Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

by Kershaw, Ian

  Hitler’s conviction of his own uniqueness conveyed itself to some, if not all, of those imprisoned alongside him in Landsberg. It was only in Landsberg, wrote Rudolf Heß, that he fully grasped the ‘mighty significance’ of Hitler’s personality.163 Some of the inmates, like Heß, would, on release, be instrumental in transmitting the ‘heroic’ image of Hitler within the party. Hermann Fobke, Hitler’s liaison with the north German faction and an internee in Landsberg along with around two dozen other young members of Hitler’s bodyguard, gave an indication of the impression Hitler was making on him in one of his letters to the Göttingen leader of the National Socialists, Ludolf Haase:

  It is my rock solid conviction that Hitler will not move one iota from his National Socialist thinking… And if it nonetheless sometimes looks as if that is the case, then it is only for the sake of more important goals. For he combines in himself the programmatist and the politician. He knows his goal, but also sees the ways to accomplish it. My stay here has strengthened what I still doubted in Göttingen: the faith in Hitler’s political instinct.164

  When he left Landsberg, to try to rebuild a crippled movement, Hitler’s leadership claims were, therefore, not only externally enhanced within the völkisch movement, but had been inwardly transformed and consolidated into a new perception of himself and awareness of his role. His sense of realism had by no means altogether disappeared beneath his messianic claims. He had no concrete notion of how his aims might be achieved. He still imagined that his goals might be brought to fruition only in the distant future.165 Since it consisted of only a few basic, but unchangeable tenets, his ‘world-view’ was compatible with short-term tactical adjustments. And it had the advantage of accommodating and reconciling a variety of otherwise conflicting positions on particular issues and fine points of ideology adopted by subordinate Nazi leaders. Within the framework of his basic ‘world-view’, Hitler himself was flexible, even indifferent, towards ideological issues which could obsess his followers. Opponents at the time, and many later commentators, frequently underestimated the dynamism of Nazi ideology because of its diffuseness, and because of the cynicism of Nazi propaganda.166 Ideology was often regarded as no more than a cloak for power-ambitions and tyranny.167 This was to misinterpret the driving-force of Hitler’s own basic ideas, few and crude as they were. And it is to misunderstand the ways those basic ideas came to function within the Nazi Party, then, after 1933, within the Nazi state. What mattered for Hitler was indeed the road to power. He was prepared to sacrifice most principles for that. But some – and those were for him the ones that counted – were not only unchangeable. They formed the essence of what he understood by power itself. Opportunism was always itself ultimately shaped by the core ideas that determined his notion of power.

  Following his months in Landsberg, Hitler’s self-belief was now such that, unlike the pre-putsch era, he could regard himself as the exclusive exponent of the ‘idea’ of National Socialism and the sole leader of the völkisch movement, destined to show Germany the path to its national salvation. The task facing him on release would be to convince others of that.

  8

  MASTERY OVER THE MOVEMENT

  ‘Duke and liegeman! In this ancient German… relationship of leader to companions, lies the essence of the structure of the NSDAP.’

  Gregor Strasser, 1927

  ‘I subordinate myself without further ado to Herr Adolf Hitler. Why? He has proved that he can lead; on the basis of his view and his will, he has created a party out of the united national socialist idea, and leads it. He and the party are one, and offer the unity that is the unconditional premiss of success.’

  Ernst Graf zu Reventlow,

  a former critic of Hitler, 1927

  Between the refoundation of the NSDAΡ in February 1925 and the beginnings of the new political and economic turmoil that was to usher in the shattering impact of the world economic crisis, the Nazi Movement was no more than a fringe irritant in German politics. Its leader, Hitler, faced with the rebuilding of his party from scratch after it had fractured into warring factions during his imprisonment in 1924, and banned from speaking in public in most of Germany until 1927 (in the biggest state of all, Prussia, until 1928), was confined to the political wilderness. A confidential report by the Reich Minister of the Interior in 1927, pointing out that the NSDAΡ ‘was not advancing’, realistically described the party as ‘a numerically insignificant… radical-revolutionary splinter group incapable of exerting any noticeable influence on the great mass of the population and the course of political events’.1

  In the conditions of economic recovery and apparent consolidation that prevailed in the four years following the currency stabilization the major props of Nazi success before 1923 were removed. A semblance of ‘normality’ came over the Weimar Republic. These were Weimar’s ‘golden years’. With Stresemann at the helm, the Locarno Treaty of 1925 (recognizing the western borders of the Reich as determined in the Versailles Treaty) and Germany’s entry into the League of Nations the following year brought the country back into the international fold. At home, despite nationalist opposition, the Dawes Plan took much of the heat out of the reparations issue by regulating and substantially easing the rate of German repayment. It would be five years before the issue became sensitive again, when a further attempt – the Young Plan – in 1929 to establish terms for clearing the reparations burden stirred a new wave of nationalist agitation. Meanwhile, despite governmental instability, the new Republic seemed to be settling down. Beneath the four changes of administration between 1925 and 1927, there was a good deal of continuity in government coalitions.2 In the economy, after a sharp but short-lived recession in 1926, industrial production for the first time came to surpass the pre-war level. Real wages did the same. The welfare state made impressive progress. Health provision was far superior to the pre-war period. Public spending on housing increased massively. By the later 1920s, over 300,000 new houses a year were being built – a level to be reached in only two years during the Third Reich. Industrial disturbances fell. So did crime levels. The first glimmers of a mass-consumer society were visible. More people had radios, telephones, even cars.3 Shopping was increasingly carried out in big department stores. In all this, Germany in the mid-1920s followed patterns recognizable in much of Europe. America was the model, though Germany lagged far behind. These years also marked the high-point of Weimar culture, of neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) and the thriving of an extraordinary cultural avant-garde. The modernist architectural experiments of the Bauhaus, the Expressionist painting of leading artists such as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, the biting social commentaries in the pictures of Otto Dix and caricatures of George Grosz, the bold new musical forms attained by Arnold Schönberg and Paul Hindemith, the poetic genius of Bertolt Brecht’s plays: all became synonymous with Germany’s cultural pre-eminence in the 1920s.4 Mass entertainment also flourished. Sporting events drew increasing numbers of spectators. Boxing, football, and motor-sports were especially popular.5 Cinemas and dance-halls sprouted up on urban street-corners. The Charleston, shimmy and foxtrot were the rage. Young people in big cities were more likely to be attracted to hot jazz than to Heimatlieder.6 In the countryside, life continued at a more leisurely pace. ‘Apart from a few cases of fire, there are no notable disturbances of public safety to report,’ began the sleepy half-monthly dispatch of the Government President of Upper Bavaria in February 1928.7 Five years earlier, his reports had been dominated by the activities of Hitler and his Movement. It was as if a storm had burst in 1923. The calm that followed held out little hope of future success for the Nazi Party.

  The völkisch Right’s residual support had dwindled to around 3 per cent of the population by late 1924. In the 1928 Reichstag election this fell still further: the NSDAΡ (campaigning in a Reichstag election for the first time under its own name) gained a mere 2.6 per cent of the vote. Over 97 per cent of the electorate did not want Hitler. Under the present-day constitution of the Feder
al Republic, the Nazis’ percentage of the vote would have gained them no seats at all. Even under the Weimar electoral system, only twelveNazis took their seats among the 491 deputies returned to the Reichstag.8 Growing unrest in farming communities and agitation surrounding the Young Plan helped the NSDAΡ to improve on this disastrous performance in regional elections in 1929. Even so, without the Depression and the calamitous effect upon Germany from the end of that year, the Nazi Party may well have broken up and faded into oblivion, remembered essentially as a passing phenomenon of the post-war upheaval. Hitler himself would have been recalled as a one-time firebrand who burnt his fingers in an absurd putsch attempt and never again became a force in German politics.

  As long as the German economy offered prospects of recovery and future prosperity, the fragile political fabric of the new democracy did not collapse. Without such a collapse, and as long as the anti-democratic élites with a leverage on power – particularly the army leadership, but also the big landowners, many of the captains of industry, and the top echelon of the civil service – retained their detached loyalty to the Republic, there was little or nothing that Hitler and his party could do to gain a foothold in the mainstream of politics, let alone to stake a claim to power. However, it is as well not to be dismissive of the importance of these ‘wilderness years’ between 1924 and 1929 in laying the platform for the later triumphant rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party. During this period, Hitler became incontestably established as the leader of the radical Right. In the process, the NSDAP was transformed into a ‘leader party’ of a unique kind, with the character it was to retain, and later to impart to the German state. Hitler by this time was no conventional party chairman, nor even a leader among others, primus inter pares. He was now ‘the Leader’. Between 1925 and 1929, at first with some difficulty, he had established outright and complete mastery over his movement.

  By 1929, the organization of the party, which had been built up to accompany its nationwide expansion (however thinly spread at first), bore little comparison with the hand-to-mouth administration of the pre-putsch party, and placed it in a far stronger position to exploit the new crises that descended on Germany from the autumn of that year. The activist cadres had also grown in strength. Despite its miserable showing at the polls, the party’s own figures of 100,000 members in October 1928 were almost twice as high as the membership rolls on the eve of the putsch.9 Though the voters were still few in number, the activist core of mainly dedicated fanatics was relatively large.10 Finally, though the factionalism inherent in radical rightist movements still simmered just below the surface, not infrequently breaking through into open conflict, the NSDAP was a far more cohesive force by 1929 than it had been before the putsch. And by then, its rivals on the extreme Right had disappeared, lost all significance, or been absorbed into the Nazi Movement.

  These developments were strongly influenced by Hitler’s changed leadership position. As we have noted, Hitler was before the putsch only one of the leaders of the Right, and, with the main emphasis in 1923 on paramilitary politics, heavily dependent upon forces outside his own movement. Despite the beginnings of the leadership cult which some of his followers attached to him, he was still regarded at that time as merely one exponent – however important – of National Socialism (with its myriad forms of emphasis and interpretation). By 1929, his dominance in the movement was absolute, the ‘idea’ now as good as inseparable from the Leader. The Hitler cult had caught hold among the party faithful in ways scarcely imaginable before 1923, and was now well on the way to elevating the Leader above the party. For some leading figures in the party, the cult was encouraged, or at least tolerated, because it served successfully as the focus of growing support. Above all, it was accepted because it was a crucial adhesive, alone capable of holding together the party which otherwise, as 1924 had shown, was likely to splinter into feuding factions. But for opponents and for supporters alike, National Socialism came in these years to mean exclusively ‘the Hitler Movement’. The platform was created for the subsequent rapid spread of the Leader cult, once the breakthrough of popular support had been attained in 1930, and for the later near deification of Hitler in the Third Reich itself.

  Hitler’s own contribution to the transformation of the NSDAP in these years should not be exaggerated. What is remarkable, indeed, is not how much, but how little, Hitler personally had to do to bring about the restructuring of the NSDAP in these years so that it was in a position to challenge for power once circumstances again began to favour it.

  In essence, Hitler’s crude scheme of the path to national redemption and rebirth remained as it had been since his entry into politics: mobilization of the masses, takeover of the state, destruction of internal enemies, preparation for external conquest.11 His ideological ‘vision’ was, at this stage at least, of importance mainly in further ‘rationalizing’ to himself the prejudices and phobias he had long carried with him, and in conveying a compelling image of a political ‘visionary’ to his followers. His sole recipe, as always, was to work for the ‘nationalization’ of the masses through ceaseless propaganda and agitation, and to wait for events to turn in his favour. The certainty that they would do so – the certainty of the fanatic – impressed those drawn to his message. It helped to shape the aura around Hitler, the ‘messianic’, ‘visionary’ image. However, the growth of the Führer cult – though Hitler did nothing to prevent it, other than prohibiting its most tasteless excesses – was brought about by his followers. And the important restructuring of the party’s organization was largely the work of Gregor Strasser. Hitler’s indispensability to the völkiscb Right had been demonstrated when it disintegrated during his time in Landsberg. No other leader could rally it and hold it together as he could. And no speaker could draw the crowds like he could. Beyond that, his main contribution to the inner strengthening of the NSDAP in this period amounted to an uncompromising stance – even in adversity – towards all potential threats to his authority, and the utilization of his unique leadership position to bypass or override all ideological conflicts in the single-minded pursuit of power.

  Despite the modest growth (from a low base) in party support in 1929, neither Hitler nor any other leading Nazi had any inkling about the speed with which the political breakthrough was to follow. But once the breakthrough came, the party was, following the changes since its refoundation in 1925, in a position to exploit the new conditions it had been powerless to produce.

  I

  Hitler spent Christmas Eve 1924 with the Hanfstaengls in their splendid new villa in Munich’s Herzogpark. He had put on weight during his time in prison, and looked a little flabby. His blue suit was flecked with dandruff on the collar and shoulders. Four-year-old Egon Hanfstaengl was glad to see his ‘Uncle Dolf’ again.12 Within two minutes, Hitler was asking to hear Isolde’s ‘Liebestod’ on Hanfstaengl’s elegant Blüthner grand piano. Wagner’s music, as Hanfstaengl had often noticed, could transform Hitler’s mood. His initial nervousness and tension disappeared. He became relaxed and cheerful. He admired the new house, then suddenly stopped in mid-sentence, glanced over his shoulder, and explained that he had not lost his habit from prison of imagining he was being observed through the peephole. It was, as Hanfstaengl realized, a pathetic piece of play-acting. Putzi had seen Hitler in Landsberg, relaxed and comfortable; and there had been no peephole in his room. He noticed that Hitler had a good appetite during the meal of turkey followed by his favourite Viennese sweet pastries, but that he scarcely touched the wine. Hitler subsequently explained that he had begun on leaving Landsberg to cut out meat and alcohol in order to lose weight.13 He had convinced himself that meat and alcohol were harmful for him, and, ‘in his fanatical way,’ went on Hanfstaengl, ‘finally made a dogma out of it and from then on only took vegetarian meals and alcohol-free drinks.’14 After the meal, Hitler treated the family to his war-memories, marching up and down the room, imitating the sounds of different sorts of artillery fire at the battle of the Somme. Late in
the evening, a well-connected artist, Wilhelm Funk, dropped in at the Hanfstaengls’. He had known Hitler for quite some time, and now ventured his views on how the party could be built up again. Hitler replied in a familiar, and revealing, tone. For one who had ‘come up from the bottom’, he said, ‘without name, special position, or connection’, it was less a matter of programmes than hard endeavour until the public was ready to see ‘a nameless one’ as identical with a political line. Hitler thought he had now reached that position, and that the putsch had been of value to the movement: ‘I’m no longer an unknown, and that provides us with the best basis for a new start.’15

  The new start was Hitler’s priority. The immediate aim was to have the ban on the NSDAP lifted. His first political act was to call on his old ally Pöhner, the former Munich Police President. Through a well-placed intermediary, Theodor Freiherr von Cramer-Klett, a meeting with the Bavarian Minister President Heinrich Held was arranged for 4 January. Pöhner was also influential in persuading Gürtner, the Bavarian Minister of Justice (whom Hitler was to make Reich Minister of Justice in 1933), to have the other Nazis detained in Landsberg released, among them Rudolf Heß.16

  The meeting with Minister President Held on 4 January, only a fortnight after Hitler’s release and the first of three meetings between the two, went well. No one else was present. Hitler was prepared to act humbly. It was his ‘journey to Canossa’. He agreed to respect the authority of the state without condition, and to support it in the struggle against Communism. He distanced himself sharply from Ludendorff’s attacks on the Catholic Church, a necessary step since the General’s vociferous anti-clericalism – scarcely a winning formula in Bavaria – had recently become notably strident, and linked to an all too public row (involving a court case for libel, which Ludendorff lost) with Rupprecht, the Crown Prince of Bavaria.17 Behind the public façade of continued reverence for the figurehead of the völkisch movement, Hitler’s willingness during his meeting with the Bavarian premier to dissociate himself from Ludendorff was not only shrewd, but also a sign of his increasing estrangement from the General, which would rapidly accelerate into complete alienation by 1927.