Hitler

by Joachim C. Fest

  All this was outlined by Gregor Strasser at a meeting in Hanover on November 22, 1926. Here the rebellious mood of the North and West German party organizations, their antipathy to headquarters and the “pope in Munich”—as Gauleiter Rust put it, to general applause—emerged in public to a startling degree. At another such meeting in the same city at the end of January, this time held in Gauleiter Rust’s apartment, Goebbels demanded that the group bluntly show the door to Gottfried Feder, whom Hitler had recently sent as an observer. Nor was this all. If the sources are to be believed, Goebbels followed this up with a motion “that the petty bourgeois Adolf Hitler be expelled from the National Socialist Party.”28

  The challenge to Hitler’s authority was to increase. In December, without knowledge of headquarters, Strasser distributed his draft program among the party members. It was meant to replace the twenty-five points so arbitrarily thrown together long ago, and to overturn the image of the party’s representing only petty bourgeois interests. Although Hitler was reported to be “furious” over this show of autonomy, no one paid attention to Feder’s objections. In fact, the Strasser group refused to allow Feder to vote on any motions. Only one of the twenty-five who took part in the discussion, the gauleiter of Cologne, Robert Ley, “a moron and possibly an intriguer,” came out openly for Hitler.

  At the moment, the German public was passionately discussing the question of whether the royal and ducal houses should be expropriated or whether their property, confiscated in 1918, should be returned. Hitler found himself impelled by his tactical reasoning to side with the German princes, and in general with the propertied classes. The Strasser group decided, as did the parties of the Left, for expropriation of the former rulers without compensation. They also undertook, without authorization from Munich, to publish a newspaper entitled Der Nationale Sozialist (“The Nationalist Socialist”) and, with funds Gregor Strasser obtained by mortgaging his drugstore in Landshut, to set up a publishing house called the Kampfverlag. This soon developed into a sizable concern; with its six weekly newspapers it for a while outdid the Eher Verlag, run by Munich headquarters. Moreover, in the judgment of Konrad Heiden, its publications were far superior to those of the Munich firm “in intellectual variety and honesty.”

  But the most naked challenge to Hitler on the part of the Hanover circle came when Gregor Strasser called upon the party to abandon its timorous pledge of legality and follow a “politics of catastrophe,” prepared for the worst contingencies. He declared his resolve to seize power by frontal attack and sanctioned any means that damaged the government and shattered public order: putsch, bombs, strikes, street battles, or brawls. As Goebbels was to express it shortly after: “We will attain everything if we set hunger, despair and sacrifice marching for our aims.” The party was “to light the beacon in our people so that nationalist and socialist despair flame in a single great fire.”

  Hitler had so far remained silent about the group’s activities, although it was setting up a power center that threatened to become a secondary governing committee within the party and although in North Germany the name of Gregor Strasser meant “almost more” than his own. “Nobody has faith in Munich any more,” Goebbels noted jubilantly in his diary. “Elberfeld is going to become the mecca of German socialism.” But Hitler haughtily ignored the plans to kick him upstairs by making him honorary chairman and then unite the disorganized nationalist camp in one great movement. A few scornful pages in Mein Kampf were the only notice Hitler ever took of such projects.

  Hitler’s restraint was partly due to his personal affairs. For in the interval he had rented a country house belonging to a Hamburg businessman on the Obersalzberg, near Berchtesgaden. The situation of the house was extraordinarily beautiful, although the place was otherwise quite modest, consisting of a large living room and a veranda on the ground floor, and three attic rooms. In talking to visitors, Hitler made a point of saying that the house did not belong to him, “so that there could be no question of any corrupt practices, in line with the bad example of other ‘party bigwigs.’” He had asked his widowed half-sister, Angela Raubal, to be his housekeeper. She was accompanied by her seventeen-year-old daughter Geli. The affection Hitler felt for this pretty, superficial niece soon developed into a passionate relationship hopelessly burdened by his intolerance, his romantic ideal of womanhood, and avuncular scruples, so that it was finally to end in an act of desperation. Hitler rarely left his rural retreat; when he did, it would be to attend the Munich opera with his niece or to visit friends in the city. These were still the Hanfstaengls, the Bruckmanns, the Essers. He scarcely bothered about the party; even in South Germany criticisms of his indifferent leadership were voiced; but Hitler paid these little attention. The summer of 1925 saw the publication of the first volume of Mein Kampf, and although the book was not a success—it sold fewer than 10,000 copies the first year—Hitler promptly set about dictating the second volume. His need to justify himself was as much a motive force as his urge to communicate.

  From his mountain hideout he had followed with apparent apathy the program discussions in the North German wing of the party. His silence did not stem entirely from his characteristic reluctance to take steps. It also sprang from the politician’s indifference to theory, his contempt for ideas in themselves. Moreover, he might have been secretly hoping to repeat the game he had played so successfully while in Landsberg, when he encouraged rivals, promoted antagonisms, and actually increased his own authority by slackening the reins.

  Strasser’s “catastrophe politics” abruptly changed the situation. Rather justifiably Hitler saw this as a direct challenge to himself, since, as with Röhm’s activities, it threatened his parole and hence his entire political future. Immediately, he went on the offensive and could barely wait for the chance to strike out against the rebels and restore his authority.

  In retrospect it would seem as if Hitler’s imperious and impatient nature wrecked the party just when it was making such great strides. He was striking out at all his former associates, including Anton Drexler, with whom he was waging a libel suit. In the course of the proceedings, one of Hitler’s former followers appeared as witness against him. Calling out in court to Hitler that the National Socialist Party would in the long run fail if it used his methods, the man struck a prophetic chord, “You will come to a very sad end.”

  Only Hitler himself seemed unmoved by the continuing chain of failures. The certitude that had come to him as he formulated his philosophy in Mein Kampf, together with his obstinacy, enabled him to withstand all the crises without a hint of discouragement or resignation. It seemed as if he were once again, and with a measure of satisfaction, letting events take their course toward the highest dramatic pitch. As if untouched by all the bothersome events around him, he busied himself drawing, on postcards or in a sketchbook, baroque public buildings, arches of triumph, ornate domed halls—in short, a backdrop that expressed his unrelinquished plans for world domination and his extravagant millennial expectations.29

  Deployment for Battle

  If we wish to create a power factor, we need unity, authority, and drill. Our purpose must be not to create an army of politicians but an army of soldiers of the new philosophy.

  Adolf Hitler, 1925

  Hitler’s position would seem to be on the verge of crumbling. He had come back from Landsberg with a certain messianic aura. This had given a degree of sanction to his strange behavior, to his insults, rifts and splitting maneuvers. But after a year that aura had worn off, and it was clear that the party could not survive any more such purges. To regain his lost ground, Hitler would have to smash the opposition while capturing its members for himself. He would have to make the North Germans renounce their socialistic tendencies and abjure their catastrophe policy. He would have to unseat Gregor Strasser, while swinging him around to his own side again, and somehow reconcile him to the plebeian Munich coterie of Streichers, Essers, and Amanns. Hitler’s tactical agility, his artistry in handling people,
his hypnotic talent, were seldom better revealed than in the way he went about this.

  The question of the expropriated property of the princely houses served him as his lever. For the referendum proposed by the socialist parties had aroused a storm throughout the nation, and driven a wedge through fronts and political factions. Working class and middle class alike, the small savers and small property holders, even the most trusty of party members, realized with spontaneous indignation that any reimbursement for the princely families would come out of their own pockets. Yet they could not bear the thought of striking up an alliance with the Marxists against the former rulers of the country and by sanctioning the expropriation partially sanctioning the outrage of the revolution. Caught in this intellectual and emotional dilemma, the people spent themselves in furious argument. In Hanover, too, the matter was passionately debated.

  Hitler saw how he could turn this situation to his own advantage. He called a meeting of the leaders of the entire party to be held in Bamberg on February 14, 1926. Bamberg was one of the bailiwicks of Julius Streicher, a fanatical Hitler devotee, and Hitler had recently honored the local party group by participating in their Christmas celebrations. Hitler saw to it that the North German district leaders with their mainly modest organizations would be impressed and possibly also somewhat demoralized by the display of banners, giant posters, and the announcement of massive demonstrations. By giving very short notice and by manipulating the list of participants, he took care that his own following would have a distinct majority. Hitler himself opened the discussion, which went on for the whole day, in a speech lasting nearly five hours. He called the proponents of expropriation deceitful because they spared the property of the Jewish lords of banking and the stock exchange. To be sure, the former rulers should not receive anything they had no right to; nevertheless, what did belong to them should not be taken from them: the National Socialist Party stood for private property and justice. As his South German followers applauded these sentiments, and were joined gradually and hesitantly by a few of the North Germans, he began to tear into the program of the Strasser group, point by point, opposing to it the party program of 1920: this was “the Founding Charter of our religion, our philosophy. To deviate from it would imply a betrayal of those who died for their faith in our ideas.” A diary entry by Goebbels reflects the feelings of dismay on the part of the North German rebels: “I feel stunned. What is Hitler? A reactionary? Incredibly clumsy and insecure. Russian question: completely beside the point. Italy and England our natural allies: Horrible! Our task is smashing Bolshevism. Bolshevism is a Jewish plot! We must inherit Russia! 180 million people!!! Pay off the princes!… Horrible! Program suffices. Content with it. Feder nods. Ley nods. Streicher nods. Esser nods. It hurts my soul when I see you in this company! Brief discussion. Strasser speaks. Falteringly, tremblingly, clumsily, good, honest Strasser. Oh God, how ill-equipped we are for coping with those swine down there…. I cannot say a word! I feel dumbfounded.”30

  Even so, Strasser would not recant. He persisted in calling anti-Bolshevism totally misguided, a prime example of the way the capitalist system sowed confusion among its enemies and tricked the nationalist forces into serving its exploitative interests. Nevertheless, Strasser’s defeat was complete. His brother Otto Strasser, to gloss over the humiliation, later pointed out that Hitler had cunningly convoked the meeting for a weekday, thus ensuring the absence of the unpaid North German gauleiters, who had jobs in addition to their party functions. Only Gregor Strasser and Goebbels had been in Bamberg, Otto Strasser alleged.

  In fact, February 14, 1926, was a Sunday, and almost all the principal spokesmen of the Strasser coterie were present: Hinrich Lohse of Schleswig-Holstein, Theodor Vahlen of Pomerania, Rust of Hanover, Klant of Hamburg. None of them, however, stood up to defend the idea of leftist National Socialism. In embarrassment they looked to Joseph Goebbels, the one man in their ranks with a natural gift for oratory; and like him, they felt stunned. Goebbels was cowed by Hitler’s magnetic powers, by his brilliantly staged arrival complete with a column of cars, by the organizational ability and display of wealth of the Munich group. Gregor Strasser also succumbed, for the moment at least, to Hitler’s talent for seduction. Thus Hitler had just finished fulminating against the “company of traitors” when he suddenly and demonstratively went over to Strasser and put his arm around his shoulders. Although the gesture did not convert Strasser himself, it made an impression upon the leaders at the meeting and forced them to take a conciliatory attitude. The working committee of North and West German gauleiters was in practice dissolved, its draft program not even put up for discussion, and the party took its stand against expropriation of the princely houses. Three weeks later, on March 5, Gregor Strasser sent out a hectographed circular letter to his fellow party leaders asking them to return the draft program “for very particular reasons” and because he had “promised Herr Hitler” that he would “see to the rounding up of every last copy of the draft.”

  It would seem that Hitler’s vigorous intervention was directed not so much against the leftist program as against the leftist mentality of the Strasser following. Goebbels had even imagined, shortly before the Bamberg meeting, that “Hitler could be coaxed over to our terrain.” But, in fact, what incensed Hitler most was the kind of Nazi the Strasser brothers were fostering: a National Socialist perpetually engaged in discussions, involved in problems, prone to doubt and needing to square things intellectually. To Hitler’s mind, this was a deadly peril to the movement, bringing back the sort of sectarian dissension that had ruined the nationalist movement in the past. For Hitler equated all argument over ideas with sectarianism. Much as he favored and sometimes promoted personal conflicts among his followers, he hated theoretical differences of opinion. These, he thought, merely consumed energies and diminished the force of the movement. One of the secrets of Christianity’s success, he was always saying, was the unalterability of its dogmas. Hitler’s “Catholic” streak seldom emerges so clearly as in his respect for rigid, immutable formulas. All that really matters is a political creed, he would say; “that is what the whole world revolves around.” And he would add that “no matter how idiotic” a program was, “people will believe in it because of the firmness with which it is advocated.” In fact, a few weeks later Hitler took occasion to declare the old party program, in spite of its obvious weaknesses, “unalterable.” The very outmoded, archaic features of the program transformed it from an object of discussion to one of veneration. Moreover, its purpose was not to answer questions or define aims but to attract attention.

  Clarification would mean only division, Hitler declared. Faith was all. Once he had insisted on the identity of Führer and idea, the principle of the infallible, immutable Führer was equally established. One of his adherents put it in a nutshell: “Our program can be expressed in two words: ‘Adolf Hitler.’ ”

  The Bamberg meeting and the concomitant humiliation of Gregor Strasser marked the beginning of the end for leftist National Socialism. In spite of the clamorous publicity stirred up at the time, especially by Otto Strasser, the Nazi Left henceforth could only be a troublesome deviation, no longer an effective political alternative. From the time of the meeting, the NSDAP was increasingly molded into a regimented leader-directed party. Thereafter, and until the end, there were no longer any battles over principles, no longer any ideological disputes; what remained was only the struggle for office and favoritism. “Our movement has tremendous powers of assimilation,” Hitler stated shortly afterward. Along with this, National Socialism no longer tried to rival the system of the democratic republic by presenting its own plan for a social order. Rather than an idea, it opposed to the republic a committed, disciplined, militant association whose members basked obtusely in the Führer’s charisma. Theirs was the “primitive force of one-sidedness” that “arouses such horror precisely in people of the better class,” that “male fist which,” as Hitler put it in one of his weirder mixed metaphors, “knows that
a toxin can only be smashed by an antitoxin…. The harder head must decide, the greatest resolution and the greater idealism.” Elsewhere he assured the party members: “Such a struggle is not waged with ‘intellectual’ weapons, but with fanaticism.”

  It was this ruthlessly instrumental character of the party in the hands of a seemingly unchallenged leader that soon distinguished the National Socialist Party from all other political parties and militant movements. Its discipline surpassed that of the Communists, in whose obedient cadres elements of deviation, skepticism, and intellectual resistance were continually cropping up. There were no such problems within the NSDAP; the abject way in which the anti-Hitler opposition had caved in seemed to inspire a passion for conformity. Many of Strasser’s followers now made it their ambition to convert the “movement into a handy, flawlessly functioning tool in the Führer’s hand.” Henceforth Hitler literally cracked his whip over even the highest-ranking members of the party leadership, insisting on his supremacy. The man to be hailed as “prototype of a good National Socialist,” he declared, is one who “would let himself be killed for his Führer at any time.” According to the bylaws the general membership meetings had to elect Hitler first chairman of the party; but from now on the motion to this effect would be treated as a humorous formality. As Göring later declared, alongside of Hitler’s overwhelming authority “none of us counts more than the stones on which we are standing.”31