The move by Hitler effectively merged the offices of both the President and Chancellor into one role, and therefore completed what the Nazis referred to as Gleichschaltung (or ‘Co-ordination’) by establishing Hitler as both Germany’s head of state and head of government.

Both Hitler and Mussolini were concerned about the risk of the Spanish Civil War escalating into a European-wide conflict, so at first their support for the Nationalists was small-scale and consisted mainly of transporting existing Spanish troops from Morocco to the mainland. As the war progressed their involvement grew.

SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich called the meeting in the Berlin suburb, in which he outlined the deportation of European Jews to extermination camps in Poland where they would be systematically murdered.