Coordination

Bringing the states, associations and institutions into line (Gleichschaltung).

58 days

Day 4 Thursday 2 February 1933

Göring bans Communist demonstrations as Hitler is reminded of his oath in the Reichsrat

Göring banned all Communist demonstrations in Prussia, and the cabinet discussed a sweeping emergency decree against the press and public meetings. In the Reichsrat, the chamber of the states, a Prussian official answered Hitler’s first address by reminding him of his oath to the constitution. Berliners paid sharply more for potatoes, and Ufa’s U-boat film Morgenrot opened at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo before an audience full of officers.
Day 6 Saturday 4 February 1933

Hindenburg signs a decree allowing bans on newspapers and political meetings

Hindenburg signed the “Decree for the Protection of the German People”, which let the authorities ban political meetings and newspapers and hold suspects in police custody for up to three months. The Prussian Landtag refused to dissolve itself, and the Reich’s commissioners in Prussia dissolved every municipal council instead. Two young Communists were shot dead in Berlin overnight, and that evening the Social Democratic mayor of Staßfurt was shot in front of his house. In Berlin, new flu cases passed a thousand a day.
Day 8 Monday 6 February 1933

Presidential decree removes Prussia’s elected government; Papen dissolves the Landtag

Hindenburg transferred the last powers of Otto Braun’s elected Prussian government to the Reich Commissioner, Papen, who then dissolved the Prussian Landtag together with its president, Kerrl, over the objection of Konrad Adenauer. The same day Hindenburg assured Bavaria that no one planned to override the states. In Staßfurt a headmaster told his school of the murdered mayor; in Berlin the flu began, briefly, to ebb.
Day 11 Thursday 9 February 1933

Hitler wants the job-creation programme to serve as cover for rearmament

In the cabinet’s work-creation committee Hitler declared that Germany’s future depended solely on rebuilding the armed forces and that public works money should help to disguise rearmament; the committee gave the army the largest single share. Württemberg protested at party rallies being broadcast as government programmes. On Berlin’s radio a spokesman for the German cities argued that the unemployed should be left wholly to the municipalities, and new flu cases began to fall.
Day 15 Monday 13 February 1933

Göring widens the purge of Prussia’s republican police chiefs

Göring, as Reich Commissioner for the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, sent more officials loyal to the Republic on forced leave, among them the police presidents of Dortmund, Oberhausen, Stettin, Frankfurt and Breslau. The Stahlhelm told its members the coming election was a plebiscite on the “national government”. Away from politics, Bayreuth marked the fiftieth anniversary of Richard Wagner’s death and Berlin radio filled the evening with his operas.
Day 16 Tuesday 14 February 1933

Nazi deputies break up a Reichstag committee as farm foreclosures are halted

The cabinet approved, and Hindenburg signed, a decree stopping forced auctions of farms until the end of October. In the Reichstag, Nazi members drove the chairman of the committee that guarded parliament’s rights from his seat and Julius Streicher struck a People’s Party deputy; that evening the political police searched Communist rooms in the building. Neunkirchen in the Saar buried the victims of the gas-holder explosion, Göring opened a show of modern Italian painting and the geneticist Carl Correns died in Dahlem.
Day 17 Wednesday 15 February 1933

Käthe Kollwitz and Heinrich Mann forced out of the Prussian Academy of Arts

Under threat that the Academy would be dissolved, Käthe Kollwitz and Heinrich Mann left the Prussian Academy of Arts, and the Prussian commissioners confirmed a sweeping purge of police chiefs, naming a retired rear admiral as police president of Berlin. Vorwärts and the 8-Uhr-Abendblatt were banned for a week, and in Stuttgart someone cut the cable carrying Hitler’s speech to the radio. Abroad, Thomas Mann lectured on Wagner in Brussels and an assassin fired on Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami.
Day 18 Thursday 16 February 1933

The states protest in the Reichsrat as Göring vows no Social Democrat will stay in office

In the Reichsrat Bavaria and the southern states protested against Prussia being represented by Göring’s and Papen’s appointees and voted to limit the chamber to urgent business until the constitutional court had ruled. That evening Göring told journalists that no Social Democrat would be tolerated in the Prussian administration. The Reichsgericht lifted an earlier ban on Vorwärts, and the cabinet discussed taking away the court’s power to do so. At the Sportpalast the American ice hockey team beat Germany 7–2.
Day 19 Friday 17 February 1933

Göring orders the Prussian police to shoot and promises to cover them

Göring sent all Prussian police authorities a circular telling them to cooperate with the SA, SS and Stahlhelm, to act against “enemies of the state” with the harshest means and to use their firearms without hesitation, promising to cover any officer who did. The Bavarian People’s Party leader Fritz Schäffer warned Hindenburg against Reich commissioners in the states, and uniformed students broke up an examination at the State Art School in Schöneberg. In the evening 4,000 people watched boxing at the Sportpalast.
Day 21 Sunday 19 February 1933

Police break up the “Free Word” congress at the Kroll Opera

More than a thousand writers, scholars and politicians met at the Kroll Opera to defend freedom of speech, the press, assembly and art; police dissolved the meeting when the former Prussian minister Wolfgang Heine mocked the regime. Frick told a Dresden rally that the government would not give up power even without a majority, Hitler spoke against the Centre Party in Cologne and the Reichsbanner marched in the Lustgarten. Berliners took sledges and skis to the snowbound Grunewald.
Day 22 Monday 20 February 1933

Hitler and Göring ask leading industrialists to pay for the election

At Göring’s official residence opposite the Reichstag, Hitler told about two dozen leading industrialists and bankers that private enterprise could not survive in a democracy; Göring added that the coming election would surely be the last for ten years, perhaps a hundred, and Hjalmar Schacht proposed a three-million-mark election fund. The same day the Prussian press service released Göring’s “shooting decree”. Göring also banned the sale of spirits on polling days, and the perjury trial of a former Berlin transport director in the Sklarek scandal opened to packed public benches.
Day 23 Tuesday 21 February 1933

Rust suspends the head of the Karl-Marx-Schule; Frick bans Communist marches in Saxony

Rust ordered the reorganisation of the Karl-Marx-Schule in Neukölln, one of the Weimar Republic’s leading reform schools, sent its head Fritz Karsen on leave and suspended three senior Berlin school officials. Frick used the decree of 4 February to ban Communist open-air meetings and marches in Saxony, and the trade union federation protested to Hindenburg against Göring’s police decree. In Berlin, thermometers on the city’s edge fell to 18 degrees below zero overnight, and the creditors of the theatre impresarios Rotter learned they would get nothing.
Day 24 Wednesday 22 February 1933

Göring makes the SA, SS and Stahlhelm an auxiliary police in Prussia

Göring signed a decree allowing the Prussian police to call up “auxiliary police” from the ranks of “nationally minded” Germans: in practice men of the SA, SS and Stahlhelm, wearing a white armband over their own uniforms and holding full police powers while on duty. The Prussian commissioners pensioned off another wave of senior officials and began closing the secular schools, and Hitler told his followers that the enemy to be beaten on 5 March was “Marxism”. In Berlin the first film directed by Friedrich Hollaender, Ich und die Kaiserin, opened at the Gloria-Palast.
Day 25 Thursday 23 February 1933

Police search the Communist headquarters and break up the KPD’s Sportpalast rally

In the afternoon the political police occupied and searched the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus, the Communist Party’s headquarters; in the evening a police officer dissolved the KPD’s rally in the Sportpalast while Wilhelm Pieck was speaking. Overnight men in Nazi uniform had shot a Reichsbanner leader in Großbeeren and burned down the poorhouse where he lived. Göring ordered tougher action against the opposition press. In Berlin the motor show closed after more than 400,000 visits, and Prussia relaxed its rules on men’s bathing trunks.
Day 26 Friday 24 February 1933

The Karl-Liebknecht-Haus is closed and the auxiliary police decree made public

The police closed the Communist headquarters, the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus, “until further notice”, and the official Prussian press service released Göring’s decree creating an auxiliary police. Rudolf Diels took charge of the political police with its own new strike squads, and the jurist Robert Kempner was removed from the Prussian Interior Ministry. Hitler spoke to a huge crowd in Munich on the anniversary of the party programme. In Geneva the League of Nations condemned Japan’s actions in Manchuria and the Japanese delegation walked out; Max Ophüls’s Liebelei opened in Vienna.
Day 27 Saturday 25 February 1933

Police claim to find tunnels and treasonable leaflets under the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus

Diels’s political police announced that the closed Communist headquarters had yielded secret cellars, a tunnel and hundredweights of leaflets calling for armed revolt. The Reichsgericht lifted or shortened a series of newspaper bans, Adenauer settled his protest over Göring’s police decrees in a meeting with Göring, and Rust ordered that the secular schools take no new pupils. Berlin learned from a League of Nations report how much weight its unemployed had lost, and the Sklarek perjury trial ended with a year’s prison for the former transport director Fritz Brolat.
Day 28 Sunday 26 February 1933

Uniformed police wear swastika armbands at a Nazi rally in the Lustgarten

On the last Sunday of February uniformed Berlin police officers marched with swastika armbands at the first mass rally of the National Socialist factory cells in the Lustgarten, while police president Levetzow looked in to cheers. Police broke up a Social Democratic cultural rally in Neukölln and led the speaker Friedrich Stampfer away to the station; across the Reich, election marches ended in shootings and stabbings. Berliners went tobogganing on a second snowy Sunday, and in Prague the United States took the ice hockey world title from Canada for the first time.
Day 31 Wednesday 1 March 1933

Göring promises to ‘exterminate’ Communism as the treason decree is published

On Ash Wednesday the decree against ‘treason against the German people’ appeared in the Reichsgesetzblatt, Frick asked every state to ban the Communist press and meetings, and the Prussian press service claimed that at least ten men had set the Reichstag fire. Göring told radio listeners that the government’s aim was the extermination of Communism, Hitler spoke to some 20,000 people in Breslau, and Cardinal Bertram begged Hindenburg to protect the freedom of the vote. In Berlin, Leopold Jessner bade farewell to the State Theatre with Billinger’s Rosse, while Max Reinhardt reopened the Deutsches Theater with Hofmannsthal’s Great Theatre of the World.
Day 33 Friday 3 March 1933

Ernst Thälmann is arrested in Berlin; Göring vows ‘to destroy and exterminate’

The Communist party’s leader, Ernst Thälmann, was arrested in a flat in Charlottenburg on Friday afternoon; he never regained his freedom. In Frankfurt Göring told a mass meeting that his measures would not be hampered by legal scruples, and in Hamburg the Social Democratic senators left the city government rather than ban their party’s newspaper. In Berlin tens of thousands queued in the pouring rain, between lines of SA men, to look at the burnt-out Reichstag chamber, and a Jewish weekly urged every Jewish voter to go to the polls on Sunday.
Day 34 Saturday 4 March 1933

Election eve: Hitler speaks from Königsberg and Otto Braun leaves for Switzerland

On the eve of the election the Nazi party staged its ‘Day of the Awakening Nation’: Hitler flew to Königsberg and spoke there in a broadcast relayed to marching columns and loudspeakers across Germany. Otto Braun, the Social Democrat who had governed Prussia for most of the Weimar years, crossed the Swiss border that afternoon and did not come back. In Hamburg the Nazis demanded control of the police, in Vienna all three presidents of the Austrian parliament resigned, and in Washington Franklin D. Roosevelt took office. Hamburg’s port saw the season’s first Mediterranean cruise sail.
Day 35 Sunday 5 March 1933

Reichstag election under the emergency decree: 43.9 per cent for the NSDAP

On a grey, rainy Sunday nearly 89 per cent of Germany’s voters went to the polls in an election held under the emergency decree, with Communist leaders in prison or in hiding and the left-wing press silenced. The NSDAP won 43.9 per cent, short of an absolute majority, but with the nationalist ‘Combat Front Black-White-Red’ the government had a majority of seats; the Social Democrats held 18.3 per cent and the Communists 12.3. That night the Reich interior minister ordered Hamburg’s police handed to a Nazi, and SA men raised the swastika on town halls. In Hamburg, Altona 93 won the city football championship in the rain.
Day 36 Monday 6 March 1933

The morning after: Reich commissioners and swastikas in Bremen, Lübeck and Hesse

On the day after the election the Reich began taking over the states that the Nazis did not yet control. Frick used the Reichstag Fire Decree to seize police powers in Bremen and Hesse, where SA men occupied ministries and the homes of the Social Democratic state president and interior minister overnight; in Lübeck the Social Democratic senators were pushed out, and Thuringia banned the Central Association of German Jews. In Altona a 20-year-old bystander was shot dead during an SA torchlight parade. In Hamburg Karl Muck conducted Also sprach Zarathustra, and in Washington Roosevelt closed every bank in the country.
Day 37 Tuesday 7 March 1933

Hitler tells the cabinet the election was a ‘revolution’ and calls for an Enabling Act

Two days after the election Hitler told his ministers that 5 March had been a revolution, that Marxism would disappear and that an Enabling Act with a two-thirds majority was needed; he and Frick demanded that van der Lubbe be hanged, retroactively if need be. At Hindenburg’s residence the Reichstag’s opening in Potsdam’s Garrison Church was planned in detail. In Dresden, Nazi supporters whistled the conductor Fritz Busch off the podium of the State Opera. Abroad, Dollfuss began governing Austria without parliament, and the Netherlands reinforced its border against German refugees.
Day 38 Wednesday 8 March 1933

Reich takes the police in Baden, Württemberg and Saxony; Hamburg gets a Nazi mayor

Frick took over police powers in Baden, Württemberg, Saxony and Schaumburg-Lippe and installed Nazi commissioners, leaving Bavaria as the only large state not yet under Reich control. Hamburg’s parliament elected a Senate led by the Nazi Carl Vincent Krogmann, SA men occupied the trade union house in Breslau after a shooting, and Social Democratic deputies complained in vain about the beating of prisoners. The Reich Institute reported six million unemployed at the end of February. At the Cologne opera, Nazi hecklers disrupted Fidelio after the general music director stayed away for fear of Nazi demonstrations.
Day 39 Thursday 9 March 1933

Bavaria falls: General von Epp made Reich commissioner over Held’s refusal

After a day of pressure in Munich from Röhm, Gauleiter Wagner and Himmler, and with the Bavarian government refusing their demands, the Reich used the Reichstag Fire Decree to hand the powers of Bavaria’s government to General Ritter von Epp; Württemberg protested to Hindenburg against the same treatment. In Berlin the Reich Chancellery, on Hitler’s behalf, asked Frick to prepare ‘völkisch’ laws against Eastern European Jews. In Washington Roosevelt signed the Emergency Banking Act. Dresden’s opera, its music director just driven out, staged Graener’s Friedemann Bach.
Day 41 Saturday 11 March 1933

Cabinet agrees a propaganda ministry; SA drive Jewish lawyers from Breslau’s courts

At Hitler’s insistence the cabinet agreed to create a Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, expected to go to Goebbels. On the eve of Remembrance Day and the Prussian local elections, SA men and crowds forced department stores and chain stores to close in Hamburg, Breslau, Frankfurt and other cities, and in Breslau SA men ordered Jewish judges and lawyers out of the courts. Magdeburg’s mayor and union leaders in Bochum were taken into ‘protective custody’ (Schutzhaft, imprisonment without trial). Hitler spoke at a rally broadcast from Berlin, and in Cologne a play about front-line soldiers had its first local performance.
Day 43 Monday 13 March 1933

Goebbels appointed Reich Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda

Hindenburg signed the decree creating a Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda and appointed Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party’s propaganda chief, as its minister. In Prussia, Göring suspended the mayors of Cologne, Frankfurt, Magdeburg, Altona and Kiel and several Berlin city councillors. In Berlin the manslaughter trial of a banker accused of shooting his wife, the soprano Gertrud Bindernagel, opened before packed public benches.
Day 47 Friday 17 March 1933

Berlin’s state commissioner orders the dismissal of Jewish doctors from city hospitals

Julius Lippert, the Nazi state commissioner for Berlin, ordered that the contracts of doctors denounced as ‘Jewish Communists and Social Democrats’ be terminated at the city’s hospitals. Hugenberg suspended Ernst Wagemann, head of the Statistical Reich Office, and the decrees creating the Propaganda Ministry and the double flag were published. That evening Kurt Gerron’s comedy Heut’ kommt’s drauf an, starring Hans Albers, had its premiere at the Gloria-Palast.
Day 52 Wednesday 22 March 1933

First prisoners arrive at Dachau as the new Prussian Landtag meets

The first transports of prisoners reached the new concentration camp at Dachau, set up on the grounds of a disused powder and munitions factory. In Berlin the Prussian Landtag opened under its 84-year-old Nazi senior member, who called it ‘the Landtag of the Hitler spring’, and a Reichstag committee changed the rules so that absent deputies could be counted as present. The decrees on ‘malicious attacks’ and special courts were published, and the Deutschlandsender began using the Garrison Church carillon as its interval signal.
Day 55 Saturday 25 March 1933

Goebbels tells the radio chiefs that broadcasting now belongs to the government

At the Haus des Rundfunks in Berlin, Goebbels told the heads of all German radio companies that radio was the most important instrument for influencing the masses and that the government would give it its instructions. Göring told the foreign press that reports of atrocities were lies and blamed Jews and Marxists abroad. Berlin’s fire chief was suspended, a Berlin court upheld a Nazi defendant’s objection to a Jewish judge, and the plaque recalling the Weimar constitution was removed from the theatre in Weimar.
Day 56 Sunday 26 March 1933

Berlin’s newly elected city council is installed at the Rathaus with Nazi salutes

On a fine spring Sunday Berlin’s newly elected city council was sworn in at the Rathaus after church services, with the black-white-red flag and the swastika flying; the Nazi group answered with three ‘Heils’ for Hitler and the Horst Wessel song. The Zionist Federation repeated its rejection of foreign ‘atrocity’ reports, Der Angriff threatened ‘traitors’, and the radio refused to carry a German National call for the monarchy. Germany beat France at hockey in Berlin.
Day 58 Tuesday 28 March 1933

Nazi party orders a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses from 1 April

From Munich the Nazi party leadership published its call for a boycott of Jewish shops, goods, doctors and lawyers, to begin ‘at a stroke’ on Saturday 1 April at 10:00 under a central committee led by Julius Streicher. The Catholic bishops withdrew their warnings against the Nazi movement, and Albert Einstein, landing in Belgium, broke with Prussia. In Berlin Goebbels told the film industry which films he admired.
Day 59 Wednesday 29 March 1933

Retroactive death-penalty law signed; Ufa resolves to part with its Jewish staff

Back from Munich, Hitler told his ministers that the boycott of Jewish businesses had to be organised, and the cabinet discussed the bill to ‘coordinate’ the states. A law dated this day made the death penalty retroactive, clearing the way to hang the alleged Reichstag arsonist. In the film world the censors banned Fritz Lang’s Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, and Ufa’s board decided in principle to end its contracts with Jewish employees.
Day 61 Friday 31 March 1933

First coordination law dissolves state parliaments; SA drives Jewish judges from courts

The Reich government enacted the provisional law to ‘coordinate’ the states with the Reich, dissolving every state parliament except Prussia’s and refilling them by the Reichstag vote without new elections. In Berlin crowds and SA men forced Jewish judges and lawyers out of the courts, and that evening Kerrl ordered Jewish judges in Prussia to take leave. Goebbels announced that the boycott would start next morning. In the cinemas Lamprecht’s Spione am Werk opened, and Erich Pommer left Ufa.
Day 63 Sunday 2 April 1933

Boycott ‘suspended’ until Wednesday as the coordination law appears in the gazette

From Munich Streicher’s committee announced that the boycott was suspended until Wednesday morning and told local committees to take down their posters. The coordination law appeared in the Reich Law Gazette, to take effect the next day, and the chairmen of 85 labour exchanges were suspended. Berlin mourned the actor Paul Biensfeldt, who had died overnight; Hertha BSC and BSV 92 drew 2–2 before 15,000 spectators, a tram rammed a Stahlhelm lorry in Neukölln, and an operetta ended in uproar at the Schiller-Theater.
Day 64 Monday 3 April 1933

Max Reinhardt ousted from the Deutsches Theater; Germans now need exit visas

The management of the Deutsches Theater announced, after a meeting with a Prussian ministry commissioner, that Max Reinhardt would have no further part in its artistic direction. The coordination law came into force, and the Interior Minister required every German leaving the country to obtain an exit visa. The pro-Nazi ‘German Christians’ opened their first national conference in Berlin. Hindenburg presented the aviator Elly Beinhorn with the Hindenburg Cup.
Day 66 Wednesday 5 April 1933

Hitler Youth takes over the youth associations; the Rotter brothers ambushed in exile

The Hitler Youth occupied the offices of the Reich Committee of German Youth Associations in Berlin, and Baldur von Schirach took over its leadership. Einstein wrote to the Prussian Academy rejecting its charges; Hitler answered Hindenburg on the Jewish veterans and spoke to the farmers’ council; Kerrl told Jewish notaries to stop working. In Liechtenstein the Berlin theatre impresarios Alfred and Fritz Rotter were ambushed; Alfred and his wife fell to their deaths. Prussia ordered a strict Good Friday.
Day 67 Thursday 6 April 1933

Hitler tells doctors’ leaders he will purge ‘alien influence’ from Germany’s professions

Receiving the newly ‘coordinated’ leadership of the medical profession, Hitler spoke of removing the ‘excess’ of Jewish intellectuals from German cultural life. In the evening he and Goebbels addressed the foreign press, with the papal nuncio at the head of the diplomatic corps. The civil servants’ federation dissolved itself and the Protestant church protested at Kube’s remarks to the German Christians. Duelling was legalised again in Prussia, and the Propaganda Ministry warned against ‘patriotic kitsch’.
Day 68 Friday 7 April 1933

Civil Service law purges Jews and opponents; Reich governors take over the states

In a cabinet session lasting into the night, Hitler’s government adopted the law ‘for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service’, which forced officials ‘not of Aryan descent’ into retirement and allowed political opponents to be dismissed, and a second coordination law placing Reich governors over the states. Berlin’s new Special Court gave its first sentence, a year in prison for a Jewish market trader. Unemployment was reported down by 337,000 in a fortnight, and Berlin radio chose a Nazi fighting song for its interval signal.
Day 70 Sunday 9 April 1933

Göring tells 20,000 Nazi factory-cell members it is a ‘National Socialist revolution’

At the first general meeting of the Nazi factory cell organisation in Greater Berlin, Göring insisted that the upheaval be called a ‘National Socialist’, not merely a ‘national’, revolution; that afternoon he flew to Rome, his appointment as Prussian premier now said to be settled. The Reichstag deputy Sprenger was made Reich commissioner to ‘coordinate’ the civil servants’ associations. Hindenburg attended a Palm Sunday confirmation, and an aircraft crashed into spectators at a Nazi youth flying display in Staaken, killing two.
Day 71 Monday 10 April 1933

Hitler signs the law turning 1 May into a state ‘Holiday of National Labour’

Hitler, Frick and Goebbels signed a law making 1 May, the labour movement’s own day, a public holiday under state control, while the official gazette published the law allowing Jewish lawyers to be struck off. Franz Ritter von Epp was appointed Reich governor of Bavaria, and in Rome Papen met Cardinal Pacelli and Mussolini as Göring flew in. On a rainy Monday in Berlin, radio listeners could hear Furtwängler conduct the Eroica, and the theatre director Viktor Barnowsky left the Komödienhaus.
Day 72 Tuesday 11 April 1933

Police and SA search and seal the Bauhaus in Berlin-Steglitz

Police and SA searched the Bauhaus school in its converted telephone factory in Berlin-Steglitz, sealed the building and arrested 32 students; the school never taught there again. The first implementing ordinance of the Civil Service law defined anyone with a single Jewish grandparent as ‘non-Aryan’, Göring was named Prussian Minister President, and the SS took over the Dachau camp. Newspapers printed Goebbels’s reply to the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who had objected to artists such as Bruno Walter being driven from the platform, and most Jewish members of the Berlin club Tennis Borussia left it.
Day 73 Wednesday 12 April 1933

SS guards murder Jewish prisoners at Dachau, the camp’s first killings

On the second day of SS control at Dachau, guards led away four Jewish prisoners and shot them: Rudolf Benario, Ernst Goldmann and Arthur Kahn died, Erwin Kahn survived for four days. The same day the German Student Union opened its month-long ‘Action against the Un-German Spirit’, Prussia ruled that only students of ‘German descent’ could belong to the student body, and Theodor Lewald stood down as head of German sport. In cinemas, Frank Wisbar’s film Anna und Elisabeth had its premiere.
Day 74 Thursday 13 April 1933

Students post the twelve theses ‘against the un-German spirit’; first professors suspended

From Maundy Thursday the German Student Union began posting its twelve theses ‘against the un-German spirit’, which declared the Jew the most dangerous enemy and demanded that Jewish writers publish only in Hebrew. Prussia suspended sixteen university teachers, among them Kelsen, Tillich, Horkheimer and Mannheim, and the main Jewish organisations founded a joint committee for help and reconstruction. In the House of Commons, Austen Chamberlain attacked the new regime, while restaurants learned they would have to post notices declaring whether they cooked with margarine.
Day 75 Friday 14 April 1933

Good Friday: Berlin protests to London over the Commons debate on Germany

On Good Friday the government instructed its ambassador in London to protest ‘most emphatically’ against the previous day’s Commons debate, while at noon Germany’s attachés laid a wreath at the Cenotaph. The Nazi ‘Fighting League for German Culture’ founded a national theatre-goers’ association with ministers as its founders, and Prussia ruled that only Nazi organisations and the Stahlhelm counted as ‘national associations’ for shortened law exams. With matches banned almost everywhere for the holy day, 6,000 people in Cologne watched Grasshoppers Zürich, and a balloon set off from Gelsenkirchen for Africa.
Day 76 Saturday 15 April 1933

Germany’s protest over the Commons debate is handed in at an empty Foreign Office

On Easter Saturday the German chargé d’affaires delivered the Reich’s protest against the Commons debate to the duty official at the Foreign Office, as the Prime Minister sailed for Washington and The Times called the protest ‘absurd’. In Austria the government restored compulsory religious exercises in schools and declared an Easter amnesty, and Hamburg’s Senate placed state commissioners in the Chamber of Commerce. German radio carried the third act of Parsifal from the Berlin State Opera, and Hamburger SV drew 2–2 with the Vienna professionals WAC.
Day 77 Sunday 16 April 1933

Easter: Erwin Kahn dies of his Dachau wounds; Munich publishes its attack on Thomas Mann

Early on Easter Sunday Erwin Kahn, the one survivor of the Dachau shootings of 12 April, died under guard in a Munich clinic, killed by force to his larynx. The Easter edition of the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten carried the ‘Protest of the Richard Wagner City of Munich’ against Thomas Mann, signed by more than forty people including Richard Strauss, and the satirical weekly Simplicissimus was brought into line. Protestant pulpits in Prussia read out a message welcoming the ‘new Germany’; in Berlin, burglars cleared out the C&A store on Königstraße, and a gusty wind troubled the Easter air show at Tempelhof.
Day 80 Wednesday 19 April 1933

Munich rally demands ‘Out with the Jews from the administration of justice’

In Munich’s Circus Krone the justice ministers of Bavaria and Prussia, Hans Frank and Hanns Kerrl, spoke with Julius Streicher at a rally under the slogan ‘Out with the Jews from the administration of justice’, as Bavaria issued its rules for removing Jewish lawyers. Hindenburg received the Stahlhelm leader Seldte to hear about plans to ‘coordinate’ (gleichschalten, bring into line) the Stahlhelm with the SA. Abroad, Britain banned most Soviet imports after the Moscow engineers’ verdict and Roosevelt took the dollar off gold; at home the government threatened to act against the flood of ‘national kitsch’, from Horst Wessel pencils to swastika ice-cream parlours.
Day 81 Thursday 20 April 1933

Hitler’s 44th birthday: flags across Berlin and the premiere of Johst’s ‘Schlageter’

For Hitler’s 44th birthday Berlin put out flags almost as for the Day of Potsdam, a flag parade marched past the Interior Ministry on Unter den Linden, and Bavaria made Hindenburg, Hitler, Epp and Röhm honorary citizens; Hitler himself stayed in Bavaria. Prussia marked the day by turning three cadet schools into ‘national-political education institutes’ and by withdrawing Theodor Lessing’s research post, while the party announced a ban on new members from 1 May. That evening the State Theatre gave the premiere of Hanns Johst’s Nazi drama ‘Schlageter’ before Goebbels, Frick and Rust.
Day 83 Saturday 22 April 1933

Decree ends ‘non-Aryan’ doctors’ insurance practice; student law adopts ‘German descent’

Labour Minister Seldte signed a decree ending the work of ‘non-Aryan’ and Communist panel doctors with the health insurance funds, and the cabinet passed a Reich law limiting university student bodies to students of ‘German descent and mother tongue’, a law excluding Jews from the patent bar and a tenants’ protection law for farmers. Bavaria’s justice minister, Frank, was proposed as Reich Commissioner for bringing justice in the states into line. After the meeting Hitler and Goebbels flew to Munich for the party leaders’ conference, while in Berlin the Davis Cup candidates trained in cold rain and London counted the cost of a great fire in its docks.
Day 84 Sunday 23 April 1933

Tennis federation bars ‘non-Aryans’ from national teams, shutting out Daniel Prenn

After the Davis Cup trials in Berlin, the board of the German Tennis Federation resolved that ‘non-Aryans’ (the regime’s term for people of Jewish descent) could no longer be picked for the Davis Cup or other representative teams and that Jews should leave club boards, which shut out the Jewish player Daniel Prenn. In the plenary hall of the Prussian Landtag, the Nazi press chief Otto Dietrich told journalists the press must become a ‘sharply honed weapon’ of German politics, and Protestant leaders announced work on a new constitution for a single German Evangelical Church. Max Planck turned 75, and in Monaco Achille Varzi won the Grand Prix in record time.
Day 85 Monday 24 April 1933

Decree shutting Jewish doctors out of health-insurance practice is published

The official gazette published the Reich Labour Minister’s ordinance of 22 April, which told the doctors’ associations to withdraw health-insurance admission from “non-Aryan” doctors and from those accused of communist activity. Hitler handed two of his powers as Reich governor of Prussia to Göring’s cabinet, and the Mecklenburg church dispute reached the Chancellery. The sports pages reported that Germany’s Davis Cup team had been named without Daniel Prenn, after the tennis federation declared that Jewish players could no longer be members.
Day 86 Tuesday 25 April 1933

Cabinet passes the “overcrowding” law capping Jewish pupils and students

Hitler’s cabinet sat until after ten at night and passed a law that limited admissions to secondary schools and universities and capped the share of “non-Aryan” pupils and students. Prussia’s culture minister suspended 25 more professors, and Hitler named the army chaplain Ludwig Müller his liaison to the Protestant churches. The labour exchanges reported unemployment down by 69,000 in the first half of April, and Berlin’s university rector explained why he had objected to two of the students’ anti-Jewish posters.
Day 93 Tuesday 2 May 1933

SA and SS occupy the trade union offices across Germany; union leaders arrested

At ten in the morning, the day after the “Day of National Labour”, SA and SS men occupied every building of the free trade unions in Germany, together with their newspapers and their bank. Theodor Leipart, Peter Graßmann and other leaders were taken into “protective custody”, the unions’ property was seized and Nazi commissioners took over. In Duisburg four union officials were murdered. The Hoppegarten racecourse opened its season the same afternoon.
Day 94 Wednesday 3 May 1933

The remaining union federations submit to Hitler; Göring defines the Gestapo’s powers

Ley announced that the Christian trade unions, the Hirsch-Duncker union ring and other employees’ federations had placed themselves unconditionally under Hitler and his action committee. A circular from Göring set out the new Secret State Police Office’s tasks and its headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8, and the Berlin daily Tägliche Rundschau was banned until the end of May. The German National People’s Party renamed itself the “German National Front”. In Berlin a football play-off ended 3–3 after extra time.
Day 96 Friday 5 May 1933

Seven Nazi Reich governors appointed to rule the states for Berlin

On Hitler’s proposal Hindenburg appointed seven Reich governors (Reichsstatthalter), all of them Nazi leaders, for Württemberg, Baden, Saxony, Hesse, Bremen and Oldenburg, Anhalt and Brunswick, and Thuringia. The cabinet passed laws on tax advisers, sales premiums and a six-month freeze on new shops, and in Moscow Germany and the Soviet Union brought the extension of the Berlin Treaty into force. On the Avus the French racing driver Count Czaykowski set a world one-hour record of 213.8 km/h; Berlin’s Jewish community bulletin reported hundreds seeking help every day.
Day 100 Tuesday 9 May 1933

Frick tells the states that schools must form “the political human being”

At a meeting of the states’ education ministers in the Reich Interior Ministry, Frick set out the principles of future school policy: schools were to teach race studies, warn against mixing German with “alien”, above all Jewish, blood, and prepare the young for military service. Rust handed sex education back to parents and stopped grants to Jewish trainee teachers. The Berlin guard troops mounted their first guard at the war memorial on Unter den Linden, two convicted murderers were executed at Plötzensee, Joseph Schmidt’s film “Ein Lied geht um die Welt” had its premiere, and from France Klaus Mann wrote to Gottfried Benn.
Epilogue Wednesday 10 May 1933

Books burn on the Opernplatz as the German Labour Front is founded

Late on Wednesday evening Berlin students burned an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 books on the Opernplatz, in pouring rain and in front of newsreel cameras; the works of Marx, Heinrich Mann, Kästner, Remarque, Tucholsky, Ossietzky and many others went into the fire, and Goebbels declared the age of “Jewish intellectualism” over. Books were burned in 21 other university towns the same night. That afternoon Hitler had addressed the first congress of the German Labour Front, which took the place of the destroyed trade unions under Robert Ley, and it was announced that the assets of the SPD, its newspapers and the Reichsbanner had been seized.