In the lead up to the 1933 election oppression and harassment of political opponents increased. On February 27, 1933, six day before the Reichstag election, the Dutch National and communist Marinus van der Lubbe was caught setting the Reichstag on fire. While the exact events surrounding this event are still contended, it was blamed on a communist conspiracy. President Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire decree the next day, which increased Hitlers powers and gave him the opportunity to arrest political opponents, among them elected members of parliament.[http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/burns.htm] [http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/innenpolitik/reichstagsbrand/index.html]
In the election the national socialist failed to win a majority, but the newly formed Reichstag voted in favor of an Enabling Actwith a majority of 69% (67% being the necessary quota), giving the national socialist government the power to enact new laws without interference from parliament or constitution. Only the members of the Social Democrats (SPD) and Communists (KPD) voted against the act. Hitler and the NSDAP had sucessfully tricked the members of the Bayerische Volkspartei and the Zentrum into supporting the act. In the summer of 1933 the Nazi government declared first the communist and social democratic party illegal, briefly afterwards all other parties. At the end of the year the Reichstag cast officially into law that Germany was a one-party-state.
After all political opponents had been neutralised and in order to gain support from the German military, Hitler turned his attention to a key group which had catapulted the Nazi's into power--the stormtroopers (SA) under Ernst Roehm. The German military viewed an armed and trained paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party as a challenge to their power. It was a well known within the Nazi establishment that Roehm was gay, and it was now used against him to discredit him. Heinrich Himmler of the SS, Hitler's personal body guards at the time, was tasked with reigning the SA in. In the so-called ''Night of Long Knives'' the entire top of the SA was executed. This marked the eclipse of the SA as within the [[Nazi Party]], and the rise of the SS as the dominant force. Although hestitant at first, Hitler agreed to have Ernst Roehm executed, a friend and associate since their time in Landsberg prison.[http://www.adolfhitler.ws/lib/nsdap/Rohm.html] [http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/nazi/innenpolitik/roehm/index.html]