From multiple parties to a one-party state.
Elimination took place in several steps. Communists were persecuted and their political activity suppressed. The SPD was banned on 22 June 1933. Other parties dissolved under pressure before the formation of new parties was prohibited in July.
Free competition for political support was thereby removed. The exam answer summarises that process briefly. It does not mean the Nazi Party banned itself or that all parties disappeared in the same way on the same day.
The other three answers
The other answers name rights that the Nazi state did not protect for everyone.
the right to free development of personality
Protected free development of personality was not a general right under the Nazi dictatorship. Today’s Basic Law guarantees this right in Article 2 within constitutional limits.
freedom of the press
The press was controlled and forced into conformity. Freedom of the press belongs to today’s Article 5 guarantees, not to the features of Nazi dictatorship.
protection of human dignity
The Nazi state violated human dignity through persecution and deprivation of rights. Today, Article 1 of the Basic Law requires the state to respect and protect human dignity.
Distinguishing the historical measure from today’s fundamental rights.
The Basic Law was created only in 1949. Its terms help explain the contrast with dictatorship; they do not describe effective guarantees available to persecuted people at that time.
The question asks for a feature that actually existed in the Nazi period. It does not contain a negative such as “not”. Therefore choose the measure of repression, not one of the three rights or protections.
One-party state · German Historical Museum ↗Nazi dictatorship: other parties eliminated, Nazi Party alone permitted.
Check the direction of the question. Here it asks “What existed?”; the correct choice is the banning of parties.
Three words for this question
- das Parteienverbotban on a political party
- Prohibition of operating as a political party.
- der Einparteienstaatone-party state
- A state in which only one party is permitted.
- die Selbstauflösungself-dissolution
- An organisation formally ends its own activity; here under political pressure.