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LECTURE  4:

The Seizure of Power

• Keppler Circle
  
  

• Dr. Horace Greely Hjalmar Schacht (1877 – 1970)
  

• January 4, 1933 Hitler-Papen Meeting
  
  

• January 15 election in Lippe
  
  

• Alfred Hugenberg / DNVP
       
  

• January 30, 1933
  
  

• Wilhelm Frick (1877 –1946)
  
  

• Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering) 1893–1946
  

Cabinet January 30, 1933 Adolf Hitler (NSDAP) - Chancellor  Franz von Papen - Vice Chancellor  Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath - Minister of Foreign Affairs  Wilhelm Frick (NSDAP) - Minister of the Interior  Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk - Minister of Finance  Alfred Hugenberg (DNVP) - Minister of Economics and Food  Franz Seldte - Minister of Labour  Franz Gürtner (DNVP) - Minister of Justice  Werner von Blomberg - Minister of Defence  Paul Freiherr Eltz von Rübenach - Minister of Posts and Transport  Hermann Göring (NSDAP) - Minister without Portfolio

 

• The "National Revolution"  (Jan-March 1933) ( The “Legal Revolution”)
  
  
  

• Decree for the Protection of the German People (Feb 4, 1933)
  
  

• Schutzhaft - "protective custody"
  
  

• Gestapo --  Geheime Staatspolizei
  
  

• Rudolf Diels (1900 - 1957)
  
  

• The Reichstag Fire
   

• Decree for the Protection of the People and State 
  (Reichstag Fire Decree, February 28)
   

• Hilfspolizei  
   
  
  

 

March 5, 1933 Election Nazis:                                          17.2 million votes – 44 percent Communists                                 4.8 million votes Social Democrats (SPD)                7.1 million – second largest party Nationalist (Nazi partners)              3.1 million Nazi 288 + 52 nationalist seats = 340 seats out of 647 – enough for a majority to govern but not enough for the two-thirds needed to amend the constitution.

• Dachau KL
  
  

• "wild" camps
  
  

Protective custody arrest statistics for Prussia DATE                  DISTRICTS REPORTING    ARRESTS 1-15 March           24/34                    7,784 16-31 March         16/34                    2,860 1-15 April              20/34                   3,017 16-30 April 1           9/34                   2,693 Total (Approximately  60%)              16,354

Law for the Removal of the Distress of People and Reich
(The Enabling Act, 23 March 1933)

• Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli  (Pope Pius XII)
  

• Reichskonkordat (concordat)

• The Gleichschaltung – “Coordination”  (April-December 1933)
  
  

• Law on Industry Representation and Economic Associations (4 April 1933)
  
  

• National Labour Front
  
  

• Law for the Re-establishment of the Professional Civil Service (7 April 1933)  
  
   

• Law against the Establishment of Parties (14 July 1933)
  
   

• Law for Securing the Unity of the Party and State (1 December 1933)
  
  

• Ernst Röhm
  
  

• Operation Hummingbird (Night of the Long Knives, 30 June 1934)
  
  

• Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defense (July 3, 1934)
  
   

• Death of von Hindenburg (August 1934)
  
  

• First they came for the communists,
  and I did not speak up,
  for I was not a communist.

  Then they came for the social democrats,
  and I did not speak up,
  for I was not a social democrat.

  Then they came for the trade unionists,
  and I did not speak up,
  for I was not a trade unionist.

  Then they came for the Jews,
  I did not speak up,
  for I was not a Jew.

  And then when they came for me,
  there was no one left to speak out for me.

  •  Pastor Martin Niemöller

   

 

FURTHER READINGS:

Henry Ashby Turner, Jr.  German Big Business & The Rise of Hitler

Max Wallace, The American Axis:  Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of the Third Reich

James Pool, Who Financed Hitler 1919-1933 

James Pool,  Hitler and His Secret Partners 1933-1945

Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris

George C. Browder, Foundations of the Nazi Police State:  The Formation of the Sipo and SD

Peter Hayes, Industry and Ideology:  IG Farben in the Nazi Era

Joseph Borkin, The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben

Harold James, The Nazi Dictatorship and the Deutsche Bank

Richard Overy, Goering

Ingo Muller, Hitler's Justice:  The Courts of the Third Reich

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