In April of 1932, Heinrich Bruening, Chancellor of Germany, invoked Article 48 of the constitution and issued a decree banning the SA and SS all across Germany. The Nazis were outraged and wanted Hitler to fight the ban. 7. As Germany's economic situation got worse, with nearly six million unemployed, Bruening was labeled "The Hunger Chancellor." Bruening had also continued the dangerous precedent of ruling by decree. He invoked Article 48 of the German constitution several times to break the political stalemate in Berlin. To Schleicher and Hitler, he was simply in the way and had to go. Schleicher went to work on him by undermining the support of Hindenburg. Bruening was already in trouble with Hindenburg, who blamed him for the political turmoil that had made it necessary to run for re-election at age 85 against the 'Bohemian Corporal' Adolf Hitler. The Nazis, sensing total victory, campaigned with fanatical energy. Hitler was now speaking to adoring German audiences of up to 100,000 at a time. The phenomenon of large scale 'Fhrer worship' had begun. On July 31, the people voted and gave the Nazis 13,745,000 votes, 37% of the total, granting them 230 seats in the Reichstag. The Nazi party was now the largest and most powerful in Germany. 8. Hitler's much celebrated "Third Reich," which was to have endured for eternity, ended after twelve years of unparalleled barbarity, in which 30 million people lost their lives. Twelve million of theses souls lost their lives far from the battlefield, by mass shootings, forced labor camps, and in gas ovens at Belsen, Dachau, Auschwitz and Ravensbrck in accordance with Nazi racial theories and the "New Order." To these atrocities we could add the indiscriminate torture and murder of prisoners of war, or the uprooting and destruction of entire villages in Poland, France and Russia. Such horror prompted the international trial at Nuremberg (1945-46), at which twenty-one leading Nazis were tried and ele...
