Word: hitlers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hindenburg and the other conservatives were confident that they could keep Hitler under control. They held eight of the eleven Cabinet seats, including such power centers as the Foreign Ministry and the Economics Ministry. What they did not seem to appreciate was that Goring was not only a national Minister Without Portfolio but also the Prussian interior minister; that put him in charge of the police in the state of Prussia, which covered Berlin and two-thirds of Germany...
...Hitler had no sooner taken office than he had Hindenburg dissolve the Reichstag and order new elections. With Goring in charge of the police, 40,000 Nazis became special officers, invading opposition meetings, beating and arresting opposition speakers. Just a week before the election, Berliners saw a red glow in the night sky and learned that the Reichstag was on fire. At the scene, Goring was shouting wildly: "This is a Communist crime against the new government! We will show no mercy! Every Communist deputy must be shot...
Independent experts assumed from the beginning that the Nazis had started the fire, but Hitler immediately made it his pretext for seizing power. He persuaded Hindenburg to sign a decree that gave the government broad powers to make arrests, search homes, confiscate property and impose "restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion." The Storm Troopers were in power now, and mass arrests began. "My mission is only to destroy and exterminate," said Goring...
...their last free (or semifree) elections, held March 5, 1933, the Germans gave their new dictator 44% of their votes. Hitler never won a majority in an election, but that 44% brought the Nazis, along with their right-wing allies of the Nationalist Party, their first majority in the Reichstag. So Hitler presented the Reichstag with an "enabling act" that would surrender most of its powers to what was now very much his Cabinet. Some Communists and socialists -- those not already in jail -- protested, but while the Nazi delegates cheered and shouted, the Reichstag docilely voted itself out of business...
Throughout these first years of the Third Reich, Hitler imposed a process that the Nazis called Gleichschaltung, which means standardization or making things the same. All political parties except the Nazis were banned as divisive. Leftist union leaders were arrested and replaced by Nazis preaching the harmonious unity of the working classes (strikes were banned). Joseph Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister, rallied students to a vast bonfire outside the University of Berlin, where the works of illustrious liberals (Emile Zola) and Jews (Heinrich Heine) were consigned to the flames. Jews were barred from public office, the civil service and professions like...