After they consolidated their accession to power, began to transform the German economy and society, and started to devise a foreign policy, the Nazis paused to stabilise their accomplishments and strengthen the processes they had set in motion. The broad public consensus that had coalesced around Hitler and National Socialism helped the Nazis to apply their policies in the years to come. Between 1935 and 1937, the regime also reinforced the foundations of the terrorist state by: 1) giving terror agencies broader powers and expanding their areas of control, 2) applying measures against various population groups with greater ferocity and velocity, and 3) elaborating a foreign-relations system that progressively enhanced Germany's status in Europe. These processes characterised the 1935-1937 period - the years of relative stability of the Nazi regime.
The SS Apparatus
Strengthening the SS
The SS, that was founded in 1925 as the ΓÇ£protection squads ΓÇ¥ (Schutzstaffeln), chiefly to protect Hitler and the Nazi party leaders, was originally a part of the SA, the ΓÇ£storm detachmentΓÇ¥ (Sturmabteilung) , founded in 1921 to provide security at Nazi party conferences. The reinforcement and expansion of SS activity were among the most pronounced manifestations of the Nazi totalitarianism. Through the SS, the state embodied the Fuehrerprinzip, since it was Hitler who made policy in all areas of life, using the SS to apply this policy by brute force. The SS power base in German life was highly consolidated in June 1936, when SS commander Heinrich Himmler was named police commander in all German states. This appointment created a central German police command under the SS, in contrast to the previous arrangement, in which the police was subordinated to the governments of the federal states. Thus the SS - which started out in 1925 with 200 people and had grown to 160,000 members in 1936 - attained an autonomous status.
Reorganisation of the Police Force
Upon taking up his appointment, Himmler divided the police into the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police), which dealt with ordinary police duties, and the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), charged with intelligence and ideological control on behalf of the government system. Alongside central-government control of police forces, the autonomous SS administration commanded the Party's security service, the SD (Sicherheitsdienst ), which became part of the security police. The duties of the SD focused on intelligence, espionage, and counterespionage, and its agents operated in Party circles, the SA, and the SS itself. In light of this reorganisation of the security system, the SS defined its major goals: the establishment of SS departments in all areas of political activity, integration of the police into various SS agencies, and combining the bureaucracy with the enforcement mechanism. Himmler even demanded that the security police be allowed to overstep the limits of the law in their operations. This ensured the status of the SS, alongside the party, as the instrument that would full fill the Fuehrer's will in the political domain, rather than the government bureaucracy.
The Persecution Apparatus
The consolidation of Himmler's status with the police led to full integration of the apparatus of persecution and concentration camps that had been established in 1933 under the SS. During this year about 27,000 people were detained in the camps. Between October 1935 and May 1937, the Gestapo - the political arm of the security police - arrested more than 7,000 people for alleged activity on behalf of the Socialist and Communist parties. The legal basis for these persecutions and arrests was a set of emergency decrees issued after the burning of the Reichstag. Following the decline in camp population to 6,000 in late 1936, due to the sense of governmental stability, the wave of persecutions resumed in 1937 with a resultant increase in the number of persons in detention. This time, however, the persecution was aimed not only at political opponents but also at ΓÇ£nationally harmful elementsΓÇ¥ who could not be arrested on political grounds. The new definitions led to the imprisonment of immigrants, Jews, members of the Sinti and the Roma (ΓÇ£GypsiesΓÇ¥), asocials and ΓÇ£shirkers,ΓÇ¥ homosexuals, and members of various sects. The expansion of the persecution apparatus and concentration camps was based on the claim that these measures were needed to correct flaws in ΓÇ£national virtues.ΓÇ¥
More On: The role of the Political Police
Dr. Werner Best, legal advisor to the Gestapo and head of the secret state police office at the Ministry of the Interior, wrote in 1936 that: To discover the enemies of the State, to watch them and to render them harmless at the right moment is the preventive police duty of a political police. In order to fulfil this duty, the political police must be free to use every means suited to achieve the required end. It is correct to say that in the National Socialist Fuehrer State the institutions called upon to protect State and people and to carry out the will of the State possess as of right the authority required to fulfil their task, an authority which is derived solely from the new conception of the State and one which requires no special legal legitimisation ...From this inescapable fact there has developed the concept of the political police as a new and unique body for the protection of the State whose members, in addition to their official duties, regard themselves as belonging to a fighting formation.' (Krausnick and Broszat 171)
The SS as a Racial Elite
Apart from the role of the SS in consolidating and ensuring the strength of the regime, its commander saw it as fulfilling further duty: its members were to constitute a racial elite, based on racial purity and embodying exalted racial traits and temperament. By means of selection and breeding, Himmler aspired to foster a new type of person - loyal, obedient, tough, erudite, primed for leadership, and prepared for self-sacrifice: We want to create an upper class for Germany, selected constantly over centuries, a new aristocracy, recruited always from the best sons and daughters of our nation, an aristocracy that never becomes old.' (Ziegler 52) In accordance with Himmler's aspiration, only candidates found to be healthy, strong, and pronouncedly Aryan' in appearance were admitted to the ranks of the SS. Furthermore, any SS man who wished to marry had to obtain a marriage license, issued only after the prospective bride's racial purity' and state of health had been certified. In 1935 Himmler established an organisation within the SS called Lebensborn (ΓÇ£Well of LifeΓÇ¥), to promote procreation and the birth of children of high racial value', especially among members of the SS.
More On: Himmler's Marriage Order to SS Men
Himmler's marriage ordinance for members of the SS, dated 1 January 1932: 1. The SS is a band of purely Nordic German men selected according to certain principles. In accordance with the National Socialist ideology ... I hereby institute from 1 January 1932 the ΓÇ£Marriage CertificateΓÇ¥ for all unmarried members of the SS. The aim is to create a hereditarily healthy clan of a purely Nordic German type. The marriage certificate will be awarded or refused solely on the basis of racial health and heredity. Every SS man intending to get married must procure for this purpose the marriage certificate of the Reichsfuehrer SS.' (Noakes, 281-282)
Foreign Policy
The European Constellation
The belligerent attitude that characterised German foreign policy in the Nazis' first two years in power continued in 1935-1937, at times tempered by some apparent willingness to appear conciliatory. One of the first steps in this context was the Fleet Agreement' of June 1935, in which Germany and Great Britain worked out the balance of naval strength between them. Hitler's goal in concluding this accord was to prevent the political isolation of Germany and to avert the forof an anti-Hitler front. Moreover, the agreement allowed Germany to rebuild her navy and to equip it for a war in the future. Britain's willingness to make concessions in achieving this agreement frustrated Italian and French efforts to co-ordinate a policy that would impede Germany. Relying on this state of affairs, the Wehrmacht invaded the demilitarised Rhineland in March 1936 - an action which the European powers responded to as they had before, by issuing protests and avoiding action.
More On: The Olympics
Although the International Olympic Committee had decided to hold the XI Olympiad (1936) in Germany back in 1932, the timing of the event made it supremely important in terms of Germany's foreign relations. Hitler was aware that his three years in power, coupled with the invasion of Rhineland in March of that year - not to mention reports of persecution of Jews and political opponents - had given Germany a very bad image abroad. Thus, the Berlin Olympiad, in which hundreds of athletes from scores of countries participated, constituted recognition of sorts, of the Nazi regime and its actions. The Nazis, for their part, took care to conceal any hint or indication of their Antisemitic policies and attempted to demonstrate their ostensibly peaceful and conciliatory intentions. At the same time they exploited the event to exhibit the people's support of the regime, to stress the racial characteristics of the ΓÇ£AryanΓÇ¥ man, and to attempt to publicise his accomplishments.
Germany and Italy Grow Closer
Another arena in which Germany exploited as a means of demonstrating its might and strengthening its status in Europe was the Spanish Civil War. While France and Great Britain contented themselves with a policy of non-intervention Italy under Mussolini supported the pro-Fascist enemies of the Spanish Republic while Germany, which also supported these forces, intervened actively by sending the Condor' squadron. This intervention gave Germany two advantages: new opportunities for political and military activity - opportunities of vast importance in view of the coming war, and the creation of a basis for Italian-German co-operation, which was expressed in the formation of the Berlin-Rome axis'. Mussolini, who coined this phrase in late 1936, believed that the axis' would serve as a basis for the formation of an anti-Bolshevik bloc.
The Four Year Plan
Another indication of Germany's military resurgence and its aspirations for territorial expansion may be found in the Four-Year Plan. In a secret memorandum written in August 1936, Hitler instructed all government agencies to prepare the military and the economy for war within four years. Hermann Goering was appointed to be the general overseer of the plan. There were obvious shortages in personnel and raw materials at this time, and German exports were beginning to decline. Hitler therefore ordered an acceleration in fuel and iron production, irrespective of other economic factors. There was a significant gap between the goals defined by Hitler and the objective economic conditions. This disparity was one of the major factors motivating economic circles to support Hitler's proposals for territorial expansion. These circles concluded that even from an economic point of view, there was no choice but to go to war.
More On: Hitler on the Four Years Plan
An excerpt from Hitler's preamble to the four-year plan: It is not sufficient merely to draw up, from time to time, a raw material or foreign exchange balance, or to talk about the preparation of a war economy in time of peace; on the contrary, it is essential to ensure peacetime food supplies and above all those means for the conduct of war which it is possible to make sure of by human energy and activity.' (Meyer, 248)
More On: The Antisemitic Aspect of the Four Years Plan
In the introduction to the Plan, Hitler exposed the Antisemitic ideological dimension of the struggle which the Plan aimed to support: Since the outbreak of the French Revolution the world has been moving with ever-increasing speed towards a new conflict, the most extreme solution of which is Bolshevism; and the essence and goal of Bolshevism is the elimination of those strata of mankind, which have hitherto provided the leadership and their replacement by international Jewry.' (Documents on the Holocaust 89)
The Hossbach Memorandum
In late 1937, Hitler provided more explicit evidence of his intention to launch a war in the near future. In the course of a meeting at the Chancellery on 5 November - documented in the records of Hitler's military adjutant, Colonel Friedrich Hossbach - Hitler presented his ideas for the future before Germany's military and political elite: The German racial community comprised over 85 million people and, because of their number and the narrow limits of habitable space in Europe, constituted a tightly packed racial core such as not to be met in any other country and such as implied the right to a greater living space than in the case of other peoples... Germany's problem could only be resolved by means of force and this was never without attendant risk. The campaigns of Frederick the Great for Silesia and Bismarck's wars against Austria and France had involved unheard-of risk, and the swiftness of the Prussian action in 1870 had kept Austria from entering the war.' (Meyer, 251-253) Hitler's remarks provide evidence of his ideological consistency with regard to imperialist, expansionist foreign policy as he had formulated it in Mein Kampf.
Racial Policy in the Nazi State
Introduction
The regime's leaders sought to create a society based on the tenets of Nazi racial ideology. The Nazis had begun to take such measures in 1933 - primarily against Jews - but as time passed they applied these policies to additional German population groups and with growing severity. The Nazis enacted a series of laws and decrees designed for the racial-hygienic improvement of "the body of the German nation". German population groups defined as "alien" and "racially less valuable" were subjected to a list of restrictions and repressive measures, some of which were conceived of as part of the ΓÇ£social welfareΓÇ¥ policy, which the regime had adopted.
The Sinti and the Roma
Under the July 14, 1933 ΓÇ£Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased ProgenyΓÇ¥, the Nazis began, in late 1935, to restrict and persecute members of the Sinti and Roma, known to them as Gypsies. For years centuries these Sinti and Roma had been perceived as practitioners of an inferior way of life manifested in environmental filth, nomadicism, beggary, theft, and witchcraft. In addition to the provisions of the Nuremberg Laws, the Prussian ministry of the interior, in an explicit order in November 1935, placed restrictions on Sinti and Roma marriages. In 1936, shortly before the Olympic games in Berlin, hundreds of them were deported to concentration camp in a marshy area on the outskirts of Berlin - lest they mar the city's ΓÇ£clean image.ΓÇ¥ In 1936, a ΓÇ£Reich Central Office for the Fight against Gypsy NuisanceΓÇ¥ was established at the Reich criminal police headquarters in Berlin. Dr. Robert Ritter, a physician and psychologist, had conducted an ostensibly academic study in which he claimed that it was the racial attributes of the Sinti and the Roma, which caused them to lead asocial and criminal lives. He recommended that they be settled in quarantined colonies and that those deemed ΓÇ£especially dangerousΓÇ¥ be sterilised.
Policy toward the Sinti and the Roma
Ritter's recommendations were adopted by Himmler, who used them to elaborate the policy that he wished to apply against the estimated 30,000 Sinti and Roma in Germany. On December 8, 1938, Himmler put out a circular in which he defined the outline of Nazi policy toward this group: Experience gained in the fight against the Gypsy nuisance, and knowledge derived from race-biological research, have shown that the proper method of attacking the Gypsy problem seems to be to treat it as a matter of race. Experience shows that part Gypsieplay the greatest role in Gypsy criminality. On the other hand, It has been shown that efforts to make the Gypsies settle have been unsuccessful, especially in the case of pure Gypsies, on account of their strong compulsion to wander. It has therefore become necessary to distinguish between pure and part-Gypsies in the final solution of the Gypsy question… Although the principle that the German nation respects the national identity of alien peoples is also assumed in the fight against the Gypsy Nuisance, nonetheless the aim of measures taken by the State to defend the homogeneity of the German nation must be physical separation of Gypsydom from the German nation, the prevention of miscegenation, and finally the regulation of the way of life of pure and part-Gypsies.' (Wippermann 120-121) Upon the outbreak of war, the Nazis decided to deport some 30,000 out of 37,000 Sinti and Roma from Germany and Austria to Poland, but this proved impracticable. In 1942, Roma (Gypsies) from the Reich were sent to Auschwitz. Elsewhere in Europe, wandering Roma were targeted for annihilation, while settled Roma were largely left alone. Estimates of those murdered all over Europe range from 150,000 – to 300,000.
Sterilisation and Euthanasia
Another group targeted for special treatment according to Nazi doctrine was people with largely imaginary hereditary diseases. In June 1933, the Minister of the Interior appointed a committee to promote the sterilisation of such individuals - including those whom the Nazis diagnosed as suffering from congenital feeblemindedness, schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorder, Huntington's chorea, congenital blindness, congenital deafness, "grave physiological defects", and chronic alcoholics. However, according to the testimony of Reich Physicians' Leader, Dr. Gerhard Wagner, Hitler had informed him as early as 1935 of his intention to impose euthanasia on the congenitally ill in the event of war. And indeed, the euthanasia program gained momentum in the winter of 1938/39 with the formation of the "Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditarily and Congenitally Based Illnesses". The committee gathered reports from doctors and midwives throughout Germany concerning children born with defects or illnesses. On the basis of these reports, the members of the committee decided whether or not to put these patients to death. The doctors charged with the killings received official authorisation from Hitler, in October 1939, to administer euthanasia: Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. Brandt are charged with responsibility to extend the power of specific doctors in such a way that, after the most careful assessment of their condition, those suffering from illnesses deemed to be incurable may be granted a mercy death.' (Wippermann 148) Continued implementation of the euthanasia program was handed over, in early 1940 to the Reich Association of Science', whose headquarters at Tiergartenstrasse 4 lent the operation its code-name, T4. The number of euthanasia victims is estimated at 100,000.
More On: A Story of a Victim
Heinrich H. was born in Osnabroeck in 1903, the sixth child in a tailor's family. In 1917, he began to study sculpture in wood and stone. In 1923, he embarked on a career as a sculptor in northern Germany, where many of his works were exhibited in churches. As the result of a venereal disease, he began in 1933 to display indications of mental disturbance, which eventually led to his institutionalisation and broke his engagement. Even while institutionalised, Heinrich H. continued to sculpt. When relatives wished to visit him in 1941, they discovered that he had been moved to another institution but were not told where. A month later, the family was informed of Heinrich's death and given a death certificate indicating that he had succumbed to pneumonia. In fact, Heinrich H. had been murdered in a gas chamber at the hospital in Hadamar.
ΓÇ£AsocialsΓÇ¥ and Homosexuals
The year 1935 also saw an escalation in the repression and terror aimed at ΓÇ£asocialsΓÇ¥ and homosexuals. The Nazis wrongly believed that asocial and criminal behaviour is a congenital, hereditary trait. Therefore, anyone whose social or sexual conduct was suspicious and in violating of Nazi society's legal and moral requirements, was perceived as deviating from the healthy instincts of the Volk . As such, these people could be forcibly sterilised or deported to concentration camps. Similar penalties were imposed on homosexuals, who, according to the Nazi worldview, constituted a racially degenerate and pernicious phenomenon.
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Himmler explicated his attitude towards homosexuality in a February 1937 speech: I would like to develop a couple of ideas for you on the question of homosexuality. There are those homosexuals who take the view: what I do is my business, a purely private matter. However, all things which take place in the sexual sphere are not the private affair of the individual, but signify the life and death of the nation...A people that has many children has the candidature for world power and world domination.... When I bring a homosexual before the courts and have him locked up, the matter is not settled, because the homosexual comes out of prison just as homosexual as he went in. Therefore the whole question is not clarified. It is clarified in the sense that this burden has been identified, in contrast to the years before the seizure of power' (Wippermann 192-193). Persecution of ΓÇ£asocialsΓÇ¥ and homosexuals continued during the war, 6,000 members of the former and 10,000-15,000 of the latter were exploited for forced labour in concentration camps (about 1% of the German homosexuals). Most of them survived, but some died as a result of the conditions in the camps.
Summary
In all, the Nazi ideology sought to establish a new society based on a new hierarchy ΓÇô not of social classes, religion or nationality, but of so-called ΓÇ£racesΓÇ¥, with the Aryan or Nordic (Germanic) races on top, and everyone else below them.
