Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

by Ian Kershaw

  V

  An early intimation that a head of government who had had his own immediate predecessor as Chancellor, General von Schleicher, murdered might also not shy away from involvement in violence abroad was provided by the assassination of the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dolfuss, in a failed putsch attempt undertaken by Austrian SS men on 25 July while Hitler was attending the Bayreuth Festival.

  For months, Hitler had left Theo Habicht, a German member of the Reichstag whom he had appointed to head the Austrian wing of the NSDAP, on a long leash to put pressure on the Dollfuss government. Under Dollfuss, Austria was a repressive single-party dictatorship bearing some distinctly fascist traits. Bans on political parties were applied not just to socialists and liberals. The Austrian NSDAP had been banned since June 1933. From spring 1934, the terror campaign of the outlawed party had brought tough reaction from the government, leading to a further spiral of terrorist violence. The feeling among the underground, factionalized Austrian Nazis that they were being left in the lurch by Berlin was intensified by Hitler’s meeting with Mussolini in Venice on 14–15 June. Mussolini had made it plain that Italy backed Dollfuss. Hitler had wanted elections, and National Socialists to be taken into the Austrian government. But he could not risk alienating Italy, and was prepared to let matters ride for the forseeable future. He gave an undertaking to respect Austrian independence. His underlings in Austria were less patient, and suspicious that Berlin was selling out their interests. The terror attacks, using bombs and grenades, increased. Hitler was told that the situation was highly volatile. Putsch plans were worked out among underground SS leaders and party functionaries.131

  Hitler’s own role, and the extent to which he had detailed information of the putsch plans, is less than wholly clear.132 The initiative for the coup attempt clearly came from local Nazis. It seems that Hitler was aware of it, and gave his approval, but on the basis of misleading information from the Austrian Nazis. Hitler had rejected the idea of a putsch the previous autumn. In the immediate aftermath of the meeting with Mussolini, it was unlikely that he would readily back such a risky venture. However, it could not take place in clear breach of his wishes. Habicht misleadingly informed him, therefore, that officers of the Austrian army were planning a coup, and asked whether the National Socialists should not support the move to topple the Dollfuss government. Hitler agreed.133 Whether it was a deliberate piece of deception on Habicht’s part, or whether Hitler misconstrued what was said to him, is uncertain. However, that Hitler was aware of what was happening, but on the basis of a flawed understanding of what was to take place, is apparent from the post-war recollections of General Adam, at that time Army District Commander VII in Munich and formerly Chef des Truppenamts. At a meeting on the morning of 25 July, Hitler told Adam that on that very day the Austrian Federal Army would topple the government. When Adam seemed sceptical, Hitler insisted that the army would launch its strike, which would lead to the immediate return of those Nazis forced into exile. He wanted Adam to make preparations to send weapons for them into Austria. He promised to keep Adam informed about events in Vienna, and later that day rang to tell him that events were proceeding satisfactorily, and that Dollfuss was wounded.134 In reality, there had been no putsch plans by the Austrian army. There had been only the hare-brained attempt at a coup by the Nazi activists. The putsch attempt-partly sabotaged even within the Nazi Movement by the SA – was rapidly put down.135 Under Kurt Schuschnigg, successor to the murdered Dollfuss, the Austrian authoritarian regime, treading its tightrope between the predatory powers of Germany and Italy, continued in existence – for the present.

  The international embarrassment for Hitler was enormous, the damage to relations with Italy considerable.136 For a time, it even looked as if Italian intervention was likely.137 Papen found Hitler in a near-hysterical state, denouncing the idiocy of the Austrian Nazis for landing him in such a mess.138 Every attempt was made by the German government, however unconvincingly, to dissociate itself from the coup.139 Habicht was dropped. The headquarters of the Austrian NSDAP in Munich were closed down. A new policy of restraint in Austria was imposed.140 But at least one consequence of the ill-fated affair pleased Hitler. He found the answer to what to do with Papen – who had ‘just been in our way since the Röhm business’, as Göring reportedly put it.141 He made him the new German ambassador in Vienna.142

  VI

  In Neudeck, meanwhile, Hindenburg was dying. His condition had been worsening during the previous weeks. Signing Papen’s letters of appointment to Vienna was his last official act. At the end of July, the public was made aware of the grave condition of the Reich President.143 On 1 August, Hitler flew to Neudeck. Hindenburg, mistaking him for the Kaiser, addressed him as ‘Majesty’.144 Hitler told the cabinet that evening that the doctors were giving Hindenburg less than twenty-four hours to live.145 The following morning, the Reich President was dead.

  So close to the goal of total power, Hitler had left nothing to chance. The Enabling Act had explicitly stipulated that the rights of the Reich President would be left untouched. But on 1 August, while Hindenburg was still alive, Hitler had all his ministers put their names to a law determining that, on Hindenburg’s death, the office of the Reich President would be combined with that of the Reich Chancellor.146 The reason subsequently given was that the title ‘Reich President’ was uniquely bound up with the ‘greatness’ of the deceased. Hitler wished from now on, in a ruling to apply ‘for all time’, to be addressed as ‘Führer and Reich Chancellor’. The change in his powers was to be put to the German people for confirmation in a ‘free plebiscite’, scheduled for 19 August.147

  Among the signatories to the ‘Law on the Head of State of the German Reich’ of 1 August 1934 had been Reichswehr Minister Blomberg. The law meant that, on Hindenburg’s death, Hitler would automatically become Supreme Commander of the armed forces. The possibility of the army appealing over the head of the government to the Reich President as Supreme Commander thereby disappeared.148 This caused no concern to the Reichswehr leadership. Blomberg and Reichenau were, in any case, determined to go further. They were keen to exploit the moment to bind Hitler, as they imagined, more closely to the armed forces. The fateful step they took, however, had precisely the opposite effect. As Blomberg later made clear, it was without any request by Hitler, and without consulting him, that he and Reichenau hastily devised the oath of unconditional loyalty to the person of the Führer, taken by every officer and soldier in the armed forces in ceremonies throughout the land on 2 August, almost before Hindenburg’s corpse had gone cold.149 It seems most likely that Blomberg discussed the oath with Hitler (who later offered his profuse thanks in public)150 shortly before Hindenburg’s death, probably on 1 August. The speed and coordination of the taking of the oath by all the troops throughout the entire country certainly needed preparation.151 But, as Blomberg himself made clear, the initiative came from the Reichswehr leadership, not from Hitler. Reichenau had asked two members of his staff to prepare drafts, then rapidly dictated his own version. That Blomberg, as Reichswehr Minister, had no legal power to alter the oath, previously sworn to the Constitution and not to the person of the President, was simply ignored.152

  Some traditionalists in the army, including the Chef der Heeresleitung Werner von Fritsch, saw the oath as reinstating the type of relationship that had existed under the Kaiser. But Blomberg and Reichenau thought in more modern, power-political terms. They hoped, through this personalized demonstration of loyalty, to cement a special relationship with Hitler which would separate him from the Nazi Party and consolidate the dominance of the army as the Third Reich’s ‘power-house’. ‘We swore the oath on the flag to Hitler as Führer of the German people, not as head of the National Socialist Party,’ was Blomberg’s later comment.153 Among the officers, the reaction to the oath was mixed. Some were sceptical or dubious. ‘The darkest day of my life,’ Beck was reported to have remarked.154 ‘A momentous oath. Pray God that both sides hold to it with the
same loyalty for the good of Germany,’ wrote Guderian.155 But the majority spent little time reflecting on its implications.156 The oath meant that the distinction between loyalty to the state and loyalty to Hitler had been eradicated. Opposition was made more difficult. For those later hesitant about joining the conspiracy against Hitler, the oath would also provide an excuse. Far from creating a dependence of Hitler on the army, the oath, stemming from ill-conceived ambitions of the Reichswehr leadership, marked the symbolic moment where the army chained itself to the Führer.157

  ‘Today Hitler is the Whole of Germany,’ ran a headline on 4 August.158 The funeral of the Reich President, held with great pomp and circumstance at the Tannenberg Memorial in East Prussia, the scene of his great victory in the First World War, saw Hindenburg, who had represented the only countervailing source of loyalty, ‘enter Valhalla’, as Hitler put it.159 Hindenburg had wanted to be buried at Neudeck. Ever alert to propaganda opportunities, Hitler insisted on his burial in the Tannenberg Memorial.160 On 19 August, the silent coup of the first days of the month duly gained its ritual plebiscitary confirmation. According to the official figures, 89.9 per cent of the voters supported Hitler’s constitutionally now unlimited powers as head of state, head of government, leader of the party, and Supreme Commander of the armed forces.161 The result, disappointing though it was to the Nazi leadership,162 and less impressive as a show of support than might perhaps have been imagined when all account is taken of the obvious pressures and manipulation, nevertheless reflected the fact that Hitler had the backing, much of it fervently enthusiastic, of the great majority of the German people.

  In the few weeks embracing the Röhm affair and the death of Hindenburg, Hitler had removed all remaining threats to his position – with an ease which even in the spring and early summer of 1934 could have been barely imagined. He was now institutionally unchallengeable, backed by the ‘big battalions’, adored by much of the population. He had secured total power. The Führer state was established. Germany had bound itself to the dictatorship it had created.

  After the crisis-ridden summer, Hitler was, by September, once again in his element on the huge propaganda stage of the Nuremberg Rally.163 In contrast even to the previous year’s Rally, this was consciously devised as a vehicle of the Führer cult. Hitler now towered above his Movement, which had assembled to pay him homage. The film which the talented and glamorous director Leni Riefenstahl made of the Rally subsequently played to packed houses throughout Germany, and made its own significant contribution to the glorification of Hitler. The title of the film, devised by Hitler himself, was Triumph of the Will.164 In reality, his triumph owed only a little to will. It owed far more to those who, in the power-struggles of the summer, had much to gain – or thought they had – by placing the German state at Hitler’s disposal.

  13

  WORKING TOWARDS THE FÜHRER

  ‘It is the duty of every single person to attempt, in the spirit of the Führer, to work towards him.’

  Werner Willikens, 21 February 1934

  ‘The Führer had for outward appearances to ban individual actions against the Jews in consideration of foreign policy, but in reality was wholly in agreement that each individual should continue on his own initiative the fight against Jewry in the most rigorous and radical form.’

  Reported opinion in Hessen, March 1936

  ‘I go with the certainty of a sleepwalker along the path laid out for me by Providence.’

  Hitler, 14 March 1936

  Everyone with opportunity to observe it knows that the Führer can only with great difficulty order from above everything that he intends to carry out sooner or later. On the contrary, until now everyone has best worked in his place in the new Germany if, so to speak, he works towards the Führer.

  This was the central idea of a speech made by Werner Willikens, State Secretary in the Prussian Agriculture Ministry, at a meeting of representatives from Länder agriculture ministries held in Berlin on 21 February 1934. Willikens continued:

  Very often, and in many places, it has been the case that individuals, already in previous years, have waited for commands and orders. Unfortunately, that will probably also be so in future. Rather, however, it is the duty of every single person to attempt, in the spirit of the Führer, to work towards him. Anyone making mistakes will come to notice it soon enough. But the one who works correctly towards the Führer along his lines and towards his aim will in future as previously have the finest reward of one day suddenly attaining the legal confirmation of his work.1

  These comments, made in a routine speech, hold a key to how the Third Reich operated. Between Hindenburg’s death at the beginning of August 1934 and the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis in late January and early February 1938, the Führer state took shape. These were the ‘normal’ years of the Third Reich that lived in the memories of many contemporaries as the ‘good’ years (though they were scarcely that for the already growing numbers of victims of Nazism).2 But they were also years in which the ‘cumulative radicalization’3 so characteristic of the Nazi regime began to gather pace. One feature of this process was the fragmentation of government as Hitler’s form of personalized rule distorted the machinery of administration and called into being a panoply of overlapping and competing agencies dependent in differing ways upon the ‘will of the Führer’. At the same time, the racial and expansionist goals at the heart of Hitler’s own Weltanschauung began in these years gradually to come more sharply into focus, though by no means always as a direct consequence of Hitler’s own actions. Not least, these were the years in which Hitler’s prestige and power, institutionally unchallengeable after the summer of 1934, expanded to the point where it was absolute. This point was reached when the once mighty army officer corps surrendered what was left of its authority and independent power-base following a scandal relating to the private lives of the two most senior military leaders in the country in early 1938.4

  These three tendencies – erosion of collective government, emergence of clearer ideological goals, and Führer absolutism – were closely interrelated. Hitler’s personal actions, particularly in the realm of foreign policy, were certainly vital to the development. But the decisive component was that unwittingly singled out in his speech by Werner Willikens. Hitler’s personalized form of rule invited radical initiatives from below and offered such initiatives backing, so long as they were in line with his broadly defined goals. This promoted ferocious competition at all levels of the regime, among competing agencies, and among individuals within those agencies. In the Darwinist jungle of the Third Reich, the way to power and advancement was through anticipating the ‘Führer will’, and, without waiting for directives, taking initiatives to promote what were presumed to be Hitler’s aims and wishes. For party functionaries and ideologues and for SS ‘technocrats of power’, ‘working towards the Führer’ could have a literal meaning. But, metaphorically, ordinary citizens denouncing neighbours to the Gestapo, often turning personal animosity or resentment to their advantage through political slur, businessmen happy to exploit anti-Jewish legislation to rid themselves of competitors, and the many others whose daily forms of minor cooperation with the regime took place at the cost of others, were – whatever their motives – indirectly ‘working towards the Führer’. They were as a consequence helping drive on an unstoppable radicalization which saw the gradual emergence in concrete shape of policy objectives embodied in the ‘mission’ of the Führer.

  Through ‘working towards the Führer’, initiatives were taken, pressures created, legislation instigated – all in ways which fell into line with what were taken to be Hitler’s aims, and without the dictator necessarily having to dictate. The result was continuing radicalization of policy in a direction which brought Hitler’s own ideological imperatives more plainly into view as practicable policy options. The disintegration of the formal machinery of government and the accompanying ideological radicalization resulted then directly and inexorably from the specific form of pe
rsonalized rule under Hitler. Conversely, both decisively shaped the process by which Hitler’s personalized power was able to free itself from all institutional constraints and become absolute.

  Within this process, Hitler’s growing self-confidence – swollen with each international ‘triumph’ attained, as it appeared, through boldness in the face of the timidity of others, in reality achieved by pushing against a European state system which was as stable as a house of cards – intensified his already immense ego, magnified his megalomaniac tendencies, and underlined his contempt for more cautious spirits in the military leadership and Foreign Office. At the same time, every success accredited to Hitler increased his popular standing, undermined the hopes of opposition, and enhanced the readiness of any remaining doubters among the political élite to accept his outright supremacy without demur. And as the Führer cult moved towards its apogee, it became ever more clear that Hitler, too, had succumbed to it. The tense developments in foreign affairs culminating in the reoccupation of the Rhine-land mark a crucial phase in this process. The successful outcome of the Rhine-land crisis was Hitler’s greatest triumph to date. By that point he had become more than ever a convinced believer in his own ‘myth’.