The Third Reich

by Thomas Childers

  All that remained was Hitler’s commitment to run. On February 5, Goebbels briefed the Führer on his plans for the campaign. Hitler seemed impressed and on the verge of declaring his candidacy. “Everything is ready,” Goebbels assured him. “Just press the button and the avalanche will begin.” Still, to Goebbels’s dismay, Hitler procrastinated. “We must begin the battle,” Goebbels wrote in exasperation two weeks later. “Slogans [for Hitler’s candidacy] have been postponed for yet another day. This eternal waiting is frightful. Hitler is hesitating too long.”

  By early February, the preparations for the campaign were complete, the themes laid out in a memorandum drafted on February 4. “It must be made clear to the masses . . . that the National Socialist movement is determined to use the presidential elections to put an end to the entire system of 1918. The two words ‘Schluss Jetzt!’ ”—End It Now!—“represent the most direct and forceful formulation of that determination. As the final words of every leaflet and placard this slogan must be relentlessly hammered into the head of the reader and voter. In ten days no one in Germany should be talking about anything but this slogan.” The presidential election was to be framed “as the decisive battle between National Socialism and the system. It must be pounded into the masses that this system will inevitably lead to Bolshevist chaos.” Only the NSDAP could “overcome the threatening specter of Bolshevism and . . . create a true people’s community of all productive [schaffenden] Germans.” The time had come to “End It Now!”

  Finally, on February 22, Hitler gave the green light. Goebbels could announce his candidacy that night at a mass meeting in Berlin’s cavernous Sportpalast. The news, proclaimed with all the stormy theatricality Goebbels could muster, was greeted with wild cheering that went on for twenty minutes. It was an auspicious beginning. Despite the infuriating delays, Goebbels was confident that the party was well prepared for the coming battle. “It will be a campaign that will leave all previous ones in the shadows,” he predicted. “Everything is ready. . . . The election is already won. Poor Hindenburg.”

  The field of candidates reflected the shifting topography of late Weimar politics. Hindenburg, the conservative, the monarchist, was spurned by the DNVP and other right-wing organizations, who put forward Theodor Duesterberg of the Stahlhelm as their candidate. Hindenburg was, however, supported by the Social Democrats, Zentrum, and the rapidly shrinking parties of the moderate center. The Social Democrats were hardly enthusiastic but considered Hindenburg the lesser of several evils. The Communists put forward their leader, Ernst Thälmann.

  Hindenburg was a reluctant candidate, uncomfortable from the outset. He refused to go out on the campaign trail—it was beneath his sense of dignity and beyond his physical endurance—preferring instead to campaign from the halls of the Presidential Palace. It was at best a lackluster effort. He pointedly offered no endorsement of the Brüning government, which he had himself installed. He did not attend any rallies, and he made only one radio address to the nation. Symptomatic of his aloofness were two short campaign films that were as unexciting and detached as the old gentleman himself. In one, he read ploddingly through prepared remarks about his decision to enter the race, his eyes never leaving the page he held in his hands. In a second film he did not appear on camera at all. Instead, an actor stood on stage, script in hand, and declaimed in arch-thespian style Hindenburg’s record of achievement. Interspersed with his peroration were newsreel clips of Hindenburg at various state ceremonies. It was Brüning who bore the brunt of Hindenburg’s campaign, Brüning who was out on the hustings, the face of the campaign.

  With its propaganda machine well organized and well financed, the NSDAP launched a massive media blitz the likes of which had never been seen in German politics. In February Goebbels moved the RPL, the Propaganda Leadership, from Munich to Berlin, where he would direct the campaign. Every day the new offices in the Hedemannstrasse bustled with frantic activity: the rooms were full, the atmosphere electric. The clatter of typewriters echoed from every room in the building; telephones jangled without stop. Hourly reports poured in from all over the country. The staff produced fifty thousand phonograph records, small enough to slip into a postal envelope, and several short films for distribution. The films, none longer than fifteen minutes, featured speeches by Hitler, Goebbels, and other Nazi leaders. They would not be shown in theaters but in public plazas in major cities and market towns. Otto Dietrich, head of the Nazi press corps and a rival of Goebbels for Hitler’s affection, mobilized the party’s daily and weekly newspapers, adding campaign extras and articles to its big-city dailies and smaller regional weeklies. In the torrent of printed matter that rained down on the country, special leaflets were addressed to every conceivable social and demographic group—shopkeepers, civil servants, farmers, workers, Catholics, Protestants, the old, the young, women. The content of these appeals was based on an analysis by the party’s market research. In Department III, on the second floor, a group of young men, most in their twenties and early thirties, analyzed reports submitted from the party’s regional propaganda affiliates. They sifted through them all, preparing summaries for Goebbels, their chief, who would evaluate them.

  For weeks the party saturated the country with pamphlets, rallies, and theatrically orchestrated appearances by Nazi leaders. In addition to the mass of printed materials provided to regional leaders on an almost daily basis, the RPL earmarked some for public distribution on specific dates. Their appearance on the designated dates was intended to coincide with important speeches or rallies devoted to a particular social group or political issue. “The placards must appear, whether in the press, as leaflets, or as posters on exactly the date for which they are marked,” the RPL stressed. “The end effect must be that on the same day all over Germany our attack on the system and its parties has been launched as a unified assault.” Such coordinated propaganda offensives became hallmarks of the National Socialist campaigns in 1932, and they produced the desired effect: on a given date, from Königsberg to Aachen, from the Baltic to the Alps, Nazis would be on the streets distributing the same leaflets, posting similar placards, and holding highly publicized speeches or rallies on the designated topic of the day. This degree of nationwide coordination was unrivaled by the other parties and gave the NSDAP a tremendous advantage in the day-to-day conduct of national campaigning.

  Along with these displays of national coordination and centralized control, the party targeted virtually every group, with farmers, civil servants, and workers leading the list. No group was too small, too insignificant for the NSDAP to mobilize. The message generated in a variety of ways was simple, direct, and shorn of any nuance, couched in a few snappy catchphrases, a handful of images, and easily recognized code words—sound bites, in today’s vernacular—that could be easily remembered and passed on. The local party chapters studied their area’s Addressbuch, a forerunner of telephone directories, which listed the occupation of the head of the household. Using that information as a guide, the Nazis were able to design leaflets and short pamphlets that addressed the specific woes of the shopkeeper, the civil servant, farmer, white-collar employee, and worker. These were then delivered in person, and the recipient was invited to a follow-up meeting for his particular occupational group.

  These printed materials were accompanied by the usual reminders about other propaganda aids available from the national or Gau headquarters. The party’s list of such aids and services had grown considerably since 1930, including not only films and phonograph records, but loudspeakers, motorcycles, trucks, and, for the most affluent and important regions, even airplanes. The RPL also continued to offer detailed instructions on virtually every aspect of campaigning from the sort of music to play at rallies to the colors of campaign placards and the frequency with which they should be changed to hold public attention. In each of the 1932 campaigns, the NSDAP continued to concentrate on what the RPL referred to as “systematic work at the grass-roots level (Kleinarbeit).” No detail was to be ignored.<
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  The Nazis staged more than thirty thousand events, distributed eight million leaflets, and plastered the walls of every town and city with Nazi posters. Goebbels’s office circulated regular propaganda updates, designating new themes and target groups for particular emphasis. But the main attractions of the campaign were the public appearances of Hitler, Goebbels, Strasser, and Göring, whose public profile had risen dramatically since he returned from exile in 1927 to lead the party’s Reichstag delegation. Other big guns of the party also spoke, but Hitler and Goebbels were the headliners. Between the announcement of Hitler’s candidacy of February 22 and election day on March 13, Goebbels made nineteen speeches in Berlin, and addressed mass meetings in nine other towns scattered across Germany. Hitler kept to an exhausting schedule, speaking in twelve cities in eleven days, traveling always by car. He raced from engagement to engagement in a small convoy of automobiles, accompanied by his usual team of bodyguards, secretaries, drivers, and a changeable entourage of party figures. At the edge of every town or city, the convoy would be met by local Nazi officials, who were in charge of security for the event. Hitler, sitting beside his driver, always kept a map on his knees, marking the route, careful to avoid known Communist strongholds. He also carried a revolver. Everywhere he drew monster crowds, who often waited patiently through hours of delay for his arrival. In the last frenetic days of the campaign, Hitler addressed mass meetings in Berlin, Hamburg, Stettin, Breslau, Leipzig, Bad Blankenburg, Weimar, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Dortmund, and Hanover, where crowds of sixty to one hundred thousand turned out for his well-choreographed appearances.

  Throughout the campaign, the party handled the ancient Feldmarschall with uncharacteristic restraint. The strategy was to praise Hindenburg’s great service to the fatherland, in both war and peace, to show respect (a rare exercise for the Nazis) for his patriotism and person, while at the same time suggesting that der Alte (the Old One) was being manipulated and misused by an unscrupulous chancellor—a strategy that tied Hindenburg to Brüning while at the same time serving as an indirect, if not very subtle, reminder of Hindenburg’s age. A vote for Hindenburg, the Nazis insisted, was a vote for Brüning and his emergency decrees. It was time for new leadership.

  * * *

  There were bright clear skies over Germany on election day, March 13—“Hitler weather,” Goebbels prophesized. “Everyone is confident of victory. [Hitler], too.” From early in the day reports from around the country indicated a massive turnout. Polling places everywhere were teeming with activity. Long lines snaked along crowded sidewalks. “Fate, do not help us,” Goebbels prayed, “but be just. . . . We await your judgment. Evening should find us joyful.”

  As he left his office in the Hedemannstrasse in the early evening, he was struck by the mood of excitement and anticipation he saw on the streets. “Everywhere victory fever prevails.” That night a small crowd of friends and party colleagues gathered in his house to listen to the returns. The early results from cruise ships leaving Hamburg and Bremen harbors reported “a fantastic win for Hitler,” a good omen. But as the evening wore on and more returns began trickling in, the optimistic mood evaporated. “Things look bad. . . . Around ten one can sense the final result. We have been beaten,” Goebbels conceded glumly. The outlook was “frightful.” By 2 a.m. everyone was “dejected and discouraged.” It was depressingly clear, he concluded, that “we had set our goals too high.” He placed a call to Hitler in Munich. The Führer was “completely surprised by the results,” Goebbels thought, but was determined to go on, to get back down to work. “In that,” Goebbels gushed, “he is great.”

  Putzi Hanfstaengl, Hitler’s piano player, foreign press chief, and general factotum, had a rather different recollection of Hitler’s reaction to the defeat. Hitler listened to the returns in his office at the Brown House surrounded by Hanfstaengl, Hess, his secretary Martin Bormann, and the party’s business manager Philipp Bouhler. In the early-morning hours, when the final verdict was in, a heavy pall settled over the little group. The telephone began to ring. Calls from various party leaders. “Goebbels was completely distraught and cried with disappointment,” Hanfstaengl remembered. Göring kept his head and pointed out that due to Hindenburg’s advanced years, he would never survive a runoff. Hitler hardly uttered a word. He rose stiffly from his chair and departed as if in a trance. Sometime later Hanfstaengl drove to Hitler’s apartment on the Prinzregentenplatz and found the Führer sitting alone in a darkened room, staring into the shadows, brooding. He was, Hanfstaengl thought, “the very picture of a disappointed, dejected gambler who had wagered beyond his means.”

  Although deflated by the results, the Nazis had captured eleven and a half million votes, almost double their total from 1930, and with 30 percent of the vote, Hitler left Duesterberg (6.8 percent) and the KPD’s Thälmann (10 percent) in the dust. Hindenburg had prevailed, the outcome not even close. With more than eighteen million votes, he was the clear winner. And yet when the final results were officially tabulated, there was a problem. In order to avoid a runoff, a candidate needed at least 50 percent of the vote. Now it was the Hindenburg camp’s turn to be disappointed. The old field marshal had captured 49.6 percent. A second round would be necessary.

  Initially Strasser and Göring were reluctant to embark on a new campaign. With the other candidates eliminated, a direct Hindenburg-Hitler contest could only end in another, possibly more damaging setback. Even the Harzburg parties, still smarting from Hitler’s refusal to back Duesterberg in the first round, were urging their voters to abstain rather than endorse Hitler. But having once decided to challenge Hindenburg, Hitler was not about to back out now. He would confront Hindenburg in the runoff. On March 14, a special edition of the Völkischer Beobachter appeared, carrying the party’s new rallying cry: “The first election campaign is over,” Hitler wrote. “The second has begun today. I will lead it.”

  The party’s propaganda machine shifted immediately into high gear. Drawing on reports from their regional propaganda operatives, the RPL was convinced that the party had failed to attract sufficient support from civil servants, pensioners, and women. Hindenburg’s strong showing, Goebbels believed, could be “traced to the typical mentality of certain bourgeois circles, especially the German petit bourgeois whose vote was won with sentimentality and the fear of the unknown; the woman whose vote was swayed by appeals to the tear ducts and fear of war; and the pensioner and public official who were misled by references to inflation, cuts in benefits, and National Socialist hostility toward civil servants.” To counter such charges, Goebbels and his staff deluged regional leaders with drafts of leaflets directed to precisely these groups.

  As the campaign unfolded, the Nazis avoided a frontal assault on the Reich President and directed their fire to the parties that supported him. Hindenburg was the candidate of the “system parties,” and what did they stand for? “The SPD—Marxism, socialization. ‘Property is theft,’ hate of the army, nationalism”; they were “the treasonous guarantors of Versailles [and] enemies of the church”; the Zentrum was assailed for its “misuse of religion” and “working arm in arm with atheists.” The liberals merited hardly a mention. They were simply the tools of “Jewish money bag interests.” The Nazis again sought to tar Hindenburg with Brüning’s unpopular emergency decrees, repeatedly reminding voters that “if you vote for Hindenburg, you’re voting for Brüning, and whoever votes for Brüning casts his ballot for the emergency decrees.”

  At the same time, the RPL chose to concentrate on candidate Hitler, implicitly contrasting his youth, energy, and populist magnetism with the ancient Prussian field marshal. Hindenburg was a great and honorable man but a man whose day had passed. It was time for a new generation to take up the torch. Day after day the public was bombarded with articles about Hitler—his humble beginnings (not the privileged background of a Prussian Junker), his service as a common front soldier, his creation of a movement of political, social, and cultural renewal that, against all odds,
was taking the country by storm. Typical was a series of leaflets composed by Goebbels that would appear nationwide on four consecutive days: “Adolf Hitler as Human Being,” March 29; “Adolf Hitler as Comrade,” March 30; “Adolf Hitler as Political Fighter,” March 31; “Adolf Hitler as Statesman,” April 1. By election day, his stern visage looked down from every wall, every kiosk. Hitler preferred one poster in particular—his chalk-white face staring hypnotically out from the center of a solid black background, presumably capturing his fanatical magnetism. The caption read only: “Hitler.”

  Hitler touched on all these themes in a campaign declaration entitled “My Program,” released on April 2. As in almost all Hitler’s public utterances, “My Program” began with a recapitulation of his unlikely rise from political obscurity, depicting himself as a lonely visionary engaged in a long and bitter struggle against the establishment, the insiders, the power brokers. The story did not lack for melodrama—or false humility. Hitler’s fanatical devotion to the cause of Germany’s revival (in the Nazi lexicon “fanatical” was an adjective of the highest praise) was a defining leitmotif of the campaign. Delivered in a tone of aggrieved self-righteousness, he thundered against the system that had relentlessly persecuted him and his movement. The authorities had banned the movement’s newspapers, suppressed its organizations, prohibited him from speaking in different states, charged the party’s leaders with slander, libel, and sedition, and thrown others into prison. “When thirteen years ago,” he typically began, “an unknown man and German soldier, entered political life, I listened only to the dictates of my conscience. . . . I could not convince myself, as millions of others did, to keep quiet and go along . . . with those whose actions were driving Germany to ruin. For thirteen years of hard struggle . . . I have followed my sense of duty and founded a movement to fight against those . . . responsible for Germany’s collapse.” The “system parties,” he wrote, “have tried to silence me; they have scorned me; they could prohibit my speaking, suppress the movement, gag our propaganda, just as today they ban my newspapers, confiscate our leaflets, and deny us access to the radio. All this they can do and have for thirteen years. But one thing they have failed to do: they have not been able to show me wrong.”