Hitler pursued a policy called ‘Gleichschaltung’, which means synchronisation or ‘to make the same’. Throughout his early years as Chancellor with full power, Hitler decreed several laws in order to make the German people ‘the same’, as in he wanted all Germans to look up to him and see only him as their ‘Führer’ (Leader). In 1933 he passed the Law against the establishment of Political Parties, which ensured that Hitler’s Nazi party would not be facing any new political enemies in the Reichstag. In 1934 he passed the Law concerning the reconstruction of the Reich, which brought all the Länder, as in the local administrators of every region of Germany, together to the Reichstag in order to centralize Germany for the first time, and thus be further able to control it. With most of the political German stage under his control, Hitler still had to deal with the army. The army was strong and proud, as it consisted of several nobles of high birth who would not look up to Hitler, although they supported him. Additionally, Ernst Röhm of Hitler’s SA was growing too strong, with the whole SA looking up to him. On June 30/July 1 1934 Hitler issued the arrest of several members of the SA and the army under the false pretence that Röhm was stirring up trouble. Röhm and several other high-ranking generals in the army were captured and either executed or sent to concentration camps. This event was called the Night of the Long Knives, and not only members of the SA and the army were killed, but also political enemies of the Nazis, such as Gregor Strasser. On the 2nd of August 1934 President Hindenburg died in his sleep and Hitler became President, holding a position of absolute power as both Chancellor and President of Germany. He then made the soldiers and sailors of Germany swear an oath of allegiance to him that was more an oath of allegiance to Hitler personally than one to the President of Germany.
With the internal political situation fully under control, Hitler still had to indoctrinate the German people and establish a cult of personality in which all the people worshipped him as their supreme leader. He did this through several means. One was to win their favour by eliminating unemployment in Germany. Unemployment was at 6 million unemployed people in 1933, but by 1939 it had gone down to only 200,000. This was because Hitler was rearming Germany. In that one stroke he made the people happy by giving them jobs, he pleased the army by making them see the pride of Germany’s army being rebuilt, and he prepared for his future conquests of Europe. He created these free work spaces by shunning and driving away the Jews, and in 1935 Hitler released the Nuremberg Laws, in which it was clearly stated that marriage with Jews and extra-marital relations with Jews was strictly forbidden for Germans. The Jews were further shunned and harassed when in 1938 a Nazi diplomatic officer was killed in Paris by a young Jew, resulting in a giant Pogrom of Jewish businesses and homes all over Germany in what came to be known as the Kristalnacht. Hitler was already beginning to alter the German’s way of thinking into matching his own, anti-Semitic nationalist views.
Hitler also proceeded in his ‘Gleichschaltung’ through the use of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Enlightenment and Propaganda. Goebbels succeeded in creating a cult of personality for Hitler by organizing rallies all over the countryside, putting up posters and signs glorifying Hitler, and making sure that it was always clear that people had work because of Hitler. But he also had his hands directly in the local German media. He released a portable radio called the ‘Reichsempfänger’, which all Germans could use at any time to listen to Hitler’s rallies and speeches. He also censored any literature that was not absolutely pro-Nazi. Thousands of non-Nazi books were burnt in Berlin throughout Hitler’s reign. He also made sure that the only movies being made carried an absolutely pro-Nazi message in order to further indoctrinate the people. As all the media was manipulated, it became absolutely impossible to ignore or be unaware of Hitler. As historian Norman Rich stated, “Hitler was the master in the Third Reich”. But it was not only through manipulation of the media that the people were indoctrinated.
As historian Gordon Craig stated, “The force that prevented the regime from dissolving into chaos was terror, and its instrument was the SS”. Hitler used the SS, under Himmler, to arrest anyone voicing even the tiniest anti-Nazi opinion. Almost all the people living in Germany became vassals of the SS, and even the slightest suspicion of non-Nazism was reported to them. In order to avoid the very real risk of being sent off to a concentration camp or even executed, all Germans ensured that they were as Nazi as possible, and it was common to have a copy of ‘Mein Kampf’ in one’s house. People even stopped attending church, as the Nazi Party had replaced most religion in Germany. Himmler was able to fully exploit the situation because Hitler was bored by administrative duties and he let his subordinated do all the work as they pleased, believing that all issues would thus solve themselves. Some think that Hitler was just plain bad at ruling and that contributed to his lack of decision-making, but it is also commonly believed that Hitler was employing a tactic of ‘divide and rule’, by which he made sure that there could be no cooperation between his subordinated and that they would all go their own way, thus giving him full power to command.
In conclusion, once Hitler had brought the government under his control it became a matter of indoctrinating the people of Germany and creating a cult of personality in which he would be the God-Leader of Germany. He achieved this through the use of terror (through the SS and the police which he controlled) and media manipulation (by which Joseph Goebbels made the life of every German revolve around Hitler). Also, by making the army swear a personal oath of allegiance he had the military fully under his control. This is why by 1939 Hitler was in full control of Germany as a country, over which he had established himself as the absolute Führer.
