AQA 7042 · 2O · R13 - Hitler’s consolidation of power, March 1933–1934: governmental and administrative change and the establishment of the one-party state; the Night of the Long Knives and the impact of the death of President Hindenburg
This lesson traces how Hitler’s government removed independent political and administrative restraints between March 1933 and August 1934. You will connect the creation of a one-party state to the Night of the Long Knives and President Hindenburg’s death, then judge which changes did most to turn Nazi control into a dictatorship centred on Hitler. Because this is a Component 2 depth study, you will also practise judging what an authentic law can and cannot reveal when it is tested against context.
From chancellor to dictator
Hitler had been Chancellor since 30 January 1933, but at first he headed a coalition, President Paul von Hindenburg remained head of state, Germany retained federal Länder, or regional states, and the NSDAP was not yet the only legal party. Securing the appointment therefore left Hitler with restraints to remove and powerful institutions whose cooperation he needed.
Consolidation of power
Making recently acquired authority more secure by removing restraints, subordinating institutions and gaining the cooperation of people whose support matters. This is different from winning an election or receiving an appointment.
The Enabling Act of 23 March 1933 is the starting condition from the preceding specification row. Passed in an atmosphere of repression, it allowed the Reich government to make laws without the Reichstag and even to depart from the constitution. The important distinction is that this power enabled the later changes; it did not itself appoint every official, abolish every other party or settle Hitler’s relationships with the SA, army and presidency.
Two kinds of change followed:
- governmental change altered where constitutional and political authority lay—for example, replacing parliamentary lawmaking, abolishing competing representative bodies or merging the presidency and chancellorship;
- administrative change altered the machinery that implemented decisions—for example, subordinating Länder governments to the Reich and removing officials whom the regime considered politically or racially unacceptable.
The Nazi term Gleichschaltung, usually translated as “coordination”, describes the process of bringing institutions into line with Nazi rule. The word can sound orderly and voluntary. In practice, coordination combined laws made from above, intimidation and violence, career pressure, cooperation by existing elites and self-coordination, when institutions anticipated the regime’s demands without waiting to be forced.
| Date | Development | Restraint removed or weakened |
|---|---|---|
| 23 March 1933 | Enabling Act | Parliamentary control over government lawmaking |
| 31 March and 7 April 1933 | Laws coordinating the Länder and creating Reich governors | Federal and regional independence |
| 7 April 1933 | Civil Service Law | Security of officials targeted on political or racial grounds |
| 14 July 1933 | Law Against the Formation of New Parties | Legal party competition |
| 1 December 1933 | Law to Safeguard the Unity of Party and State | Separation between the only permitted party and the state |
| 30 January and 14 February 1934 | Länder sovereignty transferred to the Reich; Reichsrat abolished | Remaining federal representation and constitutional autonomy |
| 30 June–2 July 1934 | Night of the Long Knives | Rival power within the Nazi movement and threats perceived among conservative opponents |
| 1–2 August 1934 | Presidency merged with chancellorship after Hindenburg’s death; army oath to Hitler | A separate head of state and an institutional military oath |
The sequence already suggests an enquiry: no one measure removed every restraint. Consolidation worked because changes to law, administration, party competition and elite allegiance accumulated and reinforced one another.
Coordinating the state and parties
Germany’s federal structure had given its Länder their own governments, legislatures and administrative traditions. The provisional coordination law of 31 March 1933 dissolved most existing Länder legislatures and reconstructed them using the 5 March Reichstag election result, but excluded Communist seats. A second law on 7 April created Reich governors who could ensure that regional policy followed the Reich government. These measures reduced the possibility that a Land could act as an independent political base against Berlin.
The process became more complete on 30 January 1934. The Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich abolished Länder representative bodies, transferred their sovereign powers to the Reich and made their governments subordinate to the Reich government. The Reichsrat, through which the Länder had been represented at national level, was abolished on 14 February. The change was therefore progressive: regional institutions were first captured and redirected, then deprived of constitutional autonomy.
Administration mattered because laws have little effect unless officials implement them. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of 7 April 1933 allowed removal of officials whose previous political activity supposedly gave no guarantee of loyalty to the new state and provided for exclusion of officials classified as “non-Aryan”, although exemptions meant that implementation was not literally immediate or uniform. Judges, teachers, university staff and local as well as national officials were among those affected. This both persecuted political opponents and Jewish Germans and made professional survival increasingly dependent on fitting the regime’s definition of loyalty.
Party competition was eliminated alongside this capture of the state. The KPD had already been suppressed and its assets confiscated; the SPD was banned on 22 June 1933; and other non-Nazi parties dissolved under pressure in late June and early July. The law of 14 July then converted an achieved condition into an enforceable rule. On 1 December, the Law to Safeguard the Unity of Party and State declared the NSDAP the bearer of the German state idea and inseparably linked it with the state. The one-party state therefore meant more than absence of electoral rivals: it joined the only permitted party to governmental authority.
Authentic primary source — complete operative sections, NovaLearn translation. Law Against the Formation of New Parties, 14 July 1933, §§1–2, Reichsgesetzblatt 1933 I, p. 479. German transcription and scan: https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Gesetz_gegen_die_Neubildung_von_Parteien. The original statute is a public-domain official work; this English translation was made by NovaLearn in 2026.
§1. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party is the only political party existing in Germany.
§2. Anyone who attempts to maintain the organisational cohesion of another political party or to form a new political party is punishable, unless a more severe penalty applies under other provisions, by penal servitude for up to three years or imprisonment from six months to three years.
For an historian investigating the formal establishment of a one-party state, this law has high value. Its official form and the signatures of Hitler, Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick and Justice Minister Franz Gürtner show what the government declared and instructed the state to enforce. Its content identifies both the permitted party and the criminal penalty. Yet the law cannot, on its own, show how intimidation had already destroyed party competition, how consistently police and courts enforced it, or how different Germans responded. That is why source value depends on the enquiry rather than on calling the document simply “reliable” or “biased”.
The Night of the Long Knives
By 1934, a new problem came from within the Nazi movement. The SA, the party’s mass paramilitary organisation led by Ernst Röhm, had helped intimidate opponents and project Nazi power. Röhm pressed for a “second revolution” that would give the SA a larger social and military role, and he wanted an SA-centred people’s militia into which the much smaller professional Reichswehr would be absorbed. Senior army officers opposed losing their institution, status and professional command.
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