EARLY NAZI RULE

Background

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From 1933-38, the government underwent a swift and brutal repression of minority nationalities, including Poles and Jews. Under the rule of its charismatic and nationalistic totalitarian leader --paranoid of any dissent-- the secret police arrested hundreds of thousands of people perceived of being enemies of the state, labeled them as spies, and executed them via firing squads. Nearly all of this was done in secrecy -- ignored by the rest of the world. During this period alone, 681,692 people were killed and thousands more disappeared in labor camps (Snyder 104). The leader mobilized the entire government bureaucracy and secret police to fulfill his wishes. 

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This was not Hitler's Nazi Germany --where the war against the Jews was only slowly building in incremental steps-- but rather Stalin's Soviet Union and his Great Purge and Great Terror. Hitler and the Nazis were learning how to persecute, scapegoat and dominate; Stalin had already figured it out and mastered the techniques to tragic ends. As historian Timothy Snyder explains in Bloodlands, "Soviet terror, at this point, was not only on a far greater scale; it was incomparably more lethal" (86).

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In Germany, the period from 1933-1938 served as the consolidation of Nazi power and the beginning of the implementation of their vision for the country. They gradually restricted the rights of Jews and other perceived enemies of Nazism, such as Communists. A wave of state-sponsored violence pulsated throughout the country. Hitler's police officers arrested, beat, and killed people they considered enemies of the state, including communists and Jews. They created prisons and torture stations in places like basements and garages. 

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The government placed the press under its control with near total censorship.

 

The Nazis passed multiple laws during this period to prohibit Jews from actively participating in the country, in schools, and in the economy. They reframed the notion of German citizenship with laws such as the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. All of this led to increased persecution and discrimination from average German citizens. 

 

Over time, the atmosphere became tenser, like a town awaiting a hurricane. The nation seemed infected with fear, a fear that was beginning to affect all interactions. Nazi newspapers began urging readers to be on the lookout for Jews and report any of their failures or shortcomings.

 

Judges granted permission to men to divorce their wives because the women were Jewish, reasoning that such marriages would yield mixed offspring that would only weaken the Aryan race.

 

Walking the streets, people encountered squads of uniformed young people marching and singing. Banners with the red, white, black insignia of the Nazi Party hung from balconies.

 

The atmosphere changed in the schools. The Hitler Salute began every school-day. Everyone was expected to salute, except Jewish students who were prohibited from doing so. The teachers no longer said “Good morning” – they said “Heil Hitler.” 

After a few years, the web of restrictions only increase. Jews were no longer allowed to teach in public schools. They were no longer allowed to attend schools and universities. A few months later, Jews were excluded from being citizens of Germany.  Then, Jews could not marry Germans, or have sexual relations with Germans. Jews could not even hire German women to work in their homes. 

 

The very public persecution only disappeared for a short period of time, during the Berlin Olympics of 1936, so as to show the rest of the world that the news of Jewish persecution was false. In 1937-38, 267 people were sentenced to death in Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, 378,326 "kulaks" received death sentences in the Soviet Union (Snyder 87).

 

The tightening web of oppression came to a climax with Kristallnacht in 1938, an event that you will examine in the next gallery, which served as a crucial turning point in the Holocaust. 

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Click here for a 1933-1938 Timeline