by Dan McMillan
Belief in the magical qualities of a charismatic leader usually takes root in conditions of crisis, when it seems that only someone of superhuman abilities can master the challenges of the day. In the world’s two largest democracies, the economic suffering caused by the Great Depression was especially severe, and both countries saw the rise to power of leaders who were seen by their people as stunningly charismatic, although they could not have been more different in other respects: Adolf Hitler in Germany and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the United States. In Germany the crisis was far more frightening than it was in the United States, because on top of 30 percent unemployment (25 percent in the United States), Germans suffered a complete loss of faith in their county’s political system. In contrast, Americans never doubted the continued existence of their democratic form of government, which had endured for nearly a century and a half, and which had not faced any threats to its existence since the Civil War some seventy years earlier. Perhaps because the Germans faced a much more terrible crisis after 1929, they rewarded Adolf Hitler’s later successes with a childlike adulation that may have exceeded even Roosevelt’s extraordinary popularity.4
Besides the severity of the economic and political crisis, a second factor prepared the German people to accept the myth of Hitler’s magical abilities: they were looking for him long before he arrived. Otto von Bismarck did much to create the expectation that a brilliant leader could solve all problems. He had led Prussia through the three victorious wars that had resulted in the creation of the first German nation-state, the German Empire, in 1871. As prime minister, Bismarck then wholly dominated the politics of the empire for another nineteen years. There is no counterpart to Bismarck in American history. At most one could say that he combined George Washington’s accomplishment as the father of his country with the tactical cleverness and political longevity of Franklin Roosevelt. Even that comparison, however, is faulty, as Roosevelt governed for only twelve years, in contrast to Bismarck’s twenty-eight. After Bismarck died in 1898, he became an object of worship for Germans who believed that another great leader could magically resolve the conflicts dividing their country. Between 1900 and 1910, enthusiasts for this Bismarck cult erected some five hundred “Bismarck towers” in every corner of Germany.5
As seen in the example of Heinrich Class, right-wing nationalists were calling—already before World War I—for a ruthless “Leader” who could suppress conflict and prevent the advent of democracy. The war only worsened the divisions within German society, and the 1918 revolution established the long-feared democratic political system and gave the hated socialists a share in power. With a feeling of severe crisis now widespread among the middle class, hopes for an all-powerful Leader spread far beyond the ranks of extreme nationalists. The massive “Steel Helmet” veteran’s organization called for a “strong hand” to banish the “plague” of democratic government, insisting that Germany needed “a dictator . . . who would sweep out the entire muck with an iron broom.” The idea of a charismatic Leader had become so common during the 1920s that an analyst of the German automobile industry concluded that it could be saved only by “a superior leader personality, a man of strong action.”6
Hitler’s impressive talent for public speaking also did much to create the myth of his superhuman qualities. His impact on audiences can only be described as electrifying. One Nazi Party member affirmed that “his never-to-be-forgotten speech affected me as the words of a prophet.” Another declared that “no one who has ever looked Hitler in the eye and heard him speak can ever break away from him.” Amplified by the new and exciting medium of radio, Hitler’s oratorical gifts reached into millions of homes, winning him enthusiastic admirers and fanatical converts among all social classes. A parallel to President Roosevelt’s popular Fireside Chats on American radio seems obvious. The Germans are not the only nation that has come to idolize a charismatic leader during a time of crisis.7
In promoting the myth of his special qualities, Hitler had an immensely skilled helper, his Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Using film, radio, posters, the press, and carefully staged rallies and marches by the party members, Goebbels nurtured the myth of Hitler’s infallibility. He promoted as well the illusion that Hitler knew the hopes and struggles of every German, cared deeply for each of his people, and might intercede for them personally, much in the manner of the loving Christian God. However, given how few Germans wrote letters to Hitler—perhaps not many more than 100,000, as compared to as many as 30 million Americans who wrote to Franklin Roosevelt during the same time period—one may question how many Germans were actually fooled by photos of gentle “Uncle Adolf” surrounded by adoring children, and other images supposedly demonstrating the Leader’s kind benevolence. Far more important than Hitler’s oratorical gifts or Goebbels’s propaganda in shaping the Leader’s image was Hitler’s unprecedented run of political and military successes.8
Hitler’s record of success began when a mentally unbalanced Dutch communist burned down the German parliament building on the night of February 27–28, 1933. Arguing that the fire was the signal for a general communist uprising, Hitler secured from President Hindenburg a set of emergency powers that allowed Hitler to unleash the Prussian police and his own storm troopers upon the leadership and active cadres of the socialist and communist parties. Within weeks, these men were in captivity, hiding, or exile. At one stroke, Hitler had banished the specter of communist revolution that had terrified the great majority of the population. Moving rapidly, Hitler suppressed all political parties other than the Nazi Party and crushed the labor unions. Harmony among Germany’s warring social classes was thereby imposed from above, to the enthusiastic approval of everyone outside the working class. The mass media were rapidly brought under Nazi control. After Hitler gained control of the army in August 1934, he ruled Germany as an unchallenged dictator.9
From these beginnings, Hitler moved from strength to strength. When he had become prime minister on January 30, 1933, unemployment in Germany had exceeded 30 percent of the labor force. Hitler promptly embarked on a program of deficit spending that massively funded the armaments industry, producing countless jobs throughout the economy. Combined with a cyclical upswing in the economy that began shortly after Hitler took office, this military spending produced full employment in Germany within only four years. This policy did not reflect any economic sophistication on Hitler’s part, for he understood nothing of the study of economics. Rather, Hitler pumped money into armaments because he planned to start another major war. Few Germans could understand his intentions, given Nazi control of the media. The German worker knew only that he had his job back. Among the major industrial economies of the West, whether in Europe or North America, only Germany escaped the Great Depression during the 1930s. For millions of Germans, including many of the socialist and communist workers who had opposed the Nazis during the Weimar Republic, Hitler appeared to be a miracle worker, a man who brought bread, jobs, and prosperity.10
Beyond Germany’s economic recovery, a series of seemingly brilliant foreign policy breakthroughs cemented Hitler’s image as political genius. In a series of bold initiatives during the 1930s, Hitler reversed several terms of the hated Treaty of Versailles. Here again, these victories reflected no genius on Hitler’s part, but instead resulted from the combination of his violent instincts and circumstances that rewarded aggression. As Hitler’s leading biographer explained, Hitler had only one strategy throughout his political career. Incapable of compromise, he took aggressive action or threatened force if his demands were not met, which worked only as long as his opponents backed down. This was not the strategic wisdom of a statesman, but rather the impulsive brutality of a thug.11
Circumstances favored Hitler in that the most hated terms of the Versailles Treaty rested on questionable moral foundations. The treaty limited Germany’s army to the tiny size of 100,000 men, reduced the German navy to a sort of glorified coast guard, and forbade Germany from building an air force or s
ubmarine fleet. Germany could not defend its border with France, because it was also forbidden to station troops or build fortifications on either side of the Rhine River. Why should Germany, alone among the countries of Europe, be denied the right to defend itself from military aggression? The peace treaties following World War I contained a further element of hypocrisy. A central principle behind all the treaties was “national self-determination,” the idea that each nation—Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, and so on—should govern itself in its own country. Yet the Germans who made up the population of Austria, in violation of their wishes and those of the Germans, were not allowed to become part of Germany, because this would have made Germany larger and more powerful than the war’s victors wanted it to be. Germany and Austria therefore remained separate countries until Germany annexed Austria in 1938. Especially in Great Britain, elite opinion had come to recognize that parts of the treaty could not be maintained. The leaders of Britain and France chose a policy of appeasement, believing that by agreeing to “reasonable” German demands, they could ensure peace. They had no way of knowing that Hitler’s aggressive moves during the 1930s were only the first steps of his plan to dominate Europe.12
Hitler had another major advantage as he proceeded to tear up the Treaty of Versailles: far from fearing war, he welcomed it. Indeed, Hitler may have been the only man of any influence in Europe during the 1930s who looked forward to another major war. After the horrors of World War I, the peoples of Europe had had enough. Public opinion in France, Britain, and Germany clearly opposed another war, but with a crucial difference. France and England were democracies, whose governments acted on their citizens’ fervent desire to avoid another armed conflict. As a dictator, Hitler could safely ignore his people’s wishes, counting on them to obey his commands once war had broken out, when he could call on them to “defend the Fatherland.” Time and again he gladly risked war, and his French and British opponents backed down.13
Hitler reinstated a military draft in March 1935 and announced that Germany would build an army of over half a million men. He guessed, correctly, that France and Britain would take no military action to punish this violation of the treaty, yet this was no mature and careful judgment on his part. Before making this potentially risky move, Hitler did not even discuss it with his military or foreign policy advisers. The German people held their collective breath. Did this mean war? When the French and British did nothing, anxiety gave way to euphoria. An intelligence agent of the socialist underground grudgingly reported that “the whole of Munich was on its feet. People can be compelled to sing, but not forced to sing with such enthusiasm. . . . The trust in the political talent and the honest will of Hitler becomes greater all the time. He is loved by many.”14
Almost a year later, in March 1936, Hitler marched German troops into the Rhineland, which had been demilitarized under the Versailles Treaty. Anticipating this step, the French and British governments had already decided against responding with force. Among the German people, dread of war soon gave way to enthusiasm when war did not come. Luise Solmitz, a Hamburg housewife whose husband and daughter had been stripped of their German citizenship because of their part-Jewish ancestry, spoke for many when she confided her thoughts to her diary. Not long before, “when demoralization ruled amongst us,” she declared, “we would not have dared contemplate such deeds. Again and again, the Leader faces the world with a fait accompli. Along with the world, the individual holds his breath. Where is Hitler heading, what will be the end, the climax of this speech, what boldness, what surprise will there be? And then it comes, blow on blow, action as stated without fear of his own courage. That is so strengthening. . . . That is the deep, unfathomable secret of the Leader’s nature. . . . And he is always lucky.” The Leader, Germans were told, was a man of peace, an incomparable genius who had restored their nation’s pride and rightful place in the world without bloodshed. His successes seemed to bear out the myth.15
When Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938, he sent troops into that small country in an act of naked aggression. Or was it? After all, very many Austrians greeted the German forces, and later Hitler himself, with raucous enthusiasm. When he drove into Austria not far behind his invading troops, Hitler found his motorcade repeatedly delayed by the enthusiastic crowds that lined the roads. Reaching Vienna, the capital, on March 14, Hitler encountered an enthusiasm that “defied all description,” in the words of a Swiss journalist. An English observer remarked: “To say that the crowds which greeted [Hitler] were delirious with joy is an understatement.” Hitler had to appear, again and again, on the balcony of his hotel to satisfy the crowd, which shouted, “We want to see our Leader.” In annexing Austria, Hitler was pushing on an open door. France and Britain did nothing to oppose him, in part because Hitler’s actions could be reconciled with the spirit of the peace treaties, and were welcomed by a very large fraction of the Austrian people. In German regions that bordered Austria, where fear of war had been especially acute, officials noted “heartfelt jubilation” everywhere, “above all because our Leader has pulled it off without bloodshed.”16
Even the October 1938 annexation of the Sudetenland, a German-speaking region of western Czechoslovakia, could be rationalized as another expression of the principle of national self-determination. Hitler took bold, decisive action, and his reckless gambler’s temperament was rewarded by French and British inaction. Yet again, the German people briefly feared war—especially since this time he had threatened war—but when war did not come, and the annexation was accomplished, they rejoiced in the triumph of their Leader, a “man of peace” who had restored Germany to her rightful status as a great power, without firing a shot.17
Nothing cemented the myth of Adolf Hitler’s magical abilities like the swift and crushing victory over France in June 1940. In World War I, the Germans had fought the French for four years of bloody stalemate, lost 2 million of their young men, and lost the war. Now, Hitler had crushed the hated enemy and avenged the defeat of 1918 in six weeks of exhilarating triumphs at the cost of only 30,000 German soldiers killed. Yet happenstance, arguably more than any other factor, had played the decisive role.18
Hitler had started World War II by invading Poland on September 1, 1939. As they had warned, the French and British governments promptly declared war on Germany. Yet Hitler had attacked Poland without making any plans for war against France and Britain; he had no military strategy and no blueprint to gear up the German economy for long-term armaments production. Hitler then compounded this flagrant recklessness by demanding that the German Army march into battle in the West only a month after the conquest of Poland was finished, while his army was short on ammunition and half its armored vehicles were out of action. Their objections overridden by Hitler, the generals prepared to invade southward through Holland and Belgium into France, but the operation was repeatedly delayed through the fall and winter by bad weather, which would have kept the German air force from giving tactical support to Hitler’s tank armies.19
These postponements of the invasion infuriated Hitler, but they proved to be his salvation. The French and British expected the Germans to invade by exactly the route that Hitler’s generals were planning throughout the fall of 1939. Their expectation was further confirmed when a German officer’s plane made a forced landing in Belgium and he could not fully destroy the documents he was carrying. These documents were based on the original plan, which was soon replaced by an entirely different strategy. Two enterprising generals, Heinz Guderian and Erich von Manstein, challenged an assumption long held by the senior leadership of both the French and German armies, namely, that the dense Ardennes forest in Luxembourg and Belgium could not be crossed by tanks. In fact, a network of logging roads would allow German tank armies to roll through in stealth, partly hidden from sight by the thick spring foliage. Bucking opposition from the Army High Command, Manstein secured a fateful meeting with Hitler on February 17, 1940, and presented his plan: a smaller German force would invade through H
olland as originally planned, and serve as bait to draw the French and British off balance. The main blow would be delivered through the Ardennes, in tank columns that would slice through northern France, driving to the English Channel and cutting the Allied forces in two.20
Hitler deserves some credit for accepting Manstein’s brilliant plan. He correctly feared that the Allies would expect the main thrust to come from the north. Yet all through the fall of 1939 he had insistently pressed for war, before the German Army had even recovered from the Polish campaign, and using the High Command’s unimaginative strategy. Only bad weather had given Manstein time to develop his plan; only repeated postponements gave Hitler the chance to hear Manstein out. Hitler’s fateful decision came not from military expertise, which he utterly lacked, but in large part from his natural preference for bold gambles and shocking surprises, combined with a large measure of good luck.21
The German armies attacked on May 10, 1940. As the northern prong of their invasion force drove into Holland, the Allies took the bait. The British sent almost their entire force, and the French sent their best and most mobile units northward to meet the German forces. Meanwhile, German tank armies rolled through the Ardennes unseen, exploding into the rear of the Allied forces. Covering 150 miles in only ten days, German armor reached the English Channel during the night of May 20–21. Cut off from their lines of supply, under attack from two directions, the Allied armies were lost. Cutting their losses, the British hastily assembled an armada of navy ships and private vessels, which rescued 340,000 French and British troops at Dunkirk during the last week in May, ferrying them across the Channel to safety. Paris fell on June 14 and France surrendered on the 22nd.22