The views espoused in Mein Kampf provided Hitler’s followers with insight into his thought. One of the trained speakers of the movement later said, “The book must be the Bible of all National Socialists. The more I became absorbed in it, the more was I gripped by the greatness of the thoughts expounded therein. I felt that I was eternally bound to this man.” Not surprisingly, the writer (born in 1890 in Lower Silesia) displayed a high degree of anti-Semitism. His lengthy remarks were made in an essay in 1934 for a contest sponsored by an American professor.18
No doubt many did not bother to read Hitler’s book, but that was not necessary, because he repeated the same themes often in his speeches. The book was wrong in details about Hitler’s life, full of factual errors, and confused about the scientific and linguistic origins of key concepts—most important, terms like “Aryan” and “Semites.” But what Hitler offered his followers was a brutal philosophy of life, backed up by “science,” radically opposed to Marxism in all its forms, unashamedly racist, and irreversibly committed to anti-Semitism.
Hitler said exactly what he would like to do, and in his hundreds of speeches from 1926 to 1933 there was consistency. That does not mean he had a blueprint from the start. Much of what happened was based on reactions of the moment to opportunities and possibilities that arose. His “theories,” however, indicate how the madness of his thoughts and actions held together. What he said and wrote before he got into power revealed an agenda of sorts. Anyone with the slightest interest in politics at the time, including foreigners like Stalin, could have picked up clues just by reading the published record.
FÜHRER CULT AND LEGAL REVOLUTION
Ernst Hanfstaengl, one of Hitler’s close friends and connected to the better-off social classes, visited him in prison and helped smuggle out some of Mein Kampf. He and Hitler had marched together on the fateful day of November 9, 1923, but Putzi, as he was nicknamed, managed to escape. He happily agreed to read the proofs of Hitler’s book, but he was appalled at errors in style and the poor grammar and thought some of it utter rubbish. Nevertheless, he remarked of the book, “If you cut your way through the verbiage it reveals the essential Hitler, with all his blind spots, combined with fantastic energy and single-mindedness with which he adhered to this rigmarole.”19
Hanfstaengl put his finger on the moment when the führer cult began to form. His impression was that until the putsch in 1923, it was always simply “Herr Hitler.” Rudolf Hess seems to have started the cult in the Landsberg prison, where he began using the term “der Chef” (the boss), but soon adopted “der Führer” in imitation of how the Italians were using “il Duce” to refer to Mussolini. In addition, the “Heil” greeting, which was (and still is) common in Austria, gradually became something more. “Heil Hitler,” at least according to Hanfstaengl, was a password and gradually endowed Hitler with special qualities, and for that reason the snobbish Hanfstaengl refused to use it. He insisted on the old and formal “Herr Hitler” and later “Herr Reichskanzler.” Hitler never asked or ordered anyone to call him the führer, much as Stalin played down being called the vozhd’, but both took pleasure in the honor.20
The leader cult and Heil Hitler greeting fitted together and personalized the Nazi movement around the much-hoped-for strongman. Dictators appeared all across Europe in the interwar period, most notably Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini. They invariably dressed in full military regalia and often used a salute. Their uniformed followers organized along the lines of the army, as if they were still engaged in war, as, in their own terms, they were.
By mid-February 1925, only months out of prison, Hitler was laying the groundwork for a new approach to gaining political power. He got permission from the Bavarian government to remove the ban on the outlawed NSDAP and the Völkischer Beobachter. He called for a new founding meeting, as the Party had all but ceased to exist in his absence. Straightaway he demanded recognition as the leader. Anyone who could not accept his dominance had no place in the Party. The Sturmabteilung (SA) was also refounded, and what both stood for was simple: “The entire force of the movement is directed at the most terrible enemy of the German people: Jews and Marxism.”21
At a meeting held on February 27 in the Bürgerbräukeller, the scene of his attempted putsch on November 8, 1923, Hitler refounded the Party. The hall was packed with up to three thousand, and the police had to turn away at least two thousand more. As always nothing was for free, and the price of admission—one mark—though small, asked for at least a token commitment from participants. Inspiring the crowd, Hitler called for unity around his leadership and for the main contenders in the Nazi movement to join him.
He revived the Party’s flag, reminding the audience of its significance, with the swastika as the symbol for work, the white as a sign of nationalist predisposition, and the red as a sign of the social sentiment. Their aim was summed up: “Struggle against the devilish power that drove Germany into misery, fighting Marxism as well as the spiritual carriers of this world plague and pestilence, the Jews.”22
The speech was reported under headlines such as “Hitler Fever,” “A Provocation of the State’s Authority,” “The Dictator Hitler,” and other less colorful terms to signal that he was back, unrepentant, and popular. His challenge was answered on March 9 by the Bavarian police, who banned him from public speaking on the grounds that he incited violence. The gag order was upheld for two years, until March 5, 1927, but he was still able to address “private” meetings.23
The Party consensus was that it would have to pursue its aims legally and work through elections.24 One of the first occasions to see what the Party would do arose with the election of a new president of the republic. Friedrich Ebert of the SPD, the first president, died on February 28, 1925.
Hitler and the right wing despised that man for embodying the betrayal of November 9, 1918. But Ebert’s vacant position was too important to be ignored. The president’s role as defined under the constitution gave him even greater powers than the American president. He was head of state, elected directly by the people for seven years, and commanded the armed forces. He appointed the chancellor, the head of the government, who had to have the confidence (or toleration) of the Reichstag but who could stay on if the president supported him. Under article 48 of the constitution, the president could declare an emergency and, if he saw fit, pass laws—even the budget—by special decree. In theory, the Reichstag could terminate these emergency powers, but the president could stop such action by dissolving the Reichstag and calling new elections. Ebert had issued 134 emergency decrees to uphold democracy and the republic and demonstrated that the office of the president was the dominant one in the country.
The Nazis could not capitalize on Ebert’s death, but Hitler manipulated General Ludendorff into becoming the Party’s candidate, one of seven who stood for election. None of them won a clear majority, so a second ballot was needed. Ludendorff’s showing was so bad percent of the vote) on the first ballot that he dropped out. This result, as Hitler no doubt foresaw, eliminated Ludendorff as a possible right-wing rival. In the second round the right wing came up with a new candidate, the seventy-eight-year-old field marshal Paul von Hindenburg, the hero of Tannenberg. The SPD and Catholic Center agreed to support the former chancellor Wilhelm Marx (of the Center Party). The Communists insisted that the head of their Party (Ernst Thälmann) stay in the race.
Hindenburg did not win an absolute majority, but obtained 14, 655,641 votes (48.3 percent) over Marx, who got 13, 751,605 (45.3 percent). Thälmann was a distant third, but a spoiler with 1, 931,151 votes (6.4 percent), which would have been enough to elect Marx.25 The Socialists bitterly pointed to the Communists and blamed them for Hindenburg’s victory. The old field marshal made practically no personal appearances during the election but rallied large sections of the country in resentment against the SPD and the KPD. His election was a defeat for the republic.
Hindenburg was an antirepublican with strong antidemocratic tendencies, and he now occupi
ed the most powerful position in Germany. The worry was not so much Hindenburg himself as the “General Staff clique” (Generalstabskamarilla) surrounding him. In fact, he turned out to be more loyal to the constitution than some hoped and others feared, but for all that it would be Hindenburg, acting on the advice of those around him in January 1933, who would appoint Hitler as chancellor.
New people began to join the NSDAP inside and beyond Bavaria. Some of these men, like Joseph Goebbels from Rheydt in the Ruhr, brought their own ideas, not all of which were a good fit with Hitler’s. Goebbels was well educated and articulate and along with some new joiners more “socialistic” than Hitler. He went so far (early in his career) as to empathize with Bolshevism and to suggest an alliance between Germany and Soviet Russia. Gregor Strasser, another highly educated man from Bavaria, carried the Nazi message to the north on Hitler’s instructions. Strasser was moderate on anti-Semitism and inclined to socioeconomic positions similar to those taken by Goebbels. Other shadings of opinion could be found in the expanding Party, but there was nothing like the factionalism among the Marxists either before or after the Russian Revolution. The Nazis agreed on one key point, and that was Hitler’s indispensability.
Hitler called a “leader meeting” in Bamberg for February 14, 1926, and according to the police report, between sixty and sixty-five Party leaders attended. He firmly rejected any alliance with the Soviet Union. Any “going with” (Zusammengehen) Russia would lead to “the immediate Bolshevization of Germany” and thus would be “national suicide.” On the question of land, Hitler was concerned about the health of the race and believed the German people needed space in Eastern Europe, not in distant colonies. As for whether to expropriate the lands of the German princes, Hitler came out against people like Goebbels.
Hitler would not hear of nationalizing land. He was not going to have Nazis confused with Communists. “For us there are no princes, but only Germans.” He also took the opportunity to link up the more socialistically minded among them to the Jews. “We stand on the basis of the law and will not give a Jewish system of exploitation a legal pretext for the complete plundering of our people.” Hitler did, however, want to see the “expropriation of the non-German ‘princes’ of money, of the stock exchange, trade, and commerce.”26
Goebbels confided in his diary how shocked he was by Hitler’s stand on these questions. He wondered whether the man was some kind of “reactionary,” with poor judgment at that: “Russian question: completely misses the point. Italy and England, natural allies. Terrible! Our task is the destruction of Bolshevism. Bolshevism is Jewish work. We must become the heir to Russia! 180 million!” Goebbels wrote that Hitler’s speech was “probably one of the greatest disappointments of my life.”27
It took time to bring him and the northern group around. What helped heal the potential split was the personal impression Hitler was able to make. He invited Goebbels to Munich and explained his speech in person. As he put it, “Russia wants to gobble us up,” and with such statements and the personal touch Hitler won over the feisty Goebbels. The latter wrote in his diary on April 13: “I bend to the greater one, to the political genius.”28 Like Gregor Strasser, he understood that without Hitler they had no chance of getting anywhere.
Hitler was clever enough to balance this kind of dressing-down, delivered when necessary in private, by holding out his hand, a gesture soon followed up by a promotion in the Party. In September 1926, Strasser was made propaganda leader, and by year’s end Goebbels had become gauleiter (district leader) in Berlin. These were two of Hitler’s best appointments, both of them zealous, intelligent, and imaginative, as well as good organizers and gifted speakers in their own right.29
PART THREE
STALIN TRIUMPHS OVER POLITICAL RIVALS
7
BATTLE FOR COMMUNIST UTOPIA
By the time Lenin died at age fifty-three on January 21, 1924, the Communist regime was established and its key features in place. The one-party and one-ideology state had a marked tendency to use terror, and power was in the hands of a half dozen men in the Politburo, an executive committee of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Lenin’s highly centralized system of rule was in the name of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” but behind all the institutions, the fanfare of the congresses, meetings, and the constitution, the Soviet leader was more powerful and autocratic than the mightiest of the tsars. Lenin annihilated enemies and ignored the will of the people as he saw fit.
Stalin was the most poorly educated of all the Communist leaders, but he had a psychological advantage over his rivals because he was from humble origins in far-off Georgia, an economically backward, non-Russian-speaking province in the unruly Caucasus. He learned Russian as a second language and always spoke with a Georgian accent.1
He was born on December 6, 1878—but the date has been questioned. His father, Vissarion Dzhughashvili, was a shoemaker, known for having been a harsh man and excessive drinker who deserted the family altogether. His mother, Ekaterina, like other poor women in the small town of Gori, took work where she could find it, including as a seamstress and housekeeper. She did everything she could to foster Joseph’s religious upbringing and education. When he was nine years old, she got him into the Eastern Orthodox elementary school in their little town.
In 1894, at fifteen, Joseph traveled to the provincial capital city at Tiflis (Tbilisi), where he entered the seminary. It was the most important high school in the Caucasus, but grim and regimented. Students were among the brightest in the area and interested in politics. The “hot” topics of the day included Marxism and other advanced Western ideas, but also the grievances of the Georgian people. Even by Russian standards Georgia was behind. Serfdom persisted after it was abolished in Russia in 1861, and when the serfs were finally emancipated in Georgia, they got less favorable terms than those in Russia. The man who was to become the tyrannical Stalin was an impressionable youth, no doubt affected by the oppressive atmosphere and the discontent around him. He ceased being a model seminary student and became rebellious.
The young Stalin committed quickly to the “cause.” By eighteen or nineteen he had renounced existing society and given up thoughts of a “normal” future. By 1899 he had left the seminary, not even bothering to write his exams. He was attracted to Marxist circles and involved in discussions of the outlawed texts. His official biography, published half a century later, added a heroic note by claiming he was expelled because of his Marxist propaganda work. Once out of school, he briefly found a regular job, but soon opted for life on the run and committed to being a full-time revolutionary.
The Russian movement comprised a loose collection of socially marginal individuals drawn to Marx’s ideas, which already had many adherents in Western Europe. Populist or agricultural Socialism was more widely accepted in Russia, but even that had a marginal following. Marx’s ideas were considered the most progressive of the day by the handful of devotees. A few showed up at the founding congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in 1898. A more serious effort was undertaken in 1903 with the second congress, but (as indicated earlier) it split at once into two factions, with Lenin and the Bolsheviks (majority) on one side and the Mensheviks, or minority, on the other.
Lenin made his name among young Russian radicals as one of the founding members of Iskra (Spark) in 1900. The émigré newspaper was published in Germany and favored underground activity that would “spark” the fires of revolution. Lenin became far better known for the pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (1902). It won over people like Stalin, who were excited by the idea that a small band of revolutionaries could bring fundamental change. They accepted Lenin’s sneering about the workers’ disappointing inclination to work within the system: “The history of all countries shows that the working class, by itself, is not able to get beyond trade-union consciousness, that is, the belief that workers need to join together in unions, fight the employers, and try to force the government to pass necessary labor legi
slation, and so on.” Lenin readily adopted the catchall Marxist dictum that workers who did not agree suffered from “false consciousness” and did not really know their own best interests. Unlike other Marxists, he did not take the paternalistic route to “enlighten” workers, but he determined that revolution would have to be brought to them from outside their ranks.2
Stalin was attracted and became a Leninist long before he met the source of the inspiration. He staunchly defended Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? in the Georgian revolutionary underground. Like Lenin he favored a tightly knit group of highly committed individuals who were prepared to use whatever methods were necessary to bring about the kind of world they wanted. They both felt they knew what was best for those whom they would “save.”3
STALIN’S EARLY POLITICAL VENTURES
Stalin was the type of extremist who was, in Lenin’s terms, “boundlessly devoted to the revolution.”4 Given the vigilance of the tsarist secret police and their spies, however, he no sooner appeared in the radical circles in Georgia than he was hounded and driven underground. He adopted “Koba” as the first of many noms de guerre he would use. It was from a well-known Georgian novel of the day by Alexander Kazbegi in which the heroic character Koba leads a mountain people to freedom and independence. Joseph Dzhughashvili evidently felt comfortable picturing himself as Koba, and his new vocation became that of the fulltime revolutionary.
He entered the strange and at times slightly mad underground of writers, dreamers, idealists, fanatics, anarchists, conspirators, and assassins. He became a prime example of a new political breed, men and women who devoted themselves selflessly to some higher cause and who were prepared to deny themselves all the worldly comforts to attain their ends. They wanted the people to have complete happiness and earthly salvation, if necessary through violence and terrorism. Most were ascetics, almost like medieval monks. Koba was arrested at least eight times and exiled, often to distant parts of Siberia. His ardor could not be crushed, and he repeatedly escaped, somehow made his way back to Russia, and threw himself into the struggle again.
Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler Page 15