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Hitler had proposed legislation—entitled the Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich, but known colloquially as the Enabling Act—that essentially codified into law the Reichstag Fire Decree that was supposed to be temporary. The law allowed Hitler to enact any law, even those that violated the Weimar Constitution and without the approval of President von Hindenburg. It would cement Hitler’s dictatorial stranglehold over the nation of Germany.

“How do you know?” asked Gerlich.

“A guard was listening to the radio. But most of the Communist members of the Reichstag are in custody here, and at least half the Social Democrats. They need a two-thirds quorum, and they don’t have it.”

Gerlich let a bitter chuckle escape his lips. “They’ll just say they have a quorum, whether they do or not,” he said. “Nobody will challenge them. And anyone who does will answer to the SA guards who will be surrounding the legislative chamber.”

He’d come to adopt Thomas Bauer’s view: to the Nazis, truth was irrelevant and rules didn’t matter. They did what they wanted, and anyone who got in their way, by definition, was treated as an enemy of the people.

He clasped Christian Grotewald on the shoulder. “It pains me to say this, my good man, but that law will pass today.”

The detainees trudged out for roll call in the center of camp, the ground cold and hard, the sky gray. They lined up in rows of ten, separated by blocks. Nearly a thousand men stood at attention, shivering in their coveralls, their breath frozen, wincing against the severe wind. The camp was surrounded by fences of electrified barbed wire twenty feet high and a moat, courtesy of the River Amper, as wide as eight feet. A tower loomed at each corner, housing an SS guard manning a machine gun.

Gerlich looked around. Lined up to his right was a biology professor from Berlin, to his left an attorney specializing in civil rights. Along the rest of his row were a rabbi from Munich, a Düsseldorf man elected to parliament as a Communist, a banker from Berlin who was openly gay, a Jewish judge from Frankfurt, a Hamburg journalist who had written of Hitler’s “petty tyranny,” and two others from Munich, a Jewish pediatrician who had contributed heavily to Hitler’s opponent in the presidential election and an essayist who had once criticized Hitler for his role ten years ago in the Beer Hall Putsch.

The Führer was not just jailing his current enemies. He was settling old scores.

SS guards patrolled the detainees in formation, heavy winter coats covering their black uniforms, rifles over their shoulders. In succession, from Block A to E, SS guards counted heads and reported a final tally to a guard holding a clipboard, who would confirm that the count matched up with official records.

They counted each block twice to ensure all detainees were present. There was an inconsistency in the count of Block C, which required yet another recount. The roll call, as usual, took over ninety minutes, with detainees being forced to stand completely still and weathering unbearable cold in their thin coveralls.

When roll call finally finished, the SS guards stood at attention as a door opened from the administration building, a log cabin in the camp’s infancy. Out strode the lagerkommandant, the camp commander, carrying a bullhorn to address the detainees. Hilmar Wäckerle was a longtime National Socialist and classmate of Heinrich Himmler’s back at the Technical University Munich.

“Today you will again focus on the construction of the barracks,” Wäckerle announced.

Gerlich winced, not so much at the grueling labor ahead—chopping and lifting logs, nailing boards together, driving shovels into cold, hard earth—but the sentiment behind it. The prisoners were being made to build and expand their prison.

“You have no right to hold me! I demand to be released!”

Gerlich turned as he heard these words shouted to the kommandant by a detainee many rows behind him. Gerlich braced himself as the SS guards moved toward the man, but the kommandant intervened.

“Bring him forward,” said Wäckerle through the bullhorn. “Let the man speak.”

SS guards shoved the man forward until he stood near the commander. The prisoner was thin, of average build, with dark eyes. He faced his fellow detainees.

“My name is Karl Litten!” he called out. “I am an elected member of the Reichstag. I am needed in Berlin for a crucial vote. I demand to be released at once!”

Wäckerle raised his bullhorn. “Who among you agrees with this man?”

Gerlich raised his hand. A few others did, as well, and then others became more emboldened and followed suit. Nearly five hundred hands went up.

Kommandant Wäckerle, standing behind Litten the prisoner, nodded to one of his guards. The guard removed his baton and swung it at the back of the prisoner’s knees, knocking him to the ground with a cry. The SS guard swung the club like a hammer down on the prisoner’s head with a hideous crunch. Then he slammed down the baton again, this time drawing blood from the prisoner’s skull. Then again, and again and again, as if hammering a stubborn nail into the floor, until the prisoner’s skull was nothing but a mash, blood and brain matter spraying everywhere with each successive blow.

The kommandant turned to the rows and rows of prisoners. “I ask again,” he called out through his bullhorn. “Who among you agrees with this man?”

At no other time that day did the camp at Dachau grow more silent.

74

Reich chancellery

Wilhelmstraße 73

Berlin

“NO!”

Inside the chancellor’s office, a wall-wide swastika as his background, Adolf Hitler ripped the press releases into pieces and flung them through the air. “A boycott of German goods? An international Jewish boycott? I will not stand for this!”