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Why were Communist deputies unable to vote against the Enabling Act?
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Weimar Republic
Learn about Germany's fledgling Weimar Republic and the challenges it faced.
Communist deputies were unable to vote against the Enabling Act because they were either arrested or excluded from the Reichstag prior to the vote on March 23, 1933.12
Following the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, the Nazi government used the incident as a pretext to claim a Communist plot to seize power. This allowed the government to suspend constitutional guarantees of individual liberty and implement emergency powers, which facilitated the systematic suppression and removal of political opposition, specifically targeting the 81 Communist deputies.123