by Ian Kershaw
III
In the wake of Schleicher’s overtures to Gregor Strasser, Hitler’s movement entered upon its greatest crisis since the refoundation of 1925. The affair surrounding the exclusion of Gregor’s brother, Otto, in 1930 and the Stennes uprising a year later had occurred with the party riding the crest of a wave. Hitler’s authority, as we have seen, was such that it could sweep away the revolts with ease. In the case of Gregor Strasser, it was different. Gregor was no fringe character. His contribution to the growth of the NSDAP had been second only to that of Hitler himself. The organization of the party, in particular, had been largely his work. His reputation inside the party – though he had made powerful enemies, not least his one-time acolyte Goebbels – was high. He was generally seen as Hitler’s right-hand man.107 Some outside the party also regarded him with admiration. Oswald Spengler, for instance, author of the best-selling Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West), held Hitler in contempt. ‘A dreamer (Phantast), a numbskull (Hohlkopf)… a man without idea, without strength of purpose, in a word: stupid’, was how he described him. But he liked Strasser, who had ‘a sense of reality’.108 Strasser’s resignation of all his party offices on 8 December 1932 naturally, therefore, caused a sensation. Moreover, it hit a party already rocked by falling support and shaky morale. The decline in voter support had again been vividly demonstrated in the first days of December as the results of the Thuringian local elections showed a devastating drop of around 40 per cent since the high-point of the July Reichstag election.109 Internal reports were commenting with alarm on the numbers leaving the party. Subscriptions to the party press were being cancelled. Unrest within the SA was scarcely containable in some areas. And the party was massively in debt after a year of non-stop electioneering.110 All in all, the Strasser affair struck a party undergoing a full-scale crisis of confidence. If power were not attained soon, the chances that the party might fall apart altogether could not be discounted.
Bombshell though it was when news broke of Gregor Strasser’s resignation of his party offices, trouble had been brewing for some considerable time. Despite his image in the 1920s as a radical spokesman for the NSDAP’s populist versions of socialism and anti-capitalism, Strasser had by the early 1930s come to be seen by many in influential positions as something of a ‘moderate’ in the Nazi Movement.111 His work in restructuring the party’s organization had made him more pragmatic about extending National Socialism’s appeal. He had not only masterminded the turn to cultivate the middle classes and peasantry, but had also coordinated the links with other right-wing organizations in the anti-Young Plan campaign.112 In 1930 he had publicly broken with his brother Otto, whose brand of socialism had led to his secession from the NSDAP. By 1932, he had built up good contacts with some leading Ruhr industrialists, and benefited from their financial subventions.113 By the autumn of 1932, as Hitler – once seen by sections of business as a ‘moderate’ – was viewed as an intransigent obstacle to a conservative-dominated right-wing government, Strasser came to be seen as a more responsible and constructive politician who could bring Nazi mass support behind a conservative cabinet.114 Indeed, by this time Strasser, increasingly influenced by the neo-conservative ideas of Hans Zehrer’s Tat group, was advocating notions of a broad front on the Right.115 Now as before, though there were variations of emphasis, Strasser’s differences with Hitler were not primarily ideological. Strasser was an out-and-out racist; he did not shy away from violence; his ‘social ideas’ were hardly less vague than Hitler’s own; his economic ideas, eclectic and contradictory, were more Utopian than, but still compatible with, Hitler’s cruder and more brutal notions;116 his foreign policy ambitions were no less extensive than Hitler’s; and he was ruthless and single-minded in the drive for power. But tactically, there were fundamental differences. And after 13 August, as Hitler’s political inflexibility threatened increasingly to block the road to power forever, these differences came more and more to the surface. Strasser, never a complete convert to the Führer myth, continued to take the view that the party which now showed plain signs of potential disintegration was not solely Hitler’s creation.117 In contrast to Hitler’s ‘all-or-nothing’ stance, Strasser thought the NSDAP ought to be prepared to join coalitions, explore all possible alliances, and if necessary enter government even without the offer of the Chancellorship.118 Immediately following the 13 August setback, Strasser was exhorted by Reventlow and some other supporters to stand out against Hitler; otherwise, they argued, the party leader’s hard-line strategy would have catastrophic consequences for the movement.119
Through members of the ‘Tat Circle’, Strasser had been introduced to General Schleicher in the summer of 1932. Schleicher was particularly interested in the possibility that Gregor Strasser could help bring the trade unions behind a ‘national’ – that is, authoritarian – government. This was something which the ‘Tat Circle’ had favoured. Unlike Hitler, whose dislike of trade unions had never wavered, Strasser was openly conciliatory towards the unions. Given his growing contacts with union leaders interested in a broad coalition to head off the dangers they saw on the far Right and far Left, the prospects of winning their support for a Schleicher cabinet that had Strasser in the government and offered an expansive work-creation programme could not be lightly dismissed.120
During the autumn, the rift between Hitler and Strasser widened. Already in September, Hitler distanced himself from Strasser’s economic ideas by dissolving the Political Economy Section (Wirtschaftspolitische Abteilung), which had been run by Otto Wagener, and banning further distribution of the Economic Emergency Programme (Wirtschaftliches Sofortprogramm), both of which Strasser had inspired. Then in October, Hitler had refused to endorse a speech Strasser made to the ΝSBO which contained pro-unionist sentiments. After the November election, Strasser lost his place in Hitler’s inner circle.121 Privately, he was contemptuous of those he thought decisively influencing Hitler. Göring he thought ‘a brutal egoist’; Goebbels was ‘from the bottom up devious’; and Rohm simply ‘a swine’. Things looked black, he told Hans Frank.122
Goebbels, his old enemy since the inner-party conflicts of the mid-twenties, in particular, had repeatedly castigated the ‘Strasser clique’, and had wasted no opportunity to poison Hitler against the Organization Leader. On 31 August, Goebbels had noted in his diary: ‘For the first time [Hitler] speaks openly about the doings of the Strasser clique in the party. Here, too, he has kept his eyes open; and if he has said nothing, then that’s not because he had seen nothing.’123 Four days later, he added: ‘I spoke for a long time with the Führer. He distrusts Strasser very strongly.’124 Already in early September, Hitler had rejected out of hand Strasser’s suggestion that the way forward would be to support a Schleicher cabinet. Around the same time, Strasser was the only Nazi leader advising against holding out for Hitler’s appointment to the Chancellorship.125 Goebbels wrote, towards the end of September: ‘It would be a blessing if he [Strasser] would carry out his secret sabotage work in the open so that the Führer could act against him.’126 Given the political sensitivities of the autumn, a public split in the party leadership was scarcely opportune. But by the first week of December, matters could rest no longer.
At a meeting held in secret in Berlin on 3 December, Schleicher offered Strasser the posts of Vice-Chancellor and Minister President in Prussia.127 The English journalist Sefton Delmer apparently passed on news to Hanf-staengl that the two had met. Hitler gave no outward indication of his feelings when he heard of the meeting.128 That it had produced the offer of the Vice-Chancellorship to the second man in the party, who had not turned it down, only became clear to Hitler and other leading figures in the party, it seems, when they gathered for discussions in the Kaiserhof two days later. At this meeting, Hitler and Strasser became involved in heated exchanges. According to Goebbels, Strasser pleaded in vain for toleration of the Schleicher cabinet. But those present again approved of Hitler’s flat rejection of any compromise whatsoever.129
Strasser’s choices were now to back Hitler, to rebel against him in the hope of winning over some of the party, or to do what by 8 December he had made up his mind to do: resign his offices and withdraw from an active role in politics. After the meeting on 5 December, Strasser must have realized that the chances of leading a palace revolution against Hitler were minimal. His best support lay among the Nazi Reichstag members. But here, too, he controlled nothing amounting to a firmly organized faction. Pride, as well as his principled objections, prevented him from backing down and accepting Hitler’s all-or-bust strategy. He was left, therefore, with only the third possibility. Perhaps disappointed at the lack of open support from his party friends, he withdrew to his room in Berlin’s Hotel Exzelsior and wrote out his letter resigning his party offices.130
On the morning of 8 December, he summoned those Regional Inspectors (Landesinspekteure) of the party – the senior Gauleiter – who happened to be in Berlin to his office in the Reichstag. Six were present besides Reich Inspector Robert Ley – Goebbels, not surprisingly, was missing – when Strasser addressed them. According to the post-war account of one of them, Hinrich Lohse, Strasser told them he had written the Führer a letter, resigning his party offices. He did not criticize Hitler’s programme, but rather his lack of any clear policy towards attaining power since the meeting with Hindenburg in August. Hitler was clear, he said, about one thing only: he wanted to become Reich Chancellor. But just wanting the post was not going to overcome the opposition he had encountered. And meanwhile the party was under great strain and exposed to potential disintegration. Strasser said he was prepared to go along with either the legal or the illegal – that is, putschist – way to power. But what he was not prepared to do was simply wait for Hitler to be made Reich Chancellor and see the party fall apart before that happened. Hitler, in his view, should have accepted the Vice-Chancellorship in August, and used that position as a bargaining counter to build up further power. On a personal note, Strasser expressed his pique at being excluded from top-level deliberations, and had no wish to play second fiddle to Göring, Goebbels, Rohm, and others. Now at the end of his tether, he was resigning his offices and leaving to recuperate.131
Strasser’s letter was delivered to Hitler in the Kaiserhof at midday on 8 December.132 It amounted to a feeble justification of Strasser’s position, couched in terms of wounded pride, and not touching on the fundamentals that separated him from Hitler. It had the ring of defeat in the very way it was formulated.133 Hitler had been forewarned by Gauleiter Bernhard Rust, who had attended the meeting called by Strasser, to expect the letter. He had immediately summoned the same group of party Inspectors whom Strasser had addressed to the Kaiserhof for a meeting at noon.134 The group, in dejected mood, were left standing in Hitler’s apartment while, in an agitated state, he provided a point-by-point counter to Strasser’s reasons for his resignation, as summarized by Robert Ley from the earlier meeting. Entering the Papen cabinet, he said, would have given the initiative to the party’s enemies. He would soon have been forced, through fundamental disagreement with Papen’s policies, into resignation. The effect on public opinion would have been the apparent demonstration of his incapacity for government – that which his enemies had always claimed. The electorate would have turned their backs on him. The movement would have collapsed. The illegal route was even more dangerous. It would simply have meant – the lessons of 1923 plainly recalled – standing ‘the prime of the nation’s manhood’ (das beste Mannestum der Nation) in front of the machine-guns of the police and army. As for overlooking Strasser, Hitler disingenuously claimed he entered into discussions with whosoever was necessary for a particular purpose, distributed tasks according to specific circumstances, and – according to availability – was open to all. He shifted the blame back on Gregor Strasser for avoiding him.
His address went on for the best part of two hours. Towards the end, the well-worn tactic was deployed once more: he made a personal appeal to loyalty. According to Lohse’s account, he became ‘quieter and more human, more friendly and appealing in his comments’. He had found
that comradely tone which those assembled knew and which completely convinced them. Now he was their friend, their comrade, their leader who had visibly for each one again freed the way out of the completely muddled situation which Strasser had presented, convincing them emotionally and intellectually. As he spoke, Strasser sank with his dark prophecy ever more into a shadowy distance, although those present in consideration and under the impact of what he had said had come with considerable reservations… Increasingly persuasive to his audience and inexorably drawing them under his spell, he [Hitler] triumphed and proved to his wavering, but upright and indispensable fighters in this toughest test of the movement, that he was the master and Strasser the journeyman… So he had remained the outright victor also in this last and most serious attack, directed at the substance of the movement from within its own ranks… The old bond with him was again sealed by those present with a handshake.135
The mood that evening at Goebbels’s house, where Hitler returned, was nevertheless still sombre. There was real concern that the movement would fall apart. If that were to happen, announced Hitler, ‘I’ll finish things in three minutes.’136 Dramatic gestures soon gave way to concerted moves to counter the possible ramifications of the ‘treachery’. Goebbels was summoned the same night at 2a.m. to a meeting in the Kaiserhof, where he found Rohm and Himmler already with Hitler. Hitler, still stunned by Strasser’s action, spent the time pacing the floor of his hotel-room. The meeting lasted until dawn. The main outcome was the decision to dismantle the organizational framework that Strasser had erected, and which had given him his power-base in the party.137 In time-honoured fashion, as he had taken over the SA leadership following the Stennes affair, Hitler himself now formally took over the leadership of the political organization, with Robert Ley as his chief of staff.138 A new Political Central Commission was set up, under Rudolf Heß, and the two Reich Inspectorates created by Strasser were abolished.139 A number of known Strasser supporters were removed from their posts.140 And a major campaign was begun, eliciting countless declarations of loyalty to Hitler from all parts of Germany – also from Strasser sympathizers.141 Strasser was rapidly turned into the movement’s arch-traitor. Hitler began the appeals to loyalty the very next day, 9 December, when he addressed the Gauleiter, Regional Inspectors, and Reichstag deputies. According to the report in the Völkischer Beobachter, every single person present felt the need to offer a personal show of loyalty by shaking hands with the Führer.142 ‘Strasser is isolated. Dead man!’ noted Goebbels triumphantly.143 Soon afterwards, Hitler set off on a speaking tour, addressing party members and functionaries at seven meetings in nine days.144 Again and again the personal appeal was successful. No secession followed Strasser’s resignation. The crisis was past.
Following the shock announcement of his resignation, Gregor Strasser had immediately left for holiday in Italy. His resignation and departure sounded the death-knell for Schleicher’s political hopes. Belated discussions in early January between a dispirited Strasser and a Chancellor whose star was evidently on the wane were a mere empty postscript to the December drama.145 On 16 January, following the revival of the party’s fortunes (after a massive propaganda input) the previous day in the state elections of the dwarf-state Lippe-Detmold, Hitler delivered a three-hour verbal assault on Strasser to his assembled Gauleiter at a meeting in Weimar.146 ‘His shares are no longer sought after. A short performance on the stage of significance. Now he sinks again into the void from which he came,’ was Goebbels’s – stylistically embellished – dismissal of Gregor Strasser in his diary entry.147 Strasser now retired fully from all political activity and from public view. He was not excluded from the party. In fact, early in 1934 he applied for, and was granted, the NSDAP’s badge of honour, awarded to him as party member No.9, dating from the refoundation of the party on 25 February 1925.148 Neither this nor a plaintive letter h
e wrote to Rudolf Heß on 18 June 1934 emphasizing his lengthy service and continuing loyalty to the party could save his skin.149 Hitler was unforgiving to those he felt had betrayed him. His final reckoning with Gregor Strasser came on 30 June 1934, when the former second man in the party was murdered in what came to be known as ‘the Night of the Long Knives’.
Had Gregor Strasser succeeded in splitting the party, bringing one part of it behind the Schleicher government, and joining the cabinet himself, the chances are that a Hitler takeover of power would never have occurred. History would have taken a different course. But in fact Strasser never even seriously attempted to create a party rebellion.150 He turned his protest into a personal one by the nature of his resignation. As a consequence, it was all the easier to isolate him as Hitler and Goebbels orchestrated their recovery. And since his resignation, and the way it was carried out, fully undermined Schleicher’s plans and left the Chancellor increasingly exposed, it paradoxically cleared the path, which had appeared – also to Strasser – blocked, to a Hitler Chancellorship.151
Ultimately, the Strasser affair – the most serious of the inner-party crises since 1925 – revealed once again most graphically just how strong Hitler’s hold over the party had become, how much the NSDAP had become a ‘leader party’. The implications of this for the character of the party on the eve of its becoming the state party of the Third Reich were illustrated in Hitler’s guidelines for the organization of the party after Strasser’s departure. Hitler’s memorandum of 15 December 1932 ‘on the inner reasons for the instructions to produce a heightened fighting power (Scblagkraft) of the Movement’ demonstrates plainly the key differences between his conception of the party and that of Strasser.152