How far do you agree that Hitler’s Regime was a ‘consensus dictatorship’?
A consensus dictatorship is on that suggests Hitler’s regime was surrounded by a general agreement. This would mean that the majority of the German public were in cooperation with the Nazi regime and agreed with both the enforced and promoted concept of the regime. Hitler had mainly achieved this by trying to ‘ win over the hearts and minds of all non-Jewish Germans’ this would mean he would have the majority of the Germans citizens on his side. However, it is also suggested that many of the people had only consented due to fear which can be inferred from source 5 that it was the methods of the Nazi apparatus of terror that had led to the people conforming. …show more content…

The overall opposition was present in the Nazi regime but most of it were Resitenz and not Widerstand.

Hitler wanted to achieve his idea of Volksgemeinschaft and he chose to bring this community together to the ‘exclusion of the Jews and others deemed racially unfit’ as source 4 mentions. Hitler wanted people to agree with his ideology and consent to his government. Gellately argues that the people consented to give up certain freedoms and even supported and developed the Nazi state in return for the creation of a new celebrated community. Hitler set out a broad appeal of the Nazi regime which ignited a sense of belonging from the public. For example, concentration camps were not something that was hidden but was openly known about in the backdrops of the city. This suggests that the public did conform to such Nazi measures where the public believed that asocials would be best re-educated before returning back to society. It could also be said that it was fear of these concentration camps that made the public conform to the regime as source 5 suggests that it was ‘fear of arrest’ and ‘fear of informers’ that led to public conformity but the lack of terror used on the ordinary germans suggests that it wasn’t as large as its exaggerated.
The use of terror in the Nazi Regime is mentioned in source 5 as ‘bolstered by an elaborate apparatus of terror’.