Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
to 500,000 men and their power worried big business, the regular army and rival Nazis
like Himmler and Göring. United in their hostility towards the SA they persuaded
Hitler that Röhm and his allies were conspiring against him with the result that on the
night of June 30, the SA leaders were taken to Stadelheim Prison and shot in the
courtyard by SS troopers; it came as such a surprise that some believed it was an army
coup, and died shouting “Heil Hitler!” In Berlin alone, 150 SA leaders were executed.
Other victims included conservative politicians such as General Schleicher and several
of von Papen's assistants, while local police and Gestapo chiefs added personal enemies
to death lists. Meanwhile, the Nazis put their own men into vital posts throughout
local governments - in Berlin and the rest of Germany. his was the first stage of
Gleichschaltung (“coordination”), whereby the machinery of state, and then society
itself, would be Nazified.
he other big night of Nazi savagery in the prewar period was
Kristallnacht
(November 9, 1938) when the
boycott of Jewish
businesses, medical and legal practices
in Berlin - enforced by the SA since April 1, 1934 - turned into bare-faced
attacks on
Jewish shops and institutions
. Just as the Reichstag fire was used as an excuse to
consolidate power, the Nazis used the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, a German
o
cial in Paris, by Herschel Grynszpan, a young German-Jewish refugee, as an excuse
to unleash a general pogrom on German Jews. Grynszpan was protesting his parents'
forced deportation to Poland with ten thousand other Jews. (Ironically, vom Rath was
an anti-Nazi whom Grynszpan had mistaken for his intended target, the German
ambassador.) In retaliation the Nazis organized “spontaneous” anti-Jewish
demonstrations - directing the police to ensure that attacks on the Jewish community,
mainly by SA men in civilian clothes, were not hindered. After
Kristallnacht
the Nazi
government enacted anti-Semitic laws confiscating property and making life di
cult
and dangerous for German Jews, paving the way for the greater horrors to come.
Daily life and the Olympics
Given the suppression, fear, exodus and the tightening grip of Nazi control on all areas
of life, the atmosphere in Berlin changed irrevocably. he unemployed were drafted
into labour battalions, set to work on the land or building autobahns; the press and
radio were orchestrated by Goebbels; children joined Nazi youth organizations; and
every tenement building had Nazi-appointed wardens who doubled as Gestapo spies.
It was even decreed that women should eschew make-up as an “un-German” artifice -
one of the few edicts that wasn't taken seriously. Anti-Nazi criticism - even of the
mildest kind - invited a visit from the Gestapo. Although Germans might avoid
joining the NSDAP itself, it was di
cult to escape the plethora of related organizations
covering every aspect of life, from riding clubs and dog breeders to the “Reich Church”
or “German League of Maidens”. his was the second stage of
Gleichschaltung
-
drawing the entire population into the Nazi net.
As the capital of the Reich, Berlin became a showcase city of banners, uniforms
and parades. An image of order and dynamism, of a “new Germany” on the march,
was what the Nazis tried to convey. his reached its zenith during the
1936
Olympics
, held at a vast purpose-built stadium in suburban Berlin, which helped
raise Germany's international standing and temporarily glossed over the realities
of Nazi brutality.
1918
1920
Berlin witnesses the end of World War I and
the proclamation of the Republic.
Berlin is established as a separate administrative zone
under the Greater Berlin Act. A dozen villages and
estates are incorporated into the city to expand it.
