The Death of the Spectacle in the mid-1930s

Abstract

The mid-1930s were decisive years for the Nazi dictatorship as the regime had consolidated itself by this time. Resistance had been crushed while powerful organisations, including the army, the police force and the courts, had been brought under National Socialist control. Accompanied by open violence and terror, particularly in the first year and a half after Hitler’s seizure of power, the population had been given a taste of the consequences that awaited those who publicly disagreed with Nazi policy. However, by the mid-1930s some of the chaos, brutality and disorder people associated with the last years of the Weimar Republic and the early years of the Third Reich had died down. In fact, the National Socialists got credit for having brought under control much of the disorder and violence they were responsible for in the first place. The economic situation improved and many people remembered the mid-1930s as the beginning of ‘the good days’ of the Third Reich.¹ Needless to say, these memories were not shared by groups and individuals the Nazis had classified as enemies to their alleged ‘people’s community’.