Gleichschaltung – policy of coordination

Week 11, January 11

Louise Solmitz’ family, 1928

Solmitz about Hitler’s visit in Hamburg on March 3, 1933:“What an exhilarating day without any cloud, full of patriotic kick! We walked to the headquarters of the NSDAP. […] The pillars are wavering: Hitler is coming! Hitler is coming! […] We met masses of people coming towards us. […] On the connecting rail line stood a group of policemen, and I saw for the first time armlets with swastika. Everyone was wearing them, everyone! […] The hands went up to Hitler salute. It was like 1914, everyone could have hugged all out of the feeling for Hitler. It was like being drunk without wine.”

Bedrohung, Hoffnung, Skepsis: Vier Tagebücher des Jahres 1933, ed. Frak Bajohr, Beate Meyer, and Joachim Szodrzynski (Göttingen:Wallstein, 2013), illustration from here

Events before the Reichstag fire

• Decree for the Protection of the German People (February 4)

• Legal difference between law and decree- For arresting without judicial warrant on charges of

high treason for up to three months into protective custody- SS and SA used the decree to arrest their political

opponents• SPD and KPD don’t go into (violent) resistance• Upcoming elections March 5

Reichstag Fire, February 27

Marinus van der Lubbe

At the trial, Leipzig 1933. van der Lubbe was sentenced for high treason and executed

Benjamin Hett, Burning the Reichstag

Aftermath of the Reichstag Fire

• Escalation of terror: political opponents arrested and brought into early concentration camps

• By March 15, 10,000 communists arrested • Reichstag Fire Decree (February 28)• limit of freedom of press, of opinion, of personal freedom,

in freedom of meetings, house searches, confiscation of property

• control of the state govt over the lands• gave the judicial base for what followed

Election on March 5, 1933

• No longer an independent election• People massively intimidated, especially in smaller

towns and villages• NSDAP 43,9%; KPD 12,3%; SPD 18,3%; Zentrum

11,2%; Kampffront (continuation DNVP) 8%• While the Nazis and the DNVP now had a majority,

they still did not have two thirds in the parliament needed to change the constitution

• Even in these rigged elections, Hitler did not receive a majority of the votes

Garnison church: Day of Potsdam, March 21-- old German and Prussian elites coalesce with the Nazis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC9OBj-vnwk

Enabling law, March 23

• KPD’s mandates were annulled by the Reichstag decree Communist MPs could not vote

• Hitler secured two third majority to change the constitution

• crucial margin of victory provided by the Zentrum• Only the SPD MPs voted against• Transformed Germany into a dictatorship• Legal base (together with the Reichstag decree) for

the Third Reich

Memorial for the 96 murdered Reichstag deputies

• Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (April 7) removed Jews and political opponents from public service

• Catholic church cautiously supported the new regime; Concordat of July 30

• SPD prohibited and other parties dissolved• After Hindenburg’s death in August 34, the office of

the Reich Chancellor and the president merged• New kind of state -- dictatorship

Finalizing of the transformation of power

Legal and political interpretations

• Ernst Fraenkel’s Dual State• Franz Neumann’s Behemoth both interpreted the

transformation of the political order• Nazi Germany as a state of exception• Siege mentality• Decision-taking not according to norms but

measures – no more normative law• Personal loyalty crushed by terror• No remains of legality, only technical laws