A-Level History: Nazi Consolidation and the Terror State, 1933–39

Between January 1933 and the summer of 1934, Germany went from coalition government to total dictatorship — legally, step by step. A-level questions on the Nazi state demand command of that sequence and of the machinery that maintained it. This quiz tests both.

The consolidation questions cover the legal revolution in order: the Reichstag Fire Decree of February 1933 suspending civil liberties and enabling the destruction of the KPD, the Enabling Act of March transferring legislative power to the cabinet, Gleichschaltung's coordination of the states, unions and parties — with the German Labour Front replacing the unions — and the Night of the Long Knives of June 1934, tested for its real target and purpose: Röhm's SA sacrificed to secure the army's allegiance, sealed weeks later by the merger of Chancellor and President on Hindenburg's death.

The terror-state questions examine the SS-Gestapo-SD complex and the camps, and propaganda under Goebbels — tested through the Ministry's actual functions across media and the arts. The church questions cover both accommodations and limits: the 1933 Concordat's exchange of institutional guarantees for political abstention, and the Confessing Church's stand against the German Christians and state control of doctrine.

Economic policy completes the set: Schacht's New Plan against the Four Year Plan of 1936 under Göring, with the shift to war preparation and autarky tested explicitly, alongside the regime's twin economic goals of employment through state spending and self-sufficiency. Each explanation names the instrument — decree, purge, ministry, plan — building the "legal revolution" analysis that structures the strongest essays.

• Sequence the legal revolution from the Fire Decree to the Führer state
• Explain Gleichschaltung and the destruction of independent institutions
• Analyse the Night of the Long Knives and the army's allegiance
• Evaluate the SS-Gestapo system, propaganda and church policy
• Contrast Schacht's New Plan with the Four Year Plan's war orientation

Covers the Nazi consolidation of power and the pre-war dictatorship (1933–1939) as taught in the widely studied A-level Germany courses: the legal revolution, the terror state, propaganda, the churches, and the war economy in preparation.