The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

by Adam Tooze

The results of the March election were a disappointment to Hitler and Goebbels. The failure of the Nazis to achieve anywhere near an absolute majority, even when their electoral appeal was backed up by considerable intimidation, confirms the conclusion reached by most observers in the autumn of 1932. As a political movement, the Nazi party had reached its limit well short of a majority of the German electorate. Now, however, Hitler and his party no longer needed to rely exclusively on the electoral process.9 After applying massive pressure to the Catholic Centre party, Hitler got the two-thirds majority he needed for the Enabling Law of 23 March 1933. This freed his government to rule by decree. The road was open to the decisive application of physical force. In stark contrast to the reluctant revolutionaries of November 1918, who had done their best to suppress the popular uprising against World War I and the Wilhelmine monarchy, the Nazis did not hesitate to combine the ballot box with physical force. Across Germany in the spring of 1933, the Nazi party and its nationalist