zum Beispiel

Koppel S. Pinson: "Modern Germany"; Macmillan, 1954

Thus was completed the process of 'Gleichschaltung', the co-ordination of the complete life of Germany to the Nazi pattern.

When referring or alluding to the historical process in Nazi Germany, I think 'Gleichschaltung' (possibly in italics, possibly not capitalized) could be used for an educated British readership, though I think a few words might be added to explain what is meant for the historically challenged.

OED

<<Gleichschaltung. . . Also with lower-case initial.

The standardization in authoritarian states of political, economic, and cultural institutions. Also transf.
Other parts of speech related to the G. word (e.g. gleichschalten v. trans., to impose Gleichschaltung upon; gleichgeschaltet ppl. a.) are also occas. found in English contexts. . . .
1969 J. Mander Static Soc. viii. 254 There was no effective resistance..to Peron’s gleichschaltung of the CGT.>>

I now see it is even in the OED. Most of the quotations use italics, but the (later) one given above does not.

One could perhaps use the English word 'alignment' (in inverted commas) as an English equivalent. I prefer that to 'co-ordination'.

elimination of opposition

"alignment" sounds like a good translation to me. When you look at the contexts that the LEO entry for "alignment" lists, it would work the same way as "Gleichschaltung" works in German: the figurative use of a term originally used in engineering for a political strategy (cf. especially "Parteilinie"). In my opinion "co-ordination" is to weak for that.

BTW: The English, French, and Spanish entries in Wikipedia for "Gleichschaltung" retain the German technical term and suggest "synchronisation" and its equivalents as an explanation.

@ Hermann: "Gleichschaltung" is not the same as elimination of opposition (although this was the eventual effect). The Third Reich did not abolish the institutions of the former democratic society and its political system at once, but rather adopted many of them, thus utilising existing structures for its authoritorian rule. The "Vorläufiges Gesetz zur Gleichschaltung der Länder mit dem Reich" (http://www.documentarchiv.de/ns/lndrgleich01.html) is a good example of how this was done. The German Länder were retained as political bodies, but the democratic procedures of policy-making were abolished in order to make sure that the Länder would be from now an an effective instrument of central governance.

I use the word streamlining for "Gleichschaltung"

I do have another question on that topic.

Is the word 'Gleichschaltung' just used in a historical context concerning the Third Reich, or can I use, too, concerning the Soviet-regime. The thing is the Soviets did something similar with the press in the former GDR. Do I have to find a translation or can I just use the German word?

the more I hear the word, the more I think of two or more operations being performed simultaneously or in coordination with each other, like troops doing parade drills or the recent Olympic sport of synchronized swimming.

I'm familiar with most English-language (and English translation) histories of NS domestic policies, and the term "coordination" -- with quotation marks -- is almost always used for Gleichschaltung. It's important, however, that the reader is aware of the full meaning of the German concept in the Nazi totalitarian context: the "simultaneous homogenization and atomization" (to quote D. Peukert) of all entropic and/or autonomous social elements. The Nazi State was a vertical hierarchy capped by the Führer. The only tolerated "horizontal" association was the Volksgemeinschaft -- a broad national and racial community that erased (in theory) all distinctions between socioeconomic classes.

Whether Gleichschaltung can be used outside of the Nazi context, I don't know. Certainly by analogy. But any usage bears the Nazi imprint -- much in the same way that "Holocaust," an old multi-use term, is now inseparable from the Shoah.

Often, just the German word is used, with a brief explanation as necessary, depending on the audience, at the first instance.

The question in #8 is a year old, but I would have said, no, I don't think the German word is known at all to most nonspecialist English-speaking readers. Within the context of 20th-century history in the academic world, historians will read German anyway, so it doesn't really matter whether writers use the original term or substitute a (necessarily inadequate) short paraphrase.

But as far as I'm aware, it's not known to the general English-speaking public at all -- unlike, say, other WW2 words like Kristallnacht and Blitzkrieg and so on. So if you wanted to introduce it to an audience unfamiliar with it, you would need more explanation than just a word or two; you'd really have to discuss the whole historical and linguistic background. For that reason, it wouldn't make sense to me to use it in any context except for that particular historical one.

Habe das gleiche Problem mit

'forced political assimilation'

gelöst, nachdem ich mir die Vorschläge oben angesehen habe. Denke, dass es das trifft.

"The standardisation of political, economic and social institutions in authoritarian states", The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, Oxford 1995, p. 575

Just for the record. I think this to be a superficial approach of understanding and describing what actually happened in Germany in 1933-1934 http://www.documentarchiv.de/ns/lndrgleich01.html

See too "bringing into line", "making the same", "coordination" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung

Compare Siehe Wörterbuch: [fr-de] mise au pas
which might be translated with "Gleichschrittmachung"

"alignment" is IMHO the best so far. I like "streamlining" or "assimilation" too.
But what about "Entkernung" ? http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entkernung I don't know any proper translation therefore ("decorification"?).
What actually essentially happened was, in one word, a "delegislation". So I go for it.

'Delegislation' really isn't very clear; is that first citation supposed to be its definition? It just sounds like canceling laws, making things not subject to the law when previously they were. I don't quite see how you get from that to Gleichschaltung. Can you explain the thought process?

#14 isn't bad, or the literal paraphrases from Wikipedia, but I still think anyone using this term in English in a nonspecialist context will probably need to explain it in considerably more than one word, in order to show where the figurative sense comes from.

See the link above for other past discussions and translation suggestions.