To what extent and with what degree of success did the Nazis establish a totalitarian regime in Germany between 1933 and 1939?

1. Legislation power

        On 23 March, 1933 Hitler introduced the Enabling Act, which transferred the power to make law from government to cabinet and in this way authorized Hitler to make any law without the vote from the Reichstag. He went a step further and on 14 July 1933 was introduced “The Law against formation of other political parties” from which KPD (the Communist party) was banned and soon followed the SPD (socialist party) and the other smaller political parties. By the end of July 1933 the NSDAP was the only political party left. Hitler wanted to rule Germany without opposition, creating so a dictatorship. Fuhrerprinzip (principle of leader) was the oath of allegiance that people were acquired to swear to Hitler and by which he was acknowledged as the sole political leader. By this act afterwards, the democracy in Germany was considered dead.

2. Centrally Controlled Economy

       When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Germany’s economy was in ruins as a result of the great depression. The unemployment stood at 6 million in 1933 and Hitler as one of his first actions, took great steps to bring it down. The rearmament policy brought to place and developed many iron and steel industries and also weapon companies and in this way gave works to thousands of people. By 1939 the unemployment in Germany had fallen to 300 000 men. This extensive decrease in unemployment was due to the fact that 35% of the investment went on public employment in rearmament, in building of new motorways, etc. However, this huge fell in unemployment in my opinion has not been totally Hitler’s merit for a couple of reasons.  First, after the depression unemployment did also fell in countries all over Europe. Second, women and Jews were not considered on the statistics, which shows some unreliability of these statistics. Third, the fall in unemployment was achieved through a very high cost by the totalitarian regime policies: the rights of citizens because they were dependent on the government and had to do whatever the government told them to otherwise they were considered as opposition. Also, there was no improvement in the level of wages but to the contrary they fell and people were obliged to work more (from 45 hours in 1928 to 50 hours in 1939 and over 60 towards the end of the war.)  Furthermore, most resources were mainly concentrated on important military projects while annual food consumption in 1937 had fallen for wheat bread, meat, bacon, milk, eggs, fish vegetables, sugar, etc and beer compared to the 1927 figures. The winners from the Nazis economy were the big businesses whose rights were left untouched by the Nazis, which shows some limitations to the attempt of Hitler in centralizing the whole economy of Germany.  

3. Full Control of Armament

        After World War One, the Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to disarm itself and put some strict limitations on its arm forces and weapon quantities. Following this Treaty, Germany was obliged to accept war guilt, was demanded to pay for reparations to the allies, was allowed a professional army of 100,000 men and it was strictly forbidden to manufacture military aircraft, tanks and submarines. But once in power, Hitler started ignoring all these limitations on the size of the German army and introduced the Wehrwirtschaft (war economy) which implied the organization of the entire economy towards future wars. By 1936, Germany had 13 artillery groups, 54 single-seater planes, 19 battalions of infantry and an army force of 1.4 million men. This large scale of rearmament for future foreign conquests was acquired thought a huge exploitation of the population. Hitler had created a deficit of RM 900 million for the great expenditures made on rearmament because they could not be financed out of the budged.

4. Racial superiority concepts and anti-Semitism

        Nazi’s doctrines were anti-Semitic and had many racial superiority concepts. The Law of the Protection of German Blood and German Honor was introduced, in which Germans were forbidden any kind of relations with Jews like marriages, sexual relations outside marriage, etc.  The new Civil Service Law was another doctrine that expelled Jewish civil servants from their posts. All Jews were removed from their jobs and these became available for “pure” Germans. As soon as Hitler came to power, he blamed the Jews for the defeat in the World War One and they were subjected to a tough persecution. Jews were regarded as the lowest of races and were blamed for all of Germany’s problems. He wanted to bring about an extermination of the Jewish race not only in Germany but also all over Europe. The statistics says that the Jews who died in the Holocaust were 6-7 million and was euphemistically termed the “Final Solution” which exterminated to a high degree the Jewish race. However, Hitler was very hostile not only towards the Jews, but also to minority groups like gypsies, deviant groups like homosexuals, tramps, habitual criminals, those in mental hospitals and incurably ill. Hitler argued that the German Aryan race was superior to all others and placed the Germans on the top of the racial heredity and all other races came beneath.  

5. The Secret Police Apparatus

         The secret police forces in Germany helped to sustain Hitler’s totalitarian goals. The Gestapo was the main and most feared secret police apparatus during the Nazis regime and was used to spy on people at all times and execute or send to concentration camps even the least suspected ones without any necessity of going to trial. Any sign of complaint could lead to an arrest or to a complete disappearance and therefore, many Germans learned to keep their mouths shut. The Nazis had informers everywhere who checked on people's comings and goings. Immediately after assuming power on January 30,1933 they established many concentration camps. The policies had the authority to arrest and put into a camp anyone whom they thought was a threat to national security. The SA (storm troopers) was another armed group set by Hitler in 1921 to fight against Hitler’s opponents, especially the Communists. This group gave a lot of confidence to Hitler to seize power in 1923.  Later on in August 1934, however Hitler decided that the SA was diminishing asset … and therefore he decided to get rid of them. The day this incident took place is known as “The Night Of The Long Knives” on June 30 when Hitler ordered the leader of the SS (Hitler’s private bodyguards) Heirnrich Himmler to kill Rohm and the other SA leaders.

        In conclusion, I would like to state that the Nazis successfully reached to establish a totalitarian regime since they possessed the five dominant powers. In relation with mass media they reached successfully to out it under total control, while legislative (parliament) and juridical (trials) power which theoretically separated, were in fact under the Nazis total control. The control of the economy as part of the executive power was to a great extent controlled and especially for military purposes. However, many big businesses remained out of this guidance. The increase of the national products did not correspond with better salaries or smaller working hours.  

 

List of Sources:

1. Kelly, Nigel & Lacey. 1999. Modern World History. Heinemann Education Publishers.
2. McDonough, Frank.  Hitler and Nazi Germany. Cambridge, Perspectives in History.
3. Thurlow, Richard. Fascism. Cambridge, Perspectives in History.
4. Traynor, John. 1991 Europe 1890-1990:Russia in Turmoil. Nelson. Lymm High School.

 

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