April 1933 one of the first artists in the Nazi period to be dismissed from his teaching position for "Verletzung des sittlichen Gefühls und Zersetzung des Wehrwillens des deutschen Volkes" (Violation of the sense of morality and undermining the will of the German people to defend itself). Fall 1933 first public defamation as a "degenerate" artist in an exhibition in the covered courtyard of Dresden's City Hall. Beginning in 1934 prohibited from showing his work in Dresden. 1937/38 eight major works are a focal point of the touring exhibition "Entartete Kunst"
(Degenerate Art). In the course of National Socialist cleansing, a total of 260 Dix works are seized from German museums.

Beginning in summer 1933 internal emigration in southwest Germany first at Randegg Castle in Hegau, beginning in 1936 in Hemmenhofen on Lake Constance (his primary residence until his death in 1969). Until 1943 annual visits to Dresden (studio: Kesselsdorfer Strasse 11). In late 1938, 14 day imprisonment by the Gestapo after the assassination attempt on Hitler at the Munich Hofbräuhaus.