> "In a decree issued on 17 February 1933, Göring ordered the Prussian police force to make unrestrained use of firearms in operations against political opponents" and (as mentioned in previous posts) the police were not the only armed paramilitary group in play.
One additional item of context is that there were many people (including Ezra Pound and Oswald Spengler) going about saying that WWI+depression had proved that the edwardian vision of progress and social democracy was broken forever, and something new needed to be tried.
