Prelude to War: 7. Hitler Takes Power
The End of Weimar (1933-1934)
On the morning of 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler walked through the corridors of the Presidential Palace in Berlin as Chancellor of Germany. The man who had attempted to overthrow the Bavarian government ten years earlier now held the second-highest office in the German state. Within eighteen months, he would hold absolute power over eighty million Germans.
Hitler’s appointment represented the final collapse of the Weimar Republic, Germany’s first experiment with democracy. What followed was not merely a change of government but the systematic destruction of every institution, organisation, and individual that stood between the Nazi Party and total control of German society. This transformation, accomplished through a combination of legal manipulation, political violence, and mass intimidation, would reshape Germany into a totalitarian state and set the stage for the most devastating war in human history.
The Appointment of a Chancellor
President Paul von Hindenburg had resisted appointing Hitler as Chancellor for months, privately calling the former corporal “that Bohemian private” and expressing deep reservations about placing such power in Nazi hands. The decision came only after a series of backroom negotiations orchestrated by Franz von Papen, the aristocratic politician who had served as Chancellor during the crisis months of 1932.
Papen, bitter over his own dismissal and eager to return to power, convinced himself and others that they could control Hitler. The plan appeared simple: surround the Nazi leader with conservative politicians who would constrain his more radical impulses while using his mass appeal to stabilise German politics. Only three Nazis would sit in the new cabinet of twelve ministers. Papen himself would serve as Vice Chancellor, maintaining direct access to Hindenburg and believing he could guide policy from behind the scenes.
The conservative establishment that engineered Hitler’s appointment represented the same social and political forces that had undermined the Weimar Republic from its inception. These were the industrialists, landowners, military officers, and nationalist politicians who had never accepted Germany’s democratic experiment and longed for a return to authoritarian rule. They saw in Hitler a useful instrument for destroying the left-wing parties and trade unions while believing they could discard him once he had served their purposes.
Their calculations proved catastrophically wrong. Within days of taking office, Hitler began dismantling the very system that had brought him to power, using the legal framework of the Weimar Republic to destroy the Weimar Republic itself.
Fire in the Reichstag
At 21:14 on 27 February 1933, flames erupted from the glass dome of the Reichstag building, seat of the German parliament. The fire, which destroyed the debating chamber and much of the building’s interior, provided Hitler with the pretext he needed to begin his assault on civil liberties and political opposition.
Police arrested Marinus van der Lubbe, a young Dutch communist, at the scene with matches and fire-lighting materials. Van der Lubbe, who suffered from mental illness and had a history of minor arson attempts, confessed to starting the fire as a protest against the capitalist system. Nazi propaganda immediately portrayed the incident as part of a broader communist conspiracy to overthrow the German government, despite a complete lack of evidence supporting such claims.
Hermann Göring, who had become Prussian Interior Minister and thus controlled the largest state police force in Germany, declared that the fire represented the beginning of a communist uprising. Within hours, police began arresting communist leaders, trade unionists, and Social Democratic politicians across the country. The speed and scope of these arrests revealed that lists of targets had been prepared well in advance, suggesting the Nazis had planned to use any available pretext to begin their crackdown on political opposition.
Hitler persuaded the aged Hindenburg to sign the Decree for the Protection of People and State, officially known as the Reichstag Fire Decree, on 28 February. This emergency measure suspended key provisions of the Weimar Constitution, including guarantees of personal liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and privacy of communications. The decree also allowed the national government to take control of state governments that failed to maintain order, effectively destroying the federal structure that had limited central authority under the Weimar system.
The Reichstag Fire Decree remained in effect until Germany’s surrender in 1945, providing the legal foundation for Nazi persecution throughout the regime’s existence. By framing these extraordinary measures as temporary responses to a communist threat, Hitler avoided the appearance of a military coup while achieving many of the same results through manipulation of existing legal procedures.
The Last Election
Germany held its final multi-party election on 5 March 1933, five days after the Reichstag Fire Decree came into effect. The campaign took place under conditions of unprecedented intimidation and violence, with Nazi Storm Troopers and police harassing opposition candidates and breaking up their meetings while protecting Nazi rallies and propaganda efforts.
Communist Party candidates faced arrest or went into hiding, while Social Democratic newspapers were banned and their meetings prohibited. Heinrich Brüning, former Chancellor and leader of the Centre Party, required police protection after receiving death threats. Trade union offices were raided and their funds seized. Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda chief, controlled radio broadcasts and used the state’s resources to flood Germany with Nazi messaging while denying opposition parties access to the same media.
Despite these advantages, the Nazi Party won only 43.9 percent of the vote, falling short of the absolute majority Hitler had hoped to achieve. Combined with their coalition partners, the German National People’s Party, the Nazis controlled 51.9 percent of the new Reichstag. While this narrow majority provided legal cover for Hitler’s subsequent actions, it also demonstrated that most Germans had not voted for Nazi rule, even under conditions of severe intimidation.
The Communist Party, despite the arrests and harassment of its leadership, still received 12.3 percent of the vote, while the Social Democrats captured 18.3 percent. The Centre Party and other moderate groups combined for another 15 percent. These results revealed the persistence of democratic sentiment among German voters and suggested that free and fair elections might have produced very different outcomes.
Hitler’s response to these electoral limitations was not to accept democratic constraints but to eliminate them entirely. The March election would be the last competitive vote held in Germany for twelve years.
Destroying the Constitution
The Enabling Act, formally titled the Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich, represented Hitler’s masterpiece of legal manipulation. Passed by the Reichstag on 23 March 1933, this legislation transferred the power to make laws from parliament to Hitler’s cabinet, effectively ending legislative democracy in Germany while maintaining the appearance of constitutional government.
The Act required a two-thirds majority to amend the constitution, a threshold the Nazis could not reach through their electoral victory alone. Hitler achieved the necessary votes through a combination of exclusion, intimidation, and false promises. Communist deputies were prevented from taking their seats through arrests and threats, while many Social Democratic representatives were detained or forced to flee the country.
The session took place in the Kroll Opera House, since the Reichstag building remained damaged from the fire. Nazi Storm Troopers filled the galleries and surrounded the building, creating an atmosphere of barely contained violence. Heinrich Brüning later recalled that deputies entered the chamber expecting physical assault if they voted against the measure.
Hitler addressed the assembly with uncharacteristic restraint, promising to use his new powers only to address Germany’s economic crisis and restore national unity. He assured moderate deputies that the rights of the Catholic Church would be protected, that existing state governments would retain their authority, and that the Reichstag would continue to meet regularly. Each of these promises would be broken within months.
Otto Wels, leader of the Social Democratic Party, provided the only speech in opposition to the Enabling Act. Standing before an increasingly hostile audience, Wels declared that no enabling act could give Hitler the power to destroy ideas that were eternal and indestructible. His courage in speaking truth to power represented the final act of parliamentary opposition in Nazi Germany.
The Enabling Act passed by 444 votes to 94, with only the Social Democrats voting against it. The Centre Party, crucial to reaching the two-thirds majority, supported the measure after receiving Hitler’s personal assurances about Catholic rights. Ludwig Kaas, the Centre Party leader and a Catholic priest, would later reflect that his party’s vote represented one of the greatest mistakes in German political history.
Coordinating German Society
The process known as Gleichschaltung, often translated as coordination or alignment, represented the Nazi Party’s systematic takeover of every aspect of German social, cultural, and economic life. Beginning in March 1933 and continuing throughout the year, this campaign brought all independent organisations under Nazi control or destroyed them entirely.
State governments fell first. Using the authority granted by the Reichstag Fire Decree, Hitler appointed Reich Commissioners to take control of state administrations throughout Germany. These commissioners, typically local Nazi leaders, dismissed elected officials and replaced them with party members. Bavaria, Prussia, and the other German states lost their autonomy and became administrative districts of the central government, ending the federal system that had existed since 1871.
Trade unions, representing millions of German workers and constituting one of the most powerful forces in Weimar politics, faced systematic destruction. On 1 May 1933, the Nazis organised elaborate Labour Day celebrations, inviting union leaders to participate and promising to protect workers’ rights. The following morning, Storm Troopers occupied union offices across the country, arrested union leaders, and seized union funds. The German Labour Front, led by Robert Ley, replaced all independent unions and became the only legal workers’ organisation in Germany.
Professional associations, cultural organisations, and civic groups faced similar takeovers. The German Medical Association, the Association of German Engineers, and hundreds of other professional bodies were either dissolved or brought under Nazi leadership. Student organisations in universities elected Nazi leaders or were replaced by party-controlled groups. Sports clubs, hiking associations, and amateur orchestras found themselves subject to Nazi oversight and ideological direction.
The process extended into areas of life previously considered private or apolitical. The Nazi Party created new organisations to replace those they destroyed, ensuring that Germans who wished to participate in professional, cultural, or social activities had no choice but to engage with party-controlled institutions. The German Labour Front organised workplace activities and vacation trips. The Nazi Women’s League coordinated female participation in public life. The Hitler Youth became the only legal youth organisation in the country.
This coordination campaign achieved more than simple political control. By monopolising associational life, the Nazis prevented the formation of independent networks that might serve as centres of resistance while creating mechanisms for surveillance and indoctrination that reached into every community. Germans found themselves isolated from traditional sources of solidarity and support while being drawn into new relationships defined entirely by party loyalty.
The Night of the Long Knives
By early 1934, tensions between Hitler and the leadership of his own Storm Trooper organisation had reached a breaking point. Ernst Röhm, who commanded nearly three million SA members, demanded a “second revolution” that would fulfill the socialist promises of the Nazi programme and place the SA at the centre of German military organisation. His ambitions threatened both Hitler’s relationship with the German army and his alliance with conservative politicians and business leaders.
Röhm’s SA had served as the shock troops of the Nazi movement, providing the muscle for street fighting and intimidation that brought Hitler to power. But the organisation’s revolutionary rhetoric and working-class composition made it a liability once the Nazis achieved governmental authority. German army commanders refused to accept SA leadership and threatened to withdraw their support if Röhm’s demands were met. Conservative politicians who had facilitated Hitler’s rise warned that they would not tolerate socialist revolution.
Hitler’s solution combined political necessity with personal ruthlessness. During the weekend of 30 June to 2 July 1934, SS units acting on Hitler’s direct orders arrested and murdered Röhm and approximately 200 other actual or perceived enemies. The victims included SA leaders who had followed Röhm’s revolutionary line, conservative politicians who had opposed Nazi policies, and personal enemies of Nazi leaders who seized the opportunity to settle old scores.
Röhm was shot in his prison cell after refusing Hitler’s offer to commit suicide. Gregor Strasser, who had built the Nazi Party organisation in northern Germany but had fallen out with Hitler over strategy, was murdered in a Berlin prison. Kurt von Schleicher, the general and former Chancellor who had attempted to split the Nazi movement, was gunned down in his home along with his wife.
The killings, which became known as the Night of the Long Knives, eliminated the last significant source of opposition within the Nazi movement while demonstrating Hitler’s willingness to use murder as a tool of political control. German army commanders, relieved by the destruction of SA power, pledged their loyalty to Hitler personally. Conservative politicians, terrified by the display of ruthless violence, abandoned any remaining thoughts of constraining Nazi authority.
Hitler justified the murders in a speech to the Reichstag on 13 July, claiming that Röhm and his associates had plotted treason and that swift action had been necessary to preserve the state. The German parliament, now reduced to a Nazi-dominated assembly, gave Hitler’s actions retroactive legal approval. The principle that murder could become lawful through Hitler’s command would define the Nazi regime’s approach to opposition throughout its existence.
The Death of the President
Paul von Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934 at his estate in East Prussia, aged eighty-six. The old field marshal’s death removed the last constitutional obstacle to Hitler’s complete control of the German state. Within hours of the announcement, Hitler combined the offices of President and Chancellor, assuming the new title of Führer and Reich Chancellor with absolute authority over all aspects of government.
Hindenburg’s final political act had been to leave a sealed testament calling for the restoration of the monarchy after his death. Hitler suppressed this document and arranged a state funeral that portrayed the deceased president as having blessed Nazi rule. The ceremony at the Tannenberg Memorial, where Hindenburg had won his greatest military victory in 1914, provided Hitler with powerful symbolism linking his regime to German military tradition and national glory.
The German army, which had sworn its oath of loyalty to the constitution and the president rather than to any individual leader, now faced a critical choice. Following Hindenburg’s death, Hitler required all military personnel to swear a new oath of allegiance directly to him personally. The oath bound soldiers to “render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich and people, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.”
Most officers accepted the new oath without protest, believing that military discipline required obedience to constituted authority regardless of personal feelings. Some rationalised their compliance by arguing that Hitler’s government represented legal continuity with previous German administrations. Others simply feared the consequences of resistance. The handful who refused found themselves dismissed from service or arrested.
This personal oath would prove crucial to Hitler’s control over the German military throughout his regime. Officers who later developed doubts about Nazi policies or military strategy found themselves bound by sacred vows that made opposition seem tantamount to treachery. The oath created a psychological barrier to resistance that survived even the disasters of the later war years.
The Totalitarian State
By the end of 1934, Hitler had achieved what historians would later recognise as the most rapid and complete destruction of democratic institutions in modern European history. The Weimar Republic, whatever its flaws and weaknesses, had maintained the basic structures of constitutional government, civil liberties, and political competition. The Nazi regime eliminated all of these within eighteen months while maintaining the appearance of legal continuity.
The speed of this transformation reflected both the vulnerabilities of German democracy and the Nazi Party’s sophisticated understanding of how to exploit those vulnerabilities. Hitler’s success depended not only on Nazi organisation and violence but on the collaboration or acquiescence of millions of Germans who chose not to resist the destruction of their constitutional system.
German civil servants continued to administer government departments under Nazi leadership, rationalising their compliance as necessary for maintaining public order. Police officers enforced Nazi decrees while convincing themselves they were simply maintaining law and order. Judges applied Nazi laws while claiming to serve justice rather than party politics. Teachers indoctrinated children with Nazi ideology while believing they were providing education.
This collaboration extended beyond government officials to include leaders of churches, universities, professional associations, and cultural institutions. Some enthusiastically embraced Nazi ideology, others reluctantly accepted Nazi authority, and still others simply chose the path of least resistance. The result was the same: the swift elimination of independent centres of authority that might have provided focal points for resistance.
The Nazi regime’s early success also reflected its ability to satisfy the demands of different constituencies that had supported Hitler’s rise to power. Conservative politicians received the destruction of the left-wing parties they had always opposed. Business leaders gained the elimination of trade unions and socialist parties that had threatened their interests. Military officers obtained massive rearmament programmes and promises of renewed German power. Middle-class Germans saw the restoration of order and national pride after years of economic crisis and political chaos.
Each group convinced itself that it could work with the Nazi regime while avoiding or minimising the aspects of Nazi ideology they found distasteful. This selective engagement allowed Hitler to consolidate power without facing unified opposition from the traditional elites who might have prevented his rise to absolute authority.
The Foundation of Dictatorship
The transformation of Germany between January 1933 and August 1934 established the basic structures of Nazi dictatorship that would endure until the regime’s destruction in 1945. Hitler had demonstrated that democratic constitutions, however carefully crafted, could not protect themselves against leaders willing to exploit legal procedures for illegal ends. The Weimar Republic’s commitment to procedural democracy proved insufficient when faced with an opposition movement that rejected democratic values entirely.
The Nazi consolidation of power revealed the crucial importance of civil society institutions in maintaining democratic government. Trade unions, professional associations, churches, and cultural organisations provided the social foundation for democratic politics by creating networks of loyalty and solidarity independent of government control. When these institutions were destroyed or corrupted, individual Germans found themselves isolated and vulnerable to state pressure.
The events of 1933-1934 also demonstrated the fatal consequences of conservative politicians’ attempts to use radical movements for their own purposes. Papen, Hindenburg, and their associates believed they could control Hitler while benefiting from his popular appeal and political energy. Their miscalculation destroyed the Weimar Republic and ultimately themselves, as the Nazi regime eventually consumed many of the conservatives who had facilitated its rise to power.
Perhaps most significantly, Hitler’s consolidation of power showed how quickly democratic norms and institutions could be swept away once the process of destruction began. The Weimar Republic had survived multiple crises during its fourteen-year existence, from revolutionary uprisings to economic collapse to political deadlock. But the combination of legal manipulation, political violence, and mass intimidation that Hitler employed proved capable of destroying in months what had taken years to build.
The Germany that emerged from this transformation was fundamentally different from the country that had elected Hitler as Chancellor. The Weimar Republic, for all its problems, had maintained space for political opposition, civil liberties, and independent thought. The Nazi state eliminated these possibilities entirely, creating a system of total political control that extended into every aspect of social and personal life.
This totalitarian system would soon turn its energies toward the preparation for war. Having destroyed internal opposition, Hitler now possessed the absolute authority necessary to implement his vision of German expansion and racial supremacy. The consolidation of Nazi power in Germany thus represented not merely the end of the Weimar Republic but the beginning of a trajectory that would lead to global conflict and unprecedented human suffering.
The speed and completeness of this transformation served as both warning and precedent. Democratic societies that observed events in Germany between 1933 and 1934 could no longer claim ignorance about how constitutional governments might be destroyed from within by their own legal procedures. The Nazi consolidation of power provided a template that would be studied and sometimes imitated by authoritarian movements throughout the world.
For the German people, the establishment of Nazi dictatorship meant the end of political choice and the beginning of a period in which their country’s destiny would be determined entirely by the will of one man. The consequences of that surrender of democratic control would become clear in the years that followed, as Hitler led Germany toward a war that would devastate Europe and destroy the Nazi regime itself. But in 1934, those consequences lay hidden in the future, while the immediate reality was the complete triumph of totalitarian rule over the remnants of German democracy.