Hitler
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Hitler himself, in order to improve his bargaining position and shore up the party’s claims to power, concentrated all his forces on the Landtag elections that were to take place on January 15 in the miniature state of Lippe. He conducted one of his most lavish election campaigns. Assembling the best known party speakers in the castle of Baron von Oeynhausen, he sent them out night after night, saturating the little state with the Nazi message. On the first day, Goebbels noted, “I have spoken three times, partly in tiny peasant villages.” Hitler himself addressed eighteen demonstrations within a few days. With that sure psychological insight which his critics failed to understand or regarded with disdain he saw that this election offered him an unparalleled opportunity. From the start he hammered away at the theme that this was to be the decisive test in the struggle for power, and he managed to impose this view of the election on the country at large. Thus the German public awaited this marginal event, the decision of some 100,000 voters, as if it were a kind of trial by ordeal that would decide “the political future of a nation of 68 millions.”
As a result of his massive commitment, on January 15 Hitler won his first success since the July elections. Even so, the party, with 39.5 per cent of the vote, lagged behind the share of the vote it had won in July. Moreover, the democratic parties, in particular the Social Democratic Party, in toto achieved greater gains than Hitler’s party. But compared with the results of the November election, the results in Lippe were good. Instead of reading this success in terms of the excessive effort behind it, the public was persuaded that the Hitler movement had regained its irresistible impetus. Even the heads of the government took this view. And Hitler’s own self-confidence mounted.
On January 18 Hitler met with Franz von Papen in the Berlin apartment of Joachim von Ribbentrop, a liquor salesman who had recently joined Hitler’s movement. At this meeting Hitler demanded the chancellorship for himself. Papen replied that his influence with the President was not great enough for him to put across such a demand. That refusal nearly blocked the negotiations, and only the sudden inspiration of involving Hindenburg’s son started them moving again. The meeting took place a few days later, with extraordinary precautions to insure secrecy. Hitler and his team entered von Ribbentrop’s apartment under cover of darkness, from the garden side. Meanwhile, Oskar von Hindenburg and State Secretary Meissner first appeared ostentatiously at the opera. Shortly after the intermission they slipped out of their box. Papen, for his part, was brought to the meeting in Ribbentrop’s car.
As soon as everyone was present, Hitler asked the President’s son to step into another room with him. Suddenly, Oskar von Hindenburg, who had insisted on being accompanied by Meissner, found himself forced into a man-to-man encounter with Hitler. To this day no one knows what was said during their two-hour private talk. Hitler must have attempted to swing the President’s son over to his side by a combination of blackmail and bribery. Among the threats there might well be the charge, repeatedly raised by the Nazis, that Hindenburg had participated in a coup d’état against Prussia. Hitler may also have hinted that the Nazis would publicize the tax evasion by the Hindenburgs when Estate Neudeck was transferred to them.54 In addition, Hitler’s magnetic personality must have made an impression upon the President’s opportunistic son. In any case, Oskar, who had come to the conference prejudiced against Hitler, remarked to Meissner on his way home that there was no alternative, that Hitler would have to become Chancellor—especially now that Papen had agreed to accept the Vice-Chancellorship.
At this moment Schleicher seems for the first time to have realized what was brewing. On January 23 he called on Hindenburg and admitted that his plan for splitting the Nazi party and providing a parliamentary basis for the cabinet had failed. He then asked the President for powers to dissolve the Reichstag, declare a state of emergency, and issue a general ban on the National Socialist and Communist parties. Hindenburg, however, reminded him of their disagreement of December 2. At that time Papen had proposed a similar solution, but Schleicher had scotched it. The situation had changed, the Chancellor replied. But this reasoning had no effect on the old man; after talking the matter over with Meissner, he denied Schleicher’s request.
As might be expected, the camarilla saw to it that the public was immediately informed of Schleicher’s wish to dissolve the Reichstag and rule by decree. There was a general outcry. The Nazis made a great fuss over “Primo de Schleicheros’ ” would-be coup d’état. The Communists, too, were understandably indignant. And the Chancellor lost the remnant of the prestige he had enjoyed among the democratic Center parties. This unanimous reaction made its impression on Hindenburg and may have made him look with greater favor on plans for a Hitler cabinet. On January 27, moreover, Göring called on Meissner at the presidential palace and asked him to inform the “revered Field Marshal” that Hitler, unlike Schleicher, had no intention of burdening the President’s conscience by violating the law but would practice strict and loyal adherence to the Constitution.
Meanwhile, the tireless Papen was pushing matters forward. His thought was to make the planned cabinet more acceptable to Hindenburg by securing participation of the German Nationalists and of the Stahlhelm leaders, who were close to the President’s heart. While Duesterberg vigorously disagreed that there was anything like the so-called compelling necessity for a Hitler cabinet, Seldte and Hugenberg fell in with Papen’s plans. Having learned nothing from the experiences of recent years, Hugenberg declared with self-assurance “that nothing much would be able to happen”; Hindenburg would be remaining President and commander in chief of the armed forces, Papen would be Vice-Chancellor, he himself would be taking charge of the entire economy, and Seldte of the Ministry of Labor. “We’ll be boxing Hitler in.”
Hindenburg himself, tired, confused, and capable of grasping the situation only for brief spells, was at this time evidently still thinking of a Papen cabinet with Hitler as Vice-Chancellor. On the morning of January 26 General von Hammerstein, army commander in chief, called on him to express his concern about the way things were going. Hindenburg was “quick to suppress any attempt to influence him politically, but then said, apparently to reassure me, that he ‘had no intention at all of making the Austrian lance corporal Defense Minister or Chancellor.’ ” But next day Papen called on the President and reported that a Papen cabinet was impossible at the moment. Now Hindenburg stood alone in his resolve not to have Hitler form a government.
The factors that made him change his mind in the course of the following day are almost too complicated to list. Among them were the schemings of the camarilla, the blackmail of the NSDAP, the pressure of his friends from among the large landowner and nationalist groups. The effect of all this counsel was that the name of Schleicher ceased to represent an alternative either to Hindenburg or anyone else. Another significant factor was Papen’s promise to the President that the new government would be made up exclusively of members of the Right. For the thing Hindenburg was most set against was what was summed up in his exhausted mind as “rule of the union functionaries.” The prospect of a rightist government had been one of the decisive elements in his dismissal of Brüning; now the same promise was being dangled before him if he would get rid of Schleicher.
The party leaders, whom Hindenburg once more consulted, also turned against General Schleicher. But they were not in favor of another try with Papen. Rather, they indicated, the time had come at last to summon Hitler to power, with all appropriate guarantees; let him be exposed to that chastening by responsibility, which they had all undergone. The republic had truly reached the end of its rope.
On the morning of January 28 Schleicher made one last attempt to regain control. He let the public know, through the press, that he would ask Hindenburg for powers to dissolve the Reichstag or offer his resignation. Toward noon he went to the presidential palace. At this time he himself clearly knew nothing about the imminence of Hitler’s chancellorship—a measure of his loss of grip. On the contrary, he seem
s to have counted to the last on Hindenburg’s support. He had assumed office with the President pledged to give him the power of dissolution of the Reichstag at any time. But the President tersely turned down his request. Stung to the quick, Schleicher is reported to have said angrily: “I concede your right, Mr. President, to be dissatisfied with the way I have conducted my office, although you assured me of the contrary four weeks ago in writing. I concede your right to depose me. But I do not concede you the right to make alliances with someone else behind the back of the Chancellor you yourself summoned to office. That is a breach of faith.” Hindenburg thought for a moment, then answered. He stood with one foot in the grave, he said, and did not know whether or not he might regret his decision in heaven. Schleicher is supposed to have shot back: “After this breach of confidence, Your Excellency, I would not be too sure that you will go to heaven.”55
Schleicher had scarcely left when Papen, in conjunction with Oskar von Hindenburg and Meissner, began urging the President to appoint Hitler Chancellor. Still vacillating, Hindenburg made a last effort to evade responsibility for this decision. Contrary to custom, he did not personally request Hitler to form a new government, but appointed Papen his homo regius with the assignment “to clarify the political situation by negotiations with the parties and to determine the available possibilities.”
That afternoon Papen was able to win Hugenberg by promising his party two seats in the cabinet. He then got in touch with Hitler. In the elaborate preliminary talks they had already agreed that Hitler’s people should have the Ministry of the Interior and a Ministry for Civil Air Transport, to be newly created especially for Göring. Now Hitler insisted on the posts of Reich Commissioner for Prussia and Prussian Minister of the Interior. These would assure him control of the Prussian police. In addition, he demanded new elections.
Once more everything teetered. On hearing of Hitler’s further demands, Hindenburg had a fresh siege of foreboding. He calmed down only after he had received Hitler’s assurance—in highly equivocal words—“that these would be the last elections.” Finally the President let things take their course. With the exception of the post of Reich Commissioner for Prussia—which was reserved for Papen himself—all of Hitler’s demands were met. The decision had been taken.
On the afternoon of January 29 a rumor arose that Schleicher, together with General Hammerstein, had put the Potsdam garrison on alert and was planning to seize the President, proclaim a state of emergency, and with the aid of the army take power. Days later, Oskar von Hindenburg’s wife was still exercised over the matter: the plan had called for the President’s being removed to Neudeck “in a sealed cattle car.” Hitler, who was in Goebbels’s apartment on Reichskanzlerplatz when he heard the rumor, reacted with an audacious gesture: he instantly placed the Berlin SA on alert and, in a flamboyant anticipation of the power he expected to receive, ordered six nonexistent police battalions to prepare to occupy the Wilhelmstrasse.
The author of this rumor has never been traced, but the person who profited by it is obvious. None other than Papen used the phantom of a threatening military dictatorship to push forward his plans. General von Blomberg had been summoned from Geneva, and on the morning of January 30 Papen was sworn in as Minister of Defense, before any other members of the cabinet. Evidently this was to prevent any last-minute desperate intervention by Schleicher, who on his own had been making contact with Hitler. Hugenberg, who had obstinately rejected Hitler’s demand for new elections, felt blackmailed by the new threat of a military take-over. To avert any possibility that the mysterious reports of an imminent putsch might be clarified, Papen summoned Hugenberg at seven o’clock in the morning on January 30 to beg him—“in greatest excitement”—to change his mind. “Unless a new government has been formed by eleven o’clock this morning,” he exclaimed, “the army will march!” But Hugenberg would not be stampeded. More keenly than Papen, he saw through Hitler’s scheme. The Nazis wanted to improve on the election results of November 6. With the power and unlimited funds of the state at their disposal, they could unquestonably do so. No new elections, Hugenberg said.
Once again his stubbornness seemed to be imperiling the whole agreement. At fifteen minutes before ten o’clock Papen led the members of the projected government through the snow-covered ministerial gardens to the presidential palace and into Meissner’s office. There he formally greeted Hitler as the new Chancellor. Even as he expressed his thanks, Hitler declared that “now the German people must confirm the completed formation of the cabinet.” Hugenberg resolutely spoke up against this. A vehement argument broke out. Hitler finally went up to his antagonist and gave him his “solemn word of honor” that the new elections would change nothing in regard to the persons composing the cabinet. He would, he said, “never part with any of those present here.” Anxiously, Papen followed this up: “Herr Geheimrat, would you want to undermine the agreement reached with such difficulty? Surely you cannot doubt the solemn word of honor of a German!”
The cheerful notion of boxing Hitler in and taming him thus came to grief at the first test. In purely arithmetic terms, it is true, the conservatives had managed to retain the advantage. There were three National Socialist as against eight conservative ministers, and virtually all the key positions in the government were in the hands of a group of men united on certain basic social and ideological principles. The trouble was that such men as Papen, Neurath, Seldte or Schwerin-Krosigk were not the right persons to box anyone in. For that they would have needed a sense of values and the energy to defend it. Instead they considered themselves summoned merely to preserve traditional privileges. Hitler’s readiness to accept such a numerically unfavorable arrangement testifies to his self-assurance and his deadly contempt for his conservative adversaries.
Now his would-be tamers had drawn Hugenberg into a window niche and were pleading with him to co-operate. Hugenberg held out. In the adjoining room, meanwhile, the President sent for State Secretary Meissner and wanted to know the meaning of the delay. “Watch in hand,” Meissner returned to the disputants: “Gentlemen, the President set the swearing-in for eleven o’clock. It is eleven-fifteen. You cannot make the President wait any longer.” And what could not be accomplished by the arm twisting of Hugenberg’s conservative friends, by Hitler’s cajolery and by Papen’s pleas, was done easily—for the last time, at the hour of the republic’s last agony—by the allusion to the legendary figure of the Field Marshal-President. Hugenberg was in the habit of referring to himself, with candid pride, as “a stubborn mule”; as recently as August, 1932, he had told Hindenburg that he had found Hitler “somewhat remiss at keeping agreements.” Now, however, knowing full well what was at stake, he yielded to the exigencies of Hindenburg’s appointments calendar. A few minutes later the cabinet had been sworn in.
Papen seems actually to have thought that he had put across a political master stroke. He had avenged himself upon Schleicher while at the same time using Schleicher’s concept of taming the wicked Nazis. He had satisfied his own ambition, which had swollen to absurd proportions during his brief, unexpected chancellorship, by entering the government once more. And he had made Hitler take a position of responsibility without turning control of the government over to him completely. For the leader of the NSDAP was not even the Chancellor of a presidential cabinet; he would have to maintain a parliamentary majority. Moreover, he did not enjoy Hindenburg’s confidence; it was Franz von Papen who continued to have a special relationship with the old President. In the negotiations Papen had insisted—this was one of the results he was proudest of—that he must participate in all conversations between Hitler and the President. Finally, Papen was also Vice-Chancellor and Prime Minister of Prussia. In the cabinet the Nazis held only the Ministry of the Interior, which did not control the federal police, and a Ministry without Portfolio which was intended to satisfy Göring’s vanity but not to have any powers. To be sure, Göring was also Prussian Minister of the Interior, and in Prussia this ministry did co
ntrol the police. But Papen was confident that he would block any independent action on Göring’s part. Finally, within the cabinet foreign policy, finance, economics, labor, and agriculture were in the hands of experienced conservatives, and command of the army still remained the prerogative of the President. Papen saw it as a brilliantly conceived, splendid combination, which, moreover, placed that troublesome Herr Hitler at the service of employers and big landowners and of Papen’s own plans for an authoritarian new state. His own unfortunate fling at the chancellorship seemed to have taught Papen that a modern industrial nation shaken by crisis could not be openly governed by the dismissed representatives of an outmoded epoch. By harnessing the slightly unsavory manipulator of the masses to his own wagon, Papen seemed to be solving the ancient problem of conservatism: that it did not enjoy the support of the people. In this sense, using the vocabulary of a political impresario, Papen complacently replied to all warnings: “No danger at all. We’ve hired him for our act.”
Hitler himself undoubtedly saw through this strategy from the start. His demand for new elections was intended as a direct counterstroke. By winning an unprecedented electoral triumph he wanted to break out of the box Papen had nailed together and with the sanction of the vote behind him throw off the role of puppet Chancellor. He certainly did not mean to let cheap words of honor stand in his way. Thus the “Cabinet of National Concentration” was already a system of crisscrossing mental reservations even before Hindenburg sent it out into the world with the words: “And now, gentlemen, forward with God!”