Time to hand back the crown jewels?

It was the final act of a carefully prepared plan. On March 21st 1933, two days before the Reichstag was due to vote on giving Hitler absolute power, the Nazis organized the Day of Potsdam.

Still missing the two thirds majority he needed in parliament, Hitler’s strategy was to woo conservatives into voting with him, while unleashing his stormtroopers on the left-wing opposition.

The fire in the Reichstag a month earlier had given him the excuse he needed to round up and imprison MPs from the communist KPD party. Centrists were intimidated with death threats against them and their families.

Conservatives though, were won over with the promise that Hitler would unite his fascist forces with the traditions of the Prussian monarchy.

The Day of Potsdam was central to this theatre. It marked the opening of a new Reichstag in Potsdam, the seat of the Hohenzollern royal family. In Goebbels’ finely orchestrated ceremony, the streets were decked with the black, red and white flags of the Kaiserreic…