by Ian Kershaw
II
On 11 March, two days after the speaking ban had been imposed, Hitler commissioned Gregor Strasser to organize the party in north Germany.66 Strasser, a Landshut apothecary, a big, bluff Bavarian, in the pre-putsch days SA chief in Lower Bavaria, a diabetic who mixed it with the roughest in beerhall brawls but relaxed by reading Homer in the original, was probably the most able of the leading Nazis. Above all he was a superb organizer. It was largely Gregor Strasser’s work, building on the contacts he had established while in the Reich Leadership of the NSFB, that resulted in the rapid construction of the ΝSDAΡ’s organization in north Germany.67 Most of the local branches in the north had to be created from scratch. By the end of 1925, these branches numbered 262, compared with only seventy-one on the eve of the putsch.68 While Hitler spent much of the summer of 1925 in the mountains near Berchtesgaden, working on the second volume of his book, and taking time out to enjoy the Bayreuth Festival, bothering little about the party outside Bavaria, Strasser was unceasing in his efforts in the north. His own views on a ‘national socialism’ had been formed in the trenches. He was more idealistic, less purely instrumentalist, than Hitler in his aim to win over the working class. And, though of course strongly antisemitic, he thought little of the obsessive, near-exclusive emphasis on Jew-baiting that characterized Hitler and his entourage in the Munich party. In fact, dating from the period of the rancorous split in 1924, he could barely tolerate the leading lights in the Bavarian NSDAP, Esser and Streicher. Even if he expressed them somewhat differently, however, he shared Hitler’s basic aims. And though he never succumbed to Hitler-worship, he recognized Hitler’s indispensability to the movement, and remained a Hitler loyalist.69
Strasser’s views, and his approach, fitted well into the way the party had developed in north Germany, far away from the Bavarian heartlands. A central issue there was the intense detestation, deriving from the deep clashes of the ‘leaderless time’ of 1924, of the three individuals they saw as dominating affairs in Bavaria – Esser, Streicher and Amann. The rejection of these figures had been practically the sole area of agreement between the Directorate and the NSFB leaders in 1924. It was to remain a point of tension between the north German NSDAP and the Munich headquarters throughout 1925.70 This went hand in hand with the refusal to be dictated to by the Munich headquarters, where the party secretary, Philipp Bouhler, was attempting to impose centralized control over party membership, and with it Munich’s complete authority over the whole movement.71 A further integrally related factor was the concern over Hitler’s continuing inaction while the crisis in the NSDAP deepened. It was his passivity, in the eyes of the northern party leaders, that allowed the Esser clique its dominance and kept him far too much under the unsavoury influence of the former G V G leaders. His support for them remained a source of intense disappointment and bitterness.72 Hitler had also disappointed in his neglect of the north, despite his promises, since the refoundation. Beyond this, there were continuing disagreements about electoral participation. The Göttingen party leadership, especially, remained wholly hostile to parliamentary tactics, which, it felt, would result in the ‘movement’ being turned into a mere ‘party’, like others.73 Not least, there were different accents on policy and different emphases on the National Socialist ‘idea’. Some of the north German leaders, like Strasser, advocated a more ‘socialist’ emphasis. This aimed at maximum appeal to workers in the big industrial regions. The different social structure demanded a different type of appeal than that favoured in Bavaria.
But it was not just a matter of cynical propaganda. Some of the leading activists in the north, like the young Joseph Goebbels in the Elberfeld area of the Ruhr, were attracted by the ideas of ‘national Bolshevism’.74 Possessed of a sharp mind and biting wit, the future Propaganda Minister, among the most intelligent of the leading figures in the Nazi Movement, had joined the NSDAΡ at the end of 1924. Brought up in a Catholic family of moderate means, from Rheydt, a small industrial town in the Rhineland, his deformed right foot exposed him from childhood days to jibes, taunts, and lasting feelings of physical inadequacy. That his early pretensions as a writer met with little recognition further fostered his resentment. ‘Why does fate deny to me what it gives to others?’ he asked himself in an entry in March 1925 in the diary he would keep till the end of his days in the Berlin bunker twenty years later, adding, self-piteously, Jesus’s words on the Cross – ‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’75 His inferiority complex produced driving ambition and the need to demonstrate achievement through mental agility in a movement which derided both physical weakness and ‘intellectuals’. Not least, it produced ideological fanaticism.
Goebbels showed his own ideological preferences at that time in an exchange in mid-September 1925 with the head of the Pomeranian Gau, Theodor Vahlen, a professor at Greifswald University and owner of a small printing-house in the town, whose incompetence alongside the animosity he attracted from the future Propaganda Leader led to his replacement as Gauleiter by 1927.76 ‘National and socialist! What goes first, and what comes afterwards? With us in the west, there can be no doubt. First socialist redemption, then comes national liberation like a whirlwind. Professor Vahlen takes a different view. First nationalize the workers. But the question is, how?’ Goebbels had gained a false impression of Hitler’s position. ‘Hitler stands between both opinions,’ he wrote. ‘But he is on the way to coming over to us completely.’77 Goebbels and some other northern leaders thought of themselves as revolutionaries, with more in common with the Communists than with the hated bourgeoisie. There were some sympathies for Russia. And there was talk of a party trade union.78
Finally, there was the attitude towards Hitler and towards the party’s programme. The north German Directorate had been fanatically pro-Hitler during the time of his imprisonment. But it had been disappointed at his equivocal stance towards the NSFB, and the issue of elections. And its leaders, Adalbert Volck and then Ludolf Haase, had shied away from the way a personality cult was being built around Hitler, and its implications for the party. All the north German leaders accepted Hitler’s position, and his right to head the party. They recognized him as the ‘hero of Munich’ for his part in the putsch, and for his stance at the trial. His standing and reputation needed no emphasis, and faults were attributed to those around him – especially Esser and Streicher.79 But many of the north German party faithful did not know Hitler personally, had not even met him.80 Their relationship to him was, therefore, quite different than that of Bavarian party members, especially those in Munich. Hitler was their leader; that was not in question. But Hitler, too, in their eyes, was bound to the ‘idea’. Moreover, the 1920 Programme that outlined the ‘idea’ in terms of the aims of the party was itself in their view deficient and in need of reform.81
By late summer 1925, the northern leaders, differing among themselves in matters of interpretation and emphasis on points of the programme, aims, and meaning of National Socialism, were at least agreed that the party was undergoing a crisis. This was reflected in declining membership and stagnation. It was associated by them, above all, with the state of the party in Munich.82 Hitler himself was totally taken up with work on Mein Kampf and, they felt, prepared to do nothing. In the circumstances, this amounted to support for Esser. Hitler defended Esser and his clique on the grounds that their usefulness was the decisive factor, ignoring how limited this ‘usefulness’ was if it meant the opposition of the party in the rest of the Reich.
It was to create a counter to the ‘Esser dictatorship’ that Gregor Strasser, described by Fobke as ‘the honest, extraordinarily diligent, if not genial, collaborator of Hitler’, summoned a meeting of northern party leaders to Hagen in Westphalia on 10 September 1925. Strasser himself had to drop out at the last minute because of the serious illness of his mother.83 As a result, the discussions did not go entirely according to plan. But most of the northern and western party leaders were present. In Strasser’s absence, the intention (which had
not been revealed to most of those attending) of forming a block to combat ‘the harmful Munich direction’ could not be fulfilled. Divisions were quickly revealed. When the issue of Esser was raised, there was resistance to anything that smacked of a ‘palace revolution’. A unanimous rejection of participation in elections, recorded and sent on to Hitler, simply papered over other serious divisions. Beyond that, all that could be achieved was the establishment, under Strasser’s leadership, of a loose organization of northern party districts, mainly for arranging the exchange of speakers.84
This ‘Working Community (Arbeitsgemeinschaft) of the North and West German Gaue of the NSDAP’ (AG), and its publicity organ, the National-sozialistische Briefe (National Socialist Letters), edited by Goebbels, were not in any way intended as a challenge to Hitler.85 His approval was explicitly acknowledged in the Community’s statutes, and its members committed themselves to work ‘in comradely spirit of the idea of National Socialism under their leader Adolf Hitler’.86 Hitler recommended the publications of the Community to party members. The members of the Community opposed Hitler’s entourage, not Hitler himself. And here, too, there were compromises in practice – even stretching to relations with Esser and Streicher.87 There was, therefore, no hint of a secession.
Even so, despite its internal divisions, the Community did come to pose a threat to Hitler’s authority. The clashes over the Esser clique, and over electoral participation, were not in themselves critical. Of far greater significance was the fact that Gregor Strasser and Goebbels, especially, looked to the Community as an opportunity to reshape the party’s programme. Ultimately, Strasser hoped to replace the Programme of 1920.88 In November, Strasser took the first steps in composing the Community’s own draft programme. It advocated a racially integrated German nation at the heart of a central European customs union, the basis of a united states of Europe. Internally, it proposed a corporate state. In the economy, it looked to tying peasants to their landholdings, and public control of the means of production while protecting private property.89
Not only was the draft vague, incoherent, and contradictory. It could only be divisive. So it proved even before the Community’s meeting in Hanover on 24 January 1926 to consider it.90 The meeting resolved to consider the suggestions sent in by various members in a commission run by Gregor Strasser.91 But this bland resolution did not reflect a heated, acrimonious debate, at which uncomplimentary comments were made about Gottfried Feder, the party’s economics ‘expert’ whose ideas had made a strong impression on Hitler while the latter was undergoing his ideological training course for the Reichswehr in the summer of 1919. The Community’s draft programme had not been sent to either Feder or Hitler. When he obtained a copy, Feder, the self-styled ‘father’ of the original party programme – though his influence had probably extended no further than the inclusion of his obsessive demand for the ‘breaking of interest slavery’ – was furious. He turned up unannounced at Hanover and did not hide his anger at the direction of the intended changes.92 Feeling aggrieved and insulted, he made notes of what was said, plainly with a view to reporting them in Munich.93 Some of the Gauleiter – the party’s regional bosses, in charge of the thirty or so sizeable districts (Gaue) into which the Reich was divided – present did not shy away from direct criticism of Hitler’s leadership qualities – though they realized they could not do without him.94 The meeting had previously also decided unanimously to support the plebiscite (to take place in June) for the expropriation of the German princes without compensation – an initiative of the Left, and at the time a significant and divisive public issue.95
Hitler had previously been unconcerned about the Working Community. But Feder now prompted him into action. Hitler plainly recognized the danger signals. He summoned about sixty party leaders to a meeting on 14 February 1926 at Bamberg, in Upper Franconia.96 There was no agenda. Hitler, it was stated, simply wanted to discuss some ‘important questions’. The local branch in Bamberg, large and loyalist, had been well cultivated by Hitler and Streicher during 1925. The northern leaders, though several of the most prominent among them were present, were both outnumbered and could not but be impressed by the show of support for Hitler which had been orchestrated in the town.97 On the journey to Bamberg, Feder had once more taken the opportunity to underline to Hitler the threat to his authority.98
Hitler spoke for two hours.99 He addressed in the main the issue of foreign policy and future alliances. His position was wholly opposed to that of the Working Community. Alliances were never ideal, he said, but always ‘purely a matter of political business’. Britain and Italy, both distancing themselves from Germany’s arch-enemy France, offered the best potential. Any thought of an alliance with Russia could be ruled out. It would mean ‘the immediate political bolshevization of Germany’, and with it ‘national suicide’. Germany’s future could be secured solely by acquiring land, by eastern colonization as in the Middle Ages, by a colonial policy not overseas but in Europe. On the question of the expropriation of the princes, Hitler again ruled out the position of the Working Community. ‘For us there are today no princes, only Germans,’ he declared. ‘We stand on the basis of the law, and will not give a Jewish system of exploitation a legal pretext for the complete plundering of our people.’ Such a rhetorical slant could not conceal the outright rejection of the views of the northern leaders. Finally, Hitler repeated his insistence that religious problems had no part to play in the National Socialist Movement.100
Goebbels was appalled.
I feel devastated. What sort of Hitler? A reactionary? Amazingly clumsy and uncertain. Russian question: completely by the way. Italy and England natural allies. Terrible! Our task is the smashing of Bolshevism. Bolshevism is a Jewish creation! We must be Russia’s heir! 180 Millions! Expropriation of the princes! Law is law. Also for the princes. Don’t shake the question of private property! (sic!)101 Dreadful! Programme is sufficient! Content with it. Feder nods. Ley nods.102 Streicher nods. Esser nods. I’m sick at heart when I see you in such company!!! Short discussion. Strasser speaks. Hesitant, trembling, clumsy, the good, honest Strasser. God, how poor a match we are for those swine down there!… Probably one of the greatest disappointments of my life. I no longer believe fully in Hitler. That’s the terrible thing: my inner support has been taken away.103
The potential threat from the Working Community had evaporated. Hitler had reasserted his authority. Despite some initial signs of defiance, the fate of the Community had been sealed at Bamberg. Gregor Strasser promised Hitler to collect all copies of the draft programme he had distributed, and wrote to members of the Community on 5 March asking for them to be returned.104 The Community now petered out into non-existence. On 1 July 1926, Hitler signed a directive stating that ‘since the NSDAP represents a large working community, there is no justification for smaller working communities as a combination of individual Gaue’. 105 By that time, Strasser’s Working Community of northern and western Gauleiter was finished. With it went the last obstacle to the complete establishment of Hitler’s supreme mastery over the party.
Hitler was shrewd enough to be generous after his Bamberg triumph. He voiced no objection to the creation in March of a greatly enlarged Gau in the Ruhr under the combined leadership of the Working Community members Goebbels, Karl Kaufmann (an energetic activist in his mid-twenties, later Gauleiter of Hamburg, who had cut his teeth through organizing sabotage in the French-occupied Ruhr), and Franz Pfeffer von Salomon (Gauleiter of Westphalia, a former army officer who had subsequently joined the Freikorps, participated in the Kapp Putsch, and been active in opposition to the French in the Ruhr).106 He paid Gregor Strasser, recovering from a car accident, a surprise visit at his Landshut home. Following discussions with Strasser, he excluded Esser from the Reich Leadership of the NSDAP in April.107 And by September, Strasser had himself been called to the Reich Leadership as Propaganda Leader of the party, while Franz Pfeffer von Salomon was appointed head of the SA.108 Most important of all, the impressi
onable Goebbels was openly courted by Hitler and completely won over.
To bring about what has often been called Goebbels’s ‘Damascus’ in fact took little doing.109 Goebbels had idolized Hitler from the beginning. ‘Who is this man? Half plebian, half God! Actually Christ, or only John [the Baptist]?’ he had written in his diary in October 1925 on finishing reading the first volume of Mein Kampf. 110 ‘This man has everything to be a king. The born tribune of the people. The coming dictator,’ he added a few weeks later. ‘How I love him.’111 Like others in the Working Community, he had wanted only to liberate Hitler from the clutches of the Esser clique.112 Bamberg was a bitter blow. But his belief in Hitler was dented, not destroyed. It needed only a sign from Hitler to restore it. And the sign was not long in coming.