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SS Police State
Members of the SS (Schutzstaffel; originally
Hitler's bodyguard, later the elite guard of the
Nazi state) parade during a rally. Germany,
date uncertain.
— United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
An important tool of Nazi terror was the Protective
Squad (Schutzstaffel), or SS, which began as a
special guard for Adolf Hitler and other party
leaders. The black-shirted SS members formed a
smaller, elite group whose members also served as auxiliary policemen and, later,
as concentration camp guards. Eventually overshadowing the Storm Troopers
(SA) in importance, the SS became, after 1934, the private army of the Nazi party.
SS chief Heinrich Himmler also turned the regular (nonparty) police forces into an
instrument of terror. He helped forge the powerful Secret State Police (Geheime
Staatspolizei), or Gestapo; these non-uniformed police used ruthless and cruel
methods throughout Germany to identify and arrest political opponents and
others who refused to obey laws and policies of the Nazi regime.
In the months after Hitler took power, the SA and Gestapo agents went from
door to door looking for Hitler's enemies. Socialists, Communists, trade union
leaders, and others who had spoken out against the Nazi party were arrested,
and some were killed. By the middle of 1933, the Nazi party was the only political
party, and nearly all organized opposition to the regime had been eliminated.
Democracy was dead in Germany.
Many different groups, including the SA and SS, set up hundreds of makeshift
"camps" in empty warehouses, factories, and other locations all over Germany
where they held political opponents without trial and under conditions of great
cruelty. One of these camps was set up on March 20, 1933, at Dachau, in an
abandoned munitions factory from World War I. Located near Munich in
southwestern Germany, Dachau would become the "model" concentration camp
for a vast system of SS camps.
Key Dates
FEBRUARY 22, 1933
SS AND SA BECOME AUXILIARY POLICE UNITS
Less than a month after Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany, he calls
on elements of the Nazi party to act as auxiliary police. The SS, initially Hitler's
bodyguards, and the SA, the street fighters or Storm Troopers of the Nazi party,
now have official police power. This further increases the power of the Nazi party
in German society.
FEBRUARY 28, 1933
REICHSTAG FIRE DECREE EMPOWERS POLICE
An emergency decree following the burning of the Reichstag (German
parliament) on February 27, 1933, grants the police almost unlimited power of
arrest. This power is known as "protective custody." In National Socialist
terminology, protective custody means the arrest of potential opponents of the
regime without benefit of a trial or judicial proceedings. Protective custody
prisoners are confined not in the normal prison system but in concentration
camps. These camps were initially established by the Storm Troopers (SA) and
later came under the exclusive authority of the chief of the SS (the elite guard of
the Nazi state).
MARCH 20, 1933
HEINRICH HIMMLER ANNOUNCES THE OPENING OF DACHAU
The Dachau camp, located near Munich in southern Germany, is one of the first
concentration camps established by the Nazis. SS chief Heinrich Himmler
announces its opening on March 20, 1933. The first prisoners arrive on March 22.
They are mainly Communists and Socialists. Dachau is the only camp to remain in
operation from 1933 until 1945.
JUNE 17, 1936
HEINRICH HIMMLER BECOMES CHIEF OF THE GERMAN POLICE
Adolf Hitler appoints SS chief Heinrich Himmler chief of all German police units.
All police powers are now centralized. The Gestapo (German secret state police)
comes under Himmler's control. Responsible for state security, it has the
authority to send individuals to concentration camps. Members of the Gestapo
are often also members of the SS.
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NAZI PROPAGANDA
German children read an anti-Jewish
propaganda book titled DER GIFTPILZ (
"The Poisonous Mushroom"). The girl on
the left holds a companion volume, the
translated title of which is "Trust No Fox."
Germany, ca. 1938.
— Stadtarchiv Nürnberg
Once they succeeded in ending democracy and turning Germany into a
one-party dictatorship, the Nazis orchestrated a massive propaganda
campaign to win the loyalty and cooperation of Germans. The Nazi
Propaganda Ministry, directed by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, took control of all
forms of communication in Germany: newspapers, magazines, books,
public meetings, and rallies, art, music, movies, and radio. Viewpoints in
any way threatening to Nazi beliefs or to the regime were censored or
eliminated from all media.
During the spring of 1933, Nazi student organizations, professors, and
librarians made up long lists of books they thought should not be read by
Germans. Then, on the night of May 10, 1933, Nazis raided libraries and
bookstores across Germany. They marched by torchlight in nighttime
parades, sang chants, and threw books into huge bonfires. On that night
more than 25,000 books were burned. Some were works of Jewish writers,
including Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Most of the books were by
non-Jewish writers, including such famous Americans as Jack London,
Ernest Hemingway, and Sinclair Lewis, whose ideas the Nazis viewed as
different from their own and therefore not to be read.
The Nazi censors also burned the books of Helen Keller, who had
overcome her deafness and blindness to become a respected writer; told
of the book burnings, she responded: "Tyranny cannot defeat the power of
ideas." Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States protested the
book burnings, a clear violation of freedom of speech, in public rallies in
New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis.
Schools also played an important role in spreading Nazi ideas. While some
books were removed from classrooms by censors, other textbooks, newly
written, were brought in to teach students blind obedience to the party,
love for Hitler, and antisemitism. After-school meetings of the Hitler Youth
and the League of German Girls trained children to be faithful to the Nazi
party. In school and out, young people celebrated such occasions as Adolf
Hitler's birthday and the anniversary of his taking power.
Key Dates
DECEMBER 5, 1930
JOSEPH GOEBBELS DISRUPTS PREMIERE OF
FILM In Berlin, Joseph Goebbels, one of Adolf Hitler’s top deputies, and Storm
Troopers (SA) disrupt the premiere of "All Quiet on the Western Front," a
film based on the novel of the same title by Erich Maria Remarque. Nazi
protestors throw smoke bombs and sneezing powder to halt the film.
Members of the audience who protest the disruption are beaten. The novel
had always been unpopular with the Nazis, who believed that its depiction
of the cruelty and absurdity of war was "un-German." Ultimately, the film
will be banned. Remarque will emigrate to Switzerland in 1931, and the
Nazis, after coming to power, will revoke his German citizenship in 1938.
MARCH 13, 1933 JOSEPH GOEBBELS HEADS REICH
PROPAGANDA MINISTRY Joseph Goebbels, one of Adolf Hitler's most trusted associates, is
appointed to head the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and
Propaganda. This agency controls the writing and broadcast of all media
(newspapers, radio programs, and movies) as well as public entertainment
and cultural programs (theater, art, and music). Goebbels integrates Nazi
racism and ideas into the media.
MAY 10, 1933 JOSEPH GOEBBELS SPEAKS AT BOOK BURNING IN
BERLIN Forty thousand people gather to hear German propaganda minister
Joseph Goebbels speak in Berlin's Opera Square. Goebbels condemns
works written by Jews, liberals, leftists, pacifists, foreigners, and others as
"un-German." Nazi students begin burning books. Libraries across
Germany are purged of "censored" books. Goebbels proclaims the
"cleansing of the German spirit."
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HITLER COMES TO POWER
A crowd cheers Adolf Hitler as his car
leaves the Reich Chancellery following
a meeting with President Paul von
Hindenburg. Berlin, Germany,
November 19, 1932.
— National Archives and Records
Administration, College Park, Md.
In the early 1930s, the mood in
Germany was grim. The worldwide
economic depression had hit the
country especially hard, and
millions of people were out of work.
Still fresh in the minds of many was
Germany's humiliating defeat fifteen
years earlier during World War I,
and Germans lacked confidence in
their weak government, known as
the Weimar Republic. These
conditions provided the chance for
the rise of a new leader, Adolf Hitler, and his party, the National Socialist
German Workers' Party, or Nazi party for short.
Hitler was a powerful and spellbinding speaker who attracted a wide
following of Germans desperate for change. He promised the
disenchanted a better life and a new and glorious Germany. The Nazis
appealed especially to the unemployed, young people, and members of
the lower middle class (small store owners, office employees, craftsmen,
and farmers).
The party's rise to power was rapid. Before the economic depression
struck, the Nazis were practically unknown, winning only 3 percent of the
vote to the Reichstag (German parliament) in elections in 1924. In the
1932 elections, the Nazis won 33 percent of the votes, more than any
other party. In January 1933 Hitler was appointed chancellor, the head of
the German government, and many Germans believed that they had found
a savior for their nation
Key Dates
JUNE 28, 1919
TREATY OF VERSAILLES ENDS WORLD WAR I
In
the Treaty of Versailles, which followed German defeat in World War I, the
victorious powers (the United States, Great Britain, France, and other
allied states) impose severe terms on Germany. Germany, under threat of
invasion, is forced to sign the treaty. Among other provisions, Germany
accepts responsibility for the war and agrees to make huge payments
(known as reparations), limit its military to 100,000 troops, and transfer
territory to its neighbors. The terms of the treaty lead to widespread
political discontent in Germany. Adolf Hitler gains support by promising to
overturn them.
OCTOBER 24, 1929
STOCK MARKET CRASH IN NEW YORK
The
plummet in the value of stocks that is associated with the New York stock
market crash brings a rash of business bankruptcies. Widespread
unemployment occurs in the United States. The "Great Depression," as it
is called, sparks a worldwide economic crisis. In Germany, six million are
unemployed by June 1932. Economic distress contributes to a meteoric
rise in the support for the Nazi party. As a result, the Nazi party wins the
votes of almost 40 of the electorate in the Reichstag (German parliament)
elections of July 1932. The Nazi party becomes at this point the largest
party in the German parliament.
NOVEMBER 6, 1932
NAZIS LOSE SUPPORT IN PARLIAMENTARY
ELECTIONS
In the Reichstag (German parliament) elections of
November 1932, the Nazis lose almost two million votes from the previous
elections of July. They win only 33 percent of the vote. It seems clear that
the Nazis will not gain a majority in democratic elections, and Adolf Hitler
agrees to a coalition with conservatives. After months of negotiations, the
president of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg, will appoint Hitler chancellor
of Germany in a government seemingly dominated by conservatives on
January 30, 1933.
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NAZI RACISM
The Nazis used public displays to
spread their ideas of race. The chart
shown here is titled "The Biology of
Growth," and is labeled "Stages of
Growth for Members of the Nordic
Race."
— National Archives and Records
Administration, College Park, Md.
For years before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of
Germany, he was obsessed with ideas about race. In
his speeches and writings, Hitler spread his beliefs in
racial "purity" and in the superiority of the "Germanic
race"—what he called an Aryan "master race." He
pronounced that his race must remain pure in order to
one day take over the world. For Hitler, the ideal "Aryan"
was blond, blue-eyed, and tall.
When Hitler and the Nazis came to power, these beliefs
became the government ideology and were spread in
publicly displayed posters, on the radio, in movies, in
classrooms, and in newspapers. The Nazis began to put
their ideology into practice with the support of German
scientists who believed that the human race could be improved by limiting
the reproduction of people considered "inferior." Beginning in 1933,
German physicians were allowed to perform forced sterilizations,
operations making it impossible for the victims to have children. Among the
targets of this public program were Roma (Gypsies), an ethnic minority
numbering about 30,000 in Germany, and handicapped individuals,
including the mentally ill and people born deaf and blind. Also victimized
were about 500 African-German children, the offspring of German mothers
and African colonial soldiers in the Allied armies that occupied the German
Rhineland region after World War I.
Hitler and other Nazi leaders viewed the Jews not as a religious group, but
as a poisonous "race," which "lived off" the other races and weakened
them. After Hitler took power, Nazi teachers in school classrooms began to
apply the "principles" of racial science. They measured skull size and nose
length, and recorded the color of their pupils' hair and eyes to determine
whether students belonged to the true "Aryan race." Jewish and Romani
(Gypsy) students were often humiliated in the process.
Key Dates
FEBRUARY 24, 1920
NAZIS OUTLINE POLITICAL AGENDA
The first public meeting of the Nazi party, then called the German Workers’
Party, takes place in Munich, Germany. Adolf Hitler issues a "25 Point
Program" outlining the party's political agenda. The party platform
embodies racism. It demands racial purity in Germany; proclaims
Germany's destiny to rule over inferior races; and identifies Jews as racial
enemies. Point 4 concludes that "No Jew, therefore, may be a member of
the Nation."
JULY 18, 1925
THE FIRST VOLUME OF MEIN KAMPF APPEARS
Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf while in prison for treason following his
failed attempt to seize power in 1923. In Mein Kampf, he outlined his racial
ideas. Hitler saw history as the struggle between races for living space. He
envisioned a war of conquest in the east, with the Slavic peoples enslaved
to German interests. He believed the Jews to be an exceptional evil,
working within the nation to subvert "racial purity." He urged the "removal"
of Jews from Germany.
JULY 14, 1933
NAZI STATE ENACTS RACIAL PURITY LAW
Believing that "racial purity" requires state regulation of human
reproduction, Adolf Hitler issues the Law to Prevent Hereditarily Diseased
Offspring. Among other provisions, the measure prohibits "undesirables"
from having children and mandates forced sterilization of certain physically
or mentally impaired individuals. The law will affect some 400,000 people
over the next 18 months.
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Indoctrinating Youth
German youth attending the Reich
Party Conference rally at the
Zepplin Field in Nuremberg raise
their hands in the Hitler salute.
Nuremberg, Germany, September
1938.
— TimePix
From the 1920s onwards, the Nazi Party targeted German youth as a
special audience for its propaganda messages. These messages
emphasized that the Party was a movement of youth: dynamic, resilient,
forward-looking, and hopeful. Millions of German young people were won
over to Nazism in the classroom and through extracurricular activities. In
January 1933, the Hitler Youth had only 50,000 members, but by the end
of the year this figure had increased to more than 2 million. By 1936
membership in the Hitler Youth increased to 5.4 million before it became
mandatory in 1939. The German authorities then prohibited or dissolved
competing youth organizations.
Education in the Nazi State
Education in the Third Reich served to indoctrinate students with the
National Socialist world view. Nazi scholars and educators glorified Nordic
and other “Aryan” races, while denigrating Jews and other so-called
inferior peoples as parasitic “bastard races” incapable of creating culture or
civilization. After 1933, the Nazi regime purged the public school system of
teachers deemed to be Jews or to be “politically unreliable.” Most
educators, however, remained in their posts and joined the National
Socialist Teachers League. 97% of all public school teachers, some
300,000 persons, had joined the League by 1936. In fact, teachers joined
the Nazi Party in greater numbers than any other profession.
In the classroom and in the Hitler Youth, instruction aimed to produce raceconscious, obedient, self-sacrificing Germans who would be willing to die
for Führer and Fatherland. Devotion to Adolf Hitler was a key component
of Hitler Youth training. German young people celebrated his birthday
(April 20)-a national holiday-for membership inductions. German
adolescents swore allegiance to Hitler and pledged to serve the nation and
its leader as future soldiers.
Schools played an important role in spreading Nazi ideas to German
youth. While censors removed some books from the classroom, German
educators introduced new textbooks that taught students love for Hitler,
obedience to state authority, militarism, racism, and antisemitism.
Board games and toys for children served as another way to spread racial
and political propaganda to German youth. Toys were also used as
propaganda vehicles to indoctrinate children into militarism.
Youth Organizations
The Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were the primary tools
that the Nazis used to shape the beliefs, thinking and actions of German
youth. Youth leaders used tightly controlled group activities and staged
propaganda events such as mass rallies full of ritual and spectacle to
create the illusion of one national community reaching across class and
religious divisions that characterized Germany before 1933.
Founded in 1926, the original purpose of the Hitler Youth was to train boys
to enter the SA (Storm Troopers), a Nazi Party paramilitary formation. After
1933, however, youth leaders sought to integrate boys into the Nazi
national community and to prepare them for service as soldiers in the
armed forces or, later, in the SS.
In 1936, membership in Nazi youth groups became mandatory for all boys
and girls between the ages of ten and seventeen. After-school meetings
and weekend camping trips sponsored by the Hitler Youth and the League
of German Girls trained children to become faithful to the Nazi Party and
the future leaders of the National Socialist state. By September 1939, over
765,000 young people served in leadership roles in Nazi youth
organizations which prepared them for such roles in the military and the
German occupation bureaucracy.
The Hitler Youth combined sports and outdoor activities with ideology.
Similarly, the League of German Girls emphasized collective athletics,
such as rhythmic gymnastics, which German health authorities deemed
less strenuous to the female body and better geared to preparing them for
motherhood. Their public displays of these values encouraged young men
and women to abandon their individuality in favor of the goals of the Aryan
collective.
Military Service
Upon reaching age eighteen, boys were required to enlist immediately in
the armed forces or into the Reich Labor Service, for which their activities
in the Hitler Youth had prepared them.
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ANTI-JEWISH LAWS(Legislation)
During the first six years of Hitler's dictatorship, from 1933 until the
outbreak of war in 1939, Jews felt the effects of more than 400 decrees
and regulations that restricted all aspects of their public and private lives.
1933-1934 The first wave of legislation, from 1933 to 1934, focused
largely on limiting the participation of Jews in German public life. The first
major law to curtail the rights of Jewish citizens was the "Law for the
Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" of April 7, 1933, according to
which Jewish and "politically unreliable" civil servants and employees were
to be excluded from state service. The new Civil Service Law was the
German authorities' first formulation of the so-called Aryan Paragraph, a
kind of regulation used to exclude from organizations, professions, and
other aspects of public life.
In April 1933, German law restricted the number of Jewish students at
German schools and universities. In the same month, further legislation
sharply curtailed "Jewish activity" in the medical and legal professions. In
early 1934, forbade Jewish actors to perform on the stage or screen.
1935 At their annual party rally held in Nuremberg in September 1935,
the Nazi leaders announced new laws which institutionalized many of the
racial theories prevalent in Nazi ideology. These "Nuremberg Laws"
excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from
marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or Germanrelated blood." Additional ordinances to these laws deprived them of most
political rights. Jews were disenfranchised (that is, they had no formal
expectation to the right to vote) and could not hold public office.
The Nuremberg Laws did not identify a "Jew" as someone with particular
religious beliefs. Instead, the first amendment to the Nuremberg Laws
defined anyone who had three or four Jewish grandparents as a Jew,
regardless of whether that individual recognized himself or herself as a
Jew or belonged to the Jewish religious community. Many Germans who
had not practiced Judaism or who had not done so for years found
themselves caught in the grip of Nazi terror. Even people with Jewish
grandparents who had converted to Christianity could be defined as Jews.
"Aryanization"
Government agencies at all levels aimed to exclude Jews from the
economic sphere of Germany by preventing them from earning a living.
Jews were required to register their domestic and foreign property and
assets, a prelude to the gradual expropriation of their material wealth by
the state. Likewise, the German authorities intended to "Aryanize" all
Jewish businesses, a process involving the dismissal of Jewish workers
and managers, as well as the transfer of companies and enterprises to
non-Jewish Germans, who bought them at prices officially fixed well below
market value. From April 1933 to April 1938, "Aryanization" effectively
reduced the number of Jewish-owned businesses in Germany by
approximately two-thirds.
1936 In the weeks before and during the 1936 Winter and Summer
Olympic Games held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Berlin, respectively,
the Nazi regime actually toned down much of its public anti-Jewish rhetoric
and activities. The regime even removed some of the signs saying "Jews
Unwelcome" from public places. Hitler did not want international criticism of
his government to result in the transfer of the Games to another country.
Such a loss would have been a serious blow to German prestige. Likewise,
Nazi leaders did not want to discourage international tourism and the
revenue that it would bring during the Olympics year.
1937-1938 In 1937 and 1938, German authorities again stepped up
legislative persecution of German Jews. The government set out to
impoverish Jews and remove them from the German economy by requiring
them to register their property.
Following the Kristallnacht (commonly known as "Night of Broken Glass")
pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, Nazi leaders stepped up "Aryanization"
efforts and enforced measures that succeeded increasingly in physically
isolating and segregating Jews from their fellow Germans. Jews were
barred from all public schools and universities, as well as from cinemas,
theaters, and sports facilities. In many cities, Jews were forbidden to enter
designated "Aryan" zones. German decrees and ordinances expanded the
ban on Jews in professional life. By September 1938, for instance, Jewish
physicians were effectively banned from treating "Aryan" patients.
The government required Jews to identify themselves in ways that would
permanently separate them from the rest of the population. In August
1938, German authorities decreed that by January 1, 1939, Jewish men
and women bearing first names of "non-Jewish" origin had to add "Israel"
and "Sara," respectively, to their given names. All Jews were obliged to
carry identity cards that indicated their Jewish heritage, and, in the autumn
of 1938, all Jewish passports were stamped with an identifying letter "J".
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POGROMS
Pogrom is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish
violently.” Historically, the term refers to violent attacks by local non-Jewish
populations on Jews in the Russian Empire and in other countries. The first
such incident to be labeled a pogrom is believed to be anti-Jewish rioting in
Odessa in 1821. As a descriptive term, “pogrom” came into common
usage with extensive anti-Jewish riots that swept Ukraine and southern
Russia in 1881-1884, following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. In
Germany and eastern Europe during the era of the Holocaust, as in Tsarist
Russia, economic, social, and political resentment of Jews reinforced
traditional religious antisemitism. This served as a pretext for pogroms.
The perpetrators of pogroms organized locally, sometimes with
government and police encouragement. They raped and murdered their
Jewish victims and looted their property. During the civil war that followed
the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Ukrainian nationalists, Polish officials, and
Red Army soldiers all engaged in pogrom-like violence in western
Belorussia (Belarus) and Poland's Galicia province (now West Ukraine),
killing tens of thousands of Jews between 1918 and 1920.
After the Nazis seized power in Germany in 1933, Adolf Hitler publicly
discouraged "disorder" and acts of violence. In practice, though, street
violence against Jews was tolerated and even encouraged at certain
periods when Nazi leaders calculated that the violence would “prepare” the
German population for harsh antisemitic legal and administrative measures
implemented ostensibly “to restore order.”
For example, the orchestrated nationwide campaign of street violence
known as Kristallnacht of November 9-10, 1938, was the culmination of a
longer period of more sporadic street violence against Jews. This street
violence had begun with riots in Vienna after the Anschluss of Austria in
March.
Kristallnacht, literally, "Night of Crystal," is often referred to as the "Night of
Broken Glass." The name refers to the wave of violent anti-Jewish
pogroms which took place on November 9 and 10, 1938, throughout
Germany, annexed Austria, and in areas of the Sudetenland in
Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops.
Instigated primarily by Nazi Party officials and members of the SA
(Sturmabteilungen: literally Assault Detachments, but commonly known as
Storm Troopers) and Hitler Youth, Kristallnacht owes its name to the
shards of shattered glass that lined German streets in the wake of the
pogrom—broken glass from the windows of synagogues, homes, and
Jewish-owned businesses plundered and destroyed during the violence.
Kristallnacht was followed by a dramatic surge in anti-Jewish legislation
during the autumn and winter of 1938-1939. Another period of street
violence had covered the first two months of the Nazi regime and
culminated in a law dismissing Jews and Communists from the civil service
on April 7, 1933. The summer before the announcement of the Nuremberg
Race Laws in September 1935 saw frequent violence against Jews in
various German cities. Such street violence involved burning down
synagogues, destroying Jewish-owned homes and businesses, and
physical assaults on individuals. Kristallnacht was by far the largest, most
destructive, and most clearly orchestrated of these “pogroms.”