by Ian Kershaw
Finally, on home ground in Manchester, the Convenor and Fellows of SOFPIK, the club of which I am most proud to be a member, have shown their friendship and support for even longer than it has taken to write these two volumes on Hitler. I can never forget, though it is now many years ago, the sacrifices made by my mother and late father, who lived through Hitler’s war, to give me and my sister, Anne, the priceless opportunity to study at university. And, meanwhile, not just Betty, David, and Stephen, but now also as the years roll on Katie, Becky, and – though she is not yet aware of it – Sophie have lived in the shadow of a biography of Hitler for too long. I hope we can soon move out of this shadow and into the sunlight again. But I would like to thank them all as much as words can express for the different ways in which they have contributed to the making of this work.
I.K.
April 2000
1. The legacy of the First World War.
2. Poland under Nazi occupation.
3. The Western offensive, 1940: the Sichelschnitt attack.
4. The German Reich of 1942: the Nazi Party Gaue.
5. Nazi occupied Europe.
6. Limits of the German occupation of the USSR.
7. The Western and Eastern fronts, 1944–5.
8. The Soviet drive to Berlin.
1936: HITLER TRIUMPHANT
‘That this new deed of Hitler is another milestone on the way to the hell’s jaws of destruction seems hardly to have entered the consciousness of anyone.’
‘Germany Report’ of the Sopade, April 1936
I
‘After three years, I believe that, with the present day, the struggle for German equal rights can be regarded as closed.’ The day was 7 March 1936. The words were those of Hitler addressing the Reichstag as German troops, defying the western democracies, crossed into the demilitarized Rhineland. ‘Great are the successes which Providence has let me attain for our Fatherland in these three years,’ Hitler continued. ‘In all areas of our national, political, and economic life, our position has been improved… In these three years, Germany has regained its honour, found belief again, overcome its greatest economic distress and finally ushered in a new cultural ascent.’ In this paean to his own ‘achievements’, Hitler also explicitly stated that ‘we have no territorial claims to make in Europe’. He ended with an appeal – received to rapturous acclaim – to support him in new ‘elections’ (though only one party, the Nazi Party, was standing), set for 29 March.1 The outcome of these ‘elections’ was a vote of 98.9 per cent backing Hitler. But however ‘massaged’ the figures had been, whatever the combined weight of propaganda and coercion behind them, there can be no doubt that the overwhelming mass of the German people in March 1936 applauded Hitler’s recovery of German sovereignty in the Rhineland (as they had his earlier steps in throwing off the shackles of Versailles). It was a major triumph for Hitler, both externally and internally. It was the culminating point of the first phase of his dictatorship.
Hitler’s triumph also marked the plainest demonstration of the weakness of France and Great Britain, the dominant powers in Europe since the First World War. Hitler had broken with impunity the treaties of Versailles and Locarno, the main props of the post-war peace-settlement. And he had signalled Germany’s reassertiveness and new importance in international affairs.
Within Germany, by this point, Hitler’s power was absolute. The largest, most modern, and most thrusting nation-state in central Europe lay at his feet, bound to the ‘charismatic’ politics of ‘national salvation’. His position as Dictator was unchallenged. No serious threat of opposition faced him.
The mood of national exhilaration whipped up by the Rhineland spectacular was, it is true, of its nature short-lived. The worries and complaints of daily life returned soon enough. Worker discontent about low wages and poor work conditions, farmer resentment at the ‘coercive economy’ of the Food Estate, the grumbling of small tradesmen about economic difficulties, and ubiquitous consumer dissatisfaction over prices continued unabated. The behaviour and corruption of party functionaries was as much a source of grievance as ever. And in Catholic areas, where the ‘Church struggle’ had intensified, the party’s attacks on the Church’s practices and institutions, the assault on denominational schooling, and the harassing of clergy (including highly publicized trials of members of religious orders for alleged foreign-currency smuggling and sexual impropriety) left the mood extraordinarily sour. But it would be as well not to overestimate the significance of the discontent. None of it was translated into political opposition likely to cause serious trouble to the regime.
Oppositional forces on the Left, the Communists and Socialists, were crushed, cowed, and powerless – dismayed at the supine acquiescence of the western democracies as Hitler continued to upturn the post-war international order. The propaganda image of a statesman of extraordinary boldness and political genius seemed as a consequence of weakness of the western powers to match reality in the eyes of millions. Under threat of draconian recrimination, the perilous illegal work of undercover resistance had continued, even revived, for a brief period in late 1935 and early 1936 as foodstuff shortages led to rising unrest in industrial areas, and was never halted. But following a huge onslaught by the Gestapo to crush all indications of a short-lived Communist revival, any threat of resistance from below by illegal organizations was effectively ruled out.2 Resistance cells, especially those of the Communists, were constant prey to Gestapo informers, and were as a result frequently penetrated, the members arrested and interned in prisons or concentration camps. It has been estimated that around one in two of the 300,000 Communist Party members of 1932 was imprisoned at some stage during the Third Reich – a statistic of unrelenting attritional repression.3 Even so, new cells invariably sprang up. Those risking liberty, even life, showed great courage. But they lacked any semblance of power or influence, had no contacts in high places, and consequently lacked all opportunity to overthrow the regime. By this time, they could pose no real threat to Hitler. Opposition endangering his dictatorship – leaving aside the unpredictable actions of an outsider acting alone, as would occur in 1939 – could now in practice only come from within the regime itself.4
Meanwhile, the pillars of the regime – armed forces, Party, industry, civil service – were loyal in their support.
The national-conservative élites who had helped Hitler into power in imagining that they would be able to control and manipulate him, had largely swallowed their differences. Disquiet in such circles had been marked especially during the gathering internal crisis of spring and summer which had been ended by the massacre of the stormtroopers’ leadership (and the liquidation of numerous other genuine or presumed opponents) in the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ on 30 June 1934. But whatever their continuing misgivings about anti-capitalistic tendencies in the Party, the highhanded behaviour of Party bosses, attacks on the Christian Churches, the lawlessness of Party formations, and other disquieting aspects of the regime, the conservative élites had by early 1936 not distanced themselves from Hitler in any serious fashion.
The armed forces, though the officer corps often turned up their noses at the vulgar upstarts now running the country, had fewer grounds than most for dissatisfaction. The tensions with the SA which had preoccupied the military leaders in the early months of the regime were now long past. The political murder of two generals, the former Reich Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Major-General Ferdinand von Bredow, in the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ had seemed a small price to pay for removing the scourge of SA leader Ernst Röhm and his associates. Meanwhile, military leaders had seen their aim of rebuilding a powerful Wehrmacht, cherished even in the dark days of the 1920s, fully backed.5 The army had been delighted when general conscription, despite the prohibition under the Versailles Treaty, had been reintroduced (as the basis of a greatly expanded thirty-six-division peacetime army) in March 1935. In line with Hitler’s promise in February 1933 ‘that for the next 4–5 years the main principle must
be: everything for the armed forces’,6 rearmament was now rapidly gathering pace. The existence of the Luftwaffe – a further flouting of Versailles – had been announced, without recrimination, in March 1935. And, remarkably, Great Britain had proved a willing accomplice in the undermining of Versailles in its willingness in June 1935 to conclude a naval treaty with the Reich allowing Germany to attain 35 per cent of the strength of the British Navy. With the remilitarization of the Rhineland Hitler had then accomplished a cherished desire of the military leadership long before they had contemplated such a move being possible. He was doing all that the leaders of the armed forces wanted him to do – and more. There could be few grounds for complaint.
Leaders of big business, though often harbouring private concerns about current difficulties and looming future problems for the economy, were, for their part, grateful to Hitler for the destruction of the left-wing parties and trade unions. They were again ‘masters in their house’ in their dealings with their work-force. And the road to massively increased profits and dividends was wide open. Even where Party interference was criticized, problems of export trade or shortage of raw materials were raised, or worries about the direction of the economy voiced, no industrialist advocated, even in private, a return to the ‘bad’ old democratic days of the Weimar Republic.
Some individuals from within the national-conservative élite groups – mainly in the leadership of the army and the upper echelons of the state bureaucracy – would some two years later at first gradually and falteringly begin to feel their way towards fundamental opposition to the Nazi regime. But at this time, they still saw their own interests, and what they took to be the national interest, served by the apparently successful policies of national assertiveness and reconstruction embodied in the figure of Hitler.
Only the intensified ‘Church Struggle’, causing heightened friction between clergy and churchgoers on the one side and Party activists on the other, cast a substantial shadow, notably in Catholic rural districts where the influence of the clergy remained unbroken, over what amounted otherwise to an extensive prevailing consensus (in part, of course, manufactured through a mixture of repression and propaganda). But the stance of both major Christian denominations was riddled with ambivalence. Though still wielding considerable influence over the churchgoing population, the clergy felt they had to tread warily in public pronouncements, particularly where religious matters were not directly concerned. In some ways, they were led by public opinion more than they were willing or able to lead it. They had to take account of the fact that Hitler’s national ‘successes’, most of all his triumph in remilitarizing the Rhineland, were massively popular even among the same members of their flocks who harshly criticized the Nazi attacks on the Churches.
The unrest stirred up by the ‘Church Struggle’ was extensive. But it was largely compartmentalized. It seldom equated with fundamental rejection of the regime, or with any commitment to active and outright political opposition. Fierce defence of traditional observances, customs, and practices against Nazi chicanery was compatible with support for Hitler personally, with approval for his assault on the Left, with applause for his national ‘triumphs’, with readiness to accept his discriminatory measures against Jews, with most measures, in fact, which did not directly impinge on Church affairs. Catholic bishops had, in the very first weeks of Hitler’s chancellorship, exhorted their charges to obedience to the new regime.7 And even at the height of the ‘Church Struggle’, they publicly endorsed its stance against ‘atheistic’ Bolshevism and affirmed their loyalty to Hitler.8 The brutality of the concentration camps, the murder in 1934 of the SA leaders, and the mounting discrimination against the Jews had brought no official protests or opposition. Similarly in a Protestant Church divided within itself, unease, criticism, or dissent over Nazi high-handedness towards the Church and interference in its affairs, practices, structures, and doctrine coexisted – apart from the examples of a few exceptional individuals – with official avowals of loyalty and a great deal of genuine approval for what Hitler was doing.
Underpinning Hitler’s unchallenged authority in spring 1936 was the adulation of the masses. Large sections of the population simply idolized him. Even his opponents acknowledged this. ‘What a fellow, Hitler. He had the courage to risk something,’ was a sentiment frequently recorded at the time by the underground socialist opposition. ‘The spirit of Versailles is hated by all Germans. Hitler has now torn up this accursed treaty and thrown it at the feet of the French,’ was the reason given for the upsurge of support for the Dictator even among those who up to then had been less than enthusiastic about him.9 In 1936, the German people – at any rate the vast majority of them – revelled in the national pride that Hitler (almost single-handedly, it often seemed, in the relentless trumpetings of effusive propaganda) had restored to the country.
The backing of a huge mass movement, the mainstay of his plebiscitary support, guaranteed that the flow of adulation was never stemmed. But the support for Hitler was genuine enough, and massive in extent. Most Germans, whatever their grumbles, were at least in some respects Hitler supporters by summer 1936. Unquestionably, the foreign-policy triumphs had united the overwhelming majority of the population behind his leadership. Admiration for the Führer was widespread. Indeed, at the level of humdrum daily life, too, many were prepared to credit Hitler with bringing about a change in Germany that seemed to them little short of miraculous. For most of those who did not belong to a persecuted minority, remain firm adherents of the suppressed Social Democrats or Communists, or feel wholly alienated by the attacks on the Churches, things seemed incomparably better than they had been when Hitler took over. Unemployment, far from increasing again (as the Jeremiahs had predicted), had practically been wiped out. Modestly, but noticeably, living standards were beginning to improve. More consumer goods were becoming available. The ‘people’s radio’ (Volksempfänger) was spreading to more and more households.10 Leisure pursuits, entertainment, and minor forms of tourism were expanding. The cinemas and dance-halls were full. And even if the much-trumpeted ‘glamour’ trips to Madeira or Norway on cruise-ships run by ‘Strength Through Joy’ (the leisure organization of the German Labour Front) remained the preserve of the privileged and made little real dent on class divisions, far more people were able to take advantage of days out in the country or visits to theatres and concerts.11 For many, even looking back long after the war, these were the ‘good times’.12
In a mere three years, Hitler appeared to have rescued Germany from the miseries and divisions of Weimar democracy, and to have paved the way for a grandiose future for the German people. The demagogue and political firebrand had apparently been transformed into a statesman and national leader of a stature to match that of Bismarck. That the the national revival had been accompanied by rigid authoritarianism, loss of civil rights, brutal repression of the Left, and intensifying discrimination against Jews and others thought unfit to belong to the ‘national community’ was seen by most as at least a price worth paying – by many as positively welcome.
Few at this stage had the foresight to imagine what would come – that Germany’s new international standing in spring 1936 would prove the prelude to boundless expansion, world war bringing slaughter on an immeasurable scale, unparalleled genocide, and the eventual destruction of the Reich itself. ‘That this new deed of Hitler is another milestone on the way to the hell’s jaws of destruction,’ the same perceptive report of the exiled Social Democratic movement added, ‘seems hardly to have entered the consciousness of anyone.’13
II
For most dictators, the acquisition of unrivalled power over the state would have been enough. For Hitler, this was no end in itself. In his thinking, power served a twin ideological purpose: destroying the Jews – for him, Germany’s mortal enemy; and, through their destruction, acquiring mastery over the entire continent of Europe – a platform for subsequent world dominance. Both interlocking aims, resting on a ‘world-view’ that
saw racial struggle and survival of the fittest as the key determinants in human history, had been central to his thinking since the 1920s. However uncharted the route to attaining them, these basic ideas, once formed, never left him.
The obsessiveness and tenacity with which he held to these fixed ideas were part of Hitler’s unique role in steering Germany, Europe, and the world to disaster. However, relatively few of the millions of followers attracted to Nazism on its road to power saw matters precisely as Hitler did, or were drawn by fanatical adherence to the fixed points of the personal ‘world-view’ that constituted his own prime ideological driving-force.14 The growing appeal of Hitler as an alternative to Weimar democracy rested to a far greater extent on the forcefulness of his uncompromising, frontal assault on a visibly failing political system undermined in high places and increasingly haemorrhaging mass support. During his rise to power, his central ideological tenets had been embedded within the general, all-embracing armoury of hate-filled tirades against the Weimar ‘system’ and within the appealing counter-image he conjured up of national rebirth once the ‘criminals’ who had instigated defeat and revolution, with catastophic consequences, had been destroyed. His success as a demagogue lay in his ability to say what the disaffected masses wanted to hear, to speak their language – to capture and exploit a psychology of despair and invest it with new hope for a phoenix-like resurgence of the nation. He was able as no one else to give voice to popular hatreds, resentments, hopes, and expectations. He spoke more stridently, more vehemently, more expressively and appealingly than any of those with a similar ideological message. He was the mouthpiece of the nationalist masses at a decisive time of all-embracing national crisis.