by Ian Kershaw
When the votes were counted, Nazi fears were realized. In the last election before Hitler came to power (and the last fully free election in the Weimar Republic) the NSDAP had lost 2 million voters. In a reduced turn-out – the lowest (at 80.6 per cent) since 1928 – its percentage of the poll had fallen from 37.4 in July to 33.1, its Reichstag seats reduced from 230 to 196. The SPD and Zentrum had also lost ground slightly. The winners were the Communists, who had increased their vote to 16.9 per cent (now little more than 3 per cent behind the SPD), and the DNVP, which had risen to 8.9 per cent.64 The DΝVP’s gains had been largely in winning back former supporters who had drifted to the NSDAP. The lower turn-out was the other main factor that worked to the disadvantage of Hitler’s party, as earlier Nazi voters stayed at home.65 Not only had the party failed, as before, to make serious inroads into the big left-wing and Catholic voting blocks; it had this time lost voters – it seems to all other parties, but predominantly to the DNVP.66 The middle classes were beginning to desert the Nazis.
Goebbels consoled himself that the results were less bad than pessimists had predicted. But he accepted they were a blow.67 The regional and local propaganda offices of the party provided their own analysis of what had gone wrong. Lack of funding had been a major handicap in mounting a good campaign.68 But there were less superficial reasons. An important one was Hitler’s refusal to enter the cabinet in August. This had provoked division within the party membership and among the electorate, it was reported. People had expressed reluctance to vote again for Hitler, after he had rejected the opportunity of joining the government and remained as distant from power as ever.69 Party members in some parts were quoted as saying that they had had enough of ‘a party whose leader does not know what he wants and has no programme’.70 Some Protestant support had also been alienated by Hitler’s negotiations with the Zentrum in August.71
Beyond these reasons, the pronounced socialist image of the NSDAP that had come across strongly during the campaign – inevitably, since the main target had been Papen’s reactionary conservatism – had plainly alienated middle-class support.72 The attacks of the Nazis had seemed to many little different from the class-warfare of the Communists. The similarity of ‘red’ and ‘brown’ varieties of ‘Bolshevism’ appeared proven by the NSDAP’s support for the Communist-inspired strike of Berlin transport workers during the days immediately preceding the election.73 The transport strike had illustrated the party’s cleft stick in the autumn campaign. Now that the DNVP, the main bourgeois conservative party, was its open enemy, the NSDAP could no longer square the electoral circle and avoid alienating one or other side of its heterogeneous ‘catch-all’ following.74 Goebbels acknowledged that the party had been faced with no choice other than to support the Berlin workers. Otherwise, its support from the working-class population would have been seriously shaken. ‘We are in a by no means envious position,’ he wrote. ‘Many bourgeois circles are frightened off by our participation in the strike. But that’s not decisive. These circles can later be very easily won back. But if we’d have once lost the workers, they’d have been lost for ever.’75 Hitler, with whom he was in constant telephone contact, had fully approved of Goebbels’s action in supporting the strike. The loss of ‘a few ten-thousand votes’ in ‘a more or less pointless election’ was of no consequence ‘in the active, revolutionary struggle’, the propaganda boss commented.76
Many shocked rural voters – a mainstay of party support since 1928 – indeed stayed away from the polls as a result of the Nazi support for the strike.77 In the middle class it was little different. Luise Solmitz, the Hamburg ex-schoolteacher so thrilled by Hitler earlier in the year, now voted – disappointed, and without enthusiasm – for the DNVP. She saw the Berlin transport strike as evidence that Hitler was arm in arm with Marxism. An acquaintance said he had twice voted for Hitler, but not again. Another thought Hitler far on the Left.78 ‘Above all his approval of the Berlin transport strike; yes, his demand to take part in it, has cost him at the last moment thousands of voters,’ Frau Solmitz summed up, the day after the election. Hitler had lost, in her eyes, his claim to stand selflessly for the national interest. ‘For him, it’s not a matter of Germany, but of power,’ she noted. ‘Why has Hitler deserted us after showing us a future that we could welcome. Hitler awake!’79
II
The November election had changed nothing in the political stalemate – except, perhaps, to make the situation even worse. The parties supporting the government, the DNVP and DVP, had only just over 10 per cent of the population behind them. And with the drop in the vote of both the NSDAP and the Zentrum, a coalition between the two parties, such as had been discussed in August, would in itself not suffice to produce an absolute majority in the Reichstag.80 The only majority, now as before, was a negative one. Hitler was undeterred by the election setback. He told party leaders in Munich to continue the struggle without any relenting. ‘Papen has to go. There are to be no compromises,’ is how Goebbels recalled the gist of Hitler’s comments.81 In the light of his humiliating experience on 13 August – the memory of being out-manoeuvred rankled greatly with him – the Nazi leader insisted on replying in writing, which he did on 16 November, flatly rejecting the Chancellor’s formal entreaty to enter discussions with a view to working with the government. Papen’s request indeed marked no advance for Hitler on the position of 13 August.82 Equally vain were the continued hopes of the Zentrum and its sister Catholic party, the ΒVP, that Hitler might be persuaded to enter a coalition – also with the smaller parties – to provide a working majority. The ΒVP leader, Fritz Schäffer, told Papen he was even prepared to operate under Hitler as Chancellor in such a coalition.83 Three days later, the same party leader was telling Reich President Hindenburg that he was well disposed towards Hitler in person; the danger lay in those around him, who would have to be controlled through strong counterweights in the government.84 The misreading and underestimation of Hitler was not confined to mavericks on the nationalist Right. It extended, too, into the leadership of political Catholicism.
Now, as before, Hitler had no interest in power at the behest of other parties in a majority government dependent on the Reichstag. By mid-November, Papen’s attempts to find any basis of support for his government had failed. On 17 November, mourned by few, his entire cabinet resigned. It was now left to Hindenburg himself to try to negotiate a path out of the state crisis. Meanwhile, the cabinet would continue to conduct the daily business of governmental administration.85
On 19 November, the day that Hindenburg received Hitler as part of his meetings with the heads of the political parties, the Reich President was handed a petition carrying twenty signatures from businessmen demanding the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor.86 It did not mark proof, as was once thought, of extensive big business support for Hitler, and its machinations to get him into power. The idea was, in fact, that of Wilhelm Keppler, emerging as Hitler’s link with a group of pro-Nazi businessmen, and put into operation in conjunction with Himmler, who served as the liaison to the Brown House. Keppler and Schacht began with a list of around three dozen possible signatories. But they found it an uphill task. Eight of the ‘Keppler Circle’, headed by Schacht and the Cologne banker Kurt von Schroeder, signed the petition. The results with industrialists were disappointing. A single prominent industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, signed. But he had for long made no secret of his sympathies for the National Socialists. The acting President of the Reichslandbund (Reich Agrarian League), the Nazi-infiltrated lobby of big landowners, was another signatory. The rest were middle-ranking businessmen and landholders. It was misleadingly claimed that leading industrialists Paul Reusch, Fritz Springorum and Albert Vögler sympathized, but had withheld their names from the actual petition. Big business on the whole still placed its hopes in Papen, though the petition was an indication that the business community did not speak with a single voice. The agricultural lobby, in particular, was the one to watch.87
In any case, the petition ha
d no bearing on Hindenburg’s negotiations with Hitler. The Reich President remained, as the exchanges of mid-November were to show, utterly distrustful of the Nazi leader. Hitler, for his part, was privately contemptuous of Hindenburg.88 But he had no way of attaining power without the President’s backing.
At his meeting with Hitler on 19 November, Hindenburg repeated, as in August, that he wanted to see him and his movement participating in government. The President expressed the hope that Hitler would take soundings with other parties with a view to forming a government with a parliamentary majority. This was calling Hitler’s bluff. Hindenburg knew that it would prove impossible, given the certain opposition of the DNVP.89 The outcome would have been the exposure of Hitler’s failure, and a weakening of his position. Hitler saw through the tactic straight away.
In what Goebbels called a ‘chessmatch for power’,90 Hitler replied that he had no intention of involving himself in negotiations with other parties before he had been entrusted by the Reich President, in whose hands the decision lay, with constructing a government. In such an eventuality, he was confident of finding a basis which would provide his government with an enabling act, approved by the Reichstag. He alone was in the position to obtain such a mandate from the Reichstag. The difficulties would be thereby solved.91
He repeated to Hindenburg in writing two days later his ‘single request’, that he be given the authority accorded to those before him.92 This was precisely what Hindenburg adamantly refused to concede. He remained unwilling to make Hitler the head of a presidential cabinet. He left the door open, however, to the possibility of a cabinet with a working majority, led by Hitler, and stipulated his conditions for accepting such a cabinet: establishment of an economic programme, no return to the dualism of Prussia and the Reich, no limiting of Article 48, and approval of a list of ministers in which he, the President, would nominate the foreign and defence ministers.93 Hitler replied, seeking clarification of the conditions, but still pressing for appointment as Chancellor of a presidential cabinet.94 Hindenburg’s state secretary, Otto Meissner, reiterated the distinction the President drew between a presidential cabinet, depending on Article 48, standing above parties, and requiring the leadership of a man ‘with the special trust of the Reich President’, and a parliamentary government resting on a Reichstag majority and following the aims of one or more political parties. Correspondingly, Meissner pointed out, ‘a party leader, all the more the leader of a party demanding the exclusivity of his movement, cannot be leader of a presidential cabinet’. He left open the possibility that, as in the case of Brüning, a Hitler-led parliamentary government could evolve into a presidential cabinet. But, it was made clear, only the leadership of a parliamentary majority cabinet was currently on offer to Hitler.95 Hindenburg’s preference remained, plainly, for a presidential cabinet, if possible run by Papen, his favourite, including Hitler in a subordinate role, or at least tolerated by his party. But a presidential cabinet under Hitler’s leadership, as in August, was ruled out. Hitler immediately wrote back to Meissner. Goebbels called his letter ‘a masterpiece of political strategy’.96 Hitler pointed to the recent judgement of the constitutional court (Staatsgerichtshof) about the powers of the Reich Commissar in Prussia which emphasized that Article 48 was intended to be used only in specific cases and for a limited period of time, not as a general method of government. Where parliamentary procedures hindered government in an emergency situation, the constitutional way, wrote Hitler, was through the deployment of an enabling act, approved by parliament, over a fixed period of time. Only his party had the prospect of obtaining such backing. He also rejected as unconstitutional – since they fell within the powers of the appointed head of government – the conditions imposed by the Reich President. Instead, he proposed his own terms for accepting the Chancellorship. He would put forward a political programme within forty-eight hours. On approval by the President, he would proffer a list of ministers. He would propose in advance Schleicher, known as the President’s ‘personal confidant’, as Defence Minister, and Neurath as Foreign Minister. Finally, and the key point, the President would grant him ‘those plenipotentiary powers which in such critical and difficult times have never been denied also to parliamentary Reich Chancellors’.97 By this, Hitler implied the dissolution of the Reichstag and the prescribing of new elections, in the hope of winning the majority he needed to obtain an enabling act without depending on other parties.98 Once more, Hitler was not kept waiting for an answer.
The Reich President’s unyielding views were communicated to him on 24 November, effectively repeating the sentiments Hindenburg had expressed in August: ‘that a presidential cabinet led by you would develop necessarily into a party dictatorship with all its consequences for an extraordinary accentuation of the conflicts in the German people’. For that, said the President, he could answer neither before his oath nor to his own conscience.99 It was his second outright rejection of Hitler within little over three months. It seemed final. Hitler, for his part, remained adamant that he would do nothing to assist the current presidential cabinet.100 On 30 November he rejected as pointless a further invitation to discussions with Hindenburg.101 The deadlock continued.
Schleicher had been gradually distancing himself from Papen. He was imperceptibly shifting his role from eminence grise behind the scenes to main part. He had helped draft Meissner’s letters to Hitler. And with Hindenburg’s approval, he had met Hitler on 23 November. Less to the President’s liking, he took soundings about whether Hitler might support a Schleicher cabinet. Hitler was unbending.102 On 1 December Schleicher sent his right-hand man, Lieutenant-Colonel Eugen Ott, to Weimar to hold talks with Hitler. On the surface, this was to make a last attempt to persuade him to participate in government. The hidden agenda was, however, exactly the opposite. Certain of Hitler’s response, Schleicher wanted to demonstrate to Hindenburg – and probably to Gregor Strasser – that the Nazi leader had to be left out of the equation. Beyond that, he had hopes of incorporating Gregor Strasser – backed by at least parts of the NSDAP – in his cabinet.103 Hitler did not disappoint Schleicher. Ott was subjected to a three-hour monologue, denouncing the prospect of a Schleicher cabinet. Knowing word would get back to the army leadership, Hitler also expressed concern at the Reichswehr being dragged into domestic politics.104 Meanwhile, Schleicher was making sure that lines were kept open to Gregor Strasser, who had played no part in the flurry of correspondence between Hitler and Hindenburg’s office, and was thought to be ready ‘to step personally into the breach’ if nothing came of the discussions with Hitler.105
Schleicher threw this possibility into the ring during discussions between himself, Papen, and Hindenburg on the evening of 1 December. Strasser and one or two of his supporters would be offered places in the government. About sixty Nazi Reichstag deputies could be won over. Schleicher was confident of gaining the support of the trade unions, the SPD, and the bourgeois parties for a package of economic reforms and work creation. This, he claimed, would obviate the need for the upturning of the constitution, which Papen had again proposed. Hindenburg nevertheless sided with Papen, and asked him to form a government and resume office – something which had been his intention all along. Behind the scenes, however, Schleicher had been warning members of Papen’s cabinet that if there were to be no change of government, and the proposed breaking of the constitution in a state of emergency were to take place, there would be civil war and the army would not be able to cope. This was reinforced at a cabinet meeting the following morning, 2 December, at which Lieutenant-Colonel Ott was brought in to report on a ‘war games’ exercise which the Reichswehr had conducted, demonstrating that they could not defend the borders and withstand the breakdown of internal order which would follow from strikes and disruption. The army was almost certainly too pessimistic in its judgement. But the message made its mark on the cabinet, and on the President. Hindenburg was afraid of possible civil war. Reluctantly, he let Papen, his favourite, go and appointed Schleicher
as Reich Chancellor.106