""Gleichschaltung" is usually translated, somewhat inadequately, as "coordination" or "unification." It is difficult to find a satisfactory English equivalent — possibly because the enforced uniformity which the German term describes does not commend itself to the English-speaking peoples. The French, with their genius for definition, have done better; they have translated the verb form, "gleichschalten," as "mettre au pas" — to bring into step. This phrase suggests an almost mechanical kind of conformity, as under military command; and no other human community so well represents a perfectly unified and coordinated whole — in precisely the sense of this German word — as a well-trained company of soldiers whose every movement is completely synchronized. If, therefore, following the French, one interprets "Gleichschaltung" as the application, mentally and morally as well as physically, of the principle of the goose-step, one gets a fair representation of what the word means to the Germans."
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Harold Callender in, "A SINGLE WORD THAT SUMS UP A NATION", The New York Times (28 January 1934)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung
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Gleichschaltung
Gleichschaltung was a Nazi term meaning "synchronization" or "coordination", designating the process by which Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party in Germany, established a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of German society. Although the Weimar Constitution remained nominally in effect throughout Hitler's dictatorship, near total Nazification was achieved by 1935 with the resolutions approved during that year's Nuremberg Rally, fusing the symbols of the part
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