Machtergreifung

The Nazis described the rather grubby deal which made Hitler Chancellor as 'the first Revolution'.  The succeediing year, which in most History books is called the 'consolidation of power', they called the Machtergreifung  - the 'power-grab'.

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Four BBC Bitesize webpages on the creation of a dictatorship, 1933-34

The History Place has a useful narrative account of the critical period 5-23 March

Infographic from versushistory

Podcasts

- Scott Allsop's podcast on Hitler's Rise to Power

- Giles Hill: development of the Nazi dictatorship

YouTube

Hitler establishes power - excellent BBC video (watch the first 9 minutes). 

Mr Portman's clear video - Chancellor to Dictator

Pete Jackson on the establishment of Hitler's dictatorship

Eight Steps to Becoming Dictator

[Rigged German Election Leads To Psycho Nazi Fuhrer]

After he became Chancellor in January 1933, Hitler transformed his democratic position into dictatorial power:  

• Calling an election - and taking advantage of the Reichstag fire - he got the Reichstag to pass the Enabling Act.  

• Then, using the power this gave him to make his own laws, he set up the Gestapo, banned Trade Unions and opposition parties and (on the Night of the Long Knives, July 1934) removed even the opposition within the Nazi Party. 

• When Hindenburg died, Hitler declared himself Führer.

1.  Reichstag Fire - 27 Feb 1933

The Reichstag (the German Parliament) burned down.  A Dutch Communist named van der Lubbe was caught red-handed with matches and fire-lighting materials.   Hitler used it as an excuse to arrest many of his Communist opponents, and as a major platform in his election campaign of March 1933.   The fire was so convenient that many people at the time claimed that the Nazis had burned it down, and then just blamed the Communists.   Modern historians, however, tend to believe that van der Lubbe did cause the fire.

•         Eleven Results of the Fire

       Many historians regard the Reichstag Fire as the critical event, which gave Hitler the OPPORTUNITY to seize control of the government.

  • 1.  On 28 February, Hitler issued the Reichstag Fire Decree authorising a police state and suspending most civil freedoms.  Political marches and groups were banned, newspapers censored, houses and post searched, telephones tapped.  The German historian KD Bracher (1969) believed that this was more important in the Nazis’ consolidation of power than the Enabling Act.
  • 2.  The KPD delegates were expelled from parliament; many were imprisoned.  Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the German Communist Party, was arrested.
  • 3.  Thousands of political opponents – KPD and SDP – were arrested overnight and carted off to the first, makeshift concentration camps.  (The swift action actually increased support for Hitler.).
  • 4.  KPD candidates were forbidden to stand in the election, but their names were left on the ballot papers to confuse the Left-Wing vote.
  • 5.  A massive propaganda campaign was launched against the KPD accusing them of attempting a putsch, just before the election.
  • 6.  Nazi Stormtroopers went on a rampage of window-smashing, beatings and murder.
  • 7.  Van der Lubbe and four leading Communists were put on trial.  Der Lubbe was easily convicted and executed, but the trial turned out to be an embarrassment.  It lasted 5 months.  Prosecution witnesses (including Goering and Goebbels) were exposed as liars.  The defendants – notably Georgi Dimitrov (who later became Prime Minister of Bulgaria) – ran rings round the judge and were acquitted.  Worst of all, in their attempt to convict the Communists, the Nazis produced expert witnesses who testified that the fire could not have been started by one man … a tactic which backfired when people started accusing the Nazis themselves of starting the fire.
  • 8.  One of the results of the failure of the trial was that the Nazis set up Volksgerichtshof – ‘People’s Courts’ – where they were sure to get the verdict they wanted.
  • 9.  In the 1950s, the journalist Walter Kiaulehn said the Fire was the 'opening act' of the Nazi terror.
  • 10.  The German lawyer and political scientist Ernst Fraenkel (1941) called the Reichstag Fire Decree the “constitutional charter” of Hitler’s Reich.
  • 11.  Lawyer and historian BC Hett wrote (2014) that “the fire marked the real beginning of what was arguably the most violently destructive regime in human history”.  He believes that the interest in the Fire is part of Germans’ ‘coping with the past’.

BBC Bitesize on the Reichstag Fire

History Place - narrative account 

Short informative YouTube account

2.  General Election - 5 March 1933

Hitler held a general election, appealing to the German people to give him a clear mandate.   Only 44% of the people voted Nazi, which did not give him a majority in the Reichstag, so Hitler arrested the 81 Communist deputies (which did give him a majority). 

Goering became Speaker of the Reichstag. 

3.  Enabling Act - 23 March 1933

The Reichstag voted to give Hitler the power to make his own laws.   Nazi stormtroopers stopped opposition deputies going in, and beat up anyone who dared to speak against it. Remembering those days in 1942, the German lawyer Franz Neumann commented: “If the Centrists had not capitulated and given their support to the bill, a reign of terror would unquestionably have been unleashed”.

It is important to avoid three common misconceptions about the Enabling Act:

1. Strictly, its proper title was ‘An Act to relieve the Distress of the People and of the Reich’ ... which gives you an idea of what was going on.  It was not an open power-grab, but a subterfuge.

2. It was nothing new - there had been enabling acts passed in 1920, 1921, 1923 and 1926; what was special about the 1933 Act was how it was 'spun' to the German people and the watching world.

3. Whilst it gave the Cabinet unlimited power to make laws, to deviate from the constitution and, in Franz Neumann's words, "to interfere everywhere", it did NOT - as is often stated, give Hitler the legal power to do anything he liked.  It came with explicit limitations ... all of which Hitler illegally ignored over the course of the next year as he established his dictatorship.  This is important for how we interpret the Nazi consolidation of power.

History Place - narrative account

Guardian newspaper report of 1933

Re-interpreting the Enabling Act - have we got it wrong?

4.  Local government and the Police- 26 April 1933

The Nazis took over local government and the police.   The Nazis started to replace anti-Nazi teachers and University professors.   Hitler set up the Gestapo (the secret police) and encouraged Germans to report opponents and 'grumblers'.   Tens of thousands of Jews, Communists, Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses, gypsies, homosexuals, alcoholics and prostitutes were arrested and sent to concentration camps for 'crimes' as small as writing anti-Nazi graffiti, possessing a banned book, or saying that business was bad. 

In February 1934, the Reichsrat was abolished, and all the powers of the German States transferred to the Chancellor.

BBC Bitesize on the Police State

History Place - narrative account of the establishment of the Gestapo

5.  Trade Unions banned - 2 May 1933

The Trade Unions offices were closed, their money confiscated, and their leaders put in prison.   In their place, Hitler put the German Labour Front which reduced workers' pay and took away the right to strike. 

6.  Political Parties banned - 14 July 1933

The Law against the Formation of Parties declared the Nazi Party the only political party in Germany.   All other parties were banned, and their leaders were put in prison. 

7.  Night of the Long Knives - 30 June 1934

The SA were the thugs who Hitler had used to help him come to power.   They had defended his meetings, and attacked opponents.   By 1934 there were more than a million of them. 

Historians have often wondered why Hitler turned on the SA.   But Hitler was in power in 1934, and there was no opposition left - the SA were an embarrassment, not an advantage.   Also, Rohm, the leader of the SA, was talking about a Socialist revolution and about taking over the army.   On the night of 30 June 1934 - codeword 'Hummingbird - Hitler ordered the SS to kill more than 400 SA men. 

History Place - narrative account

A homosexual Kristallnacht - this gay website see the Night of the Long Knives as homophobia.

Source A

This David Low cartoon from 3 July 1934 shows Hitler (with a smoking gun) and Goering (shown as Thor, the God of War) glowering at - not the traditional Nazi salute - but terrified SA men with their hands up.   Some SA men already lie dead on the ground.   The caption reads: 'They salute with both hands now'. 

Low was fiercely anti-Nazi, and portrays Hitler as a brazen murderer keeping his men in check by naked fear, while Goebbels is shown as Hitler's poodle.

8.  Führer - 19 August 1934

When Hindenburg died, Hitler took over the office of President and leader of the army (the soldiers had to swear to die for Adolf Hitler personally).   Hitler called himself 'Führer'. 

History Place - narrative account

Interpretations

Here are some things that have written about the Nazi consolidation of power, 1933-34: