LEGAL CHANCELLOR TO LEGAL DICTATOR". HOW VALID IS THIS ASSESSMENT OF THE NATURE AND THE EXTENT OF THE NAZI CONSOLIDATION OF POWER DURING 1933?

In recent years many historians have come to the conclusion that during the year of 1933 Hitler was able to move from a chancellor of Germany to its dictator. A dictator is defined as a ruler who is not bound by constitution or laws. A dictator can also be a person who behaves in a tyrannical manner. So was this the position that Hitler found himself in at the end of 1933. Was he bound by a constitution or laws and did he behave in a 'tyrannical' manner. Through looking and analyzing the key events of this year we will be able to answer this question.

At the beginning of 1933 Hitler found himself in a very promising position. When Hitler's conservative supporters including Franz Von Papen allowed Hitler to become chancellor on the 30th January 1933 they did it because they felt they could control him. Papen himself was minister president of Prussia ultimately having control over the police as well as the civil service. He felt that by obtaining this position he would be able to stop Hitler from

Further developments were also made in the justice system. 10,000 lawyers were made to publicly swear that they would "strive as German jurists to follow the course of our Fuhrer to the end of all our days". In April Hitler gave himself power to remove any judge whose sentences he saw as being to soft or not loyal enough to the nazi party. Effectively this therefore meant that judges could no longer make decisions based on the law if they knew it was going against the Nazis. They were forced to convict people for crimes they had not committed.

Gleichschaltung is a term that describes the process by which German institutions such as the civil service and trade unions were made to follow the ideas of the nazi party. This is infact what Hitler had achieved by around May during 1933. Firstly the civil service was independent and Hitler realized that this could therefore ruin his plans for government. A law passed in April meant that the civil service could be reorganized so that it met the needs of the nazi party. All members were to be approved of for their political reliability. Expulsion met those who could not prove this because total obedience to the government was now expected. The Aryan Clause in the act also meant that Jews could not enter the civil service as well as the courts, teaching, and government service.

In the Landers (federal states) there was being much trouble caused by the SS and the SA. Describing the democratically elected governments in these states as incapable of keeping order, Hitler ordered that Nazi Reich commissioners should replace them on the grounds of protecting the Weimar constitution. We must remember that it was the emergency decree after the reichstag fire that enabled Hitler to do this. By the beginning of the following year total control over these governments was achieved by dissolving the parliaments of the separate states, and by declaring their governments was to be supervised by the Reich minister of the interior. A federal system founded in 1867 was now completely dead!

One of the

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1380
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)