Enabling Act of 1933

The Enabling Act of 1933 (German: Ermachtigungsgesetz), officially titled Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich ("Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich"), was a law passed by the German Reichstag on 23 March 1933 that gave the German Cabinet, most importantly Chancellor Adolf Hitler, the power to make and enforce laws without the involvement of the Reichstag or President Paul von Hindenburg. It passed by a vote of 444 to 94, with all opposing votes cast by the Social Democrats and 109 deputies absent, after Reichstag President Hermann Goring reduced the effective quorum by excluding the 81 absent Communist deputies from the count, and after Hitler secured the Centre Party's support with assurances protecting Catholic civil liberties and schools. The act permitted government laws to deviate from the constitution so long as they did not affect the institutions of the Reichstag and the Reichsrat, and it was formally declared repealed by the Allied Control Council in Control Council Law No. 1 following Germany's surrender at the end of the Second World War.