How Did Hitler Deal With Opposition

Hitler didn’t wait for after his consolidation of power to gather information about the Marxists. So by the time of the Reichstag fire [27th February 1933] he had all information about the communists, including their whereabouts and this made it easier for him to arrest all of them in one night. After the Reichstag fire, which was ‘supposedly’ a communist uprising started by Marinus van der Lubbe, was a two month purge of all communists.

They were taken to local prisons, concentration camps or worst still, torture chambers set up by the SA [still in power before he Night of Long Knives] in homes.

This was supposed to be a purge of the communists, but it showed that the SA was powerful enough to arrest anyone who dared to oppose the Nazi regime. This whole purge was called ‘preventive detention’, i. e. imprisoning people who harmed the state to prevent them from further doing so, but it was an open threat to opposition so that they’d either convert to Nazism or be way to frightened to ever oppose the Nazis.

Hitler didn’t get rid of only the communists, he also effectively ealt with the Social Democrats and accused them and the center party of being communists. Jews were also included in this purge. It’s said that he sent out instructions to arrest those who have been especially active in the political scenario. By late 1933, the Nazis had wiped out strong opposition organization in addition to closing down trade unions.

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The KPD [communist party] was forcibly disbanded; other parties disbanded themselves for fear of being confronted by the Nazis.

Seizing this opportunity, Hitler banned all parties and the reation of new parties. Having a political meeting was considered to be a criminal offense. Political opposition was now divided and those who weren’t arrested went underground or fled, so there was little political resistance for more than a decade. It was easy to squelch the communists as they weren’t as strong as the communists in Russia, they had no strong leader with equal caliber or status as that of Stalin and they did not have a wide network of strong organizations.

They were popular, as in well known, only ecause people were against them. Germans feared communist rule in Germany and were willing to let the Nazis repress the KPD. The KPD was greatly weakened by the fact that they took orders from the Moscow communists who insisted on a passive policy towards the Nazis as they [especially Stalin] thought Nazi rule would collapse very soon, and the communists would be victorious in Germany. They didn’t know how Hitler’s dictatorship and policies operated and adopted a rather casual, passive attitude towards the Nazis.

The iggest blow to communists actually came with the [ironic] Nazi-Soviet Pact [1939]]. The Socialists were also weak and were easy prey for Hitler. After the depression, even trade unions were crippled and so the weapon of the socialists, a general strike, wasn’t possible, so they couldn’t use mass action against Hitler. Plus they had hardly any contacts with the establishment and were thus easily marginalized. Thus Hitler used clever manipulation, and played on the weak points his opposition, to ultimately get rid of them.