Democracy Destroyed The First 100 Days of Nazi Rule

Day 1, Monday 30 January 1933: Hindenburg appoints Hitler Reich Chancellor at the head of a coalition cabinet

Day 1 of 100

Hindenburg appoints Hitler Reich Chancellor at the head of a coalition cabinet

Reich President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Reich Chancellor of a cabinet in which only two other National Socialists sat. That evening SA, SS and Stahlhelm columns carried torches through the government quarter, and late that night a police officer and an SA man were shot dead in Charlottenburg. Elsewhere in Berlin a flu epidemic was closing school classes and the police caught two long-sought robbers.

Three men seated in front of six standing men in suits in a panelled room
The Hitler cabinet, 30 January 1933. Seated, from left: Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler, Franz von Papen. Standing, from left: Franz Seldte, Günther Gereke, Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Wilhelm Frick, Werner von Blomberg, Alfred Hugenberg. Photographed on this day Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H28422 / CC-BY-SA 3.0. CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons

Kurt von Schleicher had resigned as Chancellor on 28 January after Hindenburg refused him a dissolution of the Reichstag, and Franz von Papen spent the following day negotiating with Alfred Hugenberg of the German National People’s Party (DNVP) and with Hitler. On 30 January Hindenburg appointed Hitler. Papen became Vice-Chancellor and Reich Commissioner for Prussia, Hugenberg took the economics and agriculture ministries, and the National Socialists Wilhelm Frick (interior) and Hermann Göring (minister without portfolio) joined the cabinet. Eight conservatives outnumbered three Nazis, and Papen expected this arrangement to keep Hitler in check.

The minutes of the first cabinet meeting, held at 17:00, show how quickly the new government turned to the question of power. Hitler argued that banning the Communist Party (KPD), with some six million voters behind it, risked a general strike and preferred new elections; Hugenberg said suppression of the KPD was unavoidable and would make an enabling act possible; Papen suggested asking the Reichstag for an enabling act first. Göring reported that he had already banned a Communist demonstration planned for that evening.

In the evening the NSDAP marked what it called its “seizure of power” (Machtergreifung, the regime’s own term for an appointment made within the constitution’s forms) with a torchlight procession through the Brandenburg Gate and along the Wilhelmstraße, and Berlin radio broadcast a report on it. The Social Democratic Vorwärts described much of the watching crowd as curious rather than enthusiastic, and recorded violence in the government quarter that afternoon: a driver caught in the crush was pulled from his car and beaten after being identified as a Jew, while the police stood by.

The KPD called on the trade unions and the Social Democrats to join a general strike against the new government; no general strike followed. The appointment did not yet give Hitler dictatorial powers, but within days the cabinet would dissolve the Reichstag and begin governing by presidential decree.

Politics and power

Government, terror and persecution

  1. Government Berlin, Wilhelmstraße

    Hitler appointed Reich Chancellor

    Hindenburg appointed the NSDAP leader Adolf Hitler Reich Chancellor after the collapse of the Schleicher cabinet. Franz von Papen became Vice-Chancellor and Reich Commissioner for Prussia; Wilhelm Frick became Reich Minister of the Interior and Hermann Göring minister without portfolio. The other posts, including Foreign Affairs, Finance and the Reichswehr, went to conservatives and non-party ministers, among them Alfred Hugenberg for economics and agriculture.1,2,4

  2. Government 17:00, Berlin, Reich Chancellery

    First cabinet meeting debates a KPD ban and an enabling act

    At 17:00 the new cabinet met for the first time. Hitler named Hans Heinrich Lammers state secretary in the Reich Chancellery and Walther Funk head of the press office. In the discussion Hugenberg pressed for suppressing the KPD so that an enabling act could pass; Hitler feared a general strike and preferred dissolution and new elections, and pledged that the result would not change the cabinet’s composition.3

  3. Opposition

    KPD calls for a general strike

    The Communist Party appealed to the free trade unions, the white-collar federation, the SPD and the Christian unions to join it in a general strike against the new government. Göring banned the Communist demonstration planned for that evening. Frick told the Völkischer Beobachter that any general strike would be met with the sharpest measures.1,3

  4. Propaganda evening, Berlin, Brandenburg Gate and Wilhelmstraße

    Torchlight procession through the government quarter

    In the evening columns of the SA, the SS and the Stahlhelm, about 15,000 men according to the German Historical Museum, marched with torches through the Brandenburg Gate and down the Wilhelmstraße past the Reich Chancellery. Berlin radio broadcast a report on the procession; a recording survives in the German Broadcasting Archive.1,2,4

  5. Persecution about 16:00, Berlin, Wilhelmplatz

    Violence in the crowds near the Kaiserhof

    The Vorwärts reported that around 16:00, as crowds gathered between the Reich Chancellery and the Hotel Kaiserhof, a driver whose car was stuck in the crush was dragged out and beaten; the paper noted that he was Jewish. Nearby, SA men struck passers-by wearing the badges of opposing parties while the police looked on, apparently unsure how to act under the new government.5

  6. Terror late night, Berlin-Charlottenburg, Wallstraße (today Zillestraße)

    Police officer and SA man shot dead in the Wallstraße

    Late that night, as a troop of National Socialists marched through the Wallstraße in Charlottenburg escorted by two policemen, some sixty to seventy shots were fired within about five minutes. Police Oberwachtmeister Josef Zauritz, 30, married with two children, was hit and died on the way to hospital; the SA leader Hans Maikowski was also fatally wounded. Two men found with leg wounds, among them the landlord of a Communist pub in the street, were taken into police custody, and some 15 suspects were arrested.6

    Sources disagree. The Vorwärts reported the next day that nobody knew who had fired; Nazi propaganda blamed the Communists, and the sources consulted here do not establish who killed either man.

Everyday life

What else was happening in Germany

  1. Society Berlin, Unter den Linden and Friedrichstraße

    A Monday in Berlin’s streets, hour by hour

    Vorwärts reporters followed the news through the city. At noon bank clerks on Unter den Linden at first took the appointment for a joke, though their banks told them to settle all current business that same day. By 13:00 notices hung in newspaper branch windows; in a café used by businessmen there was talk of cancelling orders. At 17:00 workers leaving a large factory in the north of the city said they would wait and see.5

  2. Education Berlin

    Flu closes school classes across Berlin

    With influenza spreading mainly among children, district medical officers closed 12 school classes on Monday morning and ordered 13 more shut during the day, at first for eight days; among them was a class of the Steglitz grammar school in the Heesestraße. Hospitals had reopened reserve wards over the weekend, and the Lord Mayor told the districts to keep coughing children at home but to close whole schools only in an emergency, since many children lived in poor housing.5

  3. Crime midday, Berlin

    The last two “BVG robbers” arrested

    Around midday the Berlin criminal police, with an unusually large escort of uniformed officers, arrested Achtenhagen and Hoheisen, the last members of a gang still at large. The gang had confessed to a series of raids, including the hold-up of a Berlin transport company (BVG) cash transport in Charlottenburg, attacks on petrol stations and taxi drivers, in which two people had been killed.5

  4. Film

    Censors pass a new Frederick the Great film

    The film censors passed Der Choral von Leuthen, directed by Carl Froelich with Otto Gebühr once again as Frederick II of Prussia. One of a long series of patriotic Prussian costume films, it was due to open on 3 February.7

Voices

First wait and see. We’ll stand our ground!

Unnamed workers at a Berlin factory, as quoted by the Vorwärts Overheard at 17:00 on 30 January as workers left a large factory in the north of Berlin and heard of Hitler’s appointment; printed in the Vorwärts the next morning. Translated by this site.5

In Berlin today

A sandstone gateway of six columns topped by a bronze chariot drawn by four horses, seen across an empty paved square
The Brandenburg Gate seen from the Pariser Platz in July 2012. Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Brandenburg Gate

Pariser Platz, 10117 Berlin

Then
On the evening of 30 January SA, SS and Stahlhelm columns marched with torches through the gate and on along the Wilhelmstraße to celebrate Hitler’s appointment.1,8
Today
The gate, badly damaged in the Second World War and restored afterwards, stands at the western end of Unter den Linden; once in the border zone of the divided city, it is now Berlin’s best-known symbol of German unity.

Open in OpenStreetMap

A six-storey apartment block with rows of projecting balconies and cars parked along the kerb
Flats in the Zillestraße in Charlottenburg, the former Wallstraße, in 2020. Gunnar Klack / CC BY-SA 4.0. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Zillestraße (then Wallstraße)

Zillestraße, 10585 Berlin-Charlottenburg

Then
Late on 30 January shots were fired at a marching SA troop and its police escort here; police officer Josef Zauritz and SA man Hans Maikowski were killed.6,9
Today
The street was renamed Maikowskistraße in 1933 to honour the SA man, and has borne the name of the artist Heinrich Zille since 31 July 1947. No memorial marks the events of that night.

Open in OpenStreetMap

More pictures

A crowd in hats below a lamp-lit stone façade; a man stands at an open first-floor window
Hitler at a window of the Reich Chancellery in the Wilhelmstraße, acknowledging the crowd on the evening of 30 January 1933. Photograph by Robert Sennecke. Photographed on this day Robert Sennecke. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
At night, uniformed men carrying torches and brass instruments march through a dense crowd; a tall band standard hung with horsetails rises above them
SA men with torches and a marching band move along the Wilhelmstraße in the torchlight procession for the new Reich Chancellor on the evening of 30 January 1933. No one in the crowd is identified in the archive record. Photographed on this day Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-02985A / CC-BY-SA 3.0. CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons

Sources

  1. Jahreschronik 1933 Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO, entries for 28, 29 and 30 January
  2. Etablierung der NS-Herrschaft Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO, introduction, 'Brauner Terror', and audio 'Reportage zum Tag der Machtübernahme' (Stiftung Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv)
  3. Akten der Reichskanzlei. Regierung Hitler 1933–1945, Bd. I, Nr. 1: Ministerbesprechung vom 30. Januar 1933, 17 Uhr Bundesarchiv / Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, R 43 I/1459, S. 241–246, with notes 5–7
  4. 30. Januar 1933: Ernennung Adolf Hitlers zum Reichskanzler Bundesarchiv, Geschichtsgalerie
  5. Vorwärts, Morgenausgabe Nr. 51, 31 January 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 3 ('Grippewelle ergreift Berlin!', 'Karabiner gegen BVG.-Räuber!'); p. 4 ('Am Montag von 12–21 Uhr in den Straßen Berlins')
  6. Vorwärts, Abendausgabe Nr. 52, 31 January 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 1, 'Blutnacht in Berlin'
  7. Der Choral von Leuthen (1933) filmportal.de (Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum), Prüfung 30.01.1933; Uraufführung 03.02.1933
  8. Brandenburger Tor Berlin.de (Land Berlin)
  9. Zillestraße Kauperts Straßenführer durch Berlin, Geschichte: alte Namen Wallstraße (um 1720–1933), Maikowskistraße (1933–1947)

Spotted a mistake? Send a correction.

Tip: use the left and right arrow keys to move between days.