In his speeches Hitler declared the ‘removal’ of the Jews to be the precondition for a national resurgence. This could be achieved, however, only if the division of Germany into a ‘nationalist’ middle-class camp and a ‘socialist’ proletarian camp could also be overcome.9 The reconciliation of the middle classes and the proletariat, the second major subject of Hitler’s addresses in this period, was possible only through a synthesis of nationalism and socialism, for which he claimed the NSDAP was striving. Yet the National ‘Socialism’ advanced by Hitler had absolutely nothing to do with taking the means of production into public ownership, as demanded by the Socialist movement. This alleged synthesis of the two terms amounted rather to the complete abandonment of classic socialist aims in favour of a militant nationalism with its roots in a racially defined notion of the nation [Volkstum]. Hitler constantly came out with new formulations but they all made one thing clear: National Socialism was nothing more or less than völkisch (ethnic) nationalism. ‘The nationalist and the socialist need to understand each other. If socialism is love for one’s nation, then socialism is the highest form of nationalism. But then nationalism is the highest form of socialism.’10 Another variant was: ‘To be nationalist is identical with being socialist. . . . There is no kind of socialism that does not find its liveliest expression in ardent admiration for and love of one’s nation [Volkstum] and in the unconditional devotion to this nation that alone sustains the fatherland and thus at the same time the promise of the future social wellbeing of its children. There is no idea of the nation that is not one and the same as living together with one’s children, sound in mind and body.’11 It would take an extraordinary effort to achieve a synthesis of nationalism and socialism and that was the third great subject of these speeches: the German nation had to realize that its entire existence was dependent on three factors. It had to acknowledge the importance of race (or ‘blood’, as he frequently expressed it), recognize the significance of leader figures, and accept the need for struggle. ‘The value of race’, ‘the value of personality’, and ‘the idea of struggle’ were, he claimed, ‘the pillars’ of the Nazi movement, which alone was called to restore power and glory to Germany. These three notions formed a trio of national virtues that recurred in a variety of forms in Hitler’s speeches to his supporters.12
He adopted a somewhat different tone when he had the opportunity to escape the confines of Party events. This happened on various occasions in 1926/27, when the audience was made up of invited middle-class guests drawn mainly from business. In these speeches Hitler did not affect to be speaking as a ‘simple man of the people’ to the broad masses, but rather attempted to impress his audience by appearing to offer insights into his very individual style of ‘leading the masses’ or spoke with pretended candour about his foreign policy goals. He adopted a predominantly condescending, indeed contemptuous, tone in speaking of the ‘masses’ he promised to lead towards these goals; anti-Semitism was not mentioned.
He made the first of these speeches on 28 February 1926 to about 400 members of the famous Hamburg National Club, a right-wing conservative association of prosperous residents of the Hanseatic city. Hitler portrayed himself on this occasion as a ruthless demagogue who, by using nationalist agitation and making a strong ‘socially-orientated’ impression, would succeed in turning the masses away from ‘Marxist’ parties. The nation, Hitler began, had not recovered from defeat and revolution and was still deeply divided: in addition to those who were indifferent to politics, there was a majority of people who were ‘international’ in outlook (or seriously lacking as far as their attitude to their own nation was concerned), namely the Social Democrats, communists, middle-class pacifists, and sections of the [Catholic] Centre Party and of the so-called parties of the Right. They faced a bloc of Germans who were unambiguously ‘nationalist’ in outlook. Hitler reduced the future political battle to ‘a simple formula: The problem of the resurgence of Germany is the problem of how to eliminate Marxist ideology in Germany. If this ideology is not eradicated, Germany will never rise again, any more than you can restore someone to health without curing him of tuberculosis.’ That goal had to be achieved ‘by all possible means’ and it could be achieved only with help from ‘the masses’. But how were the masses to be won over? First of all, by means of greater openness in addressing social matters, which, as he hastened to reassure his listeners, did not necessarily mean paying higher wages, but rather increasing national production, which benefited everyone. Secondly, however, the masses, who were ‘feminine’ and thus easily manipulated, ‘blind and stupid’, indeed ‘primitive in outlook’, had to be ‘offered a political creed, an immutable programme, an unshakable political faith’. The middle-class parties were incapable of doing this. He, however, regarded it as his ‘mission’.13
Before invited audiences at five subsequent events he pressed on with this attempt to woo business. On 18 June 1926 in Essen he spoke to about fifty or sixty ‘business leaders’ specifically ‘in support of private property’ and promised to protect ‘the market economy . . . as the most effective and only feasible economic system’.14 In December he addressed 500 invited ‘business leaders’ in Königswinter on ‘German economic and social policy’15 and about 200 invited guests a few days later in Essen, where he spoke relatively openly about his foreign policies. The speech, which lasted almost three hours, had the characteristic title ‘New Paths to Power’. He assured his business-orientated audience that his basic aim was ‘to acquire more territory that would open up new markets to German commerce’.16 In April 1927 he was in Essen again, speaking once more to an audience of businessmen on the topic of ‘The Führer and the Masses’, in which he expounded the ‘view that any leader of the masses who aims to be successful must emerge from the masses and engage in daily dispute with the leaders of the masses’.17 On 5 December 1927 he was already making his fourth speech to a ‘circle of invited Rhineland-Westphalian business men’ in Essen, this time more than 600 of them. Once again Hitler shared some of his foreign policy ideas, although he was much more circumspect than he had been a year previously, when he had outlined an imperialist programme. This time he took a pragmatic line: any agreement with France was fundamentally out of the question and preference should be given to an alliance with Great Britain and Italy.18
The speaking ban is lifted
In May 1926 the speaking ban was lifted in Oldenburg, in January 1927 in Saxony, and finally in March in Bavaria and Hamburg. During the following months most of the states removed restrictions until they remained in place only in Prussia and Anhalt until the autumn of 1928.19
Hitler soon discovered, however, that it was not easy to pick up the threads of past successes. After completing his first engagement before a general audience in Bavaria on 6 March 1927 in Vilsbiburg (the Bavarian government had insisted on his first appearance being outside Munich)20 he gave a speech three days later in the Circus Krone building in Munich. The hall was only half full.21 At subsequent events in the massive auditorium the NSDAP managed to attract nowhere near the numbers that Hitler had attracted between 1921 and 1923. This negative trend continued for the whole of 1927 and, according to official reports, was repeated in the Bavarian provinces; indeed the numbers attending Hitler’s meetings here actually shrank.22 At the Party Rally, which in this year was being held in Nuremberg, the number of participants similarly fell below expectations.23 Hitler had to get used to the idea that his eccentric, politically provocative style appealed to few people at a time when the Weimar Republic was experiencing a period of political and economic stability. In January 1928 at the general membership meeting of the NSDAP’s Schwabing branch Hitler felt it necessary to emphasize that his most recent meetings in central Germany had been ‘jam packed’, claiming that ‘soon Munich too will be back to what it was before 1923’.24
At first the basic tenor of his speeches was unchanged. As before, he stressed the restoration of the nation’s power through the ‘removal’
of the Jews, the union of ‘nationalism’ and ‘socialism’, and the need to recognize the national core virtues of race, leadership by a ‘Führer’, and preparedness to fight. Now, however, another element was added that had been largely absent from earlier speeches, namely the problem that Hitler still rather tentatively skirted round by referring to the ‘disproportion’ of ‘soil’ and ‘nation’. In volume two of Mein Kampf, which had appeared at the end of 1926, Hitler had argued that the German national rebirth the NSDAP was striving for should not be understood as an end in itself or as the construction of a more just social order, but as the precondition for the ‘superior’ German nation to fulfil the task for which it was destined by the laws of history. Thus, what was required was ‘a political strategy for the East, namely the acquisition of the land needed for our German nation’.25 That meant nothing more nor less than rearmament and a war of conquest. The fact that the territory he had in view was mainly on Soviet soil could be inferred only indirectly from Hitler’s speeches: he repeatedly stressed that in relation to the size of population ‘Russia’ had an area eighteen times bigger than the German Reich and that this massive size was the result of a historical development that could most certainly be challenged.26 In the main he merely hinted at his ideas, using ponderous formulations as he explored the various theoretical possibilities of alleviating the problem he kept emphasizing of the ‘disproportion’ between ‘soil’ and ‘nation’.27
Thus, from the spring of 1927 onwards, Hitler regularly used speeches to develop the core elements of his ideology, albeit expressed in a convoluted way. Whenever he presented the central concepts of his political programme – hostility to the Jews, National Socialism, race, the Führer principle, struggle, the conquest of ‘soil’ – in speeches lasting several hours, he indulged in long digressions, historical musings, polemical interludes, using insinuations and indirect references. In addition, at the big, central Party Rallies, where from 1929 onwards he was again speaking to more than 10,000 people, many in his audience could only pick up fragments of what he said. When from the end of the 1920s the NSDAP introduced microphones and loudspeakers, audibility was still limited in part because of technical difficulties.28
For anyone who was not already familiar with the ideological core of Hitler’s thought – through having read Mein Kampf, for example – the inner logic of this elaborate structure of ideas and its implications were not necessarily easy to grasp. But that was not really the point: the effect of his speeches derived rather from how they were staged. Before the putsch Hitler had carried his audience along because his despair appeared so evident and he seemed to present to his listeners a way out of it. After the bans on his speaking had been lifted in 1927/28, he applied himself to perfecting his public appearances.
One element in this was the fact that he did not show himself too often. He could speak only every three days, if only on account of the strain on his vocal chords, or at least that was the line taken by the Party’s Reich propaganda headquarters.29 In 1927 Hitler appeared at only sixty-two events, in 1928, an election year, it was seventy-eight, and in 1929 it was only thirty-nine; the overwhelming majority of these speeches each year were made in Bavaria.30 The Party branches had positively to compete for him and convince the propaganda HQ that they were capable of creating the required ambience. Most of these requests were turned down.31 The procedure was fairly elaborate. First of all, the local branch had to fill in a questionnaire describing the proposed venue and providing detailed information on the size of the branch, the probable composition of the audience, and recent propaganda efforts. If an appearance by the Party leader was then approved by the Munich HQ, the local group received the compulsory ‘Guidelines for Hitler meetings’ produced by his private office, which had meanwhile been set up in Munich.32 In them every last detail of the local branch’s duties was set out. They document not only how organized and precisely calculated the Führer propaganda already was at the end of the 1920s, but they also reveal Hitler’s anxiety about being caused embarrassment by the incompetence of Party comrades in the provinces; all risks and imponderables that might have a negative impact on his public appearance had as far as possible to be eliminated.
The guidelines prescribed that the meeting be kept secret for as long as possible and that problems, even if they arose at the last minute, should be immediately reported to Munich. Hitler thus had the option of pulling out at the last moment. This he did, for example during the campaign for the elections to the Mecklenburg-Schwerin state assembly in May 1927, when he had all the speeches he had scheduled cancelled at short notice, possibly because the election campaign was poorly organized.33
Generally speaking, for ‘Hitler meetings’ there was an entrance charge of one Reich mark. Half of the sum raised was to be sent to Party HQ. If the demand was great enough, the price could rise to three marks. In the Weimar Republic it was unusual for a political party to charge entry to its propaganda events, but it was a method of ensuring that the audience consisted mainly of supporters.34 The posters made it explicit from the outset that Jews were forbidden to attend.
If all preparations were complete and the hall was full, the great moment approached: the ‘Führer’s’ arrival. Hitler always came late, which was not only the result of his notorious unpunctuality but part of the calculated drama of the occasion. With swastika flags leading the way he would walk through the hall in a solemn procession with local Party functionaries following, with a band playing military music and the audience cheering. In the hall itself there was an ‘absolute ban on smoking’, again required by the guidelines because of the ‘heavy demands on Adolf Hitler’s voice’. Hitler never spoke from behind a lectern but rather stood on an empty stage so that all of his body language was visible to the audience. A small table always had to be positioned to his left for his notes, which contained headings that Hitler generally kept to fairly closely.35
As an introduction he usually offered his audience a historical event they could relate to and which he used to conjure up a collective historical memory or a shared experience. It might be the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon or the founding of the Reich, but most often he chose the World War. As he proceeded certain key terms functioned as an expression of ‘community’, and during the speech the majority of the audience could identify themselves as members of it. Usually these terms were ‘race’, ‘blood’, ‘leadership’. Other key words aroused a sense of being under threat – Jewry, Marxism, the Allies’ policies that limited Germany’s freedom, lack of space, the inner degeneration of the German nation – while others provoked the audience’s aggression (‘annihilation’ of Marxists and Jews, ‘struggle’, conquest of ‘soil’). The conclusion was always a vision of triumph: the nation, united under National Socialism, would in the end overcome all enemies.
An address of this kind normally lasted several hours.36 Hitler usually began hesitantly, giving an impression of uncertainty; then he would become increasingly fluent and emotionally charged, until finally he reached his rhetorical climax, straining his voice to its limits and gesticulating wildly. The effort made him lose litres of fluids,37 which is why the guidelines specifically asked for an ‘unopened bottle of Fachingen mineral water at room temperature and a glass’ to be on the small table, with additional bottles to hand. On very hot days ice was to be available for Hitler to cool his hands. So that he retained future control of the spoken text of his speech, ‘two reliable stenographers’ had to make a transcript of it and to send it immediately to Party HQ in Munich. In addition, six men, ‘known to be honourable and if possible elderly’, had to sit on the podium behind Hitler in order ‘if necessary to give evidence about the content of the speech’. At the start of the meeting the chairman should strongly emphasize that, in view of the ‘witnesses’ and the stenographers, ‘attempts to falsify’ the proceedings were pointless.
The next stipulations clearly sprang from the fear that Party comrades in the provinces might try to steal the show and de
tract from the star turn. The chairman was instructed to be ‘very brief’ when opening the meeting and, as Hitler’s speech spoke ‘for itself’, to desist from appreciative closing remarks. The meeting should end simply with a ‘Hail Germany’ (but not ‘Hail Hitler’). Songs were also to be dispensed with. Should members of the audience start to sing the Deutschland anthem or any other song, the chairman was to interrupt it with a ‘Hail Germany’ after one verse, ‘as experience shows that the majority of those present do not know the words of the other verses’. As Hitler ‘needed absolute peace and quiet’ after his exertions, the local branch had ‘to accept the fact that after the meeting he could not spend any time with them’ but would withdraw to his hotel, where the organizers had to arrange a room with a bathroom.38
Yet these carefully honed techniques and the enthusiastic reception he was regularly given on such occasions could not disguise the fact that Hitler was regarded as the ‘Führer’ only on the extreme right of the political spectrum. The Party was relatively well organized and made a comparatively united impression. It had in fact established itself as the dominant force within the extreme Right. But it could not find a way out of this political subculture and had only very moderate success in elections during these years. Its vote never exceeded 5 per cent and the results were mostly distinctly poorer than that.39
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