The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

by William L. Shirer

Enabling Act—the “Law for Removing the Distress of People and Reich (Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich),” as it was officially called. Its five brief paragraphs took the power of legislation, including control of the Reich budget, approval of treaties with foreign states and the initiating of constitutional amendments, away from Parliament and handed it over to the Reich cabinet for a period of four years. Moreover, the act stipulated that the laws enacted by the cabinet were to be drafted by the Chancellor and “might deviate from the constitution.” No laws were to “affect the position of the Reichstag”—surely the cruelest joke of all—and the powers of the President remained “undisturbed.”