The NaziState, Economy and Society.

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Fascism - Semester 1: Lecture 7. Student Notes.

The Nazi State, Economy and Society.

When Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30th January 1933, as head of a coalition government,

Franz von Papen, the aristocratic Conservative ex-Chancellor and member of the Catholic Centre

Party, boasted that: ‘In two months we will have pushed Herr Hitler into a corner so hard that he’ll

be squeaking.’ In fact, armed with the resources of the state - its police, army, press, radio and

propaganda machine - two months was all Hitler needed to achieve the end of Germany’s old

political class.

Within 24 hours of Hitler’s appointment new Reichstag elections were called. Prior to this big

business had held back in supporting the Nazis with money, now at a meeting with Hitler on 20th

February 1933, 20 leading industrialists and bankers promised the Nazis 3 million Reichmarks for

their campaign. A campaign followed in which the Nazi’s finally revealed their true colours of

violence and terror tactics. 69 people died in the five week campaign. Goring enrolled an extra

50,000 Nazi supporters as ‘police’ in Prussia. The Nazi election propaganda blamed all the

violence on ‘the terrorist activities of the Communists’.

Hitler issued an Appeal to the German People on 31st January 1933 which was long on rhetoric

and short on details. Basically it was a call to restore Germany’s power and unity and ended with

a religious peroration:

‘Now German People, give us four years and then judge us.....May Almighty God favour

our work, shape our will in the right way, bless our vision and bless us with the trust of our

people. We have no desire to fight for ourselves; only for Germany.’

On 27th February the Reichstag caught fire and a Dutch Communist vander Lubbe arrested close

to the scene. (It will never be known for certain whether or not this was a deliberate act of self

sabotage by the Nazis, but it certainly gave them an excuse to cynically exploit the incident for

their own ends.)

On 28th February Frick produced the Decree for the Protection of the People and State, which

suspended most political and civil liberties and opened up an orgy of arrests of the Nazi’s chief

opponents. The election still produced only a small increase in the Nazi vote to 43.9% giving

them 288 seats. They needed a two thirds majority to abolish the Weimar Constitution and were

forced to govern with the Nationalists.

The Nazis now used all the powers at their disposal to kill democracy in Germany and create a

one Party State and Nazi dictatorship. On 21st march 1933 Goebbels orchestrated a huge Nazi

ceremonial opening of the Reichstag at the Potsdam Church, allowing Hitler to reassure the old

Conservative political and military class that Nazism was on their side.

Hitler also used the growing violence to propose and pass a new ‘Enabling Bill’ which would do

away with the Republic without actually suspending it in law. The new Reichstag met on 23rd

March 1933 at the Kroll Opera House to consider the new Enabling Bill, but the building was

surrounded by fanatical Nazis, mostly SA and SS men who refused admittance to all Communists

and spat on and intimidated SPD and Centre Party Deputies.

Hitler was careful in his address to the Deputies to promise to protect the rights of the Catholic

Church and this ensured that the Centre Party voted for the Bill which passed with 444 to 94

votes. The Reichstag had instigated a ‘legal revolution’ allowing a dictatorship to emerge’. (K. D.

Bracher).

A Revolution From Above and Below?

The nazis now set about attempting the Nazification of German society (Gleichschaltung -

‘coordination’) beginning with the political system. Government was centralised on Berlin. State

(Lander) autonomy was destroyed in April 1933 and local parliaments subordinated in January

1934 - ending the federal state.

The trade Unions were emasculated. The Nazis unexpectedly announced that May 1st 1933

would be a national holiday and the following day the SA and SS occupied all their offices and

arrested their leaders. Henceforth all German workers were enrolled in the DAF (Deutscher

Arbeitsfront - German Labour Front) an instrument of Nazi control.

The Communist Party was proscribed after the Reichstag Fire, now the SPD was banned, while

the nationalists and Centre Party helpfully dissolved themselves and on 14th July the Nazi Party

became the only legal political party. Less than 6 months after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor.

But the party was by now at war with itself internally. Hitler found himself still needing support

from the old Conservative elites - whilst presiding over a radicalised party in which the 2.5 million

members of the SA represented a more proletarian, populist and anti-capitalist form of Nazism,

pushing now for a Second Wave of revolutionary action against the old political class.

The leader of the SA Ernst Rohm was angry with Hitler for betraying the Nazi revolution and this

alarmed the military elite who called for Rohm and the SA to be eliminated at a meeting with

Hitler on the battleship Deutchland in April 1934.

With President Hindenburg close to death Hitler decided that he needed the army’s support more

than the SA and secretly ordered what became known as: ‘The Night of the Long Knives’, in

which the SS shot Rohm and over 400 other leading Nazi radicals and settled other old scores for

Hitler (Gregor Strasser, Schleicher etc.) The Nazi propaganda machine claimed that they were

eliminated for plotting ‘high treason against the Fuhrer and his people’.

From now on the SA were demoted to appearing at great propaganda occasions and the SS

emerged as the Nazis chief instrument of terror.

When Hindenburg died on 1st August 1934 Hitler simply merged the offices of Chancellor and

President under the official title of ‘Der Fuhrer’. From now on there was to be no more talk of

revolution, other than the one which had already taken place, as Hitler stated clearly at the

September 1934 Nuremberg Party Rally: ‘...in the next thousand years there will be no other

revolution in Germany...’ History had indeed ended.

Had the Nazis achieved a true political revolution by September 1934? They had certainly

achieved an institutional and constitutional revolution - Weimar and its predecessor the

Kaiserreich had been replaced by a one party Nazi state. However, the old political, military and

business classes continued to exist within the state with independent means of action -

something the SA Nazi revolutionaries under Rohm and Gregor Strasser had attempted to rectify,

and which had cost them their lives.

The Nazi Economic ‘Revolution’?

Nazis propaganda, like that of their Italian Fascist counterparts claimed to have achieved a

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‘Totalitarian’ state in Germany. By the end of 1934 Germany was a one party Nazi state.

However, the old state machinery remained largely in tact. The bureaucracy had suffered a purge

of ‘Jewish’ and ‘non-Aryan’ personnel under The Law for the restoration of the Professional Civil

Service (April 1933). But this and the subsequent Law to Ensure the Unity of Party and State

(December 1933) failed to make the party and state into one entity.

The party was forged as an instrument to gain political power and was never united about the

means to a Nazi state. The huge influx ...

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