Goering
Page 9
The first problem was to make Hitler decide to stand for the presidential election. Hitler had refused point blank to support Brüning’s proposal that Hindenburg’s term of office as President should be extended without resort to elections, which, Brüning maintained, would disturb the nation still further during this period of economic and political distress. But when the presidential elections became inevitable, Hitler hesitated for weeks on end before finally consenting that his name should go forward in opposition to the formidable candidacy of Hindenburg. Goebbels acknowledges that Goering was a “valuable help” to Hitler at this time, a rare tribute from so self-centered a man. It was not, however, until February 22 that Hitler finally made up his mind and permitted a public statement to be made of his intention to stand for election. The whole machinery of Nazi propaganda immediately accelerated into action, and Goering, like the other Nazi speakers, toured the country, speaking at an endless succession of meetings.
Nazi speechmaking was rabble-rousing by voice and gesture, a form of mime with a political purpose. What was regarded as Goering’s greatest speech in support of Hitler, delivered in a rally at the Berlin Sports Stadium, was in fact nothing but an empty fanfare of words, without one fact stated, one argument reasoned; yet, proclaimed by Goering’s powerful voice, it had a dynamic effect on the audience of Nazis who looked on election speeches as a spectacle embellished by Goebbels’ music and banners and armed by Roehm’s troops of marching men. These great organized shows, with their sinister backing of violence in the streets, were the form of pressure brought to bear on the German people to force through the vote that would place ultimate power in Hitler’s ready hands. Goering submerged himself in the book of words which all of them knew by heart and spoke without thinking, while the loudspeakers echoed round the upturned faces of an audience dazed by noise.
German men and women! Only a short time parts us from the hour which will be the hour of destiny for the German nation. The German people shall themselves decide whether German history can begin again or whether German history shall be forever—finished! It comes!—the day which will speak its iron yes or no: whether the catastrophe, whether the breakdown of November 1918, whether the want of the last thirteen years shall lead completely to chaos or breakdown into Bolshevism, or whether the new rise of Germany begins, allowing the German people once again to carry on the glorious history of their forefathers.
The German people themselves, whom I love with my deepest soul, with all the feelings of my heart, will judge for themselves the system which places them in dishonorable bondage, of internal and external slavery. The protests of the suffering German people will be a tremendous scream against their torture, a torture which they have endured, mentally and physically, for thirteen weary long years. The people rise! They will be free again—internally and externally. We National Socialists have for years been the open accusers in the name of the people. We accuse the system! We accuse the parties which created the system. We accuse the men who represent it. We have shaken the people into an awakening. We have taken care that the German people cannot again be put to slumber with the narcotic of new, betraying promises, which always brought ill luck. We have labored for years and years to create a new nation, and heaven will bless this tremendous work and those who are doing it, from the lowest S.A. man up to our Leader, because God will not allow slavery.13
“Goering speaks well,” noted Goebbels in his diary that night.
On March 13, the day of balloting in the presidential election, Hitler lost, but the loss was by no means catastrophic. Hitler polled more than eleven million votes as against a little over eighteen and a half million cast for Hindenburg. Allowing for the other candidates (Thaelmann, the Communist, polled about five million), Hindenburg just failed to win the necessary absolute majority required by the constitution, making a run-off election necessary. The Nazi offices were raided by the Prussian police on March 17, and the raids proved to Brüning’s satisfaction that if Hitler had won the Presidency the S.A. would have been mobilized to stage an immediate coup d’état. On March 19, Goering called a press conference for the foreign correspondents at the Kaiserhof. He was very affable. He had brought them together, he explained, to assert once more the party’s desire to proceed with absolute legality in all matters.
It was most commendable of us [he said] to concentrate three hundred and fifty thousand storm troopers in their own quarters on election day. By so doing we prevented bloodshed. As for the allegation of the police that we Nazis were preparing to surround Berlin, the whole idea is absurd. We are surely entitled to take our own measures for the evacuation from the city of our women and children so as to protect them from injury by government mobs, and that, in fact, is what we did. Why, heaven help us, we have so many former officers in our ranks that if we really wanted to stage a rising we could set about it in quite a different manner, I assure you, gentlemen.14
In the second balloting, that of April 10, Hindenburg just managed to gain his absolute majority in spite of the fact that Hitler increased his poll by a further two million votes. On April 13 an emergency decree was issued prohibiting the S.A. and the S.S., and also the Nazis’ special flying corps, which Goebbels found useful for transporting speakers from place to place, and which Goering strongly favored because in it lay the seeds of a future Air Force. Hitler, for once, exercised diplomatic patience at this seeming dissolution of his private army. By the beginning of May Hindenburg had forced General Wilhelm Groener, Minister of Defense and of the Interior, to extend the ban to all paramilitary organizations, including the Army’s favorite, the right-wing veterans’ organization the Stahlhelm. Then the Nazis felt the time had come to act. On May 9 Goering launched his anger against Groener across the floor of the Reichstag:
Do not believe that by removing his brown shirt you can take away the spirit from the S.A. man. When other parties often change their policies, even as their shirt, here spirit and policy remain the same in spite of prohibition and terror. Faithfulness and comradeship, which to many of you have become phantoms, like your oath, are for us fundamental to the union of German men, who stand united for their country and for their people. Therefore, it is natural that today, after the conclusive judgment of the Cabinet, we voice our suspicions. A government which, internally, externally, and in political economy, has lost every battle, can no longer ask for confidence. It is always so in history. When a general has lost a battle he has to go. Troops are not there to bleed to death for a general, and a people does not exist in order that a government which is not in the position to master the situation shall ruin it. And so we declare today that the Cabinet no longer enjoys the trust of the people; the people are clamoring for new men! We turn to all who want to help to work for the rebuilding of Germany. . . . We will fulfill our historic mission to reconcile all classes and to make it clear to all that the question of the nation’s destiny has to be placed above the petty questions of everyday life, and that the classes, confessions, and professions have to bow down to the problem of the destiny of the German nation. . . . The Brüning Cabinet must go. It must go in order that Germany can live.15
When he was greeted by shouts and whistling from the left, Goering cried, “I think, gentlemen, that you specialize in high treason!” Groener was forced to resign, betrayed behind his back by Schleicher, who was now shifting his loyalty to Hitler. Schleicher had told Hindenburg that Groener no longer enjoyed the confidence of the Army. Hindenburg coldly asked Brüning to resign; Schleicher, in league with the Nazis, had prevailed. The S.A. and the S.S. remained intact, but Hitler kept them temporarily out of uniform and off the streets in marching formation. Hitler himself stayed away from Berlin, concentrating on the next election. Goering remained in touch with Schleicher.
Brüning, the “monkish ascetic,” as Goering called him, formally resigned on May 30. Hindenburg at once summoned Hitler to Berlin; Goering went with him to see the President, who informed them, without inviting them to sit down, that he was app
ointing Papen as Chancellor. Hitler said he was prepared to support him, but the immediate price Papen had to pay was lifting the ban on the S.A. on June 15.
Immediately a wave of murderous street battles between Nazis and Communists began in many German cities. Hitler calculated that Papen could never command the confidence of the Reichstag and that another election, in which he could seek still further to improve the party’s position, would have to be fought. There was some discussion that Hitler might be Papen’s Vice-Chancellor. “I remember that I told Herr von Papen,” said Goering at Nuremberg fourteen years later, “that Hitler could become any number of things, but never a ‘Vice.’ Whatever he was to become, he would naturally have to be in the highest position.”16 So on June 1 Papen became Chancellor; he dissolved the Reichstag, and once more new elections were announced, for July 31. So great were the disturbances during July that Papen dissolved the Prussian state government and made himself Reich Commissioner for Prussia.
Eighteen months later Goering recalled, with the blatant simplifications of a self-professed fanatic, his feelings at this time. Above everything, he claimed, came his devotion to Hitler, the sum of whose virtues he describes as “something mystical, inexpressible, almost incomprehensible . . . We love Adolf Hitler because we believe deeply that God has sent him to us to save Germany . . .” To Hitler he offers his “unbending . . . unquestioning loyalty”; in return he receives “unqualified confidence.” “His authority is a matter of course,” writes Goering, “just like King Arthur’s authority at the Round Table! The great error of the previous system of liberalism was to imagine that the people wanted to govern themselves, to lead themselves. No, the people want to be led and to be governed . . . The party could well fight in opposition within the parliamentary system, but it would have been impossible for Adolf Hitler to govern in a democratic, parliamentary way.”17
In the election, the Nazis increased their hold on the country by more than doubling their vote. They now had 230 seats. Nevertheless, Hindenburg refused to give the chancellorship to Hitler. At the meeting between them on the afternoon of August 13, Hitler, who was again accompanied by Goering, refused the demand made by Hindenburg that he should co-operate in a coalition government. Hindenburg, then eighty-four, was too contemptuous of his guests to offer them seats; he stood all the while in front of Hitler in an effort to command him. But it was useless. Hitler and Goering were determined to destroy Papen’s government, and for that matter the government of any other minister who stood between Hitler and the chancellorship. They knew they were now almost in power. Goering stood and listened as the old man, leaning on his stick, “gravely exhorted Herr Hitler to conduct the opposition on behalf of the Nazi Party in a chivalrous manner.”
The new Reichstag met on August 30, 1932. Goering was put forward as its president by the Nazis in alliance with the Center Party and the Bavarian People’s Party and was elected.18 In his first speech as president of the Reichstag he made a further attack on Papen:
I promise that I shall fulfil the duties of my office impartially, justly, and in accordance with the existing rules of the house. I shall show due regard for the regulations and for the dignity of this house. But I must make it perfectly plain that I shall be equally vigilant in taking care that the honor and dignity of the German people are not assailed in this house. The glorious record of the German people will always find in me a ready champion. I proclaim to the whole German people that this session has clearly proved that the new Reichstag has a large working majority and is capable of conducting the affairs of state without the government having need for recourse to emergency measures. The fact that we have a national Cabinet inspires me with the hope that I shall be able to discharge my duty as president of the Reichstag, and that the honor of the people, the safety of the nation and the freedom of the Fatherland will be the chief guiding stars of all my actions.19
Goering’s election to the presidency of the Reichstag was a great personal triumph for the man who only five years previously had been an exile with neither place nor prospects in Germany, and who only seven years before had been confined in a strait-jacket at Langbro. In spite of his new office, Goering never ceased his direct negotiations for his political master. Like Goebbels and Roehm, he became a member of the Herrenklub, the most exclusive meeting place in Berlin, and there he could work upon the susceptibilities of the Junkers, the senior men in the Army and the German industrialists. All this success came as the result of what Goering termed “the tactics of legality.” He was, however, a close observer neither of parliamentary procedure nor of chivalry on the day the Reichstag first assembled under his presidency. This was September 12, the day on which, as Goering points out, “that famous scene occurred in which Herr von Papen wished to dissolve the Reichstag, but I, as president of the Reichstag, sought to prevent his doing so.”
Papen had adopted the unusual course of obtaining a decree from the President dissolving the Reichstag before it met. This he was determined to use the moment it suited him, though not at the first session. Initially he wanted to put forward his government’s program in a prepared speech. He knew that the Communists were ready to launch a vote of censure on his government the moment the session opened, but he was depending in turn on a prearranged objection to this vote being taken that was due to be raised by one of the Nationalist Party deputies. This would have left him free to proceed. When in fact no deputy opposed the Communist vote of censure, the Reichstag adjourned at the request of the Nazi deputy Wilhelm Frick. During this recess Papen hastily sent for his decree of dissolution while Hitler discussed the situation with the principal Nazi deputies in Goering’s residence, the Reichstag President’s Palace, which was situated just opposite the Reichstag. The Nazi conspirators decided that the quickest way to defeat Papen was to spring the surprise on the Reichstag of supporting the Communists in their vote of censure. Papen would scarcely be expecting this.
The deputies trooped back into the chamber, and Papen reappeared carrying the red dispatch box which everyone knew was the symbol of the decree of dissolution. But Goering, his head deliberately turned away from Papen, asked the Reichstag to record its vote on the Communists’ motion of censure. Papen immediately rose and demanded attention, waving the decree of dissolution, which, once read, would rid him of control by the Reichstag so long as he remained Chancellor. Goering, grinning broadly as if he were conducting a successful raid, took no notice whatsoever. Papen strode up to him and thrust the decree under his nose. Goering still took no notice of him, intent on recording the vote. Papen secured only thirty-two votes; 513 deputies voted against him. Then and only then did Goering glance down with a show of interest at the decree lying in front of him. He even read it out. Then he declared it invalid because it bore the signature of a Chancellor who was now no longer in office.
Papen in his memoirs describes his view of what happened.
The house became a scene of complete disorder. The session resolved itself into a shooting match, and amidst the tumult Goering refused to recognize my right to speak. He turned ostentatiously to the left side of the house and pretended not to hear me. Instead he shouted, “As no objections have come from the floor to the Communist proposal, I intend to proceed with the division.” There was no other solution but for me to march over to the presidential platform, slap the dissolution order on Goering’s desk, and walk out of the Reichstag with the members of the Cabinet, to the accompaniment of a positive howl of derision.
In his book Germany Reborn Goering describes this mockery of parliamentary procedure with a cynical delight.
It was seemingly just playing with words, a race with the second hand of the watch; it was ultimately of no importance how and where he handed me the President’s writ; what was important was that we resisted it with all our strength . . . The von Papen Cabinet retired and the Reichstag continued to sit. I knew that to go on sitting was only a pretense, but that too was unimportant . . . the impossibility of continuing to play the parli
amentary game was clearly demonstrated to the people.
In his evidence at Nuremberg in 1946, Goering was equally frank. He said, “It was a matter of indifference to me by what means I brought our party to power. If by means of parliamentary negotiations, very good; if through appointment by the Reich President, all the better.” The President, however, did not approve of Goering’s parliamentary game, and the Reichstag was dissolved.20
The next round of elections was announced for November 6. Meanwhile Papen continued in office by presidential decree. The Nazis had to some extent overplayed their hand. They lost over two million votes at the elections and the number of their deputies dropped from 230 to 196. Many people had ceased altogether to trust them, and they were short of money. Their tactics during the past few months and their attitude to both the President and his Chancellor did not please the industrialists on whom they still had mainly to rely for financial support. Also, the number of unemployed, on whose discontent the Nazis depended for their votes, had appreciably decreased; it can be said that the genuine peak of the Nazi vote in Germany was attained when the unemployment figure was at its height, in July 1932. Time was running out.