8
A New Direction
From 19 to 21 August 1927 the Party held its third Party Rally in Nuremberg.1 According to police records a total of 15,000 to 20,000 people took part, including some 9,000 uniformed members of the SA, SS, and Hitler Youth.2 Although the NSDAP had gathered together about twice as many supporters for this quasi-military review as the previous year, over all the Party was stagnating. On top of this, various internal conflicts came to light at the rally and this situation was hard to reconcile with the image of a Führer party.
For one thing, although the disputes with the ‘working group’ had been dealt with in 1926, there were still major differences between Hitler and supporters of a ‘socialist’ path. While he had divided its most important advocates from one another, they were nevertheless to return repeatedly to their basic concern. Since 1926 they had also developed an intellectual and journalistic base in the Kampf publishing house belonging to the Strasser brothers.3 The representatives of the so-called left of the Party exploited the fact that Hitler often used ‘anti-capitalist’ rhetoric to keep on citing him as their authority. But in using such arguments Hitler was not interested in a restructuring of the German economy along socialist lines; rather his polemics against ‘international’ and ‘Jewish’ capital were designed to support the demand that Germany be ‘liberated’ from the bonds of the Versailles Treaty and the Jews ‘removed’ from Germany.4 By contrast with the left wing of his Party he had no interest in fleshing out Points 11 to 17 in the Party programme as an ‘anti-capitalist’ programme of economic reform.5 When, at the beginning of 1927, Gregor Strasser and Alfred Rosenberg had a public disagreement about whether the ‘socialist’ or the ‘nationalist’ element in National Socialism should predominate6 (to emphasize the former element, Strasser wanted to hold on to the term ‘National Socialism’), Hitler attempted to terminate the discussion by using one of his well-known rhetorical tricks. Both terms, he said, had fused into an indissoluble unity with new content: ‘Socialism is becoming Nationalism and Nationalism Socialism.’7
For another thing, conflicts were developing over the future role of the SA: whereas Hitler saw its function as being above all to protect and support the Party’s activities, the SA leadership, with its collection of former World War officers, continued to favour the idea of a paramilitary outfit that should take its place prominently among the various other paramilitary organizations. The fact that the SA’s rank and file was left-leaning made the situation more difficult. This conflict first came out into the open in Munich itself in the spring of 1927. Although Hitler placed all his authority behind his attempt to explain his ‘legal’ path to the renegade SA men, he could not prevent a large number of the ‘activists’ in the Munich SA from splitting off from the movement; nor could he prevent more heavy criticism being voiced at the beginning of 1928 among the remaining SA members that the Party leadership was not moving in a sufficiently ‘revolutionary’ direction.8
The fact that the NSDAP simply could not manage to break out of its marginal position on the far right and appeal to the masses made these conflicts more bitter and led to constant friction that was frequently tactical or purely personal. There was some point to Hitler’s warning at the Party Rally about ‘the local branches holding too many members’ meetings’, as they were just a ‘source of conflict, petty jealousies and intemperate outbursts, and a waste of energy.’9 Changes were therefore necessary.
After the 1927 Party Rally the NSDAP gradually shifted its public image away from being first and foremost a ‘workers’ party’ and increased its efforts to target other sections of the population, in particular the urban lower middle classes and the rural population. This refocusing of Party propaganda did not follow on from any particular ‘decision’ taken by the Party leader but had a number of causes. It was the logical outcome of the failure of the ‘socialist’ wing of the Party to rewrite the Party programme along the lines it favoured. It was also an acknowledgement of practical experience gained by the Party organization: the fact that the Party resonated more with the middle classes than with the workers had in the end to be taken into account. And it now better fitted Hitler’s own ideas, for he had vehemently opposed the use of overly ‘socialist’ slogans and instead had already sought support for his Party among middle-class business people. An opportunity to introduce this new emphasis came early in 1928, when Gregor Strasser, the main advocate of orienting the Party towards the working classes, moved from being the head of Reich propaganda to being head of the Party organization. Although Hitler was formally in charge of propaganda, Heinrich Himmler, until now Strasser’s deputy, in effect took over this role. He was simultaneously the Party’s designated agriculture expert and strongly supported the inclusion of rural areas in the Party’s propaganda efforts.10
In concentrating propaganda on the rural population the Party was also responding to an increasingly evident crisis developing in agriculture. In 1927/28, as a result of the global agrarian crisis, the price of agricultural products collapsed, while production costs rose. Farmers gave vent to their frustration by means of a nationwide protest movement. There were demonstrations and mass meetings, violence was used to prevent compulsory evictions and auctions, and taxes were withheld. In Schleswig-Holstein in particular a hard-line opposition formed, the so-called Landvolkbewegung, which became so radical that it openly rejected ‘the State’ and even carried out bomb attacks on tax offices. In the final analysis, however, this movement, which spread as far as Lower Saxony and the Oldenburg area, was heterogeneous; its political aims and tactics remained confused, while many country people were deterred by the terrorist excesses. At the same time, in Protestant areas in particular, the protests shook people’s confidence in the established agricultural associations and in the DNVP, the conservative party representing the political interests of agriculture. The NSDAP now had the opportunity of deploying its propaganda to attract a new source of support.11
In December 1927, as the Landvolkbewegung was just getting organized, Hitler made his first speech at a major Party event that was specifically geared to agriculture. His audience was made up primarily of members of the Schleswig-Holstein Farmers’ Association, the Movement for Small Peasants [Kleinbauernbewegung], and the Farmers League [Landbund]. They had come to Hamburg specially since the Prussian ban on his speaking in public, which was still in force, prevented him from speaking in Schleswig-Holstein. Even in this speech, however, Hitler quickly managed to marginalize the topical issues of agricultural policy – heavy taxation, pricing policies, import restrictions, the indebtedness of many farms – turning to more fundamental matters. The Germans, he assured his audience, had always been a ‘peasant people with all the health that comes from an existence rooted in the soil’, whereas the impact of modern city life was ‘gradually’ having a ‘debilitating and degenerative’ effect. What was needed was a ‘vigorous, active, outward-facing territorial policy, in other words a clear political goal that can hold for centuries’, ‘making the territory fit the size of the nation’s population’. Population growth, adequate space for it, and the ‘worth of a nation’ that was manifest ‘first and foremost in the worth of our race and in our blood’ were the factors that were decisive for the future.12 In order to allay suspicion that the NSDAP was contemplating a land reform, in April 1928 Hitler even took the step of committing himself to a particular gloss on a fundamental point in the Party programme that he himself had declared to be ‘immutable’. He announced that, although Point 17 contained a demand for ‘the expropriation without compensation of land for public use’, such a law only envisaged the expropriation of land that ‘had been acquired unlawfully or was not being administered in a manner that respected the common good’. This measure, he added pointedly, was directed first and foremost ‘against Jewish companies involved in land speculation’.13 In addition, by campaigning among rural artisans, the NSDAP in North Germany succeeded in establishing a foothold in the local artisans’ associati
ons and in putting pressure on the leaders of the Northwest German Artisans’ League.14
Students were another group that the Party leadership increasingly began to focus on. A National Socialist German Students’ League (NSDStB) had been founded in February 1926, although to begin with it was unable to build on the Party’s successes with Munich students before 1923. Unlike in the immediate post-war years, during the period when the Republic was stabilizing, the student body was no longer under the influence of former combatants and those who had been growing up during the war years, who were eager to take a chance on a possible counter-revolution. Now it consisted of young men and women who were studying in order to lay the foundations for a professional career.15 Up to now Hitler had said virtually nothing on student matters. In January 1927 he had published an article in the Nationalsozialistische Hochschulbriefe [National Socialist University Newsletters], the organ of the NSDStB,16 and on 21 November 1927 he held the first large-scale demonstration for students. At a meeting of the NSDStB in Munich he made a speech to an audience of between 2,000 and 2,500. He offered them his standard repertoire, taking trouble at the same time to cater for the needs of an audience that was more highly educated than was the norm by giving numerous historical examples and quotations and speaking in more inflated language than usual. So, for example, he expounded the idea that politics was ‘history in the making, because every political event in the moment it happens becomes the history of a nation’.17
In 1928 the Party leader also began to modify his position with regard to paramilitary organizations. Up to this point he had fundamentally questioned the existence and political function of paramilitary organizations, forbidden NSDAP supporters to be members of such organizations, and recommended to their members that in order to avoid further difficulties they should quite simply acknowledge his political leadership.18 He now adopted a more conciliatory tone and smoothed the way for a limited amount of cooperation with the paramilitary organizations. From May 1928 onwards the rank and file of the Party was instructed to avoid making any verbal attacks on them.19
This gradual change of propaganda focus revealed itself in Hitler’s speeches through two topics in particular. First, Hitler altered the importance he placed on anti-Semitism: anti-Jewish comments, allusions, and sideswipes were still evident in his public utterances and recognizable in particular to Party supporters,20 and he continued to indulge in long-winded anti-Jewish tirades and accusations;21 but, crucially, anti-Semitism no longer functioned as a central leitmotiv of the Party programme. In particular, Hitler avoided making statements about the fate in store for the Jews in a Nazi Germany. He now appeared to have given up his idea of realizing his vision of a Germany united under the Nazis through the ‘removal’ of the Jews. His retreat from this demand was indicated in February 1928 when he announced to a packed meeting in the main hall of the Hofbräuhaus that the matter could be resolved if the Jews were ‘shown clearly who’s boss; if they behave themselves they can stay; if not, then out they go!’22 While on this occasion the expulsion of the Jews was made to depend on their good behaviour, Hitler was later to drop this threat altogether. Thus he was adapting to the type of anti-Semitism prevalent during those years in right-wing conservative circles. Although the DNVP and the Stahlhelm, which soon became his preferred alliance partners, had also gone about excluding their Jewish members in the mid-1920s,23 their anti-Semitism was shaped more by a social code, a kind of universally accepted habitus expressed more through the rejection of all things ‘Jewish’ and less through specific attacks couched in radical language. Excluding the Jews from German citizenship, as the NSDAP programme demanded, was not, as yet, a measure that would have met with broad agreement in these right-wing conservative circles. Hitler knew that his radical anti-Semitism, the vision of a nation without Jews, did not represent a particularly attractive propaganda slogan by which to win support from the conservative right, let alone the lower middle classes. At the same time, a certain amount of anti-Jewish polemic did the Party no harm in these circles, for anti-Semitic stereotypes, prejudices, and resentments were too deep-rooted in German society for that.24
Secondly, Hitler now began to make another important ideological theme a leitmotiv of his speeches: the acquisition of ‘Lebensraum’ (living space) as the goal of Nazi policy.25 The fact that this increase in living space made another war necessary and that in fact permanent ‘struggle’ in general was fundamental to National Socialism emerged clearly from these speeches. Although Hitler did not state openly that the conquest of living space in eastern Europe was to be primarily at the expense of the Soviet Union, anyone who wanted to have more detail had only to take to heart the second volume of Mein Kampf. Hitler did not need to fear that his demand that German borders be forcibly revised would put off his potential right-wing conservative allies and their supporters, whom he wished to win over to the NSDAP. On the political right there was a consensus about wanting to see Germany as a great power, and war was by no means excluded as a means towards that political end. Hitler could certainly lay claim to originality with his concept of living space, for unlike the political right he was not demanding the restoration of Germany’s 1914 borders. Instead he was aiming for a position of power, based on geopolitics and secured by a network of alliances, that would safeguard the German Reich of the future from dropping back into the hopeless ‘centre position’ that was widely blamed for defeat in the World War.
Positioning after the 1928 elections
Elections for the Reichstag and various state parliaments were set for 20 May 1928. In preparation, Hitler made an election speech in Munich in the middle of April that, contrary to his usual practice, had less of a ‘visionary’ quality and instead was concerned with concrete political issues. He strongly criticized Gustav Stresemann’s foreign policy since the Ruhr conflict of 1923, violently attacking the minister personally. The Völkischer Beobachter turned this speech into a special issue with the significant title of ‘Down with Stresemann’.26 Given this background, it was hardly a coincidence that the following week the Nazis disrupted an election rally Stresemann was holding in Munich, an occurrence Hitler referred to maliciously a few days later in an election speech in the city: he personally had ‘immensely regretted that the affair had come to this’. Then for several hours he attacked Stresemann’s foreign policy in a speech that the Völkischer Beobachter published once again in a special issue entitled ‘Intellect and Dr Stresemann’.27
Yet Hitler’s sarcastic and furious assaults on Stresemann could not disguise the fact that in this election campaign he was increasingly being put on the defensive and in particular with regard to his own foreign policy programme. This was because Stresemann made criticism of Mussolini’s policy of ‘Italianizing’ the South Tyrol one of the main themes of the election, and the other parties, not wanting to lag behind, also declared their solidarity with the German-speaking minority south of the Brenner. As Hitler had always advocated accepting the annexation of the South Tyrol in the interests of forging an alliance with Italy, he found himself wrong-footed by the focus on this issue. He was unprepared to argue for his position on the South Tyrol in the election campaign, for it made sense only in the context of his ideas about foreign policy alliances. In addition, shortly before election day the SPD in Munich produced a poster that, under the heading ‘Adolf Hitler Unmasked’, claimed that Hitler was being supported financially by Mussolini.28 In the final stages of the campaign he thus found himself in the extremely uncomfortable position of having to defend himself against the charge of being nationally unreliable and he attempted to do just that in a furious speech the night before the election.29
The elections brought gains above all for the SPD and the KPD, while the nationalist parties suffered heavy losses. The increased support for splinter parties from 7 per cent to 13 per cent showed clearly the beginnings of an erosion of the conservative and liberal camps. Yet the NSDAP could benefit only slightly from this, and with only 2.6 per cent of the v
ote it had done badly. In the state parliament elections held at the same time the Party achieved 6.1 per cent of the vote in Bavaria, 1.8 per cent in Prussia and Württemberg, 2.1 per cent in Anhalt, but 7.5 per cent in Oldenburg.30 On election night Hitler was still hailing the results as a success when addressing Party comrades in the Bürgerbräukeller: It could now be taken for granted ‘that from now on there is and will be only one völkisch movement, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party’. Above all, however, ‘the watchword is: The election battle has finished and the fight goes on!’ Their goal was ‘to be in four years’ time where Marxism is now, and for Marxism to fall to where we are now’.31
That was merely rhetoric. On the contrary, the election results had confirmed that so far the NSDAP, in spite of its efforts, had made no inroads at all into the working-class vote. On the other hand, gains had been made in a whole series of rural areas and these gains lent weight to those in the Party who saw the middle classes as having the most potential NSDAP voters. It was not only in its Bavarian heartlands that the Party’s share of the vote was clearly higher than the national average (6.2 per cent in Upper Bavaria and Swabia, 3.5 per cent in Lower Bavaria) but also in a series of predominantly Protestant, rural areas (3.7 per cent in Thuringia, 4.0 per cent in Schleswig-Holstein, 5.2 per cent in Weser-Ems, 4.4 per cent in Hanover-South-Brunswick, 3.6 per cent in Hesse-Nassau, 5.7 per cent in the Palatinate, and 4.4 per cent in Chemnitz-Zwickau).
Hitler now attempted to extend these gains. On 14 October he spoke to some 15,000 people at a large NSDAP rally on the Holstein heath. Four days later he was in Oldenburg, another centre of the agricultural protest movement, speaking to 2,000–3,000 people. When in March 1929 in Wörden in Dithmarschen [Schleswig-Holstein] two SA men were killed during violent clashes with communists, the Party turned the funeral into a propaganda event, with Hitler delivering the eulogy. The victims, Hitler said with emotion, had died as ‘martyrs’ for the ‘fatherland’. This personal engagement on the part of the Party leader resulted in an immediate increase in support for the NSDAP in the whole of the Dithmarschen area,32 a stronghold of the Landvolk movement. Having infiltrated it extensively during the winter of 1928/29, the NSDAP was now making gains everywhere in Schleswig-Holstein from that movement’s efforts to mobilize support among the rural population which had been badly hit by the crisis. People turned to the Party in droves.33
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