37.2 KT3 - A new Reich, 1933-35

Enquiry Frame

This Paper 3 depth topic is about the making of dictatorship between 1933 and 1935. Do not treat it as a simple list of Nazi laws. The sharper enquiry is: how did the Nazis turn a constitutional appointment into a new political order, and how complete was Hitler's power by 1935?

The word Gleichschaltung is usually translated as "coordination" or "bringing into line". That polite translation hides the violence of the process. It meant aligning the state, regional government, political parties, trade unions, professional bodies, cultural organisations and much of public life with Nazi rule. It involved decrees and statutes, but also arrests, intimidation, dismissals, propaganda and what historians call "self-coordination": institutions adapting themselves to Nazi expectations before they were forced to do so.

The basic chronology matters because power shifted quickly, but not all at once.

The new Reich therefore had two faces. One face looked legal: decrees, laws, plebiscites, cabinet decisions and official oaths. The other face was coercive and ideological: violence against opponents, purging of rivals, suppression of independent organisations, propaganda, racial classification and the claim that only Nazi leadership could represent the German people.

For assessment, keep the balance clear. By 1935 Hitler's power was immense: no legal opposition party existed, parliament was largely decorative, the Länder had lost autonomy, the army had sworn loyalty to him personally, and race had become a principle of citizenship. Yet this was not a neat, perfectly rational machine. The army, churches, big business, state bureaucracy, party officials, SS, SA, Gauleiters and ministers still had different interests. Hitler's power often grew because he sat above those rivalries and because subordinates competed to "work towards the Führer".

Gleichschaltung and One-Party Rule

The Nazis' first problem was that Hitler had office before he had uncontested power. In January 1933, only Hitler, Wilhelm Frick and Hermann Göring gave the cabinet a clear Nazi presence. Conservative nationalists such as Franz von Papen and Alfred Hugenberg thought they could use Hitler's mass support while controlling policy themselves. This was a catastrophic misjudgement because Hitler controlled the largest party, had access to state power, and could combine legal authority with street violence.

The Reichstag Fire on 27 February 1933 gave the regime its first great opportunity. The next day, President Hindenburg signed the Decree for the Protection of the People and State, usually called the Reichstag Fire Decree. It suspended key Weimar rights: personal liberty, free expression, freedom of the press, assembly, association, privacy of communications and protection from arbitrary searches. It also allowed the Reich to intervene more directly in the states. In practice, this meant that Nazi-controlled police and SA auxiliaries could arrest Communists, Social Democrats and other opponents while claiming to defend Germany from revolution.

The March election did not give the Nazis everything they wanted. On 5 March 1933 they won 43.9 percent of the vote, which showed genuine mass support but not majority consent. The turning point was the Enabling Act, passed on 23 March and promulgated on 24 March 1933. Communist deputies had been arrested or excluded, SA and SS men surrounded the Kroll Opera House where the Reichstag met, and Hitler promised moderation to win the Catholic Centre Party's support. Only the Social Democrats present voted against. The law allowed the Reich Cabinet to pass laws, including laws deviating from the constitution, without normal parliamentary procedure.

The significance of the Enabling Act is not that it instantly abolished every institution. The Reichstag and Reichsrat still formally existed. Hindenburg remained president until August 1934. Courts, ministries and local governments continued to function. Its importance was that constitutional government had been emptied of its central safeguard: legislation no longer depended on genuine parliamentary consent. The dictatorship was being built through a legal shell.

Gleichschaltung then moved through the political system.

The attack on trade unions shows the pattern especially clearly. The regime did not simply ban workers' organisations in one public act. It first tried to win symbolic support by declaring 1 May a national holiday. The following day, it seized union buildings, arrested leaders and took over assets. The DAF then claimed to represent all productive Germans, but it was not a trade union. It could not defend workers through free collective bargaining, strike action or independent political pressure. Its purpose was to discipline labour, mobilise workers for national goals and replace class conflict with the image of a united national community.

Regional and local coordination was just as important. The Weimar Republic had been a federal state. The Länder had governments, parliaments and administrative traditions. The Nazis could not create a totalitarian state while leaving Bavaria, Saxony, Hamburg or other regions as independent political bases. The first coordination laws made state parliaments reflect the new Reichstag balance and gave the Reich power to appoint governors who could force state governments into line. The Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich on 30 January 1934 went further by transferring the sovereign rights of the states to the Reich. The Reichsrat, which had represented the states, was abolished on 14 February 1934.

This matters for historical judgement. Gleichschaltung was not only repression from above; it also worked because many office-holders, associations and professional bodies adapted quickly. Civil servants, teachers, lawyers, clubs, cultural organisations and local authorities often signalled loyalty, removed Jews or political opponents, and adopted Nazi symbols. Fear mattered, but so did opportunism, careerism, nationalism, antisemitism and the desire to avoid being left outside the new order.

The phrase "creating a totalitarian state" needs careful handling. The Nazis had totalitarian ambitions: they wanted no independent political voice between the individual and the Nazi movement. By 1934 they had destroyed legal opposition and much independent organisation. But totalitarian ambition was not the same as perfect control. The churches retained some autonomy, the army remained institutionally important, big business was not simply nationalised, and private attitudes could not be read from public conformity. The new Reich was therefore both more coercive than ordinary authoritarian rule and messier than a single disciplined command structure.

Night of the Long Knives

The Night of the Long Knives, from 30 June to 2 July 1934, was a turning point because it solved several political problems at once. It removed the SA as a potential rival, reassured the army, frightened conservative critics, strengthened the SS, and showed that Hitler could turn murder into law.

The background was the uneasy place of the SA, or Sturmabteilung. The SA had been vital to Nazi rise: it fought opponents, intimidated voters, protected meetings and embodied the movement's claim to revolutionary energy. By 1934 it had millions of members, far larger than the 100,000-man army permitted under Versailles. Its leader, Ernst Röhm, wanted the SA to become the basis of a new people's army and spoke the language of a continuing or "second" revolution. That alarmed the army, conservative elites and many employers who wanted order, hierarchy and rearmament, not a radical social revolution from below.

Hitler had to choose. He needed the SA's past service and street power, but he needed the army more. The army had professional expertise, officer prestige, weapons, and the institutional capacity required for rearmament and future foreign policy. Hindenburg was old and ill. If Hitler wanted to succeed him as head of state, he could not afford an open breach with the army leadership.

The purge began when Hitler flew to Bavaria and arrested Röhm and other SA leaders at Bad Wiessee. Over the next days, shootings took place across Germany. The victims were not only SA men. The regime also killed older political enemies and conservative critics, including former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and his wife, Gregor Strasser, and others associated with past opposition or possible future intrigue. The official propaganda claimed that Hitler had prevented a Röhm putsch and saved Germany from chaos. On 3 July 1934, the regime passed a law retroactively declaring the killings to be acts of state self-defence.

That retroactive law is central to the nature of the Nazi state. It did not merely cover up illegality; it announced that Hitler's violent decision could become legal after the event. The normal distinction between law and personal rule was collapsing. If the Führer defined an emergency, then murder could be re-described as justice.

The impact can be ranked.

The purge also reshaped relations between party and state. It showed that the Nazi movement was not a single harmonious body. There were rival visions inside it: SA radicalism, army conservatism, SS ambition, bureaucratic order, and Hitler's personal supremacy. The Night of the Long Knives did not make the state tidy. It made clear that Hitler would arbitrate between competing forces, and that the winner would be the force most useful to his authority.

For exam judgement, the Night of the Long Knives was more than a violent episode. It was a constitutional moment without a constitution. It prepared the way for August 1934 because the army had little reason to defend presidential checks on Hitler after he had destroyed the SA threat. It also taught Germans that legality now followed power, not the other way round.

Hitler as Führer

Hindenburg's death on 2 August 1934 allowed Hitler to complete the transition from chancellor to Führer. On 1 August, the cabinet had already approved a law merging the offices of Reich President and Reich Chancellor once Hindenburg died. Hitler then took the title Führer and Reich Chancellor. A plebiscite on 19 August 1934 approved the change with a large majority, but the vote was held in a dictatorship without free opposition, press freedom or equal campaigning.

The army oath was even more important than the plebiscite. On 2 August 1934, soldiers swore loyalty not to the constitution, not to Germany in abstract terms, and not simply to the office of president. They swore personal obedience to Adolf Hitler as Führer and supreme commander. This personalised military loyalty. For a conservative officer, the oath could feel like a solemn honour code. For Hitler, it helped turn the army from a potential constitutional check into an institution bound to his person.

Hitler's approach to government was not that of a conventional prime minister chairing regular collective discussion. He disliked detailed administrative routine and often preferred broad ideological direction, personal conversations, speeches, special commissions and rival agencies. He set central goals: destroy Marxism, reverse Versailles, rearm, create racial unity, remove Jews from the national community, and expand German power. Subordinates then tried to interpret and radicalise these aims in ways likely to win approval.

This is why the decline of cabinet meetings matters. Cabinet government implies ministers meeting together, debating policy, recording decisions and accepting collective responsibility. In 1933 the cabinet still met frequently, partly because the regime was using laws and decrees to transform the state. By 1935 full cabinet meetings had become much rarer, and Hitler often avoided sustained collective discussion. The cabinet did not formally vanish, but it became less central. Ministers increasingly sought direct access to Hitler or acted within overlapping spheres of authority.