Hitler had control of the SS (Gestapo), his secret force, but he still didn’t have control of the whole army. In August ’34 the army swore loyalty to Hitler, because he promised them re-armament. Now Hitler had complete power, with no opposition, and control of the whole country.
The Nazis controlled all the top jobs, and if they didn’t do what Hitler wanted, they would have been treated as not “one of them”, and might have been put into concentration camps, which were designed to hold people that didn’t follow Hitler, as he wanted. Because Hitler got rid of the people who didn’t agree with him, there were only people that did what Hitler would want them to do, even if they didn’t know what they were doing, or if it was good for the country. This created a “Chaotic Germany”.
Hitler also believed that he was an Aryan (the superior race), and that no one could stand in his empires way. He had an obsession with the survival of the fittest, for example he would make stag beetles fight each other, and claimed that the strongest would win. There is an image of a perfect Nazi found in a museum, which was meant to symbolise order, but the reality was chaos. In 1936 the first Olympics were held, so that the Nazi’s could show off their superiority, but the fact that an Aryan didn’t win the 100m race surely proves his theory wrong, but that stop him believing his regime was superior. As he believed in this theory of being a superior race, he felt that Germany (or the Aryans) needed more space to expand their empire. He had already managed to re-take The Rhineland, which was originally taken away from them by The Treaty of Versailles. Before he tried take over Austria in 1934, but was prevented by Mussolini, which he eventually took over in 1938. He now had plans to expand into the East, like Russia. To be able to do this he would need a big army, even though he thought that once he broke into Russia the rest would collapse. It seemed like the economy was going good, but actually Germany owed a lot of countries money. Germany spent most of their money on re-armament, and Hitler because Hitler was so lazy he let the situation build up, and he wouldn’t listen to his financial manager, and in the end sacked him, because he didn’t like the advice he was giving him. Hitler did one good thing though he virtually eradicated unemployment, by employing people to do such things as building the World’s first motorways, and employing people to re-arm the country. Women at first didn’t work under the Nazi regime, they were to be there to do the housework, and be the perfect wife, but after there were a shortage of people for jobs, women were forced to work.
Hitler hated the Communists (Russia was communist), and wanted to ally with England. England didn’t agree to ally with Germany, but they did allow them to rebuild their navy again to 35% of the British Naval, which they weren’t originally allowed to do, as it was one of the terms of Versailles that they weren’t allowed to build their navy up. But as Hitler failed to make an alliance with England, he wanted to have another ally, because he didn’t want to fight on two fronts (France and Russia). He turned to Russia, as a ‘radical’ solution to the problem, even though in 1936 Hitler made an anti-communist alliance with Italy and Germany. The Nazi-Soviet Pact was formed on 23rd August 1939, which was only to be a temporary solution to the problem; Hitler was fighting the wrong war. When he invaded Poland on 3rd September 1939, Britain and France declared war, which was the start of WW2.
In my opinion, I don’t know how Hitler managed to control Germany, and sustain the Nazi regime, for the 6 years leading up to the war. Hitler was a very laid back man, and the regime was run by people who didn’t really know what they were doing. I feel that he managed to keep things going for long, because he covered up all the problems, and was very good at delivering the propaganda he wanted. He also liked to do things without thinking about the following consequences.
