The international embarrassment for Hitler was enormous, the damage to relations with Italy considerable. For a time, it even looked as if Italian intervention was likely. Papen found Hitler in a near-hysterical state, denouncing the idiocy of the Austrian Nazis for landing him in such a mess. Every attempt was made by the German government, however unconvincingly, to dissociate itself from the coup. The headquarters of the Austrian NSDAP in Munich were closed down. A new policy of restraint in Austria was imposed. But at least one consequence of the ill-fated affair pleased Hitler. He found the answer to what to do with Papen – who had ‘just been in our way since the Röhm business’, as Göring reportedly put it. He made him the new German ambassador in Vienna.
In Neudeck, meanwhile, Hindenburg was dying. His condition had been worsening during the previous weeks. On 1 August, Hitler told the cabinet that the doctors were giving Hindenburg less than twenty-four hours to live. The following morning, the Reich President was dead.
So close to the goal of total power, Hitler had left nothing to chance. The Enabling Act had explicitly stipulated that the rights of the Reich President would be left untouched. But on 1 August, while Hindenburg was still alive, Hitler had all his ministers put their names to a law determining that, on Hindenburg’s death, the office of the Reich President would be combined with that of the Reich Chancellor. The reason subsequently given was that the title ‘Reich President’ was uniquely bound up with the ‘greatness’ of the deceased. Hitler wished from now on, in a ruling to apply ‘for all time’, to be addressed as ‘Führer and Reich Chancellor’. The change in his powers was to be put to the German people for confirmation in a ‘free plebiscite’, scheduled for 19 August.
Among the signatories to the ‘Law on the Head of State of the German Reich’ of 1 August 1934 had been Reichswehr Minister Blomberg. The law meant that, on Hindenburg’s death, Hitler would automatically become supreme commander of the armed forces. The possibility of the army appealing over the head of the government to the Reich President as supreme commander thereby disappeared. This caused no concern to the Reichswehr leadership. Blomberg and Reichenau were, in any case, determined to go further. They were keen to exploit the moment to bind Hitler, as they imagined, more closely to the armed forces. The fateful step they took, however, had precisely the opposite effect. As Blomberg later made clear, it was without any request by Hitler, and without consulting him, that he and Reichenau hastily devised the oath of unconditional loyalty to the person of the Führer, taken by every officer and soldier in the armed forces in ceremonies throughout the land on 2 August, almost before Hindenburg’s corpse had gone cold. The oath meant that the distinction between loyalty to the state and loyalty to Hitler had been eradicated. Opposition was made more difficult. For those later hesitant about joining the conspiracy against Hitler, the oath would also provide an excuse. Far from creating a dependence of Hitler on the army, the oath, stemming from ill-conceived ambitions of the Reichswehr leadership, marked the symbolic moment when the army chained itself to the Führer.
‘Today Hitler is the Whole of Germany,’ ran a headline on 4 August. The funeral of the Reich President, held with great pomp and circumstance at the Tannenberg Memorial in East Prussia, the scene of his great victory in the First World War, saw Hindenburg, who had represented the only countervailing source of loyalty, ‘enter Valhalla’, as Hitler put it. Hindenburg had wanted to be buried at Neudeck. Ever alert to propaganda opportunities, Hitler insisted on his burial in the Tannenberg Memorial. On 19 August, the silent coup of the first days of the month duly gained its ritual plebiscitary confirmation. According to the official figures, 89.9 per cent of the voters supported Hitler’s constitutionally now unlimited powers as head of state, head of government, leader of the party, and supreme commander of the armed forces. The result, disappointing though it was to the Nazi leadership, and less impressive as a show of support than might perhaps have been imagined when all account is taken of the obvious pressures and manipulation, nevertheless reflected the fact that Hitler had the backing, much of it fervently enthusiastic, of the great majority of the German people.
In the few weeks embracing the Röhm affair and the death of Hindenburg, Hitler had removed all remaining threats to his position with an ease which even in the spring and early summer of 1934 could have been barely imagined. He was now institutionally unchallengeable, backed by the ‘big battalions’, adored by much of the population. He had secured total power. The Führer state was established. Germany had bound itself to the dictatorship it had created.
After the crisis-ridden summer, Hitler was, by September, once again in his element on the huge propaganda stage of the Nuremberg Rally. In contrast even to the previous year’s rally, this was consciously created as a vehicle of the Führer cult. Hitler now towered above his Movement, which had assembled to pay him homage. The film which the talented and glamorous director Leni Riefenstahl made of the rally subsequently played to packed houses throughout Germany, and made its own significant contribution to the glorification of Hitler. The title of the film, devised by Hitler himself, was Triumph of the Will. In reality, his triumph owed only a little to will. It owed far more to those who had much to gain – or thought they had – by placing the German state at Hitler’s disposal.
12
Working Towards the Führer
I
Everyone with opportunity to observe it knows that the Führer can only with great difficulty order from above everything that he intends to carry out sooner or later. On the contrary, until now everyone has best worked in his place in the new Germany if, so to speak, he works towards the Führer.
This was the central idea of a speech made by Werner Willikens, State Secretary in the Prussian Agriculture Ministry, at a meeting of representatives from Länder agriculture ministries held in Berlin on 21 February 1934. Willikens continued:
Very often, and in many places, it has been the case that individuals, already in previous years, have waited for commands and orders. Unfortunately, that will probably also be so in future. Rather, however, it is the duty of every single person to attempt, in the spirit of the Führer, to work towards him. Anyone making mistakes will come to notice it soon enough. But the one who works correctly towards the Führer along his lines and towards his aim will in future as previously have the finest reward of one day suddenly attaining the legal confirmation of his work.
These comments, made in a routine speech, hold a key to how the Third Reich operated. Between Hindenburg’s death at the beginning of August 1934 and the Blomberg–Fritsch crisis in late January and early February 1938, the Führer state took shape. These were the ‘normal’ years of the Third Reich that lived in the memories of many contemporaries as the ‘good’ years (though they were scarcely that for the already growing numbers of victims of Nazism). But they were also years in which the ‘cumulative radicalization’ so characteristic of the Nazi regime began to gather pace. One feature of this process was the fragmentation of government as Hitler’s form of personalized rule distorted the machinery of administration and called into being a panoply of overlapping and competing agencies dependent in differing ways upon the ‘will of the Führer’. At the same time, the racial and expansionist goals at the heart of Hitler’s own Weltanschauung began in these years gradually to come more sharply into focus, though by no means always as a direct consequence of Hitler’s own actions. Not least, these were the years in which Hitler’s prestige and power, institutionally unchallengeable after the summer of 1934, expanded to the point where it was absolute.
These three tendencies – erosion of collective government, emergence of clearer ideological goals, and Führer absolutism – were closely interrelated. Hitler’s personal actions, particularly in the realm of foreign policy, were certainly vital to the development. But the decisive component was that unwittingly singled out in his speech by Werner Willikens. Hitler’s personalized form of rule invited radical initiatives from below and offered such initiatives
backing, so long as they were in line with his broadly defined goals. This promoted ferocious competition at all levels of the regime, among competing agencies, and among individuals within those agencies. In the Darwinist jungle of the Third Reich, the way to power and advancement was through anticipating the ‘Führer will’, and, without waiting for directives, taking initiatives to promote what were presumed to be Hitler’s aims and wishes. For party functionaries and ideologues and for SS ‘technocrats of power’, ‘working towards the Führer’ could have a literal meaning. But, metaphorically, ordinary citizens denouncing neighbours to the Gestapo, often turning personal animosity or resentment to their advantage through political slur, businessmen happy to exploit anti-Jewish legislation to rid themselves of competitors, and the many others whose daily forms of minor cooperation with the regime took place at the cost of others, were – whatever their motives – indirectly ‘working towards the Führer’. They were as a consequence helping drive on an unstoppable radicalization which saw the gradual emergence in concrete shape of policy objectives embodied in the ‘mission’ of the Führer.
Through ‘working towards the Führer’, initiatives were taken, pressures created, legislation instigated – all in ways which fell into line with what were taken to be Hitler’s aims, and without the Dictator necessarily having to dictate. The result was continuing radicalization of policy in a direction which brought Hitler’s own ideological imperatives more plainly into view as practicable policy options. The disintegration of the formal machinery of government and the accompanying ideological radicalization resulted then directly and inexorably from the specific form of personalized rule under Hitler. Conversely, both decisively shaped the process by which Hitler’s personalized power was able to free itself from all institutional constraints and become absolute.
Those close to Hitler later claimed that they detected a change in him after Hindenburg’s death. According to Press Chief Otto Dietrich, the years 1935 and 1936, with Hitler ‘now as absolute ruler on the lookout for new deeds’, were ‘the most significant’ in his development ‘from domestic reformer and social leader of the people to the later foreign-policy desperado and gambler in international politics’. ‘In these years,’ Dietrich went on, ‘a certain change also made itself noticeable in Hitler’s personal conduct and behaviour. He became increasingly unwilling to receive visitors on political matters if they had not been ordered by him to attend. Equally, he knew how to distance himself inwardly from his entourage. While, before the takeover of power, they had the possibility of putting forward their differing political opinion, he now as head of state and person of standing kept strictly out of all unrequested political discussion … Hitler began to hate objections to his views and doubts on their infallibility … He wanted to speak, but not to listen. He wanted to be the hammer, not the anvil.’
Hitler’s increasing withdrawal from domestic politics once the period of consolidation of power had come to an end in August 1934 was, as Dietrich’s remarks suggest, not simply a matter of character and choice. It also directly mirrored his position as Leader, whose prestige and image could not allow him to be politically embarrassed or sullied by association with unpopular policy choices. Hitler represented, and as the regime’s central integrating mechanism had to represent, the image of national unity. He could not be seen to be involved in internal, day-to-day political conflict. Beyond that, his growing aloofness reflected, too, the effective transformation of domestic politics into propaganda and indoctrination. Choice and debate about options – the essence of politics – had by now been removed from the public arena (even if, of course, bitter disputes and conflicts continued behind the scenes). ‘Politics’ within a ‘coordinated’ Germany now amounted to what Hitler had since the early 1920s regarded as its sole aim: the ‘nationalization of the masses’ in preparation for the great and inevitable struggle against external enemies. But this goal, the creation of a strong, united, and impregnable ‘national community’, was so all-embracing, so universal in its impact, that it amounted to little more than an extremely powerful emotional incitement to formulate policy initiatives in every sphere of the regime’s activity, affecting all walks of life. What his form of leadership, linked to the broad ‘directions for action’ which he embodied – national revival, ‘removal’ of Jews, racial ‘improvement’, and restoration of Germany’s power and standing in the world – did was to unleash an unending dynamic in all avenues of policy-making. As Willikens had remarked, the greatest chances of success (and best opportunities for personal aggrandizement), occurred where individuals could demonstrate how effectively they were ‘working towards the Führer’. But since this frenzy of activity was uncoordinated – and could not be coordinated – because of Hitler’s need to avoid being openly drawn into disputes, it inexorably led to endemic conflict (within the general understanding of following the ‘Führer’s will’). And this in turn merely reinforced the impossibility of Hitler’s personal involvement in resolving the conflict. Hitler was, therefore, at one and the same time the absolutely indispensable fulcrum of the entire regime, and yet largely detached from any formal machinery of government. The result, inevitably, was a high level of governmental and administrative disorder.
Hitler’s personal temperament, his unbureaucratic style of operating, his Darwinistic inclination to side with the stronger, and the aloofness necessitated by his role as Führer, all merged together to produce a most extraordinary phenomenon: a highly modern, advanced state without any central coordinating body and with a head of government largely disengaged from the machinery of government. Cabinet meetings (which Hitler had never liked running) now lost significance. There were only twelve gatherings of ministers in 1935. By 1937, this had fallen to a mere six meetings. After 5 February 1938, the cabinet never met again. During the war, Hitler would even ban his ministers getting together occasionally over a glass of beer. In the absence of cabinet discussions which might have determined priorities, a flood of legislation emanating independently from each ministry had to be formulated by a cumbersome and grossly inefficient process whereby drafts were circulated and recirculated among ministers until some agreement was reached. Only at that stage would Hitler, if he approved after its contents were briefly summarized for him, sign the bill (usually scarcely bothering to read it) and turn it into law. Hans Heinrich Lammers, the head of the Reich Chancellery, and sole link between the ministers and the Führer, naturally attained considerable influence over the way legislation (or other business of ministers) was presented to Hitler. Where Lammers decided that the Führer was too busy with other pressing matters of state, legislation that had taken months to prepare could simply be ignored or postponed, sometimes indefinitely. Alternatively, Hitler intervened, sometimes in minutiae, on the basis of some one-sided piece of information he had been fed. The result was an increasing arbitrariness as Hitler’s highly personalized style of rule came into inevitable – and ultimately irreconcilable – conflict with bureaucracy’s need for regulated norms and clearly-defined procedures. Hitler’s ingrained secretiveness, his preference for one-to-one meetings (which he could easily dominate) with his subordinates, and his strong favouritism among ministers and other leaders in party as well as state, were added ingredients that went to undermine formal patterns of government and administration.
Access to Hitler was naturally a key element in the continuing power-struggle within the regime. Ministers who had for some reason fallen out of favour could find it impossible to speak to him. Agriculture Minister Walther Darré, for instance, was in the later 1930s to attempt in vain for over two years to gain an audience with the Führer to discuss the country’s seriously worsening agricultural problems. Though they could not hinder the access of ‘court favourites’ like Goebbels and the highly ambitious young architect, Albert Speer – skilful in pandering to Hitler’s obsession with building plans and a rapidly rising star in the Nazi firmament – Hitler’s adjutants acquired a good deal of informal power through thei
r control of the portals of the Führer.
Fritz Wiedemann, during the First World War Hitler’s immediate superior and in the mid-1930s one of his adjutants, later recalled the extraordinary style of his arbitrary and haphazard form of personal rule. In 1935, commented Wiedemann, Hitler still maintained a relatively orderly routine. Mornings, between about 10.00 a.m. and lunch at 1.00 or 2.00 p.m., were normally taken up with meetings with Lammers, State Secretary Meissner, Funk (from the Propaganda Ministry) and ministers or other significant figures who had pressing business to discuss. In the afternoons, Hitler held discussions with military or foreign-policy advisers, though he preferred to talk to Speer about building plans. Gradually, however, any formal routine crumbled. Hitler reverted to the type of dilettante lifestyle which, in essence, he had enjoyed as a youth in Linz and Vienna. ‘Later on,’ recalled Wiedemann, ‘Hitler appeared as a rule only just before lunch, quickly read the press summaries provided by Reich Press Chief Dr Dietrich, then went to eat. It became, therefore, ever more difficult for Lammers and Meissner to acquire decisions from Hitler which he alone as head of state could take.’ When Hitler was at his residence on the Obersalzberg, it was even worse. ‘There he invariably left his room only approaching 2.00 p.m. Then it was lunch. The afternoon was mainly taken up with a walk, and in the evenings, straight after the evening meal, films were shown.’