Hitler’s private style also exemplified the lack of grip upon reality characteristic of socially alienated intellectuals. Many of his contemporaries noted his tendency to take off, in conversation, into “higher regions,” from which he had constantly to be “pulled down to the solid ground of facts,” as one of them wrote. Significantly, Hitler gave himself to his fantasies particularly when he was at home at Obersalzberg, or in the Eagle’s Nest, which he had built on the Kehlstein above the Berghof, at an altitude of more than 6,000 feet. Here, in thinner air, against the backdrop of the mountains, he thought over his projects; here, he repeatedly said, he had come to all major decisions. But the fantasies of a vast empire extending to the Urals, the wild geopolitical schemes for partitioning the world, the visions of mass slaughter of whole peoples and races, the superman dreams and phantasmagorias of blood purity and Holy Grail, and finally the elaborate diagrams of runways, military installations, and fortified villages conceived on a continental scale—all this in substance can hardly be called “German.” What was German about it was only the intellectual consistency with which he constructed these mental systems. What was German also was the merciless rigor, the shrinking from no logical conclusion. Certainly Hitler’s harshness stemmed from a monstrous character structure, while his radicality always had something of the brutality of the gutter. But over and beyond that, this radicality may be attributed to the apolitical attitude, the hostility toward reality, which belongs to the intellectual tradition of the country.
On the other hand, what distinguished him from all his ilk was his capacity for political action. He was the exception, the intellectual with a practical understanding of power. More radical postulates than his can easily be found in the texts of his forerunners. Both Germans and other Europeans came out with even stronger anathemas against the present, showed an even stronger aestheticizing contempt for reality. The Futurist Filippo Marinetti, for example, proclaimed redemption from “infamous reality,” and in a 1920 manifesto demanded “all power to the artists.” But these and similar pronouncements were merely the bombast of intellectuals who were all too conscious of their impotence. What made Hitler the exception once again was his readiness to take his intellectual fictions literally.
It is certainly true that he did not take the Germans by surprise, as the tyrant Pisistratus did the Athenians while they were at table. Like the rest of the world, the Germans could have been warned, since Hitler always set forth his intentions. He had scarcely any intellectual reserve. But the traditional divorce of conceptual from social reality had long ago persuaded Germany that words were cheap, and none seemed less expensive than his. That is the only way to explain the great misjudgment of him, which was also a misjudgment of the times. Rudolf Breitscheid, chairman of the Social Democratic Party faction in the Reichstag, clapped his hands with pleasure when he heard the news of Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. Now at last the man would ruin himself, he said. Breitscheid ultimately died in the Buchenwald concentration camp. Other parliamentarians added up the votes to prove that Hitler would never be able to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to alter the Constitution. Julius Leber, another leading Social Democrat, remarked sardonically that he was waiting like everybody else in the hope of at last “finding out the intellectual foundations of this movement.”14
No one seemed to grasp who Hitler really was. The expected sanctions from abroad were never imposed. Instead, foreign governments, with that same combination of blindness, weakness, and hopes of “taming” the wild man that afflicted Germany prepared for the agreements and pacts of the coming years. There were only a few isolated expressions of forebodings, even these mingled with an odd fascination. A German observer in Paris noted among Frenchmen “a feeling as if a volcano has opened up in their immediate vicinity, the eruption of which may devastate their fields and cities any day. Consequently they are watching its slightest stirrings with astonishment and dread. A natural phenomenon which they confront almost helplessly. Today Germany is again the great international star that appears in every newspaper, in every cinema, fascinating the masses with a mixture of fear, incomprehension, and reluctant admiration, to which a goodly dash of delighted malice has been added. Germany is the great, tragic, uncanny, dangerous adventurer.”15
Scarcely one of the ideas under whose aegis the country began this adventure belonged to it alone. But the inhuman earnestness with which it embarked on its flight from reality was authentically German. The tendencies and biases described above, reinforced by the exacerbated tension between a revolutionary idea formulated a century ago and the immobility of social conditions, gave this emergence extraordinary force, the fury of a belated reaction. The German thunder had reached its goal at last.
But the rejection of reality in the name of radically idealized concepts cannot be suppressed, linked as it is to the spontaneity of the imagination and the risk-taking of thinking. That this involves hazards in the political sphere is undeniable. In the final analysis, however, the German mind owes a good deal of its glory to this tendency, and, despite what many think, not all its issues necessarily lead to Auschwitz.
V. SEIZURE OF POWER
Legal Revolution
So then he reached his goal!
Reinhold Hanisch, 1933
That was no victory, for there were no opponents.
Oswald Spengler
In a tempestuous process lasting only a few months, Hitler both took power and put across a good part of his far-reaching totalitarian claims. According to the sneering commentaries published at the time of his accession to office, he would not survive as Chancellor for very long. Illusions were the order of the day; from the Center all the way to the Social Democratic and the Communist parties he was widely regarded as a “prisoner” of Hugenberg. Skeptical predictions were legion. He would run afoul of the power of his conservative partners in the coalition of Hindenburg and the army, of the resistance of the masses, of the multiplicity and difficulty of the country’s economic problems. Or else there would be foreign intervention. Or his amateurishness would be exposed at last. But Hitler gave all these prophecies the lie in an almost unprecedented process of conquering power. Granted, every detail of his actions was not so minutely calculated in advance as may sometimes appear in historical hindsight. But he never forgot for a moment what he was after, namely, to gather all the threads of power into his own hand by the time the eighty-five-year-old President died. And he knew how to go about it: namely, to continue to use those tactics of legality he had so successfully tested in past years. A dynamic program of surprise assaults enabled him to deliver blow upon blow, smashing open each new position the opponent occupied. The discouraged forces that tried to oppose him were given no opportunity to compose themselves and regroup their ranks. They unwittingly threw all kinds of chances into his path, and with growing cleverness he learned to seize them.
Hitler devoted the cabinet session of February 2, 1933, chiefly to preparations for the new elections, in which Hugenberg had reluctantly acquiesced shortly before the swearing-in on January 30. After the ceremony Hitler had promptly provided a reason for these elections by conducting sham negotiations with the Center and being unable to reach agreement. Here was his chance to repair the defeat of the preceding November. If the elections turned out well for him, and with his control of the machinery of government, such a result was assured, he would be able to shake off the control of his German-nationalist partner. Hitler’s old comrade Wilhelm Frick, now Minister of the Interior, proposed that the government set aside a million marks for the election campaign. This suggestion was rejected by Finance Minister von Schwerin-Krosigk. Nevertheless, with the power of the state behind him, Hitler no longer needed such additional help to put across that “masterpiece of agitation” foretold by Goebbels in one of his diary entries.
Characteristically, every tactical move henceforth was slanted toward the elections to be held on March 5. Hitler himself signaled the opening of the campaign with a �
��Proclamation to the German People,” which he read on the radio late in the evening of February 1. He had adapted swiftly to his new role and the pose it demanded. Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank, was present at the reading and noted Hitler’s agitation; he has described how at times “his whole body quivered and shook.” But the document itself, which had been offered to all the cabinet members for their approval, adhered to the moderate tone of most proclamations by statesmen. Since the days of treachery in November, 1918, Hitler began, “the Almighty has withheld his blessing from our people.” Partisan dissension, hatred and chaos had converted the unity of the nation into “a confusion of political and personal opinions, economic interests, and ideological differences.” Since those days Germany “has presented a picture of heartbreaking disunity.” He deplored in general terms the inner decay, misery, hunger, lack of dignity, and the disasters of the recent past. He drew an eschatological picture of the last days of a 2,000-year-old culture faced with “a powerful and insidious attack” by Communism:
This negative, destroying spirit spared nothing of all that is highest and most valuable. Beginning with the family, it has undermined the very foundations of morality and faith and scoffs at culture and business, nation and Fatherland, justice and honor. Fourteen years of Marxism have ruined Germany; one year of Bolshevism would destroy her. The richest and fairest territories of the world would be turned into a smoking heap of ruins. Even the sufferings of the last decade and a half could not be compared to the misery of a Europe in the heart of which the red flag of destruction has been hoisted.
The new government would regard it as its task, he declared, “to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation.” He would be pledged to foster “Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of racial and political life.” He promised to eliminate class struggle and to restore traditions to honor. The economy would be reconstructed by means of two great Four Year Plans (the principle of which was borrowed from the Marxist enemy). As for foreign policy, Hitler spoke of Germany’s right to live, but reassured the foreign powers with placatory formulas of eagerness for reconciliation. His government, he concluded, was “determined to rectify in four years the ills of fourteen years.” But before going on to a pious appeal for God’s blessing on the work, he made it plain that his administration would not be bound by constitutional checks: “It cannot make the work of reconstruction dependent upon the approval of those who were responsible for the collapse. The Marxist parties and their leaders have had fourteen years to show what they can do. The result is a heap of ruins.”
On the whole, this address had demonstrated his capacity for restraint. But only two days later he threw off that restraint when he met with the commanders of the Reichswehr in the official residence of General von Hammerstein, the army commander in chief. Busy as he was, he had been impatient for this encounter. The reason lay not only in the key position he assigned to the military in his concept for the conquest of power. Rather, in the exhilaration of these first days in office he wanted to find others to share his grand perspectives—despite his usual bent for secrecy. In the grip of this feeling, Hitler unveiled his entire plan with remarkable candor to the army commanders.
According to one of the participants, von Hammerstein “somewhat condescendingly and ‘benevolently’ introduced the ‘Chancellor of the Reich’; the phalanx of generals responded with polite coolness; Hitler made modest, awkward bows in all directions and remained embarrassed until the time came for him to make a long after-dinner speech.” He assured the army, as the sole bearer of arms, a tranquil period of development and explained right at the outset his idea of the primacy of domestic politics. The most urgent aim of the new government was to recapture political power by the “complete reversal of present conditions in domestic politics,” by ruthless extermination of Marxism and pacifism, and by creation of a broadly based state of preparedness for attack and defense. This was to be done by “stringently authoritarian administration.” Only this, combined with a shrewd foreign policy, would put the country in a fit position to take up the struggle against the Versailles Treaty. This would be followed by a concentration of power for the “conquest of new living space in the East and its ruthless Germanization.”
By now Hitler was no longer content to justify his expansionist aims on grounds of military geography and the need to acquire new sources of food. To these arguments he now added the Depression, whose cause, he claimed to be lack of Lebensraum and whose cure lay in conquering Lebensraum. As he examined the situation, the only doubtful aspects seemed the coming years of concealed political and military rebuilding; during this period they would all find out whether France possessed statesmen. “If so, she will not allow us time, but will fall upon us (probably with eastern satellites),” one of those present recalled him saying.
This speech is another example of Hitler’s tendency to make new combinations out of disparate ideas. The structure of his thinking was such that he understood every phenomenon merely as a further argument for ideas long ago fixed—even if that involved grotesquely misunderstanding the nature of the phenomena, as he was doing with regard to the Depression. And, as always, the only solution he recognized was in the realm of violence. At the same time, the speech also reveals the continuity in Hitler’s thought. It gives the lie to those theorists who maintain that responsibility did indeed have a moderating effect upon him, and pretend to see a later change in Hitler’s personality—usually ascribed to the year 1938—when he fell back into the old aggressive hate complexes or, according to another version, into a new pathological system of delusions.
Though Hitler freely borrowed the well-tested Bolshevik and Fascist formulas for the coup d’état, he was highly original in the methods by which he consolidated his new-won power. He may be credited with inventing the classical method by which democratic institutions are crushed from within and totalitarian rule imposed with the full aid of the pre-existent state.
It was important, first of all, to adapt the terrorist practices of the preceding months to the new situation. Thus, while he continued to send his brown auxiliary troops on revolutionary rampages, he permitted a few of these “excesses” to be punished by legal action. In any particular case it would be difficult to say that justice was being done, but the impression was created that the Nazis were maintaining discipline. A convincing screen of legality concealed the real nature of the regime.
Similarly, many of the old institutional façades were left intact. In their shadow fundamental upheavals in all conditions and relationships could be carried on unhindered, until at last people no longer knew whether the system was acting justly or unjustly and could no longer decide between loyalty and opposition. Thus the paradoxical concept of the legal revolution was a good deal “more than a propagandistic trick.” It was basic to Hitler’s whole program for entrenching himself. Hitler himself later declared that Germany at that time thirsted for order, so that he was obliged to shun any open use of force. In one of his despairing moods during the last days of January, when he was reviewing all the mistakes and omissions of the past, he roundly condemned the Germans’ craving for law and order. Their mania for legalism and profound dislike of chaos had made the revolution of 1918 an indecisive affair, but it had also caused his own failure in the Munich putsch of 1923. He blamed himself along with all other Germans for the halfway measures, the compromises, and the eschewing of a bloody surprise operation: “Had we gone ahead as we should have, thousands would have been eliminated at that time…. Only afterwards does one regret having been so good.”
At the moment, to be sure, the strategy of encasing a revolution within a legal framework was proving highly successful. Before February was over, three decrees decided the whole future course of events—and yet their legitimacy seemed guaranteed by the bourgeois associates at Hitler’s side, by Hindenburg’s signature, and by the accompanying fog of nationalistic slogans. As early as February 4
the decree “For the protection of the German people” was issued. It permitted the government on the vaguest grounds to forbid political meetings and ban the newspapers and publications of the rival parties. Almost at once the government moved against deviant political views of all kinds. A congress of leftist intellectuals and artists was banned shortly after it opened, purportedly because of atheistic statements made by some of the delegates. Two days later another emergency measure, a kind of second coup d’état, ordered dissolution of the Prussian Landtag; an attempt to dissolve the Prussian legislature by parliamentary means had just failed. Another two days later Hitler, addressing German journalists, justified the emergency decree of February 4 by pointing to certain newspaper criticisms of Richard Wagner; his purpose was “to preserve the present-day press from similar errors.” Along with this he threatened harsh measures against all those “who consciously want to harm Germany.” Meanwhile, the general public was being fed carefully calculated bulletins to bring out the human side of the new Chancellor. On February 5 the Reich press agency of the National Socialist Party announced that Adolf Hitler, “who personally is also deeply attached to Munich,” was keeping his apartment in that city and had resolved not to accept his Chancellor’s salary.
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