Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

by Ian Kershaw

  The talks at Geneva remained deadlocked. A variety of plans were advanced by the British, French and Italians offering Germany some concessions beyond the provisions of Versailles, but retaining clear supremacy in armaments for the western powers. None had any prospect of acceptance in Germany, though Hitler was prepared to follow a tactically more moderate line than that pressed by Neurath and Blomberg. In contrast to the army’s impatience for immediate – but unobtainable – equality of armaments, Hitler, the shrewder tactician, was prepared to play the waiting game.284 At this point, he could only hope that the evident differences between Britain and France on the disarmament question would play into his hands. Eventually, they would do so. Though both major western powers were anxious at the prospect of a rearming Germany, worried by some of the aggressive tones coming from Berlin, and concerned at the Nazi wave of terror activity in Austria, there were significant divisions between them. These meant there was no real prospect of the military intervention that Hitler so feared.285 Britain was prepared to make greater concessions to Germany. The hope was that through minor concessions, German rearmament could effectively be retarded. But the British felt tugged along by the French hard line, while fearing that it would force Germany out of the League of Nations.286

  It was, however, Britain that took the lead, on 28 April, supported by France, in presenting Germany with only the minimal concession of the right to a 200,000-man army, but demanding a ban on all paramilitary organizations. Blomberg and Neurath responded angrily in public. Hitler, worried about the threat of sanctions by the western powers, and Polish sabre-rattling in the east, bowed to superior might.287 He told the cabinet that the question of rearmament would not be solved around the conference table. A new method was needed. There was no possibility at the present time of rearmament ‘by normal methods’. The unity of the German people in the disarmament question had to be shown ‘to the world’. He picked up a suggestion put to cabinet by Foreign Minister Neurath of a speech to the Reichstag, which would then find acclamation as government policy. He repeated that the greatest caution was needed about rearmament. The cabinet meeting ended with Blomberg and Neurath arguing for Germany withdrawing from participation in negotiations in Geneva.288 Hitler ignored them. His cautious approach persuaded him to take advice in the preparation of his speech from his old adversary Heinrich Brüning, who underlined the dangers of intervention by France and Poland, with Britain and the USA agreeing to do nothing.289 Hitler promised Brüning – of course, the promises meant nothing to him – that he would afterwards discuss with the former Chancellor ways of altering the restrictions on personal liberties introduced after the Reichstag fire. Brüning, to whom Hitler offered a position in the government,290 said he was ready to persuade his colleagues in the Zentrum, and even the SPD deputies, to support the government declaration.291

  This they did. ‘Even Stresemann could not have delivered a milder peace speech,’ later commented the SPD deputy Wilhelm Hoegner, an antagonist of Hitler for over a decade, who voted in favour of the resolution proposed by the Chancellor.292 Indeed, Hitler had seemed to speak, in his address to the Reichstag on 17 May, in the diction of a statesman interested in securing the peace and well-being of his own country, and of the whole of Europe. ‘We respect the national rights also of other peoples,’ he stated, and ‘wish from the innermost heart to live with them in peace and friendship’. With an eye on Pilsudski’s Poland, he even rejected expressly ‘the concept of germanization’.293 His demands for equal treatment for Germany in the question of disarmament could sound nothing but justified to German ears, and outside Germany, too. He made a virtue out of emphasizing German weakness in armaments in contrast to French intransigence when superiority was so immense. Germany was prepared to renounce weapons of aggression, if other countries would do the same, he declared. Any attempt to force a disarmament settlement on Germany could only be dictated by the intention of driving the country from the disarmament negotiations, he claimed. ‘As a continually defamed people, it would be hard for us to stay within the League of Nations,’ ran his scarcely veiled threat.294 It was a clever piece of rhetoric. Whatever their political persuasion, it was difficult for patriotic members of the Reichstag to vote against such sentiments. And abroad, Hitler sounded the voice of reason, putting his adversaries in the western democracies on a propaganda defensive. Everywhere, Hitler had gained popularity and prestige.

  The stalemated Geneva talks were postponed until June, then until October. During this period there were no concrete plans for Germany to break with the League of Nations. Blomberg continued to make hawkish noises, clamouring for Germany to pull out of the talks and undertake the full rearmament of the Reichswehr with heavy defensive weaponry. One of his right-hand men, Colonel Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, told the French attaché in early September that Germany would leave the rearmament conference in the near future. But even later that month, neither Hitler nor his Foreign Minister Neurath were reckoning with an early withdrawal.295 As late as 4 October, Hitler appears to have been thinking of further negotiations.296 But on that very day news arrived of a more unyielding British stance on German rearmament, toughened to back the French, and taking no account of demands for equality. That afternoon, Blomberg sought an audience with Hitler in the Reich Chancellery. Neurath later acknowledged that he, too, had advised Hitler at the end of September that there was nothing more to be gained in Geneva.297 By the time State Secretary Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, nephew of Wilhelm II’s favourite Chancellor, from the Foreign Ministry, also supportive of the move, saw Hitler, the decision to withdraw from the disarmament talks and break with the League of Nations had been made. Bülow was left to work out the details.298 Hitler recognized that the time was now ripe to leave the League in circumstances which looked as if Germany was the wronged party. The propaganda advantage, especially at home where he could be certain of massive popular support, was too good a chance to miss. Once the decision was taken – only two ministers, Neurath and Blomberg, and seven people in all were fully informed – any moves that might provoke compromise or concessions from the western powers were avoided.299

  The cabinet was finally informed on 13 October. With a sure eye as always on the propaganda value of plebiscitary acclaim, Hitler told his ministers that Germany’s position would be strengthened by the dissolution of the Reichstag, the setting of new elections, and ‘requiring the German people to identify with the peace policy of the Reich government through a plebiscite. With these measures we deprive the world of the possibility of accusing Germany of an aggressive policy. This procedure also provides the possibility of capturing the attention of the world in an entirely new way.’ No minister dissented.300

  The following day, the Geneva Conference received official notification of the German withdrawal.301 The consequences were far-reaching. The disarmament talks now lost their meaning. The League of Nations, which Japan had already left earlier in the year, was fatally weakened. The inaction of the western powers persuaded Pilsudski to commission the Polish ambassador to Berlin to explore the possibilities of coming to a diplomatic arrangement with Germany. The resulting ten-year non-aggression pact between Poland and Germany, eventually signed on 26 January 1934, pushed through by Hitler against the traditional anti-Polish thrust of the Foreign Ministry, was a serious blow to France’s alliance system in eastern Europe and freed Germany from encirclement.302 All this had followed directly or indirectly from Hitler’s decision to take Germany out of the League of Nations. In that decision, the timing and propaganda exploitation were vintage Hitler. But, as we have noted, Blomberg, especially, and Neurath had been pressing for withdrawal long before Hitler became convinced that the moment had arrived for Germany to gain maximum advantage. Hitler had not least been able to benefit from the shaky basis of European diplomacy at the outset of his Chancellorship. The world economic crisis had undermined the ‘fulfilment policy’ on which Stresemann’s strategy, and the basis of European security, had been built. The Eu
ropean diplomatic order was, therefore, already no more stable than a house of cards when Hitler took up office. The German withdrawal from the League of Nations was the first card to be removed from the house. The others would soon come tumbling down.

  On the evening of 14 October, in an astutely constructed broadcast sure of a positive resonance among the millions of listeners throughout the country, Hitler announced the dissolution of the Reichstag.303 New elections, set for 12 November, now provided the opportunity to have a purely National Socialist Reichstag, free of the remnants of the dissolved parties. Even though only one party was contesting the elections, Hitler flew once more throughout Germany holding election addresses.304 On one occasion, when the plane’s compass had failed, he assisted his pilot, Hans Baur, to locate his bearings through recognizing a hall in the town of Wismar where he had once spoken. Baur eventually landed in nearby Travemünde with scarcely any fuel left.305 The propaganda campaign directed its energies almost entirely to accomplishing a show of loyalty to Hitler personally – now regularly referred to even in the still existent non-Nazi press as simply ‘the Führer’.306 Hitler’s name did not appear in the loaded question posed on the plebiscite ballot-sheet: ‘Do you, German man, and you, German woman, approve this policy of your Reich government, and are you ready to declare it to be the expression of your own view and your own will, and solemnly to give it your allegiance?’307 It was, however, obvious that ‘Reich government’ and ‘Hitler’ were by now synonymous.

  Electoral manipulation was still not as refined as it was to become in the 1936 and 1938 plebiscites. But it was far from absent. Various forms of chicanery were commonplace. Secrecy at the ballot-box was far from guaranteed.308 And pressure to conform was obvious.309 Even so, the official result – 95.1 per cent in the plebiscite, 92.1 per cent in the ‘Reichstag election’ – arked a genuine triumph for Hitler.310 Abroad as well as at home, even allowing for manipulation and lack of freedom, it had to be concluded that the vast majority of the German people backed him. In a matter of national importance, in which even those who had rigorously opposed the NSDAP overwhelmingly favoured the stance taken towards the League of Nations, Hitler had won genuine acclaim. His stature as a national leader above party interest was massively enhanced.

  The obsequious language used by Vice-Chancellor Papen at the first cabinet meeting after the plebiscite confirmed the total dominance Hitler had attained during his first months in office. Papen spoke of the ‘unique, most overwhelming profession of support (Bekenntnisses) that a nation has ever given to its leader’. ‘In nine months,’ he continued, ‘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.’ He went on to portray Hitler as Germany’s ‘unknown soldier’ who had won over his people. ‘Probably never in the history of nations has such a measure of fervent trust been shown to a statesman. The German people has thereby let it be known that it has grasped the meaning of the changing times and is determined to follow the Leader on his path.’ The members of cabinet rose from their seats to salute their Chancellor. Hitler replied that the tasks ahead would be easier on the basis of the support that he now enjoyed.311

  Hitler’s conquest of Germany was still, however, incomplete. Behind the euphoria of the plebiscite result, a long-standing problem was now threatening to endanger the regime itself: the problem of the SA.

  12

  SECURING TOTAL POWER

  ‘I gave the order to shoot those most guilty of this treason, and I further gave the order to burn out down to the raw flesh the ulcers of our internal well-poisoning…’

  Hitler, addressing the Reichstag on 13 July 1934

  ‘The Reich Chancellor kept his word when he nipped in the bud Röhm’s attempt to incorporate the S A in the Reichswehr. We love him because he has shown himself a true soldier.’

  Walther von Reichenau, part of guidelines for

  political instruction of the troops, 28 August 1934

  The making of the dictator was still incomplete at the end of 1933. Despite an astonishing transformation of the political scene which, at a speed few if any could have foreseen, had inordinately strengthened Hitler’s position, two notable obstacles remained, blocking his route to untrammelled power in the state. The obstacles were closely bound up with each other.

  Hitler’s unruly party army, the SA, had outlived its purpose. That had been to win power. Everything had been predicated on the attainment of that single goal. What would follow the winning of power, what would be the purpose and function of the SA in the new state, what benefits would flow for ordinary stormtroopers, had never been clarified. Now, months after the ‘seizure of power’, the SA’s ‘politics of hooliganism’1 were a force for disruption in the state. And particularly in the military ambitions of its leader, Ernst Röhm, the SA was an increasingly destabilizing factor, above all in relations with the Reichswehr. But its elimination, or disempowering, was no simple matter. It was a huge organization, far bigger than the party itself. It contained many of the most ardent ‘old fighters’ (in a literal sense) in the Movement. And it had been the backbone of the violent activism which had forced the pace of the Nazi revolution since Hitler had become Chancellor. Röhm’s ambitions, as we have seen in earlier chapters, had never been identical with those of Hitler. A large paramilitary organization that had never accepted its subordination to the political wing of the party had caused tensions, and occasional rebellion, since the 1920s. But, whatever the crises, Hitler had always managed to retain the SA’s loyalty. To challenge the SA’s leadership risked losing that loyalty. It could not be done easily or approached lightly. Faced with the dilemma of what to do about the SA, Hitler for months did little to resolve the tensions which continued to build. Characteristically, he acted finally when there was no longer a choice – but then with utter ruthlessness.

  The problem of the SA was inextricably bound up with the other threat to the consolidation of Hitler’s power. Reich President Hindenburg was old and frail. The issue of the succession would loom within the foreseeable future. Hindenburg, the symbol of ‘old’ Germany, and ‘Old’ Prussia, was the figurehead behind which stood still powerful forces with somewhat ambivalent loyalties towards the new state. Most important among them was the army, of which as Head of State Hindenburg was supreme commander. The Reichswehr leadership was intensely and increasingly alarmed by the military pretensions of the SA. Failure on Hitler’s part to solve the problem of the SA could conceivably lead to army leaders favouring an alternative as Head of State on Hindenburg’s death – perhaps resulting in a restoration of the monarchy, and a de facto military dictatorship. Such a development would have met with favour among sections, not just of the military old guard, but of some national-conservative groups, which had favoured an authoritarian, anti-democratic form of state but had become appalled by the Hitler regime. The office of the Vice-Chancellor, Papen, gradually emerged as the focal point of hopes of blunting the edge of the Nazi revolution. Since Papen continued to enjoy the favour of the Reich President, such ‘reactionaries’, though small in number, could not be discounted in power-political terms. And since at the same time there were growing worries among business leaders about serious and mounting economic problems, the threat to the consolidation of Hitler’s power – and with that of the regime itself – was a real one.

  Hitler did not act before he was compelled to do so. The pressure from the Reichswehr leadership and the machinations of Göring, Himmler and Heydrich played decisive roles in bringing matters to a head in summer 1934. Then, within a matter of five weeks, the destruction of the SA leadership in the Night of the Long Knives (accompanied by the murder of leading figures in the ‘reaction’) and the rapid takeover by Hitler of the headship of state on Hindenburg’s death (under a law agreed by the cabinet while he was still alive) amounted to a decisive phase in the securing of total power.

  I

  Ernst Röhm’s
SA had been the spearhead of the Nazi revolution in the first months of 1933. The explosion of elemental violence had needed no commands from above. The SA had long been kept on a leash, told to wait for the day of reckoning. Now it could scarcely be contained. Orgies of hate-filled revenge against political enemies and horrifically brutal assaults on Jews were daily occurrences. A large proportion of the estimated 100,000 persons taken into custody in these turbulent months were held in makeshift SA prisons and camps. Some hundred of these were set up in the Berlin area alone. Many victims were bestially tortured. The minimal figure of some 500–600 murdered in what the Nazis themselves proclaimed as a bloodless and legal revolution can largely be placed on the account of the SA.2 The first Gestapo chief, Rudolf Diels, described after the war the conditions in one of the SA’s Berlin prisons: ‘The “interrogations” had begun and ended with a beating. A dozen fellows had laid into their victims at intervals of some hours with iron bars, rubber coshes, and whips. Smashed teeth and broken bones bore witness to the tortures. As we entered, these living skeletons with festering wounds lay in rows on the rotting straw…’3 In one of numerous letters with which he bombarded Reich President Hindenburg in autumn 1933 on the ‘violent activity and lawlessness (Willkür) in the German Reich ruled by you’, his erstwhile comrade, now thorn in his flesh, Erich Ludendorff, reported ‘unbelievable events’ which were ‘mounting up in horrifying fashion’, and spoke of the final phase of Hindenburg’s presidency as ‘the blackest time in German history’. The letters were passed on to Hitler.4 Appeals for discipline by Hitler were ignored. Even those by Röhm were not heeded.5 Such appeals were in any case half-hearted and merely tactical. Behind the scenes, Hitler was quashing – often following requests from within the party leadership or from Reich Justice Minister Gürtner – case after case of maltreatment and torture of prisoners, many by SA men.6