11. Nazification of the civil service was critical to Hitler’s power
In 1930s Germany the civil service included not only government workers, but also teachers and professors, officers of the courts including judges and prosecutors, and many other professionals. In April 1933 the Law for the Restoration of a Professional Civil Service was decreed, though with some objections from Hindenburg, which effectively banned Jews from the German civil service, and forced the removal of thousands of former civil servants from their positions. Many, in order to retain their posts, joined the Nazi Party. Others were forced into retirement or simply dismissed. The decree was later supplemented with a series of related ordinances which forced Jews and others known to have opposed National Socialism out of schools, under the guise of relieving overcrowding.
In January 1934, the separate German states were effectively abolished as political entities, reduced to provinces under a centralized government, and Germany for all practical purposes ceased to be a federal republic. The powers of the former states were formally transferred to the Chancellor and President, which Hitler then had combined into the same office through the Law Concerning the Highest State Office of the Reich in August 1934 following the death of Hindenburg. The political moves were possible since the Nazis had banned all opposition in the Reichstag, but the support of the German people was still necessary. Hitler’s moves to control public opinion and gain public support were part of an all-encompassing propaganda campaign which emphasized the superiority of the Aryan race and the international conspiracies against it, led by Jewish control of the world’s economic system.
