by Dan McMillan
When his money ran out in the autumn of 1909, Hitler lived on the street for several months, finding his way in December to a homeless shelter. In the words of his leading biographer, “the twenty-year-old would-be artistic genius had joined the tramps, winos, and down-and-outs in society’s basement.” In early 1910 Hitler managed to stabilize his living situation with a cash gift from an aunt, moving to a more respectable men’s dormitory. There he lived for more than three years, earning his money by painting postcard-sized images of Vienna landmarks that a partner sold to tourists and frame shops. As before, he lacked all direction and purpose. In May 1913, Hitler fled to Munich to escape punishment for having avoided service in the Austro-Hungarian Army. There he resumed the aimless life he had lived in Vienna. In the summer of 1914, Hitler was living at the margins of society, a man without friends and without prospects. When war broke out in August, he promptly volunteered for the German Army.24
World War I was the best thing that ever happened to Adolf Hitler. It rescued him from a pointless existence and gave him a regular job, a sense of belonging, and a purpose for his life—the German victory for which he fought. The war also gave him his first meaningful successes: two medals for bravery under fire, the Iron Cross Second Class and First Class. During the war that he had unleashed on Europe in 1939, Hitler fondly recalled his years of trench warfare as “the one time when I had no worries.” He served on the western front as a dispatch runner until he was temporarily blinded by mustard gas in October 1918, displaying a fanatical commitment to the war effort and an unswerving faith in Germany’s inevitable victory. The revolution that toppled the emperor, and the armistice that confirmed Germany’s loss of the war, coming two days apart in November 1918, fell upon Hitler as a crushing double blow. His entire world and his identity as a soldier had collapsed.25
Like so many on the right wing of German politics, Hitler came to blame the loss of the war on the revolution, and on the socialists and Jews who had supposedly brought the revolution about. Although he probably did not reach these conclusions until some point in 1919, in Mein Kampf Hitler backdated his political awakening to the day of Germany’s surrender, as he lay in hospital recovering from poisoning by mustard gas. “There followed terrible days and even more terrible nights—I knew that all was lost,” he wrote. “In these nights hatred grew within me, hatred against the perpetrators of this deed.” Hitler had acquired the thirst for revenge that would drive his every action for the remainder of his bleak and violent life.26
Hitler published the second volume of his manifesto, Mein Kampf, in 1926. Although he did not know that he would one day try to murder every person of Jewish ancestry in Europe, he had articulated the fundamental beliefs that would lead to the Holocaust. By this point, all of the leading perpetrators of this crime had reached adulthood and acquired the political views and character traits that would make them into killers. The war, and the political violence that followed, especially service in the Free Corps, had hardened their hearts to the suffering of others and made them into fanatical adherents of an unspeakably violent ideology. Yet they lacked the opportunity to make their terrible ideas a reality. They were wholly excluded from power.
CHAPTER 7
WHY HITLER?
From that day on I could never violate my allegiance to Hitler. I saw his illimitable faith in his people and the desire to set them free. His conviction upheld us, whenever we weakened amid our trials; we leaned upon him in our weariness.
His never-to-be forgotten speech affected me as the words of a prophet.
—Two active members of the Nazi Party, recalling speeches by Adolf Hitler1
Without Hitler there would have been no Holocaust. Yes, German democracy had faltered badly by the end of the 1920s, and an authoritarian government might well have established itself. Without Hitler, however, it is hard to imagine such a government perpetrating genocide. Hitler’s bizarre and obsessive hatred for Jews was at first particular to him, and was only later adopted by some of his followers under his influence. Germany’s cautious military leaders eventually followed Hitler into world war with enthusiasm, but only after his early victories persuaded them of his “genius.” On their own, they would never have undertaken the conquest of Europe. Yet Hitler’s central role in the Holocaust only raises a larger question. How could a man like Adolf Hitler gain control of one of the world’s most advanced societies? Hitler’s coming to power is all the more remarkable when one considers not only his shocking moral depravity, but also his limited abilities and unattractive personal qualities.2
In personal terms, Hitler was not only unimpressive, but indeed downright repulsive. He seemed devoid of empathy, cared little for other human beings, and had no concern for the boundless suffering he inflicted upon them. In his entire life Hitler did not have a single friendship that most people would consider healthy. His two “romantic” relationships with women—Geli Raubal and Eva Braun—both ended with the women committing suicide, Braun taking poison by his side as he shot himself amid the ruins of Berlin.3
Far from developing nuanced insight into political affairs, Hitler let his thinking congeal into a handful of primitive obsessions that could be summarized on the back of a postcard. Unfortunately, these simplistic ideas were at least partly in step with the more sophisticated thinking of many of his contemporaries. The combination of his hate-fueled passion and endlessly repeated slogans and his uncanny feel for the mood of his audiences produced Hitler’s only real talent, public speaking. This one skill carried him into politics and made his career.4
After World War I ended, Hitler faced the terrifying prospect of returning to civilian society and the unbroken record of failure that he had suffered before the war. Seeking desperately to remain in the military as long as he could, Hitler found employment with the army as a propaganda officer. Trained to spread nationalist and anticommunist ideas among the troops, Hitler discovered his gift for public speaking. During the crisis-laden five years that followed Germany’s defeat in November 1918, Hitler steadily gained prominence in radical right-wing politics in Munich, the capital of Bavaria and a center of hostility to the young Republic. Discharged from the army in March 1920, Hitler threw in his lot with an obscure radical faction, the National Socialist German Workers Party, later to be known as the “Nazis,” an abbreviation derived from the German pronunciation of the word “national.” Being far and away the best public speaker in Munich, Hitler became the head of the Nazi Party in 1921, since only he could draw crowds to the party’s rallies. By late 1923, the party counted 55,000 members, up from a few hundred when Hitler had joined in 1920. Hitler had become the most visible public figure calling for Bavarians to lead a coup against the democratic government in Berlin. Yet Hitler’s understanding of politics began and ended with his ability to rouse the hateful passions of nationalist true believers.5
Hitler’s record during his early career is one of political incompetence, displaying a complete cluelessness about the ways and means of acquiring power. Nowhere was Hitler’s ineptitude more obvious than in the farcical episode known as the “Beer Hall Putsch.” During the crisis year 1923, galloping inflation and the French-led invasion of the Ruhr made the dissolution of the Republic seem a real possibility. On November 8, Hitler and a group of his followers stormed a political meeting being held in a Munich beer hall. Hitler waved a pistol and forced the leaders of the Bavarian government and the local army commander into a private room. Facing death threats from Hitler, they promised to support his half-baked plan: Hitler would march on Berlin at the head of the Bavarian contingent of the German Army, topple the Republic, and declare himself leader of Germany.6
After one of Hitler’s accomplices made the mistake of releasing the Bavarian leaders, they reneged on their promises to Hitler, and his coup, or Putsch, swiftly collapsed. The next morning Hitler made a final delusional attempt to inspire the Bavarian troops to mutiny against their officers and follow him to Berlin. As he marched his supporters into
central Munich, shooting broke out between the police and Hitler’s followers, leaving eighteen men dead, including four police officers. By all rights, Hitler’s career in German politics should have ended then and there: conviction on charges of high treason, a long prison term, and then deportation to his native Austria, as he had never gained German citizenship.
Not for the last time, an astonishing stroke of good luck saved Hitler from failure and well-deserved obscurity. A flagrantly biased trial judge and enemy of the Republic, Georg Neithardt, ignored procedural rules and let Hitler turn the trial into a circus, giving political speeches from the witness stand over the prosecutor’s objections. The trial catapulted Hitler to national prominence, and his absurdly lenient sentence—five years—shocked even conservative opponents of the Republic. Unfairly credited by a supportive prison warden with good behavior, Hitler was released in December 1924 after only thirteen months in custody, and efforts to have him deported led nowhere. Official favoritism toward Hitler was only one example of how conservative elites deliberately undermined the Republic, but it was one of the most consequential.7
His trial for treason was a triumph for Hitler. It persuaded both Hitler and his dedicated followers that he was the charismatic Leader destined to be the savior of Germany, the one long dreamt of by the nationalist Right. Over the next four years, the Nazi Party was transformed into a new kind of political organization, a “Leader party” in which Hitler’s authority was unquestioned, and in which loyalty to him papered over all disagreements between followers. During this period, the party spread beyond its Bavarian stronghold to build a national organization, refined its methods of agitation, and increased its membership, which passed the 100,000 mark in October 1928. Throughout these years Hitler played a hands-off role, leaving vital organizational matters to subordinates, of whom Gregor Strasser was the most important. Hitler’s detachment partly reflected his own chronic laziness, indecision, and lack of executive ability. It also sprang from his need to protect his charismatic image, his main contribution to the growth of the party, by placing himself above intraparty conflicts. Now unshakable in his messianic self-image, Hitler resolutely insisted on his dictatorial control over the Nazi Party. His supreme confidence, together with his brilliant public speaking, convinced enough followers of his genius that his control of the party became complete.8
Despite the Nazi Party’s development of a tight organization and an effective propaganda apparatus, until 1930 Hitler and his party remained an insignificant splinter group, more a nuisance than a danger. The Nazis polled only 2.6 percent of the vote in the election of 1928. All this changed when the American stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, setting off the Great Depression.9
Throughout the world, the Depression shuttered businesses, closed banks, wiped out life savings, and put millions out of work. But it struck Germany with exceptional fury. By January 1933, the German unemployment rate stood at a shocking 30 percent. Including hidden unemployment and workers on shortened hours, almost half the labor force was wholly or partially unemployed. However, Germany’s economic collapse, and the resulting failure of democratic government, were not inevitable, but instead resulted in large part from foolish decisions made by Germany’s rulers.10
Germany’s president, Paul von Hindenburg, had long hoped to force the Socialists out of government and destroy parliamentary democracy. Germany’s top general in World War I, Hindenburg had promoted the lie that the democratic revolutionaries of 1918 had lost the war by stabbing the army in the back. When a conflict broke out in March 1930 between the Socialists and the People’s Party over unemployment benefits, Hindenburg used it as an excuse to carry out his long-standing plan. He installed a new prime minister, Heinrich Brüning, who bypassed parliament by issuing emergency decrees that Hindenburg signed into law. The constitution allowed an emergency decree to become law as long as a majority of the parliament did not vote to overturn the decree. On July 16, the parliament did just that, rejecting one of Brüning’s measures. Rather than accepting the majority’s decision, Brüning and Hindenburg took a fatal step, one that would prove a turning point in German history: they dissolved the parliament and called an election for September 14, naïvely thinking that the election would produce a more cooperative parliament.11
In the September 1930 election, the Nazis made their breakthrough: they polled over 18 percent of the vote, up from only 2.6 percent in 1928, and 107 deputies in brown-shirted Nazi uniforms marched into parliament. From this point forward, it would have been extremely difficult to create a parliamentary majority that could choose a cabinet and prime minister. Brüning continued to govern using emergency decrees signed by Hindenburg, and the moderate parties decided not to vote against his decrees, fearing that new elections might bring even more Nazis into parliament. Germany had ceased to be a democracy.12
Brüning’s policies only worsened the situation, severely damaging the German economy and deepening the suffering of the German people. In part because he believed that balancing the budget would help the economy recover, Brüning raised taxes and slashed government spending. However, even after everyone could see that his policies had done terrible damage, Brüning stayed the course. His second, overriding aim was to show that even after taking such drastic measures, the German government could not come up with the reparations payments required by the Versailles Treaty. In other words, he accepted the suffering of the German people in the hope that it would help him persuade the victors of World War I to release Germany from its reparations obligations. Pensions, salaries, and unemployment benefits were all cut to the bone. This deflationary policy led to a further contraction of the German economy, and helps explain why unemployment rose higher in Germany than in any other major industrial economy. Not surprisingly, Brüning became almost universally hated: his government had little support in the elected parliament, and the economic situation had gone from crisis to catastrophe.13
By May 1932, Hindenburg and his advisers could see that Brüning had become a dangerous liability. At this point, Hindenburg could have chosen to govern with support from parties that supported democracy by granting emergency decrees to a coalition of moderate parties that had polled almost 43 percent in the 1930 elections. However, such a coalition would have included the Socialists, and Hindenburg had no intention of granting them any role in government. Besides, he was determined to destroy parliamentary democracy. So he looked instead for ways to create an authoritarian government that, unlike Brüning’s cabinet, would have meaningful support from the German people. In this course of action, Hindenburg could count on the approval of much of Germany’s elite—big business, large landowners, the titled aristocracy, and the military and higher civil service. Although these groups differed among themselves as to strategy, they agreed that some kind of authoritarian system should replace the hated Republic.14
Hindenburg replaced Brüning with Franz von Papen in mid-1932 and called an election for July, having secured a promise from Hitler—soon to be broken—that the Nazis would not join a vote to topple the Papen government. Hindenburg and Papen believed that they could “tame” the Nazi movement and harness it to their government. The July 1932 election was a disaster. The Nazis reached their all-time peak of 37.3 percent of the electorate. Making matters worse, the Communists polled 14.3 percent. The two extreme parties now made up a majority of parliament; if they voted together (as they sometimes did), they could block Papen from governing by emergency decree. The way back to democratic government by parliamentary majority was now definitively blocked, and even government by emergency decree could no longer be continued in conformity with the constitution. At this point Hitler saw his opening.15
Hitler began to woo Hindenburg, asking that the president make him prime minister and let him form a government. Hindenburg mistrusted Hitler and refused for the time being. But the government’s problem remained: it did not seem safe to continue governing without any popular support, especially as the Nazis and Communists
both had large paramilitary organizations that might rise in rebellion. The Papen government, known as the “cabinet of barons” because of its elite membership, had almost no support in parliament or in the country at large.16
A second election, in November 1932, brought the government only a small bit of good news: the Nazi vote had fallen 4 points, to 33.1 percent. Hindenburg wanted Papen to continue in office, if need be by declaring a state of emergency in outright defiance of the constitution. At this crucial juncture, the army weighed in during a December 2 cabinet meeting, presenting the results of a recent war games exercise. Lieutenant Colonel Eugen Ott explained that the army would not be able to maintain order if confronted by widespread strikes and an uprising by Nazi and communist paramilitaries, especially if they were combined with a Polish attack on Germany’s eastern borders, which was at least possible. The army’s judgment was probably overly pessimistic, but it had its effect on Hindenburg, who replaced Papen with General Kurt von Schleicher. However, the temptation to bring Hitler into the government was now even greater: the threat of a Nazi uprising would be banished, the government could now use the Nazis’ popular support to buttress its own legitimacy, and Hindenburg could claim to be acting in a manner permitted by the constitution. Even so, Hindenburg resisted this step, not wanting to give so much power to a man he mistrusted and a party that used so much violence to achieve its aims.17