Gleichschaltung
강제적 동질화
The process by which the Nazis, after taking power in 1933, brought every area of German society, from the economy and associations to the media, culture and education, under party control. The German word, meaning “synchronisation”, comes from electrical engineering.
In depth
Laws of 31 March and 7 April 1933 dissolved and remade the state parliaments and governments and placed a Reich governor over each state. The civil service law of 7 April drove Jews and political opponents out of public office, the trade unions were destroyed on 2 May, and after the SPD was banned and the other parties dissolved themselves in June and July, the Nazi Party became the only legal party on 14 July. The press, broadcasting and the arts were brought under Goebbels’s Reich Chamber of Culture. The Weimar Constitution remained formally in force, but with the decisions of the 1935 Nuremberg Rally, which fused the symbols of party and state and stripped Jews of citizenship, Gleichschaltung was all but complete.