Section A: the creation of a dictatorship, 1933-4 

The Reichstag Fire 

1. After becoming Chancellor Hitler called for new elections to try to get a majority.  

2. On 27 February, a week before the elections were due to take place, the Reichstag building was destroyed by a fire. 

3. The Nazis blamed Marinus Van der Lubbe, a Dutch Communist who was quickly put on trial and found guilty and executed. 

4. Hitler and Goering, his new Chief of Police, claimed this was the beginning of a wider Communist plot and President Hindenburg was persuaded to declare a state of emergency on 28 February, allowing him to rule by decree. 

5. Hitler used the temporary emergency powers to issue the Decree for the Protection of the People and the State, which allowed him to imprison political opponents, particularly Communists and ban Communist newspapers. 

6. The election on 5 March resulted in the Nazis increasing their share of the vote to 43%. The 81 Communists elected were banned from attending Parliament so, with Nationalist support, Hitler now had majority support in the Reichstag. 

The Enabling Act, March 1933 

1. After the election, Hitler wanted to make his temporary emergency powers permanent so requested an Enabling Act in March 1933. 

2. This law would overturn the Weimar constitution and allow Hitler and his cabinet to make laws without the consent of the Reichstag, initially for four years. 

3. As this law would change the constitution a two third majority was required to pass it. Hitler was able to convince the Catholic Centre Party to support it, and he placed the SA in the Reichstag Chamber to intimidate other deputies into supporting it.  

4. On 24 March 1933 the Act was passed by 444 votes to 94, ending the Weimar constitution. 

Removing other opposition 

1. Trade Unions were a powerful potential source of opposition, with close links to the Socialist Party and the power to undermine the government by calling their workers out on strike. 

2. Hitler used his new Enabling Act powers to ban trade unions and make strikes illegal. Trade Union officials were arrested and sent to concentration camps and a new Nazi organization; the German Labour Front (DAF) was set up to replace the unions. 

3. Political parties were Hitler’s next target. In May 1933, Nazi stormtroopers closed down the newspapers and confiscated the funds of the Socialist and Communist parties. 

4. On 14 July 1933, the Law against the establishment of Parties made all political parties other than the Nazis illegal. 

5. Finally, Hitler wanted to prevent local government interfering in his control of Germany, so in January 1934 Hitler abolished the Lander (local parliaments) and replaced them with Gauleiters to run the local regions of Germany. 

The Night of the Long Knives 

1. Although Germany was now a one party state, Hitler still feared opposition within his own party, in particular from Ernst Rohm, leader of the SA. 

2. By 1934, the SA numbered 3 million, and Hitler feared many of these were loyal more to Rohm than himself, who was more socialist than Hitler.  

3. Rohm was also distrusted by the army generals, whose limited army of 100,000 was threatened by the 3 million strong SA, and by other Nazi leaders such as Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goring who saw Rohm’s influence as a threat to their status in the Party. Himmler wanted his SS to replace the SA in importance. 

4. Hitler believed that Rohm was planning to use the SA to seize power, so on 30 June 1934, Rohm and 100 other senior SA leaders were arrested at a meeting in Bavaria and shot without trial. 

5. The SA continued to exist but no longer rivalled the army or the SS and was now firmly under Hitler’s control.  

6. Hitler also used the opportunity to have other potential political opponents murdered in the carnage, including Gregor Strasser who had challenged Hitler’s leadership of the Party at the Bamberg Conference. 

Hitler became Fuhrer 

1. 87 year old President Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934. 

2. Hitler now had the position of President abolished and that the powers of the President with by merged with those of the chancellor to form a new position of Fuhrer, which Hitler would hold as undisputed leader of Germany. 

3. In gratitude for eliminating the threat of Rohm to the army, a new oath of loyalty was now sworn to Hitler in person by everyone in the army. 

4. In a plebiscite held on 19 August, 90% of voters supported Hitler as Fuhrer. The Weimar Republic had now formally ceased to exist and the Third Reich had begun.