Hitler

by Peter Longerich

  The elections and the coordination of the federal states had shifted the balance of power in the cabinet in Hitler’s favour. He was now in a position to appoint a further Nazi minister. On 11 March the cabinet agreed to establish a Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, and, on 15 March, having returned from a short trip to Munich, where three days previously he had celebrated the final ‘conquest’ of the city and laid a wreath for ‘the fallen’ at the Feldherrnhalle,75 Hitler was able to congratulate Joseph Goebbels on his appointment as his youngest minister. Originally he had promised him a Ministry of Culture with comprehensive powers, but now Goebbels had to content himself with the fact that the main focus of his work would be state propaganda.76

  Hitler supported the establishment of the new ministry by getting the cabinet to give him special powers to transfer a considerable number of responsibilities from other government departments to the new ministry.77 By July, it had acquired its basic structure. The responsibility for radio, hitherto divided between the Postal Ministry, the Interior Ministry, and the states, was assigned to Goebbels and, despite stalling by the states, all regional transmitters now became ‘Reich transmitters’.78 Goebbels took over responsibility for theatres from the Education Ministry (although Göring retained significant power over the Prussian theatres),79 and for fine art and other cultural and media responsibilities from the Interior Ministry.80 Also, despite opposition from the Foreign Ministry, he was able to establish his own foreign department.81

  Among other personnel changes that strengthened the Nazi element in the government were Hitler’s replacement on 17 March of Hans Luther as president of the Reichsbank with Hjalmar Schacht, and the appointment at the end of March of Konstantin Hierl as state secretary in the Reich Ministry of Labour and head of the state Labour Service (despite opposition from Labour Minister, Seldte). Fritz Reinhardt, the head of the NSDAP’s ‘Speakers’ School’, was made state secretary in the Reich Finance Ministry at the beginning of April.82

  On 21 March, on the occasion of the opening of the Reichstag, the alliance between Nazis and conservatives, between the ‘nationalist revolution’ and Prussian tradition, was to be celebrated with pomp and ceremony in Potsdam.83 On 2 March, at Papen’s suggestion, the cabinet had decided on the Garrison Church as the venue for the occasion, a choice full of symbolism. It contained the tombs of two Prussian kings, Fredrick William I and Frederick II [the Great], and up until the end of the First World War enemy flags and banners captured by the Prussian army were kept there. After a few pious qualms, the Reich President had agreed, but secured himself the main role in the ceremony, which was now clearly designed to resemble the opening of the first ever Reichstag by Kaiser William I.84

  Potsdam Day is often described as the Nazis’ first great propaganda success, for they succeeded in shamelessly and hypocritically appropriating Prussian traditions so revered by Germans. Looked at more closely, the occasion has rather the appearance of a demonstration of conservative Germany. With Potsdam a sea of black-white-red flags and hundreds of thousands there primarily to cheer the Reich President, the Nazis were in danger of being downgraded to mere assistants in the restoration of the monarchy.85 Moreover, Hitler’s lack of control of the event was rubbed in by the friendly invitation from the representative of the Catholic Church in Potsdam to attend the service inaugurating the event and thereby demonstrate his oft-expressed ‘belief in God and Christianity’.86 This prompted Hitler and Goebbels, the day before it started, to try to put a stop to all this. Instead of attending the church service, they decided to make a demonstrative visit to the graves of members of the SA buried in the Luise cemetery in Berlin. They justified their absence by claiming that leaders and supporters of the NSDAP had been accused of being ‘apostates’ by representatives of the Church and excluded from the sacraments, a claim that was immediately rejected as an inaccurate generalization.87

  Hitler and Goebbels arrived on time for the start of the state ceremony at 12 noon. The Reichstag deputies from the Nazi and bourgeois parties were all assembled in the church; the Social Democrats had declined to participate. Apart from the deputies, the church, which could hold around 2,000 people, was mainly filled with representatives of ‘nationalist’ Germany, including many wearing the colourful uniforms of the old army. After a few words, the Reich President called on Hitler to speak. Hitler praised the recent election result as the expression of a ‘marriage . . . between the symbols of the greatness of the olden days and the vigour of youth’. The handshake between Hindenburg in his field-marshal’s uniform and Hitler in his civilian tailcoat represented the high point of the ceremony.

  After laying wreaths on the tombs of the Prussian kings in the crypt, Hindenburg took the salute at a parade of Reichswehr, police, and the ‘nationalist leagues’ (SA, SS, Hitler Youth, and Stahlhelm) lasting several hours, while Hitler and his cabinet were obliged to watch the march past from the second row. The photograph of Hitler taking his leave of Hindenburg with a reverential bow, as carried in the media – Goebbels’s first major coup as Propaganda Minister – became the iconic image of the day. It was intended to symbolize the alliance between the Nazis and the conservative elites. However, two days later, Hitler rejected the restoration of the monarchy, towards which the conservatives had clearly been moving; he declared that, given the misery of the masses, the government considered the issue ‘inappropriate for discussion at the present time’.88

  Immediately after the Potsdam ceremony the government ministers agreed further emergency powers. An emergency decree imposed severe penalties for ‘malicious attacks’ on the government (even the death penalty in particularly serious cases). Special courts were set up, intended to ensure the rapid sentencing of offences against both this decree and the Reichstag Fire Decree.89

  Two days later, the Enabling Law was on the Reichstag’s agenda. This law, which the cabinet had been discussing for several weeks, envisaged the Reich government being able to pass laws without the participation of parliament, and the Chancellor rather than the Reich President being responsible for the final approval of laws.90 The government was also expressly authorized to issue legislation contrary to the constitution, provided it did not affect the Reichstag and the Reichsrat as institutions or the ‘rights of the Reich President’. With this fine distinction between the two legislatures and the Presidency – the office of Reich President, including the method of election and the position of deputy, was no longer guaranteed – the first step was being taken towards an unconstitutional settlement of the succession to the Reich Presidency in the event of Hindenburg’s death. The law was intended to last for four years, but would become invalid ‘if the present Reich government is replaced by another’. In other words, it was the Hitler/Hugenberg coalition government that was being ‘enabled’; in the event of the government being replaced, the Reich President could insist on the Enabling Law being suspended. He could achieve this through his right to appoint the Chancellor and the ministers. Thus, in principle, the Enabling Law had a built-in guarantee against an unbridled extension of Hitler’s power at the expense of his conservative partners.91 However, it freed him from any kind of parliamentary control. For although, since the recent elections, the government had a majority, he had no intention of subjecting himself to the day-to-day tedium of parliamentary majority government and having to take account of the particular interests of conservative deputies on each issue as it arose. Thanks to his majority, the Chancellor was also no longer dependent on the Reich President’s power to issue emergency decrees. As a result, Hindenburg’s authority, on which the conservatives had based their efforts ‘to contain’ Hitler, was inevitably weakened.

  However, the law had not yet been passed. To achieve the requisite two-thirds majority, a change in the procedural rules decreed that those communist deputies who were in prison, had fled, or gone underground should be regarded as non-existent, with the result that the quorum required for the chamber to take decisions was reduced.
92 Nevertheless, the support of the Centre Party was still required for the law to pass. To secure this, on 20 and 21 March Hitler made oral promises to the chairman of the Centre, Ludwig Kaas, which he reiterated in the government declaration to the Reichstag on 23 March. They included a guarantee to maintain the federal states in their present form and – with qualifications – for all ‘those elements positively disposed towards the state’ a guarantee of the rights of the religious confessions, of the civil service, and of the Reich President.93

  At the Reichstag session on 23 March, which because of the fire was held in the Kroll Opera House, Hitler appeared not in a suit but in his brown Party uniform. At the start of his speech, he expatiated once more on the ‘decline’ that the German people had allegedly suffered during the previous fourteen years, going on to put forward a ‘programme for the reconstruction of nation and Reich’. This proposed law was designed to serve the goal of furthering the ‘welfare of our local authorities and states’, by allowing the government to achieve, ‘from now onwards and for ever after, a consistency of political goals throughout the Reich and the states’. The Reich government wanted to put a stop to the ‘total devaluation of the legislative bodies’ as a result of frequent elections, with ‘the aim of ensuring that, once the nation’s will has been expressed, it will produce uniform results throughout the Reich and the states’.

  Hitler announced that ‘with the political decontamination of our public life . . . [would come] a thorough moral purging of the national body’ and praised the two Christian confessions as ‘the most important factors for the maintenance of our nation’. Then he moved to conciliate the Centre Party and to calm fears that the National Socialists intended to attack the Churches. As requested by the Centre Party, Hitler conceded that the ‘judges are irremovable’, at the same time issuing an unambiguous warning that they must ‘demonstrate flexibility in adjusting their verdicts to the benefit of society’. His economic policy announcements remained vague. He talked about ‘the encouragement of private initiative’ and the ‘recognition of private property’ as well as of the simplification and reduction of the burden of taxation. They were going to ‘rescue the German peasantry’, ‘integrate the army of unemployed in the production process’, and protect the self-employed.

  In the foreign policy section of his speech Hitler emphasized the government’s willingness to disarm and to seek peace and friendly relations. The Reich government aimed to do everything possible ‘to bring the four great powers, England, France, Italy, and Germany’, closer together and was also willing to establish ‘friendly and mutually beneficial relations’ with the Soviet Union (the persecution of communists was a purely domestic matter for the Reich). However, any attempt to divide nations into victors and vanquished would remove any basis for an ‘understanding’. Finally, Hitler gave the commitments agreed with the Centre Party, while stating that the government ‘insisted’ on the law being passed. As far as its application was concerned, while ‘the number of cases . . . would be limited’, the cabinet would regard ‘rejection’ as a ‘declaration of resistance’.94

  Despite the intimidating atmosphere in the hall (which was decorated with swastikas and dominated by SA men), the SPD leader, Otto Wels, while welcoming in his response the foreign policy section of the government statement, nevertheless announced that the SPD opposed the draft bill, and concluded by declaring his commitment to basic human rights and justice, to freedom, and to socialism. Hitler then embarked on an apparently spontaneous ‘settling of accounts’ with Wels, although in fact it was well prepared, as he had already seen a copy of Wels’s speech. Accompanied by thunderous applause from the Nazi deputies, Hitler brusquely rejected Wels’s positive response to the regime’s foreign policy plans. Indicating his contempt for democratic procedures and legality, he made it clear that the Reichstag deputies were simply being requested ‘to agree to something that we could have done anyway’. He, Hitler, would not ‘make the mistake of simply irritating opponents instead of either destroying or reconciling them’. He did not want the SPD to vote for the law: ‘Germany must become free, but not thanks to you!’95

  Ludwig Kaas of the Centre Party and the representatives of the BVP, the Staatspartei, and the Christlich-Sozialer Volksdienst [Christian Social People’s Service] then declared their groups’ support for the Enabling Law. When the final vote was taken, there were 94 SPD votes against; the remainder of their total of 120 deputies had either emigrated, were in protective custody, or had excused themselves for reasons of personal security. The overwhelming majority of 444 deputies voted for the law.

  The mass arrests of political opponents had begun immediately after the Reichstag fire and increased significantly after the election of 5 March. In addition, from the beginning of March, the SA imprisoned thousands of people, mainly supporters of the left-wing parties, in cellars and provisional camps, of which there were several hundred scattered throughout the Reich, where they were held for months and often tortured.96 Moreover, since the Reichstag Fire Decree, the police had been able arbitrarily to impose ‘protective custody’ on presumed opponents of the regime, without reference to any breach of an existing law, for an indeterminate period, outside judicial control, and without access to legal assistance.97 This extraordinary power in the hands of the security apparatus was to remain the basis of the regime’s system of terror until the end of the Third Reich.

  By April 1933, around 50,000 people had been taken into protective custody, albeit many of them only temporarily.98 In spring 1933, some seventy state camps were established to accommodate these prisoners, including in workhouses and similar institutions for ‘asocials’, as well as around thirty special sections in prisons and remand prisons.99 From March onwards, the following camps established along these lines included: Dachau, Oranienburg (near Berlin), Sonnenburg (near Küstrin), Heuberg (Württemberg), Hohnstein (Saxony), and Osthofen (near Worms). In spring 1933 the foundations of the later system of concentration camps were being laid.

  Stage 4: Exclusion and coordination

  Through the Enabling Law, Hitler had, by the end of March, done much of what was needed to give him a monopoly of power. He rounded off this stage with the elimination of the trade unions and the SPD and the dissolution of the bourgeois parties. But before that happened the NSDAP wished to present itself on 1 May as a party representing the whole nation. Thus, in April, the Party leadership was confronted with the need to control three contradictory developments. The activism of the Party rank and file must not be allowed to flag; the violence must not, however, be permitted to get out of hand; the anti-capitalist ambitions of the Party’s rank and file, which had emerged during March, would have to be directed into safe channels. For there had been numerous cases of ‘interference in business’, particularly at the beginning of March, and they were no longer confined to ‘Jewish’ businesses, but were affecting banks, chambers of commerce, and firms of all descriptions, and, despite bans, kept recurring. They were causing growing concern to conservative politicians and leading business figures and had prompted numerous complaints to the government. The Party leadership needed to put an end to these excesses once and for all.100 Moreover, during March and April there were complaints about the harassment of foreign diplomats and assaults on and the arbitrary imprisonment of foreigners, above all by members of the SA.101

  A way out of this situation was provided by a revival of anti-Jewish initiatives, but this time authorized and controlled from ‘above’. The NSDAP had been aiming to reduce the economic influence of Jews for a long time and, since the end of the 1920s, boycotts of Jewish businesses had been routine for many local branches.102 Many Party activists considered it obvious that the ‘seizure of power’ should lead to an increase in such actions. By combining the continuing attacks on Jewish businesses with the ongoing harassment of Jewish lawyers in a joint campaign tolerated by the government, Hitler could present himself as a politician responding to the anti-Semitic demands of th
e Party activists, while controlling their aggression. In this way the Nazi leadership hoped to create a ‘mood’ conducive to the introduction of anti-Semitic legislation, while at the same time silencing the growing foreign criticism of the new regime’s arbitrary measures. The German Jews were to be used as hostages in order to put a stop to international ‘atrocity propaganda’ (soon termed ‘Jewish atrocity propaganda’ by the NSDAP).

  At the end of March, Hitler and Goebbels, who had been summoned to Berchtesgaden to discuss the matter, decided on a boycott of German Jews.103 A ‘Central Committee for the Rejection of Jewish Atrocity and Boycott Propaganda’ was set up, chaired by the Franconian Gauleiter and notorious anti-Semite, Julius Streicher.104 On 28 March, it announced a boycott, expressly authorized by Hitler and the cabinet,105 starting on 1 April.106 To keep matters under control and in order to take account of the concerns of conservatives about potential damage to German exports, on the evening of 31 March, Goebbels announced that the boycott would be ‘suspended’ from the evening of the first day, a Saturday, until the following Wednesday, and only revived if the ‘foreign atrocity propaganda’ continued.107

  The official boycott turned out to be very similar to the ‘wild’, that is, unauthorized, actions carried out by Party activists in March: SA and Hitler Youth stood outside stores that had been marked as Jewish and tried to stop customers from entering. Soon crowds of people formed in the shopping districts and most shops closed during the course of the day. There were a number of brave people who deliberately shopped in Jewish shops, but the majority of the population behaved as the regime expected: they avoided the shops.108 That evening, as planned, the boycott was suspended, with the Committee declaring it a success, as the hostile ‘atrocity propaganda’ had largely ceased.109 In fact, the regime had managed to persuade a number of Jewish organizations and individuals to call for an end to foreign boycotts of German goods.