Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

  17. See Melita Maschmann, Fazit. Mein Weg in der Hitler-Jugend, 5th paperback edn, Munich, 1983, 7–9; André François-Poncet, Souvenirs d’une ambassade à Berlin, Septembre 1931–Octobre 1938, Paris, 1946, 70; Frank, 111; Harry Graf Kessler, Tagebücher 1918–1937, Frankfurt am Main, 1961, 704.

  18. Maschmann, 8, 17–19.

  19. Hans-Jochen Gamm, Der Flüsterwitz im Dritten Reich, Munich, 1963, 8. Sir Horace Rumbold remarked that the President normally retired at 7 p.m. but stood at his window until after midnight, saluting the cheering crowd (DBFP, 2nd Ser., iv.401). (Actually, as photos show, the President was seated, not standing. See the photo in Hans Otto Meissner, 30.Januar 1933. Hitlers Machtergreifung, Munich, 1979, between 178 and 179.)

  20. Papen, 264.

  21. Papen, 264; TBJG, 358 (31 January 1933); Frank, 111.

  22. Papen, 264.

  23. Norbert Frei, ‘“Machtergreifung”. Anmerkungen zu einem historischen Begriff’, VfZ, 31 (1983), 136–45, here 139, 142.

  24. Monologe, I55; Frei, ‘“Machtergreifung”’, 136.

  25. Frei, ‘“Machtergreifung”‘,esp. 141–2. ‘Machtergreifung’ (‘seizure of power’)ap-pears, from Frei’s findings (143), to have been more a product of the historical writing of the 1950s than a term widely used during the Third Reich itself.

  26. Papen, 264.

  27. See Nipperdey, ‘1933 und Kontinuität der deutschen Geschichte’, esp. 94–101. As Nipperdey points out (93), there were also important and long-standing counter-continuities in German history – such as ideas of democracy and liberalism – that suffered an abrupt and lengthy break in 1933.

  28. Nipperdey, ‘1933 und Kontinuität der deutschen Geschichte’, 100–101.

  29. See Richard Bessel, ‘1933: A Failed Counter-Revolution’, in Ε. Ε. Riche (ed.), Revolution and Counter Revolution, Oxford, 1991, 109–227, esp. 120–21; and Martin Broszat et al. (eds.), Deutschlands Weg in die Diktatur, Berlin, 1983, 95 (comment of Richard Löwenthal). See also Horst Möller, ‘Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung. Konterrevolution oder Revolution?’, VfZ, 31 (1983), 25–51; Jeremy Noakes, ‘Nazism and Revolution’, in Noel O’Sullivan (ed.), Revolutionary Theory and Political Reality, London, 1983, 73–100; and for Hitler’s views on revolution, Zitelmann, Hitler. Selbstverständnis eines Revolutionärs, 44–86.

  30. Akten der Reichskanzlei. Die Regierung Hitler. Teil I: 1933/34, e d. Karl-Heinz Minuth, 2 vols., Boppard am Rhein, 1983, i.XVII.

  31. Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, Staatsbankrott, Göttingen, 1974, 185; Krosigk, Es geschah, I99; see also Papen, 260, and John L. Heinemann, Hitler’s First Foreign Minister, Berkeley, 1979, 65.

  32. AdR, Reg. Hitler, I–4.

  33. See Rudolf Morsey, ‘Die deutsche Zentrumspartei’ in Matthias and Morsey, Ende der Parteien, 281–453, here 340–43; and Rudolf Morsey, ‘Hitlers Verhandlungen mit der Zentrumsführung am 31. Januar 1933’, VfZ, 9 (1961), 182–94. See also Karl Dietrich Bracher, Gerhard Schulz and Wolfgang Sauer, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung (1960), paperback edn, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin/Vienna, 3 vols., 1974, i. 85.

  34. Bracher et al., Machtergreifung, i.89.

  35. Brüning, Memoiren, ii.684; AdR, Reg. Hitler, 2. Franz Gürtner was only confirmed in his office as Reich Justice Minister on 2 February. But his retention had already been agreed with the Reich President on 29 January. The delay was solely owing to Hitler’s wish to use the occupancy of the Reich Ministry of Justice as a bargaining card in his negotiations with the Zentrum (Lothar Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich 1933–1940. Anpassung und Unterwerfung in der Ära Gürtner, 2nd edn, Munich, 1990, 9–10, 64).

  36. AdR, Reg. Hitler, 5–7 and n.6; Becker, Hitlers Machtergreifung, 34–5.

  37. Bracher et al., Machtergreifung, i.85.

  38. AdR, Reg. Hitler, 6. Another conservative, Hugenberg, pressed to depose the ‘so-called sovereignty government of Braun’ in Prussia as soon as possible. State Secretary Meissner took this up and went on to propose the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, if necessary by use of Article 48, since ‘it is in any event necessary that the so-called sovereignty government of Braun soon disappears’ (AdR, Reg. Hitler, 7–8 and n.10). (A decision of the Supreme Court – Staatsgerichtshof – of 25 October 1932 had upheld the removal of the Prussian government that had taken place on 20 July 1932, but ruled that the Prussian government still had the right to represent the Prussian state in dealings with the Reich and other states.)

  39. Meissner, Staatssekretär, 225; Bracher et al., Machtergreifung, i.86; Meissner and Wilde, Machtergreifung, I97–8.

  40. A point made by Bracher et al., Machtergreifung, i.86.

  41. As regards economic recovery, Hitler’s first move was to back the initiative to suspend compulsory farm sales, pointing to the necessity of satisfying the wishes of at least a part of the nation at first (AdR, Reg. Hitler, 7–8, 11).

  42. AdR, Reg. Hitler, 9 and n.3.

  43. AdR, Reg. Hitler, 29 and n.7, 30, 34–5 and n.7.

  44. AdR, Reg. Hitler, I5.

  45. Papen, 265.

  46. Heinz Höhne, Die Zeit der Illusionen. Hitler und die Anfänge des 3. Reiches I933 bis 1936, Düsseldorf/Vienna/New York, 1991, 13–14; see also Schacht, 300: ‘I happened to be in the room with a mere handful of his entourage when he made his first speech to the German people over the radio… I had the impression that the burden of his new responsibilities weighed heavily upon him. At this moment he felt clearly what it meant to be transferred from the propaganda ranks of the Opposition to a post of Government responsibility.’

  47. Papen, 265.

  48. Domarus, 191–4.

  49. Domarus, 193.

  50. Thilo Vogelsang, ‘Neue Dokumente zur Geschichte der Reichswehr 1930–1933’, VfZ, 2 (1954), 434, n.127; Bracher et al., Machtergreifung, i.88; Höhne, Zeit der Illusionen, 55. Earlier in the day, Blomberg had met District Commanders at the Reichswehr Ministry. Vogelsang links the Hammerstein invitation with this earlier meeting as an attempt to introduce Hitler to leading officers. He inclines to follow John W. Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power. The German Army in Politics, London, 1953, 291, in seeing it as a response to Hitler’s unannounced visits to a number of Berlin barracks on the morning of 31 January, which had caused a ripple of alarm as a reminder, it seemed, of the spirit of 1918. A different reason for Hammerstein’s home as the venue and setting – a sixtieth birthday party for Neurath – is given by Wolfgang Sauer, Bracher et al., Machtergreifung, iii.55, 387 n.107. The two reasons are, perhaps, complementary rather than contradictory.

  51. Vogelsang, ‘Neue Dokumente’, 434–5 (notes of General Liebmann). According to the notes of Major von Mellenthin, also present at the meeting, Hitler’s posed alternatives were markets or colonies, and he favoured the latter (cit. Höhne, Zeit der Illusionen, 55). It seems likely, however, that Mellenthin misinterpreted Hitler’s reference to ‘living-space’ as meaning ‘colonies’.

  52. Bracher et al., Machtergreifung, iii.75–6, 393 n.183–91; Höhne, Zeit der Illusionen, 56.

  53. In a memorandum of 6 March 1926, Otto Stülpnagel, Abteilungschef in the Truppenamt, had spoken of the build-up of the armed forces as the basis of expansionism aimed at recovering Germany’s territories lost in the Versailles Treaty, re-establishing its European supremacy (at the expense of France), and preparing for ultimate global struggle for domination against the Anglo-Saxon powers (Klaus-Jürgen Müller, ‘Deutsche Militär-Elite in der Vorgeschichte des Zweiten Weltkrieges’, in Martin Broszat and Klaus Schwabe (eds.), Deutsche Eliten und der Weg in den Zweiten Weltkrieg, Munich, 1989, 226–90, here 246–7).

  54. Vogelsang, ‘Neue Dokumente’, 432–4; Klaus-Jürgen Müller, Armee und Drittes Reich 1933–1939. Darstellung und Dokumentation, Paderborn, 1987, 158–9. The emotional and impressionable Blomberg had been completely won over to Hitler (Klaus-Jürgen Müller, Das Heer und Hitler. Armee und nationalsozialistisches Regime 1933–1940, (1969) 2nd edn, Stuttgart, 1988, 51).

  55. Geyer, ‘Reichswehr, NSDAP, an
d the Seizure of Power’, 118.

  56. Geyer, ‘Reichswehr, NSDAP, and the Seizure of Power’, 111; and Geyer, ‘Professionals and Junkers’, esp. 86–7, 116–23.

  57. Klaus-Jürgen Müller, Armee, Politik und Gesellschaft in Deutschland 1933–1945, Paderborn, 1979, 11–33; Wilhelm Deist, The Wehrmacht and German Rearmament, London, 1981, ch.1; Geyer, ‘Reichswehr, NSDAP, and the Seizure of Power’, 101–23.

  58. Müller, Heer, 53. Reichenau had first met Hitler, for a lengthy private talk, in spring 1932. The colonel had evidently seen in Hitler and his Movement the potential to instigate the revolutionary renewal that he himself was seeking. Hitler, for his part, had recognized Reichenau’s instinctive backing for his radical approach. Aware of Reichenau’s sympathies (and in reply to a request for clarification about his stance to the defence of East Prussia in the event of Polish aggression), Hitler had, in December 1932, overcome his normal aversion to letter-writing to compose a lengthy statement of the need for a ‘deep process of regeneration’, destruction of Marxism ‘down to its complete extermination’, and ‘general psychological, ethical, and moral rearmament of the nation based on this new ideological unity’ as the framework for national defence (Thilo Vogelsang, ‘Hitlers Brief an Reichenau vom 4. Dezember 1932’, VfZ, 7 (1959), 429–37, here esp. 437).

  59. DRZW, i.404; Deist, Wehrmacht, 26.

  60. Cit. Vogelsang, ‘Hitlers Brief an Reichenau’, 433; Bracher et al., Machtergreifung, iii.68; Müller, Armee, I60; Müller, Heer, 61ff. for Blomberg’s understanding of keeping the army out of politics.

  61. Bracher et al., Machtergreifung, iii.68. The officer was Oberstleutnant Ott.

  62. AdR, Reg. Hitler, 50–51.

  63. AdR, Reg. Hitler, 62–3; see DRZW, i.234.

  64. See, for the above, DRZW, i.234–5, 404–5; Geyer, Rüstungspolitik, I40; Höhne, Zeit der Illusionen, 58.

  65. IMT, xxxvi.586, Doc. 611–EC.

  66. Deist, Wehrmacht, 24–6; Müller, Heer; Bracher et al, Machtergreifung, iii.41ff; DRZW, i.403; Peter Hüttenberger, ‘National-sozialistische Polykratie’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 2 (1976), 417–42, here 423–5.

  67. Müller, Armee, Politik und Gesellschaft, 44–5.

  68. Dietmar Petzina, Die deutsche Wirtschaft in der Zwischenkriegszeit, Wiesbaden, 1977, 114–15; Dieter Petzina, ‘Hauptprobleme der deutschen Wirtschaft 1932–1933’ Vfz, 15 (1967), 18–55, here 41–3, 53–5; Gustavo Corni, Hitler and the Peasants, New York/Oxford/Munich, 1990, 41ff; Turner, German Big Business, 328.

  69. For the meeting, see Turner, German Big Business, 328.

  70. IMT, XXXV.42–7, Doc. 203–D.

  71. IMT, XXV.48, Doc. 204–D.

  72. IMT, xxxv.47–8, Doc. 203–D.

  73. Turner, German Big Business, 330–31. At the cabinet meeting on 2 February, Frick had raised the question of subsidizing election propaganda of the government to the tune of a million Reich Marks. Objections were raised by Krosigk, the Finance Minister, and upheld by Hitler. At a subsequent cabinet meeting, on 21 February, it was, however, accepted that the Reichspost could be used to send out propaganda material (AdR, Reg. Hitler, 30–31, 102).

  74. Turner, German Big Business, 332.

  75. See Turner, German Big Business, 333–9.

  76. Based on Turner, German Big Business, 71–83; Henry Ashby Turner, ‘Hitlers Einstellung zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft vor 1933’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 2 (1976), 89–117; Avraham Barkai, ‘Sozialdarwinismus und Antiliberalismus in Hitlers Wirtschaftskonzept’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 3 (1977), 406–17; James, The German Slump, 345–54; see also Avraham Barkai, Das Wirtschaftssystem des Nationalsozialismus, Fischer edn, Frankfurt am Main, 1988, ch.1, and Zitelmann, Hitler. Selbstverständnis eines Revolutionärs, ch.4, for Hitler’s social and economic ideas.

  77. James, The German Slump, 344.

  78. Höhne, Zeit der Illusionen, I09–13, here 113.

  79. Schacht, 317–19; Höhne, Zeit der Illusionen, I31–2; Richard J. Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich, Oxford, 1994, 56. Following legislation brought in at the time of the currency stabilization in 1924, there were firm restrictions on the government’s scope for printing money. The discount bills – greatly extended under Schacht – were a way of getting round such restrictions.

  80. Richard J. Overy, The Nazi Economic Recovery, 2nd edn, Cambridge, 1996, 37.

  81. Barkai, Das Wirtschaftssystem des Nationalsozialismus, I51; James, The German Slump, 344; Overy, War and Economy, 60.

  82. Domarus, 208–9; Höhne, Zeit der Illusionen, 59.

  83. Cit. Heidrun Edelmann, Vom Luxusgut zum Gebrauchsgegenstand. Die Geschichte der Verbreitung von Personenkraftwagen in Deutschland, Frankfurt am Main, 1989, 173.

  84. AdR, Reg. Hitler, xliii; Edelmann, 173.

  85. Edelmann, 189 n.141; Höhne, Zeit der Illusionen 62–3.

  86. Hansjoachim Henning, ‘Kraftfahrzeugindustrie und Autobahn in der Wirtschaftspolitik des Nationalsozialismus 1933 bis 1936’, Vierteljahrsschrift für Sozial-und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 65 (1978), 217–42, here, esp., 228.

  87. AdR, Reg. Hitler, xliii. For Todt’s contribution to motorway construction, see Franz W. Seidler, Fritz Todt. Baumeister des Dritten Reiches, Munich/Berlin, 1986, Part 3, here 97ff.

  88. Kurt Kaftan, Der Kampf um die Autobahnen, Berlin, 1955, 81–3; and see Höhne, Zeit der Illusionen, 60, 62–3.

  89. Höhne, Zeit der Illusionen, 59, 62. For Hitler’s personal interest in cars, and his friendship with Jakob Werlin of Mercedes, see Overy, War and Economy, 72 n.17.

  90. Höhne, Zeit der Illusionen, 60, cit. VB, I2–13 February 1933.

  91. Hans Mommsen, Das Volkswagenwerk und seine Arbeiter im Dritten Reich, Düsseldorf, 1996, 56–60.

  92. Henning, 226 n.37.

  93. Henning, 221–7.

  94. See Overy, War and Economy, 70–71.

  95. AdR, Reg. Hitler, xliii.

  96. AdR, Reg. Hitler, xliii-v. In fact, far more of the expenditure went on ordinary roads than motorways. (See Overy, War and Economy, 60, 85.)

  97. Edelmann, 174–5. The motorways were at first not a major factor in the reduction of unemployment (Höhne, Zeit der Illusionen, I29–31).

  98. Helmut Heiber, ed., Goebbels-Reden, Bd .I: 1932–1939, Düsseldorf, 1971, 67–70 (with Heiber’s editorial interpolations referring to the background acoustics in brackets); reprinted in Becker, Hitlers Machtergreifung, 57–60, here 58–9.

  99. Domarus, 204–8.

  100. TBJG, I.2, 371 (11 February 1933).

  101. Erich Ebermayer, Denn heute gehört uns Deutschland, Hamburg/Vienna, 1959, 21.

  102. Jochmann, Nationalsozialismus und Revolution, 424–5.

  103. Becker, Hitlers Machtergreifung, 74–5; Martin Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers. Grundlegung und Entwicklung seiner inneren Verfassung, Munich, 1969, 93.

  104. Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers, 90–95.

  105. Papen, 260.

  106. Domarus, 213; Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers, 95.

  107. Domarus, 210–11; Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers, 98.

  108. BHStA, MA 106672, RPvNB/OP, 20 February 1933.

  109. Staatsarchiv München, LRA 76887, GS Anzing, 24 February 1933.

  110. Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers, 99.

  111. Hans Mommsen, ‘Van der Lubbes Weg in den Reichstag – der Ablauf der Ereignisse’, in Uwe Backes et al., Reichstagsbrand. Aufklärung einer historischen Legende, Munich/Zurich, 1986, 33–57, here 33–42.

  112. The question of who set the Reichstag ablaze has provoked the most rancorous of disputes. The Nazi version that it was a Communist plot was widely disbelieved at the time by critical observers and was not even convincing enough to secure the conviction of the leading Communists tried at the show trial at the supreme Reich Court in Leipzig in autumn 1933. The view that the Nazis, with most to gain, had set fire to the Reichstag themselves was immediately given wide currency among diplomats and foreign journalists, and in liberal circles in Germany (see François-Poncet, 94–5). Nazi authorship, as put
forward in Communist counter-propaganda, orchestrated by Willi Münzenberg, in The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the Reichstag, Paris, 1933, carried the day for a long time. But the findings of Fritz Tobias in the 1960s, collected in his extensive evaluation and documentation (Der Reichstagsbrand. Legende und Wirklichkeit, Rastatt/Baden, 1962), supported by the scholarly analysis of Hans Mommsen (‘Der Reichstagsbrand und seine politischen Folgen’, VfZ, I2 (1964), 351–413), that Marinus van der Lubbe acted alone, are compelling and are now widely accepted, though not by Klaus P. Fischer, Nazi Germany: A New History, London, 1995, 272. The counter-claims of the Luxemburg Committee (see Walther Hofer et al. (eds.), Der Reichstagsbrand. Eine wissenschaftliche Dokumentation, 2 vols., Berlin, 1972, Munich, 1978), that the Nazis were indeed the perpetrators, are regarded by most experts as flawed. The consequences of the Reichstag fire were, of course, always more important than the identity of whoever instigated the blaze. But the question of authorship was nevertheless of significance, since it revolved around the question of whether the Nazis were following through carefully laid plans to institute totalitarian rule, or whether they were improvising reactions to events they had not expected. (See, for an assessment and re-evaluation of the debate, Backes et al., Reichstagsbrand. The latest rekindling of the debate has again, following careful research in sources that have only recently become available, led to the conclusion that van der Lubbe acted alone. – See Klaus Wiegrefe, ‘Flammendes Fanal’, Der Spiegel, I5 (2001), 38–58, which convincingly defends Tobias’ version against the counter-interpretation of a Nazi conspiracy, advanced once more in Jürgen Schmädeke, Alexander Bahar, and Wilfried Kugel, ‘Der Reichstagsbrand in neuem licht’, Historische Zeitschrift, 269 (1999), 603–51.)

  113. Hanfstaengl, 15 Jahre, 291–5.

  114. Goebbels, Kaiserhof, 269–70 (27 February 1933), TBJG, I.2, 383.

  115. Heiden, Führer, 434–7; Bracher et al., Machtergreifung, i.123–4.

  116. Mommsen, ‘Van der Lubbes Weg’, 44–7.

  117. Mommsen ‘Van der Lubbes Weg’, 40–41.

  118. Mommsen ‘Der Reichstagsbrand’, 382–3.