22.2 The Nazi Revolution, 1933 - 1935

"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up."

- Pastor Martin Niemoeller

On January 30, 1933 Hitler was appointed Chancellor by President Hindenburg. As we have seen, Hitler called for a new Reichstag election campaign in order to secure a Nazi majority in the German Parliament. On February 27 the Reichstag Fire in Berlin destroyed the parliament building and alarmed and angered the German population. The Nazis blamed the fire on the Communists, calling it the prelude to a violent Communist revolution. Germany seemed on the verge of chaos. Seeking to restore order in response to the crisis, Hindenburg issued emergency presidential decrees suspending civil liberties (freedom of speech and press) and asserting full powers over all the federal states.

On March 5 the Reichstag elections gave the Nazis only 44 % of the vote - not enough to give them a majority, but they remained the largest party in the parliament. Seeking to capitalize on the crisis, Hitler and his Nationalist allies sought and won approval, including that of the Center Party, of the Enabling Act (March 23). The Enabling Act gave Hitler’s government four years to enact laws without the approval of the Reichstag, the power to make laws outside of the Constitution, and the power to conclude treaties with foreign states. Thus, a Reichstag majority voted to give the Nazi Party virtually unlimited power to make law for a four-year period. The Nazis would use this power to eliminate all traces of the constitutional system and create their own state system, a virtual totalitarian dictatorship.

Through his Gleichschaltung (“Coordination”) process, Hitler would then implement a series of laws that centralized all political power in the Nazi Party. Between March and June 1933, all other political parties (Communist, Social Democratic, Center, Peoples, and Nationalist) were abolished. All independent trade unions were abolished and replaced by a Nazi-controlled nationwide German Labor Front. The federal states were deprived of their constitutional autonomy. The Nazi Party was made the only legal political party. A Concordat with the Catholic Church in July 1933 won the Nazi regime the recognition of the Pope. In return Hitler promised to respect the independence of Catholic educational and social organizations. German Protestants were split in their response to the regime. Although most Lutheran clergy accepted Nazi rule, others led by the Reverend Martin Niemoeller denied Nazi claims to full authority over all aspects of German life. Spiritual dissenters, including Niemoeller, were persecuted and eventually arrested and interned in concentration camps.

The process of “Nazification” removed non-Nazis from the civil service (bureaucracy) and replaced them with Nazis. Jews were denied entry into the professions - law, medicine, engineering, teaching - and government service. The entire judicial system was recreated according to Nazi principles of arbitrary law and justice. The principles of guaranteed constitutional rights under law, habeas corpus, trial by jury, and the right to appeal a court’s decision were all abolished.

In the spring of 1934 Hitler secured the support of the German army. Through a secret meeting Hitler promised the military commanders that he would eliminate the SA (the brown-shirted Nazi militia) in exchange for the military’s recognition of him as Hindenburg’s successor. The army viewed the SA, a restive force which numbered some two million troops, as a dangerous and destabilizing threat to the nation. In a night of bloody treachery (The “Night of the Long Knives,” June 30, 1934), Hitler ordered his elite SS and Gestapo forces to destroy the SA leadership. In the purge, SA commander Ernst Roehm and some 400 others were murdered or arrested and executed. The army, satisfied, later pledged its personal allegiance to Hitler.

In August 1934 President Hindenburg died. Hitler combined the powers of the president with those of the chancellor making him undisputed head of state. This was later confirmed through a plebiscite in which 88 % of the electorate expressed approval.

In January 1935, as required by the Versailles Treaty, a League of Nations plebiscite was held in the Saar Valley wherein over 90 % of the population voted for the restoration of German sovereignty.

In September 1935 the Nuremberg Laws deprived all German Jews (including all those of one-quarter Jewish extraction) of their citizenship. This policy was to begin the removal of Germany’s 600,000 Jews from German life and reduce them to the status of Untermenschen (“sub-humans”). All intermarriage with Jews was forbidden. Already denied entry into the professions, those Jews who were already doctors, lawyers, or professors were to be dismissed from their jobs. Other occupational fields from which Jews were excluded included journalism, education, theater, radio, the arts, and farming. Jews would not be prohibited from running their own businesses until 1937.

Robert Goldston in his book The Life and Death of Nazi Germany (1967) writes:

Against the Jews the SA and SS, never known for their mercy in any case, showed no restraint. The murder of Jews, young or old, was a common occurrence in any German city or town, and one which was applauded by the government and ignored by the citizenry. As yet (until the start of World War II) Hitler had developed no program of complete annihilation of the Jews, but their life was made intolerable and what the future held for them was made clear. A little more than half of Germany’s half million Jews were able to flee the country, usually stripped of all their belongings before they left. But for those who were unable to escape, the future held little hope.

And, in fact, by 1935 there was no hope for any German – no hope of overthrowing Nazism. Those Germans dedicated and fearless enough to oppose Hitler were already dead or crowding the concentration camps that had sprung up throughout the country to house Der Fuehrer’s enemies. For the vast majority of the German people the loss of liberty, the degradation of their lives, their own enslavement were to be compensated by the glories of revived German militarism and foreign conquest. Hypnotized by Hitler and prisoners of their own history, the German people followed Der Fuehrer blindly down a road that was to lead to overwhelming disaster – for themselves and for the world. (Goldston 90)

Sources for The Nazi Revolution

Bullock, Alan. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. New York: Bantam, 1961.

Goldston, Robert. The Life and Death of Nazi Germany. Greenwich, CN: Fawcett, 1967.

Pauley, Bruce. Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century. Wheeling, Il: Harlan Davidson, 2003.

Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960.