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The Nazi Party in Power - Coordination (Gleichschaltung)

The government of Adolf Hitler was popular with most Germans. Although the Gestapo (secret state police) and the Security Service (SD) suppressed open criticism of the regime, there was some German opposition to the Nazi state and the regimentation of society that took place through the process of "coordination" (Gleichschaltung) — the alignment of individuals and institutions with Nazi goals. Opposition ranged from non-compliance with Nazi regulations to attempts to assassinate Hitler. Political opposition to the regime by leftist parties was crushed by force and imprisonment. Fascism aimed to replace pluralist corporatism by state corporatism, or what the Nazis would later call Gleichschaltung. Its rhetorical advantage over Marxism-Leninism was that it left the system of private ownership intact, merely imposing state control over it.

The NSDAP, having achieved power, now proceeded to extend its hold on every phase of German life. Other political parties were persecuted, their property and assets confiscated, and many of their members placed in concentration camps. On 26th April, 1933, the defendant Goering founded in Prussia the Gestapo as a secret police, and confided to the deputy leader of the Gestapo that its main task was to eliminate political opponents of National Socialism and Hitler. On the 14th July, 1933, a law was passed declaring the NSDAP to be the only political party, and making it criminal to maintain or form any other political party.

As part of the Nazi "Coordination" (Gleichschaltung, Nazi conformity) of all public offices, the Reich Ministry of the Interior under the leadership of Wilhelm Frick (1877-1946) issued the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” (also known as the Civil Service Law) on April 7, 1933, a week after the nation-wide boycott of Jewish businesses. This law excluded all racial and political “enemies” of the regime from the civil service.

The “Aryan Clause” established a racial criterion for continued employment in the civil service, effectively banishing Jews from government and administration; it also set a model that would soon be followed in other professions. Several days later, a law was passed that defined “non-Aryan” to mean descent from one or more “non-Aryan” grandparents; the law implies that grandparents are to be considered Jewish if they practiced the Jewish religion.

A short-lived exception was made for veterans of the Great War (the “Hindenburg Exception”) and for civil servants who lost a father or a son at the front. Subsequent orders related to this law terminated the services contracts of non-salaried Jewish employees of the state, expelled “non-Aryan” honorary professors and untenured junior professors, and forbade any advancement of Jews protected under the “Hindenburg Exception.” Those married to “non-Aryans” were also not granted admission to civil service positions.

In order to place the complete control of the machinery of Government in the hands of the Nazi leaders, a series of laws and decrees were passed which reduced the powers of regional and local governments throughout Germany, transforming them into subordinate divisions of the Government of the Reich. Representative assemblies in the Laender were abolished and with them all local elections.

The Government then proceeded to secure control of the Civil Service. This was achieved by a process of centralisation, and by a careful sifting of the whole Civil Service administration. By a law of the 7th April it was provided that officials "who were of non-Aryan descent " should be retired; and it was also decreed that " officials who because of their previous political activity cannot be guaranteed to exert themselves for the national state without reservation shall be discharged." The law of the 11th April, 1933, provided for the discharge of " all Civil Servants who belong to the Communist Party."

Similarly, the Judiciary was subjected to control. Judges were removed from the Bench for political or racial reasons. They were spied upon and made subject to the strongest pressure to join the Nazi Party as an alternative to being dismissed. When the Supreme Court acquitted three of the four defendants charged with complicity in the Reichstag fire, its jurisdiction in cases of treason was thereafter taken away and given to a newly established " People's Court ", consisting of two judges and five officials of the Party. Special courts were set up to try political crimes and only party members were appointed as judges. Persons were arrested by the SS for political reasons, and detained in prisons and concentration camps, and the judges were without power to intervene in any way. Pardons were granted to members of the Party who had been sentenced by the judges for proved offences.

Hanna Arendt wrote that " ... professional party organizations, such as those for teachers, lawyers, physicians, students, university professors, technicians, and workers. All these were primarily duplicates of existing nontotalitarian professional societies, paraprofessional as the stormtroopers were paramilitary. It was characteristic that the more clearly the European Communist parties be- came branches of a Moscow-directed Bolshevik movement, the more they, too, used their front organizations to compete with existing purely professional groups. The difference between the Nazis and the Bolsheviks in this respect was only that the Nazis had a pronounced tendency to consider these paraprofessional formations as part of the party elite, while the Communists preferred to recruit from them the material for their front organizations. The important factor for the movements is that, even before they seize power, they give the impression that all elements of society are embodied in their ranks."

During the time of the Weimar republic the professors and students at the School of Veterinary Medicine Hannover had a national-conservative political attitude with a clearly anti-republican tendency. Before 1933 the National Socialism did not play a role at the school. After the assumption of power by Hitler the 'Gleichschaltung' -- which also took place at the universities -- ran mostly smoothly at the veterinary school. 75% of the teaching staff and 50% of the students had joined the NSDAP (nazi party) respectively the NSDStB (nazi student organisation) at the end of the summer semester 1933.