by Ian Kershaw
The next day, Hitler put out a proclamation castigating the Papen cabinet, and taking the opportunity to turn the events of 13 August on their head by claiming his own refusal to participate in a government capable of such sentences. ‘Those of you who possess a feel for the struggle for the honour and freedom of the nation will understand why I refused to enter this bourgeois government,’ he declared. ‘With this deed, our attitude towards this national cabinet is prescribed once and for all.’16
In the event, Papen, acting in his capacity as Reich Commissar in Prussia, backed down and had the death sentences for the Potempa murderers commuted into life imprisonment – a decision which Papen himself acknowledged was political rather than legal.17 The murderers were freed under a Nazi amnesty as early as March 1933.18
The Potempa affair had cast glaring light, at precisely the juncture where the power-brokers were still examining ways and means of incorporating Hitler in government, on Nazi attitudes towards the law. Hitler had, in fact, welcomed Papen’s emergency decrees of 9 August, seeing them as directed at ‘the murderous banditry’ of Marxists.19 But the decrees would have looked different under a National Socialist government, announced the Völkischer Beobachter. They would have brought the immediate arrest and sentencing of all Communist and Social Democrat party functionaries, the ‘concentrated smoking out’ (konzentrierte Ausräucherung) of the ‘murder areas’ (Mordviertel), and ‘the internment of those under suspicion and intellectual inciters in concentration camps’.20 After the sentencing of the Potempa murderers, Alfred Rosenberg added in the same official party organ that the Beuthen judgement showed that ‘according to bourgeois justice, one Polish Communist has the same weighting as five Germans, front soldiers’. That was why National Socialism had to look at matters ideologically. In such a philosophy, ‘one soul does not equal another, one person not another’. For National Socialism, he went on, ‘there is no “law as such”. Rather, its goal is the strong German person, its belief is the protection of this German. And all law and social life, politics and economics, have to fall into line with this aim.’21 Such unmistakable indications of what a Hitler government would mean for the rule of law in Germany posed no deterrent to those who still thought the only way out of the crisis was somehow to involve the Nazis in the responsibility of public office.
Hitler’s rejection of anything less than the office of Chancellor had not only created difficulties for the NSDAP. The problems for the government were now acute. Schleicher had now given up the idea of a Hitler Chancellorship as long as Hindenburg remained Reich President.22 Papen, himself resolutely opposed, took Hindenburg’s continued opposition for granted. Only two possibilities, neither attractive, appeared to remain. The first was a ‘black-brown’ – taken from the colour associated with each party – coalition of Zentrum and National Socialists. Feelers were put out from the Zentrum about such a possibility following the events of 13 August. It never stood much chance of emerging as a solution. Gregor Strasser was keen to proceed, but could do nothing without Hitler’s backing – and the tension between the two was beginning to come into the open.23 The Zentrum continued to insist that the NSDAP concede the Chancellorship, but a Hitler Chancellorship had meanwhile become a ‘question of honour’.24 Brüning also refused to yield the offices, including the posts of Minister President and Minister of the Interior in Prussia, which Hitler demanded for his party.25 Hitler, for his part, was unwilling now, as he was to be following the November elections when the possibility was once more raised, to head a government dependent upon Reichstag majorities for support.26 In any case, the thought of a reversion to parliamentary government was anathema to Hindenburg and his advisers.27
The second alternative was to persevere with a ‘cabinet of struggle’ (Kampfkabinett) without any hope of support in the Reichstag, where the Nazis and Communists together prevailed over a ‘negative majority’. This implied going ahead with plans, first advanced by Interior Minister Gayl earlier in the month, for dissolving the Reichstag and postponing new elections in order to provide time to undertake a far-reaching reduction in the powers of the Reichstag through restricted franchise and a two-chamber system with a non-elected first chamber.28 The intention was to end ‘party rule’ once and for all. Necessary for such a drastic step were the support of the Reich President and the backing of the army to combat the expected opposition from the Left and possibly also from National Socialists. This solution for a dissolution of the Reichstag and postponement – in breach of the constitution – of elections beyond the sixty-day limit prescribed was put to Hindenburg by Papen at a meeting in Neudeck on 30 August. Schleicher and Gayl were also present. Hindenburg gave Papen the dissolution order without ado, and also agreed to the unconstitutional postponement of new elections on the grounds of a national state of emergency. Some leading constitutional lawyers – most prominent among them Carl Schmitt, the renowned constitutional theorist who in 1933 would place himself at the service of the Third Reich – were ready with their legal arguments to back the introduction of an authoritarian state through such a device.29
Probably, if he wanted to risk such a solution, Papen should have had the new Reichstag dissolved at its very first sitting on 30 August. By the second sitting, on 12 September, the initiative had been lost.30 As it was, Papen stayed away from the opening session, and the Reichstag merely heard on 30 August an attack on capitalism and advocacy of a Soviet Germany from the oldest member of the Reichstag, Clara Zetkin, given the right of speaking in the opening formalities, followed by the election on the votes of the NSDAP, BVP and Zentrum of Hermann Göring as Reichstag President.31 Göring lost no time in emphasizing that, as his election showed, there was a working majority in the Reichstag and no case for pronouncement by the government of a state of emergency. A joint statement by the NSDAP and Zentrum on 1 September, indicating that negotiations had begun between the two parties, had the same aim of deflecting a possible declaration of a state of emergency.32 It was from the Nazi side no more than a tactical device.33 The Nazi leadership were, however, prepared for a dissolution of the Reichstag. ‘If the opposite side breaks the constitution,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘then all compulsion to legality stops for us; then come tax strikes, sabotage, and uprising.’34 At a meeting of Nazi leaders on 8 September, Hitler emphasized that new elections were inevitable – the sooner, the better. He rejected out of hand a suggestion by Gregor Strasser, of whom he was becoming increasingly suspicious, to accept a cabinet led by Schleicher. Hitler as Reich Chancellor – but of a presidential cabinet, not dependent on coalition partners – remained the sole aim.35
The Reichstag met for its second – and last – sitting on 12 September. The only item on the list of the day’s agenda was a government declaration on the financial situation, announcing details of a programme aimed at economic recovery. A debate was expected to last for several days. However, the Communist Deputy Ernst Torgler proposed an alteration to the order of proceedings.36 He sought first to put a proposal of his party to repeal the emergency decrees of 4 and 5 September (which had made deep incisions in the system of tariff wage-bargaining), and to couple this with a vote of no-confidence in the government. No one expected much of such a proposal. The amendment to the order of proceedings would have fallen had there been a single objection. The Nazis expected the DNVP deputies to object. Astonishingly, not one did so. In the confusion that followed, Frick obtained an adjournment of half an hour to seek Hitler’s decision on how to proceed. Papen, completely taken aback, had to send a messenger to the Reich Chancellery during the adjournment to pick up the dissolution order, signed by Hindenburg on 30 August, which he had not even bothered to bring into the chamber with him.
Meanwhile, the Zentrum tried to persuade the National Socialists to reject the Communist proposals. But at a brief meeting with his chief henchmen, Hitler decided that the opportunity to embarrass the government could not be missed: the Nazi deputies should immediately support the Communist vote of no confidence, thus pre-empting
Papen’s dissolution order which no one doubted he would now put forward.37 When the Reichstag reassembled, Papen appeared with the red dispatch box which traditionally contained the orders of dissolution under his arm. Amid chaotic scenes, the Reichstag President Göring announced straight away that he would proceed with the vote on the Communist proposal. At this, Papen tried to speak. Göring ignored him, looking intentionally away from the Chancellor to the left side of the chamber. Papen’s State Secretary Planck pointed out to Göring that the Chancellor wished to exercise his right to speak. Göring retorted simply that the vote had begun. After again trying vainly to speak, Papen marched over to the Reichstag President’s platform and slapped the dissolution order down on Göring’s table. Followed by his cabinet, he then walked out of the chamber to howls of derision. Göring blithely pushed the dissolution order to one side, and read out the result of the division. The government was defeated by 512 votes to 42, with five abstentions and one invalid ballot paper. Only the DVNP and DVP had supported the government. All the major parties, including the Zentrum, had supported the Communist proposal. There had never been a parliamentary defeat like it. It was received with wild cheering and applause in the Reichstag.
Göring now read out Papen’s dissolution order, which he declared invalid since the government had already fallen through a vote of no-confidence. This was technically incorrect. Göring was subsequently compelled to concede that the Reichstag had indeed been formally dissolved by the presentation of Papen’s order. The no-confidence motion was, therefore, without legal standing. But this was of purely procedural significance. The government remained, as a consequence, in office. The reality was, however, that it had been rejected by more than four-fifths of the people’s representatives. Papen had been shown in the most humiliating way possible to be a Chancellor almost devoid of public support.38 Hitler was beside himself with joy.39 The cynical Nazi tactics had meanwhile given a foretaste of how they would behave in power, given the opportunity.40
New elections – the fifth of the year – loomed. Papen still had in his possession Hindenburg’s approval to postpone the election beyond the sixty days allowed by the constitution. But after the fiasco of 12 September, the cabinet decided two days later that now was not the time to proceed with that experiment.41 New elections were set for 6 November. The Nazi leadership was aware of the difficulties. The bourgeois press was now completely hostile. The NSDAP could make little use of broadcasting.42 The public were weary of elections. Even leading party speakers found it difficult to sustain top form. Not least, noted Goebbels, previous campaigns had drained all available funds. The party’s coffers were empty. Funding was difficult to come by. Getting through the ‘financial calamity’ was not going to be easy, thought the Propaganda Leader, who had his organization moved from Munich to Berlin for the duration of the campaign.43
Hitler himself seemed in confident mood on his way from Berlin to Munich shortly after the extraordinary events in the Reichstag.44 Whatever the doubts in the party, he was also able to convey optimism to the propagandists assembled in Munich on 6 October, when he laid down the guidelines for the campaign: ‘I look forward to the struggle with absolute confidence,’ he said. ‘The battle can begin. In four weeks we will emerge from it as the victor.’45
A few days earlier, on 2 October, he had attended the ‘Reich Youth Rally’ staged by the Hitler Youth in Potsdam. He had, according to Lüdecke’s account, been reluctant to go. But Schirach persuaded him not to miss such an inviting propaganda opportunity just before the election. Lüdecke was part of the accompaniment of sundry adjutants and bodyguards that formed the northward-bound cavalcade. Hitler wanted to hear about America, where Lüdecke had spent the previous few years in a variety of insignificant jobs and small-time business ventures. He was glad to discover Lüdecke’s interest in the Karl May cowboy and Indian stories which he had devoured as a boy. He said he could still read them and get a thrill out of them. The bodyguards had to be on alert as roadworks in Saxony forced the cars to slow down to overtake a procession of lorries carrying Communists waving red flags. But nothing more than insults were hurled at Hitler and his entourage. The danger passed. By the time they were approaching Potsdam, they were slowed down again – but this time by the crowds of Hitler Youth on their way to the rally.46
An estimated 110,000 boys and girls from all over Germany, and also from Austria, Bohemia, Danzig, and Memel, had come to Potsdam – twice the number expected. Many had been on the road for days. Those who could not be accommodated had to sleep in the open, though it was already chilly in early October. Hitler was greeted with wild enthusiasm on entering the stadium, a blaze of torches, where the rally was held. ‘Tens of thousands of boys and girls stood in formation on the field,’ recalled Lüdecke. ‘When Hitler stood alone at the front of the platform, a fantastic cry went up into the night, a sound of matchless jubilation. Then he raised his arms and dead silence fell. He burst into a flaming address which lasted scarcely fifteen minutes. Again he was the old Hitler, spontaneous, fiery, full of appeal.’47 As always when at the centre of a propaganda spectacular, he was himself gripped by the atmosphere, by the thrill of the performance. He could appear tireless, sleeping little, conveying the impression to those around him of concern for the well-being of his young supporters, then standing with outstretched arm for seven hours while the Hitler Youth paraded past him. In the evening he dined with the Kaiser’s fourth son and party member Prince August Wilhelm – Auwi as he was known – whom he addressed courteously, even deferentially, then went back to Goebbels’ house. Only when finally ‘off-stage’, slumped in his train compartment at the beginning of the journey back to Munich, could the image be put to one side as he sagged with tiredness. ‘Leave him alone,’ his adjutant Brückner told Hoffmann and Lüdecke. ‘The man’s played out.’48
Electioneering reinvigorated him. And in the fifth long campaign of the year, he set out yet again to do what he did best: make speeches. Once more, his indispensability as the chief propaganda focus of the movement meant he had to embark upon a punishing schedule of speeches and rallies. During his fourth ‘Germany Flight’ between 11 October and 5 November he gave no fewer than fifty speeches, again sometimes three a day, on one occasion four.49 He briefly interrupted his campaign when he heard of Eva Braun’s apparent attempted suicide by shooting late on 1 November.50 Despairing of the man she had fallen in love with but scarcely saw, and who was so taken up with his political activities that he was hardly acknowledging her existence, Eva had shot herself – allegedly aiming at the heart – with her father’s pistol. She had not, however, been too injured to telephone immediately for a doctor. She was immediately taken to hospital, where Hitler visited her bearing a large bouquet of flowers – and some doubts about whether the suicide attempt had been a genuine one.51 If he momentarily feared another scandal like the one involving Geli Raubal the previous summer, he gave no indication of it. Without delay, he was back on the campaign trail, speaking on the evening of 2 November at a big rally in the Berlin Sportpalast.52
Hitler’s attack now focused squarely on Papen and ‘the Reaction’. The vast support for his own movement was contrasted with the ‘small circle of reactionaries’ keeping the Papen government, lacking all popular backing, in office.53 ‘There the head of a government which depends on a small circle of reactionaries, a government on which the German people with 512 to 42 votes has given its devastating verdict; here a leader of his own strength, rooted in the people, who has worked and struggled to gain trust,’ was how Nazi propaganda depicted the contest.54 Hitler emphasized how little ministerial titles meant to him. ‘He preferred to be the leader of his party.’ Nor did he need a ministerial salary, since he had his own income as a writer. Papen, with his property worth 5 million Marks, Hitler went on, still drew his Chancellor’s salary. He, on the other hand, had no intention of claiming one: ‘decisive for him was working for the people’.55 Hitler declared that it was plain to see why he had not entered the ‘c
abinet of the barons’ on 13 August. He was prepared, he said, to take responsibility – full responsibility – but not to take it where it was evident that he would be deprived of influence. ‘My opponents deceive themselves above all,’ he railed, ‘about my enormous determination. I’ve chosen my path and will follow it to its end.’56
The Nazi press inevitably portrayed Hitler’s campaign as a victory march. ‘The Führer begins his new struggle for Germany,’ proclaimed the Völkischer Beobachter on 13 October. It followed with ‘The Führer’s Victory Parade through Bavaria’s Gaue’ two days later. ‘Grandiose Progress of the Hitler Days,’ ran the banner headline of the Coburger National-Zeitung on 17 October. ‘Huge participation from the entire Reich… Coburg, the Hitler town, mirrors symbolically the emergence and struggle of the German freedom movement.’ ‘Where once Marxism ruled, the people now stands by Hitler,’ professed the party’s main organ again, after its leader had spoken in Schweinfurt in Lower Franconia.57 ‘Fourteen Years Ago War-Blind in Hospital – Now the Leader of Millions. Adolf Hitler in the Pomeranian Town of Pasewalk, the starting-point of his struggle for the German soul,’ ran another headline towards the end of the month.58 But not even all Nazi followers read the party press. And the main bourgeois papers, with their far larger circulation, were unremittingly hostile. The triumphalist headlines in the Völkischer Beobachter in any case merely disguised worries within the movement that the party’s support was falling off, that morale among the often fickle members was low, that the SA were unwilling in many places to take part in propaganda work, and that the NSDAP was heading for a serious electoral setback.59 Grossly inflated attendances at Hitler rallies provided in the party press – in rural areas especially thousands were brought in from outside the area to swell the numbers – hid the plain signs of disillusionment and electoral fatigue. Hitler acknowledged that the party was likely to lose votes, perhaps a large number, but characteristically, if not logically, still thought the election would be ‘a great psychological success’.60 Even Hitler was now unable to fill the halls as he previously had done. For his speech in Nuremberg on 13 October, the Festhalle in Luitpoldhain was only half full.61 While a Hitler speech might have made a difference to the election result in some places, observers were already predicting in October that his campaign tour would do little to prevent the expected drop in Nazi support.62 The day before the election, Goebbels, too, was anticipating a defeat.63