Legal methods used to consolidate Nazi power

Organizations

• German Labour Front (May 1933)
  • Replaced independent trade union
  • Social and productive community
  • Labour work camps – built public works projects
    • Canals, bridges, railways, sense of purpose to many Germans
    • RAD = state labour service, promoted German recovery
    • Compulsory by 1935
  • Farmers, workers, and the middle class must unite to contribute the bricks wherewith to build the new Reich.
• Hitler Youth
  • Forcibly merged youth groups ⇒ taught eugenics
  • 2 million members by 1933
  • Compulsory in Dec 1936
• Encouraged
  • Conformity, Indoctrination, The ideal child and youth
  • Political movements – popular before 1920s
  • 60% young children in 1935

Parliamentary changes (see: opposition)

• Reichstag fire – February 1933
  • Van Der Lubbe (communist) was blamed
  • “Communist conspiracy”
  • Reichstag fire decree → gave Hitler Article 48 powers

1. Emergency powers = Law for the Protection of People and State in Feb 1933 (X FOP/FOS/FOA)
   1. Banned the communist party
2. Election success = March 1933 – difficult for non-Nazi candidates ⇒ more power in parliament (won 288 seats) – ⅔ of the parliament to change the constitution

• Nationalists joined forces with the Nazis, communists were not allowed to take seats, over half of the Reichstag = Hitler
  • The Enabling Act
    • Right to make laws for 4 years without consent of Reichstag