Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

  The hours passed, the sun shone, the expectation mounted… It got to 3 o’clock. ‘The Führer’s coming!’ A thrill goes through the masses. Around the platform hands could be seen raised in the Hitler greeting… There stood Hitler in a simple black coat, looking expectantly over the crowd. A forest of swastika banners rustled upwards. The jubilation of the moment gave vent to a rousing cry of ‘Heil’. Then Hitler spoke. Main idea: out of the parties a people (Volk) will emerge, the German people. He castigated the ‘system’… For the rest, he refrained from personal attacks and also unspecific and specific promises. His voice was hoarse from speaking so much in previous days. When the speech was over, there were roars of jubilation and applause. Hitler saluted, gave his thanks, the ‘Germany Anthem’ sounded over the track. Hitler was helped into his coat. Then he went. How many look to him in touching faith as the helper, saviour, the redeemer from overgreat distress. To him, who rescues the Prussian prince, the scholar, the clergyman, the peasant, the worker, the unemployed out of the party into the people.302

  The results were closely in line with the votes won by Hitler in the run-off presidential election. Leader and party were largely indistinguishable in the eyes of the voters. In the giant state of Prussia, embracing two-thirds of Reich territory, the NSDAP’s vote of 36.3 per cent made it easily the largest party, now far ahead of the SPD which had been the dominant party since 1919. Since the previous election, in 1928, the Nazis had held six seats in the Prussian Landtag. Now they had 162 seats. In Bavaria, with 32.5 per cent, they came to within 0.1 per cent of the ruling BVP. In Württemberg, they rose from 1.8 per cent in 1928, to 26.4 per cent. In Hamburg, they attained 31.2 per cent. And in Anhalt, with 40.9 per cent, they could nominate the first Nazi Minister President of a German state.303

  ‘It’s a fantastic victory that we’ve attained,’ noted Goebbels, with justification. But he added: ‘We must come to power in the foreseeable future. Otherwise we’ll win ourselves to death in elections.’304 Mobilizing the masses was in itself going to be insufficient, Goebbels was recognizing. Despite the immense gains over the previous three years, there were signs that the limits of mobilization were being reached. The way ahead was still anything but clear. But another door was about to open.

  XI

  The state election campaign had been fought in the wake of a ban on the SA and SS. Chancellor Brüning and Interior and Defence Minister Groener, under pressure from the state authorities, had persuaded Hindenburg three days after the President’s re-election to dissolve ‘all military-like (militärähnliche) organizations’ of the NSDAP.305 The dissolution was directly occasioned by the Prussian police’s discovery, following a tip-off to Reich Minister of the Interior Groener, in raids on Nazi Party offices, shortly after the first round of the presidential election, of material indicating the SA’s readiness for a takeover of power by force following an electoral victory by Hitler.306 Despite Hitler’s repeated declarations that he would come to power by legal means, the concern of the authorities about the putschist intentions within the party, particularly within the SA, had persisted. The sensational discovery the previous autumn of the ‘Boxheimer Documents’ – named after the place in Hessen, the Boxheimer Hof, where they were found – outlining Nazi plans for taking power by force, had strongly underlined the justification for such concern. Actually, the ‘Boxheimer Documents’ had amounted to a half-baked concoction of measures to be taken in the event of a Nazi takeover of state power following the smashing of a Communist attempted putsch, devised on his own initiative by the ambitious head of the party’s legal section in Gau Hessen, Werner Best.307 At the time, an embarrassed Hitler, whose claim to have known nothing of the incriminating material was in fact correct, had satisfied Groener with a renewed declaration of his legal intentions.308 But there had been distinct signs during the presidential election campaigns that the S A – now close to 400,000 strong – was straining at the leash.309 Talk of a putsch attempt by the Left in the event of a Hitler victory was in the air.310 The SA had been placed on nationwide alarm. But instead of action, the stormtroopers had sat depressed in their quarters after Hitler’s defeat.311 Goebbels noted the impatience of the SA again on 2 April, commenting that a premature strike with force could destroy Nazi hopes at one fell swoop.312 News of the impending ban leaked to the Nazi leadership two days before it was imposed.313 Some preparations could therefore be made to retain the SA as distinct units within the party organization by simply reclassing the stormtroopers now as ordinary party members.314 And since the Left also had its paramilitary organizations which did not fall under the Groener dissolution order, the authorities had delivered the Nazis a further effective propaganda weapon, which Hitler was quick to exploit.315

  More importantly, the SA ban opened up the machinations that were to undermine the position not only of Groener, but of Brüning too, and to move the Reich government sharply to the Right. The key figure was to be General von Schleicher, head of the Ministerial Office, the army’s political bureau, in the Reichswehr Ministry, and seen up to now as Groener’s protege. Schleicher’s aim was an authoritarian regime, resting on the Reichswehr, with support from the National Socialists. The idea was to ‘tame’ Hitler, and incorporate the ‘valuable elements’ from his Movement into what would have been essentially a military dictatorship with populist backing.316 Schleicher opposed the ban on the SA, therefore, which he wanted as a feeder organization for an expanded Reichswehr, once the reparations issue was out of the way. In secret talks with Schleicher on 28 April, Hitler had learnt that the Reichswehr leadership no longer supported Brüning.317 He followed this on 7 May with what Goebbels described as ‘a decisive discussion with General Schleicher’, attended by some of Hindenburg’s immediate entourage. ‘Brüning is to go in the next days,’ he added. ‘The Reich President will withdraw his confidence. The plan is to install a presidential cabinet. The Reichstag will be dissolved; all coercive laws will be dropped. We will be given freedom of action, and will then deliver a masterpiece of propaganda.’318 Removal of the SA ban and new elections were, then, Hitler’s price for supporting a new right-wing cabinet.319 With the emphasis on elections, it is clear that Hitler thought, as always, essentially of little more than coming to power by winning over the masses.

  Brüning was able to survive longer than the conspirators had imagined. But his days were plainly numbered. In the meantime, the orchestrated campaign by the Nazis to pressurize Groener into resignation proved successful. After rowdy scenes in the Reichstag during his speech on 10 May, and after being told by Schleicher that he had lost the confidence of the Reichswehr, Groener announced his resignation on 12 May.320 It was seen as the beginning of the end for Brüning. Hitler was ‘extraordinarily content’.321 The next day, Goebbels noted: ‘We get message from General Schleicher: the crisis continues according to plan.’322

  The last straw for Brüning was Hindenburg’s displeasure, influenced by lobbying from fellow estate-owners in eastern Germany, at a planned emergency decree to break up bankrupt estates to create smallholder settlements. This was, however, only a contributory factor to Brüning’s downfall. His deflationary policies that had precipitated the steepest economic collapse outside war witnessed in a modern industrial society had served their purpose. The end of reparations was now in sight, and would effectively be brought about at the Lausanne Conference only a few weeks later. With that, the move to the Right that Hindenburg favoured and Schleicher had worked for could now be actively implemented. On 29 May, Hindenburg brusquely sought Brüning’s resignation. The following day, in the briefest of audiences, it was submitted.323

  ‘The system is collapsing,’ wrote Goebbels. Hitler saw the Reich President that afternoon. The meeting went well, he told his propaganda chief in the evening: ‘The SA ban will be dropped. Uniforms are to be allowed again. The Reichstag will be dissolved. That’s the most important of all. v. Papen is foreseen as Chancellor. But that is not so interesting. Voting, voting! Out to the people. We’re all
very happy.’324

  XII

  The new Chancellor, Franz von Papen, an urbane and well-connected member of the Catholic nobility, a former diplomat and arch-conservative formerly on the right of the Zentrum, had been sounded out by Schleicher some days before Brüning’s fall. Schleicher had not only cleared the ground with Hindenburg for Papen’s appointment, but had also drawn up a list of cabinet ministers and discussed the matter with some of them even before Papen agreed to serve.325 With his ‘cabinet of barons’ independent of parties, Papen made no pretence at parliamentary government. With no prospect of finding a majority in the Reichstag, he was dependent solely upon presidential emergency decrees – and the toleration of the NSDAP. Just over a week after coming into office, he met Hitler for the first time. ‘I found him curiously unimpressive,’ wrote Papen after the war.

  I could detect no inner quality which might explain his extraordinary hold on the masses. He was wearing a dark blue suit and seemed the complete petit-bourgeois. He had an unhealthy complexion, and with his little moustache and curious hair style had an indefinable bohemian quality. His demeanour was modest and polite, and although I had heard much about the magnetic quality of his eyes, I do not remember being impressed by them… As he talked about his party’s aims I was struck by the fanatical insistence with which he presented his arguments. I realized that the fate of my Government would depend to a large extent on the willingness of this man and his followers to back me up, and that this would be the most difficult problem with which I should have to deal. He made it clear that he would not be content for long with a subordinate role and intended in due course to demand plenary powers for himself. ‘I regard your Cabinet only as a temporary solution, and will continue my efforts to make my party the strongest in the country. The Chancellorship will then devolve on me,’ he said.326

  Five days earlier, as prearranged, the Reich President had dissolved the Reichstag, setting new elections for the latest possible date, 31 July 1932. Hitler now had his chance to try to win power by the ballot-box. State elections in Oldenburg at the end of May and in Mecklenburg-Schwerin on 5 June brought the NSDAP respectively 48.4 and 49.0 per cent of the vote.327 On 19 June in Hessen the Nazis increased their proportion of the vote there to 44 per cent.328 An absolute majority in the Reichstag election did not seem out of the question.

  The second part of Schleicher’s deal with Hitler, the lifting of the ban on the SA and SS, eventually took place, after some delay, on 16 June.329 It was already by then being openly flouted.330 It ushered in a summer of political violence throughout Germany such as had never been seen before. The latent civil war that had existed throughout the Weimar Republic was threatening to become an actual civil war. Armed clashes and street-fighting between the SA and the Communists were daily occurrences. Nazi violence, it might be thought, ought to have put off the ‘respectable’ bourgeois following it was increasingly attracting.331 But since such Nazi supporters saw the threat as lying on the Left, the anti-Communist thuggery purporting to serve the interests of the nation alienated remarkably few voters.

  The level of violence was frightening. In the second half of June, after the lifting of the S A ban, there were seventeen politically motivated murders. During July, there were a further eighty-six killings, mainly Nazis and Communists. The numbers of those seriously injured rose into the hundreds. Four were killed and thirty-four injured in a single clash on 10 July in Ohlau in Silesia. In the worst incident, the Altona ‘Blood Sunday’ of 17 July, seventeen people were killed and sixty-four injured as shooting broke out during an SA parade seen as a direct provocation by the town’s Communists.332

  The Papen government immediately took up plans it had temporarily postponed to depose the Prussian government, still headed by the Social Democrat Otto Braun with another Socialist, Carl Severing, as Interior Minister, and placed the largest state in Germany in the hands of a Reich Commissar. On 20 July, representatives of the Prussian government were told that they were deposed, and that Papen was now acting as Reich Commissar for Prussia. The biggest and most important state, and the vital bulwark of Social Democracy, capitulated without resistance. Militant opposition would almost certainly have been futile. A general strike, of the kind that had broken the back of the Kapp Putsch in 1920, was unthinkable with 6 million unemployed. There were fears, too, that an attempt at a general strike would provoke a military dictatorship. But the passivity of the main defender of the Republic in the face of such a blatant breach of the constitution was desperately demoralizing for the SPD’s supporters. And it showed Hitler he had little to fear from that quarter. Papen’s destruction of the Prussian bastion without a blow being struck in anger was undertaken by conservatives, not Nazis. But it set the model for the takeover of power in the states more than six months before Hitler became Chancellor.333

  Meanwhile, Hitler’s party had entered upon its fourth election campaign within four months. Goebbels had claimed in mid-April that shortage of money was hindering propaganda.334 There was little sign of either money or energy being spared, however, as the propaganda machine was cranked up once more. Nazi toleration of the Papen government counted for little once the campaign was under way. But the main aim was to destroy the remnants of voting for the bourgeois splinter parties and attempt to make inroads into the Zentrum’s support.335 There was a good deal of parading and pageantry.336 A novel touch was the use of film propaganda and production of 50,000 gramophone records of an ‘Appeal to the Nation’ by Hitler.337 There was awareness that boredom with the constant electioneering was setting in.338 Hitler began a speaking marathon in fifty-three towns and cities during his third ‘Germany Flight’.339 The monotony for his entourage was scarcely bearable. He arrived, gave his speech, had his bags packed, and left for the next venue. His attendants, commented Hanfstaengl, were like boxing seconds who had to keep their man fit between rounds – in Hitler’s case, speaking bouts.340 His theme was unchanged: the parties of the November Revolution had presided over the untold ruin of every aspect of German life; his own party was the only one that could rescue the German people from its misery.341

  When the results were declared on 31 July, the Nazis could record another victory – of sorts. They had increased their share of the vote to 37.4 per cent. This made them, with 230 seats, easily the largest party in the Reichstag.342 The Socialists had lost votes, compared with 1930; the KPD and Zentrum had made slight gains; the collapse of the bourgeois parties of the centre and right had advanced still further.

  The victory for the Nazis was, however, only a pyrrhic one. Compared with the Reichstag election results of 1930, let alone 1928, their advance was indeed astonishing. But from a more short-term perspective the outcome of the July election could even be regarded as disappointing. They had scarcely improved on the support they had won in the second presidential election and in the April state elections. Goebbels gave a sober assessment of the position: ‘We have won a tiny bit… Result: now we must come to power and exterminate (ausrotten) Marxism. One way or another! Something must happen. The time for opposition is over. Now deeds! Hitler is of the same opinion. Now events have to sort themselves out and then decisions have to be taken. We won’t get to an absolute majority this way.’343

  On 2 August, Hitler was still uncertain what to do. He talked over the possibilities of action with Goebbels while recuperating from the election campaign by the Tegernsee. A coalition with the Zentrum was one option briefly considered but discarded. No conclusions were reached. It was decided to wait and see how things developed. Music, films, relaxation, and a visit to Tristan und Isolde in Munich filled the space.344 Within two days, while at Berchtesgaden, Hitler had decided how to play his hand. He arranged a meeting with Schleicher in Berlin to put his demands: the Chancellorship for himself, Interior Ministry for Frick, Air Ministry for Göring, Labour Ministry for Strasser, and a Ministry for the People’s Education (Volkserziehung) for Goebbels. He was confident that ‘the barons would give way’. But he left a questi
on mark over the response of ‘the old man’, Hindenburg.345

  The secret negotiations with Reichswehr Minister Schleicher, at Fürstenberg, fifty miles north of Berlin, lasted for several hours on 6 August. When Hitler reported back to other Nazi leaders gathered at Berchtesgaden, he was confident. ‘Within a week the matter will burst open,’ thought Goebbels. ‘Chief will become Reich Chancellor and Prussian Minister President, Strasser Reich and Prussian Interior, Goebbels Prussian and Reich Education, Darre Agriculture in both, Frick state secretary in the Reich Chancellery, Göring Air Ministry. Justice [Ministry] stays with us. Warmbold Economy. Crosigk [i.e. Schwerin von Krosigk] Finance. Schacht Reichsbank. A cabinet of men. If the Reichstag rejects the enabling act, it will be sent packing (nach Hause geschickt). Hindenburg wants to die with a national cabinet. We will never give up power again. They’ll have to carry us out as corpses… I still can’t believe it. At the gates of power.’346

  The deal with Schleicher appeared to offer Hitler all he wanted. It was not total power. But there was little left wanting so far as internal power and control over domestic politics was concerned. From Schleicher’s point of view, the concession of a Hitler Chancellorship was a significant one. But the Reichswehr Minister presumably reckoned that as long as the army remained under his own control, Hitler could be kept in check, and would provide the popular basis for an authoritarian regime in which he himself would continue to be the eminence grise.347 The prospect of a civil war, into which the Reichswehr might be drawn, would recede sharply. And the teeth of the Nazis would be drawn by the inevitable compromises they would have to make in the face of the realities of political responsibility. Such was the thinking behind all variants of a ‘taming strategy’ which would unfold over the following months.