The Nazification of German Politics

Millions of Germans celebrated Hitler’s ascent to power. “My father went down to the cellar and brought up our best bottles of wine. . . . And my mother wept for joy,” one German recalled. “Now everything will be all right.” Yet instead of being easy to control, Hitler took command brutally, quickly closing down representative government with an ugly show of force. Tens of thousands of his paramilitary supporters—the Stürmabteilung (SA), or “storm troopers”—paraded through the streets with blazing torches. When the Reichstag building was gutted by fire in February 1933, Nazis used the fire as the excuse for suspending civil rights, censoring the press, and prohibiting meetings of other political parties. Hitler had always claimed to hate democracy and diverse political opinions, declaring of parties other than his own: “I have set myself one task, namely to sweep those parties out of Germany.”

The storm troopers’ violence silenced democratic politicians but also made those who participated in the violence feel part of a glorious whole. At the end of March, intimidated Reichstag delegates let pass the Enabling Act, which suspended the constitution for four years and allowed Nazi laws to take effect without parliamentary approval. Solid middle-class Germans approved the Enabling Act as a way to advance the creation of a Volksgemeinschaft (“people’s community”) of like-minded, racially pure Germans—Aryans, the Nazis named them. Heinrich Himmler headed the elite Schutzstaffel (SS), Hitler’s “protection squadron,” and he commanded the Reich’s political police system. These and the Gestapo, the secret police force run by Hermann Goering, had vast powers to arrest people and either execute them or imprison them in concentration camps, the first of which opened at Dachau, near Munich, in March 1933. The Nazis filled it and later camps with political enemies like socialists, and then with Jews, homosexuals, and others said to be enemies of the Volksgemeinschaft.

Hitler deliberately blurred authority in the government and his political party to encourage confusion and competition. He then settled disputes, often with violence. When Ernst Roehm, leader of the SA and Hitler’s longtime collaborator, called for a “second revolution” to end the business and military elites’ continuing influence on top Nazis, Hitler ordered Roehm’s assassination. The bloody Night of the Long Knives (June 30, 1934), during which hundreds of SA leaders and innocent civilians were killed, strengthened the support of the conservative upper classes for the Nazi regime. They saw that Hitler would deal ruthlessly with those favoring a leveling-out of social privilege. Nazism’s terrorist politics served as the foundation of Hitler’s Third Reich—a German empire grandly advertised as the successor to the First Reich of Charlemagne and the Second Reich of Bismarck and William II.

New economic programs, especially those putting people back to work, were crucial to the survival of Nazism. The Nazi government pursued pump priming—that is, stimulating the economy through government spending on tanks and airplanes and on public works programs such as building the Autobahn, or highway system. Unemployment declined from a peak of almost 6 million in 1932 to 1.6 million by 1936. The Nazi Party closed down labor unions, and government managers determined work procedures and set pay levels, rating women’s jobs lower than men’s regardless of the level of expertise required. Nazi programs produced large budget deficits, but Hitler was already planning to conquer and loot neighboring countries to cover the costs.

Nazi officials devised policies to control everyday life, including gender roles. In June 1933, a bill took effect that encouraged Aryans (those people defined as racially German) to marry and have children. The bill provided for loans to Aryan newlyweds, but only if the wife left the workforce. The loans were forgiven on the birth of the pair’s fourth child. The ideal woman gave up her job, gave birth to many children, and completely surrendered her will to that of her husband, allowing him to feel powerful despite military defeat and economic depression. A good wife “joyfully sacrifices and fulfills her fate,” as one Nazi leader explained.

The government also controlled culture, destroying the rich creativity of the Weimar years. Although 70 percent of households had radios by 1938, programs were severely censored. Books like Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front were banned, and in May 1933 a huge book-burning ceremony rid libraries of works by Jews, socialists, homosexuals, and modernist writers. In the Hitler Youth, which boys and girls over age ten were required to join, children learned to report those adults they suspected of disloyalty to the Third Reich, even their own parents. People boasted that they could leave their bicycles out at night without fear of robbery, but their world was filled with informers—some 100,000 of them on the Nazi payroll. In general, the improved economy led many to see Hitler working an economic miracle while restoring pride in Germany and strengthening the Aryan community. For hundreds of thousands if not millions of Germans, however, Nazi rule in the 1930s brought anything but harmony and community.