Berlin 1933 – The Path to Dictatorship

On January 30, 1933 Reich President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Reich Chancellor, setting in motion “the process which was to lead into the abyss of war and genocide… [Its] path ended in Auschwitz.” (Ian Kershaw, 1998). A few months later, the National Socialists had consolidated their rule. By the summer of 1934, Hitler had firmly entrenched his “Führer state”. The extraordinarily rapid Nazi Gleichschaltung or coordination of state and society was made possible by the sustained support of the conservative elites and the self-coordination and enthusiastic consent of broad segments of German society. The Nazis’ ruthless, intimidating deployment of violence and terror, however, remained indispensable for the establishment and consolidation of their dictatorship.

The exhibition “Berlin 1933 – The Path to Dictatorship,” developed to mark the eightieth anniversary of the Nazi “seizure of power” and documented in this catalogue, is intended as a brief historical outline. In pictorial and written documents, it spotlights the most significant ruptures and landmarks of the establishment of Nazi power in 1933. Concentrating on the capital Berlin as the scene of historic events, it also highlights the fate of the early victims of Nazi terror in the city through representative biographies.