THE ENABLING ACT

From- Collier's Encyclopedia, 1960 Edition

page 456 ................................ GERMANY

"......... The Reichstag, with the support even of some Socialists and the Catholics, passed an enabling act, which was the first of a series of laws and decrees that converted the democratic republic into a totalitarian state with Hitler as supreme leader.

Simultaneously the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazis were put into effect, and Jews, persons with partly Jewish blood, and persons married to Jews were disqualified from participation in virtually every phase of German national and cultural life. Eventually this policy was widened to include genocide, that is, the slaying of whole nations or peoples which the Nazis considered inferior or dangerous to the Germans as a source of racial corruption. ...............

the [Roman] Catholic hierarchy found its hands tied by the Concordat of 1933 between the Third Reich and the Papacy,....."

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From .................. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND NAZI GERMANY

By Guenter Lewy

Page 35

"In the evening session of the Reichstag, which followed a dramatic afternoon meeting of the Center [ROMAN CATHOLIC] party faction, Monsignor Kaas rose to announce that the Party, despite certain misgivings, would vote for the Enabling Act. The English historian Bullock calls this fateful step "a fitting close to the shabby policy of compromise with the Nazis which the Center party had followed since the summer of 1932."

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[.................... THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND NAZI GERMANY .........

Pub by- McGraw-Hill Book Company

Copyright 1964 .......... LIBRARY OF CONGRESS No. 64-21072

"Guenter Lewy left his native Germany as a boy of fifteen in 1939, emigrated to Palestine and then to the United States. He has since taught at Columbia University and Smith College, and is now Associate Professor of Government at the University of Massachusetts" ]