Hitler moved quickly to turn Germany into a one-party dictatorship and to organize the police power necessary to enforce Nazi policies. He persuaded his Cabinet to declare a state of emergency and end individual freedoms, including freedom of press, speech, and assembly. Individuals lost the right to privacy, which meant that officials could read people's mail, listen in on telephone conversations, and search private homes without a warrant.
Hitler also relied on terror to achieve his goals. Lured by the wages, a feeling of comeradeship, and the striking uniforms, tens of thousands of young jobless men put on the brown shirts and high leather boots of the Nazi Storm Troopers (Sturmabteilungen). Called the SA, these auxillary policemen took to the streets to beat up and kill some opponents of the Nazi regime. Mere fear of the SA pressured into silence other Germans who did not support the Nazis.
Another important tool of Nazi terror was the Protective Squad (Schutzstaffel), or SS, which began as a special guard for Hitler and other party leaders. The black-shirted SS members formed a smaller, elite group whose members also served as auxillary policemen and, later, as concentration camp guards. Eventually overshadowing the SA in importance, the SS became, after 1934, the private army of the Nazi party.
SS chief Heinrich Himmler also turned the regular (nonparty) police forces into an instrument of terror. He helped forge the powerful Secret State Police (Geheime Staatpolizei), or Gestapo; these nonuniformed police used ruthless and cruel methods throughout Germany to identify and arrest political opponents and others who refused to obey laws and policies of the Nazi regime.
In the months after Hitler seized power, the SA and Gestapo agents went from door to door looking for Hitler's enemies. Socialists, Communists, trade union leaders, and others who had spoken out against the Nazi party were arrested, and some were killed. By the middle of 1933, the Nazi party was the only political party, and nearly all organized opposition to the regime had been eliminated. Democracy was dead in Germany.
Many different groups, including the SA and SS, set up hundreds of makeshift "camps" in empty warehouses, factories, and other locations all over Germany where they held political opponents without trial and under conditions of great cruelty. One of these camps was set up on March 20, 1933 at Dachau, in an abandoned munitions factory from World War I. Located near Munich in southwestern Germany, Dachau would become the "model" concentration camp for a vast system of SS camps.
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