Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  This turn of events was Hitler’s greatest political defeat since the attempted putsch in 1923. Papen toyed with reckless steps, such as restricting the vote or ruling without the Reichstag, but such measures would have caused wholesale social upheaval. He apparently gave serious thought to establishing a military dictatorship.6

  The Reichstag session on September 12 ended with a vote of non-confidence, which was put by the Communists and carried by a great majority. The government was revealed as a tiny clique of reactionaries devoid of support. Papen had to call elections yet again, in effect the fourth federal election in 1932 if we include the two for president.7

  Hitler’s campaign differed from previous ones. He had been thrown onto the defensive by the government’s claim that he had been offered a major cabinet post but wanted the entire government. He came across as power hungry, not having the nation’s best interests at heart, and as just another politician.

  ANTI-SEMITISM IN WORD AND DEED

  Anti-Semitism was never far beneath the surface in any of Hitler’s speeches, but this time it was offered in a code all his listeners recognized. All he had to do was mention the well-known name of “the Jew” Jakob Goldschmidt, an illustrious banker until the crisis of 1931. Hitler talked of him and Papen as the “marriage” of the “Berlin Jews and the Gentlemen’s Club.”8 His most common criticism of Papen’s economic program was that its “spiritual father” was Goldschmidt. In the short campaign, Hitler used Goldschmidt’s name more than a dozen times to convey the anti-Semitic message.

  Hans Mommsen points out that during the Weimar years “anti-Semitic feelings, particularly toward non-assimilated Jewish groups, began to pervade German public life as a whole.” Anti-Semitism was “a clear indicator of the increasingly antiliberal character of German political and intellectual life.”9 There were several open assaults on the Jews, some that were not so small, like the attacks in the Scheunen quarter of Berlin in November 1932.

  Anti-Semitism and anti-Bolshevism were inextricably entwined in contemporary discourse, and not just in the Nazi Party. In out-of-the-way places, like the Catholic and rural Black Forest, which had no tradition of anti-Semitism (or Communism) and where few Jews lived, the Nazi Party “adapted” to local circumstances and soft-pedaled anti-Semitism. According to a recent study, it was above all “the profound fear of Russian Bolshevism” that was “the most important, perhaps most decisive reason for the success of the Nazi Party in the Black Forest region, and possibly in other regions as well.”10

  Some people supported the Nazi Party because of its anti-Semitism, some did so despite the anti-Semitism, and some may have ignored it. Precisely what the mix was varied infinitely, even in the mind of a single individual. There can be no doubt, however, that Hitler and his Party had been rabidly and openly anti-Semitic from 1920 onward, and anyone who paid Party dues, read the Party press, or voted for the Party would have been aware of that fact.11

  In 1934 Professor Theodore Abel of Columbia University sponsored an essay contest for Nazi Party members. Advertisements were placed in Nazi newspapers inviting members of the Party to submit their autobiographies, with prizes awarded the best. Abel analyzed and quantified the content of the essays. One of his findings was that of the six hundred essays received, 60 percent made “no reference whatsoever to indicate that they harbored anti-Semitic feelings.” Abel assumed some respondents said nothing “because membership in the National Socialist party implied that they opposed the Jews.” This data has been used repeatedly to suggest that most Nazis were at best indifferent about anti-Semitism and some of them even opposed to it. But they were writing for an American professor who, for all they knew, might be Jewish. In any case, there would be an inclination to emphasize the positive aspects of their movement, their reasons for joining, and not mention its overt racism.12

  It is obviously true that anti-Semitism, like all motives for supporting Nazism, varied from place to place. In some areas Nazi anti-Semitism was so blatant as to make the two synonymous. Yet the issue was a nonstarter politically in localities with no tradition of anti-Semitism. Jews in Germany felt the country was a better place to live than anywhere else, and their support for Zionism was weak compared with that of Jews in Central European countries.

  Another approach to the role of anti-Semitism was taken by studying the “enemy groups” pictured in Nazi posters used in the five national elections between 1928 and 1932. As in all such representations, the messages are mixed and full of subtexts and suggestions. Six of 124 posters were aimed specifically at the Jews. The primary “enemy” pictured (39 in all) was the SPD/Marxism. However, this does not “prove” the Nazis did not push anti-Semitism as well, given the link they always made between the Jews and the Marxists. For the Reichstag elections of November 1932, one of the most appalling posters showed a colossal, animalistic Red Army soldier. The motto was that only Hitler could rescue the country from such a Bolshevik beast. Other posters used the motif of an attack against the “Bigwigs and Nobles’ Club,” which was explicitly associated with Jews. Jews were frequently linked to the Weimar “system” and the “November parties.” These and others, therefore, were not without hints of anti-Semitism.

  One of the most graphic and colorful posters from 1930 showed a large serpent emitting poisons, including Bolshevism, inflation, “war guilt,” Versailles, and terror. The head of the snake, itself a symbol of evil, was marked with the Star of David. It was pierced through by a sword with the implication that stopping the Jews (perhaps killing them) would solve all problems.13

  Some of the intellectuals in the Party like Werner Best said they did not believe in the “absolute inferiority of the Jews.” However, Best still held that anti-Semitism had to prevail in Germany as “political, economic, and cultural self-defense.” There had to be a struggle to free Germany from what he termed the “overdominance of foreign people.” Not unlike Hitler, he called for a “rational,” as opposed to only emotional, anti-Semitism. He would later become a key member of the SS and the secret police.14

  It was not just what Hitler said but what members of the movement did that made people aware of the stance on the “Jewish question.” In eastern Germany in August 1932, bombs and hand grenades were thrown at Jews or their property, leaving the victims to rely on the police for protection.15

  There were two especially notorious anti-Semitic events in these last years of democracy. On October 13, 1930—the day the Reichstag opened after the latest elections—the SA wanted to use the occasion to protest the government’s decision to ban their wearing uniforms. The Nazis met at the Reichstag, and then made their way to a nearby business district, where they systematically smashed the windows of mainly Jewish firms, including prominent department stores. Here was an unprecedented example of the SA’s anti-Semitism that combined with its anti-plutocratic attitudes. A similar but even larger outburst of these destructive urges took place on September 12, 1931. The scene was on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm, the upscale shopping area. Five hundred SA men marched down the Ku’damm screaming, “Long live Hitler!” and “Germany, awake, and death to the Jews!” This was on the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah), and the SA attacked anyone who “looked Jewish” near the synagogue.16

  Thus, contrary to the assertions in older literature, anti-Semitism in word and deed by no means became a “marginal phenomenon” in this period. On the contrary, in the last years of the republic, there was a discernible increase in anti-Semitism from the far north to the south of the country. The most obvious expressions were these SA attacks.17

  Apart from taking out their spite on the Jews through these and many other individual acts of violence, the Party, the SA, and the SS agreed (as did the nationalist DNVP to some extent) that the legal rights of the Jews were going to be curtailed if and when Hitler became chancellor.

  HOLDING OUT FOR POWER

  Time dragged on, and still Hitler was not in power, but he continued to campaign. In left-oriented Essen—in front of fifty tho
usand on October 30, 1932—he said his aim was to unify the “body politic” (Volkskörper), overcome all social divisions, and create the racially based “community of the people.” He had to succeed because “Germany had to be German or it will be Bolshevik.”18 The goal was to create a new and unified Reich. One half of the nation could not rule the other nor terrorize it into submission. The entire “community” had to be in agreement.19 On November 5 in Munich before ten thousand, he insisted: “One cannot construct from the top down, nor from the top down falsely invent a constitution, but it has to grow naturally out of the community.” His aim was to attract “the broad masses that are difficult to conquer because they are thickheaded and stubborn.” Yet “in times of need they are the basis on which one could build.”20

  What about the constitution? He said what he had in mind—and did so under oath—at a famous trial of three army officers in September 1930. They were charged with propagating the idea in the army that they would support a Hitler coup by refusing orders to put it down. Questioned at length about his plans, Hitler summed them up: “The National Socialist movement in this state seeks its goal by using constitutional means. The constitution determines our methods, but not the goal. We will use constitutional ways to achieve the relevant majorities in the legislative bodies. However, the moment we achieve that goal, we will mold the state into the shape we hold to be suitable.”21

  Hitler often claimed that his model was Benito Mussolini, whom he lauded for creating a system that stopped Bolshevism. Questioned in court on this point earlier in 1930, and on Mussolini’s violent methods, Hitler answered that the Fascists did not bring about a revolution like the one in Germany in 1918, but “rescued the future of the Italian people.” They used violence not against the state but against the “terror elements of the street that the state could not master.”22

  In his New Year address in December 1932 Hitler said it was coming down to a fight to the finish with the Reds. He exaggerated the threat of Bolshevism and claimed that the Communist Party in Germany had 6 million supporters. The KPD in fact had won 5.9 million votes in the last election, but the Party membership at the end of 1932 was around 360,000, of whom 252,000 were dues paying.23

  Hitler’s exaggerations aside, many “good citizens,” not just supporters of the Nazi movement, believed that the “Bolshevik danger was enormous.” Hitler as always sought to identify the real instigator behind Bolshevism: the “Jewish-intellectual leadership of the world revolution that had just conquered Russia” and who had “exterminated the earlier leading spiritual non-Slavic upper class.”24

  Although he continued to draw large and enthusiastic audiences, the November 1932 election results were disappointing. Overall participation was down by over three points and the Nazi vote by over four. Goebbels surmised that some were put off by Hitler’s refusal to take the cabinet position offered him, but saw reason for hope: “hardly 10 percent of the people stand behind the government,” and so it would not be able to hang on for very long.25

  Hitler was undaunted, and with 11.7 million votes and 196 seats (a drop of 34) the Nazi Party was still far ahead of all others. The DNVP, led by Alfred Hugenberg, won back some support lost to the Nazis in recent elections and added more seats. The vote for the second-place finisher, SPD, was down slightly, and it lost 12 seats to 120. Communist Party support grew yet again, as it had in every federal election since 1924. They now had 100 seats, 11 more than in the previous Reichstag.

  The country was stuck in a political deadlock. Gregor Strasser, the second most powerful man in the Nazi Party, began to have doubts about the wisdom of Hitler’s all-or-nothing approach. Certainly a violent seizure of power on the Leninist model was out of the question. Hitler’s aim was to get enough support to be appointed by the head of state, on the model of Mussolini, but President Hindenburg stood stubbornly in the way.

  Strasser thought it a mistake for Hitler to have rejected the offer of a position in the government. The momentum of the Nazi steamroller seemed to have slowed to a snail’s pace; the coffers were empty; many were giving up their memberships; and some local elections showed support slipping away.26

  Putzi Hanfstaengl, who was close to Hitler in these months, expressed a different view. He said Hitler’s behavior during 1932 was not that of “a politician in the ordinary sense. He did not concern himself with the day-to-day kaleidoscope of the political scene. He was not looking for alliances or coalitions or temporary tactical advantage. He wanted power, supreme and complete, and was convinced that if he talked often enough and aroused the masses sufficiently, he must, in due course, be swept into office.”27

  Hitler tried again to obtain the chancellorship in negotiations with Hindenburg and Schleicher, demonstrating, according to Goebbels, both strong nerves and determination. The effort again came to nothing, but the propaganda expert was relieved there was no repeat of the August 13 debacle that cast Hitler as just another ambitious politician.28

  A showdown between Hitler and Strasser took place in Weimar on November 30 when Strasser argued for participation in a coalition government. Hitler—backed by Goebbels and Göring—rejected the idea. Hitler was for holding out against Schleicher and those trying to lure him into accepting a role in the cabinet instead of giving him the chancellorship. He won the argument but seemed to be losing the war, as the Nazis promptly suffered a setback in the municipal elections in Thuringia on December 4.

  ON THE EVE OF VICTORY

  Two days before these elections, Schleicher was named chancellor, a decision Goebbels thought was favorable to the Nazis, as it was the last card Hindenburg could play before having to turn to Hitler. In a meeting with Schleicher and Hindenburg, Strasser was told by the old man that he would never appoint Hitler chancellor. Strasser was himself offered the vice-chancellorship, in hopes of splitting the Nazi Party. The negotiations came to nothing, but Hitler grew convinced his once loyal follower was conspiring against him, and on December 8 Strasser, disheartened and demoralized, resigned all his posts. In a letter to Hitler he said that the movement was wasting away in “useless opposition.” He thought it mistaken to place so much emphasis on anti-Marxism and wanted the Party to take its “Socialism” seriously.29

  Hitler would not yield on these vital issues and convinced Party leaders to stay the course. Strasser found himself distrusted and isolated, and left for vacation in Italy.30 Although Strasser played no further role in the history of his times, Hitler had him killed during the so-called night of the long knives on June 30, 1934. In the meantime, Hitler took over all Strasser’s posts himself, but otherwise carried out no purges. Quite to the contrary, he visited regional leaders to mend fences and give assurance all was in order.

  Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher’s strategy of trying to split the Nazi movement had failed. The new Reichstag was adjourned, and the political deadlock continued into January. Although it was long thought that Hitler negotiated behind the scenes with major industrialists, his contacts with them had been limited, and there was no great breakthrough in early 1933. Some industrialists had given funds to the Nazis but, covering their bets, gave as much or more to other right-wing parties.

  When word leaked out that a meeting had taken place on January 4 between Hitler and Kurt von Schröder, a well-connected businessman, along with Papen, the left-wing press jumped on the story. For both Communists and Socialists, the meeting confirmed what they had long asserted: Hitler was the “agent of big industry.” This story line has informed the understanding of Nazism ever since for many on the left. However, Schröder did not represent all or even most of Germany’s industrialists, but some who belonged to Wilhelm Keppler’s circle of friends. The latter was a limited group of capitalists who, with the well-known exception of Fritz Thyssen, did not include any of Germany’s big names. Papen insisted that he himself had been falsely charged with arranging the financing of the Nazi Party. Recent accounts have backed up his claims.31

  Hitler’s famous speech to the Düsseldorf
Industrial Club on January 26, 1932, had suggested his ties to the mighty capitalists. Invited by Thyssen to address the club, Hitler did his best to allay fears and win over the seven to eight hundred who showed up to hear him talk about topics dear to his heart like the Darwinian “struggle for survival” and the “threat of Bolshevism,” cast as a danger for the German economy. He strongly supported private property.

  He boasted that the men in SA and SS uniforms, fighting on their behalf, were still paying their own way, buying their own uniforms, shirts, emblems, and flags. These men had the new ideal he wanted the industrialists to share. If the speech was not a complete triumph, it went some distance toward convincing them he was not going to nationalize industry. If they did not know it already, he made it abundantly clear that he was a die-hard opponent of Communism.32

  Was Hitler’s star falling in January 1933? He had a chance to show it in yet another state election on January 15, this time in Lippe-Detmold, a tiny state with a total population of around 160,000. An election there could have enormous political significance if the Nazis lost, and so they threw themselves into it with a vengeance. They did not get funds from the industrialists with whom Hitler supposedly had made a pact. The Nazis gained less than 5 percent (up to a total of 39.5 percent) from their last showing, but the results were positive enough for the Party newspaper to scream: “Resign, Mr. Schleicher!—Hitler Wins in Lippe!”33

  Hitler’s determination to see the struggle through, when nearly everyone around him despaired, was remarkable. His intransigence can be followed almost daily in Goebbels’s diaries.

  During the two weeks that followed, the power brokers in Berlin went to work behind the scenes. When Schleicher found he could not after all put together a government Hindenburg would approve, he began toying with the idea of trying to have the Reichstag dissolved and the elections postponed until the autumn, a course of action that could have led (as he had argued himself on earlier occasions) to a general strike at best and a civil war at worst.