by Ian Kershaw
There was no inevitability about Hitler’s accession to power. Had Hindenburg been prepared to grant to Schleicher the dissolution that he had so readily allowed Papen, and to prorogue the Reichstag for a period beyond the constitutional sixty days, a Hitler Chancellorship might have been avoided. With the corner turning of the economic Depression, and with the Nazi Movement facing potential break-up if power were not soon attained, the future – even if under an authoritarian government – would have been very different. Even as the cabinet argued outside Hindenburg’s door at eleven o’clock on 30 January, keeping the President waiting, there was a possibility that a Hitler Chancellorship might not materialize. Hitler’s rise from humble beginnings to ‘seize’ power by ‘triumph of the will’ was the stuff of Nazi legend. In fact, political miscalculation by those with regular access to the corridors of power rather than any actions on the part of the Nazi leader played a larger role in placing him in the Chancellor’s seat.
His path ought to have been blocked long before the final drama of January 1933. The most glaring opportunity was missed through the failure to impose a hefty jail sentence after the putsch fiasco of 1923 – and to compound this disastrous omission by releasing him on parole within a matter of months and allowing him a fresh start. But those miscalculations, as well as those during the Depression years that opened up the possibility, then the reality, of a Hitler Chancellorship, were not random acts. They were the miscalculations of a political class determined to inflict what injury it could on (or at least make only the faintest attempts to defend) the new, detested, or at best merely tolerated democratic Republic. The anxiety to destroy democracy rather than the keenness to bring the Nazis to power was what triggered the complex developments that led to Hitler’s Chancellorship.
Democracy was surrendered without a fight. This was most notably the case in the collapse of the grand coalition in 1930. It was again the case – however vain the opposition might have proved – in the lack of resistance to the Papen coup against Prussia in July 1932.. Both events revealed the flimsiness of democracy’s base. This was not least because powerful groups had never reconciled themselves to democracy, and were by this time actively seeking to bring it down. During the Depression, democracy was less surrendered than deliberately undermined by élite groups serving their own ends. These were no pre-industrial leftovers, but – however reactionary their political aims – modern lobbies working to further their vested interests in an authoritarian system.255 In the final drama, the agrarians and the army were more influential than big business in engineering Hitler’s takeover.256 But big business, also, politically myopic and self-serving, had significantly contributed to the undermining of democracy which was the necessary prelude to Hitler’s success.
The masses, too, had played their part in democracy’s downfall. Never had circumstances been less propitious for the establishment of successful democracy than they were in Germany after the First World War. Already by 1920, the parties most supportive of democracy held only a minority of the vote. Democracy narrowly survived its early travails, though great swathes of the electorate opposed it root and branch. Who is to say that, had not the great Depression blown it completely off course, democracy might not have settled down and consolidated itself? But democracy was in a far from healthy state when the Depression struck Germany. And in the course of the Depression, the masses deserted democracy in their droves. By 1932, the only supporters of democracy were the weakened Social Democrats (and even many of these were by this time lukewarm), some sections of the Zentrum (which had itself moved sharply to the Right), and a handful of liberals. The Republic was dead. Still open was what sort of authoritarian system would replace it.
Hitler did not represent a classic ‘Bonapartist’ solution. There was no ‘class equilibrium’ in 1932.257 The working class was cowed and broken by Depression, its organizations enfeebled and powerless. But the ruling groups did not have the mass support to maximize their ascendancy and destroy once and for all the power of organized labour. Hitler was brought in to do the job for them. That he might do more than this, that he might outlast all predictions and expand his own power immensely and at their own expense, either did not occur to them, or was regarded as an exceedingly unlikely outcome. The underestimation of Hitler and his movement by the power-brokers remains a leitmotiv of the intrigues that placed him in the Chancellor’s office.
The mentalities which conditioned the behaviour both of the élites and of the masses, and which made Hitler’s rise possible, were products of strands of German political culture that were plainly recognizable in the twenty years of so before the First World War.258 Analogous trends can be seen elsewhere, most notably in Italy. But the parallels do not amount to close similarity, let alone identity. Most of the elements of political culture that fed into Nazism were peculiarly German. And the consciousness – especially among intellectuals – of Germany’s distinctiveness, even cultural superiority, as a nation was something which Hitler’s chauvinistic and bowdlerized version of this could build upon.259 Even so, Hitler was no inexorable product of a German ‘special path’, no logical culmination of long-term trends in specifically German culture and ideology.260
Nor was he a mere ‘accident’ in the course of German history. Without the unique conditions in which he came to prominence, Hitler would have been nothing. It is hard to imagine him bestriding the stage of history at any other time. His style, his brand of rhetoric, would, deprived of such conditions, have been without appeal. The impact on the German people of war, revolution, and national humiliation, and the acute fear of Bolshevism in wide sections of the population, gave Hitler his platform. He exploited the conditions brilliantly. More than any other politician of his era, he was the spokesman for the unusually intense fears, resentments, and prejudices of ordinary people not attracted by the parties of the Left or anchored in the parties of political Catholicism. And more than any other politician of his era, he offered such people the prospect of a new and better society – though one seeming to rest on ‘true’ German values with which they could identify. The vision of the future went hand in hand with the denunciation of the past in Hitler’s appeal. The total collapse of confidence in a state system resting on discredited party politics and bureaucratic administration had led over a third of the population to place its trust and its hopes in the politics of national redemption. The personality cult carefully nurtured around Hitler turned him into the embodiment of such hopes.261
Whatever the future held, for those who could not share the delirium of the SA hordes marching through the Brandenburg Gate in celebration on the evening of 30 January 1933, it was at best uncertain. ‘A leap into the dark’ was how one Catholic newspaper described Hitler’s appointment to the Chancellorship.262
Many Jews and political opponents of the Nazis now feared for their well-being – even for their lives. Some made hurried plans to leave the country. There were those, not just on the defeated left, who foresaw disaster. But others rapidly shook off their initial foreboding, convincing themselves that Hitler and the Nazis had few prospects of ruling for long. Sebastian Haffner, then a young Berlin lawyer, later – after leaving a country whose government he could no longer tolerate – a distinguished journalist and writer, summarized his views at the time: ‘No. All things considered, this government was no cause for concern. It was only a matter of what would come after it, and perhaps the fear that it would lead to civil war.’263 Most of the serious press, he added, took the same line next day.
Few, indeed, predicted that things would turn out so differently.
11
THE MAKING OF THE DICTATOR
‘It can’t be denied: he has grown. Out of the demagogue and party leader, the fanatic and agitator, the true statesman… seems to be developing.’
Diary entry of the writer Erich Ebermayer,
for 21 March 1933
‘What the old parliament and parties did not accomplish in sixty years, your statesmanlike for
esight has achieved in six months.’
Letter to Hitler from
Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, 24 July 1933
‘In nine months, the genius of your leadership and the ideals which you have newly placed before us have succeeded in creating, from a people inwardly torn apart and without hope, a united Reich.’
Franz von Papen, 14 November 1933,
speaking on behalf of the members of the Reich Government
Hitler is Reich Chancellor! And what a cabinet!!! One such as we did not dare to dream of in July. Hitler, Hugenberg, Seldte, Papen!!! A large part of my German hopes are attached to each. National Socialist drive, German National reason, the non-political Stahlhelm, and – not forgotten by us – Papen. It is so unimaginably wonderful… What an achievement by Hindenburg!1
This was the ecstatic response of Hamburg schoolteacher Luise Solmitz to the dramatic news of Hitler’s appointment to the Chancellorship on 30 January 1933. Like so many who had found their way to Hitler from middle-class, national-conservative backgrounds, she had wavered the previous autumn when she thought he was slipping under the influence of radical socialist tendencies in the party. Now that Hitler was in office, but surrounded by her trusted champions of the conservative Right, heading a government of ‘national concentration’, her joy was unbounded. The national renewal she longed for could now begin. Many, outside the ranks of diehard Nazi followers, their hopes and ideals invested in the Hitler cabinet, felt the same way.
But millions did not. Fear, anxiety, alarm, implacable hostility, illusory optimism at the regime’s early demise, and bold defiance intermingled with apathy, scepticism, condescension towards the presumed inability of the new Chancellor and his Nazi colleagues in the cabinet – and indifference.
Reactions varied according to political views and personal disposition. ‘What will this government do?’ asked Julius Leber, SPD Reichstag deputy, before, his immunity ignored, being taken into custody the very night after Hitler’s accession to power after being beaten up by a group of Nazi thugs. ‘We know their aims. Nobody knows what their next measures will be. The dangers are enormous. But the firmness of German workers is unshakeable. We don’t fear these men. We are determined to take up the struggle.’2Alongside such misplaced hopes in the strength and unity of the labour movement went the crass misapprehension of Hitler as no more than the stooge of the ‘real’ wielders of power, the forces of big capital, as represented by their friends in the cabinet. Leber’s fellow SPD – deputy Kurt Schumacher’s assessment was: ‘The cabinet is called after Adolf Hitler. But the cabinet is really Alfred Hugenberg’s. Adolf Hitler may speak; Alfred Hugenberg will act. With the construction of this government, the last veil has fallen. National Socialism has openly showed itself as that which we always took it for, the high-capitalist nationalist party of the Right. National Capitalism is the true firm!’3 The lurid rhetoric of the Communist proclamation of 30 January was closer to the mark: ‘Shameless wage robbery and boundless terror of the brown murderous plague smash the last pitiful rights of the working class. Unrestrained course towards imperialist war. All this lies directly ahead.’4
The leadership of the Zentrum concentrated on seeking assurances that unconstitutional measures would be avoided.5 The Catholic hierarchy remained reserved, its disquiet about Hitler and the anti-Christian tendencies of his movement unchanged.6 Influenced by years of warnings from their clergy, the Catholic population were apprehensive and uncertain. Among many Protestant church-goers there was, according to the later recollections of one pastor, a great optimism that national renewal would bring with it inner, moral revitalization: ‘It is as if the wing of a great turn of fate is fluttering above us. There was to be a new start.’7 The Land Bishop of Württemberg, Theophil Wurm, soon to run into conflict with the new rulers, also recalled how the Protestant Church welcomed the Hitler Chancellorship since the National Socialists had resolutely fought Marxist ‘anti-Church agitation’, and now offered new hope for the future and the expectation of a ‘favourable impact on the entire people’.8 One of the leading Protestant theologians, Karl Barth, later dismissed from his Chair at Bonn University for his hostility to the ‘German Christians’ (the nazified wing of the Protestant Church), took a different view, airly dismissing any major significance in Hitler’s appointment. ‘I don’t think that this will signify the start of great new things in any direction at all,’ he wrote to his mother on 1 February 1933.9
Many ordinary people, after what they had gone through in the Depression, were simply apathetic at the news that Hitler was Chancellor. According to the British Ambassador in Berlin, Horace Rumbold, people throughout the country ‘took the news phlegmatically’.10 Those in provincial Germany who were not Nazi fanatics or committed opponents often shrugged their shoulders and carried on with life, doubtful that yet another change of government would bring any improvement. Some thought that Hitler would not even be as long in office as Schleicher, and that his popularity would slump as soon as disillusionment set in on account of the emptiness of Nazi promises.11 But perceptive critics of Hitler were able to see that, now he enjoyed the prestige of the Chancellorship, he could swiftly break down much of the scepticism and win great support by successfully tackling mass unemployment – something which none of his predecessors had come close to achieving. ‘The Hitler cabinet will be aware that nothing could bring it so much trust as success here,’ noted a hostile journalist on 31 January 1933. Should it indeed succeed, ‘then no German will deny the new cabinet the thanks which it should be its first endeavour to earn,’ he concluded.12
For the Nazis themselves, of course, 30 January 1933 was the day they had dreamed about, the triumph they had fought for, the opening of the portals to the brave new world – and the start of what many hoped would be opportunities for prosperity, advancement, and power. Wildly cheering crowds accompanied Hitler on his way back to the Kaiserhof after his appointment with Hindenburg. ‘Now we’ve got there,’ Hitler declared, carried away with the euphoria around him, as he stepped out of the lift on the first floor of the Kaiserhof to be greeted, alongside Goebbels and other Nazi leaders, by waiters and chambermaids, all anxious to shake his hand.13 By seven o’clock that evening Goebbels had improvised a torchlight procession of marching SA and SS men through the centre of Berlin that lasted beyond midnight.14 He wasted no time in exploiting the newly available facilities of state radio to provide a stirring commentary.15 Goebbels claimed a million men had taken part. The Nazi press halved the number. The British Ambassador estimated a maximum figure of some 50,000. His military attaché thought there were around 15,00ο.16 Whatever the numbers, the spectacle was an unforgettable one – exhilarating and intoxicating for Nazi followers, menacing for those at home and abroad who feared the consequences of Hitler in power.17 One fifteen-year-old girl was mesmerized by what she saw. For Melita Maschmann, the marching columns gave ‘magical splendour’ to the idea of the ‘national community’ which had fascinated her. Afterwards, she could scarcely wait to join the BDM (Bund deutscher Mädel, the German Girls’ League, the female section of the Hitler Youth organization).18 Her idealism was shared by many, particularly among the young, who saw the dawn of a new era symbolized in the spectacular torchlight procession through the centre of Berlin.
The seemingly endless parade was watched from his window in the Wilhelmstraße by Reich President Hindenburg. Berliners later joked that the President liked torchlight processions because he was allowed to stay up late when they took place.19 There were respectful shouts when the procession passed him by.20 But when the marchers came to the window a little farther on, where Hitler was standing, the respect gave way to wild acclaim.21 For Papen, a few feet behind Hitler, it symbolized the transition ‘from a moribund regime to the new revolutionary forces’.22
The day of Hitler’s appointment to the Chancellorship became immediately stylized in Nazi mythology as the ‘day of the national uprising’.23 Hitler even contemplated – so, at least, he claimed later –
changing the calendar (as the French revolutionaries had done) to mark the beginning of a ‘new world order’.24 At the same time he – and other Nazi spokesmen generally followed suit – avoided the term ‘seizure of power’, with its putschist connotations, and preferred the more descriptive ‘takeover of power’ to underline the formal legality of his accession to the highest office of government.25 Power had indeed not been ‘seized’. It had been handed to Hitler, who had been appointed Chancellor by the Reich President in the same manner as had his immediate predecessors. Even so, the orchestrated ovations, which put Hitler himself and other party bosses into a state of ecstasy,26 signalled that this was no ordinary transfer of power. And almost overnight, those who had misunderstood or misinterpreted the momentous nature of the day’s events would realize how wrong they had been. After 30 January 1933, Germany would never be the same again.
That historic day was an end and a beginning. It denoted the expiry of the unlamented Weimar Republic and the culminating point of the comprehensive state crisis that had brought its demise. At the same time Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor marked the beginning of the process which was to lead into the abyss of war and genocide, and bring about Germany’s own destruction as a nation-state. It signified the start of that astonishingly swift jettisoning of constraints on inhumane behaviour whose path ended in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek, and the other death camps whose names are synonymous with the horror of Nazism.
As earlier chapters have tried to show, what made Hitler’s triumph possible were important strands of continuity in German political culture stretching back beyond the First World War – chauvinistic nationalism, imperialism, racism, anti-Marxism, glorification of war, the placing of order above freedom, caesaristic attractions of strong authority are some of them – as well as the specific and more short-term consequences of the multi-layered crises that afflicted Weimar democracy from the start.27 But if such continuities helped ‘make Hitler possible’, and if his triumph can at least partially be explained by his unique capacity in 1933 to bind together for a time all the strands of continuity with ‘old Germany’,28 the following twelve years would see these elements of continuity exploited, warped and distorted out of all recognition by the ever intensifying radicalism of the regime, then ultimately broken in the maelstrom of defeat and destruction in 1945 that Hitler’s rule had produced.