Seizure of Power and Gleichschaltung 1933-1935 (Part B)
Source : K. Hildebrand, The Third Reich (London, 1985), pp.3-14.
At the same time it could not be overlooked that employers were considerably favoured by Hitler's economic policy, which was largely the work of Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank from 17 March 1933, and from 30 July 1934 also Reich Economic Minister and Minister for the Prussian Economy. Wages, for instance were frozen at the level which prevailed during the world-wide slump of 1932. This was not much altered in the second half of the decade when skilled workers become scarce and a 'grey market' came into existence with employers evading the ban on wage increases as to attract and keep employees by means of cover rewards and indirect grants.
After the Nazi take-over the German economic situation on the whole improved, and unemployment fell. As the world economy gradually recovered, the new regime vigorously pursued work-providing schemes that had been begun under previous governments. The policy of creating employment was accompanied by a call to combat the 'folly of rationalisation' and to dispense with 'mechanical aids'. Laws of 1 June and 21 September 1933 for the redaction of unemployment, loans to young couples, a 'repair and maintenance program' with tax advantages for private and commercial building, and the building of the first Reich autobahn under a law of 27 June 1933 - all these paved the way for the reduction of unemployment, as did 'voluntary labour service, the employment of those out of work as rural labourers for a low wage, or their engagement in 'badly paid relief works' (Hofer and Michaelis, 1965). Other factors were compulsory military service, introduced on 16 March 1935, Reich labour service (also compulsory) from 26 June 1935, and the economic effects of rearmament after the turn of the year 1933/4. As a result of all this, between January and July 1933 the total of those out of work fell by over a million to less than 5 million, after which it sank steadily and rapidly to one million in the autumn of 1936. At all times it was a combination of favours and terrorism, the stick and carrot, that won the regime popular support and accounted for its dynamic progress.
While the trade unions had been forcibly incorporated in the DAF, associations representing farmers interests were absorbed into the Reich Food Corporation ( Reichsnaehrstand ) set up by a law of 13 September 1933. This was operate at the consumer's expense, in the interest of achieving autarky in foodstuffs and because imports were hampered by lack of foreign exchange. In order to increase agricultural production as fast as possible, the regime abandoned its plan to carve up the large estates. Richard Walter Darre, the Reich Minister for Food and Agricultural and Prussian Minister of Agriculture, preached the Nazi agrarian philosophy of 'blood and soil' and protection of the peasantry of the 'life source of the Nordic race'. Under the Hereditary Farms Act of 29 September 1933 farms of more than 7.5 hectares (18.5 acres) and, as a rule, less than 125 hectares (308.5 acres) were declared 'hereditary' provided the owner could furnish evidence of 'racial purity' as far back as 1 January 1800. They were thus 'in principle inalienable and exempt from encumbrance' and could not be partitioned on the owner's death, at the same time they were sheltered from the effects of commercialisation. But the law was often applied less rigorously than it might have been.' (Farquharson, 1976).
Unlike the workers and rural labourers, heavy industry was at first exempt from party interference. Although the party's ideology was a middle-class one, it refrained for the time being from tampering with the big concerns, chain stores and banks, which threatened the existence of an independent middle-class. On the contrary, such enterprises continued to develop and concentrate under the Third Reich, and for the present escaped the Gleichschaltung applied in other fields. The Reich Association of German Industry changed its name on 19 June 1933 to Reich Corporation ( Reichsstand) of German Industry in deference to the 'corporate' ideology of he Third Reich, which in fact was largely confined to propaganda, but it remained relatively independent under the leadership of Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach. This situation was unaffected by the law of 27 February1934 'on preparing the organic structure of the German economy' - with the basic object of making the economy substantially more dependent on the state - or the reorganisation of industrial association in the Reich Chamber of Industry ( Reichsgruppe Industrie) which also took place in 1934. The Third Reich needed the co-operation of big business, which was still a major factor in the land, and allowed it a certain autonomy even after 1936, which year marked a turning-point in the relationship between the economy and politics. After that time the primacy of politics over economic interests was made clear, and both employers and employees were impartially deprived of their rights in the spirit of 'full Fascism' (Schweitzer, 1965).
At the outset Hitler was acutely dependent on the voluntary co-operation of both industry and the army in order to start effecting his ambitious and utopian aims in the sphere of racial and foreign policy. In the first years after the take-over the 'economic dictator' Schacht made rearmament possible by risky methods of procuring credit, the so-called Mefo-Wechsel. These were bills which could be drawn by armament manufacturers on a Metal Research Company ( Metall-Forschungs-GmbH) , founded for the purpose with a modest capital, in return for supplies to the state; the latter guaranteed the bills vis-a-vis the Reichsbank, which was obliged to discount them. Schacht mistakenly believed that he could discontinue the process at a stroke when the economy had recovered sufficiently and it was necessary to effect a consolidation of social policy. He realised too late that Hitler's ideas on rearmament, economics and politics were basically different from his own, and that the Fuehrer had not notion of stopping rearmament once the economy had revived and society was once more on an even keel. On the contrary he wanted to go on arming in order to make war, wiping out debts by old-fashioned methods of plunder, and finally to destroy the existing social order both nationally and internationally. Schacht did not yet realise that he was playing Hitler's game. His 'new plan', based on the 'decree on the commercial exchanges' dated 4 September 1934 and in force from 24 September, provided essentially for the bilateralisation of foreign trade; it involved quotas and the planning of imports according to a 'scale of national urgency' (H. Flaig) and promoted exports on a barter and compensation basis. The plan introduced an export offensive which served the purpose of promoting social consolidation at home; its author accepted the risk of conflict, for example, with the USA areas such as South East Europe and Latin America, where economic ambitions overlapped. In general it represented a more realistic alternative to Hitler's bellicose and ideological aims. The Third Reich, as far its relations with big business were concerned, was still in a state of 'partial fascism' (Schweitzer, 1965). Hitler had no interest in embarking on a collision course with the powerful industrialists: his interests in part coincided with theirs, and by co-operating in their sphere the conservatives helped the regime to increase its power and thus worked for their own overthrow. Although the state regulated the competence of the various 'Reich industrial groups' - for example, by the system of supervision and auditing in respect of allocation of foreign currency and raw materials, developed from summer 1934 onwards, and also by price control - and although it could always use as a threat the charge of industrial sabotage, none the less it seemed that politics and industry, the party and big business, which had only come together during the last weeks of the moribund Weimar Republic, were in general on pretty good terms. It was by no means the case, however, that 'capital' and big business played a decisive part in bringing Hitler to power. They did not support him with funds to any great extent until after the take-over, when the March elections had to be financed. At that time the big industrialists contributed 3 million Reichsmark to Hitler's movement and the other pro-governments parties. This was when the Nazi Party had already become the decisive political factor; moreover, after the Fuehrer had addressed a select circle of business representatives in the palace of the Reichstag president, Goering had assured a meeting of industrialists and financiers on 20 February that the coming election would be the last for ten or even a hundred years. By contrast, at the end of the Weimar Republic the industrialists, while certainly not friendly to the regime, gave their support not to the Nazis but to von Papen's model of a 'new state', and in general were ready to come to terms with any political force that was not committed to the abolition of private property.
Against the background of a totalitarian dictatorship that already existed in essential respects, there followed in June and July 1933 the 'self- Gleichschaltung' of the political parties, which lost heart and capitulated to Nazi power and Nazi terror. After the SPD was banned on 22 June 1933 the Catholic Centre, the last of the democratic parties, on 5 July yielded to the monopolistic claim of the new rulers had already, on 14 April, declared to be a 'one-party state'. According to a view which some dispute (Scholder, 1977), an important reason for the surrender was the prospect of the Concordat of 20 July 1933, which seemed to offer the Catholic church in Germany favourable terms and a legal basis for resistance to the Third Reich.
While the Catholic church could present a united front to the Nazi state, among the Protestants there was open conflict between those who represented older and newer attitudes: liberal theology and religion - based socialism on the one hand, and on the other the 'Evangelical National Socialists' who styled themselves 'German Christians'. The conflict was in full swing when, on 25 April 1933, Hitler publicly endorsed the latter movement and appointed Ludwig Mueller, an army chaplain for the Koenigsberg area, as his 'plenipotentiary for the affairs of the Evangelical churches'. A conflict then arose over the post of bishop for the proposed new 'Reich church': The German Christians supported Mueller and announced his appointment in opposition to Pastor Fritz von Bodelschwingh. Among other acts of interference in church matters by the state and party, the Nazi Party gave massive support to the German Christians in the campaign preceding the church elections on 23 July 1933. The national synod, which was elected as a result duly appointed Mueller Reich bishop on 27 September. This inaugurated a contest which was to last as long as the Third Reich. Resistance to the new authorities and the German Christians was organised by the Pastors' Emergency League founded at Berlin/Dahlem in September 1933 by Martin Niemoeller, and by the Confessing church which developed from it and which first met as a body at Ulm on 22 April 1934. A protest by the Synod of Barmen (29-31 May 1934) was also of importance in the development of the dispute. This was the first occasion on which voices of opposition were raised by conservative and bourgeois Germany, which - on a basis of injured interests and disregarded knowledge - complemented and varied the resistance of the communists, which was essentially ideological. But it must be recognised that these protests were not on the whole very successful: cf., for example, Papen's Marburg speech of 17 June 1934.
After Hitler and Frick had, on several occasions from July 1933 onwards, declared the revolution to be at an end, the Fuehrer still had to cope with a challenge from within his own movement. It was becoming more and more urgent to decide what was to be done with the SA ( Sturmabteilung : Storm Detachment), the strong-arm force which, in its devotion to the Fuehrer, had played an important part in destroying the Weimar Republic, fighting political opponents in the streets and enabling Hitler to seize power. It now claimed its reward, and from its ranks was heard a half-articulate cry for a second, social revolution, reflecting the tradition of the 'left-wing' National Socialists who had left the party or been expelled from it in 1930. The SA leaders, especially the chief of staff Ernst Roehm, wanted to command a people's militia to be created by merging the conservative army with the revolutionary SA, in such a way that the 'grey rock' of the Reichswehr would be submerged by the 'brown flood' of Nazi troops. The corps of officers, headed by Blomberg, naturally viewed this demand with suspicion and hostility. Hitler, who wanted Germany to be ready for war as soon possible, preferred to ally himself with the conservative officers against the social romanticism of the SA. Roehm's alleged intention to carry out a putsch was used as a pretext to remove the SA leaders with the army's help, to reward the latter and consolidate Hitler's power. The conservatives who desired to see an end to the revolution had their wish; the military were relieved of a troublesome rival institution, whose place in the Nazi scheme of things was henceforth taken by the SS ( Schutzstaffel: Defence Echelon). This body was not only Hitler's Praetorian Guard but increasingly became the ideological spearhead and prime defender of Nazi racial policy.
Within a year of Hitler's accession to power the SS under Himmler had already wrested control of the political police from the SA in all the constituent German state. In Prussia, where Goering created the Secret State Police ( Geheime Staatpolizei , Gestapo) on 24 April 1933 as an instrument of state terrorism, one of its duties being to establish concentration camps, the SS also succeeded in gaining decisive control over this body. Goering, who was appointed head of the Gestapo by a law of 30 November 1933, was obliged in April 1934 to accept Himmler as deputy to himself, and the latter appointed Heydrich, his subordinate in the SS, to head the Gestapo.
The army's role as sole defender of the nation was safeguarded by the elimination of Roehm. In return, the officer corps raised no objection to the arbitrary murders of opponents of the regime which were perpetrated at the same time as the 'Roehm putsch', though the henchmen of Goering and Himmler included among their victims two generals, von Schleicher and von Bredow. Altogether the effect of the putsch was to strengthen the Reichswehr outwardly but to leave it in highly demoralised state.
Among those murdered in addition to the SA leaders were conservative opponents and critics of the regime such as Edgar Jung and von Bose - two of von Papen's closest collaborators; also Gustav von Kahr, the former state commissioner in Bavaria, and Erich Klausener, head of Catholic Action in Berlin. Hitler's claim that he had the SA leaders shot because homosexuality had been rife among them was a threadbare excuse to cover a political showdown. However, few members of the public realised this, and political leaders including von Papen commended Hitler's action. Carl Schmitt, then the leading German expert on public law, justified it in an article entitled 'The Fuehrer defends the right': this maintained that judicial power belonged to the 'true leader' of the nation and that in emergency he was entitled and bound to enforce the law in his capacity as supreme judge. In this way the dictator's will was given force of law, and Hitler's power was henceforth accepted as being essentially unrestricted.
Shortly afterwards, on 2 August 1934, Hindenburg died and Hitler assumed in his own person the offices of both President and Chancellor. The take-over of power was thus complete: no institution or personality any longer offered any competition to him in practical or prestige terms. On the same day the Reichswehr was made to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler personally: this was arranged by the zealous War Minister von Blomberg, to ensure Hitler's favour towards the army and himself. It was the oath of loyalty to the Fuehrer and Chancellor, instead of to the country or the constitution, which was to cause such heavy conflicts of conscience to the officers, who later took part in the resistance to Hitler. In summer 1934, however, his regime seemed to be consolidated, his dictatorship over Germany was established and the 'brown revolution' of the Nazis followed its course within what were still largely traditional forms. In this way the profile of the Third Reich was equally made up of tradition and revolution, and the same may be said of the beginnings of Hitler's foreign policy.
