The discussion, then, ended without agreement, but not before the old President, still standing, had delivered a stern lecture to the Nazi leader. In the words of the official communiqué issued immediately afterward, Hindenburg “regretted that Herr Hitler did not see himself in a position to support a national government appointed with the confidence of the Reich President, as he had agreed to do before the Reichstag elections.” In the view of the venerable President, Hitler had broken his word, but let him beware of the future. “The President,” the communiqué stated further, “gravely exhorted Herr Hitler to conduct the opposition on the part of the N.S. Party in a chivalrous manner, and to bear in mind his responsibility to the Fatherland and to the German people.”
The communiqué giving Hindenburg’s version of the meeting and insisting that Hitler had demanded “complete control of the State” was published in such a hurry that it caught Goebbels’ propaganda machine napping and did much harm to Hitler’s cause, not only among the general public but among the Nazis themselves. In vain did Hitler respond that he had not asked for “complete power” but only for the chancellorship and a few ministries. Hindenburg’s word was generally accepted.
In the meantime, the mobilized storm troopers were chafing at the bit. Hitler called in their leaders and spoke to them that same evening. “It’s a difficult task,” Goebbels noted. “Who knows if their formations can be held together? Nothing is more difficult than to tell victory-flushed troops that victory has been snatched out of their hand.” Late that night the little Doktor sought consolation in the reading of the letters of Frederick the Great. Next day he raced off for a vacation on the beaches of the Baltic. “Great hopelessness reigns among the party comrades,” he wrote. He declined to leave his room even to speak with them. “I don’t want to hear about politics for at least a week. I want only sun, fight, air and peace.”
Hitler retired to the Obersalzberg to imbibe the same elements and ponder the immediate future. As Goebbels said, “the first big chance has been missed.” Hermann Rauschning, the then Nazi leader in Danzig, found the Fuehrer brooding sullenly on his mountaintop. “We must be ruthless,” Hitler told him, and launched into a tirade against Papen. But he had not lost hope. At times he spoke as if he were already Chancellor. “My task is more difficult than Bismarck’s,” he said. “I must first create the nation before even beginning to tackle the national tasks before us.” But supposing the Nazis were suppressed by a military dictatorship under Papen and Schleicher? Hitler abruptly asked Rauschning whether Danzig, an independent city-state then under the protection of the League of Nations, had an extradition agreement with Germany. Rauschning did not at first understand the question, but it later became evident that Hitler was looking for a place that might serve as an asylum.10 In his diary Goebbels noted “rumors that the Fuehrer is to be arrested.” Yet even now, after his rebuff by the Reich President and the government of Papen and Schleicher, and despite his fears that his party might be outlawed, he was determined to stick to his path of “legality.” He squelched all talk of a putsch by the S.A. Except for occasional spells of depression he remained confident that he would achieve his goal—not by force and scarcely by winning a parliamentary majority, but by the means which had carried Schleicher and Papen to the top: by backstairs intrigue, a game that two could play.
It was not long before he gave an example. On August 25 Goebbels conferred with Hitler at Berchtesgaden and noted: “We have got into touch with the Center Party, if only to bring pressure on our opponents.” Next day Goebbels was back in Berlin, where he found that Schleicher had already found out “about our feelers to the Center.” On the following day he went to see the General just to make sure. He thought Schleicher appeared worried at the prospect of Hitler and the Catholic Center getting together, for between them they commanded an absolute majority in the Reichstag. As to Schleicher, Goebbels wrote: “I don’t know what is genuine or false in him.”
The contacts with the Center Party, though never intended, as Goebbels said, to be much more than a means of applying pressure on the Papen government, paid off in a farcical event which now occurred in the Reichstag and which marked the beginning of the end for the cavalryman Chancellor. When the chamber convened on August 30 the Centrists joined the Nazis in electing Goering President of the Reichstag. For the first time, then, a National Socialist was in the chair when the Reichstag reconvened on September 12 to begin its working session. Goering made the most of his opportunity. Chancellor von Papen had obtained in advance from the President a decree for the dissolution of the chamber—the first time that the death warrant of the Reichstag had been signed before it met to transact business. But for this first working session he neglected to bring it along. He had with him instead a speech outlining the program of his government, having been assured that one of the Nationalist deputies, in agreement with most of the other parties, would object to a vote on the expected Communist motion for censure of the government. In this case a single objection from any one of the 600-odd members was enough to postpone a vote.
When Ernst Torgler, the Communist leader, introduced his motion as an amendment to the order of the day, however, neither a Nationalist deputy nor any other rose to object. Finally Frick asked for a half hour’s adjournment on behalf of the Nazis.
“The situation was now serious,” Papen says in his memoirs, “and I had been caught unawares.” He sent a messenger posthaste to the Chancellery to fetch the dissolution order.
In the meantime Hitler conferred with his parliamentary party group in the Reichstag President’s Palace across the street. The Nazis were in a dilemma, and they were embarrassed. The Nationalists, they felt, had double-crossed them by not moving to postpone the vote. Now Hitler’s party, in order to bring down the Papen government, would have to vote with the Communists on a Communist motion. Hitler decided to swallow the pill of such an unsavory association. He ordered his deputies to vote for the Communist amendment and overthrow Papen before the Chancellor could dissolve the Reichstag. To accomplish this, of course, Goering, as presiding officer, would have to pull some fast and neat tricks of parliamentary procedure. The former air ace, a man of daring and of many abilities, as he was to prove on a larger stage later, was equal to the occasion.
When the session reconvened Papen appeared with the familiar red dispatch case which, by tradition, carried the dissolution order he had so hastily retrieved. But when he requested the floor to read it, the President of the Reichstag managed not to see him, though Papen, by now red-faced, was on his feet brandishing the paper for all in the assembly to see. All but Goering. His smiling face was turned the other way. He called for an immediate vote. By now Papen’s countenance, according to eyewitnesses, had turned from red to white with anger. He strode up to the President’s rostrum and plunked the dissolution order on his desk. Goering took no notice of it and ordered the vote to proceed. Papen, followed by his ministers, none of whom were members of the chamber, stalked out. The deputies voted: 513 to 32 against the government. Only then did Goering notice the piece of paper which had been thrust so angrily on his desk. He read it to the assembly and ruled that since it had been countersigned by a Chancellor who already had been voted out of office by a constitutional majority it had no validity.
Which elements in Germany gained and which lost by this farcical incident, and how much, was not immediately clear. That the dandy, Papen, had been made a joke of there was no doubt; but then he had always been somewhat of a joke, even, as Ambassador François-Poncet said, to his friends. That the Reichstag had shown that the overwhelming majority of Germans opposed Hindenburg’s hand-picked presidential government was clear enough. But in the process had it not further sapped public confidence in the parliamentary system? As for the Nazis, had they not again shown themselves to be not only irresponsible but ready to connive even with the Communists to achieve their ends? Moreover, were the citizens not weary of elections and did the Nazis not face losing votes in the inevitable new elec
tion, the fourth within the year? Gregor Strasser and even Frick thought that they did, and that such a loss might be disastrous to the party.
Hitler, however, Goebbels reported that same evening, “was beside himself with joy. Again he has made a clear, unmistakable decision.”
The Reichstag quickly recognized its dissolution, and new elections were set for November 6. For the Nazis they presented certain difficulties. For one thing, as Goebbels noted, the people were tired of political speeches and propaganda. Even the party workers, as he admitted in his diary of October 15, had “become very nervous as the result of these everlasting elections. They are overworked …” Also there were financial difficulties. Big business and big finance were swinging behind Papen, who had given them certain concessions. They were becoming increasingly distrustful, as Funk had warned, of Hitler’s refusal to cooperate with Hindenburg and with what seemed to them his growing radicalism and his tendency to work even with the Communists, as the Reichstag episode had shown. Goebbels took notice of this in his diary of October 15: “Money is extraordinarily hard to obtain. All the gentlemen of ‘Property and Education’ are standing by the government.”
A few days before the election the Nazis had joined the Communists in staging a strike of the transport workers in Berlin, a strike disavowed by the trade unions and the Socialists. This brought a further drying up of financial sources among the businessmen just when the Nazi Party needed funds most to make a whirlwind finish in the campaign. Goebbels noted lugubriously on November 1: “Scarcity of money has become a chronic illness with us. We lack enough to really carry out a big campaign. Many bourgeois circles have been frightened off by our participation in the strike. Even many of our party comrades are beginning to have their doubts.” On November 5, the eve of the elections: “Last attack. Desperate drive of the party against defeat. We succeed in getting 10,000 marks at the last minute. This will be thrown into the campaign Saturday afternoon. We have done everything that could be done. Now let fate decide.”
Fate, and the German electorate, decided on November 6 a number of things, none of them conclusive for the future of the crumbling Republic. The Nazis lost two million votes and 34 seats in the Reichstag, reducing them to 196 deputies. The Communists gained three quarters of a million votes and the Social Democrats lost the same number, with the result that the Communist seats rose from 89 to 100 and the Socialist seats dropped from 133 to 121. The German National Party, the sole one which had backed the government, won nearly a million additional votes—obviously from the Nazis—and now had 52 seats instead of 37. Though the National Socialists were still the largest party in the country, the loss of two million votes was a severe setback. For the first time the great Nazi tide was ebbing, and from a point far short of a majority. The legend of invincibility had been shattered. Hitler was in a weaker position to bargain for power than he had been since July.
Realizing this, Papen put aside what he calls his “personal distaste” for Hitler and wrote him a letter on November 13 inviting him to “discuss the situation.” But Hitler made so many conditions in his reply that Papen abandoned all hope of obtaining an understanding with him. The Nazi leader’s intransigence did not surprise the breezy, incompetent Chancellor, but a new course which his friend and mentor, Schleicher, now proposed did surprise him. For the slippery kingmaker had come to the conclusion that Papen’s usefulness, like that of Bruening before him, had come to an end. New plans were sprouting in his fertile mind. His good friend Papen must go. The President must be left completely free to deal with the political parties, especially with the largest. He urged Papen’s resignation, and on November 17 Papen and his cabinet resigned. Hindenburg sent immediately for Hitler.
Their meeting on November 19 was less frigid than that of August 13. This time the President offered chairs and allowed his caller to remain for over an hour. Hindenburg presented Hitler with two choices: the chancellorship if he could secure a workable majority in the Reichstag for a definite program, or the vice-chancellorship under Papen in another presidential cabinet that would rule by emergency decrees. Hitler saw the President again on the twenty-first and he also exchanged several letters with Meissner. But there was no agreement. Hitler could not get a workable majority in Parliament. Though the Center Party agreed to support him on condition that he would not aspire to dictatorship, Hugenberg withheld the co-operation of the Nationalists. Hitler therefore resumed his demand for the chancellorship of a presidential government, but this the President would not give him. If there was to be a cabinet governing by decree Hindenburg preferred his friend Papen to head it. Hitler, he said in a letter on his behalf dispatched by Meissner, could not be given such a post “because such a cabinet is bound to develop into a party dictatorship…. I cannot take the responsibility for this before my oath and my conscience.”11
The old Field Marshal was more prophetic on the first point than on the second. As for Hitler, once more he had knocked on the door of the Chancellery, had seen it open a crack only to be slammed shut in his face.
This was just what Papen had expected, and when he and Schleicher went to see Hindenburg on the evening of December 1 he was sure that he would be reappointed Chancellor. Little did he suspect what the scheming General had been up to. Schleicher had been in touch with Strasser and had suggested that if the Nazis would not come into a Papen government perhaps they would join a cabinet in which he himself were Chancellor. Hitler was asked to come to Berlin for consultations with the General, and according to one version widely publicized in the German press and later accepted by most historians, the Fuehrer actually took the night train to Berlin from Munich but was hauled off in the dead of the night by Goering at Jena and spirited away to Weimar for a meeting of the top Nazi leaders. Actually the Nazi version of this incident is, surprisingly, probably the more accurate. Goebbels’ diary for November 30 recounts that a telegram came for Hitler asking him to hurry to Berlin, but that he decided to let Schleicher wait while he conferred with his comrades at Weimar, where he was scheduled to open the campaign for the Thuringian elections. At this conference, attended by the Big Five leaders, Goering, Goebbels, Strasser, Frick and Hitler, on December 1, there was considerable disagreement. Strasser, supported by Frick, urged at least Nazi toleration of a Schleicher government, though he himself preferred joining it. Goering and Goebbels argued strenuously against such a course and Hitler sided with them. Next day Hitler advised a certain Major Ott, whom Schleicher had sent to him, to counsel the General not to take the chancellorship, but it was too late.
Papen had been blandly unaware of the intrigue which Schleicher was weaving behind his back. At the beginning of the meeting with the President on December 1 he had confidently outlined his plans for the future. He should continue as Chancellor, rule by decree and let the Reichstag go hang for a while until he could “amend the constitution.” In effect, Papen wanted “amendments” which would take the country back to the days of the empire and re-establish the rule of the conservative classes. At his Nuremberg trial and in his memoirs he admitted, as indeed he did to the Field Marshal, that his proposals involved “a breach of the present constitution by the President,” but he assured Hindenburg that “he might be justified in placing the welfare of the nation above his oath to the constitution,” as, he added, Bismarck once had done “for the sake of the country.”13
To Papen’s great surprise, Schleicher broke in to object. He played upon the aged President’s obvious reluctance to violate his oath to uphold the constitution, if it could be avoided—and the General thought it could. He believed a government which could command a majority in the Reichstag was possible if he himself headed it. He was sure he could detach Strasser and at least sixty Nazi deputies from Hitler. To this Nazi fraction he could add the middle-class parties and the Social Democrats. He even thought the trade unions would support him.
Hindenburg was shocked at such an idea and, turning to Papen, asked him then and there to go ahead with the forming of a
new government. “Schleicher,” says Papen, “appeared dumfounded.” They had a long argument after they had left the President but could reach no agreement. As they parted, Schleicher, in the famous words addressed to Luther as he set out for the fateful Diet of Worms, said to Papen, “Little Monk, you have chosen a difficult path.”
How difficult it was Papen learned the next morning at nine o’clock at a cabinet meeting which he had called.
Schleicher rose [Papen says] and declared that there was no possibility of carrying out the directive that the President had given me. Any attempt to do so would reduce the country to chaos. The police and the armed services could not guarantee to maintain transport and supply services in the event of a general strike, nor would they be able to ensure law and order in the event of a civil war. The General Staff had made a study in this respect and he had arranged for Major Ott [its author] to place himself at the Cabinet’s disposal and present a report.13
Whereupon the General produced the major. If Schleicher’s remarks had shaken’ Papen, the conveniently timed report of Major Eugen Ott (who would later be Hitler’s ambassador to Tokyo) demolished him. Ott simply stated that “the defense of the frontiers and the maintenance of order against both Nazis and Communists was beyond the strength of the forces at the disposal of the federal and state governments. It is therefore recommended that the Reich government should abstain from declaring a state of emergency.”14
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Page 28