Hitler

legislation passed in April – discriminating against the admission of Jews to the legal profession, excluding Jewish doctors from treating patients covered by the national insurance scheme, and limiting the number of Jewish schoolchildren permitted in schools – were all hurriedly improvised to meet not simply pressure from below but
de facto
measures which were already being implemented in various parts of the country. Hitler’s role was largely confined to giving his sanction to the legalization of measures already often illegally introduced by party activists with vested interests in the discrimination running alongside whatever ideological motivation they possessed.
    The seismic shift in the political scene which had taken place in the month or so following the Reichstag fire had left the Jews fully exposed to Nazi violence, discrimination, and intimidation. It had also totally undermined the position of Hitler’s political opponents. There was now little fight left in oppositional parties. The readiness to compromise soon became a readiness to capitulate.
    Already in March, Theodor Leipart, the chairman of the trade union confederation, the ADGB, had tried to blow with the wind, distancing the unions from the SPD and offering a declaration of loyalty to the new regime. It was to no avail. The planning of the destruction of the unions was undertaken by the boss of the still relatively insignificant Nazi union, the Nationalsozialistische Betriebszellenorganisation (NSBO, National Socialist Factory Cell Organization), Reinhold Muchow and, increasingly, by Robert Ley, the NSDAP’s Organization Leader. Hitler was initially hesitant, until the idea was proposed of coupling it with a propaganda coup. Along the lines of the ‘Day of Potsdam’, Goebbels prepared another huge spectacular for 1 May, when the National Socialists usurped the traditional celebration of the International and turned it into the ‘Day of National Labour’. The ADGB took a full part in the rallies and parades. Over 10 million people altogether turned out – though for many a factory workforce attendance was scarcely voluntary.
    The following day, the razzmatazz over, SA and NSBO squads occupiedthe offices and bank branches of the Social Democratic trade union movement, confiscated its funds, and arrested its functionaries. Within an hour, the ‘action’ was finished. The largest democratic trade union movement in the world had been destroyed. In a matter of days, its members had been incorporated into the massive German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF), founded on 10 May under Robert Ley’s leadership.
    The once-mighty Social Democratic Party of Germany, the largest labour movement that Europe had known, was also at an end. It had been forced during the last years of Weimar into one unholy compromise after another in its attempts to uphold its legalistic traditions while at the same time hoping to fend off the worst. When the worst came, it was ill-equipped. The depression years and internal demoralization had taken their toll. Otto Wels’s speech on 23 March had shown courage. But it was far too little, and far too late. Support was haemorrhaging away. During March and April, the SPD’s paramilitary arm, the huge Reichsbanner, was forced into dissolution. Party branches were closing down. Activists were under arrest, or had fled abroad. Some already began preparations for illegality. Alongside the fear, there was wide disillusionment with Social Democracy. The flight into exile of many party leaders – necessary safety measure that it was – enhanced a sense of desertion. The SPD was by now a rudderless ship. Otto Wels and other party leaders left for Prague, where a party headquarters in exile had already been established. All party activities within the Reich were to be banned, the SPD’s parliamentary representation abolished, its assets confiscated.
    The remaining parties now rapidly caved in, falling domino-style. The Staatspartei (formerly the DDP, the Deutsche Demokratische Partei) dissolved itself on 28 June, followed a day later by the dissolution of the DVP. The Nazis’ conservative coalition partners, the DNVP – renamed in May the German National Front (Deutschnationale Front, DNF) – also capitulated on 27 June. It had been losing members to the NSDAP at an increasing rate; its grass-roots organizations had been subjected to repression and intimidation; the Stahlhelm – many of whose members supported