Marburg was just one of many German cities that found all areas of life affected by the Nazis’ coming to power in 1933. And this showed itself in the oddest corners of city social life. For example, the leaders of the gymnastics and sports club decided to imitate the new style of government ruling Germany. Its chairman, a high-school teacher named Dr Wilhelm Stier, was re-elected with the support of local Nazis. But now he was styled the führer of the club and in May dismantled its democratic constitution; instead of elected organizers, he appointed those who would henceforth run the club. The same trend occurred in the local swimming club. Only here, its new führer declared that further changes were unnecessary as its leadership and activities had ‘always been strictly nationalistic’. Another local sports club, in May, selected new leaders to the sound of the Nazi salutes of ‘Sieg Heil’. It should be noted that – despite this enthusiastic display of loyalty – all these loyal Nazis had only joined the party since January.1 Such displays of mirroring the new government were happening across Germany.
Hitler came to power in January 1933, legally and constitutionally. This is a very important point: it affected how most Germans regarded the regime. Despite the fact that it would soon become one of the most violent and criminal governments in world history, it had been brought to power legally.
This meant that for most Germans – even for its opponents – it was the legitimate government. This would make it harder to oppose and eventually to attempt to overthrow it, even when the extent of its criminality and violence was clear. It also partly helps explain why so few Germans ever really opposed the regime between 1933 and 1945. It was not only down to its fearsome violence, it was also partly because of the German tradition of obedience to the state and the fact that Hitler had come to power legally.
However, in January 1933, all this lay ahead. Indeed, there were those at this point who believed that the Nazis were on the brink of being ‘tamed’. They assumed that bringing Hitler into government would force him to modify his more extreme demands as he faced the realities of running a nation in cooperation with other political groups. They also wanted to harness the energy and dynamism of the Nazis to crush communism and create a more stable and united Germany. To those such as von Papen, who had engineered this piece of political tightrope-walking, it seemed achievable.2 They assumed that, instead of falling into a chasm of violence and division, Germany would develop into a stronger and less volatile society.3
That this would follow right-wing, authoritarian and militaristic policies – in contrast to the democratic and multi-party democracy of the Weimar Republic – was acceptable to many of the elites within Germany, ‘who perceived them as a vehicle for restoring their own dominance’.4 These elites had never been reconciled to Weimar and the democratic constitution; they hated the left and trade union power; they wanted to scrap, or radically revise, the Treaty of Versailles and looked forward to a point when Germany would once again play a leading (and indeed dominant) role within Europe. Their aim for Germany was similar at key points to that of the Nazis and, whilst they might disagree over the extent, methods and speed of such a transformation, there was much in common between the ambitions of these elites and Hitler. Later, however – post 1945 – many of their members would be in denial about their own responsibility in making the Nazi disaster possible.5
Furthermore, given the way in which many other European countries developed in the 1920s and were continuing to do so, in the face of the depression of the 1930s, this drift into dictatorial, militaristic, right-wing government was part of a growing trend and would not have seemed particularly unusual. Germany seemed to be travelling on the same road as Italy, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal and Yugoslavia. And it was a road that, after 1933, would be followed by Austria and Spain and would be admired by right-wing groups across Western Europe (even in countries such as France, which remained democracies) before the outbreak of the Second World War.6
Even those who feared the Nazis could console themselves with the thought that this Hitler government was only a temporary arrangement. Sebastian Haffner, a Berlin lawyer and journalist opposed to Nazism, in January 1933, could conclude: ‘All things considered, the government was no cause for concern. It was only a matter of what would come after it …’7 But this hope was misplaced.
Hitler was in a vulnerable position in January 1933. He was not a dictator. At any time, he could be dismissed by President Hindenburg, just as recent chancellors such as Brüning, von Papen and von Schleicher had been before him. More than this, when Hitler became Chancellor only two major offices of state were held by Nazis: Hitler was Reich Chancellor and Wilhelm Frick was Minister of the Interior.
However, Hermann Göring was appointed Reich Minister Without Portfolio and Acting Prussian Minister of the Interior, which gave him direct control over the police in most of Germany. So, in fact, the Nazis were in a potentially more powerful position than their allies realized. With this latter government position under their control it would be possible to ensure that the police system ran to their advantage and to unleash the SA on their enemies. As the French ambassador noted (referring to the conservatives and nationalists who believed they were using Hitler): ‘They have believed themselves to be very ingenious, ridding themselves of the wolf by introducing him into the sheepfold.’8
However, at first, it seemed that there had been a return to democratic government within Germany since the Chancellor was no longer dependent on the President passing emergency decrees. This Chancellor could actually command a majority in the Reichstag when Nazi votes were added to those of their allies and likely allies amongst the other nationalists.
Hitler, though, had no intention of remaining in this dependent position. His aim was Gleichschaltung (coordination). This German word can also be translated as ‘bringing into line’. It was a phrase borrowed from the electrical industry and described a situation where all the switches in an electrical circuit were coordinated, so that one master switch would make all the electrical circuits active. It was also used where alternating current was changed to direct current, allowing electricity to flow in one direction only.9 What this really meant, as the Nazis used it, was the Nazification of German politics and society. Their aim was to create a situation where the whole of German society would respond to the orders and instructions of the Nazi leadership embodied by Hitler.10
This process of ‘coordination’ and of ‘bringing Germany into line’ would not just be something imposed from above. Instead, all over Germany, enthusiastic Nazis set about infiltrating and taking over their local communities. This included areas as non-political as local singing clubs, orchestras11 and women’s groups. Nothing would be allowed to have an existence independent of Nazi control and at variance with Nazi ideas. This aim extended from dominating government in Berlin, through taking over government in the länder (states) of Germany, down to controlling every club and institution in the smallest town and village. In education, it affected the whole spectrum, from kindergarten to university.12
Whether this would be possible only time would tell, but it was a key characteristic of the Nazi plan for the transformation of German society. In time, they hoped that this would create a Völksgemeinschaft (a racial community) in which class divisions and ‘racial impurities’ would be removed. Such a German nation would, in the Nazi view, be a truly united and harmonious society, entirely geared to Nazi values and aims. It would exclude the Jews and others who were considered by the Nazis as not being members of the racial community, such as the mentally ill and those with severe learning difficulties and genetic disorders.
The Nazi leadership described their government as a ‘national uprising’ and this described both the legal manner of Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor and the revolutionary seizure of control of Germany by ordinary Nazis that followed. This feature of Nazi rule is important to understand. Ordinary party members and their allies actively participated in this transformation and the conservative elites who had brought Hitler to power soon found that they had unleashed a flood of activity, which they were quite incapable of stopping. And, once the flood had started, many non-Nazis also decided it was safest to actively cooperate in this Nazi takeover.
As February 1933 progressed, attacks on the Communist Party were extended to the Social Democrats too. Their meetings were broken up and people assaulted and killed. With the police and the army now firmly working against them it was almost impossible for these groups to defend themselves. If they had fought back they would have been bloodily crushed and, even faced with defeat, the Communist Party and the Social Democrats would not work together to defend democracy.
It was with the aim of crushing opposition that Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to call another Reichstag election. Before it took place, the Nazi leadership set in motion three important developments. First, on 3 February, Hitler met the leaders of the German military. He promised them money to rearm Germany, the reintroduction of conscription, the end of the Treaty of Versailles and their independence from politics. Furthermore, he enticed them with the future prospect of invading Eastern Europe and ‘Germanizing’ it by expelling millions of the native Slav inhabitants. He also promised that the government would deal with the ‘threat’ of the communists. Second, on 20 February, he met the leaders of German industry. He promised them he would bring about the end of the communist threat and would ensure the security of German capitalism. In return, they promised 3 million marks to help pay for the Nazis’ election campaign. After Hitler had left the meeting, Göring promised those present that the forthcoming election would be the last, not just for four years but probably for the next hundred years. There is no record of anyone present being shocked at this statement. Finally, on 17 February, Göring, in his capacity as head of the police, urged the police to cooperate with the SA and to use whatever force was considered necessary against communists. Chillingly, he promised: ‘Police officers, who in the execution of their duty, use their firearms, will be supported by me without regard to the effect of their shots.’
Göring went even further on 22 February, when 50,000 SA, SS and Steel Helmets (First World War veterans) were actually brought into the police as auxiliary support units, to break into the offices of the Communist Party and trade unions. Despite the Nazis’ reputation for street violence this fusion was relatively easy to establish because Nazi violence had traditionally been directed at communists and then Jews and Polish workers; it had rarely been directed against the police.13 The police were being turned into a branch of the Nazi organization, but such political use of the police did not start with the Nazis. In 1932, von Papen had begun to sack senior police officers who were politically unacceptable to him, indicating the way politics was going even before Hitler became Chancellor. Nevertheless, the Nazis radically accelerated the trend.
On 23 February, the police launched a massive raid on the Communist Party’s headquarters in Berlin and claimed to have found evidence of plans for a revolutionary uprising. It was almost certainly faked. While the communists seem to have made plans for a long period of illegal, or semi-legal, activity under government persecution and had probably hidden a large number of weapons, they do not seem to have been planning a revolt. Under orders from Moscow, their official stance was that the Nazis were the last expression of capitalism in crisis and would soon collapse – to be followed by the victory of communism in Germany.
Then, on 27 February, the Reichstag building was set on fire.14 The police arrested a Dutch ex-communist, Marinus van der Lubbe. Immediately, the Nazi leaders claimed that this was the start of a communist uprising. The argument still rages as to whether this event was a total Nazi set-up or whether they simply made maximum use of a fortuitous act by this mentally unstable Dutchman.
On one hand, fires seem to have been started all over the building, suggesting that it was the work of several people. The communist leadership were taken completely unawares by the event, despite the fact that the Nazis held them responsible for the crime. In fact, the communist leader in the Reichstag surrendered himself to prove that no revolution was being planned. The lack of danger posed by the communists is revealed in the fact that the Communist Party was not banned until some time after its so-called ‘revolution’ had been crushed. All of this suggests that it was a Nazi set-up.
One the other hand, van der Lubbe was a genuine arsonist. On 25 February, he had attempted to set fire to a welfare office, the town hall and a former royal palace in one area of Berlin. Regarding the likelihood of one man causing such a widespread blaze, there is a possibility that the dome above the Reichstag chamber acted as a chimney, helping the fire to spread and enabling one man to cause so much damage. And van der Lubbe had sufficient materials on him to start several fires. While there is no evidence that he was ordered to burn the Reichstag by the Communist Party, he carried communist leaflets and the Nazis seized on this; but it seems to represent no more than his own anti-Nazi campaign. As if this was not complex enough, Rudolf Diels, head of the Prussian Political Police, interrogated van der Lubbe and in his memoirs, published in 1950, recalled how he was sure that the Dutchman acted alone. Interestingly, von Papen entertained exactly the same opinion.15
Whatever the exact circumstances, the key point lies in how the Nazis made use of the event. Hindenburg was persuaded to pass an emergency decree on 28 February, ‘For the protection of people and state’. Paragraph one of this decree restricted personal liberties, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right of assembly and the privacy of postal services. Paragraph two gave central government power to overrule regional governments. This decree provided the legal basis for the subsequent suppression of opposition. By the end of April, about 25,000 opponents of the Nazis had been arrested in Prussia alone as a result of this emergency decree. Temporary prisons, the forerunners of the concentration camps, were set up and torture was used on many of those arrested. In these ways, the decree was the first major step towards outright dictatorship.
Hitler’s government had all the advantages in the run-up to the March 1933 election. Its propaganda campaign, organized by Joseph Goebbels, used all the resources of the state, and the police were used to intimidate communist opponents. The Communist Party was not actually banned but the police and SA attacked huge numbers of individual communists and their offices and homes. By allowing the Communist Party to remain in existence, Hitler hoped to avoid a violent reaction by its supporters and also hoped to reduce the number of votes that might otherwise go to the Social Democrats.
SA violence, over which Hitler and his immediate leadership group had no direct control, exploded across Germany. This was very much in keeping with the methods of Nazi leadership developed since the 1920s. The upper leadership called for violent action in general terms, and the party activists and SA and SS understood the cue and put it into specific, violent practice in their own areas as they decided. It was a form of leadership that deliberately initiated extreme violence, but which tried not to be too closely implicated in the brutality that actually took place on the ground. It also allowed party activists to let loose their own anger and to experiment with different ways of putting violent orders into practice. This was later seen most clearly in Nazi policy towards Jewish people, but to start with it was felt by the communists.
There certainly was a national fear of a communist uprising in the aftermath of the Reichstag fire. Yet, despite this, the Nazis only gained about 44 per cent of the votes cast. Hitler was well short of the 66 per cent needed to change the Weimar constitution. But added to the 8 per cent of votes cast for the Nazis’ allies, the nationalists, Hitler’s government had 52 per cent of the vote and an overall majority in the Reichstag.
Amazingly, the Communist Party, despite having most of its candidates arrested, or in hiding, won 12.3 per cent of the vote and the Social Democrats won 18.3 per cent. This meant that just under a third of the German electorate were still prepared to vote for strongly anti-Nazi parties, despite the violence and intimidation. The Catholic Centre Party took 11.2 per cent of the vote. Even in what was by now a semi-dictatorship, the Nazis and their nationalist allies had only won 20 million votes in a country whose electorate numbered 45million in 1933. At no time did the Nazis win over the majority of the electorate.
Nevertheless, the Nazi success was enough to unleash a wave of violent action across Germany. The brutality of the SA increased dramatically. Nazis seized control of local and city governments, knowing they could not be stopped. Between 6 and 15 March, Nazis in the police and auxiliary units of the SA and the SS raised the swastika flag on all official buildings across Germany. Ministers who objected were forced to resign, or were put under house arrest. Nazi state commissioners were appointed, with the power to replace all non-Nazi local police chiefs and government ministers with their own appointees. The federal system of German government had now been replaced by central control.
As the repression increased, Heinrich Himmler, commander of the SS, took charge of the police in Bavaria and accelerated the process of arresting political opponents. On 22 March, the first concentration camp was opened at Dachau, near Munich. Those considered enemies of the new Nazi state were held without trial and subjected to torture. Many were murdered. Soon makeshift camps were being established across Germany. At least 100,000 people were arrested in 1933 and 600 were murdered.
In the middle of this unrest, the Nazis realized that it was necessary to reassure their conservative allies that order was not totally breaking down. On 12 March, the black, red and gold flag of the Weimar Republic was officially replaced with the black, white and red of the pre-1919 imperial German flag. It was a gesture designed to wipe away all official traces of the Weimar years and to suggest that the ‘old’ (pre-1919) Germany and the ‘new’ Nazi Germany were one and the same thing.
On 21 March, President Hindenburg joined Chancellor Hitler in a service of national reconciliation and renewal at Potsdam, near Berlin. Occurring on the first day of spring, the Nazi-dominated press was quick to draw parallels with the beginning of a new ‘season of growth’ in the life of the German nation.16 As one Bavarian newspaper put it: ‘What is taking place in Germany today is the struggle not only for the renewal of the idea of the state, but also for the reshaping of the German soul …’17 The event was followed by the spontaneous planting of hundreds of ‘Hitler-oaks’ across Germany, as local communities competed to show their Nazi loyalty.
Potsdam had a special place in German history as it was closely associated with the famous 18th-century German king Frederick the Great (king of Prussia, 1740–86). Frederick the Great had inherited a small, northern German kingdom and then, during his reign, he had turned it into a powerful European state, mostly through his military achievements. It was an image of power and transformation that most Germans looked back to with approval. By holding the event at Potsdam, the Nazi government was sending out two important signals: first, it too was set to revive German greatness and, second, it was in line with the hopes of traditional German society and its elites in government, the military and industry.
On 23 March, the new Reichstag met for the first time after the March elections. Due to the Reichstag fire, it met in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin. With the election secure and the Potsdam Memorial service over, the Nazis now acted to secure their hold on power. The Reichstag passed the ‘Law for the Removal of Distress from the People and Reich’, which is better known as ‘the Enabling Act’. Under the Enabling Act, the Reichstag transferred its power to Hitler as Chancellor for four years. Hitler could now rule without the agreement of the Reichstag or the President. The Weimar Republic had collapsed. Democracy was over.
Even with many Communist Party Reichstag deputies in prison, and therefore unable to vote on the Enabling Act, Hitler had still needed the support of the Centre Party for the necessary two thirds majority to pass the law. They gave it. They hoped that by so doing they would preserve the influence of the Catholic Church in Germany. It was an appalling miscalculation by people who had failed to grasp just what Hitler intended for Germany, despite the evidence all around them. It is an indicator of how far to the right politics had shifted in Germany by 1933 and how unstoppable the Nazi advance seemed. The old parties of the Weimar Republic were confused and exhausted by the storm that had overwhelmed them since 1929. The Centre Party was also influenced by a trend being seen in the Catholic Church across Europe in the 1930s. Many Catholics were prepared to support authoritarian governments, and even dictatorships, in order to prevent the spread of communism. Earlier, in 1929, the Catholic Church had been prepared to accept the fascist regime in Italy through a ‘concordat’; an agreement that guaranteed the independence of the Church. In 1933, the Vatican put pressure on the Centre Party to agree to Nazi demands in the hope of guaranteeing something similar in Germany. And Catholic politicians were later to support authoritarian governments in Austria and Spain. As a result of this support from other parties, the Enabling Act was supported by 444 Reichstag deputies. The only people to vote against it were 94 Social Democrats, and few of them would remain free for much longer.
The Enabling Act was officially a temporary measure that needed renewing every four years. But once it was in place the dictatorship was permanent. An emergency piece of law became the foundation for the end of German democracy. It was renewed again in 1937 and in 1939. It was made permanent, by decree, in 1943.
On 1 May, in an attempt to preserve themselves, trade unions took part in Nazi-organized May Day marches. On 2 May, SA and SS took over every Social Democrat-affiliated trade union office in Germany. This showed that no gesture of acceptance would be enough to ensure the survival of an independent trade union movement. On 4 May, the Catholic trade unions voluntarily put themselves under Nazi control. From this point onwards there were no independent trade unions in Germany; all labour organizations were part of the Nazi state.
On 10 May, the property and funds of the Social Democratic Party were seized. On 21 June, they were banned. Many of its leaders had already fled abroad and its headquarters were now in Prague, in Czechoslovakia. Thousands of its members were arrested and many were killed.
On 1 July, the Nazi government agreed a concordat with the Roman Catholic Church. This promised the freedom of the Catholic Church and its organizations from state interference and the full participation of Catholics in German government and society. The price was the end of the Catholic Centre Party itself. The concordat was therefore quickly followed by the formal dissolution of the Centre Party on 5 July. It was a crushing end to a party that, so recently, had had two of its leading members as Chancellor – Brüning and von Papen.
On 14 July, the Communist Party was officially banned. The parties of the left were now totally crushed. But what about the nationalist allies of the Nazis? The answer was that they too had no future. The nationalists were officially allies but could not escape the intimidation that targeted all non–Nazi groups. Hugenberg, a member of the government, even found himself banned from speaking by the police and attacked by the Nazi press. On 26 June, he resigned and soon his party was no more. The law that banned the Communist Party specifically also outlawed all non-Nazi political parties. Germany was now officially a one-party state.
Next, it was the turn of the First World War veterans’ group the Steel Helmets. After Hitler came to power, they had ceased to have any independent influence. On 26 April, its leadership placed it under Hitler’s direct leadership; it was absorbed into the SA and was finally dissolved by the Nazis in 1935. This was an organization that, in 1930, had contained 500,000 members. Yet within four years it had vanished, overwhelmed by the Nazi tide.
President Hindenburg made no attempt to oppose what Hitler was doing and he only ever objected to one Nazi law. On 7 April, the Reichstag passed a law for the ‘Restoration of the Professional Civil Service’, which called for the immediate sacking of all Jewish civil servants. Hindenburg refused to accept this law until it had been amended to exclude all Jewish veterans of the First World War, Jewish civil servants who had served in the civil service during the First World War and those Jewish civil servants whose fathers were veterans of the First World War. Hitler, who believed that no Jews had actually fought in the war, changed it to satisfy Hindenburg’s objections. It is important to note that Hindenburg was not objecting to Hitler’s anti-Semitism; rather he only wanted to protect those Jews linked to the German war effort. That the law, when changed, would still destroy the careers of large numbers of Jewish people clearly meant little to the President. It is a disturbing insight into how many Nazi beliefs fitted into existing German prejudices in the 1930s. As the historian Richard Evans reminds us:
the speed and enthusiasm with which so many people came to identify with the new regime strongly suggests that a large majority of the educated elites in German society, whatever their political allegiance up to that point, were already predisposed to embrace many of the principles upon which Nazism rested.18
It is a disturbing thought, but was Hitler securely in power? By July 1933, Hitler did seem to be in an unassailable position. The Reichstag was irrelevant, Nazis were swarming all over local government and institutions, the police were dominated by the party, the communists were crushed, other political parties banned or dissolved and anyone who opposed the government was held in one of the new concentration camps. From 13 July, it was compulsory for all public employees to greet each other with the ‘Hitler Salute’. An addition to this law promulgated two weeks later allowed the physically disabled to use their left arm. The power of the Nazis had been transformed in approximately six months. Those elite politicians such as von Papen, who had thought they could manipulate and control the Nazis, had been totally outmanoeuvred and overwhelmed by events. As for von Papen, ‘His effete drawing-room Machiavellianism [had] underestimated Hitler’s rat-like cunning.’19
Yet, Hitler was still not as secure as he needed to be if he was to hold dictatorial power in Germany. There were still three major danger areas for him: first, the President had the power to remove Hitler as Chancellor. Second, the army had the power to remove him. Third, the SA was a real area of weakness for Hitler. Its members were becoming uncontrollable now they had experienced power and they were ambitious. Under Röhm, they still hoped to overturn German middle-class society, challenge the power of the traditional German elites and take control of the army: in short, to put in place a violent Nazi revolution. Their behaviour was stirring up opposition amongst significant sections of society. Many middle-class Germans were shocked at the rude violence of the SA. More importantly, the army feared losing its power to the SA and, as the only force that could – if ordered by President Hindenburg to remove Hitler – end Nazi rule, the army was a dangerous group to alienate.
In addition, over 50 per cent of the electorate had never voted Nazi and their loyalty could not be taken for granted. There was also still a need to keep conservative nationalists on board since, for all those who enthusiastically supported Hitler, there were many more who did so, ‘with reluctant and calculated complicity’ or ‘from fear that the alternative might plunge the system backwards …’20 Institutions such as the Christian churches were not fully under Nazi control, either. The powerful industrialists seemed content to support the Nazi government so long as it provided the security and opportunity for personal wealth-creation that they valued. But their support was conditional. In the summer of 1933, Hitler’s dictatorship was not as unassailable as it first appeared. If he was to secure his dictatorship he would have to act in order to put his position beyond challenge.
1. Koshar, Rudy, Social Life, Local Politics, and Nazism: Marburg, 1880–1935, University of North Carolina Press, 1986, p. 255. See also the effects on organizations as seemingly apolitical as singing clubs in Allen, William Sheridan, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1930–1935, Franklin Watts, 1965, pp. 220–1.
2. See Rolfs, Richard, W., The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: The Life of Franz von Papen, University Press of America, 1996.
3. Overy, Richard, The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, Allen Lane, 2004, chapter 1, ‘Paths to dictatorship’, gives an accessible overview of what was hoped for from Hitler’s government.
4. Dogan, Mattéi, Higley, John (eds), Elites, Crises, and the Origins of Regimes, Rowman & Littlefield, 1998, p. 173.
5. Hayse, Michael R., Recasting West German Elites: Higher Civil Servants, Business Leaders, and Physicians in Hesse Between Nazism and Democracy, 1945–1955 (Monographs in German History, 11), Berghahn Books, 2003, p. 250.
6. An accessible overview of this process can be found in Lee, Stephen J., European Dictatorships, 1918–1945, Methuen, 2000. See also Williamson, D. G., The Age of the Dictators: A Study of the European Dictatorships, 1918–53, Pearson, 2007.
7. Quoted in Kershaw, Ian, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris, Penguin Books, 1999, p. 427.
8. Evans, Richard, The Coming of the Third Reich, Penguin Books, 2003, p. 315.
9. Krausnick, Helmut, ‘Stages of co-ordination’, in The Road to Dictatorship, 1918–1933, Oswald Wolff, 1964, p. 136.
10. For an excellent overview of the Nazi Gleichschaltung, see Kershaw, Ian, op. cit., pp. 435–6.
11. See Levi, Erik, Music in the Third Reich, Palgrave Macmillan, 1994.
12. Gallin, Alice, Midwives to Nazism: University Professors in Weimar Germany, 1925–1933, Mercer University Press, 1986, p. 87.
13. Burleigh, Michael, The Third Reich, a New History, Pan Books, 2001, p. 104.
14. For an examination of the events, see Pritchard, R. John and Mayer, Sydney L., Reichstag Fire: Ashes of Democracy, Ballantine’s Illustrated History of the Violent Century; Politics in Action Number 3, Ballantine Books, 1972.
15. See his account in Papen, Franz von, Memoirs, Andre Deutsch, 1952.
16. Kershaw, Ian, The ‘Hitler Myth’, Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 54.
17. The newspaper Miesbacher Anzeiger, of 22 March 1933, in Kershaw, Ian, 1987, ibid., p. 54.
18. Evans, Richard, op. cit., p. 459.
19. Burleigh, Michael, op. cit., p. 151.
20. Overy, Richard, op. cit., p. 47.