Germany History – The Third Reich Part I

The third Reich, according to Hitler’s conception, must be a centralized national community, founded on the principles of authority and responsibility upwards, in which the antagonisms of caste and class and the old German particularism must disappear. To this end, in addition to placing the lieutenants of the Reich in the strictest dependence of the chancellor, the re-election of the diets of the Länder was postponed. Furthermore, with the creation of a special commissariat, the formation of a unitary national law has begun, in which, excluding any influence of Roman law, the old Germanic traditions would be restored. Fundamental criterion of this right, the principle of race, according to which “non-arî citizens would be excluded from the national community and marriages, or in any case mixing, with people of Jewish blood considered as attacks on the integrity of the race. The racist theory is also one of the prerequisites of a law, which came into force on January 1, 1934, which requires artificial sterilization (decided by a “court for hereditary health”) in cases of imbecility, epilepsy, madness, blindness o hereditary deafness, large deformities, alcoholism, etc.

This racist policy found a vivid echo in the anti-Semitism of the German masses, exacerbated in the post-war period by the economic crisis and which had already manifested itself in March with mob attacks against Jewish emporiums, followed on 1 April by a systematic boycott. In turn, the government retired “non-Ari” officials with the exception of veterans and children of the fallen, introduced the numerus clausus in schools, excluding from liberal offices and professions those who had a “non-Ari” grandfather or were conjugated with a “non-air” person.

Unification was also pursued on religious grounds. As we have seen, a single concordat was stipulated with the Catholic Church for the whole Reich. Relations with the various evangelical churches were much more difficult. For the purposes of unity, the government had created, immediately after his coming to power, the office of evangelical bishop of the Reich, supreme ecclesiastical authority. Under the pressure of the regime, the representatives of the churches gathered in a synod to proceed with the election of the bishop, but the one elected was not a grateful person to the government, so that for some months a state of latent hostility persisted, truncated by the government with the appointment of one of his commissioners for the Prussian churches. On 4 September the synod of these churches approved the creation of a Prussian archbishop, ten episcopal dioceses and a senate made up of bishops and government delegates. A few weeks later the great synod of the German evangelical churches, meeting in Wittenberg, radically transformed the structure of Protestantism in Germany by deliberating the reunion of all churches and seven into a single German national church and electing as bishop of the Reich (position of new institution) Pastor L. Müller, Hitler’s trustee. Müller had initially assumed the patronage of the “Christian Germans”, but the doctrines of these, considered in contrast with the dogmatics of Lutheranism, aroused protests: Hitler ordered that the state and the National Socialist party refrain from intervening in matters dogmatic. he radically transformed the structure of Protestantism in Germany by deliberating the reunion of all churches and sects into a single German national church and by electing Pastor L. Müller, Hitler’s trustee, as bishop of the Reich (position of new institution). Müller had initially assumed the patronage of the “Christian Germans”, but the doctrines of these, considered in contrast with the dogmatics of Lutheranism, aroused protests: Hitler ordered that the state and the National Socialist party refrain from intervening in matters dogmatic.

Following the fascist example, the Hitler regime set out to fight unemployment with the policy of large public works: three and a half million hectares of marshy land were entrusted to the young people of the compulsory labor service for the reclamation, new railway systems were designed and work has begun on a large network of motorways. Measures were also taken to raise agriculture (price fixing and crop limitation) and in general to safeguard small rural property (limitations on the sale of rustic land). A partial moratorium on foreign debts was proclaimed by Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank. An attempt was also made to save the trade balance, hit by a frightening contraction in exports, thanks to a rigid customs policy, indulging in general the tendencies of the so-called economic “autarchy”. A 17-member Reich Economic Council was created.

Even in the social field, the new regime followed the fascist model by placing professional associations under its control. In May 1933 all the offices of the workers’ unions were occupied and the leaders replaced with government commissioners. Similarly, the leaders of the industrial, commercial, and banking federations were trusted by the government. At the congress of the “Workers’ Front” on May 10, Hitler spoke out for the corporate state (Ständestaat) and in the meantime appointed the “labor trustees” with the task of establishing the employment agreements in a legally binding form. Still on the Italian model, an active demographic campaign was started by setting up an Opera for the mother; a Dopolavoro was created; youth associations were organized; a sports commissariat was set up. The press, the radio, the theater, the cinema were placed under the control of the Ministry of Popular Education and Propaganda.

According to getzipcodes, the coming to power of Hitler had aroused great alarm in the world and determined the isolation of Germany, which was only broken, by Benito Mussolini, with the stipulation of the Pact for four “(June 7, 1933). neighboring states, France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, however remained tense; relations with Austria took on a dramatic character where Chancellor E. Dollfuss, determined to safeguard the independence of his country, dissolved the National Socialist party, causing a series of attacks of Hitler youths and reprisals by the German Reich.

The situation that emerged in Geneva, within the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference, is even more difficult. Already on May 17, before the Reichstag, Hitler solemnly reaffirmed his will to obtain complete and immediate parity in arms, so that when, in early October, the French and British delegates in Geneva put forward the proposal for a trial period hopes for a compromise fell. On October 14, Hitler declared that Germany was ceasing to be part of the League of Nations and abandoning the Disarmament Conference. At the same time, President Hindenburg ordered the dissolution of the Reichstag and called new elections to give the government the support of popular suffrage.

Germany History - The Third Reich 1