These aspects of the Nazi movement were widely noted, and they appealed to the sentimental socialism of the German people. Despite its enormous contrasts with the traditional left, the Nazi brand of socialism stemmed from the same social and intellectual crisis of the first half of the nineteenth century. To be sure, the Nazi movement was not rooted, as traditional socialism was, in the humanist tradition.
But it did aim to create an egalitarian society and a sense of fraternity among its members, to be achieved through what it called the Volksgemeinschaft, or community of the people. National Socialism rejected freedom, but the mood of the day placed more emphasis, in any case, on a sense of belonging and a place in the social order. The Nazis promised security and an improved standard of living, especially for working people and the petty bourgeoisie. The results included housing projects, community work programs, and the “beauty of work” plan, as well as social welfare programs ranging from subsidies during the winter months and “Nazi welfare” to the leisure cruises for workers organized by the Kraft durch Freude (“Strength through Joy”) organization.
The Nazi brand of socialism was particularly attractive because of its appeal to nationalism. This, and virtually only this, was what concealed the real nature of the Nazi revolution, encouraging the mistaken but widespread view, at the time and later, that National Socialism was essentially a conservative movement. In reality it was egalitarian and destructive of traditional structures. However, in wrapping its radical core in a layer of German nationalism, it seemed not only to assert the long-neglected national interest, but also to meld the general desire for change with the equally strong need to preserve the familiar. People wanted a new, modernized Germany but they also feared it, and the cultivation of ritualistic Germanic theater, folklore, and local customs provided a comfortable setting for a radical break with the past. It was the combination of apparent conservatism with promises of change, the tempering of the one with the other, that brought National Socialism a level of popularity that Marxism’s international socialism, with its adamant insistence on progress, could never achieve. Hitler’s appeal to Germany’s traditionally leftist working class cannot be understood if these factors are ignored-as they so often have been-or dismissed as mere demagoguery.
Increasingly convinced of the hopelessness of any opposition and hard pressed by the persecution and prohibitions they faced, many opponents of the Nazis-especially those on the left-decided to leave Germany. In so doing, however, they were abandoning the workers to their fates, as Carlo Mierendorff, later one of the leaders of the resistance group known as the Kreisau Circle, pointed out at the time. “They can’t just all go to the Riviera,” he replied when concerned friends advised him to flee.7 Opponents of the Nazis who remained in Germany had only two options: they could attempt to influence the course of events from within the system, enduring all the illusions, self-deceptions, and unwelcome involvements that almost inevitably accompany such a double life, or they could accept social exclusion and often personal isolation, turning their backs on the “miracle of a unifying Germany,” as the Nazis’ self-laudatory propaganda described the emerging sense of community and revival.
Many people who felt torn by this dilemma have described what it meant for them. Wilhelm Hoegner, the future prime minister of Bavaria, recalled wandering through the streets of Munich feeling that all of a sudden they had become hostile and threatening.8 Helmuth von Moltke’s mother felt profoundly uprooted, as if she “no longer belonged to the country.”9 Others have spoken of losing old friends, of an atmosphere of suspicion, of spying neighbors and the rapid disintegration of their social lives even as the alleged brotherhood of all Germans was being celebrated in delirious parades and pseudo-religious services, mass swearings of oaths and vows under domes of light, addresses by the Führer, nightly bonfires on hills and mountains, secular chants and hymns. All this fervor was fueled by the intense sensation that history was in the making. For the first time since the rule of the kaisers, Germans seemed to be living in a country which celebrated both leadership and political liturgy.
In the week leading up to the March 5 Reichstag elections, the Nazis pushed both national exaltation and unbridled violence to new heights. Goebbels proclaimed March 5 the “Day of the Awakening Nation” and orchestrated nationwide mass demonstrations and parades, processions and carefully staged appearances. The brilliance and ubiquity of these events left the Nazis’ coalition partner, the German National People’s Party, completely overshadowed. Meanwhile, the other parties were subjected to every kind of sabotage and disruption, while the police sat idly by in accordance with their instructions. By election day fifty-one anti-Nazis lay dead and hundreds had been injured. The Nazis themselves counted eighteen dead. On the eve of the election Hitler appeared in the city of Königsberg. Just as he was ending his rapt appeal to the German people—“Hold thy head high and proud once more! Now thou art free once again, with the help of God”—a hymn could be heard swelling in the background, and the bells of the Königsberg cathedral pealed during the final stanza. Meanwhile, on the hills and mountains along Germany’s borders, “bonfires of freedom” were lit.
Nazi expectations of overwhelming victory at the polls and at least an absolute majority in the Reichstag were to be dashed, however. Despite all they had done to intimidate their opponents, the National Socialists increased their vote by only about six points, to 43.9 percent of the total. The other parties suffered only minor losses. Having failed to win an absolute majority, the Nazis were forced to continue relying on the German National People’s Party, together with whom they had a scant majority of 51.9 percent of the vote. Angered at the results, Hitler complained to his cronies on the evening of the election that he would never be free of that German National “gang” as long as Hindenburg was alive.10
As the election results showed, many Germans were still unwilling to embrace the Nazis and their new era-far more unwilling, indeed, than Nazi propagandists would admit. Many citizens reacted to the election with curiously mixed feelings: enthusiasm for the new regime alternated with anxiety; hope for more jobs gave way to renewed doubts; confusion was resolved by the sense of pride the Nazis so skillfully evoked. Occasionally, especially on the far left, entire street-fighting organizations such as the Communist Rotfrontkämpferbund switched sides, joining ranks with those who had been their bitter enemies only days before. On the right, many non-Nazi groups hastened to “get in line” or even disband before being forced to do so. All this is well documented, but far less is known of the countless opponents of the regime who simply “disappeared” during the first weeks and months of Nazi rule. Police records show that by mid-October 1933 about twenty-six thousand people had been arrested, while many more vanished without legal formalities into the hastily constructed concentration camps that were spreading across the land. According to official figures, some three million people were incarcerated for political transgressions during the twelve years of Nazi rule; another statistic, however, shows that only 225,000 people were actually brought to trial in political cases during the first six years.11
* * *
Our picture of these years would not be complete without mention of how all established political formations, on both the left and the right, melted away without resistance. Nothing so reveals the exhaustion of the Weimar Republic as the pathetic end of its political parties and organizations. Even Hitler was astonished: “Such a miserable collapse would never have been thought possible,” he said in Dortmund in early July 1933.12 Prohibitions, seizures of buildings, and confiscations of property that a short time before would have brought Germany to the verge of civil war now elicited only shrugs. A “Potsdam Day” ceremony on March 21, 1933, celebrated the inauguration of the new parliament with a review of troops, organ music, and gun salutes. Former chancellor Heinrich Brüning commented that when he joined a column of deputies headed for the garrison church, where the ceremony took place, he felt as if he were
being taken “to the execution grounds.”13 There was more truth to this than he realized.
It could even be said that Brüning and his companions had sentenced themselves to their fate. They were not single-handedly responsible for the decline of the republic, even if they had hastened its demise through their weakness and blindness; the republic had had to face far too many opponents at home and abroad throughout its short life and was hardly blessed by good fortune. But the men who served it in high office were thoroughly lacking in judgment when they failed to recognize the extreme danger that Hitler posed to the German republic and to themselves and failed to take any measures of self-defense.
The Weimar leadership had been seeking to evade responsibility since 1930, with the SPD leading the way, attempting to recover its status as the “glorious opposition of old” while pointing ever more urgently to the mounting “threat to democracy.”14 In December 1932 Major General Kurt von Schleicher, who immediately preceded Hitler as chancellor, made a final stab at saving the republic, but that effort foundered, undermined by the cold indolence of the leaders who, while talking passionately of their commitment to democracy, abandoned the nation to its fate. Even after Hitler gained control of the “fortress,” as the republic was often called, they failed to recognize what was right before their eyes. When news arrived that Hitler had been named chancellor, Rudolf Breitscheid, the Social Democratic leader in the Reichstag, clapped with joy that Hitler would now show himself for what he really was. He did, of course, and Breitscheid met his end in Buchenwald. Julius Leber, who would become a leading figure in the resistance, commented disdainfully at the time that he, like everyone else, was looking forward finally to seeing “the intellectual foundations of this movement.”15
The miscalculations of those on the right, a result of arrogance and a lack of political instinct, were even more appalling. Their ideological affinities with the Nazis, their assumption of commonality on national issues, and their aversion to both democracy and Marxism led many to conclude that Hitler was just a radical version of themselves. The vast majority believed that conservative interests were safe in Hitler’s hands despite his distastefully rough, vulgar manner. In their condescending way, they assumed that they would soon be able to take this demagogue in hand and tame him. They confidently imagined they could restrict him to delivering speeches, staging Nazi circuses, and venting his “architectural spleen,” while they steered the ship of state. Although it should have been obvious to anyone who looked beneath the nationalistic, conservative surface, what the right failed to comprehend was the revolutionary essence of Nazism, bent on destroying the traditional bonds, loyalties, and outmoded social structures that the right-wing parties were so eager to restore. Hitler was no mere rabble-rouser whose popularity conservatives could exploit to solve their old problem of being a self-appointed ruling class without a following. It would be some time before they understood this. By 1938 Hjalmar Schacht, whom Hitler had reappointed to his old position as president of the Reichsbank, was overheard commenting to a table companion, “My dear lady, we have fallen into the hands of criminals. How could I ever have imagined it!”16
Hitler’s right-wing coalition partners owed their sense of security to two factors: their “strongmen” in the cabinet-Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen and Alfred Hugenberg, leader of the German nationalists-and the army, which they envisioned would soon clamp down on the rowdyism and lawlessness that they saw as the only blemish on the Nazi revolution. The supreme commander of the armed forces was, after all, none other than that conservative stalwart President Paul von Hindenburg. The right-wing parties were certainly not misguided in claiming him and the clout of his office as their own; they failed, however, to consider the frailty of the old man. He may still have cut a fine figure, but he was by this point little more than a majestic-looking marionette, easily manipulated by self-serving interests lurking in the background.
Hitler fully intended to take advantage of the weakness and tractability of the president, and success was not long in coming. Papen was inordinately proud of a concession he had obtained that stipulated he be present whenever Hitler met with Hindenburg. The president, however, soon informed Papen that this arrangement betrayed a distrust that his “dear young friend,” as he sometimes called Hitler, could not long be expected to endure. Hitler managed to get his way time after time in the selection of the cabinet by playing his conservative coalition partners off against each other. On the afternoon of January 29, for instance, the day before he became chancellor, he let it be known in preliminary discussions that he would be prepared to accept as minister of defense the outgoing chancellor, his old and hated foe General Schleicher. But at literally the last minute, he abruptly changed course, managing with the help of Hindenburg and Papen to slip General Werner von Blomberg into the post. Impulsive in and easily influenced, Blomberg was given to flights of fancy, earning among his army comrades the nickname “the rubber lion.” Hitler went back on other agreements as well: he insisted, despite a previous understanding, that a Nazi be appointed Prussian minister of the interior; most importantly, he managed, once again with Papen’s help, to push Hugenberg into agreeing in principle to new elections on March 5, 1933, though Hugenberg remained extremely reluctant and was still resisting in the president’s antechamber until just before the swearing-in ceremony. All these steps were further moves toward disarming and quashing the conservative forces.
Even before the new government had taken power, the conservatives’ plan to “tame” Hitler had begun to look shaky. Papen was warned of this repeatedly but maintained that the doomsayers were in error: “You’re wrong,” the vice-chancellor stormed, “we have his solid commitment.” Papen even went so far as to boast that he would soon have Hitler backed so tightly into a corner that he would “squeak.”17 Instead, Papen was blindsided by the new chancellor, who toured the country making triumphant appearances, a performance that the vice-chancellor could hardly hope to match. Although Papen must have realized by this time that Hitler was not about to be tamed, he still failed to perceive that he had gotten himself into the untenable political position of opposing both the democratic, constitutional state and Hitler’s mounting autocracy. The haughty simplemindedness of the conservative members of the cabinet was on full display in their eagerness to see the constitution set aside, even though it was the foundation of their own power and security. They looked forward just as eagerly to the passage of the Enabling Act on March 23, which freed Hitler from the last remaining constraints of constitutional law and cleared the way for him to seize virtually unlimited power. By late June 1933 the German National People’s Party was forced to dissolve despite its insistence on its rights as a coalition partner in the “cabinet of national revival.” Its powerful leader, Alfred Hugenberg, was made to resign from the government by Hitler, in contravention of all the Führer’s earlier assurances.
The venerable Social Democratic Party met an equally pathetic end. “A signal will come,” the party’s leader, Otto Wels, had assured restless members who were eager to rise up against Hitler. As time passed, though, it became increasingly apparent that no one had any idea where the signal would come from and what it would mean.18 The SPD leadership had no ready response either to Hitler’s accession to power or once he was in office, to his tactics. It was especially in the tactical arena that it utterly failed to match him. Some of the befuddled SPD leaders, still enmired in theories of class struggle, continued to see Hugenberg as the real foe and Hitler as a mere front man or “agent of the reaction.” The SPD leadership was inundated with demands that it organize resistance activities, but instead it sought to calm the waters by pointing to the guarantees in the constitution, though the constitution was clearly being disassembled. From January 30 on, the SPD issued repeated statements that it would not be the first to overstep the bounds of legality. This seemed to be a threat to fight fire with fire, but such hints were far too mild to make much of an impression on Hit
ler; indeed, they did not even move him to scorn. The chief effect of the statements was to demoralize the party rank and file, which could not help noticing the leadership’s lack of backbone and its readiness to capitulate. In February and March 1933 the first wave of resignations from party organizations began, presumably registering members’ fear, disappointment, or acceptance of the inevitable. In May many of the SPD’s local associations voluntarily disbanded, anticipating in their confusion and sense of isolation the ultimate dissolution and prohibition of the SPD itself on June 22.
The once mighty trade unions came to similar if not even more pitiful ends. As early as the end of February 1933, union leaders had already abandoned the SPD’s principled opposition to the regime in an attempt to preserve their “influence over the structuring of social life,” not to mention their union halls, hostels, and charitable institutions.19 In March they began signaling their allegiance to the new authorities and even issued declarations of loyalty despite the harassment and arrest of union leaders all across Germany. True to form, Hitler correctly perceived these attempts to appease him as signs of weakness. The reliability of his instincts was confirmed shortly thereafter by the union leadership itself. When Hitler acceded to the old union demand, which had never been granted by the Weimar Republic, to make May 1 a national workers’ holiday, union leaders summoned their members to participate in the official ceremonies, and the world was treated to the spectacle of unionized blue- and white-collar workers marching in parades beneath swastika flags and listening bitterly but with forced applause to the speeches of their triumphant foes. This humiliating experience did more than anything else to break the will to resist among millions of organized workers. Just one day later, on May 2, union halls were occupied, their property was confiscated, and union members were swallowed into the newly established Nazi workers’ organization, the German Labor Front.
Plotting Hitler's Death Page 3