Figure 1.--Here we see a group of German boys in 1933 or 34. Note that the girls have been excluded. We are not sure what kind of group this is. We suspect it is not a school group. The boys in front are wearing sports clothing. Note a few boys are wearing NAZI DJ uniforms. You can tell that this photograph was taken in the very early NAZI period because in with the NAZI flags and standards you can see the flag of the German Republic. Note the Lederhosen halters. We suspect that this photograph was taken in Bavaria.

There was a brief period in Germany after Hitler was appointed Chancellor (January 1933) in which he was not in complete control of Germany. This was not because of the political opposition. The Communists (DKP) was suppressed and the Socialists (SPD) were silenced. Hitler was able to do this because he through the ministers the NAZIs were allocated achieved control of the German police. Police officers quickly learned not to question the NAZIS. They also engaged in extra-legal actions in the concentations the SS quickly set up. The judiciary was not at first controlled by the NAZIs. The concentration camps, however, allowed the NAZIs to move against the political opposition even without the judicary. The NAZIs also gained control over the media which ensured that their extra-legal actions were not questioned pubically. While the political opposition was cowed, Hitler still was not in complete control of Germany. There was one force not unnder NAZI control--the Army. The Army was not particularly dusturbed with NAZI actions against Communists, Socialists, and Jews--legal or not. The Army was not strongly committed to the Weimar Republic. Many officers objected to the Socialist who had dominated the Repubic. Others were monarchists. And many were ardent nationalists, sympathetic to nationlist parties, including the NAZIs. he Army was, however, committed to its own institutional existence. The NAZIs posed a major problem to the Army because of the SA. Despite the NAZI natonalist appeal, the Army would not accept Hitler and the NAZIs as long as the SA posed the threat of replaceing it as the core of a new army. Thus while Hindenburg still lived and the SA threatened the Army, the Army posed aserious threat to Hitler's control of Germany. Other institutions were at first beyond the immediate control of the NAZIs. One of these was the educational system. There were NAZI teachers and administrators. There were also many who distrusted or opposed the NAZIs. It would take some time to throughly NAZIfy the educational system and other German institutions.

Police Control

When Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor (January 1933), it was a coalition government, with the NAZIs only given control of some of the ministeries. But Hitler carefully chose which ones. And among the ones he chose were the ministeries controlling the police. Police officers quickly learned not to question the NAZIS. They also engaged in extra-legal actions in the concentation camps the SS quickly set up. There NAZI actions were beyond any legal control.

Political Opposition

There was a brief period in Germany after Hitler was appointed Chancellor (January 1933) in which he was not in complete control of Germany. This was not because of the political opposition. The Communists (DKP) was suppressed and the Socialists (SPD) were silenced. Hitler was able to do this because he through the ministers the NAZIs were allocated achieved control of the German police.

Judiciary

The one branch of Government that the emergency decrees and Enabling Act did not imediately put in NAZI hands was the judiciary. The SS could carry out extra judicial actions in Dachau and the other concentration camps being opened, but Hitler also wanted control of the judiciary. The Weimar Constitution had established an independent judiciary. The Enabling Act suspended the Constitution, but the judges were still in place and protected from arbitrary removal. {Shirer] And some of these judges soon infuriated Hitler. Americans may not realise that trials in German courts (and much of the rest of the world) are decided by judges and not juries. The Reichstag trial found Lubbe guilty and sentenced him to death. The court acquitted three other defendents (Communists). Georgi Dimitrov, one of the Reichstag terrorist defendants, angered Göring during the trial whe Dimitrov cross-examined him. Even so, Dimitrov was taken into “protective custody,” by the Gestapo. The NAZIs arrested DKP leader Ernst Thälmann, but never tried him, least he turn the trial into another spectical. Hitler at any rate quickly put a stop to embarassing trials. The NAZI Government transferred jurisdiction in treason cases from the Supreme Court to a new People’s Court. One historian reports, This People's Court "... soon became the most dreaded tribunal in the land. It consisted of two professional judges and five others chosen from among party officials, the S.S. and the armed forces, thus giving the latter a majority vote. There was no appeal from its decisions or sentences and usually its sessions were held in camera. Occasionally, however, for propaganda purposes when relatively light sentences were to be given, the foreign correspondents were invited to attend." [Shirer] The NAZIs also established the Special Court to try political crimes or other “insidious attacks against the government.” These courts according to one historian, "consisted of three judges, who invariably had to be trusted party members, without a jury. A Nazi prosecutor had the choice of bringing action in such cases before either an ordinary court or the Special Court, and invariably he chose the latter, for obvious reasons. Defense lawyers before this court, as before the Volksgerichtshof, had to be approved by Nazi officials. Sometimes even if they were approved they fared badly. Thus the lawyers who attempted to represent the widow of Dr. Klausener, the Catholic Action leader murdered in the Blood Purge, in her suit for damages against the State were whisked off to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where they were kept until they formally withdrew the action." [Shirer] Sachsenhausen was an especially notorious SS concentration camp.

The Press/Media

Germany before the NAZI seizure of power had one of the livliest, freest, and largest media complex in Europe. There was a wide spectrum of newspapers and magazines as well as a major film industry. Virtually every conceivable politicial, economic, and social opinion was aired in the press. Most of what the NAZIs would do was predicted in the German press before 1933. Pnly the full dimrnsions of the Hollocaust was not imagined. Chancellor Hitler chose Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels as his Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment. Goebels was not at first pleased with the appointmentm desiring a more prestigious post. Hitler in retrospect could not have chosen a better minister to gain control over the German press and media. Goebbels was quoted before the NAZI seizure of power as saying, nothing was so good for a hostile editor as "one litre of castor oil". This was actually a measure that was used by the Fascists in Italy. When the opening of Daccau, however, Goebbels and the NAZIs had even more persuasive measures at their disposal. Goebbels as minister moved to gain control over the press and media which ensured that the extra-legal actions being taken were not question or even not fully reported. Goebbels used a mix of force and persuasion to achieve his goals. Goebbels set out to deal with stridently anti-NAZI journalists. He gained control over journalists through a law that that prohibited individuals from pursuing journalism unless they were menbers of the NAZI association of journalists. Violaters were procecuted criminally. Then Goebbels seized effective control of German's two largest news services (the Telegraphen-Union and Wolff's Telegraph Bureau) and merged them (December 1933). There were more subtle ways of dealing with most other journalists. We note "conventions" organized for provincial journalists that wre essentially indocrination sessions on the news policies of the Propaganda Minisyry. [Lochner, p. 19.]

Book Burnings (May 1933)

Books were one of the first casulties of the NAZI regime when Hitler seized power in 1933. The NAZIs organized mass burnings of books written by Jews or expressing objectional ideas. Virtually all books by Jewish authors were destroyed. Hitler Youth members enthusiastically committed masterpieces of the German language as well as many foreign texts to huge bonfires. The book burnings were carefully prepared. The NAZIS seized power in January 1933. Throughout the spring of 1933, NAZI student organizations, professors, and librarians compiled an extensive lists of books they determined to be "entartet" (degenerate) and should not be read by decent Germans. NAZI SA Stormtroopers and student groups armed with this list on the night of May 10, 1933, surged into libraries and bookstores all over Germany. They organized Wagnerian spectacles, marching in longlines by torchlight, singing Party songs, and chanting the twelve "theses,"--their manifesto for the "purification" of German literature and thought. They then threw the seized books on to huge bonfires. More than 20,000 books were burned on May 10 at the Berlin Opernplatz book burning alone. Many were works of Jewish authors such as Max Brod, Albert Einstein, Franz Kafka, Richard Katz, Sigmund Freud, and Franz Werfel. German-writing authors from Prague were Franz Kafka, Franz Werfel ("The Song of Bernadette"), Max Brod and Richard Katz. They were Jews, so their books were burned. Thomas Mann married a Jewish woman, Katja Pringsheim, so his children were half-Jews according to NAZI classifications. Most were by non-Jewish writers, including famous American (Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, and Sinclair Lewis), English (H.G. Wells), French, and German (Thomas Mann--whose wife was Jewish, Erich Maria Remarque, and Rainer Maria Rilke) writers who expressed idea differing from the NAZI world view. Erich Maria Remarque was born a Catholic (notice his middle name). His real surname was Kramer. (Remark in reverse). His books were burned on account of his anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front--the most important novel to emerge from World War I. Many of the banned authors still alive were were emmigrated, many to the United States. Also the books by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke were burned. He was too cosmopolitan, born in Prague, living in France as secretary of Rodin. Somebody like that thoroughly antagonized the NAZIs. The choice of degenerate authors provides a terrifying insight into the NAZI mindset. One such author was Helen Keller, the deaf-mute who became a writer. (The handicapped in German were to be targeted by the NAZIs as part of a eugenics program several years before the Holocaust.) Public and private libraries and book stores were advised to ensure that they did not have the "degenerate", "un-German" books.

President Hindenburg (1932-34)

President Paul von Hindenburg was Germany's most estemed World War I hero. He had been elected president after President Freidrich Ebert died (1925). He had been supported by the conservatives (naionalists, the Army Prussian Junkers, and others) and defeated the SDP and center parties. The German presidency was aelatively weak office. The Government was run by the Reich Chancrellor supported by a majority coalition in the Reichstag. With the rise of the NAZIs, however, the Reichstag became deadlocked. This thus increased the importance of the presidency and Hindenburg himself gave the post great prestige. Hitler challenged Hindeberg for the presidency and was soundly defeated. Chancellor Heinrich Brüning and the Socialists who took a strong stance against the NAZIs, banning the SA, supported him to this time to defeat Hitler. Itvlooked at first that it was a begginning of the NAZI decline. Hindenburg despite the support of Brüning and the SPD did not like the Chancellor. Hindenburg was a conservative and opposed to many Socialist reforms and high taxes on landed estates. The ageing President was strongly influenced by his World War I comrads and Junker friends who were outraged when Brüning moved to break up the landed estates in East Prussia. As a result he dismissed Brüning. He at first, however, to appoint Hitler chancellor, depite the NAZI strength in the Reichstag. In effect it was the end of the Republic. He tried two replaces (Papen and Schleicher), both who refused to stand up to the NAZIs. It was Hindenburg who finally appointed Hitler chancellor (January 1933). He thus was instrumental in the NAZI Machtergreifung (seizure of power). Hitler quicklu moved to created aolice state. Hindenburg played a major role in this, approving emergency measures after the Reichstag fire to give Hitler special powers. Hindenburg with one exception did not object to the various steps taken by Hitler to create a dictatorship. The only challenge to the NAZIs on Hindenburg's part was when Ernst Röhm threatened to turn the SA into a people's army. The result was the Night of the Long Knives (June 1934). Hitler supressed the SA. President Hindenburg died 2 months lter. The officers and men of the new Wehrmacht swore a persinal oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler as the new German Führer.

The Army

While the political opposition was cowed, Hitler still was not in complete control of Germany. There was one force not unnder NAZI control--the Army. The Army was not particularly disturbed with NAZI actions against Communists, Socialists, and Jews--legal or not. The Army was not strongly committed to the Weimar Republic. Many officers objected to the Socialist who had dominated the Repubic. Others were monarchists. And many were ardent nationalists, sympathetic to nationlist parties, including the NAZIs. The Army was, however, committed to its own institutional existence. The NAZIs posed a major problem to the Army because of the SA. Despite the NAZI natonalist appeal, the Army would not accept Hitler and the NAZIs as long as the SA posed the threat of replaceing it as the core of a new army. Thus while Hindenburg still lived and the SA threatened the Army, the Army posed a serious threat to Hitler's control of Germany.

Schools

Other institutions were at first beyond the immediate control of the NAZIs. One of these was the educational system. There were NAZI teachers and administrators. There were also many who distrusted or opposed the NAZIs. It would take some time to throughly NAZIfy the educational system and other German institutions.

First NAZI Referendum (November 1933)

Elections did not end in Germany after Hitler seized power. What ended were competitive free elections in which opposition parties were allowed to contest the NAZIs with access to an independent media and the votes were actually counted correctly. Hitler's who railed against democracy allowed four votes during his 12 years in office. His preferred form of election was the referendum. And he organized four different referendums. Hitler preferred referendums because they could be focused on issues which even non-NAZIs might agree with him. Also they did not threaten his control of power as a real election might have. The First Referendum focused on the League of Nations, an institution most Germans associated with the hated Versailles Peace Treaty (November 12, 1933). Specifically it called on the German people to ratify Hitler's decision to withdraw from the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations. The referendum was posed using the familiar Du rather than the formal Sie. Hitler was seeking to suggest an inimate relationship with the German people. [Rommelfanger, p. 144.] The German press reported that 96 percent of registered voters participated and 95 percent voted "Ja". It is not known what the actual vote was. Surely the yes vote would have been high even it had been a competive vote, 95 pecent obviously suggests the tally was manipulated. The press even reported that 2,154 of 2,242 inmates at the Dachau concentration camp voted "Ja". The issue chosen was well calculated. The sole challenge to Hitler's control of Germany was the Army and Hitler correctly calculated that both these decesions would be well received by the Army. This referendum was held in conection with a carefully controlled Reichstag election.

Sources

Lochner, Ludwig. ed. The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943 (Doubleday: New York, 1948), 566p.

Rommelfanger (1988).

Shirer, William. Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Created: 7:59 PM 3/12/2008
Last updated: 1:18 AM 1/29/2012