Hitler's Consolidation of Power, 1933–1934

When Hitler became Chancellor on 30 January 1933, he did not yet hold total power. He led a coalition government in which only three of the eleven cabinet ministers were Nazis, and he still had to work with President Hindenburg, who could dismiss him, and with a Reichstag he did not control.

Over the next 18 months Hitler removed every one of these limits. He used a deliberate combination of three tools:

Tool	How it worked	Key example
Legality	Using existing laws and the constitution to gain power "legally"	The Enabling Act, March 1933
Terror	Violence and intimidation by the SA and SS	Arrest of Communists after the Reichstag Fire
Removing rivals	Eliminating opponents inside and outside the party	Night of the Long Knives, June 1934

The key exam skill here is explaining how each step built on the last. Consolidation was a sequence, not a single event.

On the night of 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building in Berlin was destroyed by fire. A young Dutch Communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was found at the scene and arrested. Hitler seized the moment to claim the fire was the start of a Communist uprising.

The very next day he persuaded Hindenburg to sign the Decree for the Protection of the People and the State (the "Reichstag Fire Decree"). This emergency decree, issued under Article 48 of the constitution, gave the government sweeping powers:

• It suspended key civil rights, including freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
• It allowed the police to arrest and detain people without trial.
• It let the government take control of regional (state) governments.

Around 4,000 Communists were arrested. With the KPD (Communist Party) leadership in prison or hiding, Hitler had crippled his largest opponents just days before a national election.

Historians still debate who started the fire. The exam does not require you to solve this. What matters is how Hitler used the fire to justify emergency powers and attack the Communists.

Hitler called a new election for 5 March 1933, hoping to win a majority. Despite banning Communist meetings and using SA violence to intimidate opponents, the Nazis won 43.9% of the vote — a large share, but still short of a majority. Only by relying on their Nationalist coalition partners did they control the Reichstag.

Hitler wanted more than a majority: he wanted the power to make laws without parliament. This required the Enabling Act, a change to the constitution that needed a two-thirds majority to pass.

Hitler secured it on 23 March 1933 by:

• Banning the 81 Communist deputies from taking their seats.
• Surrounding the meeting hall with the SA and SS to intimidate the remaining deputies.
• Promising the Catholic Centre Party he would protect the Church, winning their votes.

The Act passed by 444 votes to 94; only the SPD (Social Democrats) voted against. It let Hitler's cabinet pass laws for four years without the Reichstag or the President.

The Enabling Act was the legal foundation of the dictatorship. After it, Hitler could rule by decree. Everything that followed was, on paper, "legal".

With the Enabling Act in place, Hitler used the process of Gleichschaltung ("coordination") to bring all political and social organisations under Nazi control. His targets were the other parties, the trade unions and the state governments.

Date (1933)	Action	Effect
March–April	State governments taken over; Nazi officials installed	Ended regional independence
2 May	Trade unions banned, offices raided, leaders arrested	Removed organised worker opposition
May	Workers forced into the German Labour Front (DAF)	Nazi-controlled replacement for unions
June–July	SPD banned; other parties dissolved themselves	Removed rival parties
14 July	Law made the NSDAP the only legal party	Germany officially a one-party state

Trade unions were an obvious threat because they could organise strikes and mass protest. Banning them on 2 May 1933 (the day after a staged May Day celebration) removed the workers' main way of resisting.

By July 1933 there was no legal opposition left. Hitler had turned a coalition government into a Nazi state in barely five months, largely through legal means backed by terror.

By 1934, the biggest threat to Hitler came from inside his own movement. The SA (Sturmabteilung), the Nazi "stormtroopers", now numbered around two million men — far larger than the German army of 100,000.

Its leader, Ernst Röhm, was ambitious and radical. This created serious problems for Hitler:

• The army feared the SA. Röhm wanted the SA to absorb the regular army, which the generals would never accept. Hitler needed the army's loyalty to secure his rule.
• Business leaders feared Röhm's socialism. Röhm talked of a "second revolution" to redistribute wealth, alarming the industrialists who had backed Hitler.
• The SA was undisciplined. Its street violence embarrassed a government now trying to look respectable.
• Röhm was a personal rival. As SA chief he commanded a huge force loyal to himself, not just to Hitler.

Hitler faced a choice between the SA and the army. He chose the army, whose professional force and control of weapons he needed most, especially with Hindenburg ageing and the question of who would succeed him looming.

On 30 June 1934, Hitler struck. Units of the SS, Hitler's elite bodyguard led by Heinrich Himmler, arrested and shot SA leaders across Germany in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives.

• Ernst Röhm and the senior SA leadership were murdered.
• The purge also killed old political enemies, including former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and figures linked to Vice-Chancellor von Papen.
• The official death toll was announced as around 90, though the true figure was probably higher.

Hitler justified the killings as stopping an SA plot against the state, and the Reichstag declared the murders legal after the event.

The consequences were decisive:

Consequence	Why it mattered
The SA was broken as a rival	The SS became the leading Nazi armed body
The army was reassured	Generals now saw Hitler as their ally, not Röhm's
Rivals were eliminated	Old enemies removed in one operation
Hitler showed he was above the law	The state accepted political murder

This cleared the last obstacle before Hitler could claim total power.

On 2 August 1934, President Paul von Hindenburg died. Hindenburg had been the one person with the constitutional authority to dismiss Hitler, and as a respected war hero he had commanded the army's ultimate loyalty.

Hitler acted immediately. A law passed the day before Hindenburg's death merged the offices of Chancellor and President, and Hitler took the title Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor). He now held both executive roles and was head of state.

The most important step was the army's oath. On 2 August, every soldier swore a personal oath of loyalty — not to Germany or the constitution, but to Adolf Hitler by name:

"I swear by God this sacred oath, that I will render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich and people…"

A plebiscite (public vote) on 19 August 1934 approved Hitler combining the roles, with around 90% voting yes (in an unfree vote). By August 1934, the process was complete: Hitler was the legal dictator of a one-party state, with the army sworn to his person.

1. Muddling the dates of the Reichstag Fire and the Enabling Act

The Reichstag Fire was 27 February 1933; the Enabling Act was 23 March 1933. They are close but distinct, and the fire came first because it created the crisis Hitler used to justify emergency powers.

2. Saying the Enabling Act made Hitler "president"

The Enabling Act let Hitler's cabinet make laws without the Reichstag; it did not make him head of state. Hitler only combined Chancellor and President into "Führer" after Hindenburg died in August 1934.

3. Confusing the SA and the SS

The SA (brownshirts, led by Röhm) were the target of the Night of the Long Knives. The SS (led by Himmler) carried out the killings. Do not swap them.

4. Treating consolidation as one event

Examiners reward answers that show the sequence: Fire → Decree → Enabling Act → banning opposition → Night of the Long Knives → Führer. Each step removed a specific limit on Hitler's power.

5. Overstating how "legal" it all was

Many steps used the constitution, but they were backed by terror and intimidation (arrests, SA violence, political murder). A strong answer notes that "legality" and terror worked together, rather than claiming Hitler took power purely by legal means.