Hitler
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Except in the extreme right-wing press, the sentence was strongly criticized: the Bayerischer Kurier wrote of a ‘judicial catastrophe’, the Kölnische Volkszeitung of a ‘Munich scandal’, the Berliner Tageblatt of ‘judicial bankruptcy’, and the Münchener Post claimed this represented the ‘death of Bavarian justice’.24
The Nazi movement without its ‘Führer’
Hitler returned to Landsberg, where he and the other Nazis who had been sentenced to ‘fortress imprisonment’ were exempted from the normal prison regime and enjoyed more comfortable conditions. (Because he had been elected to the Bavarian parliament or Landtag, one prisoner, Gregor Strasser, was released after a short time, while Pöhner did not need to start his sentence until January 1925.) The prisoners were permitted to spend five hours a day outside, doing sports or walking; they were able to visit each other in their spacious and comparatively comfortable rooms (they could hardly be called cells). Significantly, there was a large swastika flag hanging in the common room, which was removed only when senior officials came to inspect; the prison guards evidently had no objection to it. Hitler had two ‘secretaries’ at his personal disposal in the shape of Hermann Fobke, a law student, and Emil Maurice, to assist him with his correspondence and other writing activities.25 The prison authorities reported that, among the extremely large number of visitors Hitler received (350 between April and October 1924, 150 in the first month alone),26 were: ‘people seeking favours or jobs, creditors, friends, and some who were simply curious’; in addition, there were lawyers, businessmen who wanted to use his name, and publishers seeking to sign him up him as an author.27
In retrospect, Hitler described his time in prison as a phase that, above all, gave him time to reflect on his policies and his programme; moreover, in Landsberg he gained in ‘self-confidence, optimism, and faith’.28 While the trial had confirmed him in his self-image as a ‘Führer’ of national importance, in his Landsberg cell he became convinced that he was one of those rare personalities in world history in whom ‘the politician is combined with the political theorist capable of producing a programme’ [‘Programmatiker’]. The fact that, once again, as in October 1923, he referred in this context to the, in his eyes, great visionaries, Frederick the Great, Luther, and Wagner, indicates that, in the meantime, his self-image had reached Olympian proportions.29 But Hitler was not alone in his views.
On the occasion of his thirty-fifth birthday, his supporters arranged a ‘demonstration of homage’ in the Bürgerbräukeller attended by 3,000 people. A resolution was passed demanding the ‘immediate release’ of Hitler and his comrades and the lifting of the ban on the Party and the Völkischer Beobachter.30 The extreme right-wing press also celebrated Hitler as a hero. In The People’s Book of Hitler Georg Schott wrote a comprehensive account of Hitler ‘the man’, ‘the politician’, and the ‘liberator’.31 His personal photographer, Hoffmann, published a book of photographs with the title Germany’s Awakening in Words and Pictures, in which he celebrated Hitler as the ‘strongest political personality in the nationalist movement and as the leader of the völkisch-German freedom movement’.32 To cite another example from the plethora of such expressions of adulation: following a visit to Hitler, Rudolf Jung, a Sudeten German Nazi, compared him in a newspaper article in January 1924 with Jesus.33
The perception of Hitler as a martyr and as the future leader of the extreme Right was given a further boost by the fact that, during his imprisonment, the NSDAP disintegrated into several competing groups. Hitler kept largely aloof from these divisions and so was able to retain his aura as somebody above mundane politics; indeed, he was able to view the conflicts and the damage to his potential rivals with a certain amount of satisfaction, safe in the knowledge that, after his release, he would be able to intervene to sort things out and revive the movement under his leadership.
After the putsch, the NSDAP, the Kampfbund, Reichskriegsflagge, and Bund Oberland were all banned and their property confiscated, including the Völkischer Beobachter and its printing presses.34 Shortly before his arrest, Hitler had tasked Rosenberg with leading the banned party during his absence. On 1 January 1924, Rosenberg, together with Hans Jacob, the last deputy chairman of the NSDAP, founded the Grossdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft [Greater German National Community, GVG] as a successor organization.35 However, by the summer, Esser and Streicher had succeeded in taking over this party from Rosenberg, who was unpopular with the membership.36 Moreover, on 6 January, the Völkisch Bloc was founded in Bamberg as an umbrella organization covering former supporters of the NSDAP as well as other right-wing groups such as Oberland, Reichskriegsflagge, and Jungdeutscher Orden. This organization also operated outside Bavaria under the name Völkisch-Sozialer-Bloc [VSB].37 At the end of February, the Völkisch Bloc and the GVG agreed on a joint list of candidates for the approaching Bavarian Landtag elections.38 The Völkisch Bloc rapidly expanded into Thuringia, where it competed in the Landtag elections of 10 February under the name Vereinigte Völkische Liste, winning 9.3 per cent of the vote. This enabled it to exercise some influence on the newly elected right-wing government in Thuringia by providing it with parliamentary support. At the beginning of 1924, the VSB also took part in elections elsewhere, such as in the Rhineland and Hesse.39
However, it quickly became clear that the vacuum created by the ban on the NSDAP could not be filled simply by the GVG and the new-right wing umbrella organization, the VSB. They soon began to face competition from the Deutsch-völkische Freiheitspartei [German-Völkisch Freedom Party, DVFP], which was founded mainly by extreme right-wing former members of the conservative DNVP, and was already established in north Germany in autumn 1922. In March 1923 Hitler had been obliged to concede dominance in north Germany to this new party.40 But now the DVFP began to try to expand into south Germany as well.41 During negotiations, first in Salzburg in January and then on 24 February 1924 in Munich, the DVFP managed, despite Rosenberg’s dogged resistance, to insist on closer cooperation with the GVG. According to the agreement of 24 February, the two parties would retain their separate organizations at local level, but common structures would be created at regional level, unless one of the parties was clearly dominant.42 Hitler only accepted the agreement with the proviso that it should be limited to a period of six months.43 The main result of this agreement was to confirm the dominance of the DVFP in north Germany. On 25 February, the day before the start of his trial in Munich, Ludendorff had appointed the chairman of the DVFP, Albrecht von Graefe, to be his representative in north Germany. At the same time, the agreement gave the DVFP enough scope to compete with the GVG in south Germany.44
Despite Hitler’s objections – he had always rejected the NSDAP’s participation in elections – the Völkisch Bloc (the alliance of extreme right-wing forces in Bavaria) took part in the Bavarian Landtag elections on 6 April 1924, winning 17.1 per cent of the vote. In Munich itself, with the election taking place only a few days after Hitler had been sentenced, they even won almost 35 per cent.45 Their twenty-three deputies included the Landtag librarian Rudolf Buttmann, the Landshut pharmacist Gregor Strasser, the former Munich police chief Ernst Pöhner, the founder of the DAP Anton Drexler, and Julius Streicher (as the representative of the Grossdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft). However, as a result of disagreements within the parliamentary group and losses to other parties, the group was soon reduced to 17.46 In the Reichstag election of 4 May 1924 the combined völkisch list won 6.5 per cent of the vote and thirty-two seats, of which only ten were held by members of the banned NSDAP, the remainder by members of the DVFP.47 In Munich the combined list still gained 28.5 per cent. However, this election result did not mean that by 1924 Hitler had already succeeded in winning over a quarter of the Munich population to be solid Nazi supporters, for, at the next Reichstag election in December 1924, support for the völkisch list in the Bavarian capital was reduced to 9.1 per cent.48 Thus, the elections of April and May should rather be seen as protests against the Bavarian government, whose radical and vocifer
ous anti-Berlin policy had clearly come to grief during autumn 1923.
Meanwhile, Ludendorff was trying to assert his authority as the dominant figure within the extreme Right. In May, during two visits to Hitler in Landsberg, he tried to gain Hitler’s support for uniting the DVFP and the supporters of the banned NSDAP in a new Nationalsozialistische Freiheitspartei [National Socialist Freedom Party]. Hitler reluctantly agreed, but among other things, insisted that the headquarters of the new party should be in Munich. Before the details could be agreed, at a conference in Berlin Ludendorff persuaded the Reichstag deputies of both parties to unite under the name Nationalsozialistische Freiheitspartei (which was dominated by the DVFP), announcing in a press release, which Hitler had not approved, that the latter was in support of a unified party.49
Opposition to the merger now grew among the Nazis in north Germany. On 25 May, leading Nazis in Hamburg committed themselves to recreating an independent Nazi Party and opposed parliamentary cooperation with the DVFP. They sent a four-man delegation to Landsberg, which discussed the situation with Hitler on 26 and 27 May.50 He explained that he was against participation in elections, that the agreement of 24 February had taken him by surprise, and his only option had been to limit it to six months. However, cooperation with the DVFP should be restricted to the parliamentary group. Within this alliance the NSDAP must assert its claim to the leadership and insist on the headquarters being in Munich.51 As a result, on 3 June, a conference of north German Nazi Party functionaries decided to create their own leadership in the form of a three-man directorate with dictatorial powers.52
Finally, on 7 July, Hitler officially announced in the press that he was withdrawing from politics. He requested that Party comrades should cease their visits to Landsberg, explaining that he needed more time to work on a ‘substantial book’.53 In fact, the main reason for this public declaration of neutrality was probably his expectation of being released early, on 1 October, which had been envisaged in his sentence.54
Two days later, both the GVG and the Nationalsozialistische Freiheitspartei responded to this development. The GVG decided to establish a new directorate under Streicher as first and Esser as second chairman. They considered a union with the DVFP as ‘impossible at the present time’, but sought ‘reasonable cooperation as far as possible’ at local level if there were local branches of both parties in the same place.55 The Freiheitspartei issued a press release according to which Hitler had requested Ludendorff and Graefe to take over the leadership of the whole movement in his place. After his release Hitler would then ‘rejoin them as the third member’, a formula which implied a challenge to his claim to sole leadership.56 Until this time, the press release continued, Gregor Strasser would act as his deputy in the ‘Reich leadership’.57 However, in response to their immediate enquiry, Hitler informed the north German Nazis that he had not appointed Strasser; this had been done by Ludendorff, although he had nothing against him. In any case, he was determined after his release to take on the leadership once again.58 However, the north German group of Nazis refused to merge with the DVFP and rejected any involvement in parliament. Its three-man directorate believed they were keeping Hitler’s seat warm for him or, as Adalbert Volck, a member of the directorate, wrote to Fobke, Hitler’s secretary: ‘Our programme has two words: Adolf Hitler.’59
Meanwhile, the re-establishment of the SA was making considerable progress, a development that Hitler regarded with mixed feelings. On 1 April, the day on which sentence had been pronounced, Hitler sent Röhm a handwritten note appointing him military leader of the Kampfbund.60 Appointed deputy leader of the SA by Göring, Röhm was able to secure his de facto leadership of the SA at a meeting of SA leaders from all over Germany and Austria held in Salzburg on 17 and 18 May.61
Röhm immediately initiated a national reorganization of the SA. Alongside this, however, he also attempted to construct an autonomous, Reich-wide Nazi paramilitary organization with the title ‘Frontbann’. It was intended to include other leagues apart from the SA and to be organized along hierarchical, quasi-military lines. When Röhm visited Hitler in Landsberg he was told that these plans were not viable, but was not put off.62 Established in August 1924, the Frontbann soon contained 30,000 members, with Ludendorff formally assuming the ‘overall leadership’. However, in September the Bavarian government ordered the Frontbann headquarters to be searched and some of its leaders arrested; in the end, however, legal proceedings were halted by an amnesty. Hitler’s entourage blamed Röhm and his Frontbann activities for the postponement of Hitler’s release, after the public prosecutor intervened to stop it; it had been scheduled for October.63 In the meantime, there was no sign of the various groups competing to replace the NSDAP coming together; a meeting of eighty Nazis in Weimar on 20 July ended without agreement.64
Hitler continued to adopt a neutral position in public, but made his reservations clear in comments to close associates: Ludendorff had ‘a bee in his bonnet about mergers’, ‘Esser is a rake’, ‘I’ll draw a veil over Streicher’, Strasser had become so high profile that he was not going to make him second chairman after his release as he had intended. As far as he was concerned, the question of a merger with the DFVP was over and done with.65 Volck, the representative of the north Germans, took the same line when he wrote in a letter to Fobke that they did not recognize Strasser as their representative, as he had not been appointed by Hitler. But ‘H overestimates his strength; despite the chaos, he thinks he’ll easily be able to sort things out.’ If Hitler was still thinking of Bavaria as the ‘base’, he was under a misapprehension: ‘It’s only from the north that a real völkisch storm can be unleashed.’ Volck’s main concern was that, while Hitler was in prison, a rival group could emerge within the movement and become involved in parliamentary affairs. Did Hitler know, for example, that election posters were being put up with his portrait on them? For Volck this was ‘a slap in the face for H’.66 Hitler appears to have immediately responded to this criticism, for he issued a statement, published in the Völkischer Kurier, objecting to the misuse of his name in the Völkisch-Sozialer-Bloc’s election campaign.67
Meanwhile, on 26 July, the Reichstag passed a resolution lifting bans on political parties; all the states affected by this decision obeyed, albeit Prussia and Bavaria only after a delay of several months. Nazis throughout the Reich must undoubtedly have taken courage from this resolution.68 At a second conference in Weimar from 15 to 17 August 1924 a merger of the NSDAP and the DVFP under the name Nationalsozialistische Freiheitsbewegung [National Socialist Freedom Movement, NSFB] was finally agreed ‘under the Reich leadership of Ludendorff, Hitler, and von Graefe’.69
However, the north German group of former Nazis under Volck and Ludolf Haase, a Göttingen medical student, kept their distance. Confused by Hitler sending a greetings telegram to the Weimar meeting, they now enquired about his attitude to the new combined organization and how he envisaged the Party’s future activities. Fobke once more gave an evasive answer: Hitler rejected a complete merger and a ‘parliamentarization of the movement’. However, he was not totally opposed to ‘cooperation with Graefe and the Gen. [Ludendorff] in a single organization’, and whether he would establish an anti-parliamentary movement, like the old NSDAP, or ‘order a withdrawal from parliament’ he ‘could not yet say’. However, as ‘there was now a group of [völkisch] Reichstag deputies’, he wanted ‘to use it as an instrument’. Apart from that, as a matter of principle, he was not prepared publicly to support any of the existing groups. He still believed that he would be released on 1 October and then be able ‘first of all to sort out Bavaria’. The north Germans should ‘keep going’ for the time being.
They were by no means satisfied with this reply.70 At a meeting in Harburg on 7 September the north Germans distanced themselves from the Reich leadership of the NSFB, who were giving the false impression that they were acting on Hitler’s authority. They rejected any form of participation in elections and reemphasized that their three-ma
n directorate regarded itself as simply ‘keeping warm’ Hitler’s position as leader until he regained his freedom of action.71 Hitler, who was still expecting soon to be released, responded to a further pressing letter from Volck by indicating that he could only summon all those involved to meet him after this had happened. In any case, he was not prepared to accept a Reich leadership (a kind of ‘soldiers’ council type arrangement’) under any circumstances; it would be simply a question of ‘who would support him as the sole leader’.72 During the following weeks, Hitler continued to refuse to recognize a merged organization.73 His silence left the north German Nazis floundering. Volck, who was clearly at a loss, told a meeting in Uelzen at the beginning of November that they would try to ‘act in his spirit’; it was assumed that he would advocate a boycott of the Reichstag election that had been called for December.74
On 19 October, after much debate, the GVG decided to join the NSFB. A dispute broke out, however, because the Bavarian state organization of the NSFB, established a week later largely on the initiative of the Völkisch-Sozialer-Bloc, refused to accept the leaders of the GVG, Esser and Streicher, as members of the new organization. Thereupon, at the beginning of November, the GVG decided at a ‘Reich party conference’ to retain its independence after all.75 In the meantime, on 30 October, the NSFB had held its first mass meeting at the Bürgerbräukeller and, under the chairmanship of Anton Drexler, Gregor Strasser subjected Esser and Streicher to a vicious attack.76
In the light of these petty squabbles, it is clear that nobody was in a position to step into Hitler’s shoes and unite the Nazis, neither Ludendorff nor Strasser, nor any of those in Hitler’s old entourage such as Rosenberg or Streicher. Instead, the former party, having disintegrated into a number of feuding groups made a catastrophic impression. In the Reichstag election of 7 December 1924 the NSFB won only 3 per cent of the vote; among the fourteen deputies elected there were only three former Nazis. The result was a reflection of the fact that the Republic was beginning to stabilize both politically and economically, but also undoubtedly a consequence of the deep divisions within the Nazi movement that had become apparent during 1924. Hitler, at any rate, did not hide the fact that he was not unhappy with the result.77