Word: reichstags
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...Weimar Republic fell. In the Nazi-packed Reichstag, on March 23, 1933, Hitler called for the Enabling Act, which emasculated the German Constitution, took the ground from under the feet of opposition parties. Tall, husky, greying Otto Wels, president of the Social Democratic Party, strode to the dais to protest the bill. "We are defenseless, but not without honor!" he cried. "If you really wanted social reconstruction, you would need no such bill as this!" Hitler spoke next: "You're too late! We don't need you any longer!" The bill was passed...
...Jansen: "In the elections of May 1928 the National Socialists polled a total of only 809,000 votes in all Germany. By September 1930 the brown flood had swollen to 6,500,000 votes. . . . At the end of July 1932, with more than 13,500,000 votes and 230 [Reichstag] deputies, the Nazis reached the peak of their legal power in the Weimar State...
...eyebrows were raised, either in surprise or indignation, when the tired, lightweight 1935-elected House of Commons almost unanimously voted to postpone Britain's general election for another year.* No one except bumptious Independent Bill Brown compared Parliament to the Reichstag, or intimated that this might be a signpost on the road to British fascism...
...therefore ask the German Reichstag for an explicit endorsement of my legal right to demand of everyone the discharge of his duties or to cashier anyone from his post or office if I consider that he has failed in his duty...
When Hitler was through, Hermann Göring asked the Reichstag for a rising vote of assent. He did not give dissenters any chance to vote. The endorsement was "unanimous...