An even more useful convert was Ernst ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl, a six-foot-four-inch-tall, cultured part-American – his mother, a Sedgwick-Heine, was a descendant of a colonel who had fought in the Civil War – from an upper-middle-class art-dealer family, Harvard graduate, partner in an art-print publishing firm, and extremely well-connected in Munich salon society. Like Lüdecke, his first experience of Hitler was hearing him speak.97Hanfstaengl was greatly impressed by Hitler’s power to sway the masses. ‘Far beyond his electrifying rhetoric,’ he later wrote, ‘this man seemed to possess the uncanny gift of coupling the gnostic yearning of the era for a strong leader-figure with his own missionary claim and to suggest in this merging that every conceivable hope and expectation was capable of fulfilment – an astonishing spectacle of suggestive influence of the mass psyche.’98 Hanfstaengl was plainly fascinated by the subaltern, petty-bourgeois Hitler in his shabby blue suit, looking part-way between an NCO and a clerk, with awkward mannerisms, but possessing such power as a speaker when addressing a mass audience.99 Hanfstaengl remained in part contemptuous of Hitler – not least of his half-baked cliché-ridden judgements on art and culture (where Hanfstaengl was truly at home and Hitler merely an opinionated know-all).100 On Hitler’s first visit to the Hanfstaengl home, ‘his awkward use of knife and fork betrayed his background,’ wrote (somewhat snobbishly) his host.101 At the same time, Putzi was plainly captivated by this ‘virtuoso on the keyboard of the mass psyche’.102 He was appalled at catching Hitler sugaring a vintage wine he had offered him. But, added Hanfstaengl, ‘he could have peppered it, for each naïve act increased my belief in his homespun sincerity’.103
Soon, Hitler was a regular guest at Hanfstaengl’s home, where he regularly gorged himself on cream-cakes, paying court to Hanfstaengl’s attractive wife, Helene, in his quaint Viennese style.104 She took Hitler’s attentions in her stride. ‘Believe me, he’s an absolute neuter, not a man,’ she told her husband.105 Putzi himself believed, for what it was worth, that Hitler was sexually impotent, gaining substitute gratification from his intercourse with the ‘feminine’ masses.106 Hitler was taken by Putzi’s skills as a pianist, especially his ability to play Wagner. He would accompany Putzi by whistling the tune, marching up and down swinging his arms like the conductor of an orchestra, relaxing visibly in the process.107 He plainly liked Hanfstaengl – his wife even more so. But the criterion, as always, was usefulness. And above all Hanfstaengl was useful. He became a type of ‘social secretary’,108 providing openings to circles far different from the petty-bourgeois roughnecks in Hitler’s entourage who gathered each Monday in the Café Neumaier.109
Hanfstaengl introduced Hitler to Frau Elsa Bruckmann, the wife of the publisher Hugo Bruckmann, a Pan-German sympathizer and antisemite who had published the works of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Hitler’s ingratiating manners and social naïvety brought out the mother instinct in her.110 Whether it was the wish to afford him some protection against his enemies that persuaded her to make him a present of one of the dog-whips he invariably carried around is not clear. (Oddly, his other dog-whip – the first he possessed – had been given to him by a rival patroness, Frau Helene Bechstein, while a third heavy whip, made from hippopotamus hide, which he later carried, was given to him by Frau Büchner, the landlady of the Platterhof, the hotel where he stayed on the Obersalzberg.111) Everyone who was someone in Munich would be invited at some stage to the soirées of Frau Bruckmann, by birth a Rumanian princess, so that Hitler was brought into contact here with industrialists, members of the army and aristocracy, and academics.112 In his gangster hat and trenchcoat over his dinner jacket, touting a pistol and carrying as usual his dog-whip, he cut a bizarre figure in the salons of Munich’s upper-crust. But his very eccentricity of dress and exaggerated mannerisms – the affected excessive politeness of one aware of his social inferiority – saw him lionized by condescending hosts and fellow-guests. His social awkwardness and uncertainty, often covered by either silence or tendency to monologues, but at the same time the consciousness of his public success that one could read in his face, made him an oddity, affording him curiosity value among the patronizing cultured and well-to-do pillars of the establishment.113 ‘Weak but wanting to be hard, half-educated wishing to be an all-rounder (universell), a Bohemian who had to be a soldier if he wanted to impress true soldiers. A man mistrustful towards himself and what he was capable of (seine Möglichkeiten), and so full of inferiority-complex towards all who were anything or were on the way to outflank him… He was never a gentleman, even later in evening dress,’ was how one contemporary, the Freikorps leader Gerhard Roßbach, described Hitler around this time.114
Hitler was also a guest from time to time of the publisher Lehmann, for long a party sympathizer. And the wife of piano manufacturer Bechstein – to whom he had been introduced by Eckart – was another to ‘mother’ Hitler, as well as lending the party her jewellery as surety against 60,000 Swiss Francs which Hitler was able to borrow from a Berlin coffee merchant in September 1923. The Bechsteins, who usually wintered in Bavaria, used to invite Hitler to their suite in the ‘Bayerischer Hof’, or to their country residence near Berchtesgaden. Through the Bechsteins, Hitler was introduced to the Wagner circle at Bayreuth.115 He was transfixed at the first visit, in October 1923, to the shrine of his ultimate hero at Haus Wahnfried, where he tiptoed around the former possessions of Richard Wagner in the music-room and library ‘as though he were viewing relics in a cathedral’. The Wagners had mixed views of their unusual guest, who had turned up looking ‘rather common’ in his traditional Bavarian outfit of lederhosen, thick woollen socks, red and blue checked shirt and ill-fitting short blue jacket. Winifred, the English-born wife of Wagner’s son Siegfried, thought he was ‘destined to be the saviour of Germany’. Siegfried himself saw Hitler as ‘a fraud and an upstart’.116
The rapid growth in the party during the latter part of 1922 and especially in 1923 that had made it a political force in Munich, its closer connections with the ‘patriotic associations’, and the wider social contacts which now arose meant that funding flowed more readily to the NSDAP than had been the case in its first years. Now, as would be the case later, the party’s finances relied heavily upon members’ subscriptions together with entrance-fees and collections at meetings.117 The more came to meetings, the more were recruited as members, the more income came to the party, to permit yet more meetings to be held. Propaganda financed propaganda.118
But even now, the party’s heavy outgoings were difficult to meet, and funding was not easy to drum up in conditions of rip-roaring inflation. A fund-raising trip that Hitler made to Berlin in April 1922 proved disappointing in its yield.119 Party finances were still in many respects a hand-to-mouth operation.120 Hitler was constantly seeking to tap party friends and supporters for donations. But any payment in Marks, however large, was immediately devalued through the galloping currency depreciation.121 There was a premium, therefore, on donations made in hard foreign currency. Lüdecke and Hanfstaengl, as already noted, were useful in this regard. Hanfstaengl also financed with an interest-free loan of 1,000 dollars – a fortune in inflation-ridden Germany – the purchase of two rotary presses that enabled the Völkischer Beobachter to appear in larger, American-style format.122 Rumours, some far wide of the mark, about the party’s finances were repeatedly aired by opponents in the press. Even so, official inquiries in 1923 revealed considerable sums raised from an increasing array of benefactors.
One important go-between was Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, born in Riga, linguistically able, with diplomatic service in Turkey during the war, and later imprisoned for a time by Communists on his return to the Baltic. After the war he had participated in the Kapp Putsch, then, like so many counter-revolutionaries, made his way to Munich, where he joined the NSDAP in autumn 1920.123 A significant, if shadowy, figure in the early Nazi Party, he used his excellent connections with Russian emigrés, such as Princess Alexandra, wife of the Russian heir to the throne Prince Kyr
ill, to acquire funds directed at Ludendorff and, through him, deflected in part to the NSDAP. Other members of the aristocracy, including Frau Gertrud von Seidlitz, who used monies from foreign stocks and shares, also contributed to Nazi funds.124 Hitler was almost certainly a co-beneficiary (though probably in a minor way) of the generous gift of 100,000 Gold Marks made by Fritz Thyssen, heir to the family’s Ruhr steelworks, to Ludendorff, but Germany’s leading industrialists, apart from Ernst von Borsig, head of the Berlin locomotive and machine-building firm, showed little direct interest in the Nazis at this time.125 Police inquiries which remained inconclusive suggested that Borsig and car-manufacturers Daimler were among other firms contributing to the party.126 Some Bavarian industrialists and businessmen, too, were persuaded by Hitler to make donations to the movement.127
Valuable funds were also obtained abroad. Anti-Marxism and the hopes in a strong Germany as a bulwark against Bolshevism often provided motive enough for such donations. The Völkischer Beobachter’s new offices were financed with Czech Kronen.128 An important link with Swiss funds was Dr Emil Gansser, a Berlin chemist and long-standing Nazi supporter, who engineered a gift of 33,000 Swiss Francs from right-wing Swiss benefactors.129 Further Swiss donations followed a visit from Hitler himself to Zürich in the summer of 1923.130 And from right-wing circles in the arch-enemy France, 90,000 Gold Marks were passed to Captain Karl Mayr, Hitler’s first patron, and from him to the ‘patriotic associations’. It can be presumed that the NSDAP was among the beneficiaries. In addition to monetary donations, Röhm saw to it that the SA, along with other paramilitary organizations, was well provided with equipment and weapons from his secret arsenal.131 Whatever the financial support, without Röhm’s supplies an armed putsch would scarcely have been possible.
In November 1922, rumours were already circulating that Hitler was planning a putsch.132 By January 1923, in the explosive climate following the French march into the Ruhr, the rumours in Munich of a Hitler putsch were even stronger.133 The crisis, without which Hitler would have been nothing, was deepening by the day. In its wake, the Nazi movement was expanding rapidly. Some 35,000 were to join between February and November 1923, giving a strength of around 55,000 on the eve of the putsch. Recruits came from all sections of society. Around a third were workers, a tenth or more came from the upper-middle and professional classes, but more than half belonged to the crafts, commercial, white-collar, and farming lower-middle class.134 Most had joined the party out of protest, anger, and bitterness as the economic and political crisis mounted. The same was true of the thousands flocking into the SA. Hitler had won their support by promising them action. The sacrifices of the war would be avenged. The revolution would be overturned.135 He could not hold them at fever-pitch indefinitely without unleashing such action. The tendency to ‘go for broke’ was not simply a character-trait of Hitler; it was built into the nature of his leadership, his political aims, and the party he led. But Hitler was not in control of events as they unfolded in 1923. Nor was he, before 8 November, the leading player in the drama. Without the readiness of powerful figures and organizations to contemplate a putsch against Berlin, Hitler would have had no stage on which to act so disastrously. His own role, his actions – and reactions – have to be seen in that light.
V
Hitler’s incessant barrage of anti-government propaganda was nearly undermined by an event that invoked national unity in January 1923: the French occupation of the Ruhr. On this occasion at least, the Reich government seemed to be acting firmly – and acting with mass popular support.
The request by the government of Reich Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno for a moratorium for two years on reparations payments in money had been turned down by the allied heads of government meeting in Paris at the end of December. Germany had fallen behind in its reparations payments in wood – it owed 200,000 metres of telegraph poles and had delivered only 65,000 metres – and coal deliveries to the tune of 24 million Gold Marks. Compared with payments made of 1,480 million Gold Marks it was a trivial amount. But 135,000 metres of missing telegraph poles sufficed for French and Belgian troops on 11 January to march into the Ruhr district to ensure coal deliveries. Germany was gripped by an elemental wave of national fury that crossed all social and political divides. A ‘national unity front’ stretching from Social Democrats to German Nationals was founded.136 The unity – invoking the ‘Burgfrieden’ (civil truce) of 1914, when in the wake of war fever class conflict and internal disputes had temporarily given way to a sense of national accord – had little chance of lasting. But it was an immediate expression of the depth of feeling in the country. On 13 January the Reich government declared a campaign of ‘passive resistance’ against the Ruhr occupation. 14 January was to be a day of mourning throughout Germany. The gunning-down by French soldiers – possibly provoked by German nationalists – of workers in the Krupp factory at Essen on 31 March, leaving thirteen dead and forty-one wounded, was the worst of numerous confrontations that wildly inflamed an already overheated situation.137 The policy of ‘passive resistance’ was, therefore, certain of widespread public support. For radical nationalists, it did not, however, go nearly far enough. Disbanded Freikorps groups were reinstated again, with the clandestine help of the Reichswehr. Acts of sabotage were carried out in the occupied zone, again supported by the army.138 The extent and vehemence of the opposition to the Ruhr occupation posed, nevertheless, a problem for the National Socialists. The popular protest threatened to take the wind out of their sails. Attacks on a Berlin government engaged in protest at the Ruhr occupation were not guaranteed to have mass appeal.139 Undeterred, Hitler saw advantage to be gained from the French occupation.140 As usual, he went on a propaganda offensive.
On the very day of the French march into the Ruhr he spoke in a packed Circus Krone. ‘Down with the November Criminals’ was the title of his speech. It was not the first time he had used the term ‘November Criminals’ to describe the Social Democrat revolutionaries of 1918. But from now on, the slogan was seldom far from his lips.141 It showed the line he would take towards the Ruhr occupation. The real enemy was within. ‘The German rebirth is externally only possible when the criminals are faced with their responsibility and delivered to their just fate,’ he declared.142 Marxism, democracy, parliamentarism, internationalism, and, of course, behind it all the power of the Jews, were held by Hitler to blame for the national defencelessness that allowed the French to treat Germany like a colony.143 Hitler poured scorn on the newly proclaimed ‘national unity’. He announced that any party members involved in active resistance to the occupation would be expelled.144 His own supporters were temporarily taken aback. But the tactic worked.
The propaganda offensive was stepped up with preparations for the NSDAP’s first ‘Reich Party Rally’, scheduled to take place in Munich on 27–9 January. It brought confrontation with the Bavarian government, so frightened about rumours of a putsch that on 26 January it declared a state of emergency in Munich, but so weak that it lacked the power to carry through its intended ban on the rally.145 Hitler was beside himself with rage when told the rally was prohibited. For him, as usual, there could be no retreat. He promised to go ahead despite the ban, and threatened disturbances of the peace and possibly bloodshed. He was prepared, he declared, somewhat melodramatically, to stand in the front row when the shots were fired.146 It needed Röhm to calm him down and put forward a more constructive approach. The Reichswehr once more came to Hitler’s aid. Röhm persuaded Epp to prevail upon the commander of the 7th Reichswehr Division, stationed in Bavaria, General Otto Hermann von Lossow, to come down on Hitler’s side. Röhm was ordered to bring Hitler to an audience with Lossow. Hitler guaranteed the peaceful conduct of the rally, and promised on his ‘word of honour’ that no putsch would be attempted. Hitler and Röhm then hastened to Kahr, at the time Government President of Upper Bavaria, who also offered his support, as did the Police President Eduard Nortz. Hitler was given permission to go ahead with the twelve mass meetings
– all of which he addressed on the same evening – that had been arranged as well as the theatrical display of the dedication of SA standards on the Marsfeld, a big parade-ground close to the centre of Munich, on 28 January in front of 6,000 uniformed stormtroopers.147 Had the party had fewer friends in high places, and had the government held firm, it would, as Ernst Röhm recognized, have been a heavy blow to Hitler’s prestige.148 As it was, thanks to the Bavarian authorities, he could celebrate another propaganda triumph.