How Hitler came to power

Source: "Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression". Chapter V, Opening address for the United States. https://archive.org/details/NaziConspiracyAndAggression

These are the papers filed by the prosecution and defense in the Nurnberg (aka Nuremberg) trials of 1945.

The sources of evidence

The Tribunal appointed commissioners to hear evidence relating to the organizations, and 101 witnesses were heard for the defense before the commissioners, and 1,809 affidavits from other witnesses were submitted. Six reports were also submitted, summarizing the contents of a great number of further affidavits.

Thirty-eight thousand affidavits, signed by 155,000 people, were submitted on behalf of the Political Leaders, 136,213 on behalf of the SS, 10,000 on behalf of the SA, 7,000 on behalf of the SD, 3,000 on behalf of the General Staff and OKW, and 2,000 on behalf of the Gestapo.

...the Interrogation Division has harvested approximately 15,000 typewritten pages of valuable and previously unavailable information on a variety of subjects. These extensive transcripts represent approximately 950 individual interrogations...

The summary

On the 29th July 1921, the party which had changed its name to National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP) was reorganized, Hitler becoming the first “Chairman.” It was in this year that the Sturmabteilung or SA was founded, with Hitler at its head, as a private paramilitary force, which allegedly was to be used for the purpose of protecting NSDAP leaders from attack by rival political parties, and preserving order at NSDAP meetings, but in reality was used for fighting political opponents on the streets.

The chief instrumentality of cohesion in plan and action was the National Socialist German Workers Party, known as the Nazi Party. On the 24th of February, 1920, at Munich, it publicly had proclaimed its program. The Nazi Party from its inception, however, contemplated war.

The Nazi party banned newspapers that were not pro-Nazi. They taught Nazi ideology in public schools.

An abortive putsch at Munich in 1923 landed many of them in jail.
The membership took the Party oath which in effect, amounted to an abdication of personal intelligence and moral responsibility. This was the oath: “I vow inviolable fidelity to Adolf Hitler; I vow absolute obedience to him and to the leaders he designates for me.”

Hitler was released from prison in 1924 and in 1925 the Schutzstaffel, or SS, was created, nominally to act as his personal bodyguard, but in reality to terrorize political opponents.

On the 30th January 1933, Hitler succeeded in being appointed Chancellor of the Reich by President von Hindenburg. The defendants Goering, Schacht, and von Papen were active in enlisting support to bring this about.

On the 28th February 1933, the Reichstag building in Berlin was set on fire. This fire was used by Hitler and his Cabinet as a pretext for passing on the same day a decree suspending the constitutional guarantees of freedom. The decree was signed by President Hindenburg and countersigned by Hitler and the defendant Frick, who then occupied the post of Reich Minister of the Interior. On the 5th March (1933), elections were held, in which the NSDAP obtained 288 seats of the total of 647. The Hitler Cabinet was anxious to pass an “Enabling Act” that would give them full legislative powers, including the power to deviate from the constitution. They were without the necessary majority in the Reichstag to be able to do this constitutionally.

On the 14th July 1933, a law was passed declaring the NSDAP to be the only political party, and making it illegal to form any other party.

Shortly afterwards Hindenburg died, and Hitler became both Reich President and Chancellor.

Voting was rigged.

“The control was effected in the following way: some members of the election-committee marked all the ballot papers with numbers. During the ballot itself, a voters’ list was made up. The ballot-papers were handed out in numerical order, therefore it was possible afterwards with the aid of this list to find out the persons who cast no-votes or invalid votes. One sample of these marked ballot-papers is enclosed. The marking was done on the back of the ballot-papers with skimmed milk.”

They trained fantatics for violence.

The Party activity, in addition to all the familiar forms of political contest, took on the aspect of a rehearsal for warfare. It utilized a Party formation, DIE ST URMABTEIL UN GEN, commonly known as the SA. This was a voluntary organization of youthful and fanatical Nazis trained for the use of violence under semi-military discipline. (Similar to Antifa now.)
The Party had its own secret police, its security units, its intelligence and espionage division, its raiding forces, and its youth forces. It established elaborate administrative mechanisms to identify and liquidate spies and informers, to manage concentration camps, to operate death vans, and to finance the whole movement. Through concentric circles of authority, the Nazi Party, as its leadership later boasted, eventually organized and dominated every phase of German life

On February 27, 1933, less than a month after Hitler became Chancellor, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Hitler, on the morning after the fire, obtained from the aged and ailing President von Hindenburg a Presidential decree suspending the extensive guarantees of individual liberty contained in the Constitution of the Weimar Republic.

Nazis dismantled the trade unions and confiscated all their funds. They banned all churches, and persecuted the Jews.

And the defendant Hans Frank, a lawyer by profession I say with shame, summarized in his Diary in 1944 the Nazi policy thus: “The Jews are a race which has to be eliminated; whenever we catch one, it is his end.”

But the Nazis not only silenced discordant voices. They created positive controls as effective as their negative ones. Propaganda organs, on a scale never before known, stimulated the party and party formations with a permanent enthusiasm and abandon such as we democratic people can work up only for a few days before a general election.

Constant interruptions

Section 2: Acquisition of totalitarian political control, A "First steps in acquiring control of state machinery", 2(c)

The Nazi members of the Reichstag conducted themselves as a storm troop unit. Whenever representatives of the government or the democratic parties spoke, the Nazi members marched out in a body in studied contempt of the speaker, or entered a body to interrupt the speaker, thus making it physically impossible for the Reichstag President to maintain order. In the case of speakers of opposition parties, the Nazi members constantly interrupted, often resorting to lengthy and spurious parliamentary maneuvers, with the result that the schedule of the session was thrown out of order. The tactics finally culminated in physical attacks by the Nazis upon members of the house as well as upon visitors. (L-83)

In Berlin, under the leadership of Goebbels, so-called Rollkommandos were organized for the purpose of disrupting political meetings of all non-Nazi groups... The Nazis armed themselves with blackjacks, brass knuckles, rubber truncheons, walking sticks, and beer bottles.

During the campaign for the Reichstag election of 14 September 1930, Nazi conspirators made it a practice to send speakers accompanied by many Storm Troopers to meetings of other political parties, often physically taking over the meetings. On one such occasion a large detachment of Storm Troopers, some of whom were armed with pistols and clubs, attended a meeting called by the Social Democratic Party, succeeded in forcibly excluding everybody not in sympathy with their views, and concluded the meeting as their own.

Nazis arrest opponents in Reichstag

Taking advantage of the Presidential decree of 28 February 1933 suspending constitutional guarantees of freedom, Goering and other Nazi conspirators immediately caused a large number of Communists, including party officials and Reichstag deputies, and a smaller number of Social Democratic officials and deputies to be placed in “protective custody”. (2324-PS; 2573-PS; L-83) Thus all Communist deputies and a number of Social Democratic deputies were prevented from attending the new session of the Reichstag. On 9 March 1933, Frick announced that the Communists would be prevented from participating in the first session of the Reichstag on March 21st, because of their being more usefully occupied.

On 31 March 1933, they promulgated the Provisional Law integrating the Laender with the Reich (2004-PS). This law called for the dissolution of all state and local self governing bodies and for their reconstitution according to the number of votes cast for each party in the Reichstag election of 5 March 1933. The Communists and their affiliates were expressly denied representation.

The Nazi conspirators granted the Nazi Party and its components extensive and extraordinary privileges. On 19 May 1933, they passed a law to protect and insure respect for Party symbols (2759-PS). On 20 December 1934 the Nazi conspirators caused a law to be promulgated, signed by Hitler, Guertner, Hess, and Frick, making it a crime to make false or grievous statements to injure the prestige of the Government of the Reich, the NSDAP, or its agencies. This law also declared it to be a crime to wear the uniform or the insignia of the NSDAP without authority to do so,

The Reichsrat (Reich Council) was abolished by law on 14 February 1934, and all official representation on the part of the Laender in the administration of the central government was at an end.