Nazi state

Dictatorial government established in Germany by the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), or Nazis, under Adolf Hitler from 1933 onwards. The Nazi state was characterized by the concentration of absolute power in the hands of an individual (the Führer, or ‘leader’) and the violent suppression of all dissent. National socialist Germany is also known as the Third Reich.

Once the Nazis became the largest party in the German parliament (though with no overall majority), and Hitler was named chancellor on 30 January 1933, the machinery of constitutional government and multiparty democracy that had operated in the Weimar Republic was swiftly dismantled. In February the parliament building was burned down - an attack blamed on communists, but widely thought to have been staged by the Nazis - and the Enabling Act was passed, which gave the Nazi government sweeping powers to bypass parliament in drafting laws and conducting foreign affairs. Over the next year, regional assemblies were forced to adopt the same party make-up as the national parliament, so ensuring Nazi dominance, and finally all other political organizations were outlawed. A vast network of secret police (Gestapo), aided by informers, enforced the new laws; political opponents were murdered or imprisoned in concentration camps. The final phase in establishing a dictatorship came on June 1934, the Night of the Long Knives, with an internal purge of the Nazi Party. To reassure the big-business interests that had funded his rise, Hitler ordered the murder of the leadership of the SA (Sturmabteilung, or ‘stormtroops’) - the radical, populist wing of the party. The swift annihilation of any perceived opposition, a tactic known as Blitzkrieg, confirmed Hitler's total hold over Germany. Power was now consolidated in the elite group around Hitler known as the SS.

The Nazi state reached into all aspects of people's lives to ensure complete conformity and obedience. Indoctrination into the ideology of Nazism began at an early age, with schoolbooks teaching hatred against national minorities like the Jews (see anti-Semitism and the Holocaust) and the Romany people. Only approved militaristic Nazi youth organizations were permitted, such as the Hitler Youth (HJ) for boys and the League of German Maidens (BDM) for girls (which taught that the only proper roles for women were bearing children and tending the home). Books, films, and paintings that did not promote the myth of German Aryan superiority were banned, along with all the work produced by Jewish artists and scientists, whatever its content. People who did not fit the perverse Nazi notions of physical and mental ‘purity’, such as the handicapped and homosexuals, were exterminated. The press was strictly controlled, with news and diverse opinions being replaced by relentless Nazi propaganda, and all judges and lawyers were appointed by the state.

See also Germany: history 1919-49 and World War II.