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The Party activists, however, continued with their campaign against Jewish lawyers and the judicial authorities responded by transferring or suspending Jewish judges and prosecutors and introducing quotas for Jewish attorneys.110 At this point, as anticipated, the regime intervened, in effect legalizing these measures. The Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service of 7 April decreed that those public servants ‘who are not of Aryan descent’ were to be retired. Following an intervention by Hindenburg, civil servants who had been in post before 1 August 1914, who had fought at the front, or whose fathers or sons had been killed in the war were exempted from this regulation.111 During the following months around half of the 5,000 Jewish civil servants lost their jobs.112 The Law concerning the Admission of Attorneys, also issued on 7 April, banned attorneys ‘not of Aryan descent’ from practising, with the same exemptions as contained in the Professional Civil Service Law.113 During the following months, similar bans were introduced for other state-approved professions, such as patent lawyers and tax advisers. The Law against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Colleges issued on 25 April limited the number of Jewish pupils and students,114 while Jewish doctors and dentists were excluded from the health insurance system.115 More ambitious plans to prevent Jewish doctors from practising at all were initially blocked by Hitler, who told the Cabinet that ‘at the moment’ such measures were ‘not yet necessary’,116 clear proof of the extent to which the Chancellor controlled policy detail during these weeks.
The Professional Civil Service Law broke with the principle of the legal equality of Jews throughout the German Reich for the first time since its foundation in 1871. In the past, Hitler’s conservative coalition partners had always rejected the idea of revising Jewish emancipation, so their acceptance of this step represented an important moral victory for the National Socialists over their ‘partners’. But that was not the only point. For the Professional Civil Service Law not only brought about the dismissal of Jewish civil servants, but also paved the way for a large scale ‘purge’ of the civil service, thereby effectively removing the privileged status of German officials with their ‘traditional rights and responsibilities’ and contributing to a disciplining of the state apparatus. Approximately 2 per cent of the civil service was affected by the provisions of the law, which included dismissal on political grounds, but also demotion and premature retirement.117
At the end of March, a Reich law transferred the right to legislate in the federal states from parliaments to governments, while the number of each party’s deputies in the state parliaments was adjusted in accordance with the results of the Reichstag election of 5 March (with the communist vote being ignored); the local councils were also reorganized on the basis of the 5 March election.118 Under the Second Law for the Co-ordination of the Federal States of 7 April Reich Governors (Reichsstatthalter) were appointed to the states with the power of appointing the state governments.119 This meant that the hitherto lauded autonomy of the states had been finally removed. The first Reich governor to be appointed by Interior Minister Frick on 10 April was Ritter von Epp in Bavaria. In the meantime, Epp had created a provisional Bavarian government composed of Nazis and his rapid appointment suggests that Hitler wanted to prevent Bavaria from becoming too strong a power base for the Party; Epp was not a member of the local Party clique. In the other states the Gauleiters were appointed Reich Governors; they now exercised control over the state governments in the name of the Reich government, assuming they had not already become prime minister of their state. This meant that those states in which the NSDAP could never have achieved a majority were now also firmly in the hands of the Party. Hitler’s conservative coalition partners, on the other hand, had been left empty-handed with nothing to say in all these federal states, each of which had substantial administrations carrying out important functions.120
In Prussia Hitler took over the responsibilities of governor himself, which meant that Papen’s post as ‘Reich Commissar’ in Prussia had ceased to exist and so another element in the ‘taming concept’ had proved useless. On 11 April, Hitler appointed Göring (and not Papen) prime minister of Prussia (after Göring had indicated that he was going to get the Prussian parliament to elect him prime minister). Göring kept the office of Prussian interior minister and, on 25 April, Hitler also transferred to him the responsibilities of Reich governor. With the appointment of the acting Nazi Reich Commissars, Hanns Kerrl as Prussian Minister of Justice and Bernhard Rust as Prussian Minister of Culture, Göring had created in Prussia another power base that was firmly in National Socialist hands. Significantly, he had no intention of appointing Reich Commissar Hugenberg to the Prussian ministries of Agriculture and Economics.121
In April the Nazis also had considerable success in coordinating associations. Initially, this involved primarily economic associations. Among the extremely woolly economic ideas held by various Nazis before 1933, the notion of a ‘corporatist state’ [Ständestaat] had been particularly prominent. The idea was that in a future Third Reich the individual ‘professions/occupations’ [Stände] would to a large extent regulate their own affairs in professional organizations, thereby bridging the conflicts of interest between capital and labour, regulating the markets, and preventing domination by large industrial firms.122
During the first months after the take-over of power, the representatives of the self-employed within the NSDAP, organized in the Combat League for the Commercial Middle Class, set about trying to realize this idea.123 At the beginning of May, commerce and the artisanal trades were formed into separate ‘Reich groups’ and Adrian von Renteln, the leader of the Combat League, took over the leadership of the new artisanal trades’ organization.124 The representatives of the self-employed saw it as an initial victory when the cabinet introduced a special tax for department stores and chain stores, banned department stores and chain stores from having artisan shops such as hairdressers, and forbade the opening of new chain stores.125
To begin with, the Reich Association of German Industry’s (RDI) response was guarded. On 24 March, under massive pressure from Fritz Thyssen, it declared its support for the government. However, in a memorandum, released simultaneously, it made clear its intention of sticking to its basic policy of economic liberalism.126 On 1 April, the day of the Jewish boycott, Otto Wagener turned up at the RDI’s offices demanding changes to its board. Wagener was the former head of the NSDAP’s economic department and, after the seizure of power, had established his own section, dealing with economic policy, within the Party’s Berlin liaison office.127 He insisted that the general manager, Ludwig Kastl, was unacceptable on political grounds, that several Jewish members should leave, and that a number of people should be appointed whom the NSDAP could rely on to ‘coordinate’ the RDI’s activities with government policy. All attempts by the industrialists to get access to Hitler to persuade him to withdraw these demands proved unsuccessful. Meanwhile, on 24 April, in an attempt to maintain his influence, Hugenberg appointed Wagener and Alfred Moeller, a DNVP supporter, Reich Commissars for the RDI and for the economy generally (apart from agriculture). The RDI acceded to Wagener’s demands, reorganized its board in accordance with the Führer principle and finally, on 22 May, dissolved itself. Then, just over a month later, it amalgamated with the Association of German Employers’ Organizations to form the Reichsstand der Deutschen Industrie. The new name paid lip service to the ständisch [corporatist] line of the Nazi economic reformers; but the fact that the old chairman of the RDI, Krupp, was also chairman of the new organization indicated the continuity that existed between the two organizations.128
In the agricultural sphere Hugenberg had initially concentrated on raising prices through higher tariffs and by intervening in food production, and also on protecting agriculture with state subsidies and the prevention of foreclosures. These measures represented the most important points on the cabinet’s agenda since the start of the year;129 they were pushed through by Hugenberg, in some cases against Hit
ler’s wishes, who often made detailed comments at meetings on agricultural issues.130 Moreover, on 5 April, the Chancellor defended this policy in a speech to the German Agricultural Council, the umbrella organization of the Chambers of Agriculture, despite the fact that it was against the interests of consumers and creditors, and threatened the export-oriented manufacturing industries. According to Hitler, it was the peasants who secured ‘the nation’s future’.131
Figure 3. The executive committee of the Berlin Police used the force’s ninth indoor games on 17 March 1933 to put on a show of loyalty to the new regime. This photo shows the ‘Friedrich Karl’ division of the Prussian state police, rifles raised, in a swastika formation. The Nazi emblem was displayed throughout the Berlin Sportpalast.
Source: Scherl/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo
However, in the meantime, Richard Walther Darré, the leader of the Nazi Party’s agricultural department, had begun coordinating all the agricultural organizations one after the other, thereby undermining Hugenberg’s position as Agriculture Minister.132 In contrast to Hugenberg’s policy of concentrating on protecting agrarian economic interests, Darré’s policy was dominated by the ideology of ‘blood and soil’, which aimed at subordinating the agrarian economy as an ‘estate’ [Stand] to an ‘ethnic political’ conception, and transforming the whole agricultural sector into a compulsory cartel. In May 1933, despite the opposition of Hugenberg as acting Prussian Agriculture Minister, he succeeded in pushing through an ‘hereditary farm law’ for Prussia, subjecting farms to permanent entailment, preventing their division or sale, and tying the hereditary farmer’s family to that particular piece of land. This provided the model for later entailment legislation applying to the Reich as a whole.133 With his appointment as Reich Minister of Food at the end of June, Darré was finally able to get the better of Hugenberg, who had become increasingly isolated in the cabinet as a result of his one-sided agricultural policies and for other reasons that will be dealt with later.134
Apart from coordinating the leading economic associations, the Nazis placed great emphasis on gaining control of every kind of club and association. To start with, the workers’ associations were crippled by the elimination of the SPD and KPD and then later formally closed down. The numerous and locally diverse artisan associations135 were also subjected to this process, as were sports and youth clubs. The sports clubs were reorganized by SA leader Hans von Tschammer und Osten, who was appointed Reich Sports Commissar on 28 April and finally, on 19 July, Reich Sports Leader.136 The Hitler Youth leader, Baldur von Schirach, took control of the Reich Committee of German Youth Associations, which represented some five to six million young people. On 5 April 1933, he ordered a Hitler Youth squad to occupy its offices and took over the management. On 17 June, Hitler appointed Schirach Youth Leader of the German Reich and, through this new office, authorized him to supervise all work relating to young people. On the day of his appointment, Schirach ordered the closure of the Grossdeutscher Jugendbund [Greater German Youth Association], to which most members of the bündisch youth movement were affiliated.† As a result of the integration of numerous youth organizations and the huge increase in new members, both boys and girls, between the beginning of 1933 and the end of 1934 the membership of the Hitler Youth (HJ) went up from around 108,000 to 3.5 million. Around half of young Germans aged between 10 and 18 were now in Nazi organizations as ‘cubs’ (Pimpfe), young lasses ( Jungmädel), Hitler Boys (Hitlerjungen), or ‘lasses’ (Mädel).137
In the end, every form of club and association, whether it was the volunteer fire brigades, stamp collectors, rabbit breeders, or choral societies, was caught up in this process of ‘coordination’; every single association was forced to submit to the Nazis’ demand for total control. In these associations millions of Germans came together in order to follow the most diverse economic, cultural, and social pursuits and to organize their spare time in their own way. The regime was determined to prevent any possibility of such associations providing a future forum for criticism or opposition; opportunities for the formation of public opinion outside the parameters established by the regime and the Party were to be blocked right from the start. The associations were obliged to subordinate themselves to Nazi-dominated umbrella organizations, to alter their statutes in order to replace a committee structure with the Führer principle, to ensure that people who were objectionable in the eyes of the local Party were excluded, that Nazis were appointed to leading positions, and finally to introduce the so-called ‘Aryan clause’ banning Jews from membership.138 In many cases the associations were only too happy to adapt to the new circumstances and hurried to conform, whereas in others the process took until the following year or even longer to complete. Many middle-class associations appear to have been hesitant in responding to the demands of the new order and to have only superficially conformed to Nazi requirements, with the old life of the association continuing broadly unchanged. Thus, in reality, it was impossible for the Party to establish total control over every club, society, or association.139
The coordination of associations and interventions in business occurred alongside massive Nazi attacks on the DNVP and the Stahlhelm. In cabinet too Hitler’s tone, which had initially been conciliatory, became increasingly authoritarian and uncompromising, and he sought to avoid lengthy discussion of technical issues.140 Both within and outside the government, the Nazis increasingly turned against the bourgeois-nationalist milieu they considered ‘reactionary’.
From the beginning of April, a growing number of complaints reached DNVP headquarters about attacks by members of the NSDAP on the DNVP and its organizations. Hugenberg frequently complained about the attacks to Hitler and the Reich President, but almost invariably to no effect.141 His performance as a multiple minister was also subjected to ferocious criticism in the Nazi press. On 20 April, Hitler’s birthday, he published a newspaper article, pointing out that the use of the Enabling Law depended on the continuing existence of the coalition and complaining about ‘unauthorized personnel changes in economic organizations and public bodies’. This, together with a similar complaint from Reich Bank president, Schacht, did in fact lead to an order from Hitler to the Party organization, issued via its Berlin liaison staff, to refrain in future from unauthorized interference in business.142 This, however, did not affect the continuing attacks on the members and organizations of the DNVP.143
During February and March, there had also already been repeated attacks by SA men on members of the Stahlhelm. At the end of March, the Brunswick interior minister had even banned the local Stahlhelm on the grounds that the organization was being infiltrated by former members of the [largely socialist] Reichsbanner.144 In view of the growing pressure, by the beginning of April, the leader of the Stahlhelm, Franz Seldte, had already decided to subordinate himself to Hitler and abandon his organization’s independence. On 28 April, he finally dismissed his deputy, Theodor Duesterberg (who was being criticized by the Nazis for his doubts about the formation of the Hitler government and because his wife was Jewish), and the following day declared that he was subordinating himself and the Stahlhelm to Hitler.145
The process of coordination was in full swing on 20 April, Hitler’s 44th birthday, which was celebrated as though it were a public holiday. Many private houses as well as public buildings had put up flags and were decorated with flowers. Throughout the Reich, church services, marches, and torchlight processions were held to mark the day. Radio programmes were entirely geared to the event. ‘The whole German nation is celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday in a dignified and simple way’, reported the Völkischer Beobachter,146 and the non-Nazi press joined in the praise almost without reservation.147 In numerous places Hitler had been made an honorary citizen and streets had been named after him; a regular kitsch industry had sprung up, offering a broad range of devotional items dedicated to Hitler.148 However, this picture of a nation united behind the ‘Führer’ was dramatically contradicted by the numerous conflicts that characteri
zed the domestic political situation in spring 1933. The orgy of celebration around Hitler’s birthday tells us much more about the propaganda apparatus that was being constructed, which had fastened on the Hitler cult as a central element, than it does about ordinary people’s real attitude to their new ‘people’s chancellor’.
Hitler himself had left for the Obersalzberg on 12 April, where he spent Easter, and, on 16 April, received a visit from Joseph and Magda Goebbels. Whereas Goebbels left for Berlin the following day, Hitler changed his plans and stayed on at the Obersalzberg, where Magda kept him company. On 19 April, he was granted honorary citizenship of the Free State of Bavaria at a ceremony in the Munich town hall, which he described as recompense for his imprisonment in 1924. He celebrated his actual birthday privately on the Tegernsee.149
Less than three months after the take-over of the Chancellorship, the Nazis were in a position to shape Germany’s public image in accordance with their wishes. They owed this opportunity to their coordination of the political institutions and of associational life, as well as of the media and cultural life. The attempt to take control in this sphere also had begun immediately after the seizure of power, but rather in the slipstream of the other major ‘actions’. To begin with, radio was placed in the service of the regime and the left-wing press eliminated through bans; but, after spring 1933, the Catholic, bourgeois, and non-Nazi right-wing press came increasingly under pressure from the regime. It moved against uncooperative newspapers by issuing threats, intervening directly to change the composition of editorial boards, and through bans.150 During February 1933, and then even more vigorously after the election of 5 March, Nazi activists caused considerable upheaval. This was true above all of self-proclaimed cultural guardians, organized in Rosenberg’s Combat League for German Culture. In their attempt to ‘purge’ art, literature, theatre, and intellectual life of everything that was considered ‘modern’, ‘left-wing’, or ‘Jewish’, they caused disturbances in or prevented concerts, for example, by the world-famous [Jewish] conductors, Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer; they also occupied educational institutions, theatres, and opera houses in order to force through personnel changes.151