by Ian Kershaw
But he could still be grossly underrated. The anarchist revolutionary writer Erich Mühsam, a veteran of the Munich Räterepublik, saw Hitler’s victory as a ‘true blessing’ for the working class. All that was needed was to give the Nazis some ministerial responsibility, and their true reactionary colours would alienate workers more rapidly than the Social Democrats in power had done. The real danger, in Mühsam’s crass misjudgement, was the leadership of the DNVP, especially Hugenberg, ‘the true leader of the fascist movement in Germany’.129 Another writer with similar revolutionary credentials, Ernst Toller, was an exception on the Left in regarding the danger as acute. In an article in the Weltbühne entitled ‘Reich Chancellor Hitler’, he signalled that ‘the clock shows one minute to twelve’.130 Among ‘bourgeois’ writers, Thomas Mann provided a thoughtful analysis of the dangers following the Nazi landslide in his ‘German Address’ (Deutsche Ansprache), a lecture in Berlin on 17 October that was much interrupted by Nazi hecklers.131 But his cultural pessimism, his dismay at the collapse of the humanistic and idealistic values of the nineteenth century into the wild and raw, crude and primitive, emotions of mass society, led him also to a simplistic assessment of the NSDAP’s breakthrough. National Socialism offered, for him, merely ‘politics in the grotesque style with salvation-army attractions (Allüren), mass fits, showground-stall bell-ringing, hallelujah, and dervish-like repetition of monotonous slogans till everyone is foaming at the mouth’.132
After the September elections, not just Germany but the world outside had to take notice of Hitler. He was now sought after for interviews by the foreign press.133 One newspaper he was more than ready to talk to was the British conservative organ the Daily Mail, whose owner, Lord Rothermere, had publicly greeted the election result as ‘the rebirth of Germany as a nation’ and welcomed the prospect of the National Socialists taking power as a bulwark against Bolshevism.134 Hitler’s interviewer, Rothay Reynolds, was won over. ‘Hitler spoke with great simplicity and with great earnestness. There was not a trace in his manner of those arts which political leaders are apt to employ when they wish to impress. I was conscious that I was talking to a man whose power lies not, as many still think, in his eloquence and in his ability to hold the attention of the mob, but in his conviction. He is not a robust-looking man. He is slight in figure, and last night, after an exhausting day in the law-courts – where he stood for over two hours while giving evidence – followed by a conference, he looked exhausted and his face was dead white. But the moment he spoke I realized that there was in him a burning spirit that could triumph over bodily weariness. He speaks very rapidly, and in his voice there is a nervous energy that makes one feel the intense conviction behind his words.’135
Hitler’s ‘exhausting day in the law-courts’ had, in fact, been another well-exploited propaganda opportunity to allay suspicions of a putsch and to emphasize his commitment to a legal takeover of power. Hitler had throughout 1930, and especially during the election campaign, repeatedly stressed that he would win power legally.136 In the immediate aftermath of his electoral triumph, the trial of three young Reichswehr officers from a regiment stationed in Ulm, whose Nazi sympathies saw them accused of ‘Preparing to Commit High Treason’ (Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat) through working towards a military putsch with the NSDAP and breaching regulations banning members of the Reichswehr from activities aimed at altering the constitution, gave Hitler the chance, now with the eyes of the world’s press on him, of underlining his party’s commitment to legality. The trial of the officers, Hanns Ludin, Richard Scheringer, and Hans Friedrich Wendt, began on 23 September. On the first day, Wendt’s defence counsel, Hans Frank, was given permission to summon Hitler as a witness. Two days later, huge crowds demonstrated outside the court building in favour of Hitler as the leader of the Reichstag’s second largest party went into the witness-box to face the red-robed judges of the highest court in the land.137
Once more he was allowed to use a court of law for propaganda purposes. The judge even warned him on one occasion, as he heatedly denied any intention of undermining the Reichswehr, to avoid turning his testimony into a propaganda speech. It was to little avail. Hitler emphasized that his movement would take power by legal means and that the Reichswehr – again becoming ‘a great German people’s army’ – would be ‘the basis for the German future’.138 He declared that he had never wanted to pursue his ideals by illegal measures. He used the exclusion of Otto Strasser to dissociate himself from those in the movement who ‘played with the term “revolution”‘. But he assured the presiding judge: ‘If our movement is victorious in its legal struggle, then there will be a German State Court and November 1918 will find its atonement, and heads will roll.’139 This brought cheers and cries of ‘bravo’ from onlookers in the courtroom – and an immediate admonishment from the court president, reminding them that they were ‘neither in the theatre nor in a political meeting’.140 He expected, Hitler continued, that the NSDAP would win a majority following two or three further elections. ‘Then it must come to a National Socialist rising (Erhebung), and we will shape the state as we want to have it.’141 When asked how he envisaged the erection of the Third Reich, Hitler replied: ‘The National Socialist Movement will seek to attain its aim in this state by constitutional means. The constitution shows us only the methods, not the goal. In this constitutional way, we will try to gain decisive majorities in the legislative bodies in order, in the moment this is successful, to pour the state into the mould that matches our ideas.’ He repeated that this would only be done constitutionally.142 He was finally sworn in on oath to the truth of his testimony.143 Goebbels told Scheringer, one of the defendants, that Hitler’s oath was ‘a brilliant move’. ‘Now we are strictly legal,’ he is said to have exclaimed.144 The propaganda boss was delighted at the ‘fabulous’ press reportage.145 Hitler’s newly appointed Foreign Press Chief, Putzi Hanfstaengl, saw to it that there was wide coverage of the trial abroad. He also placed three articles by Hitler on the aims of the movement in the Hearst press, the powerful American media concern, at a handsome fee of 1,000 Marks for each. Hitler said it was what he needed to be able now to stay at the Kaiserhof Hotel – plush, well situated near the heart of government, and his headquarters in the capital until 1933 – when he went to Berlin.146
What Hitler said in the Leipzig Reichswehr trial – which ended on 4 October in eighteen-month custodial sentences on each of the three Reichswehr officers and the cashiering from the army of Ludin and Scheringer – was nothing new. As we have noted, he had been anxious for months to emphasize his ‘legal’ path to power. But the massive publicity surrounding the trial ensured that his declaration now made maximum impact. As Hans Frank later commented, the avowal of legality dispelled the fears of many that Hitler intended a violent takeover.147 The belief that Hitler had broken with his revolutionary past helped to win him further support in ‘respectable’ circles.148
There were those who encouraged Brüning after the election to take the NSDAP into a coalition government, arguing that government responsibility would put the Nazis to the test and limit their agitation. Brüning rejected such a notion out of hand, though he did not rule out cooperation at some future date should the party hold by the principle of legality. After deflecting Hitler’s request for an audience immediately after the election, Brüning did arrange to see him – as he did the leaders of the other parties – in early October.149 The Chancellor was hoping to reach an arrangement whereby Hitler would engage in ‘loyal opposition’ and moderate his clamour for an immediate end to reparations payments while delicate negotiations for an international loan of $125,000,000, seen as indispensable to prevent economic collapse, were under way. Their meeting on 5 October, which took place to avoid publicity in the apartment of Reich Minister Treviranus, established, however, that there was no prospect of cooperation. A chasm separated them. After Brüning’s careful statement of the government’s foreign policy – a delicate strategy aimed at acquiring a breathing-space leadi
ng to the ultimate removal of reparations – Hitler responded with an hour-long monologue. He simply ignored the issues Brüning had raised. Evidently, he did not understand the intricacies of the financial strategy that the Chancellor had outlined. Instead, starting so hesitantly that Brüning and Treviranus initially felt a little sorry for him and made remarks to encourage him, he was soon in full stride. Regular march-pasts of a singing SA troop, clearly prearranged though the meeting was meant to be a secret one, seemed to spur Hitler on. He was soon haranguing the four persons present – Frick and Gregor Strasser were there as well as Brüning and Treviranus – as if he were addressing a mass rally. Brüning was struck by the number of times Hitler used the word ‘annihilate’ (vernichten). He was going to ‘annihilate’ the KPD, the SPD, ‘the Reaction’, France as Germany’s arch-enemy, and Russia as the home of Bolshevism. It was plain to the Chancellor, so Brüning later remarked, that Hitler’s basic principle would always be: ‘First power, then politics.’150
There was a telling aftermath. Despite giving his word to Brüning that the discussion of government strategy on foreign policy was absolutely confidential, Hitler immediately dictated a resumé of what had been said, and his Foreign Press Chief Hanfstaengl leaked it to the American Ambassador.151
Brüning clearly saw Hitler as a fanatic – unsophisticated, but dangerous. Though they parted amicably enough, Hitler formed a deep loathing towards Brüning, taking on manic proportions and permeating the whole party. According to Albert Krebs, it stemmed from his strong inferiority complex towards the Chancellor during their meeting.152
Hitler was left to continue his relentless, unbridled opposition to a system whose symbolic hate-figure was now Chancellor Brüning. Continuing the agitation was, in any case, what Hitler, like Goebbels, preferred.153 That was his instinct. ‘Don’t write “victory” on your banners any longer,’ Hitler had told his supporters immediately after the election. ‘Write the word in its place that suits us better: “struggle!”‘154 In any case, it was the only option available. As one contemporary put it, the Nazis followed the maxim: ‘“After a victory, fasten on the helmet more tightly”… Following the election victory they arranged 70,000 meetings. Again an “avalanche” passed through the Reich… Town after town, village after village is stormed.’155 The election victory made this continued high level of agitation possible. The new interest in the party meant a vast influx of new members bringing new funds that could be used for the organization of still further propaganda and new activists to carry it out.156 Success bred success. But the structure of the party’s support was changing in some ways. Many of the recent converts were not the fanatics of the early years, prepared to sacrifice everything for their beliefs. Their support was in some ways conditional, dependent upon success.157 Many left the party as quickly as they had joined. The turnover in membership was considerable.158 They could not be held together by specific policies – which would immediately have alienated part of the heterogeneous following – but only by common denominator slogans: ‘national community’, national rebirth, ‘power, glory, and prosperity’.159 Above all, the prospect of victory now presented itself as a real one. Everything had to be subordinated to this single goal. The massive but shallow, organizationally somewhat ramshackle, protest movement – a loose amalgam of different interests bonded by the politics of utopia – could be sustained only by the NSDAP coming to power within a relatively short time, probably something like the space of two or three years. This was to create mounting pressure on Hitler. All he could do for the present was what he had always done best: step up the agitation still further.
VI
Behind the public persona, the private individual was difficult to locate. Politics had increasingly consumed Hitler since 1919. There was an extraordinary gulf between his political effectiveness, the magnetism not just felt by ecstatic crowds in mass rallies but by those who were frequently in his company, and the emptiness of what was left of an existence outside politics. Those who knew Hitler personally around this time found him an enigma. ‘In my recollection, there is no rounded image of Hitler’s personality,’ reflected Putzi Hanfstaengl many years later. ‘Rather, there are a number of images and shapes, all called Adolf Hitler and which were all Adolf Hitler, that can only with difficulty be brought together in overall relation to each other. He could be charming and then a little later utter opinions that hinted at a horrifying abyss. He could develop grand ideas and be primitive to the point of banality. He could fill millions with the conviction that only his will and strength of character guaranteed victory. And at the same time, even as Chancellor, he could remain a bohemian whose unreliability drove his colleagues to despair.’160
For Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, the head of the SA until his dismissal in August 1930, Hitler combined the qualities of common soldier and artist. ‘A trooper with gypsy blood’ was, given Nazi racial thinking, Pfeffer’s reported extraordinary characterization. He thought Hitler had something like a sixth sense in politics, ‘a supernatural talent’. But he wondered whether he was at bottom only a type of Freikorps leader, a revolutionary who might have difficulty in becoming a statesman after the movement had taken power.161 Pfeffer took Hitler to be a genius, something the world might experience only once in a thousand years. But the human side of Hitler, in his view, was deficient. Pfeffer, torn between adulation and criticism, saw him as a split personality, full of personal inhibitions in conflict with the ‘genius’ inside him, arising from his upbringing and education, and consuming him.162 Gregor Strasser, retaining his own critical distance from the fully-blown Führer cult, was nevertheless also, Otto Wagener recounted, prepared to see ‘genius’ of a kind in Hitler.163 ‘Whatever there is about him that is unpleasant,’ Otto Erbersdobler, Gauleiter of Lower Bavaria, later recalled Gregor Strasser saying, ‘the man has a prophetic talent for reading great political problems correctly and doing the right thing at the opportune moment despite apparently insuperable difficulties.’164 Such unusual talent as Strasser was ready to grant Hitler lay, however, as he saw it, in instinct rather than in any ability to systematize ideas.165
Otto Wagener, who had been made SA Chief of Staff in 1929, was among those totally entranced by Hitler. His captivation by this ‘rare personality’166 had still not deserted him many years later when he compiled his memoirs in British captivity. But he, too, was unsure what to make of Hitler. After hearing him one day in such a towering rage – it was a row with Pfeffer about the relations between the SA and SS – that his voice reverberated through the entire party headquarters, Wagener thought there was something in him resembling ‘an Asiatic will for destruction’ (a term still betraying after the war Wagener’s entrenchment in Nazi racial stereotypes). ‘Not genius, but hatred; not overriding greatness, but rage born of an inferiority complex; not Germanic heroism, but the Hun’s thirst for revenge’ was how, many years later, using Nazi-style parlance in describing Hitler’s alleged descent from the Huns, he summarized his impressions.167 In his incomprehension – a mixture of sycophantic admiration and awestruck fear – Wagener was reduced to seeing in Hitler’s character something ‘foreign’ (fremdartig) and ‘diabolical’. Hitler remained for him altogether a puzzle.168
Even for leading figures in the Nazi movement such as Pfeffer and Wagener, Hitler was a remote figure. He had moved in 1929 from his shabby flat in Thierschstraße to a luxury apartment in Prinzregentenplatz in Munich’s fashionable Bogenhausen.169 It matched the change from the beerhall rabble-rouser to politician cavorting with the conservative establishment. He seldom had guests, or entertained. When he did, the atmosphere was always stiff and formal.170 Obsessives rarely make good or interesting company, except in the eyes of those who share the obsession or those in awe of or dependent upon such an unbalanced personality. Hitler preferred, as he always had done, the usual afternoon round in Café Heck, where cronies and admirers would listen – fawningly, attentively, or with concealed boredom – to his monologues on the party’s early history
for the umpteenth time, or tales of the war, ‘his inexhaustible favourite theme’.171
Only with very few people was he on the familiar ‘Du’ terms. He would address most Nazi leaders by their surname alone. ‘Mein Führer’ had not yet fully established itself, as it would do after 1933, as their normal mode of address to him. For those in his entourage he was known simply as ‘the boss’ (der Chef). Some, like Hanfstaengl or ‘court’ photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, insisted on a simple ‘Herr Hitler’.172 The remoteness of his personality was complemented by the need to avoid the familiarity which could have brought with it contempt for his position as supreme Leader. The aura around him dared not be sullied in any way. Along with the remoteness went distrust. Important matters were discussed only with small – and changing – groups or individuals. That way, Hitler remained in full control, never bound by any advice of formal bodies, never needing to adjudicate on disagreements between his paladins. With his fixed views and dominant personality, he was able, as Gregor Strasser pointed out, to overwhelm any individual in his presence, even those initially sceptical.173 This in turn strengthened his self-confidence, his feeling of infallibility.174 In contrast, he felt uncomfortable with those who posed awkward questions or counter-arguments. Since his ‘intuition’ – by which, between the lines, Strasser meant his ideological dogmatism coupled with tactical flexibility and opportunism – could not in itself be combated by logical argument, the party’s organizational leader went on, Hitler invariably dismissed any objections as coming from small-minded know-alls. But he registered who the critics were. Sooner or later, they would fall from grace.175