Hitler
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Here the relevant model was not so much antiquity as the British Empire, which in the Führer’s eyes had so long served as the nursery of British racial superiority. It is perhaps no accident that Hans Günther’s Rassenkunde (‘Racial Science’), a text Hitler was familiar with, used a Victorian portrait of a Guards officer in order to illustrate the Nordic ideal type.30 Nor is it surprising that Hitler’s two favourite Englishwomen, Diana and Unity Mitford, were listed as model Aryans (‘Botticelli-Typus’) in Paul Schultze-Naumburg’s book of ‘Nordic beauties’ (Nordische Schönheiten).31 His ‘high estimation of the English character’ on account of his war experiences was still a commonplace among the Führer’s entourage,32 and–as we have seen–formed a staple of his speeches. In almost every respect, the British symbolized what was still Hitler’s preferred mode of racial elevation by evolution rather than revolution.
By 1937, the ferocious pace at which Hitler had initially tackled federalism, the multi-party system and democratic structures had perceptibly slackened. He was beginning to run out of steam, especially when confronted with his old enemy of German particularism, which responded to his plans for imperial reform with a mixture of obstruction, special pleading and guile. In late January 1937, Hitler pushed through the ‘Greater Hamburg Law’, which was necessary to facilitate his monumental building plans in the city state. Shortly afterwards, worn down by local resistance, and with his mind on other things, he decided in April 1937 that the whole issue of Reichsreform was to be put on hold.33 The chief of the Imperial Chancellery, Hans-Heinrich Lammers, Hitler’s principal gatekeeper at the time, announced wearily that the Führer believed that ‘the moment for a reform of the Reich had not yet come’. Time, in this case, seemed to stretch far into the distance. Hitler’s reflections on the succession also suggested a longer timeline, as well as providing an insight into his constitutional thinking. Looking to the future, he ruminated in cabinet that it would not be wise completely to sideline the Reichstag in favour of the Führer. Rather Hitler envisaged that a new ‘State Basic Law’, which would regulate his succession, should be hammered out by an ‘extraordinary constitutional Reichstag’ appointed by himself.34 His main concern was to prevent the return of the ‘hereditary monarchy’, and to ensure the emergence of a competent new Führer to complete the secular task of the racial regeneration of Germany.
All this said, Hitler’s personal grip on government continued to tighten in key areas. He asserted his authority over the German bureaucracy. A new law proclaimed towards the end of January 1937 gave him the authority, in consultation with the minister of the interior, to remove any civil servant whose commitment to the ‘National Socialist state’ was in doubt.35 Even if this power was to be exercised in conjunction with the justice minister and on the basis of sworn testimony and expert witnesses, and in fact he seems to have made little use of this new authority, the message was clear. Hitler also tried to shake up the bureaucracy by bringing in outside talent. For this reason he wanted a more flexible remuneration system, which would make it possible to ‘recruit and retain’ people of ‘real ability’ for the ‘state sector’. Otherwise, Hitler feared, there was a great risk that the state sector would simply experience ‘negative selection’, in which the best minds left for the business economy from whence they would control the state, rather than vice versa, as Hitler wished.36
Hitler’s increased role was most obvious in the field of criminal justice. In March 1937, he demanded greater latitude for judges to increase or reduce punishments, and, if necessary, impose the death penalty retrospectively.37 Throughout the year, Hitler also began to intervene directly in the judicial process, reversing court decisions, changing sentences and in some cases even sacking officials, one of whom Hitler ordered out within twenty-four hours.38 Such interventions now became routine in the Third Reich. Over the next few years, Hitler repeatedly sought to undermine the independence of the judiciary, to simplify the removal of judges, and to transfer competency in political cases from the civil courts to other authorities.39
The growing role of Hitler in government was matched by the declining importance of the cabinet. If it met nineteen times in 1934, this number had dropped to six by 1937. Hitler himself attended less and less, though when he did so he was not always voluble or dominant.40 There was an increased use of circulation to discuss and agree legislation;41 most business was now being done elsewhere. The cabinet met for the last time in February 1938, and, while further meetings were planned over the next two years, they never happened42–all pretence at formal collective deliberation had been abandoned. From now on, laws were made either by circulation or completely on the hoof.43 Responsible government was overtaken by autocracy, informality and adhocery. This had two serious consequences for German politics.
It deepened the polycratic chaos in Germany’s administration. The key to power lay in access to Hitler, and in denying that access to others. Some, such as Goebbels, were exceptionally successful in this regard.44 Once Hitler’s attention had been secured, a decision had to be extracted, or the parameters of independent action explored. For example, an area where Hitler had expressly reserved the right of final judgement, namely the application of the Nuremberg Laws, rapidly became a minefield as various organizations and institutions sought to engage in special pleading. Eventually, Lammers was forced to try to establish some sort of ‘consistency’ in a circular to the main departmental chiefs and other parties. This expressed Hitler’s wish that all requests for exemptions from the racial laws should be channelled through the Imperial Chancellery and not, as hitherto, reach him in an ad hoc and random manner through various avenues.45
Despite these efforts, Hitler still found himself mediating more and more disputes between ministries, and individuals, some of them quite junior.46 Perhaps the most involved battle which Hitler was dragged into was the long-running saga of the Gauleiter of Franconia, Julius Streicher.47 This had begun shortly after the takeover of power, when Streicher fell out with the senior SS commander in the city, Freiherr von Malsen-Ponickau. Despite Streicher’s well-known sexual and financial scandals, and Himmler’s support for his man, the Gauleiter’s standing with Hitler as an Alter Kämpfer was so strong that Malsen backed off for the time being. Not even Lammers could make any headway in Nuremberg, and when he told Streicher that the instructions to curb the excesses of his violently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer came directly from Hitler, he merely received a rude reply. Goebbels had no luck either. The new SS commander and police president, Dr Benno Martin, was made of sterner stuff, however. He soon teamed up with the Nuremberg mayor, Liebel. Rather than face Streicher head on, they built up a case against him through careful police work, including wire taps. Hitler agreed to a commission of inquiry and restricted the hitherto easy access which the Gauleiter had enjoyed. Eventually, Streicher was sacked with Hitler’s approval.
The Führer did not encourage this bureaucratic free-for-all, or requests to mediate, even if these placed him at the centre of the web. For one thing, they exposed him to misinterpretation and hasty judgement, as he was constantly doorstepped by people in search of ‘Führer-Entscheidungen’, which often contradicted earlier pronouncements. For example, when he was ‘reminded’ that he had committed public funds for replacement housing during the remodelling of Berlin, Hitler insisted to Lammers that he ‘had not made any such decision’.48 As for arbitrating disputes, Hitler told party leaders not to write to him with their grievances but to sleep on them instead. Most problems, he suggested, would solve themselves, and the rest should be settled in conversation rather than through an exchange of peppery letters or memoranda, which only aggravated things. Thus, when confronted with two squabbling Bavarian ministers, Hitler tasked Hess with bringing about a ‘personal exchange between the antagonists’ in order to achieve ‘a compromise’.49 Nor did Hitler want people to be reporting to him all the time. ‘I am not the chairman of a supervisory board!’ he exclaimed. Rather, he wanted party administrators to tak
e the initiative and show a sense of responsibility.50
Six months after his last attempt, Lammers issued a fresh directive to try to curb the flood of petitions and requests directed towards the Führer.51 Hitler’s immediate concern here was to prevent the machinery of government from seizing up, but these measures were also part of the broader long-term selection process by which he sought to improve the German people and its leadership caste. Cohesion, Hitler told party leaders, would come from ‘schooling’, not superintendence or control, which would only stifle initiative and creativity.52 He therefore enunciated a kind of National Socialist subsidiarity principle, by which the Third Reich should only regulate those areas which it absolutely had to. For the rest, he wanted Germans to develop the ‘confidence’ to make (the right) decisions for themselves.
All this made for an informal and often chaotic governing style, which was complicated by the fact that Hitler kept ever more irregular hours. Until 1936 he had followed a reasonably conventional routine. Thereafter, the Führer increasingly reverted to his earlier Bohemian lifestyle, rising late and going late, often very late, to bed, often after visiting the opera or watching a film, sometimes two in a row.53 That said, Hitler was not simply lazy. The overall number of hours he put in remained unchanged and because his view of politics was all-encompassing, none of his cultural activities can just be classified as entertainment, just as his numerous meetings with Unity Mitford, and her family,54 were part of his plan to engage Britain. Whether attending the Bayreuth Opera Festival, watching films late into the night or going to exhibitions, Hitler was, in effect, always working.
The exception here was his relationship with Eva Braun, which had stabilized. He admired Unity’s beauty–the Führer preferred blondes–and he saw her as a conduit to Britain, but he had no romantic or sexual interest in her. ‘She’s a very attractive girl,’ he allegedly told Leni Riefenstahl, ‘but I could never have an intimate relationship with a foreigner, no matter how beautiful she might be.’55 This may have been, as Riefenstahl claimed, out of ‘patriotic’ love for German women, but the main motivation was probably security. It is no accident that around this time Hitler issued instructions that party leaders should not marry foreigners, even if, like Englishwomen, they were considered racially unproblematic. His relationship with Eva remained clandestine, because public knowledge of it would have undermined the claim that Hitler was married to Germany, and more particularly to German womanhood. ‘I cannot afford to marry,’ he said, ‘otherwise I will lose half of my most loyal [female] followers.’56 One way or the other, Hitler’s personal life had settled into a pattern. He would see Eva either secretly in her Munich flat, or on the Obersalzberg, in whose confines she ruled acknowledged and supreme.
The Berghof now began to change its character. Originally more or less accessible to all, the Obersalzberg increasingly became a gated community, what Hitler’s press secretary later called a ‘golden cage’.57 The mountain turned into a gigantic building site, as the various institutions and grandees sought to expand their presence. Huge areas were cordoned off and the mountain air was thick with dust and fumes. Martin Bormann, the head of the Party Chancellery, used the opportunity to strengthen his position in the Nazi firmament, largely at the expense of the Imperial Chancellery, and to control access to Hitler. He sought to ingratiate himself with the Führer through the construction of the ‘Kehlsteinhaus’ in 1937–8, a tea room perched on top of a summit overlooking Austria, which could be reached only by a lift-tunnel blasted through the rock. What Hitler made of these changes is unknown, but it is clear that whatever the reasons he had for going to the Obersalzberg, the unfettered appreciation of nature was no longer one of them.
Abroad, Hitler remained preoccupied with Germany’s position in the world and his own international reputation. He monitored international responses to his speeches closely, for example, when he promised in January 1937 that the era of surprises was over.58 His principal international focus continued to be Anglo-America. Despite the failure to get through to London or Washington, Hitler was not yet seriously alarmed. Though fearful of the Jewish lobby in America, and the power of the United States more generally, Hitler still regarded Roosevelt and his New Deal with some respect. In April 1937, the Führer welcomed Roosevelt’s idea of a global conference to resolve all outstanding issues. When the German ambassador complained shortly afterwards that the embassy building in Washington was too small and in any case located in the middle of an undesirable ‘Negro Quarter’, Hitler immediately supported the construction of a more ‘dignified’ representation, if necessary at the cost of a million dollars.59 When, in the summer of 1937, the former head of the Hamburg trade office of the Foreign Office, Baron von Rechenberg, penned an inflammatory pamphlet ‘exposing’ Roosevelt as a pawn of the Jews and an inveterate enemy of the Reich, which he sent to both the Foreign Office and Hitler, he did not at first gain any traction.60 There was no suggestion, for now, that the Führer was expecting a breach with the United States any time soon.
It was the same with regard to Britain. The general drift of Ribbentrop’s dispatches from London was that while there was profound concern in Britain about Hitler’s ‘ultimate intentions’, there was also a sincere desire for peace, if necessary bought with colonial concessions.61 For this reason, Hitler continued to use various ‘go-betweens’ in search of that elusive understanding.62 One of them was the Jewish Princess Hohenlohe–born plain Stephanie Richter in Vienna–who was invited ‘on the instruction of the Führer’ to the party rally at Nuremberg so that she could bring ‘a further important personality from England’.63 Another was the former King Edward VIII, now Duke of Windsor, for whom Hitler confessed ‘a certain weakness’, who visited Germany in September 1937 with the full cooperation of the authorities.64 The duke’s visit included a stopover at a coalmine in the Ruhr (where he gave the Hitler salute)65 and culminated with his much-publicized reception by Hitler at the Berghof. It was widely regarded as a propaganda coup for the Third Reich, and as a violation of the duke’s pledge to keep a low profile after his abdication, and it infuriated the king and the British government. Hitler’s private meeting with him produced nothing of consequence.66
Some of the Führer’s other favoured ‘go-betweens’, the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, his wife Diana and her sister Unity, were also proving to be more of a liability than an asset. Mosley visited Germany a month after the duke, and he too was received by Hitler on the Obersalzberg.67 There were also meetings with Hess, Göring, Goebbels and Ribbentrop. The British Embassy ignored Mosley, but kept a close eye on his movements. Once again, little came of the talks. Hitler rejected Diana and Mosley’s plan to set up a radio station–‘Air Time Limited’–on the German North Sea island of Heligoland, as this had fallen foul of the military authorities.68 Unity, for her part, was now under surveillance by the British Secret Service. There were demands to have her passport confiscated.69 Her value as a ‘go-between’, which Hitler had in any case wildly exaggerated from the start, was rapidly diminishing.
Hitler’s need for mediators with the outside world heavily influenced his view of the German aristocracy. It was connected across Europe, and had a pan-European, generally conservative orientation.70 Philipp von Hessen-Kassel, for example, was the son-in-law of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, and played an important role in connecting Hitler to Mussolini.71 He enjoyed an excellent rapport with Hitler on the basis of shared artistic interests. But there was already a strong element of ambivalence in Hitler’s attitude. For all his enthusiasm to connect with the British aristocracy, the head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, was put to work checking whether any of them had Jewish blood,72 a suspicion which Hitler entertained about the cosmopolitan nobility in general.
Around this time, Hitler broke with his principal interpreter of US affairs, Putzi Hanfstaengl, in one of the Third Reich’s more bizarre episodes. For reasons that remain obscure, but are to be located in the ups and downs of Nazi court politics, Ha
nfstaengl had fallen out of favour by 1937. His enemies, Göring, Goebbels and Unity Mitford prominent among them, decided that he should be taught a lesson. Hitler himself knew in advance that a ‘prank’ was about to be played,73 though he may not have been aware of all the details. In early February 1937, Hanstaengl was urgently summoned to Berlin.74 On arrival, he was told he was needed in Spain immediately, and shortly after take-off he was given the impression that he was about to be thrown out of the aeroplane. This was probably, as those involved later claimed, an elaborate hoax rather than an assassination attempt, but Hanfstaengl was badly shaken. Soon after, he fled to Britain, eventually ending up in America.
In the meantime, Hitler was being warned with ever-increasing frequency and intensity about the hostility of the American public and elites. The air attaché in Washington, Boetticher, stressed both the immense military potential of the United States and the strength of the ‘forces of capital’, and the ‘dark influences dependent on American Jewry in America itself’.75 This sense of a fundamental antagonism between the United States and Nazi Germany grew during the spring and summer of 1937, despite the appointment of a new, and initially more optimistic, German ambassador, Dieckhoff.76 In March 1937, the half-Jewish New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia heavily criticized Hitler at a rally in the city, provoking furious diplomatic protests, and an exchange of insults between the German and the American press.77 If it was no surprise that the Third Reich was resisted by Jews and liberals, Hitler also struggled to gain traction in the American South, where the Third Reich enjoyed a terrible reputation, and where pro-British and anti-dictatorial sympathies were strong. It was not that Southerners opposed racism, it was just that they didn’t much like Nazis.78 Hitler was finding the Americans hard to please.