The Coming of the Third Reich

When Hitler was appointed Chancellor, Goebbels organized a torchlit parade in Berlin of the brownshirts, the SS, and the Steel Helmets. They marched in a circle to make the parade look like it had more participants than it did. Occasionally participants would attack passerby. Middle-class observers found that “the violence that accompanied the marches seemed incidental and not particularly threatening” (313).

Hitler’s new government banned the Communist newspaper Red Flag and arrested participants in Communist protests and marches. The Communists and the Social Democrats did nothing “to co-ordinate protest measures on a wider scale” (314) apart from a futile call by the Communists for a general strike. Some Communists and Social Democrats thought Hitler was just the “tool” (315) of Alfred Hugenberg, a media mogul who had supported Hitler. Others expected Hitler’s government would not last long, since so many previous administrations of the Weimar Republic were quickly overturned.

By the end of January, brownshirts attacked the offices of Communists and trade unions and the homes of left-wing figures. Hermann Göring as the Prussian Minister of the Interior prevented the police from monitoring Nazi and brownshirt activities and created a police force comprised of Nazis and Steel Helmets.