Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

by Ian Kershaw

  The rapidity of the transformation that swept over Germany between Hitler’s takeover of power on 30 January 1933 and its crucial consolidation and extension at the beginning of August 1934, after Reich President Hindenburg’s death and following close on the major crisis of the ‘Röhm affair’, was astounding for contemporaries and is scarcely less astonishing in retrospect. It was brought about by a combination of pseudo-legal measures, terror, manipulation – and willing collaboration. Within a month, civil liberties – as protected under the Weimar Constitution – had been extinguished. Within two months, with most active political opponents either imprisoned or fleeing the country, the Reichstag surrendered its powers, giving Hitler control of the legislature. Within four months the once powerful trade unions were dissolved. In less than six months, all opposition parties had been suppressed or gone into voluntary liquidation, leaving the NSDAP as the only remaining party. In January 1934, the sovereignty of the Länder – already in reality smashed the previous March – was formally abolished. Then, in the summer, the growing threat from within Hitler’s own movement was ruthlessly eliminated in the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ on 30 June 1934.

  By this time, almost all organizations, institutions, professional and representative bodies, clubs, and societies had long since rushed to align themselves with the new regime. ‘Tainted’ remnants of pluralism and democracy were rapidly removed, nazified structures and mentalities adopted. This process of ‘coordination’ (Gleichschaltung) was for the most part undertaken voluntarily and with alacrity.

  The Christian churches were exceptions to the process. Attempts to ‘coordinate’ the divided Protestant Church caused great conflict and had eventually to be abandoned. No attempt was even made to alter the organizational framework of the Catholic Church. The lasting tension and frequent clashes between the churches – especially the Catholic Church – and the regime in the following years were rooted in alternative sources of loyalty which the Christian denominations continued to command. But the political compromises which each of them made with the new rulers in the first months nevertheless pushed them on to the defensive, forcing them to become largely reactive and inward-looking.

  The army, too, remained ‘uncoordinated’, its officer corps still largely national-conservative, not Nazi. Without the army’s backing, Hitler could not rule. But however contemptuous many of the reactionary and conservative officers, often from aristocratic backgrounds, were of the upstart former corporal now running the government, his offer of ‘everything for the armed forces’, and his readiness to eradicate those forces in his own movement that threatened the army’s position, won him their support. The oath of allegiance which the army swore to Hitler personally at the death of the Reich President and war-hero Field Marshal Hindenburg on 2 August 1934 symbolically marked its full acceptance of the new order. With this act, Hitler’s dictatorship was firmly established.

  The speed of the transformation, and the readiness of the army and other traditionally powerful groups to put themselves at the service of the new regime, derived in no small measure from the conditions in which Hitler took power. The weakness of the established élites of the ‘old order’ had eventually led to Hitler’s appointment to the Chancellorship. The traditional power-groups had helped undermine and destroy the democracy they so detested. But they had been incapable of imposing the type of counter-revolution they had wanted. Hitler had needed them in order to gain power. But they had needed Hitler, too, to provide mass support for their intended counter-revolution. This was the basis of the ‘entente’ that put Hitler in the Chancellor’s seat.

  The balance of power in the ‘entente’ between Hitler and his conservative partners was nevertheless tilted from the outset towards the new Chancellor. In particular, the anxiety of the army to avoid civil strife and to attain domestic peace as a prerequisite of remilitarization assured its cooperation and willingness to support Hitler’s brutal deployment of the power of the state. For only Hitler, and the huge – if potentially unstable – mass movement he headed, could ensure control of the streets and bring about the ‘destruction of Marxism’, the basis of the desired counter-revolution. Yet precisely this dependence on Hitler and eagerness to back the most ruthless measures adopted in the early weeks and months of the new regime guaranteed that the weakness of the traditional élite groups would become laid bare in the years to come as the intended counter-revolution gave way to the attempted Nazi racial revolution in Europe and opened the path to world conflagration and genocide.29

  Remarkable in the seismic upheavals of 1933–4 was not how much, but how little, the new Chancellor needed to do to bring about the extension and consolidation of his power. Hitler’s dictatorship was made as much by others as by himself. As the ‘representative figure’ of the ‘national renewal’, Hitler could for the most part function as activator and enabler of the forces he had unleashed, authorizing and legitimating actions taken by others now rushing to implement what they took to be his wishes. ‘Working towards the Führer’ functioned as the underlying maxim of the regime from the outset.

  Hitler was, in fact, in no position to act as an outright dictator when he came to office on 30 January 1933. As long as Hindenburg lived, there was a potential rival source of loyalty – not least for the army. But by summer 1934, when he combined the headship of state with the leadership of government, his power had effectively shed formal constraints on its usage. And, by then, the personality cult built around Hitler had reached new levels of idolatry and made millions of new converts as the ‘people’s chancellor’ – as propaganda had styled him – came to be seen as a national, not merely party, leader. Disdain and detestation for a parliamentary system generally perceived to have failed miserably had resulted in willingness to entrust monopoly control over the state to a leader claiming a unique sense of mission and invested by his mass following with heroic, almost messianic, qualities. Conventional forms of government were, as a consequence, increasingly exposed to the arbitrary inroads of personalized power. It was a recipe for disaster.

  I

  There were few hints of this at the beginning. Aware that his position was by no means secure, and not wanting to alienate his coalition partners in the government of ‘national concentration’, Hitler was at first cautious in cabinet meetings, open to suggestions, ready to take advice – not least in complex matters of finance and economic policy – and not dismissive of opposing viewpoints. This only started to change in April and May.30 In the early weeks, Finance Minister Schwerin von Krosigk, who had met Hitler for the first time when the cabinet was sworn in, was not alone in finding him ‘polite and calm’ in the conduct of government business, well-briefed, backed by a good memory, and able to ‘grasp the essentials of a problem’, concisely sum up lengthy deliberations, and put a new construction on an issue.31

  Hitler’s cabinet met for the first time at five o’clock on 30 January 1933. The Reich Chancellor began by pointing out that millions greeted with joy the cabinet now formed under his leadership, and asked his colleagues for their support. The cabinet then discussed the political situation. Hitler commented that postponing the recall of the Reichstag – due to meet on 31 January after a two-month break – would not be possible without the Zentrum’s support. A Reichstag majority could be achieved by banning the KPD, but this would prove impracticable and might provoke a general strike. He was anxious to avoid any involvement of the Reichswehr in suppressing such a strike – a comment favourably received by Defence Minister Blomberg. The best hope, Hitler went on, was to have the Reichstag dissolved and win a majority for the government in new elections. Only Hugenberg – as unwilling as Hitler to have to rely on the Zentrum, but also aware that new elections would be likely to favour the NSDAP – spoke out expressly in favour of banning the KPD in order to pave the way for an Enabling Act. He doubted that a general strike would take place. He was appeased when Hitler vouched for the fact that the cabinet would remain unchanged after the election. Papen favour
ed proposing an Enabling Act immediately and reconsidering the position once it had been rejected by the Reichstag. Other ministers, anticipating no promises of support from the Zentrum, preferred new elections to the threat of a general strike. The meeting was adjourned without firm decisions.32 But Hitler had already outflanked Hugenberg, and won support for what he wanted: the earliest possible dissolution of the Reichstag and new elections.

  Hitler was keen to prevent any dependence upon the Zentrum. The meeting with Zentrum representatives Prälat Ludwig Kaas (the party leader) and Dr Ludwig Perlitius (who headed the party’s Reichstag fraction) the following morning was predictably fruitless.33 The Zentrum would only consider a postponement of the Reichstag for two months, not the twelve months which Hitler – knowing full well what the answer would be – had requested. Hitler was in effect asking for the Zentrum’s full backing, without guarantees.34 All that he offered in return – and there were valid doubts as to the seriousness of his offer – was the possibility of including a Zentrum member in the cabinet as Minister of Justice, something to which Hugenberg had strenuously objected.35 The lack of serious intent behind Hitler’s approach to the negotiations was shown by how quickly he took the opportunity to break them off. The written questions which the Zentrum then submitted on the future conduct of the new government he simply left unanswered.36 Hitler reported back to the cabinet already that day, 31 January, that further negotiations with the Zentrum were pointless. New elections were now unavoidable. But Hitler’s dealings with the Zentrum had sounded alarm bells among the conservatives that he might indeed rule with the backing of the Zentrum after the election, remove the German Nationalists and Stahlhelm from the cabinet, and thereby free himself from his dependence on Papen and Hugenberg.37 Once more, therefore, it was a conservative, not a Nazi, who sounded most radical. Papen sought, and was promptly given, an assurance ‘that the coming election to the Reichstag would be the last one and a return to the parliamentary system would be avoided for ever’.38

  That evening, Hindenburg was persuaded to grant Hitler that which he had refused Schleicher only four days earlier: the dissolution of the Reichstag. Hitler had argued, backed by Papen and Meissner, that the people must be given the opportunity to confirm its support for the new government. Though it could attain a majority in the Reichstag as it stood, new elections would produce a larger majority, which in turn would allow a general Enabling Act to be passed, giving a platform for measures to bring about a recovery.39 The dissolution scarcely conformed to the spirit of the constitution. Elections were turned into a consequence, not a cause, of the formation of a government. The Reichstag had not even been given the opportunity of demonstrating its confidence (or lack of it) in the new government. A decision which was properly parliament’s had been placed directly before the people. In its tendency, it was already a step towards acclamation by plebiscite.40

  Hitler’s opening gambit stretched no further than new elections, to be followed by an Enabling Act.41 His conservative partners, as keen as he was to end parliamentarism and eliminate the Marxist parties, had played into his hands. On the morning of 1 February he told the cabinet of Hindenburg’s agreement to dissolve the Reichstag. The elections were set for 5 March. The Reich Chancellor himself provided the government’s slogan: ‘Attack on Marxism.’ Göring immediately stated that it was necessary, in view of the rising number of ‘acts of terror’ by the Communists, to promulgate without delay the decree prepared under the Papen administration at the time of the Berlin transport strike, providing for restrictions on press freedom and introduction of ‘protective custody’.42 Slightly amended, Papen’s draft decree was to come into force on 4 February as the ‘Decree for the Protection of the German People’, and serve during the election campaign as an important weapon used to ban opposition newspapers and meetings.43

  At the second cabinet meeting on 1 February, at seven o’clock that evening, Hitler read out the draft of a proclamation to the German people to be broadcast three hours later.44 Papen had contributed some passages upholding conservative values on Christianity and the family.45 But the language of the draft plainly bore Hitler’s hallmark. Later that evening, with his cabinet standing behind him in his room in the Reich Chancellery, wearing a dark blue suit with a black and white tie, sweating profusely from nervousness, and speaking- unusually – in a dull monotone, Hitler addressed the German people for the first time on the radio.46 The ‘Appeal of the Reich Government to the German People’ that he read out was full of rhetoric but vacuous in content – the first propaganda shot in the election campaign rather than a stated programme of political measures. Since the ‘days of treachery’ fourteen years earlier, ‘the Almighty has withdrawn his blessing from our people,’ he began. National collapse had opened the way for ‘the Communist method of madness finally to poison and undermine the inwardly shaken and uprooted people’. Nothing had been spared the pernicious Communist influence, which had afflicted the family, all notions of honour and loyalty, people and Fatherland, culture and economy down to the basis of morality and belief. ‘Fourteen years of Marxism have ruined Germany. One year of Bolshevism would annihilate Germany,’ Hitler continued. Reich President Hindenburg had entrusted the national government with the ‘mission’ of rescuing Germany. The inheritance was a terrible one, the task more difficult than any in memory facing German statesmen. National unity, resting on the protection of Christianity ‘as the basis of our entire morality’ and the family ‘as the germ of our body of nation and state’, would be restored. ‘Spiritual, political, and cultural nihilism’ challenging this aim would be mercilessly attacked to prevent Germany sinking into Communist anarchism. Hitler then announced – it smacked of Soviet methods to Papen47– two ‘big four-year plans’ to tackle ‘the great work of the reorganization of the economy’. ‘Within four years,’ he proclaimed, ‘the German peasant must be saved from impoverishment. Within four years unemployment must be finally overcome.’ No hints were given as to how this would be achieved, other than on the basis of restored financial stability (it was wholly misleadingly asserted), and through the introduction of labour service and a settlement policy for farmers, neither of which ideas was novel. In foreign policy, the aspirations of the new government were no more precise. The government saw its ‘highest mission’ in upholding ‘the rights of existence (Lebensrechte) and thereby the reattainment of the freedom of our people’. Full of pathos, Hitler appealed on behalf of the government to the people to overcome class divisions, and to sign alongside the government an act of reconciliation to permit Germany’s resurgence. ‘The parties of Marxism and those who went along with them had fourteen years to see what they could do. The result is a heap of ruins. Now, German people, give us four years and then judge and sentence us,’ he declared. He ended, as he often concluded major speeches, in pseudo-religious terms, with an appeal to the Almighty to bless the work of the government.48 With that, the election campaign had begun. It was to be a different campaign to the earlier ones, with the government – already enjoying wide backing – clearly separating itself from all that had preceded it in the Weimar Republic.

  Towards the end of his proclamation, Hitler had posed for the first time as a man of peace, stating, despite love of the army as the bearer of arms and symbol of Germany’s great past, how happy the government would be ‘if through a restriction of its armaments the world should make an increase of our own weapons never again necessary’.49 His tone when invited by Blomberg to address military leaders gathered in the home of the head of the army (Chef der Heeresleitung) General Kurt Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord on the evening of 3 February was entirely different.50

  The atmosphere was cool, the attitude of many of the officers reserved, when Hitler began his lengthy speech. The overall political aim, he stated, was to regain political power. Everything was to be directed towards this end. Internally, there had to be a complete reversal of the current circumstances, no tolerance of opposition. ‘Those unwilling to be converted
must be crushed. Extermination of Marxism root and branch.’ Youth, and the population in general, had to come to see that struggle alone was the salvation. Everything had to be subordinated to this idea. Training of youth and strengthening of the will to fight should be advanced with all means possible. Firmest authoritarian leadership and ‘removal of the damaging cancer of democracy’ were the bases of the internal recovery. Hitler then turned to foreign and economic policy. The struggle at the Disarmament Conference in Geneva against Versailles and for Germany’s equality was pointless, he said, if the people were not indoctrinated with the will to fight. In the economic sphere, he ruled out increasing exports as a solution on the grounds that world capacity was limited. Settlement policy was the only way to save the peasantry and incorporate many of the jobless. But this would take time, and in any case was not an adequate solution ‘since the living-space for the German people is too small’.

  Hitler turned to the area of greatest interest to his audience. What he said could not fail to find appeal. The build-up of the armed forces was the most important premiss to the central aim of regaining political power. General conscription had to be brought back. But before that, the state leadership had to see to it that all traces of pacifism, Marxism, and Bolshevism were eradicated from those eligible for military service. The armed forces – the most important institution in the state – must be kept out of politics and above party. The internal struggle was not its concern, and could be left to the organizations of the Nazi movement. Preparations for the build-up of the armed forces had to take place without delay. This period was the most dangerous, and Hitler held out the possibility of a preventive strike from France, probably together with its allies in the east. ‘How should political power, once won, be used?’ he asked. It was still too early to say. Perhaps the attainment of new export possibilities should be the goal, he hinted. But since earlier in the speech he had already dismissed the notion of increasing exports as the solution to Germany’s problems, this could not be taken by his audience as a favoured suggestion. ‘Perhaps – and probably better – conquest of new living-space in the east and its ruthless Germanization’ was his alternative.51 The officers present could have been left in no doubt that this was Hitler’s preference.