The Third Reich

by Thomas Childers

  As 1919 turned to 1920, Hitler was fast winning a reputation as a firebrand speaker; his appearances were a spectacle. He seemed to be everywhere. He spoke in beer halls, in auditoriums, theaters, on street corners, in parks, in front of crowds large and small. The themes never varied: the November criminals, the bankruptcy of democracy, the Jewish world conspiracy, the menace of Marxism. All delivered at a fever pitch of rage and fury that found ample resonance in the climate of fear and resentment and anger that prevailed in post-revolutionary Munich.

  Those feelings of betrayal were stoked by the actions of the victorious Allies, who in the summer of 1919 delivered a body blow to the progressive forces attempting to establish Germany’s first working democracy. In January 1919 when representatives of the new, democratic Germany were summoned to the Bourbon palace at Versailles, they were informed that, contrary to their expectations, they were not there to negotiate but to receive the terms of the victors. The Germans had placed their hopes for fair treatment in the American president, Woodrow Wilson, whose famous “Fourteen Points” had, among other things, called for a peace without annexations and trumpeted the principle of national self-determination of peoples. The Germans had hoped—and believed—that Wilson’s terms would be the basis for the talks. But Wilson proved no match for David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau, whose nations, after five years of privation and slaughter, were not inclined to be generous. They were determined to weaken Germany by squeezing it, as the British prime minister so graphically put it, “until the pips squeak.” They proceeded to do just that by detaching territory from the Reich, imposing stiff reparations, and dismantling Germany’s military establishment. In the east, Germany was forced to cede West Prussia and Posen to the new Polish state, creating a Polish Corridor to the Baltic that separated East Prussia from Germany proper. To give the Poles a port on the sea, the German city of Danzig was placed under the administration of the League of Nations, and Memel, a narrow strip of German territory along the Baltic, was ceded to Lithuania.

  In the west, Alsace and Lorraine, annexed by Germany in 1871, were returned to France, and the thoroughly German Saar region was placed under League of Nations administration for fifteen years. Other smaller bits of territory were lost to Denmark and Belgium. Germany also forfeited all its overseas colonial territories in Africa and the South Pacific. But most shocking, and to the Germans most unjust, the British and French refused to allow a union of German Austria with the new German state. The Austrians made clear their desire for such a union, but the Allies were not about to see Germany, democratic or not, emerge from the war larger than it had been in 1914. To the Germans this merely proved that the treaty’s much heralded principle of national self-determination was nothing but a fraud, applying only in instances when it hurt German interests and not when it benefited the new democratic state.

  Though not as controversial but equally humiliating, the armaments clauses of the treaty essentially stripped Germany of its military establishment, destroying its ability to make war—and, the Germans complained, to defend itself. A large strip of territory in the Rhineland was declared a demilitarized zone, making it possible for French forces to march directly into Germany’s industrial heartland if they so chose. The army was reduced to 100,000 troops; Germany was allowed no air force, no tanks, or heavy artillery; the General Staff was disbanded; no conscription was allowed; and the navy was permitted only six warships and no submarines. The German army, pride of the nation, had virtually ceased to exist, rendering Germany, as its delegates bitterly complained, essentially defenseless.

  Finally, the Allies presented Germany with a bill for the financial losses suffered by the victorious powers, but no final sum was set at the conference. Germany was compelled to sign a blank check for reparations owed. Most galling, a war guilt clause, Article 231, forced Germany to accept sole responsibility for the outbreak of the war; it was the ultimate justification for the reparations and the other harsh clauses of the treaty.

  The terms of the treaty were made public in May 1919, igniting a firestorm of indignation in Germany. The armistice had been an unexpected jolt of harsh reality; the treaty was a profoundly destabilizing aftershock. Everyone from the far left to the far right was outraged by this “dictated peace,” this Diktat. Conveniently forgotten in their indignation were the draconian terms Germany had imposed on a defeated Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk only a year before, and there was little doubt that Germany was prepared to make equally extensive territorial demands and reparations claims against the Western Allies, had it won the Great War. Also dismissed was the fact that by agreeing to these terms Germany would avoid military occupation.

  So outraged was the German delegation that it refused to sign and left for Berlin. But the provisional government faced harsh realities. The British blockade was still in effect and would remain so until Germany agreed to the treaty, and the threat of Allied invasion loomed ominously over the proceedings. The Germans were given only five days to accept the terms or face military occupation. The deadline was extended by forty-eight hours because the current cabinet resigned in protest and a new government had to be formed. Finally, on June 28, 1919, the demoralized German delegation signed the treaty in the ornate Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

  The Versailles Treaty was a catastrophe for the new Republic and a boon to its enemies. It was to prove one of the treaty’s most profound weaknesses that the Allies, following Wilson’s lead, refused to deal with representatives of the old regime, allowing the Kaiser and his generals to evade responsibility for the catastrophe they had brought on the country—and Europe. Instead, the Allies compelled the democratic parties of the fledgling Republic to accept the humiliating terms. The timing could not have been worse. Since January elected representatives had been laboring in the provincial town of Weimar to write a constitution for the new state. Their deliberations resulted in a constitution for a democratic welfare state, with guarantees of individual rights, the enfranchisement of women, and universal suffrage, as well as a radical system of proportional representation that ensured that almost all views would be heard in the Reichstag.

  But these progressive accomplishments were buried under an avalanche of outrage from across the political spectrum when almost simultaneously the Allies presented their final peace terms in Paris. Although the parties that drafted the constitution of the Weimar Republic, as it quickly came to be called, had not been responsible for the disastrous conduct of the war or Germany’s capitulation, the new Republic would be saddled with the corrosive legacy of both. At the very outset of its tenuous existence, the Weimar Republic was identified with Germany’s defeat and the universally unpopular treaty that followed from it. It was a legacy the new democratic state never overcame.

  For Hitler, the treaty provided welcome ammunition for his assault on the “November criminals” and the democratic government they were trying to establish. It was, Hitler charged, a “treaty of shame,” a “second betrayal of the people,” its terms “the shackles of Versailles.” And, of course, it was the creation of the Jews. It became a staple of his speeches that by the end of 1919 were drawing increasing public attention to him. Initially, the DAP turned to more established speakers from the racialist (Völkisch) nationalist right to attract an audience, but it gradually became apparent that Hitler, who often spoke second on the program, was the real attraction. At the party’s first mass meeting, held in the spacious festival hall of the Hofbräuhaus on February 20, 1920, the keynote speaker was a well-known figure in right-wing circles. He spoke for two hours, and his address was met with polite applause from the roughly two thousand in attendance. When he finished, Hitler took the podium and began an expansive discussion of the party’s new program—the Twenty-five Points—which he and Drexler had recently formulated. As he spoke, the mood in the crowded hall underwent a dramatic change. It was as if an electrical charge had jolted the crowd, showering sparks of excitement throughout the giant hall. The audience repeatedly
interrupted Hitler with thunderous applause; fights broke out between loyalists and hecklers from the left, but Hitler continued on, carrying his audience with him. He had stolen the show.

  Hitler’s appearances soon became pieces of political theater, where confrontation was as important as the content of his remarks. Battles with the Communists and Socialists, who often appeared at the DAP’s public meetings, became a regular occurrence, adding an element of danger and excitement to a Hitler event. During one Hitler speech, which would go down in Nazi lore as the “Battle of the Hall,” a wild, chair-throwing melee erupted in the crowded Festival Hall of the Hofbräuhaus, but Hitler, dodging bottles and beer steins, stood his ground at the podium, refusing to yield or flee. On another occasion a group of toughs led by Hitler invaded a talk by a prominent Bavarian separatist, dragged the speaker off the platform, beat him, and took over the proceedings. For that brazen act of public mayhem, Hitler was arrested and sentenced to three months imprisonment—a typically light sentence for right-wing offenders—and then he spent only one month in Stadelheim prison. Among his followers, the jail sentence merely added to Hitler’s reputation as a stalwart hero persecuted for his courageous acts of defiance.

  Hitler carefully honed his skills as a public speaker, studying his gestures and expressions before a mirror. His photographer Heinrich Hoffmann took shots of Hitler auditioning different poses. His speeches were his own—no ghostwriter, no assistant. He wrote out notes on several large sheets of paper, which he kept to his left on the podium. When he finished with one sheet, he passed it unostentatiously to the right and continued. The notes served as an outline, and the impression he gave was that of a man consumed by passion, speaking extemporaneously from the heart. The effect on his audience was spectacular. Even his critics—and there were many—acknowledged the power he exerted over his listeners. He seemed to possess an instinctive ability to read a crowd, to speak their language, and to project his own disappointments and resentments as theirs, as Germany’s. The journalist Konrad Heiden, a particularly tenacious critic who closely followed Hitler’s career, was struck by the incongruities of his private person and his public being: “Silent in a circle of three and sluggish in conversation, without interest in his own private life, this miserable human nothing could think only in public terms, feel only the feeling of the mass, and when the nothing spoke with the people, it was as though the voice of the people were speaking.”

  Hearing Hitler address a large crowd on Munich’s Königsplatz, one observer was overwhelmed by the performance—a reaction that was not uncommon.

  Critically I studied this slight, pale man, his dark hair parted on one side and falling again and again over his sweating brow. Threatening and beseeching, with small, pleading hands and flaming, steel-blue eyes, he had the look of a fanatic. . . . I do not know how to describe the emotions that swept over me as I heard this man. His words were like a scourge. When he spoke of the disgrace of Germany, I felt ready to spring on any enemy. His appeal to German manhood was a call to arms, the gospel he preached a sacred truth. He seemed another Luther. I forgot everything but the man; then, glancing round, I saw that his magnetism was holding these thousands as one. . . . The intense will of the man, the passion of his sincerity seemed to flow from him into me. I experienced an exaltation that could be likened only to religious conversion.

  With each passing month, the crowds grew larger, and Hitler’s influence within the DAP mushroomed. At his insistence, the party in 1920 changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party or NSDAP, conjuring up highly unorthodox—and confusing—associations with both the left and right. It was a mouthful, and its enemies were fond of calling its followers Nazis, a diminutive for Nationalsozialisten, just as the Socialists were often referred to as Sozis. Hitler displayed an uncanny, instinctive feel for propaganda, for marketing. He believed that the party needed a symbol, an emblem that would be instantly recognized and associated with the NSDAP. He selected the swastika, an ancient Sanskrit symbol that was also found among the native tribes of North America. It was occasionally painted on the helmets of the Free Corps and other right-wing groups, but the Nazis would make it their own. The party needed a flag, a banner to be carried in parades and to be draped on podiums at meetings. A black swastika emblazoned in the center of a stark white circle on a background of bright red was the design Hitler hit upon. The red, he reasoned, would appeal to workers, while the combination of black, white, and red, the old imperial colors, would reassure nationalists and others on the right. The party also adopted a handful of short pithy slogans—“the common good before the individual good” (Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz) and “Germany Awaken!” (Deutschland Erwache!) to appear on posters, leaflets, and other official publications of the party. With an easily recognizable symbol, a new and unusual name, a flag, and catchy slogans, Hitler, in modern advertising parlance, was creating a brand.

  Working with Drexler, Hitler had rewritten the party’s program, producing the “Twenty-five Points,” which would remain the core of the “unalterable” National Socialist platform throughout the party’s existence. The new program, echoed in hundreds of stump speeches, pamphlets, and later in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, called for the nationalization of trusts and cartels, the establishment of consumer cooperatives, “profit sharing in big business,” the “breaking of interest slavery” (whatever that meant—even Hitler seemed unclear), and the ennoblement of the German worker. Its language borrowed heavily from the left, referring to members as “party comrades,” invoking “German socialism,” and calling for a classless “Volksgemeinschaft,” a people’s community to overcome Germany’s traditional social, regional, and religious cleavages.

  The program also courted the middle class, especially small-business interests, calling for “the creation and maintenance of a sound Mittelstand.” It demanded “the immediate communalization of the big department stores and their leasing to small shopkeepers at low rents.” Since the major department store chains were Jewish-owned, the attack on them, the party believed, was a major selling point in its anti-Semitic agenda. In all government contracts and purchases, the party promised “the most favorable consideration to small businessmen . . . whether on the national, state, or local levels.” It also advocated the creation of corporatist “chambers based on occupation and profession” as a counterweight to the powerful labor unions and corporate giants.

  Like all rightist organizations and parties, the NSDAP’s program was bellicosely nationalistic and expansionist, calling for “the union of all Germans . . . in a Greater Germany” and “living space” (Lebensraum) in the East “for the nourishment of our people and the settlement of our excess population.” It reviled the odious Treaty of Versailles, with its fraudulent promises of the national self-determination of peoples, and its demilitarization of Germany that left the Reich virtually defenseless. It promised to undo the repellent clauses of the treaty, indeed, to smash this “treaty of shame” and liberate Germany from its shackles. It pledged to make Germany great again.

  Its most strident element, however, was its radical anti-Semitism. The party pledged to fight “against all those who create no values, who make high profits without any mental or physical work.” These profiteers and stock market capitalists, the party made clear, “are mostly Jews. They live the good life, reaping where they have not sown. They control and rule us with their money.” Germany should be governed only by Germans, and citizenship in the promised classless people’s community was to be a matter of race. Only people “of German blood” could become people’s comrades (Volksgenossen) and only people’s comrades could become citizens of the Greater German Reich. As Point Four of the program emphatically declared, “No Jew, therefore, can be a Volksgenosse.” Jews and other non-Germans were to be excluded from the rights of citizenship and expelled from all public offices at all levels of government. There was little new or original about such ideas; most were staples of virtually every far-right party and organizati
on in Germany. What was distinctive was the insistent interweaving of left and right in the program and the party’s robust determination to win support from Germany’s working class. Certainly the NSDAP was, as Bavaria’s interior minister put it, “the noisiest and stormiest of the nationalist groups,” but, he added, the party’s most salient feature in 1920 was its virulent, unrelenting anti-Semitism. Although other right-wing parties indulged in anti-Semitic rhetoric, none could compare with the Nazis’ vicious diatribes against the Jews. For Hitler and the NSDAP, anti-Semitism was not ancillary to the party’s message of anti-Marxism and radical nationalism; it was the connective tissue that held the program together, the sinews of the party’s propaganda, the core of its ideology.

  As Hitler shrilly proclaimed in speech after speech, the Jews were behind “Bolshevism,” “Free Masonry,” “Pacifism,” “Wall Street capitalism,” “the rapacious Allies.” They were responsible for the loss of the war, for the inflation, for the French occupation of the Rhineland. The British press was “99 percent” Jewish; “the Jewish-democratic press of America” did the bidding of “large Jewish firms.” Who had enslaved the German proletariat? “Jews again!” Who controlled the League of Nations, and dominated “the history of the world over the heads of Kings and Presidents” and managed “brutally to enslave all peoples—Once more the Jews!” These and similar charges, made daily in Hitler’s speeches and in the party press, went far beyond the official program. Although Hitler and others within the party would repeatedly invoke the “immutable” Twenty-five Points, as if they were engraved in tablets of stone, the formal program slipped into the background, serving merely as a point of departure for more expansive, more plastic appeals.