Hitler

by Joachim C. Fest

  Yet these SA rowdies brought a considerable degree of self-sacrifice to their role as guerrilla fighters. This can be seen in a letter to Gregor Strasser from a thirty-four-year-old SA standard leader:

  In my work for the NSDAP I have faced a court more than thirty times and have been convicted eight times for assault and battery, resistance to a police officer, and other such misdemeanors that are natural for a Nazi. To this day I am still paying installments on my fines, and in addition have other trials coming up. Furthermore, I have been more or less severely wounded at least twenty times. I have knife scars on the back of my head, on my left shoulder, on my lower lip, on my right cheek, on the left side of my upper lip, and on my right arm. Furthermore, I have never yet claimed or received a penny of party money, but have sacrificed my time to our movement at the expense of the good business I inherited from my father. Today I am facing financial ruin….11

  Against this kind of dedication the republic could do little. Moreover, once the Hitler movement had made its breakthrough and become a mass party, the republic no longer had the strength to steer a determined course against the Nazis without risking conditions bordering on civil war. The defenders of the republic clung to the hope that they could stem the assault of irrationalism by the power of argument. They trusted in the educational effect of democratic institutions, in what they believed to be the irreversible trend toward more humane social conditions. Some of the old nineteenth-century faith in progress lingered on in these views. But even then, at the beginning of the thirties, it should have been clear that this theory was erroneous because it assumed rationality and the capacity to discriminate, where in fact there was nothing but a tangled web of anxiety, panic, and aggression. That the Nazi propagandists were by and large ignorant fellows, that their answers to the problems of the Depression were inadequate, that they fell back so tediously on their anti-Semitic slogans, discredited them for only a select group. The experts might dismiss them as a pack of dumbbells, but the Nazis continued their rise. By contrast, when Chancellor Brüning went on a tour of East Prussia and Silesia, where unemployment and misery were rife, he was everywhere greeted coolly, if not with hostility. When he spoke to crowds, banners were strung up bearing the words: “Hunger dictator,” and he was often booed.

  In the Reichstag, meanwhile, the Nazis played with growing mastery their double game as destroyers and judges of the “system.” Thanks to the strength of their fraction they were now in a position to paralyze the workings of the legislature and to confirm their reputation as “noisemakers” by putting on displays of undisciplined catcalling. They opposed every serious attempt at stabilization on the grounds that any improvement in conditions would only serve the ends of “compliance politics”—that is, the policy of meeting the terms imposed by the Allies. In that light, they maintained, every sacrifice the government asked of the people was an act of high treason.

  In addition to argument, they utilized the devices of sheer obstruction: clamor, debates on points of order, or marching out of the hall in a body as soon as a “Marxist” took the floor. It is a measure of the unruliness of the Nazi faction that, according to a report of the Agenda Committee, some 400 motions of censure had been filed against the 107 Nazi deputies. In February, 1931, a law was passed setting limits on parliamentary immunity. Thereupon, the Nazis, followed by the German Nationalists and for a time by the Communists also, withdrew completely from the Reichstag. They threw their energy more than ever into street demonstrations and public meetings, where they rightly conjectured they had far better prospects for winning followers and projecting a clear and definite image. Goebbels sneered at the deputies who remained in the Reichstag as “backside parties” and pointed out that while they were talking to a powerless legislature he had, in four days, spoken to more than 50,000 persons. For a time the Nazis toyed with the demagogic notion of setting up in Weimar, with the aid of Minister of the Interior Frick of Thuringia, a counter-Reichstag of the nationalist opposition. But they dropped this idea when the federal government threatened sanctions against the state.

  There was a certain logic to the Nazi exodus from the Reichstag. After all, the Nazis themselves had done everything they could to paralyze the work of the legislature and to reduce its prestige. It was now no longer the site of political decision making. Even before the elections of September, 1930, Chancellor Brüning had sometimes acted without the assent of the dissension-torn Reichstag, invoking the President’s emergency powers under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. But now that the paths to normal legislative operations by the formation of a majority were blocked, he governed almost exclusively by drawing on the President’s exceptional powers. In practice, he was running a semidictatorial administration. Anyone, however, who considers Brüning’s action as “the death knell for the Weimar Republic” (as the Marxist historian Arthur Rosenberg did) ought to consider that the shift in power from the legislature to the executive was possible only because it accorded with the tendency of nearly all the parties to dodge political responsibility. To this day, some historians blame the turn to authoritarianism upon the “nonpolitical masses.” But, rather than the masses, it was the political parties, from right to left, who at moments of crisis rushed to shift the responsibility to the “Ersatz Kaiser,” the President, anxious to be disassociated from the unpopular decisions that crises called for. In leaving the Reichstag, the Nazis were only demonstrating that they were superior in consistency compared with the other political parties; and although they, too, were running from responsibility, running forward not backward. Part of the “secret” of their rise was this lead in consistency.

  The vexation with democracy—to understate the case—was intensified by the government’s obvious failures in both domestic and foreign affairs. Brüning’s austerity policy, which he pursued to the point of masochism, had not succeeded in eliminating either the fiscal problems or the decline of demand, and in no way diminished the vast army of unemployed. Nor did the government win any ground on questions of reparations and disarmament. Above all, France—alarmed by the results of the September elections—refused all concessions and cultivated her hysterias.

  The Depression had brought on general economic warfare among governments. Tentative efforts toward trade agreements and a lowering of customs barriers stagnated at the beginning of 1931. Germany and Austria thereupon, on their own initiative, concluded a tariffs treaty that did not infringe on the economic autonomy of both partners and explicitly called upon other countries to join. But France viewed this agreement as undermining a crucial feature of the Treaty of Versailles and concluded that “peace on the old Continent was once again imperiled.”12 French banks in both Germany and Austria promptly called their short-term loans, throwing both countries “into a massive bankruptcy,” which compelled them, in the autumn of 1931, abjectly to abandon the plan. Austria had to make considerable economic concessions. In Germany Hitler and the radical Right gloated over the government’s loss of prestige and its further enforced efforts at accommodation. When, on June 20, President Hoover proposed a moratorium on reparations payments for one year, “a mood like that at the outbreak of war” prevailed in the Chamber of Deputies in Paris.13 Subsequently, France, which admittedly would be most affected by this plan, spun out the negotiations until a series of vast collapses in Germany intensified the crisis to a degree far worse than anyone had thought possible. In Berlin, too, a contemporary observer was reminded of the days before the outbreak of the war. But it was more the deserted look of the streets, the silence brooding over the city, and the extreme tension in the atmosphere, that produced this feeling.14 At the end of 1931 Hitler announced that during the previous year the party had had fifty men killed and about 4,000 wounded.

  It was apparent to all that the democratic party system was on its last legs, in theory as well as reality. There were all sorts of proposals for a revised Constitution. They combined contempt for the inadequacies of parliamentary democracy with anxiety over the t
otalitarian drive of extremists from both Right and Left. Conservative journalists offered foggy plans for a “new state” or a “constitutional dictatorship,” that would head off Hitler’s more radical alternative by a more moderate option.

  Similar intentions inspired the ideas for an authoritarian constitution reestablishing the prerevolutionary state, which in view of the increasing weariness with democratic methods were discussed among the Reich President’s entourage. Among the principal advocates of such plans that tended to a gradual restoration of the monarchy were Chancellor Brüning himself; Minister of Defense Groener; Groener’s liaison man with the other departments of government, the chief of the newly created Ministerial Bureau, General Kurt von Schleicher, who, thanks to his intimacy with Hindenburg, had become a key figure, albeit a background one, of the political scene.

  Schleicher had already made his presence felt in the appointment of Brüning as Chancellor; he had adroitly proceeded in extending his influence to the point that no Chancellor or cabinet minister could be appointed or dismissed without his consent. His preference for background activity and finespun nets of intrigue had earned him the reputation of being a “field-gray eminence.” He was cynical, as highly sensitive persons tend to be, impulsive, unprejudiced, and wary. He used the army intelligence service to spy even on friends and neighbors. His peculiar combination of frivolity, sense of responsibility, and bent for intrigue made him a distinctly difficult person to deal with.

  Schleicher’s reasoning started from the thesis that a broad popular movement like Hitler’s could not be quelled by governmental instruments of power. The shock of the revolution, when the officers’ corps suddenly found itself pitted against the strange gray hordes of the masses, had convinced the more open-minded members of the Reichswehr leadership that the army must never again be turned against the people. Although Schleicher hardly took the Nazi party leader seriously, describing him as a “visionary and idol of stupidity,” he acknowledged and respected the factors that had obtained for Hitler so tremendous a following. Schleicher by no means overlooked the disturbing aspects of the movement, that blend of lawlessness, resentment, and fanaticism that one of Schleicher’s fellow officers had called the “Russian character” of the Nazi party. But this made him all the more intent on putting through his plan. As long as Hindenburg was still alive and the army seemed organically sound, Schleicher thought he could “domesticate” Hitler by taking him into the inner circle of political responsibility. The mass army of his following, meanwhile, as long as the curbs of the Versailles Treaty remained in effect, would be used to strengthen Germany’s “defense posture.” Cautiously, therefore, Schleicher began seeking contact with Hitler by way of Ernst Röhm and Gregor Strasser.

  Other conservative leaders were likewise eager to have a hand in polishing the rough diamond who happened to be master of the stadia and meeting halls; among them was Alfred Hugenberg. In the summer of 1931 President Hindenburg complained to Hugenberg about Hitler’s “ruffians” and said he did not regard the NSDAP “as a reliable nationalist party.” Hugenberg replied that that was all the more reason to strike up an alliance; he believed he had already contributed to the political education of the Nazis, he said. In spite of all previous unpleasant experiences, he added, he, too, was seeking to re-establish the broken connection with Hitler.

  These efforts at rapprochement from several sides corresponded to the advances that the vexed Führer of the Nazi party was making at the same time. He was vexed because his success of September still profited him nothing. The outcome of the elections had indeed made him one of the chief actors on the political stage; but as long as his isolation continued he was condemned to play a mute part. “Hitler has lost many months,” Carl von Ossietzky wrote. “He has wasted his time in inactivity, and no eternity will ever restore that lost time to him. No power in the world will ever give him back the 15th of September with the defeated parties trembling and officialdom bewildered. At that time the hour for the German Duce had come; who would have asked whether he was acting legally or illegally? But this German Duce is a cowardly, effeminate slugabed, a petty bourgeois rebel who’s fast grown fat, who takes it easy and does not realize when fate lays him in a pickling solution along with his laurels. This drummer pounds his tomtom only in rear echelon…. Brutus sleeps.”

  Given a following held together less by political convictions than by volatile emotions, Hitler was actually dependent, far more than the other party leaders, on a train of new, spectacular successes. True, the party continued its victorious march in 1931: at the beginning of May it won 26.9 per cent of the vote in the elections for the Landtag, the provincial legislature, in Schaumburg-Lippe; two weeks later it reached 37.2 per cent in Oldenburg, thus for the first time becoming the strongest party in a Landtag. But these successes were only repeating on the provincial scale what the party had already achieved on the plane of national politics in September. When the Nazis marched through squares or narrow streets roaring in unison, “Hitler at the gates!” it sounded more as though they were trying to get him to the gates, despite their boast that he was already there. Nor could the Nazi party accomplish anything in the legislatures, since it continued to pursue its policy of paralysis. Thus there remained only the stale boasts over the ever-increasing membership figures, the more and more record-breaking meetings, or—these always announced with sanctimonious hypocrisy—more and more martyrs. Dissatisfaction with this state of affairs manifested itself once again in the spring of 1931, when the Berlin SA under Walter Stennes revolted. But before the SA leader could organize this open defection from the party and draw the vacillating Goebbels over to his side, an order arrived from Hitler deposing Stennes. The other conspirators quickly returned to the fold amid renewed assurances on Hitler’s part and new vows of loyalty on their own.

  Despite his boast that he would bring down the “system” in a succession of election campaigns, Hitler had exerted himself since the spring to gain the confidence and support of influential circles, realizing more keenly than ever before that he would never attain governmental power solely on the basis of his success among the masses. Article 48, which shifted effective power to the President and his immediate entourage, reduced both the power of the Reichstag and the importance of an electoral victory. Not the number of votes but the will of the President determined the holder of the chancellorship. In a sense, therefore, it was more important to commend himself to Hindenburg than to win a majority.

  As always, Hitler advanced on several fronts at once. His oath of legality at Leipzig had already contained a hidden offer of good behavior and partnership. At the beginning of 1931 he received a hint from Schleicher: the ban on participation of Nazis in the Frontier Guard was lifted. In return, Hitler instructed the SA to refrain from street fighting. He even had an SA unit in Kassel dissolved because it had obtained weapons contrary to orders. To strengthen the point, Röhm was required to issue a memorandum implying that the storm troop detachments might be dissolved altogether; they “would be superfluous” if Hitler assumed the chancellorship. “Pretty-boy Adolf is dripping with loyalty,” General Groener wrote to a friend at this time. Hitler was no longer a problem for the Defense Ministry, he added.

  When the Catholic bishops issued a sharp statement warning their flock against the Nazi party, Hitler instantly dispatched his most ingratiating associate, Hermann Göring, to Rome to negotiate. In an interview with the Daily Express Hitler expressed himself in favor of strong German-English co-operation to abolish reparations; he took a conciliatory, mature tone and emphasized the elements uniting England and Germany. When Wilhelm Pieck, the Communist deputy, announced that the Red Army stood ready to come to the aid of revolutionary armies of liberation within Germany, Hitler told an American newspaper that the National Socialist Party was the bulwark against advancing world Bolshevism. “He rants much less than he used to,” a contemporary account noted. “He no longer has Jews for breakfast” and was evidently doing his best “not to see
m monomaniac.” His eagerness to be thought respectable extended to outward matters. He left the modest little Hotel Sanssouci, where he had previously stayed on his visits to Berlin, and chose to reside in the prestigious Kaiserhof. There was also deliberate challenge in this; the hotel lay diagonally across the square from the chancellery. Convinced that they had tamed their man, the spokesmen for the Right assured one another that Hitler was at last on the way to being a useful implement of state power.

  He also wooed the financiers, who on the whole had remained rather reserved. Frau von Dircksen, who held court in the Kaiserhof and had many influential connections, came to his aid just at the right time—one more of those aging female friends to whose zeal he owed so much. Frau Bechstein also continued to promote his cause. Other contacts were made through Göring, who ran a lavish house, and through the financial journalist Walther Funk. Wilhelm Keppler, a small businessman ruined by the Depression, also brought sympathetic industrialists into the movement. He founded the “Economic Friendship Circle,” which was to become notorious through its later connection with Himmler. Otto Dietrich, who had extensive family connections with men in industry, noted: “In Munich in the summer of 1931 the Führer suddenly made the decision to work systematically on leading personalities in business and in the bourgeois Center parties, who were at the heart of the opposition to him.” He toured Germany in his supercharged Mercedes, going to confidential conferences. The better to keep them secret, some of these were held “in solitary forest clearings, in the bosom of nature.” At Streithof (“Squabble Farm”), the estate of Emil Kirdorf, the Ruhr industrialist, Hitler addressed more than thirty captains of heavy industry.15 He ostentatiously forced Gregor Strasser and Gottfried Feder to withdraw a motion they had introduced in the Reichstag as a kind of last bow to their abandoned socialist aims, a motion calling for the expropriation of the “bank and stock exchange barons.” And when the Communist Party faction, seeing a good joke, proposed the selfsame motion on their own account, Hitler had the Nazi deputies vote against it. Henceforth, his only comments on his economic program were dark allusions. At the same time, he drew away from the somewhat pigheaded Gottfried Feder and occasionally kept Feder from speaking in public.