As a result of these considerations, the Nazis undertook a significant shift in the focus of their propaganda. Without reducing its efforts to win a blue-collar following, the NSDAP intensified and broadened its campaign to cultivate support within the middle class. Although the party’s program remained essentially unchanged, the social revolutionary strategy advocated by Strasser and his followers assumed an increasingly subordinate role in Nazi policy. Even Strasser’s thinking underwent a gradual transformation after the 1928 debacle; he was not prepared to give up on the working class but recognized the need for a shift in emphasis. Hitler himself had presaged the party’s reorientation by publicly reaffirming the NSDAP’s strong support for private property during the 1928 campaign, explaining that Nazi demands “to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose,” Point Seventeen of the party’s Twenty-five Points, applied only to “alien” or “antisocial”—that is, Jewish—businesses and farms. Building on this foundation, the party gradually intensified its vilification of the department stores and consumer cooperatives so resented by small business and launched a major campaign to enhance its appeal to the rural, landowning population.
In addition to these propaganda offensives, the party also accelerated its efforts to infiltrate existing middle-class organizations and clubs as well as to sponsor occupational associations of its own. Between 1928 and 1930, the NSDAP founded its own organizations for doctors, lawyers, and students, while creating a National Socialist farm association as well. The NSDAP had not abandoned its determination to become a party of mass integration, bridging the great social divides of German politics, but it had become increasingly clear that a solid base of support within the fractious Mittelstand (middle class) offered the most promising foundation on which to build.
At the same time, the party introduced changes in its approach to political agitation. Recognizing its very limited resources and its determination to attract maximum public attention, the party adopted a variation of the plan first suggested by Goebbels two years earlier. In a memorandum of December 1928, Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Propaganda Section, announced his intention of conducting concentrated propaganda offensives “from time to time in every region of Germany” that would “surpass . . . our previous agitational activities.” These “propaganda actions” were to be carefully prepared and coordinated in one area after another. Seventy to two hundred rallies would be held in the selected districts (Gaue) within a period of seven to ten days. Motorized SA parades would be launched, well-known party figures would make appearances, and thousands of leaflets would be distributed in more than a hundred villages, towns, and cities in the area. An official list of the party’s most popular speakers would be made available to the local groups along with instructions on how to place requests for their favorites with the Gau and national headquarters. The objective of such saturation campaigns would be to concentrate the party’s energies and meager financial resources on specially selected locales, where the national party would rouse local Nazi activists, spark the growth of the party press, and stimulate recruitment for the SA and other party organizations. Most important, these propaganda actions would be mounted not only during election campaigns but were intended to provide the NSDAP with a high public profile in the fallow periods between elections.
These organizational and strategic reforms coincided with the first tremors of the oncoming world economic crisis, but the party was still groping for some issue that would provide the NSDAP with the national visibility it lacked. The revival of the highly volatile reparations issue in 1929 offered the party precisely the opportunity it needed. A new plan sought to establish exactly what Germany owed and to arrange a final schedule of payments. Drafted by an international committee of economic experts under the chairmanship of American businessman Owen Young, a final report was released on June 9, 1929, known as the Young Plan, and called for Germany to make payments over a period of fifty-nine years with annuities mounting gradually to a maximum of approximately 2.4 billion marks. Although that figure was considerably lower than the original Allied claim of 132 billion marks, the plan provoked a storm of protest in Germany. When the Great Coalition government accepted the report as the basis for negotiations, Alfred Hugenberg, the chairman of the conservative DNVP, opened talks with several right-wing organizations, including the Pan-German League, the Stahlhelm, and the NSDAP, to form a “front of national opposition” against the proposed settlement.
Hugenberg was a wealthy industrialist and press magnate and the leader of the DNVP’s far right wing. He had assumed the leadership of the DNVP in the aftermath of the party’s terrible showing in the 1928 election when its vote plunged from 20 percent in 1924 to 14 percent. He was determined to push the conservative right in a more radical, anti-Republican direction. With his extensive network of newspapers behind him, Hugenberg hoped to lead a “national opposition” in a referendum against the plan, and a draft bill, the so-called Freedom Law, condemning the Young Plan, was composed for submission to the Reichstag and ultimately to the general public.
Although some Nazi militants opposed even limited cooperation with the conservatives, Hitler was convinced that a temporary alliance would serve the party’s interests. Utilizing its new organizational structure and drawing considerable financial support from conservative sources, the Nazis played by far the most prominent role in the campaign waged against the plan and its supporters. While Hugenberg provided the funding and the extensive press coverage, it was the brown-shirted Nazis the public saw on the streets collecting signatures, distributing anti-Young leaflets, and leading demonstrations against the plan.
The Young Plan, the Nazis wailed, was a “pact with the devil” forced on Germany by the rapacious victor states. It would produce an “insane indebtedness” that would destroy “all economic credit,” eliminate “job opportunities for millions,” and lead to “the ruin of Germany’s economy, its agriculture, its middle class, and its small businesses.” It would be, after the Dawes Plan, “a third Versailles,” which would enslave Germans for decades to come. Generations of Germans yet unborn would be paying tribute to the vengeful Allies until 1988! The Nazi propaganda offensive dominated Germany’s national press for months, and Hitler, rather than Hugenberg, occupied center stage throughout. But the Freedom Law was decisively defeated in the Reichstag in late November and a national referendum on the Young Plan held on December 22, 1929, received less than one third of the required votes. Yet, despite its failure to sabotage the new plan, the anti-Young campaign had served its purpose for Hitler. Association with Hugenberg’s DNVP lent the Nazis a touch of respectability in conservative circles that they had previously lacked and constituted a major step in revising public perceptions of the party. Following the conclusion of the campaign, police reports on Nazi activities noted that “more and more frequently members of the Mittelstand and the so-called better classes are seen [at Nazi events].” The coarse, unruly Nazis were becoming socially acceptable. Even more important, the NSDAP had clearly emerged as the most prominent and aggressive voice of the anti-Republican right at a time when the beleaguered government parties were vainly attempting to cope with the onset of the Great Depression.
Timing was key. Just as the anti-Young campaign drew to a close in late 1929, the world economic crisis hit Germany with the force of a howling gale. Industrial production began a precipitous slide, and as production fell, unemployment rose. By January 1930, over three million Germans were unemployed, and with tax revenue shrinking and the government deficit soaring, the Great Coalition government found it increasingly difficult to fund the now desperately needed unemployment insurance program. While the national liberal DVP, supported by the major employers’ associations, insisted on a reduction of benefits, the Social Democrats, backed by powerful labor unions, countered by demanding greater government contributions to the fund. Neither party was willing to abandon its “principles,” and compromise proved impossible. Finally,
after securing the Reichstag’s approval of the Young Plan, the Great Coalition government dissolved in March 1930. It would be the last majority government of the Weimar era.
* * *
With the collapse of the Great Coalition, government based on a sound parliamentary basis proved unattainable. After surveying the bleak political landscape and finding no viable majority combination, Reich President Hindenburg turned to Heinrich Brüning, leader of the Catholic Zentrum’s Reichstag delegation, to form a government “above parties.” His name was suggested to Hindenburg by General Kurt von Schleicher, a “desk general” who had served on Hindenburg’s staff during the world war. In that post he had acted as a monitor of the political scene, and, although only a captain, became a trusted advisor to the General Staff in political matters. After the war, as he rose rapidly in rank, he continued to act as a link between the army and the government. He preferred to work behind the scenes, and he made connections with a wide variety of political and government figures. Intrigue was his milieu. A political sphinx, he was a schemer—his very name in German means “creeper.” Many felt that it was apt.
In 1928 he became chief of the Minister’s Office, a new post created especially for him, with vague responsibility for representing the military in its relations with the government. He acted, in effect, as an unofficial cabinet member, and his influence, always shadowy, soared. He was a longtime friend of Hindenburg’s son Oskar, with whom he had served during the war, and he remained a close confidant of the Reich President. He was convinced, as were many within the army, that the Republic was beyond repair and some form of authoritarian regime was needed to save Germany from chaos. In the climactic years of the Republic, when power became concentrated in a few individuals close to the Reich President, Schleicher would play a critical—and destructive—role.
Brüning recommended himself to Schleicher in part because of his financial expertise but also because of his standing on the right wing of the Catholic Zentrum. Brüning had served with distinction as an officer in the army during the war, he was the holder of the Iron Cross first class, and his political preferences inclined decidedly toward an authoritarian—though not radical—solution to Germany’s problems. He had little confidence in the Reichstag and the vicissitudes of parliamentary politics, especially under current circumstances. He also hoped to dismantle Weimar’s extensive welfare state, which he held responsible for much of Germany’s economic distress. In the process, he would reduce the power of organized labor and of the Social Democrats. Although Brüning was able to convince members of the liberal parties, the Zentrum, and, temporarily, the conservative DNVP to hold posts in the new cabinet, their parties were not bound by the cabinet’s decisions. The government clearly rested solely on the confidence of the aging Reich President, and Hindenburg was determined to steer the unwieldy parliamentary system in a more authoritarian direction.
Following the economic orthodoxy of the day, Brüning viewed a balanced budget and thus a sharp reduction of government spending as the critical first step toward a reversal of the Republic’s disastrous economic fortunes. Between March and July he submitted a series of stringent fiscal reforms to the Reichstag, only to have each rejected for quite different reasons by a majority composed of Social Democrats, Communists, Conservatives, and Nazis. In late July, with a national deficit of more than one billion marks, Brüning presented a final budgetary plan, which, in effect, would have increased the government contribution to the unemployment fund but would also have ultimately reduced benefits. When the proposed legislation met with stiff resistance in the Reichstag, he moved to implement the plan by emergency decree. Shortly thereafter a motion calling for the abrogation of the decrees received majority support in the Reichstag, but Brüning refused to back down. Instead of resigning, he asked Hindenburg to dissolve the recalcitrant Reichstag and call for new elections in September.
Brüning’s decision proved a disastrous blunder. Using its expanded organizational network and its strategy of political saturation, the NSDAP had scored disquieting gains in a series of regional elections in late 1929 and early 1930. The upward curve of Nazi electoral fortunes began in October in Baden with a modest 7 percent of the vote, but less than a month before Brüning’s announcement of new national elections, the Nazis stunned observers by winning 15 percent of the vote in Saxony, a traditional stronghold of the left. Two years earlier the NSDAP had attracted less than 3 percent of the vote.
The big losers in these regional elections were not the parties of the Marxist left, nor were they the small splinter parties. Instead, they were the traditional parties of the liberal center and the conservative right. Voter dissatisfaction with these traditional alternatives of middle-class politics, which had begun to crystallize before the onset of the Great Depression, continued in 1929–30, accelerated by their inability to deal effectively with the nation’s deteriorating economic condition. After months of internal dissension and public recriminations between the liberal parties and the relentless bickering within the fragmented conservative camp, the parties of the traditional center and right were ill-prepared for the approaching battle.
The NSDAP, on the other hand, was primed for action. In the fall of 1930 the Nazis were better organized and better financed than at any time in their brief history. The party’s prominent role in the anti-Young campaign had given the Nazis a high national profile and a growing sense of self-confidence. Party membership was virtually three times as large as in 1923, and it was no longer confined largely to the south. New local chapters were springing up all over the country, and new recruits were flooding into the NSDAP.
Hitler, who was as uninterested in organizational matters as he was in mediating ideological disputes within the party, turned the job of managing the party’s burgeoning organization over to Gregor Strasser. Between 1928 and 1930, Strasser initiated a set of organizational reforms intended to tighten the leadership’s grip on the party and to enhance Nazi campaign performance. He crafted a vertical organizational structure, established a clear chain of command, delineated responsibilities, and created a team of inspectors, responsible to him, to ensure that Munich’s directives were being properly carried out. He redrew the NSDAP’s regional boundaries to conform to the Reichstag thirty-five electoral districts, and the authority of the Gauleiter was substantially strengthened in each area. The Gauleiter and his propaganda staff were now charged with executing the party’s campaign directives.
Working with this structure, Munich now assumed responsibility for the direction of all Nazi propaganda activities throughout the country. Since 1928 Hitler had been acting head of the Propaganda Section, with Himmler serving as his deputy. In the spring of 1930 Hitler appointed Joseph Goebbels to lead the party’s propaganda efforts. It was an inspired choice. Goebbels had distinguished himself as the energetic and combative Gauleiter of Berlin, where he was in perpetual conflict with the powerful leftist parties. He was creative and unflagging in his efforts to provoke and humiliate the Reds, to wean Berlin’s workers away from the Marxists and win them for National Socialism. His newspaper, Der Angriff (The Attack), established in 1927, aggressively courted workers, printing savage attacks on “the bosses of capitalism” that were in tone and content virtually indistinguishable from that of the Communists. From his position on the front lines of Berlin, he spearheaded the party’s efforts to win working-class support. Just as important as his ideological commitment, he was devoted to Hitler. “In Goebbels,” the journalist Konrad Heiden remarked, “Hitler found a man who would listen for days to his endless speeches; the arduously cultivated enthusiasm in his eyes never abated.” Goebbels, Hitler was said to have remarked, was “a man who burns like a flame.”
For some time Goebbels had been locked in a bitter conflict with the Strasser brothers, Gregor and his younger sibling Otto. It was less a doctrinal battle than a turf war. In spite of the Twenty-five Points, there was no official party line to be toed in the NSDAP, only unquestioned obedience to the
Führer, and many variants of National Socialism flourished, with different ideological emphases and target constituencies. Otto Strasser’s brand was a compound of strident anticapitalism, rabid nationalism, anti-Semitism, and a revolutionary rejection of all things bourgeois. He was deeply concerned that Hitler and “the Munich clique” around him were not committed to the radical social revolutionary vision he espoused, that they were too timid, too willing to court the conservative right. The Strassers used their Berlin publishing house, the Kampfverlag, and daily and weekly newspapers as a platform for their views, hurting in the process the sales of Goebbels’s Der Angriff. By early spring 1930, the rivalry had reached the boiling point.
Otto and Gregor Strasser were committed National Socialists, but they were not blind adherents of the Hitler cult that had emerged after 1925. Each maintained a degree of quasi-independence and believed that the party, the “idea” of National Socialism, was larger and more important than any individual, including Hitler. Goebbels complained to Hitler that Otto Strasser was undermining his authority in Berlin, not adhering to party directives, and ignoring orders from Munich. Hitler promised to take action against Strasser but characteristically let the matter slide. “Munich, the Chief, has lost all credit with me,” Goebbels grumbled to his diary in mid-March 1930. “Hitler has—for whatever reason—broken his word to me five times. . . . Hitler withdraws into himself; he makes no decisions; he doesn’t lead any more but lets things happen.” Finally, in mid-April, after Otto Strasser had ignored a direct Hitler order by publishing an article critical of Hitler’s decision to break with the anti-Young coalition, Hitler again promised to purge the Strasser faction. Again he hesitated. “That’s the old Hitler,” Goebbels complained bitterly. “The procrastinator! Forever putting things off!” It was a common complaint. Only in midsummer was the conflict resolved—not by Hitler but by Otto Strasser, who read the handwriting on the wall and announced his decision to withdraw from the NSDAP. Gregor Strasser, a far more important figure in the party, did not follow him; he renounced his brother’s ideas, resigned as managing editor of the Kampfverlag, and pledged his unequivocal loyalty to Hitler. Goebbels was disappointed that Hitler had not purged the elder Strasser from the party, but the crisis was over for the present. The situation, as it so often did, had resolved itself.
The Third Reich Page 14
