Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  Inflation now flared completely out of control. It had been under way since 1914, when one American dollar could be exchanged for a modest 4.21 marks. By January 1922 one dollar fetched 191.81 marks, but by the end of the year the number had jumped to 7, 589.27 marks, and then the French invasion all but killed the currency. The January 1923 average rate was 17,972.00 marks to the dollar, in August the figure was an astounding 4,620, 455.00 to 1, and at the beginning of December a dollar could buy 4.2 trillion marks.13

  The humiliation of invasion and occupation was thus capped by the worst inflation ever to hit an advanced industrial country. A kilo of bread that cost 274,000 marks on September 3, 1923, went for a cool 3 million on September 24. In the same period the cost of a kilo of potatoes skyrocketed from 92,000 to 1.24 million marks. The biggest losers were the solid members of the middle class, holders of monetary assets like bonds and pensions.

  The “winners” included those who had been in debt. Some learned the rules of the game and played the market each day as if it were a lottery. There were industrialists who created vast empires. New nightclubs sprang up, sex without love became the new fashion, and the world of middle-class values went down the drain. Some had the time of their life, drank nothing but vintage wines, and ate only gourmet food. Others died of starvation, and the homeless were everywhere.14

  The psychological and political effects were reflected in the growth of extremist politics on the left and right. The first to act was the KPD, now firmly under Moscow’s control. The Communists had badly miscalculated the so-called March action of 1921, but Moscow kept trying to foment revolution. As the economic situation in Germany deteriorated in late 1922 and into 1923, the leaders of the KPD like Heinrich Brandler felt a revolutionary situation was developing. Brandler returned home in the winter of 1922–23 from Moscow, where he had been imbued with the spirit of making bold moves by the Soviet leaders. They generally agreed that German workers would be roused to unrest by the massive inflation.15

  By August 23, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and most members of the Politburo had become convinced that revolution had a chance. Stalin was far less sure but, like Radek, was inclined to think “the Germans should be restrained.” The issue of who was boss inside the Politburo was not fully settled, and a collective decision was reached. In an effort to make history repeat itself, the date for the revolution was to be as close as possible to the anniversary of the Bolsheviks’ coup in 1917: it was to be “the German October.”

  Brandler said he was not so sure he could act the part of “a German Lenin.” Ultimately he asked Trotsky himself to take the lead, but that was not to be. The KPD was certainly growing more powerful. Its membership reached 295,000, with over thirty-three hundred local groups in September 1923. Top Soviet Communists felt the situation was comparable to the one in Russia in 1917 and wanted to strike “now or never.”16

  Moscow’s plan was to begin in Saxony (as if to repeat the attempt at revolution in 1921) and from there move on to Berlin, Hamburg, the Ruhr, and the rest of the country. Troops sent by Berlin quickly snuffed out the poorly organized effort. Brandler, supported by the Russian experts, then canceled the Communist insurrection. There was miscommunication between Berlin and Hamburg, where the event went ahead on October 21.17 Over the next several days, much to the chagrin of the Hamburg Communists who went into military-style action, there was no general strike in the city. The uprising was crushed by police, who still suffered seventeen dead and twenty-six wounded. The insurgents had greater casualties. The abortive effort showed good citizens that Communists, under direct orders from Moscow, were attempting yet another revolution.18

  Stalin had warned the Politburo that it would be premature to attempt such a coup. All his rivals lost face in that to a greater or lesser extent they had supported this fiasco.19 Germany and Western Europe were not ripe for Communism, but palpable fear of it was fueled by these quixotic efforts.

  SOVIET STAR OR SWASTIKA

  The Nazi Party became better known in Bavaria during 1923, primarily through Hitler’s speeches. His most frequent theme was anti-Semitism. A typical speech was one he gave on January 18, 1923, in Munich. It was advertised under the heading “Two Fronts in Germany” and dealt with the struggle against the Jews and Marxism. The Jews were in charge in the “Soviet Paradise.” The same was in store for Germany, Hitler warned. People had to realize that the struggle was not really between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—one class led by the Jews and the other seduced by them. There were “two fronts” in the war in Germany, one against Bolshevism and one against the Jews. But this one and the same enemy could be beaten, he thundered, by launching a “racial struggle” of Germans against Jews.20

  As appalled as he was by the invasion of the Ruhr, he maintained in late January that this event was less important than many thought. The real fight was against not so much the outside world as internal enemies, above all the Jews and the Marxists.21 There were many other such speeches. He furiously charged that the “increasing Sovietization” of Europe was under way and in a single breath said there was a pressing danger that Jewish money in Paris would subject Germany to Jewish “world domination.”22

  Hitler was aware of the growth of the KPD in states such as Saxony, Thuringia, and the Ruhr. Sooner or later, he said, citizens would have to choose between the Soviet star and the swastika. In late March he fired up his storm troopers (the SA): when the French army and the Red Army march, “we will not sleep.”23 As for the Weimar Republic, he called it a “Marxist-Jewish-International pigsty.”24

  As the currency began its free fall, Hitler pointed to Jewish speculators and asserted that from the ruined culture the Jews would raise the flag of “hammer, sickle, and star.” Gradually he used the shorthand version of the “Soviet star” as the symbol of both anti-Semitism and anti-Bolshevism.25 According to press reports, these speeches were greeted “as always” with stormy applause.26

  Every misfortune was laid at the door of the Jews. It is impossible to overlook how open and radical Hitler was in his anti-Semitic charges. He said endlessly and proudly that he was a racist and that Jews could never “convert” and be German citizens. Occasionally police reports said he worked up the crowd almost to a “pogrom mood.”27 His usual call was to “throw out the Jews” and remove them from the arts and sciences, the press, theater, and the arts. He said nothing about their mass murder.28

  Hitler blamed them for the deterioration of the economy and the rise of Communism. In mid-May 1923 he said in a speech in Erlangen that Germany’s policies brought gain only to the banks and the stock exchange. “The goal is the Bolshevization of Germany. The unemployed, whose number greatly increased with the occupation of the Ruhr, will make up the Red Army.” This was a curious argument in which capitalists supposedly prepared the ground for Communism, with only the NSDAP blocking the way. His remarks were greeted by “long-lasting applause.”29

  Every speech from May until the November putsch played on the same themes. Germany was threatened by the French and the inflation, but those dangers were part of a larger one, namely of the Jews and Bolshevism. Although the Jews were sometimes called stock-exchange capitalists, this allegation was not as common as the charge that they stood behind the Soviet regime. The Jews and Bolshevism were mentioned so often that the two were sometimes elided and made into one.

  In August, Hitler delivered a speech titled “Inflation, Republic, and the Fascist Danger” at a large gathering of the Party in Munich. He pointed out how inflation produced dissatisfaction, out of which emerged political extremism, which he summed up as “Soviet star and swastika.” “What is the Soviet star? It is the emblem of a race preparing itself for domination from Vladivostok to Western Europe. The sickle is the symbol of cruelty, the hammer the symbol of Freemasonry. The domination of the Soviet star will be a paradise for Jews but a slave colony for everyone else. Not the rescue but the decline of Germany is the aim of the Communists.” Elsewhere in the speech he said hunger was pr
eparing the masses for a “second revolution under the golden Star of David.” He conflated in other speeches the star symbol on the Soviet Communist flag and the Star of David of the Jews as an “explanation” for inflation and Germany’s misfortunes.30

  American and British reporters were sometimes granted interviews with Hitler. One was particularly revealing, published in New York in October 1923 by George Sylvester Viereck. He asked Hitler what he meant by Socialism and was told Marxism—“a Jewish invention”—had tried to steal the term “Socialism,” but in reality Socialism referred to practices in the Aryan, Germanic tradition. He said his Socialism did not “repudiate private property,” nor was it international, by which he meant it was not part of the Communist International. He told Viereck that the “greatest menace” of the moment was Bolshevism, a view that many Americans and Europeans might have shared.

  Hitler’s solution was simple: “Kill Bolshevism in Germany and you restore seventy million people to power.” He said France owed “her strength not to her armies, but to the forces of Bolshevism” in Germany. The Treaty of Versailles and Bolshevism were allegedly “two heads of one monster,” and he would “decapitate both.” German workers had “two souls,” one nationalist and the other Marxist. The former had to be fostered and the latter rooted out.

  Viereck asked what Hitler would do with the Jews. His answer was that they would be disenfranchised. But what if they had citizenship? Hitler said he looked upon Jews as Americans looked upon Japanese in the United States. The difference was that the Jews supposedly had ruined Germany and were the “carriers of Bolshevism.” No violence had been done to them, nor was any planned. Nevertheless, the Nazi slogan was “Germany for the Germans,” and that meant all foreigners, whether Jews or not, “will be permitted to live in Germany only on sufferance.”

  Hitler’s foreign policy aims included regaining colonies lost under the Treaty of Versailles. In addition, he said: “We must expand eastward. There was a time when we could have shared the world with England. Now, we can stretch our cramped limbs only towards the East.” But there would be no imperialism until Germans came to grips with their situation at home. He went on: “We are in the position of a man whose house has burned down. He must have a roof over his head before he can indulge in more ambitious plans.”

  He ended the interview by pointing to the future: “In my scheme of the German state, there will be no room for the alien, no use for the criminal, no use for the diseased, no use for the wastrel, for the usurer or speculator, or anyone incapable of productive work.”31

  He told London’s Daily Mail in early October 1923 that if a “German Mussolini” were given Germany, “people would fall down on their knees and worship him more than Mussolini has ever been worshipped.”32

  HITLER’S FAILED ATTEMPT TO SEIZE POWER

  Parties in this period, still influenced by the combative mood of the First World War, used paramilitary groups to protect their meetings. The Communists and Socialists had such organizations of their own. By October 1921 the Nazi brand under Emil Maurice had begun to be referred to as the SA, or Sturmabteilung, with a membership of around three hundred. In the second half of 1922, it gained a reputation for violence, and its image was enhanced because of the role played by the Blackshirts in Mussolini’s march on Rome.

  On the heels of the Ruhr invasion Hitler called a meeting of the Party for January 27–28, 1923, and in what was to become a ritual, he “blessed” the flags of various SA groups who swore their loyalty to him. The SA’s initial task was to protect Hitler and others when they spoke, but it came to embody the militancy of the movement itself.

  In February 1923, Captain Ernst Röhm put together an umbrella organization for various right-wing groups in Bavaria, including the NSDAP. The first major event of this new Working Community of Fatherland Fighting Groups (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Vaterländischen Kampfverbände) was held on May 1, typically the day working-class organizations held their annual parades. The Fighting Groups issued an ultimatum to the Bavarian government to stop the May 1 demonstration of the Reds, and when that was refused, they armed themselves. The police and Reichswehr, backed by reinforcements from outside Munich, would not tolerate street violence. Somewhat sheepishly, the Fighting Groups returned the arms they had stolen and went home quietly.33

  Throughout the nation political violence rose as the currency fell, but in Bavaria right-wing extremism benefited most. On September 1–2 in Nuremberg a large rally named the German Day was held by nationalist paramilitary groups. There was a celebration of the victory over France in 1870, and for the speeches on September 2 at least twenty-five thousand showed up. The attraction was not Hitler but General Erich Ludendorff, still the “undefeated” hero of the First World War and a man trying to make a political comeback. Hitler was the main speaker, and according to the New York Times he gave a “firebrand oration.” He concluded as follows: “We must have a new dictatorship. We need no Parliament, no Government like the present. We cannot expect Germany’s salvation from the present condition, but only through a dictatorship brought through the sword.”34

  A Nazi flyer provided a long list of demands. The priority was to get rid of the Treaty of Versailles. Redemption would come only through struggle against “the Marxist movement, the [Communist] International in every form, the Jews as putrefactive agents in the life of the people, and pacifism.” Germany had to find a new “community of the people.”35

  The creation of the German Combat League (Deutscher Kampfbund) was one result of the event in Nuremberg. Hitler’s right-hand man, Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, was made business manager and on September 24 drew up an “action program” for taking power in Bavaria. The “basic mission” was “the crushing of Marxism,” which would be successful only if the Combat League controlled power in Bavaria, but at the very least they had to aim for the Ministry of the Interior and get command of police power. Scheubner-Richter thought it possible to achieve these aims “in an at least apparently legal manner.”36

  The hope was not so much to follow the Bolshevik model and attempt a violent coup, but to learn from Mussolini’s example. However, Munich was not Rome, where in 1922 the Italian police and army sympathized with the Fascists. The people around Hitler could not be sure the police and army in Bavaria would be on their side.

  Ernst Röhm saw to it on September 25 that Hitler was given the “political leadership” of the new Combat League. A repeat performance of the German Day was held in Hof (September 16), and one followed in Bayreuth (September 30), the home of the Wagner cult and thus sacred turf for Hitler. In an interview with the United Press at Bayreuth, Hitler almost invited a “Communist Revolution” and said “the Reds would cease to exist in the North, in Saxony and Thuringia, if they were not allowed to work away at their leisure.” He felt the Bavarian masses would rally round him: “Our program is that of a national dictatorship. If at a certain point Munich does not march on Berlin, Berlin will march on Munich.”37

  Chancellor Gustav Stresemann decided to end “passive resistance” to the French on September 26. Stresemann, perhaps the most gifted of all the Weimar Republic’s politicians, hoped the French and British would agree to negotiate a settlement, but the occupation continued.38

  In Bavaria, Minister-President Eugen von Knilling was warned that the Nazis were preparing a revolution and took preemptive action on September 26 by appointing Gustav von Kahr as special general state commissar. Hitler regarded Kahr’s appointment as a declaration of war.39

  Kahr’s pressure on the Combat League enforced quiet for weeks. Hitler and his advisers were concerned lest followers drift away, all the more as continuing economic distress sapped morale. In the meantime, Communists, egged on by Moscow, tried again to take power in several places. One of the main leaders of the KPD, Heinrich Brandler was proven correct and Moscow wrong. The Communists did no preparatory work, perhaps believing that Germany was ripe for the taking, but it was not, as was made clear in Saxony and Hamburg o
n October 23 to 26. Yet again the conceit of the Russians was that they could make the revolution happen on or about the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

  The real danger of a successful revolution came from the other end of the political spectrum. Fearful of a Hitler takeover—but wistfully inspired by Mussolini’s success—Kahr conspired with Bavarian State Police Colonel Hans Ritter von Seisser and Bavarian Reichswehr commander General Otto Hermann von Lossow to plan their own march on Berlin. In October and early November, they negotiated with influential persons in Berlin, especially General Hans von Seeckt, chief of the Reichswehr. However, Seeckt told them frankly on November 3 that he would not go along and would support the rightful government in Berlin. The Bavarian trio thereupon agreed among themselves that any attempted putsch in Munich would be put down.40

  Hitler tried to meet with Kahr but failed. He pressed on without thinking through how the police and army might react, and on November 6 he and his close advisers decided on a putsch. The next morning there was another meeting involving Scheubner-Richter, Hermann Göring, and Hermann Kriebel, the Combat League’s military leader, likely also Rudolf Hess and Ernst Röhm. They affirmed the decision.41

  Their strategy was closer to the one Trotsky used in Petrograd in 1917 than the one Mussolini used in Rome. They aimed to take over six key cities in Bavaria—Munich, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Regensburg, Ingolstadt, and Würzburg. In each they would seize railroad stations, communications offices, radio stations, town halls, and police headquarters.42 The aim was a dictatorship that would keep all Hitler’s promises. The economy was to be cleansed of “parasitic elements,” but private property left untouched with an emphasis on a strong and independent peasantry. Citizenship was to be “for Germans only,” there was to be a crackdown on crime, all opposition parties were to be eliminated, and Communist and Socialist politicians arrested.