On the following day Hitler presented him with a new decree "for the protection of the people and the state." Allegedly a defensive measure against further Communist acts of violence, it abrogated the constitution's guarantees of personal freedoms; the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephone communications; freedom of assembly and association; freedom of the press; freedom to hold one's own opinions; the right to be secure form arrest. The familiar process by which the individual perishes and becomes the extension of the dictator's will took place with extraordinary speed and violence. The prisons filled up. Anyone who spoke against Hitler was liable to be arrested.
