Nazi dictatorship in Germany
How racial ideology became state power
1933–1945
The Nazi regime destroyed independent political competition, concentrated power around Hitler and used policing, law and violence to persecute people. Its racial vision of hierarchy and exclusion linked domestic policy to territorial conquest. During the war, Nazi rule brought genocide and extensive exploitation of occupied countries.
What Nazism meant
Nazism combined extreme German nationalism with antisemitism, anti-communism and authoritarian leadership. Hitler wanted society organised around racial ideas and territorial expansion to the east. “Living space” was to be acquired at the expense of the people living there.
The leader principle demanded obedience from subordinates to superiors, with Hitler at the top of the party. This was not simply strong government in a democracy: independent opposition and the possibility of replacing the government were removed.
From government to a monopoly of power
Hitler was appointed head of a coalition government in January 1933. Emergency powers after the Reichstag fire enabled arrests of opponents; the Enabling Act allowed the government to legislate without parliament. The Nazis forcibly dissolved trade unions, and in July their party became the only legal political party.
After President Hindenburg’s death in August 1934, Hitler merged the presidency and chancellorship. Concentrated power was built through decisions by state institutions as well as overt coercion. The existence of a formal law did not ensure freedom for those against whom the regime used it.
Police power and exclusion
Political policing was progressively centralised under Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. Political imprisonment and expanding police powers helped suppress opponents. Persecution also operated through employment, property and everyday rights.
Boycotts of Jewish shops and exclusion from government employment began in 1933. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws deprived German Jews of citizenship rights and prohibited marriages between Jews and other Germans. Violence in the November 1938 pogrom shows how legislative discrimination and physical attacks formed parts of the same persecution.
Conquest, labour and mass murder
The regime rearmed and introduced a Four-Year Plan in 1936 to prepare the economy and armed forces for war. Conquest extended German power over other societies. In occupied Poland, killings of social leaders, displacement and forced labour followed.
In the Holocaust, the Nazis murdered approximately six million Jews. Mass killing took place through shootings and in camps, also drawing on cooperation from other institutions and local perpetrators. Allied armies defeated Nazi power in 1945; postwar trials then sought to hold its leaders accountable.
Explore further
- Adolf Hitler
Party leader and dictator.
- Nuremberg Laws
Racial policy embedded in legislation.
- Occupation and resistance
What the extension of Nazi rule meant for conquered countries.