Photos: The Nazification of Germany, 1933-39

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Paul Von Hindenburg called Hitler to the chancellorship of Germany on January 30, 1933. Within one month, the Reichstag (Germany's Parliament) building burned and Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to sign an emergency decree. This authorized Hitler to suspend all civil rights and arrest and execute any suspicious person.
Reichminister Joseph Goebbels delivers a speech to a crowd in Berlin urging Germans to boycott Jewish-owned businesses. He defends the boycott as a legitimate response to the anti-German "atrocity propaganda" being spread abroad by "international Jewry." April 1, 1933.
A German civilian wearing a Nazi armband holds a sheaf of anti-Jewish Boycott signs, while SA members paste them on a Jewish-owned business. Most of the signs read, "Germans defend yourselves against Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!"
A woman reads a boycott sign posted in the window of a Jewish-owned department store. The sign reads, "Germans defend yourselves against Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!" The boycott was staged April 1, 1933.
German men and youth pose beneath an anti-Jewish banner that reads, "Help liberate Germany from Jewish capital. Don't buy at Jewish stores."
SA pickets, wearing boycott signs, block the entrance to a Jewish-owned shop during April 1, 1933 boycott.
Three Jewish businessmen are forced to march down Bruehl Strasse, one of the main commercial streets in central Leipzig, carrying signs that read, "Don't buy from Jews. Shop in German businesses!" 1935.
Under order of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Nazi gangs raided the Berlin Library and gathered "un-German" books, including the works of world-class authors such as Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Jack London, H. G. Wells, and Emile Zola, as well as those of Jewish writers. In this photo, Germans crowd around a stall filled with confiscated books soon to be burned.
Nazi students and SA unloading "un-German" books as fuel for a book burning on May 10, 1933 in Berlin, Germany. The SA (Sturmabteilung or "Stormtroopers") was the Nazi paramilitary organization under Ernst Röhm. The banner on the back of the truck states, "German students march against the un-German spirit."
One way the Nazis cleansed the country of "un-German" thoughts was through censorship. A "brown shirt" (member of the SA) throws some more fuel--"un-German" books-- into a roaring fire on the Opernplatz in Berlin. May 10, 1933.
Hitler Youth march through Nuremberg, Germany past Nazi officials, including Julius Streicher, 1933.
Adolf Hitler opening the 1935 Party Day of freedom in the historic Nuremberg town hall.
Hitler reviews 35,000 SA troops who came to Berlin to celebrate the third anniversary of Hitler's chancellorship on February 20, 1936.
View of the Loos Haus, a public building in Vienna, adorned with decorations and a large banner bearing a quote from Hitler, "Those of the same blood belong in the same Reich!" Such banners were hung throughout Austria in the weeks preceding the April 10th plebiscite on the incorporation of Austria into the German Reich.
A group of Nazis hold hands on the steps of the University of Vienna in an attempt to prevent Jews from entering the building. The action led to a day of student rioting which had to be suppressed by the police.
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