• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

The Nazi Party in Power

Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party came to power in Germany in January 1933, as the head of a coalition government. But on March 23, 1933, the Reichstag passed an Enabling Act giving him permanent emergency powers, freeing him from the limitations imposed by a parliamentary system. In August 1934, following the death of President von Hindenburg, Hitler merged the office of Chancellor and President together and required to armed forces to swear an oath of loyalty him.

Hanna Arendt wrote that one " ... advantage of the totalitarian pattern is that it can be repeated indefinitely and keeps the organization in a state of fluidity which permits it constantly to insert new layers and define new degrees of militancy. The whole history of the Nazi party can be told in terms of new formations within the Nazi movement. The SA, (Sturmabteilung) the stormtroopers (founded in 1922), were the first Nazi formation which was supposed to be more militant than the party itself; in 1926, the SS was founded as the elite formation of the SA; after three years, the SS was separated from the SA and put under Himmler's command; it took Himmler only a few more years to repeat the same game within the SS. One after the other, and each more militant than its predecessor, there now came into being, first, the Shock Troops," then the Death Head units (the "guard units for the concentration camps"), which later were merged to form the Armed SS (Waffen-SS), finally the Security Service (the "ideological intelligence service of the Party," and its executive arm for the "negative population policy") and the Office for Questions of Race and Resettlement (Rasse-und Siedlungswesen), whose tasks were of a "positive kind".

"All of them developing out of the General SS, whose members, except for the higher Fuehrer Corps, remained in their civilian occupations. To all these new formations the member of the General SS now stood in the same relationship as the SA-man to the SS-man, or the party member to the SA-man, or the member of a front organization to a party member. Now the General SS was charged not only with "safe-guarding the . . . embodiments of the National Socialist idea," but also with "protecting the members of all special SS cadres from becoming detached from the movement itself." This fluctuating hierarchy, with its constant addition of new layers and shifts in authority, is well known from secret control bodies, the secret police or espionage services, where new controls are always needed to control the controllers."

From the earliest days of the NSDAP, anti-Semitism had occupied a prominent place in National Socialist thought and propaganda. The Jews who were considered to have no right to German citizenship, were held to have been largely responsible for the troubles with which the nation was afflicted following on the war of 1914-18. Furthermore, the antipathy to the Jews was intensified by the insistence which was laid upon the superiority of the Germanic race and blood. The second chapter of Book 1 of " Mein Kampf " is dedicated to what may be called the " Master Race" theory, the doctrine of Aryan superiority over all other races, and the right of Germans in virtue of this superiority to dominate and use other peoples for their own ends.

With the coming of the Nazis into power in 1933, persecution of the Jews became official state policy. On the 1st April, 1933, a boycott of Jewish enterprises was approved by the Nazi Reich Cabinet, and during the following years a series of anti-Semitic laws were passed, restricting the activities of Jews in the Civil Service, in the legal profession, in journalism and in the armed forces. In September, 1935, the so-called Nuremberg Laws were passed, the most important effect of which was to deprive Jews of German citizenship. In this way the influence of Jewish elements on the affairs of Germany was extinguished, and one more potential source of opposition to Nazi policy was rendered powerless.

In 1935 several officials of the Hohenstein concentration camp were convicted of inflicting brutal treatment upon the inmates. High Nazi officials tried to influence the Court, and after the officials had been convicted, Hitler pardoned them all. In 1942 " Judges' letters" were sent to all German judges by the Government, instructing them as to the " general lines " that they must follow.