Hitler himself wrote in Mein Kampf about the effectiveness of the Christian Social and Social Democratic propaganda in pre-war Austria112 and, above all, about Allied wartime propaganda, from which he had ‘learnt a huge amount’.113 The propaganda maxims that Hitler developed in this connection reveal his total contempt for the audience he was addressing. Propaganda must ‘always speak to the masses. Its intellectual level must be adapted to the least intelligent among those it is addressed to. Thus, the larger the masses it is trying to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be.’114 In addition to his view of the primitive nature of the masses, he stressed the importance of repetition: ‘The masses’ receptive ability is only very limited, their intelligence is small, but their memory is very short. As a result of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a few points and use these as slogans until the very last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.’115 Propaganda was all about emotion. ‘The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine by nature and attitude that their thoughts and actions are determined far less by sober reasoning than by emotion and feeling. And this sentiment is not complicated but very simple and all of a piece.’116
Propaganda, according to Hitler, must get the masses moving and prepare the ground for ‘the organization’, indeed it must ‘run far in advance of the organization and provide it with the human material to be worked on’.117 As early as 1921, he had written that it was necessary ‘to go from house to house in order to build up the organization that will bind together the hundreds of thousands of committed people and so fulfill the deep longings and hopes of the best of our nation’.118 But he was, he wrote in Mein Kampf, ‘an enemy of organizing too rapidly and too pedantically’.119 In any case, it was important to make a clear distinction between the two tasks. ‘Propaganda primes the general public to accept a particular idea and makes it ripe for the victory of this idea, while the organization secures victory by constantly welding those supporters who appear willing and able to carry on the fight for victory into an organic and effective fighting force.’120
Hitler noted down this principle in 1925, but he appears to have already been following it right from the start of his political career when he was acting as chief propagandist of the NSDAP. At the beginning of 1921, he had declined an invitation to join a new committee of the Party leadership, a three-man crisis ‘Action Committee’, which had been confirmed at the membership meeting of the Munich branch in January 1921 on Drexler’s initiative.121 Influencing his decision to reject this offer was not only his conviction that in the early phase of the Party’s development propaganda should have priority over organization, but also and above all his awareness that his talents lay in the field of propaganda, while the essential preconditions for his taking on the Party leadership were lacking.122 If he had accepted the chairmanship, he would have had to fit into an already existing structure, take on responsibility, be accountable, regularly take decisions, and in general adopt an orderly life, establish stable personal relations with leading Party figures based on mutual trust, and, not least, listen to others and possibly have to deal with their arguments. But it was impossible for him to reconcile all this with his unstable, restless personality, and irregular way of life. By contrast, producing wonderful visions in mass meetings, announcing apodictic eternal truths in newspaper articles, or addressing the clique of his closest colleagues in endless monologues about everything under the sun – that was the way in which Hitler could cope with his obvious personal flaws.123
The influential German Nationalist journalist, Max Maurenbrecher, wrote a leading article in the Deutsche Zeitung on 10 November 1923 as a kind of obituary for the failed putschist, Hitler. In it he remarked that he had had a long conversation with him in May 1921. At that time, Hitler had declared that he was not the ‘leader and statesman’, who could rescue the fatherland, but the ‘agitator’.124 In April 1920, Hitler had announced; ‘We need a dictator who is a genius if we are going to rise again’.125 In May he demanded that ‘we must acquire a powerful and authoritative government that can ruthlessly clear out the pigsty’.126 He complained in January 1921 that there were no men capable of taking on Bismarck’s legacy.127 He expressed the hope that ‘one day an iron man will come along, who may have dirty boots but a pure conscience and a steely grip, who will silence these darlings of society and get the nation to act’.128 With all these statements he was articulating the yearning for leadership widespread on the right. But he was a long way off putting himself forward as the leader.
3
Hitler Becomes Party Leader
The NSDAP was able to build up its organization under the protection of the authoritarian regime in Bavaria. The number of new members increased between January and the end of 1920 from around 200 to over 2,100.1 The first local branch outside Munich was founded in Rosenheim in April 1920.2 By the end of the year it had been followed by Stuttgart, Dortmund, Starnberg, Tegernsee, Landsberg, and Landshut.3 The Party’s growth was based among other things on the fact that, during the course of 1920, it succeeded in largely taking over the Schutz- und Trutzbund’s mass anti-Semitic agitation. It benefited from virtually the whole of the latter’s Munich local branch leadership also being members of the NSDAP. Elsewhere too, new NSDAP local branches often emerged out of branches of the Schutzbund.4 Hitler, however, who initially wanted to concentrate activity in Munich, advised caution in the creation of new branches, a policy that the Party duly followed.5
In March 1920, Hitler, who had delayed this for as long as possible, was finally discharged from the army. In Mayr’s service he had learnt lessons vital for his future political career: to perceive the world in terms of friends and enemies, how to get his way in the face of opposition from his own colleagues, the basic principles of agitation and propaganda, how to secure and cultivate sponsors, and other things besides. Hitler’s departure did not affect the army’s support for the NSDAP. In June 1920 Mayr paid for 3,000 propaganda pamphlets, published by Lehmann and delivered to the NSDAP6 and, after his own discharge from the Reichswehr in July 1920, continued to provide active support.7 Thus, in September he told his mentor, Wolfgang Kapp, leader of the failed putsch, who had since been living in exile in Sweden: ‘The national workers party must provide the basis for the strong assault force for which we are hoping. It’s true that the programme is a bit crude and may also be inadequate. . . . Since July last year I have been doing my best to encourage the movement. I have mobilized some very effective young people. A certain Herr Hitler, for example, is a dynamic figure, a first class popular speaker.’ As the next step Mayr wanted to get hold of the Münchener Beobachter, but he needed another 45,000 Marks: ‘Could you possibly, Herr Privy Councillor, provide me with a source of funds?’8 The Bavarian Army district command also had a benevolent regard for the Party. In December it reported to Berlin that the ‘series of meetings held by the National Socialist Workers Party is having a very positive patriotic effect.’9
Hitler had been working to take over the Münchener Beobachter since the summer. The project had been discussed in the meetings of the NSDAP committee since July and increasingly since November 1920.10 In December he saw that the chance to act had arrived: during the night of 16/17 December he warned important friends of the Party that there was a threat of the paper falling into the hands of separatists, and during the following days the money was raised for its purchase. Eckart was able to get General von Epp to put up 60,000 RM of Reichswehr funds (for which Eckart acted as guarantor) and Hitler persuaded an Augsburg entrepreneur, Gottfried Grandel, to come up with another 56,000 RM. The shares in the newspaper were formally transferred to Drexler.11
Hitler also sought financial support for the newspaper, which was never profitable, in Berlin. Backed with a letter of recommendation from police president, Pöhner, declaring that he had ‘had lengthy conversations with Herr Hitler and become convinced that he is an exceptionally clever and e
nergetic supporter of our cause’, Hitler travelled to meet Heinrich Class, the chairman of the Pan-German League, who had previously helped him out. This meeting may have been the result of Mayr’s September letter because Class had not gained an especially positive impression of Hitler from previous encounters.12 After the meeting Class, who was prepared in principle to seek financial support for the Völkischer Beobachter because he wanted to acquire a base in Munich, contacted Otto Gertung, chairman of the engineering firm MAN, who initially responded that he would examine the matter in a positive light.13 Following a second visit to Class that Hitler made in spring 1921, the former enquired of Tafel whether it was true, as he had been informed, that Hitler was unsettling civil servants and, above all, students with his ‘socialist’ propaganda.14 Class remained uncertain.
The Munich police headquarters under its president, Pöhner, and the head of its political department, Wilhelm Frick, had no such qualms. At Hitler’s trial in 1924 Frick stated that he and Pöhner had been supporting the DAP right from the start, as they were convinced ‘that this was the movement that would be able to win support from the workers, who had been infected by Marxism, and win them back to the nationalist cause. For this reason we held a protective hand over the National Socialist Party and Herr Hitler.’15 In particular, the approval of political posters, which was required under the state of emergency, was dealt with in a generous fashion. Kahr had ‘quietly tolerated’ this policy, he claimed. Hitler subsequently thanked Frick and Pöhner warmly for their support in Mein Kampf.16
Thus, the NSDAP continued its propaganda during 1921, supported and protected in various ways by the right-wing conservative establishment. On 3 February 1921, Hitler spoke for the first time at a meeting in the Circus Krone in front of 6,000 people, ranting for two and a half hours against the Versailles Treaty.17 With this quickly arranged meeting Hitler had pre-empted a major demonstration planned by the right-wing organizations against the impending agreement by the Reich government to pay a sum of 226 billion gold marks in reparations that had been finally agreed at the Paris Conference. As in the previous year, when he had used the hot-house anti-Semitic atmosphere created by the Schutz- und Trutzbund for the NSDAP’s first big meeting in the Hofbräuhaus, now, once again pushing himself into the limelight at just the right moment, he exploited the excitement generated by his political rivals. However, his rivals had their revenge: when Hitler tried to generate support for the NSDAP at the protest demonstration arranged by the patriotic organizations on the Odeonsplatz on 6 February the organizers sabotaged his speech.18 On 6 and again on 15 March, with Hitler as speaker, the NSDAP succeeded in filling the huge Circus Krone. As usual, he fulminated against ‘new humiliations for the German nation’ and the ‘disgrace of the Versailles treaty’.19 During the course of 1921, he gave a total of over sixty speeches.20
But who came to these meetings? In contrast to the Party’s title it was not so much the workers who joined but rather members of the lower middle class. In July Hitler reluctantly admitted this in a letter to Major Hierl, the city commandant of Munich and a Party sympathizer. In response to the latter’s enquiry he remarked: ‘Your concern that our meetings are not attended by enough people from the industrial working class is only partially correct. We recognize the difficulty of winning over to us workers who, in some cases, have been members of organizations for decades. The precondition for this was to begin by holding mass meetings in order to have a propaganda method with which to attract the masses. For workers, as down-to-earth people, will always only respect a movement which presents itself in a way that demands respect. But, to ensure the peaceful running of our meetings we were obliged to appeal to a certain middle class, whose attitudes and feelings we knew were nationalist and some of whom, because of the current miserable state of our parties, are politically homeless. As a result of this our meetings have inevitably been somewhat mixed.’21
Hitler’s entourage
It was not only the NSDAP’s propaganda that was aggressive. Responding to the violent style of politics that had emerged during the post-war era, the Nazis set about organizing their own ‘protection troop’. The Munich police first became aware in September 1920 that the Nazis had acquired a protection squad. From the end of 1920 this squad called itself the ‘Gymnastic and Sports Section’.22
In the course of this development a group of dubious characters attached themselves to Hitler to take care of his personal protection and used physical violence against his political opponents. The most prominent of these personal bodyguards was Ulrich Graf, born in 1878, and employed in the municipal abattoir. He claimed to have got to know Hitler as early as 1919 and joined the NSDAP at the beginning of 1921. Among his work colleagues he recruited ‘eight tough, reliable men’ to act as Hitler’s ‘security service’ and himself took on the role, as he later recorded, of ‘permanent escort . . . responsible for the Führer’s personal security’.23 Apart from Graf, there was also Christian Weber, born in 1883, a groom by trade and, during the post-war period, registered in the Munich trade directory as a horse dealer. According to his own statement, he had supported the Party since February 1920 and his main role had been as Hitler’s ‘muscle’. Weber was notorious for his involvement in a number of violent incidents: before the 1923 putsch he had had 152 court appearances.24 Emil Maurice, born in 1897, a watchmaker’s assistant, acted as Hitler’s chauffeur from 1921 onwards.25 Gradually, an informal circle within the NSDAP began to form around Hitler, the Party’s most important propagandist. For example, in addition to Graf, Weber, and Maurice, and Hitler’s earliest supporters, Anton Drexler, Dietrich Eckart, Alfred Rosenberg, and Hermann Esser, Rudolf Hess joined the group. During the war he had been a Lieutenant in the air force; he was a member of the Thule Society and had been actively involved in the conspiracy against the Räterepublik. He joined the NSDAP in July 1920 and, as he proudly wrote in a letter to his parents, in the late summer he established the Party’s first link with Ludendorff. This contact must have led to a meeting between Hitler and the former Quartermaster General in spring 1921.26
Hess was also part of a delegation of Nazis which, headed by Hitler, was received by Kahr for an exchange of views on 14 May 1921. Following this meeting, in an effusive letter to Kahr Hess described Hitler as a man who combined ‘a rare sense of what the people are feeling, political instinct, and tremendous will power’.27 Hess was registered as a student at the University and was a kind of private pupil of the former general and honorary professor, Karl Haushofer; at the same time, he was organizing a Nazi student group.28
Alfred Rosenberg established contacts with a number of Baltic German emigrés who supported the Party. Probably his most important contact was Max Scheubner-Richter, who was born in 1884 in Riga. During the war, he had been engaged in military and political activities (among other things for the German eastern High Command’s press office) and then in the recruitment of German Free Corps in the Baltic and their campaign against Soviet Russian forces; subsequently, he had taken part in the Kapp putsch and, after its failure, had transferred his activities to Munich. There, in 1920, Scheubner-Richter established the ‘Wirtschaftliche Aufbau-Vereinigung’ (Association for Economic Development), which worked secretly to coordinate the interests of Baltic German and White Russian emigrés with the plans of German right-wing extremists for eastern Europe and for this purpose ran a newspaper agency.
Scheubner-Richter became Ludendorff’s eastern Europe expert and close confidant; he joined the NSDAP in November 1920 and, alongside Hess, formed the link between the Party and the former Quartermaster General. He was also important for the Party as a link-man to the circles of monarchist Russian emigrés; it may also have profited from his contacts to industry. Moreover, like Rosenberg, he was a member of the Riga student fraternity, Rubonia, with a branch in Munich, to which other Baltic Germans belonged such as Otto von Kursell, who worked as an illustrator for Nazi publications, and Arno Schickedanz. Both knew Scheubner-Richter from their
Riga days and now worked for his Aufbau Association.29 The group round Rosenberg and Scheubner-Richter considered themselves pioneers in the struggle for a German strategy of using the Baltic as a springboard for an aggressive policy towards the young Soviet Union. They greatly influenced Hitler, in particular with their notion that the Bolshevik revolution was entirely in Jewish hands and must, therefore, be defeated in order to open the door to the East.
The seizure of power in the Party
In summer 1921 Hitler swapped the role of chief propagandist for that of Party leader. This happened at the high point of a crisis, which had broken out concerning a proposed fusion of the NSDAP with its ‘sister’, the German Socialist Party. Attempts to combine the two parties can be traced back to August 1920, when Hitler and Drexler met with representatives of the DSP in Salzburg and agreed a demarcation of respective ‘spheres of authority’; according to this, the NSDAP was supposed to restrict itself to operating in southern Germany.30 However, at the beginning of 1921, the NSDAP leadership told the Austrian Nazis, who had been planning a union of the various national socialist parties, of their reservations about the DSP. In a letter signed by Drexler, but, on the basis of its language almost certainly written by Hitler, they claimed that the DSP was wasting its energies by establishing far too many, ultimately useless, local branches, was sticking to its commitment to the parliamentary system, and failing to recognize the possibilities of mass propaganda such as was being carried out by the NSDAP.31 Drexler, however, appeared to be not unsympathetic to this union. In March, at a meeting with representatives of the DSP in Zeitz in Thuringia, and presumably acting on the authority of the majority of the NSDAP leadership, he reached provisional agreement for an amalgamation of the two parties. However, the subsequent negotiations to clinch the deal, held in Munich in April, were blocked by Hitler, who melodramatically threatened to resign if it went through.32
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