputy must be shot...
Independent experts assumed from the beginning that the Nazis had started the fire, but Hitler immediately made it his pretext for seizing power. He persuaded Hindenburg to sign a decree that gave the government broad powers to make arrests, search homes, confiscate property and impose "restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion." The Storm Troopers were in power now, and mass arrests began. "My mission is only to destroy and exterminate," said Goring...
...powers to what was now very much his Cabinet. Some Communists and socialists -- those not already in jail -- protested, but while the Nazi delegates cheered and shouted, the Reichstag docilely voted itself out of business. All that remained for Hitler's assumption of total power was the death of Hindenburg, which occurred the following year. Hitler simply abolished the presidency, named himself Fuhrer and had his decision ratified in a plebiscite by nearly 90% of the people...