“the events of that day”: Stimmungsbericht, November 1932.
“found an enthusiastic audience”: Stimmungsbericht der RPL, November 1932, BA/NS22/I.
reversal of roles since the spring and summer: Ibid.
“bourgeois masses had to follow”: Ibid.
“our movement will deliver”: Kreisbefehl of November 9, 1932, Heilsberg, Ostpreussen, in Geheime Staatsarchiv, Berlin (GStA)/JA XX/Re/240/C50a-c.
“working class must cease”: Stimmungsbericht der RPL, November 1932, BA/NSA22/1.
than to the National Socialists: Childers, The Nazi Voter, pp. 184–85.
“we find trouble, conflicts, and dissension”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, November 10, 1932.
to the Storm Troopers: Stimmungsbericht der RPL, November 1932, BA, NS 222.
“rather than out of ideological conviction”: Tätigkeitsbericht der RPL, November 1932, BA/NS22.
“urgently demand a revolutionary act”: Report of the Bavarian Staatsministerium, November 9, 1932, HA/24A/1759.
“by no means wavered”: Ibid.
over time was tenuous at best: Goebbels, Tagebücher, April 25, 1932.
“all the consequences this implies”: Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, p. 486.
“a house painter in Bismarck’s chair”: Toland, Adolf Hitler, p. 276.
The situation, he lamented, was a disaster: Hans Frank, Im Angesicht des Galgens: Deutung Hitlers und seiner Zeit auf Grund eigener Erlebnisse (Munich, 1953), p. 108.
“not to bring it about”: John Toland, Adolf Hitler, p. 280; also Peter Stachura, Gregor Strasser, pp. 288–90.
“leaving Germany for a considerable period”: Stachura, Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism, pp. 113–14.
“deserves it, too”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, Teil I/Aufzeichnungen, 1924–1941, September 2, 1932, pp. 298–99.
“with a pistol within three minutes”: Ibid., p. 297.
“all our work will have been done for nothing”: Ibid., December 8, 1932, p. 295.
“ ‘Give something to the wicked Nazis!’ ”: Heiden, Der Fuehrer, p. 500.
“Now we must act!”: Stimmungsbericht der RPL, November 1932.
“hopes have completely failed”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, Teil I/Aufzeichnungen, 2, December 23, 1932, p. 314. Adding to Goebbels’s depression was a serious illness of his wife, Magda. His political and personal worries are tightly interwoven in his diary entries from this period.
Chapter 7: The Impossible Happens
“has been repulsed”: “Ein Jahr deutscher Politik,” Frankfurter Zeitung, January 1, 1933.
country’s industrial and financial elites: Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, pp. 499–504.
marriage of convenience: Goebbels, Tagebücher, January 6, 1933, p. 99; background to the meeting in Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, pp. 511–15.
“Bravo! We can use him”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, January 6, 1933, p. 99; and Franz von Papen, Memoirs (London, 1952), pp. 225–29.
“committed another blunder”: Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power, p. 50.
“it can still be victorious”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, March 1, 1933, Teil I/Aufzeichnungen, p. 326.
“most seem convinced”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, January 10, 1933, p. 103.
“Down with Marxism”: Paul, Aufstand der Bilder, pp. 109–10.
all the countries in Europe: “Adolf Hitlers Neujahrsbotschaft,” December 31, 1932, in Hitler. RSA, vol. 3, p. 297.
“the life of a people is constructed”: Ibid.
“The masses . . . were delirious”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, January 8, 1933, p. 101.
“did his speech stir interest”: Lippische Landeszeitung, quoted in Hitler. RSA, vol. 3, January 12, 1933, p. 352.
beyond suspicion: Anordnung December 14, 1932, Hitler. RSA, vol. 3, pp. 261–65.
“but fanatical apostles”: Denkschrift über die inneren Gründe für die Verfügungen zur Herstellung einer erhöhten Schlagkraft der Bewegung, December 15, 1932, pp. 273–78.
“But he will pay for this”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, Aufzeichnungen, January 31 and 14, 1933, p. 325.
“Everything now hangs on Lippe”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, January 11, 13, 14, 15, and 16, 1933.
the trouble was far from over: Longerich, Die Braune Bataillone, pp. 163–64; and Heiden, Der Fuehrer, p. 523.
“it has paid off after all”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, January 16, 1933, p. 107.
“impaled on the tip of his sword”: Heiden, Der Fuehrer, pp. 523–25; Jutta Ciolek-Kümper, Wahlkampf in Lippe, Munich, 1976; Berliner Tageblatt as quoted in Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power, p. 65.
“have slaughtered him”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, January 17, 1933, p. 108.
“and achieve results”: Stachura, Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism, p. 115.
the meeting ended inconclusively: Kershaw, Hitler: A Biography (New York, 2010), pp. 250–51.
“be eating out of my hand”: Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power, p. 86.
asunder at a critical juncture: Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone, pp. 163–64; and Conan Fischer, Stormtroopers (London, 1983), p. 210.
have to find ways to economize: Goebbels, Tagebücher, January 6, 1933, p. 99.
securing a loan for the party in the United States: Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power, p. 71.
Papen would be the best alternative: Ibid., pp. 116–17.
he had no intention of naming Hitler chancellor: Ibid., p. 130.
“to the strength of his party”: Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 496.
seen him in such a state: Joachim von Ribbentrop, The Ribbentrop Memoirs (London, 1954), pp. 24–26.
produce Hitler at eleven: Ibid., pp. 25–26.
arranged for the following morning: Ibid., pp. 24–26.
minister of the interior in Prussia: Papen, Memoirs, p. 239; and The Ribbentrop Memoirs, p. 25.
“so far into a corner he’ll squeal”: Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power, p. 147.
“in your underpants to avoid arrest”: Duesterberg, Der Stahlhelm und Hitler (Wolfenbüttel/Hanover, 1949), pp. 38–39.
“the tug of war [for power] begins”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, January 29, 1933, p. 118.
“Is Papen honest? Who knows”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, Aufzeichnungen, Teil 1, January 30, 1933, p. 355.
a showdown with army troops: Goebbels, Tagebücher, Sämtliche Fragmente. Teil I, Aufzeichnungen, January 30, 1933, pp. 356–57.
“then the great moment will be here”: Ibid.
to suppress an imminent coup d’état: Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, p. 526.
“establish a military dictatorship”: Toland, Hitler, pp. 288–90.
“may retire at any moment”: Toland, Adolf Hitler, p. 289.
“forward with God!”: Ibid., pp. 290–91; Kershaw, Hitler, vol. I, pp. 421–23; Otto Meissner, Staatssekretär unter Ebert, Hindenburg, und Hitler (Hamburg, 1950), pp. 269–70.
“like a dream, a fairy tale”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, January 31, 1933, p. 120.
“the greatest demagogue in world history”: Larry Eugene Jones, “ ‘The Greatest Stupidity of My Life.’ Alfred Hugenberg and the Formation of the Hitler Cabinet, January 1933,” Journal of Contemporary History, 27 (1992), pp. 63–87.
“burst into a vast clamor”: François-Poncet, The Fateful Years, p. 48.
“Germany has awakened”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, Aufzeichnungen, January 30, 1933, p. 358.
“for what you have done”: Ernst Deuerlein, ed., Der Aufstieg der NSDAP in Augenzeugenberichten (Düsseldorf, 1968), p. 418.
Chapter 8: Seizing Power
“the road to freedom for the German people”: Der Angriff, January 31, 1933.
so little had changed: “Four Die in Reich in Party Clashes,” New York Times, February 2, 1933.
“Government led by National Socialist”: New York Times, January 1, 1933.
“. . . Hitler may attempt to undertake”: “Centr
ists Demand Hitler Make Clear His Cabinet, Policy,” New York Times, February 1, 1933.
“the support of the German people”: Quoted in “Sees Hitler Facing Fall,” New York Times, February 1, 1933.
and big agriculture Alfred Hugenberg: Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, p. 314.
“will now come to Hitler’s followers”: Quoted in New York Times, January 31, 1933.
“not fighting for ourselves but for Germany!”: Full text of Hitler’s address in Domarus, ed., Hitler Speeches, vol. I, pp. 232–35.
that was no choice at all: Kershaw, Hitler, vol. I, pp. 441–44.
“ ‘legal’ harassment of opposing parties”: Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, pp. 91–94.
official in the Interior Ministry: Hans Buchheim, Anatomie des SS Staates, vol. I, Munich, 1967, pp. 34–36.
with Nazis and hard-line conservatives: Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers, pp. 89–91.
“for following the new course”: Göring’s instructions quoted in Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, vol. I, pp. 219–20.
“before the final election”: Turner, Big Business, p. 330.
“for the next hundred years”: Turner, Big Business, p. 331.
naming him Reich minister of economics: Turner, German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, pp. 329–31.
did not seem at all far-fetched: Goebbels, Tagebücher, Aufzeichnungen, 2, III, entry of February 22, 1933.
Now they were the law: Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers, p. 95.
“no other idea shall be expressed through it”: Helmut Heiber, ed., Goebbels Reden, 1971, pp. 87, 89, 106; quoted in Reuth, Goebbels, p. 177.
“our huge demonstrations”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, Aufzeichnungen, 2, I, entry of February 3, 1933, p. 365.
“ ‘stuff shut your lying Jewish mouths’ ”: Goebbels speech, NS Newsreel, February 10, 1933.
“And Germany will triumph”: Domarus, ed., Hitler Speeches, vol. I, pp. 244–50.
“the real balance of power”: Viktor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–1941 (New York: Random House, 1998), p. 4.
imminent Communist uprising: Bracher, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, pp. 123–24.
“with an iron fist!”: Delmer, Trail Sinister, pp. 187–88.
“This is a madhouse”: Rudolf Diels, Lucifer ante Portas (Stuttgart, 1950), pp. 192–93.
and fellow travelers were arrested: Ibid.
“beyond the legal limits otherwise proscribed”: Akten der Reichskanzlei. Regierung Hitler, 1933–1938, Teil I, 1933/34 (Boppard, 1983), pp. 132–33.
“we must crush Communism out of existence”: Delmer, Trail Sinister, p. 194.
It remains a plausible case: Benjamin Carter Hett, a historian and attorney, has presented the most recent and strongest case for the Nazis having set the fire, in his Burning the Reichstag (New York, 2014). Writing almost as a prosecutor in a criminal case, Hett argues that the Nazis were, in fact, the arsonists.
“Göring has set everything in motion”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, I, 2, February 27, 1933, p. 383.
their own feverish fantasies: See Fritz Tobias, The Reichstag Fire (New York, 1964); and Hans Mommsen, “Van der Lubbe und sein Weg in den Reichstag—der Ablauf der Ereignisse,” in Uwe Beck et al., eds., Reichstagsbrand. Aufklärung einer historischen Legend (Munich/Zurich, 1986), pp. 33–57.
show trial of the first order: Bracher, Machtergreifung, pp. 123–24.
beheaded in January 1934: Werner Maser, Hermann Göring. Hitlers janusköpftiger Paladin. Die politische Biographie (Berlin, 2000), p. 168. Here Maser draws on Die neue Weltbühne, Nr. 28, July 13 1933, p. 863.
no matter how insignificant, to the regime: Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers, p. 103.
murdered in a forest near Berlin: Diels, Lucifer ante Portas, p. 304.
“one day they were just there”: Ibid., p. 257.
“everyone trembles, keeps out of sight”: Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, vol. II, diary entries of March 10 and 17, 1933, pp. 6–7.
to cast their ballots publicly: Heiden, Der Fuehrer, pp. 562–63.
“Everything else sinks to insignificance”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, 2/III, March 6, 1933, p. 140.
“the united will of the National Socialists”: Heiden, Der Fuehrer, p. 564.
throwing a single master switch: Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, p. 381.
a growing source of concern: Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers, pp. 144–50; Kershaw, Hitler, vol. I, pp. 469–70.
“acting consciously against the regime”: Hitler’s remarks, March 10, 1933, Domarus, ed., Hitler Speeches, vol. I, p. 263.
had read him correctly: Diels, Lucifer ante Portas, p. 269.
“the more powerful of the two personages”: François-Poncet, The Fateful Years, p. 62.
“old glory and young strength”: Domarus, ed., Hitler Speeches, vol. I, p. 272.
overcrowding in the prisons: Karola Fings, “The Public Face of the Camps,” in Jane Caplan and Nicholaus Wachsmann, eds., Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany (New York, 2010), pp. 110–11.
The first of these installations: On the early camps, see Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler (Oxford, 2001), pp. 51–53; and Fings, “The Public Face of the Camps,” in Caplan and Wachsmann, eds., Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany, pp. 114–15.
relations with the Vatican: Domarus, ed., Hitler Speeches, vol. I, p. 283.
“in and of itself, limited”: Ibid., p. 285.
on an almost daily basis: Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone, p. 170.
was intended to go on indefinitely: “Boycott Manifesto Includes 11 Orders,” New York Times, May 29, 1933.
“declaration of economic warfare” against Germany: See Goebbels’s diary notes on the boycott from March 26 to April 2, 1933, Goebbels, Tagebücher, I, 2, pp. 398–401.
“enemies of the people and cunning slanderers”: Völkischer Beobachter, quoted in Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. I: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York, 1997), p. 22.
was classified a Jew: Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. I, pp. 27–28.
beleaguered Jewish community: Ibid., pp. 29–30.
“opposition of the November system”: Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, p. 209.
“completely in our hands”: Notes from March 24, 1933, Goebbels, Tagebücher, Aufzeichnungen, 2, I, p. 397.
on into the night: Hitler’s remarks in Domarus, ed., Hitler Speeches, vol. I, pp. 311–16.
“won’t be able to hold out for long”: Goebbels, Tagebücher, Aufzeichnungen I, 2, entry of April 17, p. 408.
the number had doubled: Kershaw, Hitler, vol. I, pp. 462–63.
in short, was to be a Nazi church: See Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, 1996); Victoria Barnett, For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler (Oxford, 1992). See also J. S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–1945 (London, 1968). For a useful summary, see Richard Steigmann Gall, “Religion and the Churches,” in Jane Caplan, ed., Nazi Germany (Oxford, 2008), pp. 146–67.
It was July 14, Bastille Day: See Klaus Scholder, Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich, vol. I (Frankfurt a.M., 1977), pp. 482–525.
Chapter 9: Consolidation of Power
“if it must be!”: Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone, pp. 178–81.
joined since the March 5 election: Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers, pp. 252–53.
“blood week of Köpernick”: Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, p. 360.
“had never witnessed such horror”: Diels, Lucifer ante Portas, pp. 254–55.
“understands nothing about business”: Hans-Adolf Jacobsen and Werner Jochmann, eds., Ausgewählte Dokumente zur Geschichtge des Nationalsozialismus, 1933–1945 (Bielefeld, 1961), p. 2.
“lies in the foreign press”: Longerich, Die braunen Bataillone, pp. 182–83.
in Prussia sharply reduced: Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers, p
p. 260.
“as the Führer wishes”: Jeremy Noakes and Geoffry Pridham, eds., Nazism 1919–1945, vol. 2, State, Economy and Society, 1933–1939 (Exeter, 1984), p. 529.
to be snooping around for atrocity stories: Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung (Frankfurt, 1962), pp. 190–202.
confusion streaming behind him: Ibid.
came in February and March 1933. See Beatrice and Helmut Heiber, eds., Die Rückseite des Hakenkreuzes. Absonderliches aus den Akten des “Dritten Reiches” (Munich, 1993), pp. 123, 125–26.
and the public was impressed: Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pp. 42–47.
“with equal thoroughness”: Baynes, The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, vol. II, pp. 1049–53.
“while maintaining its honor”: Domarus, ed., Hitler Speeches, vol. I, p. 365.
“the hiss of a traveling bullet”: Ibid., p. 392.
“so why be a martyr?”: Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, vol. I, diary entries of November 2 and November 11, pp. 40–41.
“Nazifying society was progressing”: New Beginning was an organization of the Socialist left that had sought to bring about a common front between the KPD and SPD in the last years of the Weimar Republic. It maintained a network of cells that submitted monthly reports on life in the Third Reich from 1933 to 1936. Those reports are collected in Bernd Stöver, ed., Berichte über die Lage in Deutschland. Die Meldungen der Gruppe Neu Beginnen aus dem Dritten Reich, 1933–1936 (Bonn, 1996), p. 2.
elements of the working class: New Beginning’s Report for February 1934, in ibid., p. 51.
his successor follow his footsteps: Sopade, Deutschland-Berichte der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands, 1934–1940, Erster Jahrgang 1934 (Frankfurt a. M., 1989), pp. 54–55. Between 1934 and 1940 the Socialist underground organization smuggled reports on life inside Nazi Germany to the SPD’s exiled leadership in Prague and later Paris. The reports from all around Germany blended insightful, hardheaded realism with a generous admixture of wishful thinking. These valuable reports are collected in four volumes under the title Deutschland-Berichte der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands, 1934–1940.
refrain in local political discourse: Ian Kershaw, The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (New York, 1987), pp. 83–86.
“until our final goal is reached”: Meissner, Staatssekretär unter Ebert, Hindenburg, und Hitler (Hamburg, 1950), p. 363.
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