The apparent triumph of liberal democracy in 1919 proved extremely short-lived. By 1939, only two major states (Great Britain and France) and several minor ones (the Low Countries, the Scandinavian states, Switzerland, and Czechoslovakia) remained democratic. What had happened to Woodrow Wilson’s claim that World War I had been fought to make the world safe for democracy? Actually, World War I turned out to have had the opposite effect.
The postwar expansion of the electorate made mass politics a reality and seemed to enhance the spread of democracy in Europe. But the war itself had created conditions that led the new mass electorate to distrust democracy and move toward a more radicalized politics.
Many postwar societies were badly divided, especially along class lines. During the war, to maintain war production, governments had been forced to make concessions to trade unions and socialist parties, so the working class had been strengthened. At the same time, the position of many middleclass people had declined as consumer industries had been curtailed during the war and war bonds, which had been purchased by the middle classes as their patriotic contribution to the war effort, sank in value and even became worthless in some countries.
Gender divisions also weakened social cohesion. After the war, as soldiers returned home, women were forced out of jobs they had taken during the war, jobs that many newly independent women wanted to retain. The loss of so many men during the war had also left many younger women with no marital prospects and widows with no choice but to find jobs in the labor force. At the same time, fears about a declining population because of the war led many male political leaders to encourage women to return to their traditional roles as wives and mothers. Many European countries outlawed abortions and curtailed the sale of birth control devices while providing increased welfare benefits to entice women to remain at home and bear children.
The Great Depression served to deepen social conflict. Larger and larger numbers of people felt victimized, first by the war, and now by socioeconomic conditions that seemed beyond their control. Postwar politics became more and more polarized as people reverted to the wartime practice of dividing into friends and enemies, downplaying compromise and emphasizing conflict. Moderate centrist parties that supported democracy soon found themselves with fewer and fewer allies as people became increasingly radicalized politically, supporting the extremes of left-wing communism or right-wing fascism. In the 1920s, Italy had become the first Fascist state while the Soviet Union moved toward a repressive Communist state. In the 1930s, a host of other European states adopted authoritarian structures of various kinds. Is it justified to call any of them totalitarian states?
The word totalitarian was first used by Benito Mussolini (buh-NEE-toh moos-suh-LEE-nee) in Italy to describe his new Fascist state: “Fascism is totalitarian,” he declared. A number of historians eventually applied the term to both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union are discussed later in the chapter). Especially during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s, Western leaders were inclined to refer to both the Soviet Union and the Eastern European states that had been brought under Soviet control as “totalitarian. “
What did the historians who used the term think were the characteristics of a totalitarian state? Totalitarian regimes, it was argued, extended the functions and power of the central state far beyond what they had been in the past. The totalitarian state expected the active loyalty and commitment of its citizens to the regime’s goals and used modern mass propaganda techniques and high-speed modern communications to conquer the minds and hearts of its subjects. The total state aimed to control not only the economic, political, and social aspects of life but the intellectual and cultural aspects as well. The purpose of that control was the active involvement of the masses in the achievement of the regime’s goal, whether it be war, a socialist state, or a thousand-year Reich (RYKH). Moreover, the totalitarian state was led by a single leader and a single party and ruthlessly rejected the liberal ideal of limited government power and constitutional guarantees of individual freedoms. Indeed, individual freedom was subordinated to the collective will of the masses, organized and determined for them by a leader. Furthermore, modern technology gave these states unprecedented ability to use police controls to enforce their wishes on their subjects.
By the 1970s and 1980s, however, revisionist historians were questioning the usefulness of the term totalitarian and regarded it as crude and imprecise. Certainly, some regimes, such as Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, sought total control, but these states exhibited significant differences and none of them was successful in establishing total control of its society.
Nevertheless, these three states did transcend traditional political labels and led to some rethinking of these labels. Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany grew out of extreme rightist preoccupations with nationalism and, in the case of Germany, with racism. Communism in the Soviet Union emerged out of Marxist socialism, a radical leftist program. Thus, extreme right-wing and left-wing regimes no longer appeared to be at opposite ends of the political spectrum but came to be viewed as similar to each other in at least some respects.
In the early 1920s, in the wake of economic turmoil, political disorder, and the general insecurity and fear stemming from World War I, Benito Mussolini burst onto the Italian scene with the first fascist movement in Europe.
IMPACT OF WORLD WAR I As a new European state after 1861, Italy faced a number of serious problems that were only magnified when it became a belligerent in World War I. An estimated 700,000 Italian soldiers died, and the treasury reckoned the cost of the war at 148 billion lire, twice the sum of all government expenditures between 1861 and 1913. Italy did gain some territory, namely, Trieste, and a new northern border that included the formerly Austrian South Tyrol area. Italy’s demands for Fiume and Dalmatia on the Adriatic coast were rejected, however, which gave rise to the myth that Italy had been cheated of its just rewards by the other victors. The war created immense domestic confusion. Inflation undermined middle-class security. Demobilization of the troops created high unemployment and huge groups of dissatisfied veterans. The government proved unable to deal effectively with these problems.
THE BIRTH OF FASCISM Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was an unruly and rebellious child who ultimately received a diploma as an elementary school teacher. After an unsuccessful stint as a teacher, Mussolini became a socialist and gradually became well known in Italian socialist circles. In 1912, he obtained the important position of editor of Avanti (Forward), the official socialist daily newspaper. After editorially switching his position from ardent neutrality, the socialist position, to intervention in World War I, he was expelled from the Socialist Party.
In 1919, Mussolini laid the foundations for a new political movement that came to be called fascism after the name of his group, the Fascio di Combattimento (FASH-ee-oh dee com-bat-ee-MEN-toh) (League of Combat). It received little attention in the elections of 1919, but political stalemate in Italy’s parliamentary system and strong nationalist sentiment saved Mussolini and the Fascists.
The new parliament elected in November quickly proved incapable of governing Italy. Three major parties, the Socialists, Liberals, and Popolari (or Christian Democrats, a new Catholic party formed in January 1919), were unable to form an effective coalition. The Socialists, who had now become the largest party, spoke theoretically of the need for revolution, which alarmed conservatives, who quickly associated them with Bolsheviks or Communists. Thousands of industrial and agricultural strikes in 1919 and 1920 created a climate of class warfare and continual violence. Mussolini shifted quickly from leftist to rightist politics and began to gain support from middle-class industrialists fearful of working-class agitation and large landowners who objected to the agricultural strikes. Mussolini also perceived that Italians were angry over Italy’s failure to receive more fruits of victory in the form of territorial acquisitions after World War I. He realized then that anticommunism, antistrike activity, and nationalist rhetoric combined with the use of brute force might help him obtain what he had been unable to achieve in free elections.
In 1920 and 1921, he formed bands of armed Fascists called squadristi (skwah-DREES-tee) and turned them loose in attacks on Socialist offices and newspapers. Strikes by trade unionists and Socialist workers and peasant leagues were broken up by force. At the same time, Mussolini entered into a political alliance with the Liberals under Giovanni Giolitti, then the prime minister. No doubt, Giolitti and the Liberals believed that the Fascists could be used to crush socialism temporarily and then be dropped. In this game of mutual deceit, Mussolini soon proved to be the more skillful player. By allying with the government coalition, he gained respectability and a free hand for his violent squadristi. Mussolini’s efforts were rewarded when the Fascists won thirty-five parliamentary seats, or 7 percent of the total, in the election of May 1921.
The use of violence was crucial to Mussolini’s plans. By 1921, the black-shirted Fascist squads numbered 200,000 and had become a regular feature of Italian life. World War I veterans and students were especially attracted to the squadristi and relished the opportunity to use unrestrained violence. Administering large doses of castor oil to unwilling victims became one of their favorite tactics.
Mussolini and the Fascists believed that these terrorist tactics would eventually achieve political victory. They deliberately created conditions of disorder knowing that fascism would flourish in such an environment. The Fascists construed themselves as the party of order and drew the bulk of their support from the middle and upper classes; white-collar workers, professionals and civil servants, landowners, merchants and artisans, and students made up almost 60 percent of the membership of the Fascist Party. The middle-class fear of socialism, Communist revolution, and disorder made the Fascists attractive.
As the Italian political situation deteriorated further, Mussolini and the Fascists were emboldened to plan a march on Rome in order to seize power. In a speech in Naples to Fascist Blackshirts on October 24, 1922, Mussolini exclaimed, “Either we are allowed to govern, or we will seize power by marching on Rome” to “take by the throat the miserable political class that governs us.” Bold words, but in truth the planned march on Rome was a calculated bluff to frighten the government into giving them power. The bluff worked, and the government capitulated even before the march occurred. On October 29, 1922, King Victor Emmanuel III (1900-1946) made Mussolini prime minister of Italy. Twenty-four hours later, the Fascist Blackshirts were allowed to march into Rome in order to create the myth that they had gained power by an armed insurrection after a civil war.
MUSSOLINI AND THE ITALIAN FASCIST STATE Since the Fascists constituted but a small minority in parliament, the new prime minister was forced to move slowly. In the summer of 1923, Mussolini began to prepare for a national election that would consolidate the power of his Fascist government and give him a more secure base from which to govern. The national elections that were held on April 6, 1924, resulted in an enormous victory for the Fascists. They won 65 percent of the votes and garnered 374 seats out of a total of 535 in parliament. Although the elections were conducted in an atmosphere of Fascist fraud, force, and intimidation, the size of the victory indicated the growing popularity of Mussolini and his Fascists.
By 1926, Mussolini had established his Fascist dictatorship. Press laws gave the government the right to suspend any publications that fostered disrespect for the Catholic Church, the monarchy, or the state. The prime minister was made “head of government” with the power to legislate by decree. A police law empowered the police to arrest and confine anybody for nonpolitical or political crimes without due process of law. The government was given the power to dissolve political and cultural associations. In 1926, all anti-Fascist parties were outlawed. A secret police, known as the OVRA, was also established. By the end of 1926, Mussolini ruled Italy as Il Duce (eel DOO-chay), the leader.
Mussolini conceived of the Fascist state as totalitarian: “Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State, the synthesis and unity of all values, interprets, develops and gives strength to the whole life of the people” (see the box on p. 808).
Mussolini did try to create a police state, but police activities in Italy were never as repressive, efficient, or savage as those of Nazi Germany. Likewise, the Italian Fascists’ attempt to exercise control over all forms of mass media, including newspapers, radio, and cinema, so that they could use propaganda as an instrument to integrate the masses into the state, failed to achieve its major goals. Most commonly, Fascist propaganda was disseminated through simple slogans, such as “Mussolini is always right,” plastered on walls all over Italy.
Mussolini and the Fascists also attempted to mold Italians into a single-minded community by pursuing a Fascist educational policy and developing Fascist organizations. Because the secondary schools maintained considerable freedom from Fascist control, the regime relied more and more on the activities of youth organizations, known as the Young Fascists, to indoctrinate the young people of the nation in Fascist ideals. By 1939, about 6.8 million children, teenagers, and young adults of both sexes, or 66 percent of the population between eight and eighteen, were enrolled in some kind of Fascist youth group. Activities for these groups included unpopular Saturday afternoon marching drills and calisthenics, seaside and mountain summer camps, and competitions. An underlying motif for all of these activities was the Fascist insistence on militarization. Beginning in the 1930s, all male groups were given some kind of pre-military exercises to develop discipline and provide training for war. Results were mixed. Italian teenagers, who liked neither military training nor routine discipline of any kind, simply refused to attend Fascist youth meetings on a regular basis.
The Fascist organizations hoped to create a new Italian – hardworking, physically fit, disciplined, intellectually sharp, and martially inclined. In practice, the Fascists largely reinforced traditional social attitudes in Italy, as is evident in their policies regarding women. The Fascists portrayed the family as the pillar of the state and women as the basic foundation of the family. “Woman into the home” became the Fascist slogan. Women were to be homemakers and baby producers, “their natural and fundamental mission in life,” according to Mussolini, who viewed population growth as an indicator of national strength. To Mussolini, female emancipation was “un-Fascist.” Employment outside the home was an impediment distracting women from conception. “It forms an independence and consequent physical and moral habits contrary to child bearing.” A practical consideration also underlay the Fascist attitude toward women: eliminating women from the job market reduced male unemployment figures in the depression economy of the 1930s.
In the 1930s, the Fascists translated their attitude toward women into law with a series of enactments aimed at encouraging larger families. Families with many offspring were offered supplementary pay, loans, prizes, and subsidies, and mothers of many children received gold medals. A national “Mother and Child” holiday was celebrated on December 24, with prizes awarded for fertility. Also in the 1930s, decrees were passed that set quotas on the employment of women, but they failed to accomplish their goal.
Despite the instruments of repression, the use of propaganda, and the creation of numerous Fascist organizations, Mussolini failed to attain the degree of control achieved in Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union. Mussolini and the Fascist Party never really destroyed the old power structure. Some institutions, including the armed forces and the monarchy, were never absorbed into the Fascist state and managed to maintain their independence. Mussolini had boasted that he would help the workers and peasants, but instead he generally allied himself with the interests of the industrialists and large landowners at the expense of the lower classes.
Even more indicative of Mussolini’s compromise with the traditional institutions of Italy was his attempt to gain the support of the Catholic Church. In the Lateran Accords of February 1929, Mussolini’s regime recognized the sovereign independence of a small enclave of 109 acres within Rome, known as Vatican City, which had remained in the church’s possession since the unification of Italy in 1870; in return, the papacy recognized the Italian state. The Lateran Accords also guaranteed the church a large grant of money and recognized Catholicism as the “sole religion of the state.” In return, the Catholic Church urged Italians to support the Fascist regime.
In all areas of Italian life under Mussolini and the Fascists, there was a noticeable dichotomy between Fascist ideals and practice. The Italian Fascists promised much but delivered considerably less, and they were soon overshadowed by a much more powerful fascist movement to the north.
The apparent triumph of liberal democracy in 1919 proved extremely short-lived. By 1939, only two major states (Great Britain and France) and several minor ones (the Low Countries, the Scandinavian states, Switzerland, and Czechoslovakia) remained democratic. What had happened to Woodrow Wilson’s claim that World War I had been fought to make the world safe for democracy? Actually, World War I turned out to have had the opposite effect.
In 1923, a small rightist party, known as the Nazis, led by an obscure Austrian rabble-rouser named Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), tried to seize power in southern Germany in conscious imitation of Mussolini’s march on Rome in 1922. Although the attempt failed, Hitler and the Nazis achieved sudden national prominence. Within ten years, they had taken over complete power.
WEIMAR GERMANY After Germany’s defeat in World War I, a German democratic state known as the Weimar (VY-mar) Republic had been established. Formed by a coalition of Social Democrats, the Catholic Center Party, and German Democrats, the fragmented republic had no outstanding political leader and proved to be unstable. In 1925, Paul von Hindenburg, the World War I military hero, was elected president. Hindenburg was a traditional military man, monarchist in sentiment, who at heart was not in favor of the republic. The young republic suffered politically from attempted uprisings and attacks from both the left and the right.
Another of the republic’s problems was its inability to change Germany’s basic governmental structure. The government never really controlled the army, which operated as a state within a state. Other institutions maintained their independence as well. Hostile judges, teachers, and bureaucrats remained in office and used their positions to undermine democracy from within. At the same time, important groups of landed aristocrats and leaders of powerful business cartels refused to accept the overthrow of the imperial regime and remained hostile to the republic.
The Weimar Republic also faced serious economic difficulties. The runaway inflation of 1922 and 1923 had serious social repercussions. Widows, orphans, the retired elderly, army officers, teachers, civil servants, and others who lived on fixed incomes all watched their monthly stipends become worthless and their lifetime savings disappear. Their economic losses increasingly pushed the middle class to the rightist parties that were hostile to the republic. To make matters worse, after a period of prosperity from 1924 to 1929, Germany faced the Great Depression. Unemployment increased to nearly 4.4 million by December 1930. The depression paved the way for social discontent, fear, and extremist parties. The political, economic, and social problems of the Weimar Republic provided an environment in which Hitler and the Nazis were able to rise to power.
THE EMERGENCE OF ADOLF HITLER Born in 1889, Adolf Hitler was the son of an Austrian customs official. He was a total failure in secondary school and eventually made his way to Vienna to become an artist. Though he was rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, Hitler stayed on in Vienna to live the bohemian lifestyle of an artist. In his autobiography, Mein Kampf (myn KAHMPF) (My Struggle), Hitler characterized his years in Vienna from 1908 to 1913 as an important formative period in his life: “In this period there took shape within me a world picture and a philosophy which became the granite foundation of all my acts. In addition to what I then created, I have had to learn little, and I have had to alter nothing.”
In Vienna, then, Hitler established the basic ideas of an ideology from which he never deviated for the rest of his life. At the core of Hitler’s ideas was racism, especially anti-Semitism (see the box on p. 811). His hatred of the Jews lasted to the very end of his life. Hitler also became an extreme German nationalist who learned from the mass politics of Vienna how political parties could effectively use propaganda and terror. Finally, in his Viennese years, Hitler also came to a firm belief in the need for struggle, which he saw as the “granite foundation of the world.”
In 1913, Hitler moved to Munich, still without purpose and with no real future in sight. World War I saved him: “Overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.” As a dispatch runner on the Western Front, Hitler distinguished himself by his brave acts. At the end of the war, finding again that his life had no purpose or meaning, he returned to Munich and decided to enter politics and found, at last, his true profession.
THE RISE OF THE NAZIS Hitler joined the obscure German Workers’ Party, one of a number of right-wing extreme nationalist parties in Munich. By the summer of 1921, Hitler had assumed total control of the party, which he renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi for short (from the first two syllables of its German name). His idea was that the party’s name would distinguish the Nazis from the socialist parties while gaining support from both working-class and nationalist circles. Hitler worked assiduously to develop the party into a mass political movement with flags, badges, uniforms, its own newspaper, and its own police force or militia known as the SA, the Sturmabteilung (SHTOORM-ap-ty-loonk), or Storm Troops. The SA was used to defend the party in meeting halls and to break up the meetings of other parties. Hitler’s oratorical skills were largely responsible for attracting an increasing number of followers. By 1923, the party had grown from its early hundreds into a membership of 55,000, plus another 15,000 in the SA.
When it appeared that the Weimar Republic was on the verge of collapse in the fall of 1923, the Nazis and other rightwing leaders in the south German state of Bavaria decided to march on Berlin to overthrow the Weimar government. When his fellow conspirators reneged, Hitler and the Nazis decided to act on their own by staging an armed uprising in Munich on November 8. The so-called Beer Hall Putsch was quickly crushed. Hitler was arrested, put on trial for treason, and sentenced to prison for five years, a lenient sentence indeed from sympathetic right-wing judges.
During his brief stay in prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, an autobiographical account of his movement and its underlying ideology. Extreme German nationalism, virulent anti-Semitism, and vicious anticommunism are linked together by a social Darwinian theory of struggle that stresses the right of superior nations to Lebensraum (LAY-benz-rowm) (living space) through expansion and the right of superior individuals to secure authoritarian leadership over the masses. What is perhaps most remarkable about Mein Kampf is its elaboration of a series of ideas that directed Hitler’s actions once he took power. That others refused to take Hitler and his ideas seriously was one of his greatest advantages.
HITLER’S NEW TACTICS The Beer Hall Putsch proved to be a major turning point in Hitler’s career. Rather than discouraging him, his trial and imprisonment reinforced his faith in himself and in his mission. He now clearly understood the need for a change in tactics. If the Nazis could not overthrow the Weimar Republic by force, they would have to use constitutional means to gain power. This implied the formation of a mass political movement that would actively compete for votes with the other political parties.
After his release from prison, Hitler set about organizing the Nazi Party for the lawful takeover of power. His position on leadership in the party was quite clear. There was to be no discussion of ideas in the party, and the party was to follow the Führerprinzip (FYOOR-ur-prin-TSEEP), the leadership principle, which entailed nothing less than a single-minded party under one leader. As Hitler expressed it, “A good National Socialist is one who would let himself be killed for his Führer at any time. “
In the late 1920s, Hitler reorganized the Nazi Party on a regional basis and expanded it to all parts of Germany. By 1929, the Nazis had a national party organization. The party also grew from 27,000 members in 1925 to 178,000 by the end of 1929. Especially noticeable was the youthfulness of the regional, district, and branch leaders of the Nazi organization. Many were under thirty and were fiercely committed to Hitler because he gave them the kind of active politics they sought. Rather than democratic debate, they wanted brawls in beer halls, enthusiastic speeches, and comradeship in the building of a new Germany. One new young Nazi member expressed his excitement about the party:
For me this was the start of a completely new life. There was only one thing in the world for me and that was service in the movement. All my thoughts were centered on the movement. I could talk only politics. I was no longer aware of anything else. At the time I was a promising athlete; I was very keen on sport, and it was going to be my career. But I had to give this up too. My only interest was agitation and propaganda.
Such youthful enthusiasm gave Nazism the aura of a “young man’s movement” and a sense of dynamism that the other parties could not match.
By 1929, the Nazi Party had also made a significant shift in strategy. Between 1925 and 1927, Hitler and the Nazis had pursued an urban strategy geared toward winning workers from the socialists and Communists. But failure in the 1928 elections, when the Nazis gained only 2.6 percent of the vote and twelve seats in the Reichstag, convinced Hitler of the need for a change. By 1929, the party began to pursue middle-class and lower-middle-class votes in small towns and rural areas, especially in northern, central, and eastern Germany.
Germany’s economic difficulties paved the way for the Nazis’ rise to power. Unemployment rose dramatically, from 4.35 million in 1931 to 6 million by the winter of 1932. The economic and psychological impact of the Great Depression made the radical solutions offered by extremist parties appear more attractive. Already in the Reichstag elections of September 1930, the Nazis polled 18 percent of the vote and gained 107 seats, making the Nazi Party one of the largest in Germany.
By 1930, Chancellor Heinrich Bruning (HYN-rikh BROOning) (1885-1970) had been unable to form a working parliamentary majority in the Reichstag and relied on the use of emergency decrees by President Hindenburg to rule. In a real sense, then, parliamentary democracy was already dying in 1930, three years before Hitler destroyed it.
THE NAZI SEIZURE OF POWER Hitler’s quest for power from late 1930 to early 1933 depended on the political maneuvering around President Hindenburg. Nevertheless, the elections from 1930 through 1932 were indirectly responsible for the Nazis’ rise to power since they showed the importance of the Nazi Party. The party itself grew dramatically during this period, from 289,000 members in September 1930 to 800,000 by 1932. The SA also rose to 500,000 members.
The Nazis proved very effective in developing modern electioneering techniques. In their election campaigns, party members pitched their themes to the needs and fears of different social groups. But even as they were making blatant appeals to class interests, the Nazis were denouncing conflicts of interest and maintaining that they stood above classes and parties. Hitler, in particular, claimed to stand above all differences and promised to create a new Germany free of class differences and party infighting. His appeal to national pride, national honor, and traditional militarism struck chords of emotion in his listeners.
Elections, however, proved to have their limits. In the elections of July 1932, the Nazis won 230 seats, making them the largest party in the Reichstag. But four months later, in November, they declined to 196 seats. It became apparent to many Nazis that they would not gain power simply by the ballot box. Hitler saw clearly, however, that after 1930 the Reichstag was not all that important, since the government ruled by decree with the support of President Hindenburg. Increasingly, the right-wing elites of Germany – the industrial magnates, landed aristocrats, military establishment, and higher bureaucrats – came to see Hitler as the man who had the mass support to establish a right-wing, authoritarian regime that would save Germany and their privileged positions from a Communist takeover. These people almost certainly thought that they could control Hitler and, like many others, may well have underestimated his abilities. Under pressure from these elites, President Hindenburg agreed to allow Hitler to become chancellor (on January 30, 1933) and form a new government.
Within two months, Hitler had laid the foundations for the Nazis’ complete control over Germany. One of Hitler’s important cohorts, Hermann Göring (GUR-ing) (1893-1946), had been made minister of the interior and hence head of the police of the Prussian state, the largest of the federal states in Germany. He used his power to purge the police of non-Nazis and to establish an auxiliary police force composed of SA members. This action legitimized Nazi terror. On the day after a fire broke out in the Reichstag building (February 27), supposedly set by the Communists, Hitler was also able to convince President Hindenburg to issue a decree that gave the government emergency powers. It suspended all basic rights of citizens for the full duration of the emergency, thus enabling the Nazis to arrest and imprison anyone without redress.
The crowning step of Hitler’s “legal seizure” of power came after the Nazis had gained 288 Reichstag seats in the elections of March 5, 1933. Since they still did not possess an absolute majority, on March 23 the Nazis sought the passage of an Enabling Act, which would empower the government to dispense with constitutional forms for four years while it issued laws to deal with the country’s problems. Since the act was to be an amendment to the Weimar constitution, the Nazis needed and obtained a two-thirds vote to pass it. Only the Social Democrats had the courage to oppose Hitler. The Enabling Act provided the legal basis for Hitler’s subsequent acts. He no longer needed either the Reichstag or President Hindenburg. In effect, Hitler became a dictator appointed by the parliamentary body itself.
With their new source of power, the Nazis acted quickly to enforce Gleichschaltung (glykh-SHAHL-toonk), the coordination of all institutions under Nazi control. They purged the civil service of Jews and democratic elements, established concentration camps for opponents of the new regime, eliminated the autonomy of the federal states, dissolved the trade unions and replaced them with the gigantic Labor Front, and abolished all political parties except the Nazis. By the end of the summer of 1933, within seven months of being appointed chancellor, Hitler and the Nazis had established a powerful control over Germany.
Why had this seizure of power been so quick and easy? The Nazis were not only ruthless in their use of force but ready to take control. The depression and the Weimar Republic’s failure to resolve it had weakened what little faith the Germans had in their democratic state. But negative factors alone cannot explain the Nazi success. To many Germans, the Nazis offered a national awakening. “Germany awake,” one of the many Nazi slogans, had a powerful appeal to a people psychologically crushed by their defeat in World War 1. The Nazis presented a strong image of a dynamic new Germany that was above parties and above classes.
By the end of 1933, there were only two sources of potential danger to Hitler’s authority: the armed forces and the SA within his own party. The SA, under the leadership of Ernst Rölm (RURM), openly criticized Hitler and spoke of the need for a “second revolution” and the replacement of the regular army by the SA. Neither the army nor Hitler favored such a possibility. Hitler solved both problems simultaneously on June 30, 1934, by having Rölm and a number of other SA leaders killed in return for the army’s support in allowing Hitler to succeed Hindenburg when the president died. When Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934, the office of president was abolished, and Hitler became sole ruler of Germany. Public officials and soldiers were all required to take a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler as the “Führer of the German Reich and people.” The Third Reich had begun.
THE NAZI STATE (1933-1939) Having smashed the parliamentary state, Hitler now felt that the real task was at hand: to develop the “total state.” Hitler’s aims had not been simply power for power’s sake or a tyranny based on personal ambition. He had larger ideological goals. The development of an Aryan racial state that would dominate Europe and possibly the world for generations to come required a massive movement in which the German people would be actively involved, not passively cowed by force. Hitler stated:
We must develop organizations in which an individual’s entire life can take place. Then every activity and every need of every individual will be regulated by the collectivity represented by the party. There is no longer any arbitrary will, there are no longer any free realms in which the individual belongs to himself.... The time of personal happiness is over.
The Nazis pursued the creation of this unified state in a variety of ways. They employed mass demonstrations and spectacles to integrate the German nation into a collective fellowship and to mobilize it as an instrument for Hitler’s policies. These mass demonstrations, especially the Nuremberg party rallies that were held every September and the Harvest Festivals celebrated at the Buckeberg (BOOK-uh-bayrk) near Hamelin every fall, combined the symbolism of a religious service with the merriment of a popular amusement. They had great appeal and usually evoked mass enthusiasm and excitement (see the box on p. 814).
Some features of the state apparatus of Hitler’s total state seem contradictory. One usually thinks of Nazi Germany as having an all-powerful government that maintained absolute control and order. In truth, Nazi Germany was the scene of almost constant personal and institutional conflict, which resulted in administrative chaos. Incessant struggle characterized relationships within the party, within the state, and between party and state. By fostering rivalry within the party and between party and state, Hitler became the ultimate decision maker.
In the economic sphere, Hitler and the Nazis also established control, but industry was not nationalized, as the left wing of the Nazi Party wanted. Hitler felt that it was irrelevant who owned the means of production so long as the owners recognized their master. Although the regime pursued the use of public works projects and “pump-priming” grants to private construction firms to foster employment and end the depression, there is little doubt that rearmament did far more to solve the unemployment problem. Unemployment, which had stood at 6 million in 1932, dropped to 2.6 million in 1934 and less than 500,000 in 1937. The regime claimed full credit for solving Germany’s economic woes, and the improved economy was an important factor in convincing many Germans to accept the new regime, despite its excesses.
The German Labor Front under Robert Ley regulated the world of labor. The Labor Front was a state-run union. To control all laborers, it used the workbook. Every salaried worker had to have one in order to hold a job. Only by submitting to the policies of the Nazi-controlled Labor Front could a worker obtain and retain a workbook. The Labor Front also sponsored activities to keep the workers happy (see “Mass Leisure” later in this chapter).
For those who needed coercion, the Nazi state had its instruments of terror and repression. Especially important was the SS, the Schutzstaffen (SHOOTS-shtah-fuhn), or Protection Squads. Originally created as Hitler’s personal bodyguard, the SS, under the direction of Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945), came to control all of the regular and secret police forces. Himmler and the SS functioned on the basis of two principles: terror and ideology. Terror included the instruments of repression and murder: the secret police, criminal police, concentration camps, and later the execution squads and death camps for the extermination of the Jews (see Chapter 27). For Himmler, the SS was a crusading order whose primary goal was to further the Aryan master race. SS members, who constituted a carefully chosen elite, were thoroughly indoctrinated in racial ideology.
Other institutions, such as the Catholic and Protestant churches, primary and secondary schools, and universities, were also brought under the control of the Nazi state. Nazi professional organizations and leagues were formed for civil servants, teachers, women, farmers, doctors, and lawyers. Because the early indoctrination of the nation’s youth would lay the foundation for a strong state, special attention was given to youth organizations: the Hitler Jugend (YOO-gunt) (Hitler Youth) and its female counterpart, the Bund Deutscher Madel (BOONT DOIT-chuh MAY-dul) (German Girls Association). The oath required of Hitler Youth members demonstrates the dedication expected of youth in the Nazi state: “In the presence of this blood banner, which represents our Führer, I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God.”
Women played a crucial role in the Aryan racial state as bearers of the children who would bring about the triumph of the Aryan race. To the Nazis, the differences between men and women were quite natural. Men were warriors and political leaders; women were destined to be wives and mothers. Motherhood was exalted in an annual ceremony on August 12, Hitler’s mother’s birthday, when Hitler awarded the German Mother’s Cross to a select group of German mothers. Those with four children received a bronze cross, those with six a silver cross, and those with eight or more a gold cross.
Nazi ideas determined employment opportunities for women. The Nazis hoped to drive women out of heavy industry or other jobs that might hinder them from bearing healthy children, as well as certain professions, including university teaching, medicine, and law, which were considered inappropriate for women, especially married women. The Nazis encouraged women to pursue professional occupations that had direct practical application, such as social work and nursing. In addition to restrictive legislation against females, the Nazi regime pursued its campaign against working women with such poster slogans as “Get hold of pots and pans and broom and you’ll sooner find a groom!” Nazi policy toward female workers remained inconsistent, however. Especially after the rearmament boom and increased conscription of males for military service resulted in a labor shortage, the government encouraged women to work, even in areas previously dominated by males.
The Nazi total state was intended to be an Aryan racial state. From its beginning, the Nazi Party reflected Hitler’s strong anti-Semitic beliefs. Once in power, the Nazis translated anti-Semitic ideas into anti-Semitic policies. Already on April 1, 1933, the new Nazi government initiated a two-day boycott of Jewish businesses. A series of laws soon followed that excluded “non-Aryans” (defined as anyone “descended from non-Aryans, especially Jewish parents or grandparents”) from the legal profession, civil service, judgeships, the medical profession, teaching positions, cultural and entertainment enterprises, and the press.
In September 1935, the Nazis announced new racial laws at the annual party rally in Nuremberg. These “Nuremberg laws” excluded German Jews from German citizenship and forbade marriages and extramarital relations between Jews and German citizens. The Nuremberg laws essentially separated Jews from the Germans politically, socially, and legally and were the natural extension of Hitler’s stress on the preservation of a pure Aryan race.
Another considerably more violent phase of anti-Jewish activity took place in 1938 and 1939; it was initiated on November 9-10, 1938, the infamous Kristallnacht (kri-STAHL nahkht), or "Night of Shattered Glass." The assassination of a third secretary in the German embassy in Paris by a young Polish Jew became the excuse for a Nazi-led destructive rampage against the Jews in which synagogues were burned, seven thousand Jewish businesses were destroyed, and at least one hundred Jews were killed. Moreover, 30,000 Jewish males were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Kristallnacht also led to further drastic steps. Jews were barred from all public buildings and prohibited from owning, managing, or working in any retail store. Finally, under the direction of the SS, Jews were encouraged to “emigrate from Germany.” After the outbreak of World War II, the policy of emigration was replaced by a more gruesome one.