ABSTRACT
Although the Nazis failed to obtain a majority share of the popular vote in each of the elections of 1932, they undoubtedly held a fairly strong mandate to govern given the complex system of proportional representation of the Weimar constitution. But Hitler's chancellorship, together with the two supporting Nazi members of cabinet, did not really derive from this mandate. It sprang first from the presidency but, behind the fa~ade of that office, from a variety of power blocks (Fig. 1.19) which had long been active in German political life and which had been gathering momentum in the economic and political turmoil which characterised Weimar Germany from 1929. Since March 1930, in fact, the authority of the Reichstag as the institutional embodiment of popular political opinion and as the forum of
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8 The road to dictatorship 37
national government had been in a state of semi-abeyance. The collapse of the Social Democrat coalition in spring 1930 marked the beginning of an era of extra-parliamentary government under Article 48 of the Weimar constitution. The original purpose of this constitutional provision was to give the presidency special powers in times of national emergency. By mid-1930, the provision was being used to bypass the authority of the Reichstag. The Reichstag itself could repeal all legislation under such emergency rule, but since the presidency had power to dissolve the Reichstag, this was a poor
Reichstag,
dissolve
dissolve
