The Reichstag members cast their votes: 441 in favor, 84 against. This gives the Nazis far more than a two-thirds majority. In a spectacle of cowardice and political opportunism, the politicians support Hitler and pass a new law. Hitler calls it the “Law to Remove the Distress of People and Reich.” It will come to be known as the “Enabling Act.” In five short paragraphs, it guts what remains of the Weimar Constitution and transforms Germany into a dictatorship. And it’s all done legally. Not by armed revolution, not by a bloody coup. But in an opera house, among cherubs.
