Rise and Fall Ch. 7: The Nazification of Germany: 1933-34
As we finish up week four, we discuss the seventh chapter of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", in which Hitler consolidates power in Germany
We have now reached the end of week four of our reading group of William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I know that for some it has been hard to keep up, so two days ago I offered some encouragement and a couple suggestions.
This past week, I also interviewed legendary war correspondent Jonathan Randal, who covered the Algerian war for independence, Vietnam, the Lebanese Civil War, the Iranian Revolution, among many others. He even has a precedent in international law named after him.
In addition to offering some fascinating tidbits from 20th century history, his life story provides some helpful context to understand William Shirer. Check it out if you haven’t already.
In the last chapter (chapter 6), Shirer narrated the intrigues that led to Adolf Hitler’s Machtergreifung, or seizure of power, as President Hindenburg named him German Chancellor on January 30, 1933. In only 14 years, Hitler had taken the rebranded German Workers Party from a few dozen members in Munich to partial control of key German political institutions.
Of course, the key word there is ‘partial’.
The Nazi program of German nationalism and social welfare delimited by anti-semitism, anti-monarchism, and anti-Marxism had triumphed. But only in certain ways. There had been some electoral success—but nothing astounding. By 1933, the Nazi party leader was chancellor and other Nazis held a few positions in the new cabinet, but they had never won an absolute majority in a general election.
Crucially, there was still a strong faction of other conservatives who represented key sources of authority in German society, notably President Hindenburg, the Army, and other German conservatives. In this chapter, Shirer narrates how Hitler navigated around all three to consolidate his authority and establish total control over German politics. (Then in the next chapter, which I’ll write about tomorrow, Shirer turns to the transformation of German life and society in this moment.)
As February 1933 began, Hitler was chancellor of a multi-party democratic republic. The Nazis and Nationalists, the only two parties in the presidential cabinet named by Hindenburg, had 247 out of 583 seats in Parliament. They thus needed the Center Party to have a majority. Hitler decided to call new elections.
Although I haven’t noted every case in Hitler’s march towards power, it is notable that, as in a large number of steps along the way, in obtaining support to call elections in February 1933, Hitler used deception to achieve his ends.
In this case, Hitler misreported to his cabinet how the Center party had responded to the demand for elections, making it seem like the Center Party was making impossible demands when they were merely submitting questions as a basis for discussion. He also gave his solemn assurances to the Nationalists that the cabinet would remain unchanged after the election (with its numerical advantage to the Nationalists)—a bald-faced lie.
For the election, Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels used all the power that the press and radio offered him. And to finance their operation, the Nazi party called on wealthy industrialists to support them, with promises to eliminate the Marxists and restore the Army, which would be of special interest to German industry given the large contracts it would involve. The businessmen, although originally skeptical of Hitler, welcomed him almost universally once the trade-off became clear. Whatever freedoms were offered by the sclerotic and dysfunctional Weimar democracy, this promise of economic rejuvenation overcame any lingering concerns.
Big business was thus bought off.
A week before the elections, another major event occurred: the Reichstag fire.
In The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer takes the view that the Nazis planned the arson as a false flag operation. It is worth noting that this is not a universally accepted position. Historian Richard Evans, for instance, labels the view that the Nazis planned the Reichstag Fire as a false flag operation to go after the Nazis as a “conspiracy theory.”
A Communist did set fire to the Reichstag. That much is clear. Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch Communist who had traveled across Europe trying to help ignite Communist revolts, clearly set fire to parts of the Reichstag.Whether he was “half-witted” and a “feeble-minded pyromaniac”, as Shirer describes him, or actually largely successful on his own is a matter of contention.
Regardless, the political response from the Nazi-controlled government was abrupt and brutal. Hitler prevailed on President Hindenburg to suspend individual and civil liberties and to take over complete power in the federal states (remember that Germany was a decentralized state). The country got a taste of Nazi terror with the full backing of the state. Every party left of center was hit. The S.A. broke into homes, rounded up victims, suspended the press, and banned parties.
And yet despite the full efforts of S.A. terror and Goebbels’ propaganda machine, the Nazis still only won 44% of the total vote on March 5, 1933 (just over 17 million).
Hitler again formed a government with the Nationalists, which this time gave the two parties a majority in the Reichstag. At the end of the month, Hitler then asked the Reichstag to pass an “enabling act” to give his cabinet exclusive legislative powers for four years. In short, the executive would take over the legislative functions.
The legal act was entitled “Law for Removing Distress of People and Reich,” focusing on the supposed ends rather than the means. According to the propaganda, Hitler would rule with absolute power in order to help out the poor German folks who had suffered since their ignominious defeat in World War I. In a famous speech in opposition of the Enabling Act, Otto Wells, the leader of the Social Democrats, defied Hitler—the last true opposition speech of the Weimar Republic before the supine legislative branch gutted itself in deference to the great Leader of the executive branch.
Political parties fell one after another. The Social Democratic Party was dissolved by the Nazis, and the other parties of the middle-class—the Catholic Bavarian People’s Party and the Center Party, the People’s Party and the Democrats—all announced their dissolution as well, leaving a single party left in Germany: the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
In the run-up to the Enabling Act, Hitler paid fake deference to Hindenburg and the Army in the very moving ceremonial opening of the Reichstag in the historic Garrison Church. In similar fashion, Hitler paid fake deference to the labor movement on May 1 (the traditional Labor Day in non-American countries), before taking out the entire trade union movement the next day. This elimination of the labor movement pleased big business and further cemented their loyalty to the Führer. If there was ever a doubt whether the nationalist side or the socialist side of the Nazi party would triumph, it became crystal clear in May 1933.
Hitler’s biggest issue remained in his own camp, though. The S.A., led by Ernest Roehm, wanted a second revolution to complete their vision of a Nazi takeover of the state. Hitler, for his part, wished the S.A. to remain a paramilitary force for political ends, not an actual military force. He wished to cultivate the Army, not alienate them. Ultimately, Hitler chose to eliminate his internal rivals, starting with Roehm and the S.A. leadership but including the former chancellor Schleicher and those who had betrayed the Beer Hall Putsch a decade earlier. Hitler’s campaign of retribution was swift.
A month later, President Hindenburg died. The hero of World War I and a source of stability in the chaos of the Weimar Republic passed from the scene. Using the powers given him under the Enabling Act, Hitler very quickly eliminated the role of President and took all its powers upon himself.
To give you a sense of just how quickly this all occurred, I drew up a timeline of key events.
Timeline of Key Events in the Third Reich: 1933-1934
Jan 30, 1933: Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany
Feb 27, 1933: Reichstag Fire
Feb 28, 1933: Reichstag Fire Decree limits civil liberties
Mar 5, 1933: Nazis win Parliamentary Elections (with only 44% of the vote)
Mar 21, 1933: Ceremonial Opening of Reichstag in Garrison Church
Mar 23, 1933: Enabling Acts
Apr 1, 1933: National boycott of Jewish shops
May 1, 1933: Nazis observe Day of National Labor
May 2, 1933: Nazis dissolve unions, arrest union leaders, confiscate funds
May 17, 1933: Hitler’s Peace Speech → unites Germans, disarms foreign powers
Nov 11, 1933: Fifteenth anniversary of WWI Armistice
Nov 12, 1933: Germans vote to withdraw from League of Nations (95%)
June 30, 1934: Night of the Long Knives
Aug 2, 1934: President Hindenburg dies → title of President abolished, armed forces swear allegiance to Hitler
Aug 19, 1934: 90% of voters approve Hitler’s usurpation of powers
In just over a year and a half, Hitler went from chancellor of a weak government in a divided nation (just like his predecessors Schleicher and von Papen) to total control of all organs of the German state with no rivals.
Civil liberties were drastically limited. The far left was suppressed and opposition political parties were harassed. Parliamentary democracy was done away with; the supine legislature handed over its powers to the executive. All political parties but one disappeared. Unions were dissolved, their leaders arrested, and their money confiscated. The persecution of the Jews began. S.A. leaders and other political rivals were eliminated, bringing the military firmly onto Hitler’s side. Then, after patiently waiting out Hindenburg’s death, Hitler eliminated the role of the President and arrogated the war hero’s institutional power to himself. Big business, reassured of Hitler’s intentions, helped fund it all.
As he does every so often, William Shirer drops a personal note at the very end of the chapter to remind the reader that he himself was there at the Nuremberg rally in 1934.
No wonder that Hitler was in a confident mood when the Nazi Party Congress assembled in Nuremberg on September 4. I watched him on the morning of the next day stride like a conquering emperor down the center aisle of the great flag-bedecked Luitpold Hall while the band blared forth “The Badenweiler March” and thirty thousand hands were raised in the Nazi salute…
His choice to end the chapter with this rally has a double significance. On a personal level, Shirer had just arrived in Germany. On August 25, 1934, he arrived in Berlin with his Austrian wife Tess, and jotted down in his diary, “Tomorrow begins a new chapter for me…”
But then on a political level, the decision to end chapter 7 with the Nuremberg rally in September 1934 also allowed Shirer to make a broader point about the consolidation of power in Hitler’s hands:
…as long as he lived he would rule this great people as the most powerful and ruthless autocrat they ever had. The venerable Hindenburg was no longer there to dispute his authority, the Army was in his hands, bound to obedience by an oath no German soldier would lightly break. Indeed, all Germany and all the Germans were in his bloodstained hands now that the last recalcitrants had been done away with or had disappeared for good.
For the next seven years after September 1934—events which take up 18 chapters and over 600 pages in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich—William Shirer was reporting from Germany, a first-hand observer of public events and a curious inquirer into private ones.
Chapter Recaps
Topical Posts
Podcast ep. 1: The Man, The Myth: Hitler in American Culture
The Problems with the German Character Explanation of the Nazis
Podcast ep. 2: Why are Dictators (and Techno-monarchs) Appealing?
Podcast ep. 3: Interview with a 20th Century War Correspondent: Jon Randal
If You’ve Fallen Behind on the Reading, This Post is For You