Quick questions on Nazi consolidation and the Nazi state 1933-1939: HSC Modern History National Study

The Reichstag building burned on the night of 27 February 1933. Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found on the premises and arrested. Whether he acted alone (the modern scholarly consensus) or whether the Nazis were involved (the older "self-arson" view) is debated. The political effect is not in dispute.

The 5 March 1933 Reichstag election was held under terror. The Nazis took 43.9 per cent and 288 seats; with the DNVP they had a majority. The KPD won 81 seats but its deputies were already imprisoned or in hiding.

"Coordination" extended Nazi control across society between March 1933 and the end of the year.

The SA, with around 2 million members by 1934, under Ernst Rohm, demanded a "second revolution" and a merger with the Reichswehr. The army leadership (Blomberg, Fritsch) demanded SA destruction as the price of supporting Hitler's succession to Hindenburg.

Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934. Hitler immediately combined the offices of President and Chancellor and took the title Fuhrer und Reichskanzler. The army swore a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler ("I swear by God this sacred oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler"). A plebiscite on 19 August endorsed the change at 89.9 per cent.

Heinrich Himmler became Reichsfuhrer-SS on 6 January 1929. Between 1933 and 1936 he absorbed every police function in Germany. Reinhard Heydrich (head of SD from 1931) ran the combined Security Police (SiPo, Gestapo and Kripo) from 1936 and was appointed head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in September 1939.

Hans Mommsen and Ian Kershaw describe the Nazi state as polycratic: competing agencies (Party Chancellery under Bormann, Reich Chancellery under Lammers, SS under Himmler, Four-Year Plan under Goering, Foreign Ministry under Ribbentrop) jostled for influence by anticipating Hitler's wishes. Kershaw's phrase "working towards the Fuhrer" captures the process. Hitler avoided routine administration; the cabinet last met as a full body in February 1938.

Joseph Goebbels became Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda on 13 March 1933. The Reich Chamber of Culture (22 September 1933) controlled press, radio, film, theatre, music, and literature.

The Confessing Church (Niemoller, Bonhoeffer) opposed Nazi interference. Pope Pius XI's encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (March 1937) attacked Nazi racial policy. The Edelweiss Pirates and Swing Youth represented youth non-conformity. Detlev Peukert (Inside Nazi Germany, 1987) distinguishes "opposition" (organised political resistance, crushed by 1934) from "non-conformity" (cultural dissent, which persisted).

Ian Kershaw (Hitler: Hubris, 1998; The Hitler Myth, 1987) supplies the structuralist framework: "working towards the Fuhrer" describes how subordinates radicalised policy on their own initiative.

It was passed under armed SA presence in the Kroll Opera House and after 10,000 KPD deputies had been arrested. The SPD alone voted against.

It produced radicalisation, not paralysis. Use Kershaw's "working towards the Fuhrer" precisely.

Gellately's denunciation research is now standard. Acknowledge both.

30 June to 2 July 1934, before Hindenburg's death (2 August), not after.