of young men trained for and committed to the use of
violence, whose mission was to make the Party the master of the
streets.
2. Control acquired.
On 30 January 1933 Hitler became Chancellor of the German
Republic. After the Reichstag fire of 28 February 1933, clauses of
the Weimar constitution guaranteeing personal liberty, freedom of
speech, of the press, of association and assembly were suspended. The
Nazi conspirators secured the passage by the Reichstag of a "Law
for the Protection of the People and the Reich" giving Hitler
and the members of his then cabinet plenary powers of legislation.
The Nazi conspirators retained such powers after having changed the
members of the cabinet. The conspirators caused all political parties
except the Nazi Party to be prohibited. They caused the Nazi Party to
be established as a paragovernmental organization with extensive and
extraordinary privileges.
3. Consolidation of control.
Thus possessed of the machinery of the German State, the Nazi
conspirators set about the consolidation of their position of power
within Germany, the extermination of potential internal resistance,
and the placing of the German Nation on a military footing.
(a) The Nazi conspirators reduced the
Reichstag to a body of their own nominees and curtailed the freedom
of popular elections throughout the country. They transformed the
several states, provinces, and municipalities, which had formerly
exercised semi-autonomous powers, into hardly more than
administrative organs of the central Government. They united the
offices of the President and the Chancellor in the person of Hitler;
instituted a widespread purge of civil servants; and severely
restricted the independence of the judiciary and rendered it
subservient to Nazi ends. The conspirators greatly enlarged existing
State and Party organizations; established a network of new State and
Party organizations; and "co-ordinated" State agencies with
the Nazi Party and its branches and affiliates, with the result that
German life was dominated by Nazi doctrine and practice and
progressively mobilized for the accomplishment of their aims.
(b) In order to make their rule secure from attack and to instil
fear in the hearts of the German people, the Nazi conspirators
established and extended a system of terror against opponents and
supposed or suspected opponents of the regime. They imprisoned such
persons without judicial process, holding them in "protective
custody" and concentration camps, and subjected them to
persecution, degradation, despoilment, enslavement, torture, and
murder. These concentration camps