In the years following his release from prison in 1924 Hitler had made his star the guiding principle of the party. Belief in Adolf Hitler became all-important: his intuition, vision and sheer willpower would propel the NSDAP forward. Hitlerism focused entirely on Hitler. As Mein Kampf had pointed out, when people adored a genius they released their inner strength. Only Jews denounced reverence for great souls as a ‘cult of personality’. Now the people as a whole were asked to unite in their adoration of one man.39
The cult of personality abased all others inside the party. Ten days after the 19 August 1934 plebiscite a circular from the NSDAP demanded that portraits of Goering and Goebbels as well as other leaders be taken down from the party premises. When followers assembled for the next rally in Nuremberg a year later the slogan proposed by Hess was shortened to ‘Hitler is Germany just as Germany is Hitler’.40
Towering above all others had many advantages. Most people detested the thuggish brownshirts and had welcomed the Night of the Long Knives, unaware of the scale of the massacre because Goebbels tightly controlled the newspapers. Many saw in their chancellor a courageous man who put his country above his erstwhile comrades, moving with lightning speed against the powerful men who had become a danger to the state. But the purge had also demonstrated that conflicting forces were at work inside the Nazi movement. Hitler appeared to be the only one who could hold together very diverse and sometimes antagonistic internal party factions. While he exploited their rivalries for his own benefit, all of them had to serve him in common subordination. And when things went wrong, ordinary people blamed his underlings, rarely the Führer, building up his aura of invincibility even further.41
Two weeks after the Reichstag fire Goebbels moved into the Ordenspalais, an eighteenth-century palace in the Wilhelmstrasse directly across from the chancellery. As Reich Minister of Propaganda and Enlightenment he worked tirelessly on the cult of the Führer. On 19 April 1933, as Hitler was about to turn forty-four, Goebbels addressed the nation. Many admirers had rushed to join the ranks of the party, he explained, while millions of ordinary believers had only seen him from afar. But even the few who knew him well were overcome by the magic of his personality. ‘The longer one knows him,’ Goebbels continued, ‘the more one admires him, and the more one is ready to give oneself fully to his cause.’ Over the next decade Goebbels would glorify the leader in an annual speech on the eve of his birthday, which became a major holiday marked by parades and public celebrations.42
Every aspect of daily life fell under the control of the one-party state. In a process called Gleichschaltung, or synchronisation, the party took over or replaced completely every organisation from the education system down to a local sports club. All adopted a uniform Nazi outlook. Goebbels oversaw the press, with every newspaper spreading the same message, always dominated by fulsome praise of the Führer.
His word was everywhere. His most important speeches were published in all leading newspapers and distributed by the millions in separate pamphlets produced by the party’s printing house. Starting in 1937, every week hundreds of thousands of posters appeared with a quotation for display in party offices and public buildings. Weekly mottos were also printed in the newspapers under a special headline, usually if not always some saying of Hitler’s.43
Sales of Mein Kampf rocketed. At the German Book Week held in Bremen in November 1933 party member and literary critic Will Vesper announced that Mein Kampf was ‘the holy book of National Socialism and the new Germany that every German must have’. A million copies were sold by the end of the year. Four years later sales passed the four million mark: ‘A Book Conquers a Nation!’ trumpeted a Berlin newspaper. It became the gift of choice for newly-weds, while free copies were later handed out to soldiers fighting on the front.44
Excerpts and abridgements of the sacred text also appeared. In 1934 the chapter entitled ‘Nation and Race’ appeared as a brochure and was distributed to schools two years later. Collections of quotations from the Führer became popular, for instance, Words of the Führer and Hitler’s Words. But a few years later Hitler intervened, demanding that these publications be banned, as they simplified his thought. He insisted that his words be read in their entirety.45
His voice was also everywhere. Hitler first spoke over the radio one day after he became chancellor. It did not go well, with some listeners even complaining that his tone was harsh and ‘un-German’. Hitler worked on his broadcasting skills. He was, after all, a practised orator. ‘Sound, I think, is much more suggestive than image,’ he opined. ‘We can get endlessly more out of this.’46
Hitler was heard again on the eve of the March 1933 elections. Goebbels was elated: ‘This hymn vibrates through the ether over the radio in all of Germany. Forty million Germans stand on the squares and streets of the Reich, or sit in taverns and homes next to the loudspeaker and become aware of the great turning-point in history.’47
‘Radio is all mine,’ Goebbels enthused, soon approving a scheme whereby millions of cheap sets were sold below production cost. ‘All of Germany Listens to the Führer with the People’s Radio!’ became the slogan, and by 1941 some 65 per cent of all households boasted a subscription. But even people without a radio could not escape the voice of their saviour. Loudspeaker pillars were erected in cities, and mobile loudspeakers installed in small towns. In March 1936 Victor Klemperer came across a Hitler speech on a visit to Dresden. ‘I could not get away from it for an hour. First from an open shop, then in the bank, then from a shop again.’48
Hitler was almost entirely absent from newsreels before he became chancellor. Here, too, Goebbels saw an opportunity to exploit a new technology for propaganda purposes. On 10 February 1933 a team of camera operators and their assistants shot Hitler’s thirty-three-minute speech in the Berliner Sportpalast, a huge indoor arena in the Schöneberg district of the capital. But the film failed to capture the bond between the orator and his audience. Goebbels developed doubts, and while Hitler became a regular presence in weekly cinema newsreels his appearances remained fleeting.49
Hitler intervened and commissioned Leni Riefenstahl to make Triumph of the Will, a lavish documentary of the 1934 party rally in Nuremberg. Riefenstahl used moving cameras, aerial photography and synchronised sound to produce a masterpiece of propaganda, one that presented a murderous regime that had just carried out a bloody purge as a mesmerising, quasi-religious experience in which faithful masses were united with their saviour in a mystical bond. The star was Adolf Hitler, descending like a god from the clouds by plane in the opening scene. Triumph of the Will won awards in Germany, the United States, France and other countries. More films followed, including a propaganda piece entitled Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces and a documentary on the 1936 summer Olympics in Berlin. All of them were screened in special previews for the party elite, shown in theatres around the country and taken to the countryside in mobile cinemas.50
Goebbels tried to enlist Hoffmann, but the court photographer was determined to remain ‘just a businessman’. His business thrived, with shops in every major city. Since the Führer’s image was protected by law, the court photographer had a virtual monopoly over the market. He sold his photos as portraits, postcards, posters and calendars. His book The Hitler Nobody Knows, published in 1932, sold some 400,000 copies, and was followed by a series of equally successful picture books, including Youth around Hitler, Hitler in Italy, With Hitler in the West and The Face of the Führer. All appeared in a range of formats, from coffee-table books to miniature editions easily tucked into a pocket by soldiers on the front.51
Painters, sculptors, photographers, printers and even the Post Office were referred to Hoffmann’s studio. His reach extended still farther after Hitler put him in charge of the annual Great German Art Exhibition in 1937. Every year dozens of artworks depicting Hitler, many copied from Hoffmann’s photos, filled entire rooms.52
Goebbels controlled propaganda, but not schools and universities. To his great disappointment, the Min
istry of Culture he had been promised went to Bernhard Rust. Hitler liked to divide and rule, encouraging rivalry among his underlings or giving them overlapping tasks so as to consolidate his own power. It made him the ultimate arbiter, while relegating them to subordinates constantly competing to outdo one another.
Rust, a zealous Nazi, made sure that children were indoctrinated into the cult of the leader from their very first day in school. The Hitler salute was introduced by the end of 1933. His portrait hung in every classroom. Old textbooks were removed, with some burned in giant bonfires, while new ones endlessly hammered home the same message: love the leader and obey the party. Instead of reading Goethe, they recited the poem ‘Mein Führer’ by Hans H. Seitz: ‘I have seen you now; And will carry your image with me; Whatever may happen; I will stand by you.’53
In potted biographies children were told the story of a man who had risen from obscurity to save his people. The Story of Adolf Hitler Told to German Children by Annemarie Stiehler concluded: ‘As long as Germans walk the earth, they will think of Adolf Hitler with gratitude, the one who fought his way from unknown soldier during the world war to Führer and saved Germany from great need.’ In some schools children prayed every day for the Führer: ‘Dear God, I beg you; Let me become a pious child; Protect Hitler every day; That no accident may befall him; You sent him in our distress; O God protect him.’54
Our Hitler, published in 1933 by Paul Jennrich, enjoined young readers to ‘Wake up and follow him!’ Youngsters enrolled in the Hitler Youth, an organisation overseen by Baldur von Shirach. Since it was the only youth organisation allowed to exist, membership rocketed after 1934, until three years later it became mandatory for all Germans. They pledged love and loyalty to the Führer. They sang, paraded and prayed in his name: ‘Adolf Hitler, you are our great Führer. Thy name makes the enemy tremble.’55
Adults or children alike were told ‘The Führer is Always Right’. Robert Ley, leader of the German Labour Front and unswerving follower of the Führer, used the slogan at the Nuremberg rally in 1936. It appeared across the nation, proclaimed on banners, posters and in newspapers.56
Goebbels, Riefenstahl, Hoffmann, Rust, Shirach, Ley, all worked tirelessly to promote their leader. But the greatest architect of the cult remained Hitler himself, lead actor, stage manager, orator and publicist all rolled into one. He constantly fine-tuned his image. After 1932 he projected himself as a leader in close touch with his people, saluting millions at parades and rallies. But he was also keen to present himself as a great statesman and player on the world stage.
As soon as he moved into the chancellery he hired an interior designer to transform the premises. Hitler detested the old building, seeing its overwrought grandeur as a parable for the political decay of the nation. Rooms were opened to light and air, old partitions removed, floorboards ripped out, crisp, clear and straight lines introduced. As the temple of democracy was torn down, a new Reception Hall was erected, complete with swastika mosaics in the ceiling and bronze lamps along the walls. God was setting his house in order.57
Several years later, Hitler’s favourite architect, Albert Speer, received a blank cheque to build a new chancellery, a vast building that monopolised the entire northern side of the Vossstrasse. Hitler treasured the polished marble of the main gallery, which was twice the length of the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles: ‘On the long walk from the entrance to the reception hall they will get a taste of the power and grandeur of the German Reich!’ His office was 400 square metres in size, giving the Führer great joy every time a visitor had to cross the large expanse to reach his desk.58
Hitler’s apartment in Munich was also refurbished, with every detail carefully designed, down to the door handles. His interior designer Gerdy Troost created an atmosphere of muted, bourgeois luxury, with books and art prominently displayed. ‘We might have been in Park Terrace, Glasgow,’ one visitor commented. All was designed to convey an air of reassuring familiarity and stability.59
The principal stage for Hitler’s performance as a cultivated and trustworthy statesman, however, was neither in Berlin nor in Munich. In 1933 Hitler bought a small chalet in the Bavarian mountain retreat of Obersalzberg, which was refurbished and expanded into a sprawling compound named the Berghof (the alpine retreat is sometimes referred to as Berchtesgaden, the name of the local town). Gerdy Troost, who had transformed his home and office, filled the spacious halls and bedrooms with rich fabrics, luxurious tapestries and modern furniture. The centre of the Berghof was the Great Hall, a reception room the size of a small gymnasium, dominated by a giant window that could be lowered to offer a sweeping view of the snow-capped mountains. There Hitler held court, with every detail designed to impress his visitors. They were dazzled by the sheer size of the Great Hall, then overawed by the huge expanse of window, the largest piece of glass ever made at the time. Nothing stood between them and the mountain peak. Furniture was placed along the wall to leave the room’s centre uncluttered. But the oversized sofas had deep backs, compelling visitors to lounge, recline or perch on the edge. Hitler sat up straight on a chair, dominating all others.60
Outside, Hitler posed for Heinrich Hoffmann’s camera, feeding the deer from his terrace, playing with his dog, greeting children. Soon, thousands of well-wishers and tourists arrived, hoping for a glimpse of the Führer. It was ‘like a wonderful dream to be so near to the Führer’, one woman from Frankfurt recalled. Outsiders were banned in 1936, but leading personalities continued to visit without announcement: they, too, were barred two years later.61
Inside, Hitler received a steady flow of dignitaries, from kings and ambassadors to religious leaders and secretaries of state. Many were carefully selected sympathisers, and most were duly impressed. Former British prime minister Lloyd George, who visited in 1936, went back home declaring that Hitler was the ‘George Washington of Germany’ and a ‘born leader of men’. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor came and posed for the camera.62
The Berghof, however, also provided the ideal stage for intimidating potential opponents. When Kurt Schuschnigg came to negotiate the fate of his country, Hitler arranged for some of his most brutal looking generals to sit in the background, glaring menacingly at the chancellor of Austria while Hitler ranted for a full two hours.63
Still, Hitler was no Mussolini, a dictator who managed to beguile some of the world’s greatest leaders. Hitler’s best tactic was not so much to charm as to disarm, lulling those who met him into a false sense of security. Hitler was a master of disguise, hiding his personality behind a carefully constructed image of a modest, kind and simple man. He knew how to absorb and give expression to the emotions of a crowd, and equally he knew how to read his visitors, adapting his tone and demeanour to hide his intentions and downplay the threat he represented. When the American journalist Dorothy Thompson published I Saw Hitler in 1932, describing him as ‘formless and faceless’ after a lengthy interview, ‘the very prototype of the Little Man’ who would only smite ‘the weakest of his enemies’, Hitler was amused. She was just one in a long line of people who underestimated what the little man could – and would – do.64
From the chancellery and the Berghof, the two power centres of the Third Reich, Hitler set out to pursue the vision he had expressed in Mein Kampf, although he did so more by following his intuition, seizing opportunities when they presented themselves, than by adhering to any definite programme. Germany withdrew from the League of Nations in October 1933. Conscription was reintroduced in violation of the Treaty of Versailles in March 1935, the armed forces expanding to six times the permitted number. Even as Hitler made promises of peace, he prepared his country for war. In March 1936 he took his first international gamble, as his army marched into the demilitarised zone in the Rhineland. His own military advisers had warned him of the risks, and his troops were under strict instructions to retreat if they encountered any opposition from France. But nothing happened, except for a vote of weak condemnation by the League of Nations. ‘With the certa
inty of a sleepwalker, I walk along the path laid out for me by providence,’ Hitler quipped. He himself now began to believe in his own infallibility.65
The Rhineland coup crushed Hitler’s opponents. They were further isolated by a carefully orchestrated show of unity between the leader and his people, held in the guise of a referendum two weeks later. A wave of terror had already thinned the ranks of critics of the party, as people were sent to prison for the slightest infraction. Robert Sauter, an ordinary citizen who queried the reliability of newspapers, was confined for five months. Paul Glowania, a resident in Ludwigshaven, expressed doubts about the regime in the privacy of his own home, was overheard, denounced and sentenced to a year. ‘Germany is silent, nervous, suppressed; it speaks in whispers; there is no public opinion, no opposition, no discussion of anything,’ noted W. E. B. Du Bois, the African-American civil rights activist who spent months travelling through the country in 1936.66
Propaganda, combined with terror, convinced the others to vote Yes. Even in a small town of 1,500 people, there were posters everywhere, on fences and houses, including giant portraits of Hitler. In Breslau every display window was mandated to feature a dedicated Hitler corner. Shopowners who refused were threatened with a day in a concentration camp. Elsewhere brownshirts appeared on the doorstep of each household, telling their occupants how many posters must be displayed. Cases of resistance still occurred, with portraits of Hitler covered in paint or torn down overnight. The result of the referendum was that 99 per cent voted Yes. ‘It is the miracle of our age that you have found me among so many millions,’ he told ecstatic supporters at the party rally in September 1936, ‘and that I have found you is Germany’s great fortune.’67
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