by Ian Kershaw
Encouraged by his party’s advances, Hitler felt bold enough, in the private letter he wrote in early February 1930, to ‘prophesy’ that the Nazi Movement would get to power within two and a half to three years.25 This was typical Hitler bravado. He saw the tide turning in his favour. But his conviction of an inexorable path to triumph was simple ‘gut feeling’, not based on rational calculation. As NSDAP leaders recognized, agitation had so far been based on little more than negative propaganda: attacking the Weimar Republic.26 The party’s programme, in Gregor Strasser’s eyes, was purely ideological, not constructive. Its creators, he claimed, had no idea how they would implement it, given the chance. The party was committed to a fight for power without knowing what to do with it once attained.27 Planning for the future had only just begun in the party, and remained vague and ill-thought-out.28 Hitler himself was little interested in such notions. He remained fixated on propaganda and mobilization. Everything was targeted on the fight for power.29 But how to get power remained unclear. No cogent strategy was developed.
Electoral gains were extremely important. But they did not translate directly into power. At the Reich level, elections were not due until 1932. At provincial level, the Thuringian elections had opened up a new possible avenue of gaining power through infiltrating state government. But Nazi participation in the Thuringian government was soon to prove that this route was unlikely to yield positive results, and guaranteed to bring a fall in support for the NSDAP. Even with the deepening Depression and every prospect of increasing National Socialist electoral gains, the road to power was blocked. Only crass errors by the country’s rulers could open up a path. And only a blatant disregard by Germany’s power élites for safeguarding democracy – in fact, the hope that economic crisis could be used as a vehicle to bring about democracy’s demise and replace it by a form of authoritarianism – could induce such errors. Precisely this is what happened in March 1930.
II
The fall of the Social Democrat Chancellor Hermann Müller and his replacement by Heinrich Brüning of the Zentrum was the first unnecessary step on the suicidal road of the Weimar Republic. Without the self-destructiveness of the democratic state, without the wish to undermine democracy of those who were meant to uphold it, Hitler, whatever his talents as an agitator, could not have come close to power.
The Müller administration eventually came to grief, on 27 March 1930, over the question of whether employer contributions to unemployment insurance should be raised, as from 30 June 1930, from 3.5 to 4 per cent of the gross wage.30 The issue had polarized the ill-matched coalition partners, the SPD and DVP, since the previous autumn. If the will had been there, a compromise would have been found. But by the end of 1929, in the context of the increasing economic difficulties of the Republic, the DVP had – in company with the other ‘bourgeois’ parties – moved sharply to the right. Stresemann’s death had removed a strong force for pragmatism and common sense. Now, the DVP, with its close links with big business and anxious about the demands on employers’ social contributions in the context of rapidly rising unemployment, launched a general attack on the Weimar welfare-state. For the DVP, and for other ‘bourgeois’ parties of the Right, this was more or less synonymous with an attack on the Weimar ‘party state’ itself. The SPD was for its part increasingly intransigent. It was unwilling to allow Müller any room for compromise on the unemployment insurance issue.31
Even with the stalemate between the coalition partners, the fall of government could have been avoided. Reich President Hindenburg could have used his powers to enable Müller to resolve the issue of unemployment contributions by presidential decree. Ebert had supported Stresemann with this device during the 1923 crisis. Hindenburg was to extend it to each of Müller’s successors – completely undermining parliamentary government in the process. But in early 1930 use of Article 48 was denied to Müller.32 With no way out of the government crisis, the Chancellor tendered his resignation on 27 March. It marked the beginning of the end for the Weimar Republic.
The fall of Müller had in fact been planned long beforehand. The Reich President had spoken to the former leader and chairman of the DNVP’s parliamentary delegation Graf Westarp as early as March 1929 about the necessity of ruling without the Social Democrats. The following August, Major-General Kurt von Schleicher, protégé of Defence Minster Groener and head of the newly created Ministerial Bureau (Ministeramt) in the Defence Ministry, already with the ear of the Reich President, let Heinrich Brüning – a cautious, conscientious but somewhat desiccated figure, aloof and ascetic, on the right of the Zentrum and the party’s expert on finance policy – know of Hindenburg’s readiness to use Article 48 to ‘send the Reichstag home for a while’ and rule by emergency decree.33 In December, Brüning, by now parliamentary leader of the Zentrum, learnt that Hindenburg was determined to oust Müller as soon as the Young Plan had been accepted. Brüning himself was earmarked to take over as Chancellor, backed where necessary by the President’s powers under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. Soundings were taken in January about the willingness of the DNVP to support such an administration. A ‘government crisis on account of financial reform’ was expected in February or March, it was said in confidence. The Reich President was anxious not to miss the chance of creating an ‘anti-parliamentary and anti-Marxist’ government and afraid of being forced to retain a Social Democrat administration.34
Brüning was appointed Chancellor on 30 March 1930. His problems soon became apparent. Under the Weimar Constitution, even making full use of emergency decrees, he could not completely dispense with the support of the Reichstag. Should presidential decrees under Article 48 fail to gain the necessary majority, the President could dissolve the Reichstag. But new elections had then to be held within sixty days. By June, Brüning was running into serious difficulties in his attempts to reduce public spending through emergency decrees. On 16 July, his wide-ranging finance bill – aimed at reforming state finances through a stringent deflationary policy of cuts in public expenditure and higher taxes – was rejected by the Reichstag. Brüning had made no serious effort to explore all possibilities of securing a Reichstag majority. He now resorted to emergency decree to make the bill law – the first time this had happened for a bill rejected by the Reichstag, and a step of doubtful legality. When an SPD motion, supported by the NSDAP, to withdraw the decree was passed by the Reichstag, Brüning sought and received, on 18 July 1930, the Reich President’s dissolution of parliament.35 The temptation to seek a dissolution rather than undergo wearisome negotiations to arrive at a Reichstag majority had proved irresistible. New elections were set for 14 September. For democracy’s prospects in Germany, they were a catastrophe. They were to bring the Hitler Movement’s electoral breakthrough.
The decision to dissolve the Reichstag was one of breathtaking irresponsibility. Brüning evidently took a sizeable vote for the Nazis on board in his calculations.36 After all, the NSDAP had won 14.4 per cent of the vote only a few weeks earlier in the Saxon regional election.37 But in his determination to override parliamentary government by a more authoritarian system run by presidential decree, Brüning had greatly underestimated the extent of anger and frustration in the country, grossly miscalculating the effect of the deep alienation and dangerous levels of popular protest. The Nazis could hardly believe their luck. Under the direction of their newly appointed propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, they prepared feverishly for a summer of unprecedented agitation.38
III
In the meantime, internal conflict within the NSDAP only demonstrated the extent to which Hitler now dominated the Movement, how far it had become, over the previous five years, a ‘leader party’. The dispute, when it came to a head, crystallized once more around the issue of whether there could be any separation of the ‘idea’ from the Leader.
Otto Strasser, Gregor’s younger brother, had continued to use the publications of the Kampfverlag, the Berlin publishing house which he controlled, as a vehicle for his own versio
n of National Socialism.39 This was a vague and heady brew of radical mystical nationalism, strident anti-capitalism, social reformism, and anti-Westernism. Rejection of bourgeois society produced admiration for the radical anti-capitalism of the Bolsheviks. Otto shared his doctrinaire national-revolutionary ideas with a group of theorists who used the Kampfverlag as the outlet for their views. As long as such notions neither harmed the party nor impinged on his own position, Hitler took little notice of them. He was even aware, without taking any action, that Otto Strasser had talked of founding a new party. By early 1930, however, the quasi-independent line of Otto Strasser had grown shriller as Hitler had sought since the previous year to exploit closer association with the bourgeois Right. A showdown came closer when the Kampfverlag continued to support striking metal-workers in Saxony in April 1930, despite Hitler’s ban, under pressure from industrialists, on any backing of the strike by the party.40
Goebbels had by this time for weeks been venting his own spleen to Hitler about the Strasser brothers, whose newspapers were in rivalry to his own Angriff.41 Hitler promised to support Goebbels. ‘He can’t stand the Strassers and passes the hardest judgement on this salon socialism,’ wrote the Berlin party boss.42 But Hitler did nothing.43 His hesitancy and reluctance to act frustrated and annoyed Goebbels. Already angered in February at Hitler’s refusal to attend the funeral of Horst Wessel – a Berlin SA leader, shot in his apartment by Communists after his landlady had complained to them that he was refusing to pay his rent, and converted by Goebbels into a martyr for the movement, savagely murdered by its political enemies – he threatened to resign as Gauleiter of Berlin if Hitler did not act against the Strassers.44 But he thought Hitler, as usual, would not intervene.45 ‘Munich, incl. Chief, has lost all credit with me,’ he bitterly noted in mid-March. ‘I don’t believe anything from them any longer. Hitler has – for whatever reasons, they don’t matter – broken his word to me five times. That’s bitter to realize, and I inwardly draw my conclusions. Hitler keeps to himself (verbirgt sich), he takes no decisions, he doesn’t lead any more but lets things happen.’46
Hitler was stirred into action in early April by the publication in the Strasser press, against his orders, of his decision to break with Hugenberg and leave the Reich Committee against the Young Plan. ‘Hitler is in a stinking rage,’ noted Goebbels.47 ‘He is ready to act against this literati tendency, since he is himself threatened by it,’ he added.48 In a two-hour speech to a meeting in Munich on 27 April, to which all top party leaders had been expressly summoned, Hitler tore into the Kampfverlag and its ‘salon bolsheviks’.49 At the end of the meeting, he announced Goebbels’s appointment as Propaganda Leader of the party. The Berlin Gauleiter was triumphant. ‘Hitler leads again, thank God,’ he wrote.50 But still Hitler was reluctant to bring matters to a head.
After further inaction, he travelled to Berlin on 21 May and invited Otto Strasser to his hotel for lengthy discussions. Hitler preferred even then to avoid a breach. His tactic was to remove the problem of the Kampfverlag – which remained in serious financial difficulties – by buying it out.51 He even offered to make Otto Strasser his press chief.52 But Strasser was obdurate. Hitler turned from blandishments to threats. He wanted an immediate decision. Otherwise he would take steps within days to have the Kampfverlag banned.53 Undeterred, Strasser moved the discussion on to ideological issues. According to his published account – the only one that exists, though it rings true and was not denied by Hitler – the key points were leadership and socialism.54 ‘A Leader must serve the Idea. To this alone can we devote ourselves entirely, since it is eternal whereas the Leader passes and can make mistakes,’ claimed Strasser. ‘What you are saying is outrageous nonsense (ein unerhörter Unsinn),’ retorted Hitler. ‘That’s the most revolting democracy that we want nothing more to do with. For us, the Leader is the Idea, and each party member has to obey only the Leader.’55 Strasser accused Hitler of trying to destroy the Kampfverlag because he wanted ‘to strangle’ the ‘social revolution’ through a strategy of legality and collaboration with the bourgeois Right. Hitler angrily denounced Strasser’s socialism as ‘nothing but Marxism’. The mass of the working class, he went on, wanted only bread and circuses, and would never understand the meaning of an ideal. ‘There is only one possible kind of revolution, and it is not economic or political or social, but racial,’ he avowed.56 Pushed on his attitude towards big business, Hitler made plain that there could be no question for him of socialization or worker control. The only priority was for a strong state to ensure that production was carried out in the national interest.57
The meeting broke up. Hitler’s mood was black. ‘An intellectual white Jew, totally incapable of organization, a Marxist of the purest ilk’, was his withering assessment of Otto Strasser. ‘Hitler is full of rage,’ added Goebbels, somewhat superfluously.58 Gregor Strasser noted a few weeks later that after this discussion it was impossible for his brother to remain in the party.59 But Hitler still took no action. And, though he promised Goebbels that he would deal with Otto Strasser after the Saxony elections,60 he did nothing until late June. When he did finally act, it was following pressure from Göring and Walter Buch as well as Goebbels, and only after Otto Strasser had effectively left him little choice by publicizing his account of their discussions in Berlin in May.61 On the eve of the Saxony election, Hitler again promised Goebbels he would purge the Strasser faction.62 But three days later, on 25 June, following a telephone conversation with Hitler, the party’s propaganda boss felt: ‘Chief wants me to throw out the little ones, but doesn’t touch the big-shots. That’s so typically Hitler. In Plauen high on his horse, today he pulls back again… He makes promises, and doesn’t keep them.’63 By 28 June, Goebbels was even more critical. Hitler ‘backs away from the decision. So everything is turned upside down again. I’m certain he won’t come on Monday [to Berlin] to save himself from having to make decisions. That’s the old Hitler. The waverer! For ever putting things off!’64 As Goebbels predicted, Hitler – taken up with coalition negotiations in Saxony – cancelled his planned speech to the Berlin Gau meeting on 3 July.65 The propaganda chief was not consoled by a message from Göring that Walter Buch would read out a letter written by Hitler attacking the Strasser clique.66 However, when he saw the letter, its aggressive tone pleased him. It gave Goebbels backing for the ‘ruthless purge’ of the Berlin party.67 Strasser and twenty-five supporters had, in fact, already anticipated their expulsion, and publicly announced on 4 July that ‘the socialists are leaving the NSDAP’.68 The rebels had in effect purged themselves. ‘The whole thing ends in a great declaration of loyalty to the Movement, Hitler, and me,’ wrote Goebbels.69 ‘Berlin is in order… The air is cleared,’ he added shortly afterwards.70 ‘The entire revolt of the literati reveals itself to be a storm in a teacup. Otto Strasser has lost completely.’71 Goebbels’s confidence in Hitler was still not completely restored. ‘Hitler acts from anxiety,’ he noted in his diary on 16 July 1930. ‘He is not in the least free in his decisions any longer.’72
Within two days, little of this seemed to matter any longer. Brüning declared the Reichstag dissolved. Goebbels was thrown headlong into the preparations for the election campaign. He was shown the lavish offices being built for him in the newly purchased ‘Brown House’ headquarters in Munich, provided with a flat in the city, and given massive financial backing for his propaganda department.73 ‘Hitler listens to me completely. It’s good like that,’ he commented.74 Disappointments of the early summer forgotten, he was Hitler’s man again.
Goebbels’s account, one-sided though it was, of the crisis provoked by Otto Strasser is revealing for its repeated criticism of Hitler’s indecision. Tactics – the proximity of the Saxon elections, the wait for the most opportune moment when Strasser would provide the occasion to strike at him – obviously played their part in Hitler’s dilatory behaviour. Hitler plainly wanted to wait until the elections in Saxony, where Strasser had some support, before acting against him.75 And it
was only after Strasser had effectively decided to force the break by publishing his version of the discussion with Hitler that the latter felt compelled to intervene. But Goebbels plainly recognized the trait in Hitler’s character that other Nazi leaders were also well aware of: his instinctive tendency to put off tough decisions and his chronic wavering in a crisis. Not visible to outsiders, this trait would be apparent in so many of the major crises during the Third Reich itself. If it was a weakness, however, it was a strange one. There was never any suggestion that Hitler might be bypassed or ignored, that anyone but he could make a key decision. And, once he finally decided to act, Hitler did so, as on this occasion, with ruthlessness. Such dilatoriness followed by boldness was a feature of Hitler as party leader, then later as dictator.
The Strasser crisis showed, above all, the strength of Hitler’s position. Otto Strasser had not, in fact, been a popular member of the party. And his influence was less extensive than it had seemed. Once outside the NSDAP, he lost all significance. No major leader followed him; there were no repercussions; the rebellion fizzled out overnight.76 Gregor Strasser broke completely with his brother.77 He dissociated himself from Otto’s views and described his continued agitation against the party as ‘total lunacy’ (heller Wahnsinn).78 Otto’s ‘Union of Revolutionary National Socialists’, subsequently the ‘Black Front’, emerged as no more than a tiny oppositional right-wing sect.79 With the elimination of the Strasser clique, any lingering ideological dispute in the party was over. Things had changed drastically since 1925 and the days of the ‘Working Community’. Now it was clear: Leader and Idea were one and the same.