Sign up to access the complete lesson and track your progress!
Unlock This CourseBy August 1934 Hitler had the power to make any law he liked. But laws alone could not stop people talking, meeting or plotting against him. So the Nazis built a police state. Its aim was simple: to make opposition too dangerous to try.
The man in charge was Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS. In 1936 Hitler also made him Chief of the German Police. From then on every police force in Germany answered to the head of the SS, and through him to Hitler.
The SS had begun as Hitler's small bodyguard. After the Night of the Long Knives it answered only to Hitler. Its men wore black uniforms and were picked for their loyalty and their 'pure' German blood. By 1939 it had about 240,000 members. The SS could arrest people and hold them without trial, and it ran the concentration camps.
The SD was the intelligence service of the SS, set up in 1931 and led by Reinhard Heydrich. Its job was to find out who the enemies of the Nazis were. It kept files on anyone it suspected and reported on the mood of the German people.
The Gestapo was the secret state police. Hermann Göring set it up in Prussia in April 1933, and Himmler took control of it in April 1934. Its officers wore ordinary clothes, so nobody knew who they were. They could tap telephones, open letters, search homes and arrest people without a charge.
The Gestapo's strongest weapon was protective custody. A person could be taken away, often at night, and sent to a concentration camp with no trial and no end date. A law of 1936 put the Gestapo above the courts. No judge could question what it did.
Key terms:
The first concentration camp opened in March 1933 at Dachau, near Munich. Others followed, including Sachsenhausen near Berlin (1936), Buchenwald (1937) and RavensbrĂĽck, a camp for women (1939). From 1934 the camps were run by the SS.
The first prisoners were political opponents: communists, Social Democrats and trade union leaders. Later the camps also held other people the Nazis wanted out of sight, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, gay men, beggars and Jews. Prisoners wore coloured badges to show why they were there. Political prisoners wore a red triangle.
Life in the camps was brutal. Prisoners did hard labour on little food, beatings were common and some prisoners were killed. When the war began in 1939 the camps held about 21,000 people. Many more had been held for a time and then let out. Those who came home were often too frightened to say what they had seen, and that silence spread the fear even further.
The Nazis could not watch everyone themselves, so they used ordinary people. Every town was divided into small blocks of about 40 to 60 homes. Each block had a Block Warden, who called on every household. He noted who did not hang out a flag on Nazi holidays, who did not give the Hitler salute and who grumbled, and he passed it on.
Many Germans also informed on each other. Neighbours, workmates and even family members reported jokes about Hitler or careless remarks. Some did it because they believed in the Nazis. Others did it to settle a private quarrel. The result was that people learned to be careful about what they said, even at home.
In a free country the courts protect people from the government. Hitler made sure German courts could not do this.
So a German accused of opposing the Nazis had nowhere to turn. The police, the judge and the prison were all controlled by the same people.
Open opposition almost vanished. The leaders of the Communists and the Social Democrats were in camps or had fled abroad. Between 1933 and the start of the war in September 1939 there were no big strikes, no mass protests and no open attempt to overthrow Hitler. Fear did most of the work: people kept quiet because they believed they were always being watched.
The Gestapo was much smaller than people thought. In 1937 the city of Essen had about 650,000 people and only 43 Gestapo officers. It relied on informers, so its power rested on the help of ordinary Germans. Fear could force people to obey, but it could not make them loyal. Many still grumbled in private, and small secret groups went on passing round leaflets against the Nazis.
Terror was also only one method of control. Most Germans were never arrested, and many supported Hitler for other reasons. You will weigh those up in the lessons called Censorship and Propaganda in Nazi Germany and Work and Bread: Nazi Employment Policies.
Do not mix up the SS and the Gestapo. The SS was a huge uniformed organisation. The Gestapo was a small secret police force in plain clothes. Also, do not write that the camps of the 1930s were death camps. They were brutal prisons used to frighten and punish opponents. The death camps were built later, during the war.
(b) Explain two effects of the Nazi police state on opposition to Hitler in Germany in the years 1933-39. [8 marks]
One effect of the police state was that organised opposition was removed. The Gestapo could arrest people without charge and hold them in protective custody, and the first concentration camp opened at Dachau in March 1933. The first prisoners were communists, Social Democrats and trade union leaders, the very people most able to lead resistance. With their leaders locked away without trial, and with judges under Nazi control, opposition groups had nobody to organise them and no court to protect them. This meant there were no mass protests or big strikes against Hitler before 1939.
A second effect was that ordinary Germans became too afraid to criticise the Nazis. Block Wardens watched every block of 40 to 60 homes, and neighbours and workmates informed on each other to the Gestapo. Because Gestapo officers wore plain clothes, people believed they were everywhere, although a city like Essen had only 43 of them. As a result people stopped speaking freely, even at home, so opposition shrank to private grumbling and a few small secret groups.
What lifts this to the top level: it gives two separate effects, backs each with precise facts, and shows step by step how the police state caused each one.
You must explain two effects. One effect alone, however well written, cannot score more than 4 of the 8 marks. Here, make your two effects clearly different, for example what happened to opposition leaders and what happened to ordinary people. For each one, use a linking phrase such as 'this meant that' or 'as a result' to show how the police state led to the effect.