A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

1022 Ch. 25 • Economic Depression and Dictatorship

appealed to their dislike of Russia, their enemy on the eastern front during
the Great War.

Most wealthy businessmen still preferred more traditional nationalists
like Hindenburg and Papen and worried about Hitler’s unpredictability and
his early denunciations of capitalists and promises to create a new elite. The
Nazi Party found only one major donor among big businessmen; a group of
industrialists even tried to convince Hindenburg to leave Hitler out of the
cabinet. Although some big businessmen shared the Nazis’ virulent anti­
Semitism, they were uneasy with the foreign condemnation it brought, and
concerned that it might one day undercut their markets abroad.
But big business nonetheless contributed to the fall of Weimar. Most
Rhineland industrialists were no more in favor of parliamentary government
than were Prussian Junkers. Hitler flattered business leaders and promised
public order, which was good for business, even if achieved at gunpoint.

The Nazi State

Hitler’s appointment as chancellor sparked a wave of systematic and brutal

Nazi attacks on union members, Socialists, Communists, Jews, and some

Catholics who opposed Nazism. Mussolini had consolidated his power over

the Italian state in about three years. It took Hitler less than three months.

During the night of February 27, 1933, a fire caused considerable damage

to the Reichstag building in Berlin. The police arrested a deranged, home­

less Dutch Communist, charging him with arson.

Citing an imaginary Communist plot, Hindenburg issued an emergency

decree suspending virtually all individual rights. Penalties of imprisonment

and even death could be imposed without due legal process as police arrested

thousands of Communists. Hermann Goring (1893-1946), one of Hitler’s

long-time disciples and now minister of the interior in Prussia, authorized

a new auxiliary police force made up of members of the S.A. and other para­

military groups.

But the parliamentary elections of March 5, 1933, which Hitler promised

would be the last held in Nazi Germany and which took place amid enor­

mous Nazi intimidation, did not give Hitler the overwhelming majority he

had anticipated—the Nazis emerged with 44 percent of the vote. Nonethe­

less, Hitler proceeded as if the vote had been unanimous. On March 23,

the cowed Reichstag approved an Enabling Act, which extended the

unlimited “emergency” powers of the Nazis. The liberal political parties of

the Weimar Republic simply disbanded. In July 1933, Hitler banned all po­

litical parties except the Nazi Party. It tripled in size, with 2.5 million

members by the end of 1933, adding so many people that the “old fighters”

who had joined early in the 1920s began to grumble that the party was losing

its so-called elite character.

The Nazis implemented a dictatorial state. In May 1933, they organized

the state-controlled German Labor Front to replace the unions they had