Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
suasive right-wing advisors, Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor. That evening, NSDAP
celebrated its rise to power with a torchlit procession through the Brandenburg Gate. Not
everyone cheered. Observing the scene from his Pariser Platz home, artist Max Liebermann
famously commented: 'I couldn't possibly eat as much as I would like to puke'.
As chancellor, Hitler moved quickly to consolidate absolute power and to turn the na-
tion's democracy into a one-party dictatorship. The Reichstag fire in March 1933 gave him
the opportunity to request temporary emergency powers to arrest communists and liberal op-
ponents and push through his proposed Enabling Law, allowing him to decree laws and
change the constitution without consulting parliament. When Hindenburg died a year later,
Hitler fused the offices of president and chancellor to become Führer of the Third Reich.
THE NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES
The brown-shirted Sturmabteilung (SA or Storm Troopers) was a Nazi organisation
charged mainly with policing Nazi-party meetings and disrupting those convened by
political opponents. Although it played an important role in Hitler's ascent to power,
by 1934 it had become quite powerful in its own right thanks, in large part, to its leader
Ernst Röhm. On 30 June of that year, feeling threatened, Hitler ordered the black-shir-
ted Schutzstaffel (SS) to round up and kill the SA leadership (including Röhm and at
least 75 others) to bring the organisation to heel.
Hitler hushed up what came to be known as the 'Night of the Long Knives' until 13
July, when he announced to the Reichstag that, from now on, the SA (which
numbered two million, thus easily outnumbering the army) would serve under the
command of the army which, in turn, would swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler.
Justice would be executed by the SS under the leadership of former chicken farmer
Heinrich Himmler, effectively giving the SS unchallenged power and making it Nazi
Germany's most powerful - and feared - force.
Nazi Berlin
The rise of the Nazis had instant, far-reaching consequences for the entire population. With-
in three months of Hitler's power grab, all non-Nazi parties, organisations and labour unions
ceased to exist. Political opponents, intellectuals and artists were rounded up and detained
without trial; many went underground or into exile. There was a burgeoning culture of terror
and denunciation, and the terrorisation of Jews started to escalate.
Hitler's brown-shirted Nazi state police, the Sturmabteilung, pursued opponents, arrest-
ing, torturing and murdering people in improvised concentration camps, such as the one in
