A few days before the election, as the campaign was approaching its end—it had been conducted at obvious excess pressure and with failing strength—the party had an opportunity to demonstrate the seriousness of its leftist slogans. At the beginning of November a strike broke out in Berlin among the transportation workers. It had been instigated by the Communists over the vote of the unions, and contrary to all expectations the Nazis actually supported the strikers. Together, the SA and the Red Front paralyzed public transportation for five days. They tore up streetcar tracks, formed picket lines, beat up scabs, and forcibly stopped the sketchily organized auxiliary transport. This unity of action has always been cited as evidence for the fatal community of leftist and rightist radicalism. But in fact the Nazis at this moment had scarcely any other choice, even though it meant alienating many of their bourgeois voters and finding that their financial contributions dried up almost completely. “The entire press is denouncing us,” Goebbels noted. “It calls our action Bolshevism; and yet we really could not do anything else. If we had withdrawn our support for this strike, which involves the most basic rights of the streetcar workers, our firm position among the working people would have been shaken. This way, with the election coming, we can once again show the public that our antireactionary course comes from the heart and is genuine. A great opportunity.” And a few days later, on November 5: “Last onslaught. Desperate drive of the party against defeat. At the last minute we manage to scare up another 10,000 marks which we blow on propaganda Saturday afternoon. We have done whatever could be done. Now fate must decide.”
Fate decided, for the first time since 1930, emphatically against the National Socialists’ claims to power. They lost 2 million votes and thirty-four Reichstag seats. The Social Democratic Party also lost a few seats, while the German Nationalists emerged from the election with eleven additional seats and the Communists with an increase of fourteen. On the whole it seemed as if the steady decline of the bourgeois Center parties, which had been going on for years, had at last come to a halt. It was significant that the NSDAP’s losses were evenly distributed throughout the country, and hence could not be considered regional setbacks. They’reflected a weariness with Nazi propaganda. Even in predominantly agricultural regions, such as Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, or Pomerania, which in the preceding elections had contributed the strongest and most reliable support for the NSDAP and thus gave the party quite another cast from the urban petty bourgeois party it had been originally, the Nazis suffered considerable losses.46 And although party leaders promised they would “sweat and fight until this disgrace is wiped out,” the wave continued to ebb in the local elections of the following week. The party’s march to victory seemed broken at last, and even though it could still be called a large party, it was no longer a myth. The question was precisely whether it could continue to exist as an ordinary party, or whether its survival depended on its being a myth.
Papen, in particular, was gratified by the outcome of the elections. Conscious of a great personal success, he turned to Hitler with the proposal that they put aside old quarrels and have another try at a union of all nationalistic forces. The Chancellor’s self-assured tone made Hitler only too aware of his own weakness; the Führer’s response was to stay away from Berlin and remain inaccessible for days on end. On the eve of the elections he had issued a call to the party disdaining all thought of a reconciliation with the government and calling for “adamant continuation of the struggle until this partly overt, partly camouflaged opponent is brought to his knees” and a stop put to the reactionary policies that were driving the country into the arms of Bolshevism. Papen had to dispatch a second official letter to him before, after a deliberate delay of several days, he sent a rejection which he cloaked once again in a series of unfulfillable demands. The Chancellor received similar cold answers from the other nationalist parties.
The government, then, had only two alternatives, neither of which was very popular: either to dissolve the Reichstag once more and thus obtain a political breathing spell, as risky as it was expensive, or else to take the open step against the Constitution that had long been contemplated. This would involve using presidential and military powers to ban the Nazi party, the Communist Party, and possibly other parties. Then the rights of the legislature would be drastically pruned, a new electoral law promulgated, and Hindenburg established as a kind of superauthority in the midst of representatives of the old ruling class whom he would appoint to the seats of power. The argument in Papen’s circles went that the parliamentary-democratic “rule of the minorities” had obviously failed. The new state they were planning would ensure the “rule of the best” and thus undercut such wild ideas about dictatorship as the Nazis were advocating. Papen hinted at some of these matters in a speech delivered on October 12. Many of the details remained nebulous and indeed were never worked out. But the concept as a whole had progressed far beyond the stage of mere theory. In his reactionary bluntness Hindenburg’s neighbor and confidant, old Oldenburg-Januschau, averred that he and his friends would shortly “brand the German people with a constitution that would make their senses reel.”47
While Papen was still drawing up blueprints for the sort of state “which will not be pushed around as the plaything of political and social forces, but will stand unshakably above them,” he suddenly met with unexpected resistance on the part of Schleicher. The general had originally chosen Papen to serve as a willing and handy instrument for taming the Hitler party within the framework of a broad nationalist coalition. Instead, Papen had become involved in a futile personal dispute with Hitler. As he consolidated his position with Hindenburg, he had also shown less of that docility that would have made him useful to the publicity-shy general. “Well, what do you think of that?” Schleicher would occasionally remark sarcastically to a visitor. “Little Franz has discovered himself.” Unlike Papen, Schleicher took a serious view of the problems of a Depression-shaken industrial state. There was more to the question than the proposition that the government must be strong. He therefore had little patience with the Chancellor’s plans. Schleicher had no intention of letting the army be used to help put over this scheme. For it would mean virtual civil war, with the troops pitted against Nazis and Communists, who together were almost 18 million strong at the polls and had millions of militant followers at their disposal. But there was another factor in Schleicher’s change of front, and probably this was the decisive one. He had meanwhile discovered, or thought he had discovered, how at last to carry out his plan of taming and gradually wearing down the National Socialist Party. All that was needed was a different constellation.
With some mental reservations, therefore, Schleicher advised Papen to resign and let Hindenburg in person negotiate with the party leaders for a “Cabinet of National Concentration.” On November 17 Papen followed this recommendation, secretly hoping that the talks would fail and he would once more be summoned to the chancellorship. Two days later Hitler, cheered by a hastily assembled crowd, drove the few yards from the Hotel Kaiserhof to the presidential palace. But two talks with Hindenburg proved fruitless. Hitler obstinately demanded a presidential cabinet with special powers, whereas Hindenburg, directed by Papen in the background, would not hear of this. If the country were still to be governed by special decree, he saw no reason to dismiss Papen. Hitler, the President said, could become Chancellor only if he could put together a parliamentary majority, something the Nazi party leader was clearly in no position to do. Hindenburg’s state secretary, Meissner, summed up the matter in a letter dated November 24:
The President thanks you, my dear Herr Hitler, for your willingness to assume the leadership of a presidential cabinet. But he believes he could not justify it to the German people if he were to give his presidential powers to the leader of a party which has always stressed its exclusiveness, and which has taken a predominantly negative attitude toward him personally as well as toward the political and economic measures he has considered necessary. In t
hese circumstances the President must fear that a presidential cabinet led by you would inevitably develop into a party dictatorship, with all the consequences of a drastic intensification of the antagonisms within the German nation that that would involve. The President, in view of his oath and his conscience, could not take the responsibility for this.48
This was another and painful rebuff. “Once again the revolution is facing closed doors,” Goebbels angrily noted. Nevertheless, this time Hitler succeeded in hiding the defeat by adroit propaganda. In a detailed letter he analyzed with considerable acumen the inherent contradictions of Hindenburg’s offer, sketching for the first time the solution finally arrived at on January 30. What attracted particular attention at the presidential palace was his suggestion of a new approach to the process of forming a government. All that was needed was legislation which would free Hindenburg from involvement in the daily business of politics and thus relieve him of onorous responsibilities. This was a proposal whose importance to the further course of events can scarcely be overestimated. Certainly it did a great deal to persuade the President to assent to the claims of the man to whom, a short while back, he had at most been willing to concede the postal ministry.
Although Papen had counted on the negotiations coming to naught and himself returning to the Chancellor’s office, things turned out differently. For in the meantime Schleicher had got in touch with the Nazi party through Gregor Strasser and was exploring the possibilities of having the Nazis enter a cabinet under his own leadership. This was basically a maneuver and one typical of Schleicher: he reasoned that a generous offer of a share in the administration would produce an explosive conflict among the members of the Hitler party. The blasting powder lay ready to hand. Gregor Strasser had, in the face of recent setbacks, argued repeatedly that the party should adopt more conciliatory tactics. Göring and especially Goebbels had denounced all “halfway solutions” and insisted on demanding undivided power.
On the evening of December 1, Schleicher was summoned to the presidential palace along with Papen. Where did he stand? Hindenburg asked Papen. Papen outlined his plan for a constitutional reform involving a virtual coup d’état. Since the matter had been discussed openly for months, the request for the President’s consent was only a formality, but Schleicher broke in before Papen was finished. He called Papen’s plan both superfluous and dangerous, pointed out the danger of a civil war, and presented his own suggestion: prying the Strasser wing loose from the NSDAP and uniting all constructive forces from the Stahlhelm and the unions to the Social Democrats in a multipartisan cabinet under his own leadership.
But Hindenburg, scarcely troubling to examine the plan, waved this away. Schleicher persisted, pointing out that his plan would spare the President the unpleasantness of violating his oath of office. But by now the doddering old man could not bear to part with his favorite Chancellor, regardless of constitutional questions.
Schleicher, however, refused to accept defeat. When Papen, later in the evening, asked whether the Reichswehr would be ready to back his actions, Schleicher flatly refused to give any such assurances. To Papen that night, and at a cabinet meeting next day, he spoke of a study made by his ministry, based on a three-day war game. It concluded that the army was incapable of handling a joint uprising by the Nazis and the Communists. Such an emergency could no longer be ruled out, since the two parties had already joined forces during the Berlin transportation strike. In the event of a simultaneous general strike along with Polish attacks on the eastern border, the Reichswehr would be totally helpless. In addition, Schleicher expressed his doubts about employing the nonpartisan instrument of the army to put across a “restoration” such as Papen had in mind—the wild idea of a Chancellor supported by a vanishing minority.
Schleicher’s arguments made a strong impression on the cabinet. An indignant Papen went crying to the President that he had been betrayed, and even demanded that Schleicher be replaced by a new and more cooperative army minister. But at this point Hindenburg himself beat a retreat. Papen has described the emotional scene that followed:
In a voice that sounded almost tormented… he turned to me: “My dear Papen, you will think me a scoundrel for changing my mind now. But I am now too old to accept the responsibility for a civil war. All we can do is to let Herr von Schleicher try his luck.”
Two large tears rolled down his cheeks as this tall, strong man extended his hands to me in parting. Our collaboration was at an end. The degree of spiritual harmony between us… may perhaps be seen from the inscription the Field Marshal wrote under the photograph of himself which he gave me a few hours later as a farewell gift: Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden!49
Papen had been as quick to win the President’s heart as he had been “to throw away the last chances for a sensible solution to the political crisis.” But while he felt worsted, there was some comfort in the thought that his enemy could no longer operate discreetly in the wings but would have to expose himself to the public, while Papen could now assume the well-nigh omnipotent role Schleicher had enjoyed as confidant of the President. Papen might be leaving, but it was not yet a real good-bye. No less significant than his “spiritual harmony” with Hindenburg was the fact that even out of office Papen continued to occupy his official apartment—with the self-assurance of a person who regarded the state as his own property. Only a garden path separated this apartment from Hindenburg’s dwelling. It was like a joint household—which also included State Secretary Meissner and Oskar von Hindenburg. All four together looked spitefully on while the general played his cards, obstructed him when they could, and ultimately had the satisfaction of seeing Schleicher fail—at a high price.
Basically, the moment was favorable for Schleicher’s plans. For the crisis Hitler was facing had just reached its height, and the pressures upon him were greater than any he had previously known. The rank and file were seething with impatience and disappointed hopes. Moreover, the party seemed about to be crushed by its burden of debt. Creditors were growing restless—the printers of the party newspapers, the makers of uniforms, the suppliers of equipment, the landlords of business offices, and the innumerable holders of promissory notes. With flippant logic Hitler later admitted that at the time he had borrowed to the hilt because victory would make repayment easy and defeat would make it superfluous. On all the street corners storm troopers hung about, extending collection boxes to passers-by “like discharged soldiers whom the warlord has given, instead of a pension, a permit for begging.” “For the wicked Nazis!” they could cry ironically. Konrad Heiden has reported that many desperate SA subleaders were running to opposition parties and newspapers to betray alleged secrets for hard cash. There were other signs of decay. The motley crowd of opportunists that had gathered around the rising movement was gradually beginning to disperse. In the Landtag elections in Thuringia, formerly one of Hitler’s bastions, the NSDAP received its most stunning setback. Goebbels’s diary entry for December 6 notes: “The situation in the Reich is catastrophic. Since July 31 we have suffered almost 40 per cent losses in Thuringia.” Goebbels later admitted publicly that at that time he had sometimes wondered whether the movement would not perish after all. In the offices controlled by Gregor Strasser statements of resignation from the party piled up.
With the skepticism about the party’s future Hitler’s whole concept came into question. He had repeatedly rejected offers of partial power but had not managed to win total power. The investiture of Schleicher represented one more miscarriage of his policy. To be sure, his stand had its own impressive consistency. But we might ask, as one commentator did at the time, whether Hitler’s unyieldingness had not by now become stupidity. At any rate, a sizable band of his followers, headed by Strasser, Frick, and Feder, felt that the opportunity to come to “power” had been allowed to slip by. True, the Depression to which the party owed so much was far from over; the total number of the unemployed, including the “invisible” jobless, had been set at 8.75 million in October, 1932, and t
he country was heading into a new winter of misery with all its predictable demoralizing and radicalizing effects. But the experts claimed to see signs of a turning point. And in foreign policy also the long-delayed process of equalization was once more on its way. Hitler’s all-or-nothing slogan, as the Strasser group recognized, was fundamentally revolutionary in nature and therefore stood in contradiction to the tactics of legality. They were now afraid that Schleicher might once more dissolve the Reichstag and call an election. The party was neither financially nor psychologically able to cope with another campaign.
It can no longer be determined how large a following Strasser commanded and how ready it was to obey him against the Führer. One version has it that Hitler gave way and was on the point of permitting Strasser to enter the cabinet, since such a solution would preserve his own charismatic claim to all or nothing and would at the same time bring the party to power. According to this version, Göring and Goebbels pressed Hitler to return to his unyielding course. According to other informants, he kept to that course throughout. It is likewise uncertain whether Schleicher, in negotiations on the formation of his “cabinet of anticapitalist nostalgia,” offered Strasser the posts of Vice-Chancellor and Minister of Labor in return for a promise from Strasser to split the party. Nor is there real proof that Strasser had any thought of outmaneuvering Hitler. He may simply have acted with the self-assurance of the second man in the party, feeling entitled to take up negotiations on his own—perhaps just like Göring, who, according to still another version, proposed himself to Schleicher as Minister of Air Transport. Out of the welter of secret agreements, implied pledges, and presumptuous claims, scarcely a single reliable document has survived. What is thoroughly documented is the confusion of intrigues, the cabals, accusations, and embittered rivalries. This was the other face of the party based entirely on the Führer idea and the principle of loyalty. In the absence of any firm ideology or objective principles, every issue was decided on purely personal grounds. The leadership remained to the last a retinue of mutually feuding satellites around Hitler, with each against each at some time or other.
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