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Further Reading

Drittes Reich / Nazi Germany

The National Socialist (Nazi) Party, led by Adolf Hitler, stressed nationalist and racist themes while promising to put the unemployed back to work. The party blamed many of Germany's ills on the alleged influence of Jewish and non-German ethnic groups. The party also gained support in response to fears of growing communist strength. In the 1932 elections, the Nazis won a third of the vote. In a fragmented party structure, this gave the Nazis a powerful parliamentary caucus, and Hitler was asked to form a government. He quickly declined. The Republic eroded and Hitler had himself nominated as Reich Chancellor in January 1933. After President Paul von Hindenburg died in 1934, Hitler assumed that office as well.

Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the aged President Hindenburg on 30 January 1933 and the Enabling Act of the Reichstag on 23 March granted Hitler's National Socialist government dictatorial powers. To raise the Reich to what he considered its rightful place among the nations and to accomplish his foreign policy aims, Hitler had to have a large and well-equipped armed force and the war industry to support it.

Meanwhile, a series of conflicts had arisen between the more extreme elements of the National Socialist Party's uniformed Strwnabteilungen (SA), or Storm Troops, and the Reichsheer. Ernst Roehm, leader of the SA, advocated the absorption of the Reichsheer into his own uniformed force, to form an army more representative of the new National Socialist state. Hitler had to resolve the growing rift and decided in favor of the Reichsheer. On 30 June 1934 Roehm and several score others were executed without legal process of any kind as a threat to the security of the state. Needless to say, Hitler made use of this opportunity to rid himself of numerous political opponents as well as the embarrassing SA leaders.

Hindenburg as President was still the nominal Commander in Chief of the armed forces. The President's death on 2 August 1934 was followed immediately by a major change in this organization of command. Hitler adopted the title of Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor (Der Fuehrer und Reichskanzler), and the office of President was abolished. The functions of the Presidency were absorbed into the new office, and Hitler became Chief of State and Commander in Chief of its armed forces.

All officers and men of the Army and Navy were required to swear a personal oath of obedience to the new Chief of State and Commander in Chief. This was a radical departure from the practice of swearing allegiance only to the state, as had been done under the German Republic. A similar oath to the Kaiser had been the custom in imperial times, but under the pre-World War I system of government the Kaiser had personified the state and people. Hitler's assumption of authority was approved by a national plebiscite on 19 August 1934.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, many police remained skeptical of the Nazis because the Nazis previously had been investigated and jailed as agitators by the government. Nevertheless, Hitler posed as a champion of law and order and many police looked forward to the extension of police power promised by a strong, centralized state. Indeed, the Nazis did extend police power and alleviated many of the frustrations the police experienced in the Weimar Republic.

One practice, called "preventative police arrest," was used against repeat criminal violators, persons whose antisocial behavior constituted a public danger, and persons who refused to identify or falsely identified themselves in an attempt to hide previous criminal acts. Individuals under "preventative police arrest" had no lawyer and no trial. They could be interned directly in concentration camps for a period determined by police. In addition, "protective detention" or protective custody, allowed the police to indefinitely incarcerate people without specific charges and bring to trial persons deemed to be potentially dangerous to the security of Nazi Germany.

One of the initial thrusts of Nazi policy was to take women out of the workplace and return them to the home, where they were to have as many children as possible. The government pushed what it called the "four-child family" ideal. On 16 December 1938, Hitler announced the establishment of the "Honor Cross of German Motherhood," modeled on the Iron Cross and awarded in bronze for four children, silver for six, and gold for eight. After 1938 all public officials (including professors) were required to marry or else resign.

Once in power, Hitler and his party first undermined and then abolished democratic institutions and opposition parties. The Nazi leadership immediately jailed many Jewish citizens and opposition figures and withdrew their political rights. Hitler's Nuremburg Laws subsequently deprived all of Germany's Jews of their political rights and also of their economic assets and professional licenses, foreshadowing the systematic plundering of Jewish assets throughout Nazi-occupied territory. The Nazis implemented a program of genocide, at first through incarceration and forced labor and then by establishing death camps. In a catastrophe generally known as the Holocaust or Shoah, roughly six million European Jews from Germany and Nazi-occupied countries were murdered in these death camps and in the killing fields set up behind military lines on the Eastern Front. Hitler's henchmen also carried out a campaign of ethnic extermination against Europe's Roma/Sinti and murdered thousands of homosexuals, mentally disabled people, and opposition figures.