The foremost advocate of this position was Gregor Strasser, a thirty-two-year-old druggist who in 1924 emerged as one of the most energetic and influential leaders of the NSDAP. Like Hitler, Strasser was a decorated war veteran, a militant nationalist, and an anti-Semite. After four years in the trenches, he returned home to Bavaria, finished his degree in pharmacology at Erlangen, and began a career as an apothecary. In 1919 he signed on with Franz Ritter von Epp’s Free Corps to overthrow the Bavarian Socialist Republic; two years later he joined Hitler’s fledgling party. Big, gruff in appearance, Strasser had a commanding personality, boundless energy, and a talent for organization. He founded an SA unit in Landshut, acted as SA chief for all of Lower Bavaria, and worked assiduously to establish party chapters in other Bavarian towns. A former army officer, a man of action, he also enjoyed reading Homer in the original classical Greek. Strasser had participated in the Putsch but was cast in a minor role. A few days later he was arrested, charged not for his minimal participation in the coup but with attempting to recruit a soldier for the now-outlawed NSDAP. His stay in prison was brief; he was released in late April 1924 after he was elected to the Bavarian state legislature, a reflection of his burgeoning regional stature.
Strasser was convinced that the party should dive into the Reichstag campaign, even if it meant an alliance with other parties, and he vigorously championed a coalition with the German Völkisch Freedom Party (DVFP). This might be a short-term accommodation, Strasser acknowledged, but he hoped to exploit the DVFP’s connections in northern Germany to expand Nazi influence beyond Bavaria. His plans met stiff resistance from Esser and Streicher, leaders of the Bavarian clique that dominated party headquarters in Munich. Despite their considerable personal liabilities, both were longtime party men. They were slavishly devoted to Hitler, who returned their loyalty and trust in equal measure. Both rejected even a temporary alliance with the DVFP and scorned Strasser’s efforts to thrust the NSDAP into electoral politics. Didn’t he understand that Hitler had always rejected collaboration with other parties and had opposed on principle any participation in Weimar’s corrupt parliamentary system?
In spite of these rancorous disagreements within the Nazi camp—or perhaps because of them—Graefe and Ludendorff relentlessly pressed the case for a joint Nazi-Völkisch venture. They saw in Hitler’s absence an opportunity to assume the leadership of the entire Völkisch movement and score a major electoral victory. With Strasser’s support, Graefe began negotiations with Rosenberg and other Nazi leaders for an amalgamation of the two organizations. At a January meeting in Salzburg, Rosenberg refused to accept a merger but did agree to the formation of a temporary electoral alliance. The DVFP would focus primarily (but not exclusively) on the north, the Nazis on the south—and policy would be determined by consultation between the leadership of the two parties. It would be the Nazis’ first election campaign.
Although the Nazis had to operate under the banner of the DVFP, the spring campaign displayed all the basic themes of National Socialist ideology. Denouncing class struggle, the Nazis were determined to break down social barriers and establish a “genuine people’s community” (Volksgemeinschaft) that would bridge the deep divides of German society. The “ultimate cause” of Germany’s collapse in 1918 lay precisely in this “hate-filled divisiveness,” which had been “systematically fostered by Jewish Marxism.” After having driven the kings from their thrones in 1918, the workers now confronted the “kings of finance.” “International bank and stock-market capital” had assumed absolute power, with the greatest financial clout resting in the hands of the Jews, who “maintain a powerful network covering the whole world.” The central issue confronting the German people, the Nazis warned, was not left or right, Nationalist or Socialist, but “for or against the Jews.”
With the aftershocks of the political and economic eruptions of 1923 still reverberating, Germans went to the polls on May 4, and the extent of their disaffection was reflected in a dramatic surge of the radical, antidemocratic parties. The anti-Republican Conservatives, whose vote jumped from 14 percent in 1920 to 19.5 percent, were the big winners, but with 6.5 percent of the vote, the DVFP made a surprisingly strong showing. Despite organizational difficulties, bitter personal rivalries, and internecine bickering, the Nazis and their partners collected almost two million votes, surpassing each of the small special interest and regional parties and the mainstream Democratic Party (DDP) as well. As expected, support for the Nazis was centered in the south, particularly in Bavaria, but the ability of the Nazi-Völkisch coalition to win votes in the north served notice that the appeal of National Socialism was hardly a regional phenomenon.
With the anti-Republican forces of both right and left claiming almost 40 percent of the vote and the democratic parties divided on a number of issues, the creation of a stable majority cabinet proved elusive, and in October, after much wrangling, the Reichstag was dissolved again and new elections called for December. But the political and economic environment had undergone a considerable transformation since May. The ominous sense of impending doom that had clouded the spring campaign had dissipated. Passage of the Dawes legislation triggered a massive infusion of foreign, especially American, capital, which acted as a catalyst to economic revival. Unemployment dropped, real wages rose, and the desperate pall of economic calamity that had lingered throughout the spring had begun to lift before the fall campaign began. The threat of Rhenish and Bavarian separatism as well as armed insurrection by the political extremes had also greatly diminished. French and Belgian troops were evacuating the Ruhr. The Republic, against all odds, had managed to survive.
For the Nazi-Völkisch alliance none of these developments was welcome news. Following their surprisingly strong showing in May, the forces of the radical right were unable to bridge the steadily widening rifts in their coalition. In late August, Strasser and Rosenberg decided to join Ludendorff in founding a new party of Völkisch unity, the National Socialist Freedom Movement (NSFB), in time for the new election. But in Bavaria, Streicher and Esser refused to join the new national party and established their own rival organization. The NSFB was apparently neither sufficiently anti-Semitic nor xenophobic enough to suit their tastes. They denounced the Ludendorff-Strasser creation as hopelessly bourgeois and urged Bavarian National Socialists to boycott the approaching elections.
Although repelled by Esser and Streicher, many Nazi leaders shared their aversion to parliamentary elections and particularly disliked any formal association with the NSFB. They openly advocated total abstention from the new campaign, even encouraging those Nazis who did vote to cast Conservative ballots. To no one’s surprise, the radical right lost over half of its constituency in the December election. With a paltry 3 percent of the vote, the Nazis and the Völkisch right began a drift back to the periphery of German politics, where they remained firmly anchored until the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.
Cocooned in Landsberg, Hitler chose to sit on the sidelines. Until the ill-fated Kampfbund, he had always disparaged cooperation, not to mention merger, with other right-wing parties, and he had condemned any participation in parliamentary politics. But removed from the scene and unable to stay abreast of developments, he seemed surprisingly ambivalent, evasive. Rival leaders who made the pilgrimage to Landsberg seeking Hitler’s blessing for their plans often departed believing that they had secured his support, only to discover that he had offered similar encouragement to their adversaries. It often seemed to depend on who had seen him last. When Ludendorff made two visits to Landsberg in May, hoping to coax Hitler into agreeing to a union of the NSDAP with the much stronger DVFP, Hitler temporized. Ludendorff responded by issuing a press release claiming that Hitler had, in fact, endorsed the merger. When Hitler publicly disavowed the article, it merely added to the confusion. Hitler was livid, furious at his own powerlessness and at the treachery of Ludendorff. The event vividly underscored just how little he was able to manage events from the confines of prison.
So frustra
ted with the situation was Hitler that in early July he announced his temporary withdrawal from active politics and requested that no more delegations from the different party factions visit him. He had had enough. He explained that he could not be responsible for developments while still in prison. He would bide his time, finish his book, and would, he hoped, be released in the not too distant future. Hitler’s announcement surprised and disappointed many party leaders, some of whom lashed out at his curious disengagement, his passivity. Hitler, they felt, was simply drifting along, allowing the rudderless party to disintegrate.
Hitler fully understood this. But he had little incentive to try to sort out matters, to referee the conflicts between the different factions of his movement. Why should he be involved in matters over which he had no control? It was clear to him—and to all others—that no real unity in the movement could be attained without him, and he was more than content to await events. He was due for parole in September; then he would leave Landsberg as the savior of a revived National Socialist movement.
* * *
Hitler was denied parole in September, but against the recommendation of the state prosecutor was released from Landsberg on December 20, 1924, two weeks after the party’s electoral fiasco. In all, he had spent thirteen months in prison for attempting the violent overthrow of the duly constituted government of Germany. Beyond the right-wing fringe, his release stirred little interest. A small news item in The New York Times on the day of his discharge—“Hitler Tamed by Prison”—was typical:
Adolf Hitler, the demigod of the reactionary extremists, was released on parole from imprisonment at Fortress Landsberg, Bavaria, today and immediately left in an auto for Munich. He looked a much sadder and wiser man today than last spring when he, with Ludendorff and other radical extremists, appeared before a Munich court charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government. His behavior during his imprisonment convinced the authorities that, like his political organization, he was no longer to be feared. It is believed he will retire to private life and return to Austria, the country of his birth.
Hitler, of course, had no intention of fading meekly into a quiet retirement in Austria. He left prison determined to achieve two objectives: to reestablish the party and to assert his undisputed leadership of it. Both would be daunting tasks. The centrifugal forces that had threatened to tear the movement asunder during his detention were still strong, and when he returned to Munich a free man, his status as leader was far from clear. Before the Putsch, he had been at best only one of several figures vying for leadership of the Völkisch right. The trial had catapulted him momentarily onto the national stage, and his time in prison lent him a mysterious aura, which he assiduously cultivated. But while everyone paid homage to the heroic Hitler of Landsberg, the flesh-and-blood Hitler freed from prison and back on the streets of Munich was another matter. Some leaders on the far right, especially those in the north, were not inclined to accept him as the “Führer” of the anti-Republican Völkisch movement. At a meeting in Berlin on January 17, 1925, intended to find common ground between representatives of the Völkisch right and the National Socialists, Völkisch leaders dismissed Hitler as little more than “a drummer,” a successful agitator, but hardly the stuff from which national political leaders are made. What had he actually accomplished? By what right could he claim undisputed leadership of the Völkisch right? After all, Graefe was far more active, and Ludendorff enjoyed far greater national recognition than Hitler. Furious, the Nazi representatives stormed out of the meeting.
On that same day some three hundred miles to the south Hitler announced his intention to reestablish the NSDAP. Since his release from prison, he had met several times with Bavarian minister president Heinrich Held to convince him that he had learned his lesson, that a refounded National Socialist Party would follow a path of legality in its future activities. No more violence, no more attempts to overthrow the government by force. It was, as usual with Hitler, a persuasive performance. With some misgivings, Held lifted the ban on the NSDAP on February 16, 1925.
Ten days later the first issue of the revived Völkischer Beobachter appeared on the newsstands. It carried several announcements and declarations from Hitler, beginning with an appeal to the squabbling factions of the movement to put their quarrels behind them and come together behind the party’s banner. He was not interested in the conflicts of the past, he wrote. There would be no questions asked, no settling of scores. All that was behind them. He was interested only in the present and future, in men who were committed National Socialists, devoted to “the idea.” Above all, “every split in the struggle is to be avoided,” Hitler insisted. “The entire strength of the movement must be thrown against the most fearsome enemy of the German people: Jewry and Marxism as well as the parties allied with or supportive of them.”
There would be some organizational reforms within the party, but “the political and propaganda struggle of the new movement,” he proclaimed, would “be uniformly led according to the principles of the old movement. The program of the movement and the more detailed guidelines issued by the leadership will be the deciding factor for this.” The role of leader—his role—was key. “First [comes] the Führer, then the organization and not the other way around.” His claim to leadership was total. He would take sole responsibility for the party, its policies, organizations, and goals, and he would brook no interference or sniping. If, after a year, the party was dissatisfied with his leadership, he would step aside. The leader was more than a political leader; he was to be the very embodiment of the National Socialist idea. The message was clear: To oppose Hitler was to oppose National Socialism. His time in Landsberg had convinced him that he was the chosen one, the savior ordained by History to liberate the German people from their “enslavement,” to preserve the endangered Aryan race, and to lead the German nation again to greatness. Now he needed to convince his fractious party of that calling.
On February 27 Hitler made his first public appearance since his trial. As the venue, he chose the Bürgerbräukeller. His speech was scheduled for eight, but by late afternoon a large crowd had begun gathering outside. More than three thousand of the party faithful finally squeezed into the hall, while thousands more jostled outside as the police finally barred the doors. Those in the expectant audience paid one mark for an admission ticket—the party needed the money, and Hitler remained its biggest attraction.
Speaking in the cavernous auditorium beneath wagon-wheel-shaped lamps that hung pendulously from the ceiling, Hitler spoke for two hours, his rasping voice rising and falling in the familiar frenzied cadences, his arms flailing, his raised right hand stabbing the air for emphasis, his body straining into the odd contortions so familiar to the party faithful. He called for a revival of the German spirit, of German power, of German self-reliance. He railed against the weakness of the bourgeoisie, the cowardice of their parties, and the pacifism of the left. Above all he fulminated against that “devilish power that had plunged Germany into this misery . . . Marxism and the carrier of that world pestilence and scourge, the Jew.”
The Jewish Marxist threat was not simply a matter of ideology, of political philosophies locked in mortal combat. The peril penetrated far deeper and was more insidious than that. “The greatest threat . . . for us,” he warned his spellbound listeners, was “the alien poison in our body. All other dangers are transitory. . . . Only this one alone is . . . for us eternal.” The National Socialists could break the Versailles Treaty, refuse to pay the reparations; they could eliminate political parties, “but blood, once contaminated, can’t be changed. It continues to degenerate, pushing us year after year down deeper and deeper.” If today his audience wondered about the fractiousness of the German people, the cause was as simple as it was sinister: it was merely the corruption of their contaminated blood manifesting itself.
The evening ended, revival fashion, with leaders who only days—even hours—before had been at each other’s throats, climbing onto the garland-dr
aped platform to shake hands and embrace, to swear brotherhood to each other and fealty to the Führer. They stood on chairs and tables, cheered and laughed and wept; they roared their approval. Their Führer Adolf Hitler was back; the old fanaticism still burned.
Hitler had carried it off, energizing the troops, demanding obedience and party unity, declaring war on the movement’s enemies. Yet outside the fragile bubble of far-right politics, Hitler’s return to the stage was hardly newsworthy. He was no longer a figure of national significance; the party was half the size it had been in November 1923 and was riddled with seemingly intractable internal conflicts. In one sense, however, Hitler’s appearance at the Bürgerbräukeller had succeeded altogether too well. Alarmed by the inflammatory radicalism of Hitler’s speech, especially his violent rhetoric about the life-and-death struggle against his enemies, the Bavarian government on March 9 issued an edict prohibiting Hitler from speaking in public. He would be permitted to address closed party functions, but nothing more, nothing in the public arena. Shortly thereafter, virtually every German state issued a similar ban.
Coming at a time when he was attempting to reinvigorate the party and to restore his leadership over it, the ban was a potentially serious blow. His oratory, his ability to energize crowds, had always been his greatest political asset, and now at a critical juncture it was lost. In the spring of 1925 his claim to leadership of the radical right was tenuous, his position challenged from a number of quarters—by Graefe and the Völkisch crowd, even by some within the NSDAP, and, most seriously, by Erich Ludendorff. The general was viewed by many as a unity figure who could transcend all the petty differences that had bedeviled the radical right in 1924. He was certainly the most visible figure on the right-wing fringe, and he still commanded the allegiance of many, even within the NSDAP. If Hitler were to challenge him, he would need to proceed with caution. In all his official statements Hitler was careful to show great deference to the general, to praise his service to the nation, but he was determined to undermine him and then, at the right moment, push him aside. Just how he would do this was not clear. But events, as they so often did in Hitler’s career, came to his rescue.
The Third Reich Page 10
