Nazi ideology offered redemption from a national ontological crisis, to which it was attracted like a predatory shark to blood. - Michael Burleigh

The Enabling Law permitted the government to pass budgets and promulgate laws, including those altering the constitution, for four years without parliamentary approval. In democracies, constitutional amendments are especially solemn moments; here they were easier than changing the traffic regulations. None of the guarantees Hitler extended to the Churches or the judiciary in his address to the Reichstag amounted to a hill of beans.

Roman Catholic priests in Germany were enjoined to shun National Socialism, and the Nazis did not get from them the clerical endorsement they often enjoyed in Protestant areas. Only a handful of priests supported Nazism, mostly malcontents or naifs, like Abbot Schachleiter, who argued that ‘if the Catholics do not co-operated with the NSDAP, there is a danger that National Socialism will become a purely Protestant movement.’

For, despite its egalitarian rhetoric, Nazi Germany eschewed the doctrine of aggressive class war, whatever revolutionist animosities lingered, against the limp bourgeoisie in general.