The Nazi Dictatorship 1933-1939 - TCE Modern History (Tasmania)
“Analyse the consolidation of Nazi power and the nature of the Nazi state, 1933-1939”
You need to explain how, after becoming Chancellor on 30 January 1933, Hitler converted a democracy into a one-party totalitarian state within eighteen months, and how the Nazi regime then used terror, propaganda, economic recovery and racial policy to control German society up to the outbreak of war in 1939.
What this dot point is asking
This depth study focuses on the machinery of dictatorship and the nature of the Nazi state, rather than the earlier story of Weimar's collapse.
Consolidation came with startling speed. The Reichstag Fire of 27 February 1933 was blamed on communists and used to pass the Reichstag Fire Decree, suspending civil liberties. After the March 1933 election the Enabling Act of 23 March 1933 allowed Hitler to make laws without the Reichstag, the legal basis of dictatorship. Through Gleichschaltung (coordination) trade unions were banned in May, other parties were dissolved, and by July 1933 the Nazi Party was the only legal party. The Night of the Long Knives on 30 June 1934 destroyed the SA leadership, including Ernst Rohm, reassuring the army and big business. When Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, Hitler merged the offices of Chancellor and President as Fuhrer, and the armed forces swore a personal oath of loyalty to him.
Two pillars held the regime together. Heinrich Himmler built the SS, the Gestapo and the concentration camp system, beginning with Dachau in 1933, to crush opposition. Joseph Goebbels, as Minister of Propaganda, controlled press, radio, film and mass rallies such as Nuremberg to manufacture consent and the Hitler cult.
The regime reshaped society. The Hitler Youth and League of German Girls indoctrinated the young, while the slogan "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche" (children, kitchen, church) pushed women out of work and towards motherhood. The churches were pressured through a concordat with the Vatican in 1933 and the creation of a Nazi-aligned "German Christian" movement, though figures such as Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer resisted. Workers were given organisations such as the Strength Through Joy leisure scheme in exchange for losing independent unions.
Economic recovery underpinned popular acceptance. Hjalmar Schacht's policies and large public works, including the autobahns, cut unemployment, and from 1936 the Four Year Plan under Hermann Goering drove rearmament and the pursuit of autarky (self-sufficiency) in preparation for war. Recovery was real but increasingly geared to military spending and concealed strains.
A frequent error is to picture the regime as perfectly organised and totally controlled. In fact it was a tangle of rival agencies and overlapping authorities competing for Hitler's favour, a system structuralist historians describe as polycratic and chaotic. Terror and propaganda were powerful, but consent also rested on prosperity, nationalism and ordinary Germans accommodating the regime.
Racial policy was central from the start. Persecution escalated from the boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933 to the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which stripped Jews of citizenship and banned marriage with non-Jews. The Kristallnacht pogrom of 9 to 10 November 1938 saw synagogues burned and thousands arrested, marking a violent radicalisation. Other groups, including Roma, the disabled (murdered later in the T4 euthanasia programme), homosexuals and political prisoners, were also targeted. This persecution before 1939 set the stage for the genocide that would follow once war began.
Historians debate how the dictatorship worked and how far Germans supported it. Intentionalists such as Karl Dietrich Bracher stress Hitler's central design and ideology. Structuralists such as Hans Mommsen and Martin Broszat emphasise the chaotic, competing agencies and "cumulative radicalisation" of policy. Historians of everyday life (Alltagsgeschichte) ask how ordinary Germans experienced and accommodated the regime. For TASC source work, weigh terror against consent, and central direction against institutional chaos, when judging the nature of the Nazi state.
The "Hitler myth" is a productive concept for essays. The historian Ian Kershaw argued that propaganda built an image of Hitler as a far-sighted national saviour standing above the corruption and squabbling of party officials, so that many Germans who disliked local Nazis still trusted the Fuhrer. This helps explain how consent and disillusion could coexist: people separated the leader from the regime's failings. Read alongside the structuralist picture of competing agencies "working towards the Fuhrer", it shows the Nazi state as neither a smoothly planned machine nor a simple terror state, but a system in which charismatic authority, propaganda and bureaucratic rivalry interacted. A strong TASC answer uses these interpretations to weigh how control actually operated rather than asserting one cause.
A TASC extended response asks you to trace consolidation as a sequence of legal and illegal steps with analysis at each stage. Plan chronologically before writing.
Step 1: Set the starting point
Establish that Hitler became Chancellor on 30 January 1933 in a coalition, without dictatorial power, so consolidation was still required.
Step 2: Use crisis to suspend liberties
Explain the Reichstag Fire of 27 February 1933 and the decree the next day, which suspended civil liberties and enabled mass arrests, tilting the March election.
Step 3: Secure the legal dictatorship
Identify the Enabling Act of 23 March 1933 as the legal foundation, then trace Gleichschaltung: unions banned in May, other parties gone by July, the Lander brought under central control.
Step 4: Remove rivals and merge offices
Explain the Night of the Long Knives on 30 June 1934, which eliminated Rohm and the SA leadership to reassure the army, and the merging of Chancellor and President as Fuhrer after Hindenburg's death in August 1934.
Step 5: Reach a judgement
Conclude that consolidation combined legal forms with terror, dismantling democracy from within in eighteen months, and decide whether legality or violence mattered more.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of TASC exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice10 marksSource A is a 1936 photograph of a mass Nuremberg rally staged by the Nazi regime. With reference to its origin, purpose and content, assess the usefulness of this source for a historian investigating how the Nazi state maintained control.Show worked answer →
A TASC source-evaluation question wants origin, purpose and content tied to a judgement about usefulness for the stated inquiry, not a description of the photograph.
Origin and purpose. Identify the source as official propaganda imagery from a 1936 Nuremberg rally, staged and photographed under Goebbels to project unity, order and the Hitler cult. Its purpose is to inspire and intimidate.
Usefulness. Argue it is highly useful as evidence of the propaganda pillar of control: the manufacture of consent through spectacle and the Fuhrer myth. It is much less useful as evidence of the terror apparatus or of private dissent, because it shows only the image the regime wished to present.
Make the analytical move that a staged propaganda image is very useful as evidence of method and intent but unreliable as a measure of genuine popular feeling.
Markers reward the origin-purpose-content link, a judgement relative to the question, and awareness that a propaganda source still reveals perspective.
Practice20 marksTo what extent did terror, rather than consent, hold the Nazi state together between 1933 and 1939?Show worked answer →
A 20 mark extended response needs a clear thesis weighing terror against consent, sustained across structured paragraphs.
Thesis. Argue that terror was essential but that consent, built on prosperity, propaganda and nationalism, was equally important, so the regime rested on both.
For terror. The SS, Gestapo and concentration camps from 1933, the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, and the crushing of opposition created fear and removed alternatives.
For consent. Weigh economic recovery and falling unemployment, the appeal of national revival and order, propaganda and the Hitler cult, and the willingness of many Germans to accommodate the regime.
Judgement. Conclude that terror set the limits of dissent while consent gave the regime genuine support, so neither alone explains its grip. Reference the structuralist view of a polycratic, chaotic state and historians of everyday life.
Markers reward a weighed thesis, precise evidence and a reasoned judgement that addresses "to what extent".