Hitler's revolution: AD 1933-1934

During the election campaign, on the night of February 27, the Reichstag building burns down. Many assume at the time that this was contrived by the Nazis, but it seems probable that it was an isolated act of arson by a mentally disturbed Dutchman, Marinus van der Lubbe. Whatever the precise origin of the fire, it provides Hitler with a heaven-sent opportunity. Proclaiming it as part of a Communist plot to seize control, he passes a decree suspending all rights of the individual and giving the government emergency powers. In spite of these circumstances, the Nazis and their coalition allies fail by a narrow margin to win an overall majority within the Reichstag. Steps are immediately taken to remedy this.
On March 23, at the first session of the newly elected Reichstag (using a a Berlin opera house as a temporary home), the 81 Communist members and about 20 Social Democrats are conspicuous by their absence. They are either in hiding or are already in the hands of Hitler's police. Even without their hostile votes, Hitler cannot immediately muster the two-thirds majority which he requires for the business scheduled for the day - an 'enabling act' which will give his government the power to pass decrees independently of the Reichstag and without any restriction by the president.
In the event, with gangs of threatening Brownshirts mustered outside the building, only the Social Democrats have the courage to oppose the Enabling Act. The most significant measure in Hitler's political career is passed by the comfortable margin of 441 to 94. With this constitutional step achieved, he is an elected dictator. Subsequent decrees, passed with this new authority, tidy up Hitler's mechanism for controlling the nation. In May 1933 trades unions are brought under Nazi control. In July 1933 the Nazi party is declared to be the only legitimate political organization within Germany. In January 1934 the powers of Germany's proudly independent regions, the Länder, are transferred to the central government.
Meanwhile the apparatus of state is being rapidly equipped to cope with personal dissent. In March 1933 the Nazis establish their first concentration camp, organized by Heinrich Himmler at Dachau near Munich. The pattern is soon followed in other parts of the country. By that summer as many as 30,000 Germans are being held without trial in these punitive establishments. The two main groups of victims are Communists and Jews, the twin targets of Hitler's long-standing obsession.
Hitler and the Jews: AD 1933-1938
Immediately after the Enabling Act is passed, the world is given clear warning that the anti-Semitism of Mein Kampf is not merely the raving of a theorist. It is a basis for action. The German government declares an open-ended boycott of all Jewish shops. The announcement receives wide international attention. On March 27 (just four days after the passing of the act) a mass rally is held in New York. A resolution is taken to boycott all German goods if Hitler's measure is put into effect. Hitler compromises, revealing his sure touch in international diplomacy. He announces that the boycott will be limited to one day. On the designated day Brownshirts stand outside every Jewish establishment in Germany, warning people not to enter.
But the underlying policy remains unaltered. On April 7 a law is passed ordering the immediate 'retirement' of all civil servants 'not of Aryan descent'. This requires the dismissal of Jewish teachers in schools and universities as well as all those employed in government departments. Some of the German towns, in their enthusiasm, develop the policy beyond the immediate demands of the law. They ban performances by Jewish actors and musicians. A 'non-Aryan' is defined as anyone with one or more Jewish grandparents. At first some exceptions are made, because of the insistence of the president, Hindenburg, that the law should not apply to Jews who had fought in the 1914-18 war or had lost a father or son in that conflict. But the law of April 7 is amended in 1935, after Hindeburg's death, and by the end of the following year there are no 'non-Aryans' in public employment.
Meanwhile, in 1935, even harsher measures are imposed, in the so-called Nuremberg Laws. At a Nazi rally in Nuremberg in September of that year it is announced that Jews are to be deprived of German citizenship, and that any sexual relationship between a Jew and a German citizen is henceforth illegal. The penalty, where the Jew in question is male, is to be death. As yet there is no systematic and coordinated violence against Jews, but this changes drastically in November 1938. The pretext is the murder by a Jew of a diplomat in the German embassy in Paris. This occurs on November 7. Two days later a nation-wide pogrom is unleashed on the Jews of Germany and Austria (recently annexed by Hitler in the Anschluss). Organized bands of Nazis rampage through the towns, burning synagogues, smashing the windows of Jewish shops and looting their contents.
The smashed windows provide Germans with a name for this night of terror - Kristallnacht, the night of cut glass. Hitler personally orders the violence to continue throughout the night, telling Goebbels (who notes it in his diary) that 'the Jews should be made to feel the wrath of the people' and ordering 20,000 or 30,000 Jews to be arrested immediately. Approximately 20,000 are sent to the concentration camps during the next few days. To pile on the agony, it is decreed that insurance money due on the damaged buildings is to be paid to the state. The Jews themselves are to bear the cost of repairs to their premises. And for good measure a fine of one billion marks is imposed on the German Jewish community.
Some 7500 Jewish shops are looted during Kristallnacht. At first sight it seems an anomaly - in view of Hitler's anti-Semitism - that so many Jewish firms are still trading in 1938. Yet it is entirely consistent with his cautious economic policy. Hitler is invariably careful not to damage Germany's economy or upset those with influence in commerce and industry. In this conservative approach he is at odds with the more radical members of the Nazi party, who are eager to unleash the power of the Brownshirts to sweep away all that remains of the fusty old Germany of pre-war days. Hitler, by contrast, has a romantic notion of Germany's past. He dreams of reviving the nation's ancient greatness, in the form of a