The Nazis found revivalists who became tireless campaigners. Even when the Party was barely getting off the ground, Hitler reported holding no fewer than 2,370 “mass meetings” in the year ending in May 1926. At that time there were only about forty Party speakers, led by Joseph Goebbels, Julius Streicher, and Wilhelm Frick. Hitler himself spoke all over Germany and was invariably a big draw.5
He also went with cap in hand to sympathetic industrialists and wealthy people, but with only mixed results. The Party was off-putting for the more affluent classes as it was tinged with the stigma of being “socialistic.” That might mean Marxism or Soviet-style policies. Nonetheless, occasional gifts and loans came in during the mid-1920s, like some from Edwin Bechstein and Hugo Bruckmann, and particularly their wives. Winifred Wagner, of the famous Richard Wagner family, was an early convert and, though she had no money of her own to speak of, “worked tirelessly” for the Party and asked artists and singers at Bayreuth to contribute to the cause. Hitler’s association with the Wagner cult and these well-connected people provided him with some funding, as well as an air of social respectability.6 In 1927 the elderly Ruhr industrialist Emil Kirdorf gave the Party 100,000 marks. Hitler later told Goebbels he was on the point of despair when Kirdorf helped the Party get through a financial crisis.7
The obvious way to increase income was to carry out recruitment drives, for new members had to pay dues and buy the Party newspaper and literature. Even the unemployed who wanted to join up had to pay, if necessary by finding a friend to help out. The aim was to grow to 100,000, but in May 1926 the Party treasurer, Franz Xaver Schwarz, reported a mere 36,300 members, a number that might have been on the high side. Far better results were needed.8
Hitler forever pointed to the growing danger of the German Communist Party (KPD), supposedly with up to 700,000 sympathizers in Berlin alone. The Socialist Party (SPD), with its millions of members and even greater number of allies in the trade-union movement, was still further ahead.9
The Nazi Party was moving slowly along. At the July 1926 rally in Weimar, it put on display the Schutzstaffel (SS), or Protection Squad (founded in November 1925), an elite corps of around two hundred who were in effect Hitler’s personal bodyguard. Reichsführer SS Josef Berchtold was presented with the “blood flag” carried by the Nazis on the day of the abortive putsch in 1923. Such rituals became part of the religious-like ceremonies that grew with each Party rally. Although the SS technically remained under the SA until July 20, 1934, it went its own way. Whereas the SA (Brownshirts) was subject to local influence, the SS was free from such interference. The SA was also at the 1926 Party rally in Weimar, but no longer under the leadership of Ernst Röhm, who, feeling out of place trying to win elections, left the movement and emigrated.
The SA had a modest membership of seven to eight thousand in 1926, obviously paling in comparison with those on the left.10
ORGANIZATION AND PROPAGANDA: PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE
On paper the Nazi Party looked like a neat chain of command linking Munich to the Gauleiter (district leaders), to the Ortsgruppenleiter (group leaders), and on down to the Blockleiter (block leaders). Occasionally there were even Bezirksleiter (subregional bosses), who interjected themselves between the Gauleiter and the Ortsgruppenleiter. What happened was that certain individuals in some districts decided to fill links in the chain of command. This rigid hierarchy looked as if it was carved in stone, but the structure was flexible and able not only to adjust to local variations but to encourage initiative “from below.”11
The classic case of the Darwinian principles Hitler let run wild inside the Party was shown by Gustav Seifert, a Party member from Hanover who had founded a branch there in 1921. He wrote to Munich in 1925 and asked to be reappointed as Ortsgruppenleiter. Max Amann, one of Hitler’s right-hand men, wrote a telling response on October 27:
You know from your earlier activity as a branch leader of the NSDAP that Herr Hitler takes the view on principle that it is not the job of the Party headquarters to “appoint” Party leaders. Herr Hitler is today more than ever convinced that the most effective fighter in the National Socialist movement is the man who wins respect for himself as leader through his own achievements. You yourself say in your letter that almost all the members follow you. Then why don’t you take over the leadership of the branch?12
If there was a method to this madness, it was that the political struggle would weed out the weak, and the committed would come out on top.
The self-selecting mechanism that determined so much of what the Nazi Party became helped to influence a change in orientation away from the city toward the countryside. Hitler’s initial aim was to challenge the Marxists for the soul of the German working class. In the first years after the Party was refounded, however, it became clear that during good times, workers were almost immune to Nazism. They voted for the SPD or the KPD.
By late 1927 the Nazi Party was looking to the countryside, particularly Protestant areas where there were pockets of discontent over issues like taxes and foreign imports and where its speakers were far better received than in the cities.13 Gregor Strasser as head of Party propaganda persisted in focusing on the cities and the workers, but the strategy was not paying off. Hitler kept enjoining members at Party rallies to be prepared “to make sacrifices” for the movement.14
Hitler himself took over from Strasser on January 2, 1928, with a young deputy named Heinrich Himmler, the man he made leader of the SS in 1929. Himmler had participated in the abortive putsch of November 8–9, 1923, and joined the SS in 1925. He had served as adjutant with Strasser and now continued in the same role with Hitler, whom he impressed with his propaganda work and organizational ability.15
Hitler, convinced of the need for the Party to orient itself to the countryside, proceeded immediately to modify its program of 1920. Point 17 made demands that sounded far too “socialistic,” above all to farmers. As stated, it called for “a land reform suitable to our national requirements, the passing of a law for the expropriation of land for communal purposes without compensation, the abolition of ground rent, and the prohibition of speculation in land.” Conservative opponents of Nazism had referred to point 17 to brand the Party as radical and Socialist, and on April 13, 1928, Hitler issued a “clarification” to set the record straight. It went as follows: “Since the NSDAP stands on the basis of private property, it goes without saying that the phrase ‘expropriation without compensation’ refers simply to the creation of possible legal means for confiscation, when necessary, of land acquired illegally or not managed in the public good. It is, therefore, aimed primarily against Jewish companies that speculate in land.”16
The socialistic-sounding plank was thus changed to appease conservatives but also to promote the anti-Semitic agenda. As expected, membership began to pick up almost immediately.17
The elections of 1928, as usual fought fervently by the Nazis, produced meager results. With only 2.6 percent of the vote and nothing close to a majority in any district, they still elected 12 members because of proportional representation. Even though the 12 represented a small percentage of the 491 members in the Reichstag, they were a presence to be reckoned with. As deputies they had railway passes and could travel all over the country at state expense and give political talks.
The big winners in 1928 were the Communists, who went from 45 to 54 seats; the SPD did better, as always, with 153 seats and was thus the largest party in the Reichstag. Between them the Marxists could claim over 200 seats and, had they been able to work out an alliance, would have been a force the Nazis would have found almost impossible to beat. As it was, the Comintern—that is, the Communist Party in Moscow—determined that any such coalition with the SPD was out of the question. Already in the spring of 1928 the SPD, one of the main supporters of democracy in the country, were harshly branded by Soviet leaders as “Social Fascists.”
The new line from the Kremlin was adopted at the Sixth World Congress of the Comintern in July-August
1928. The theory was that the growth of Fascism had infected not only Italy and Germany but also workers’ parties like the SPD. Moscow detected a rising threat and called on Communists everywhere to fight against Socialist parties. A Pravda report from the Comintern meetings in July 1929 stated that the Social Democrats were “a component part of the fascist system” and had to be defeated.18 The KPD was thus compelled, under instructions from Moscow, to turn against the SPD. The Nazis scoffed at their bitter divisions and put all Marxists into the same pot.
And yet the divisions within the working-class movement helped the Nazis to grow. Hitler and Himmler began publishing and distributing “propaganda guidelines” in March 1927. These were written mainly by Himmler, who helped create and run the propaganda machine for which Joseph Goebbels is usually given credit.19
In July 1928, Fritz Reinhardt, gauleiter in Upper Bavaria-Swabia, set up a “speakers’ school” that began by offering correspondence courses. Himmler urged Party leaders to participate. All were offered some basic theory, told to practice in front of a mirror, given several set talks to memorize, and even provided with answers to likely questions. Speakers had to know what they were talking about and were introduced to the most up-to-date material on social and political matters. The goal was for ordinary people to become interested enough to make the trip to the district capital, where they would hear better-trained Gau-speakers and perhaps even national Party leaders.20
The speakers’ school was officially recognized on May 6, 1929. Thereafter, each district nominated two people per course. Once they completed the instruction, they were designated as official Party speakers. Every two weeks they received published reading material, as Reinhardt said, “in a way similar to the information service of the Communists and Socialists.” The number of trained Nazi speakers has been estimated at around six thousand by Hitler’s appointment in January 1933. Most still drew only small audiences, but together they conveyed the impression of enthusiasm, commitment, and tirelessness. Their activity was the best answer to the fears about the Communist Party. Many worked without pay, and only as the Party’s membership drive began to succeed were some given a salary.21
The Party made innovative use of the new film medium. It was also skillful in presenting itself on the radio. In October 1928 it created a weekly picture magazine, the Illustrierter Beobachter (Illustrated Observer), taking its title from the Party’s national newspaper. A Nazi version of Life magazine, it combined stories with lavish pictures and would become an institution in the Third Reich. All these innovations were only just getting off the ground in 1928, but later paid dividends.22
In the meantime, everything was done on a shoestring budget. There was not even enough money in the coffers to hold a Party rally in 1928, a sign the membership drive was not going that well. The consequences of failure in elections and recruitment were hammered out at long meetings in Munich. But in August Hitler reported the Party had a hundred thousand members and 1,124 “local groups.” Although the police said these numbers were “greatly exaggerated,” in fact they were not that far off.23
In September there was an announcement of the Party structure: new districts were defined, some new leaders put in place, and the importance of the Gau highlighted. There were twenty-four Gaue outside Bavaria, which had eight “independent Untergaue” of its own. Most of the gauleiters were strong believers who remained in office for much of the Third Reich. If they moved, they usually went to equally important posts elsewhere.24
Although the Party devoted great energy to reorganizing, improved election results were slow in coming. Indeed, the Prussian state government concluded that Hitler no longer posed a threat and at the end of September 1928 lifted the ban on his public speaking. Daringly enough, the leaders of the Party scheduled a giant rally for November 16 at Berlin’s Sportpalast with Hitler as the main attraction. The Party press said eighteen thousand paying customers packed the place, a slight exaggeration but still a massive gathering that demonstrated how the movement might be getting stronger.
Introduced briefly by Goebbels, Hitler showed that on a national stage he easily put the leaders of all other parties in the shade. He was often interrupted by “thunderous applause” and left them cheering wildly.25
They were all elated to see Hitler at his full powers for an hour and a half. He hit the nationalist and economic themes, underlining how the country had been weakened and shut out of international affairs. He told his usual story about the World War and how Germany was falsely accused of causing it.
Hitler said he wanted to rise above politics and social classes, to speak for the creation of a “community of the people” based on “pure blood.” He trotted out his favorite hobbyhorse—that racial mixing led to national decline—and branded democracy an “error.” Marxism and class conflict had to be overcome, “not in order that the bourgeoisie wins, but the German people survive. We want to create space and bread, because now we are slaves of the world economy, slaves on our own soil. We confess that our intention is to give the people land again. On the head of our weapons there is our will, the great weapon, to destroy other philosophies.” He was referring not just to Marxism but to parliamentary democracy as well. “The republic persecutes us, takes our freedom and very being, but thereby creates the weapon for the struggle of the Third Reich.”26
Hitler went back to Munich, where he addressed the National Socialist German University Student Group in November. Under the leadership of twenty-one-year-old Baldur von Schirach, the student organization made great gains in the nationwide university association. Perhaps more important than winning those elections, Schirach brought Nazi ideas to the country’s young elite. The Nazi university students were officially organized on January 26, 1926, but only became a force to reckon with two years later.
Hitler was a big drawing card on November 20, and twenty-five hundred or more university students and invited guests packed the Löwenbräu Keller to hear his speech titled “Not Pretty Words, but Deeds.” It touched all the themes likely to appeal to such a crowd, particularly nationalism and the need to fight for the fatherland “and for the coming Third Reich.” He was looking for recruits who wanted to assert Germany’s will abroad and overcome class conflict at home. He took aim at the Communists, who were accused of attacking Party members after his recent talk in Berlin. “We will break the terror of the Communists, because we’ll fight terror with terror.” He ended with the message that come what may, neither he nor the Party would bend, but would continue the battle. As usual, Hitler’s remarks were greeted with great applause.27
In preparation for elections Himmler devised propaganda “concentrations,” whereby the Party would employ saturation campaigning in one district for a week or ten days. In late 1928 the Party would schedule as many as two hundred rallies in any one district for an upcoming election. The tactic, which has been called “highly sophisticated,” was not used in areas already in the fold and avoided places where there was little or no support. Instead, Himmler, Hitler, and Hess directed the all-out drives to areas where breakthroughs were likely. To determine which to target, Himmler would evaluate the incoming monthly reports of the gauleiters and compile a master list identifying where the propaganda “concentrations” should take place.
The scheduling was worked out by the three leaders, in conjunction with Hitler’s speaking arrangements and the availability of other top performers. As a follow-up, the SA would visit each village and town that had been hit in order to show themselves in the best light. The net effect was seemingly endless numbers of meetings, a fact that never failed to impress.28
Similar procedures determined the topics, including Hitler’s. There was little point in condemning Marxism or Bolshevism in a rural area where people did not feel threatened by Socialists or Communists. Similarly, many parts of Germany had no Jewish communities at all and little or no history of anti-Semitism, so there it made little sense to dwell on these matters. Where agricultural issues were of immedia
te relevance, the Party tried to exploit them. Even in 1928, before its speakers’ school began, it had used ten “experts” on agriculture to every one on Bolshevism.29
The impression conveyed in Goebbels’s diary was that Hitler came up with the ideas and others made things happen. By late 1929 Goebbels and Himmler were cooperating closely on the Party’s propaganda.30
Voters had no idea about the careful calculations behind the scenes. Certain areas would be selected for a saturation campaign and then overwhelmed. The Party gave the impression that it was a giant movement whose activities made it seem unstoppable and inexhaustible. It used the right “experts” at the right times. Historians, particularly those who interview local people, always report such impressions. The Nazis paid enormous attention to detail, from providing outlines for election posters to suggesting battle songs the SA might sing as the occasion demanded.
OMENS OF THINGS TO COME
The Party’s organizational apparatus was in place by the end of 1928. Membership also grew, with the number 100,000 reported in October 1928 and 150,000 in September 1929. Active members were likely around one-tenth less than those numbers, as some people left the movement and others passed away. Finding the right personnel to represent the Party was a continuing problem.31
Hitler and his Party could see hopeful signs in 1929 that they would likely do better in the next national elections, even before the Great Depression began. Not only was Hitler a great attraction, but other Nazis addressed ever-increasing audiences as well. For example, Goebbels had a packed house of five thousand in Hamburg’s Circus Busch in mid-April 1929. That city had a reputation for supporting left-wing or liberal parties, and for Goebbels to get such a crowd there was encouraging to the Nazis. The same number gathered to hear him in Berlin in September. In various other parts of Germany the story was the same. These mass events took place in a highly politicized atmosphere even before local and state election campaigns got started.32
Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler Page 22