Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

by Robert Gellately

  He said repeatedly that he considered the elections a farce, but the Nazis were nonetheless going to fight them with all the resources they could muster. He vowed that the first day after the next elections, the Party would commence the battle for the German nation all over again. Although he did not say he wanted a revolution, no one who heard these remarks or read them in the press could doubt that he was intent, once in power, on getting rid of the parliamentary system.

  All these Hitler meetings had packed houses. In Frankfurt on August 3 he drew twenty-five thousand at what was called the largest public event ever held there. In Berlin on September 10 he attracted a minimum of sixteen thousand to hear him speak on Germany’s “awakening.” In Breslau two days later some twenty to twenty-five thousand gathered for a talk on overcoming class conflict. There, as in most of his other appearances, however, the note struck was nationalism.

  These speeches did not take a “shopping list” approach by trying to offer something for every social class or region, but sought to appeal to the national interest. By refusing to make more empty-sounding promises, the Party came across as novel and interesting. Because more than a dozen parties ran in the election, as usual the vote was hopelessly split. Nevertheless, the shock was that the Nazi Party became the second largest in the country with 107 seats out of a possible 577. It won 18.3 percent of the vote, which was taken from all sides of the political spectrum.

  Almost as astonishing as these gains were those of the KPD, which garnered 13.1 percent of the ballots and got 77 seats. As expected, the SPD lost about 5 percent compared with the previous election, but still had 24.5 percent of the vote and 143 seats. Nobody really “won” this election, but the extremists and antirepublicans made great strides.20

  Hitler was triumphant in his postelection speech, “Our Solution: After the Victory the Struggle.” He said winning so many seats was fine, but not to forget, the Party rejected parliament in principle. The many new Reichstag seats merely gave it new weapons to continue the fight. The goal was neither a conventional political revolution nor a putsch, “but a revolution of the German soul, conquest of the German person. Then we will leave it to the sovereign German people to settle accounts with the seducers.”21

  For Chancellor Brüning, the election was a disappointment, but he had had no clear electoral strategy. Until President Hindenburg (and his advisers, like General Kurt von Schleicher) finally lost confidence in him and forced him out, Brüning put together two cabinets whose members had little popular support. Brüning earned his title as Germany’s “hunger chancellor” when unemployment skyrocketed. As bad as it was in the United States and Great Britain in 1932, it was almost exactly twice as bad in percentage terms in Germany.22

  Hindenburg and his advisers, led by his son Oskar and General von Schleicher, grew weary of Brüning, whose resignation was demanded on May 29, 1932, and given the next day. In classic understatement, Hindenburg said he would not support the chancellor’s government any longer and it had to go as quickly as possible “because it is unpopular.”23

  The next day Franz von Papen was named the new chancellor with a “Cabinet of the Barons,” so called because seven of its ten members came from the nobility. Papen announced his plan two days later, not as was customary to the Reichstag, but over the radio. Claiming that parliament had ruined the economy by turning the state into “a kind of social welfare institution,” he sounded like a “distillation of darkest reaction” compared to even the kaiser’s prewar governments.24

  Papen pushed a right-wing agenda, including resistance to what he called “cultural Bolshevism,” and on June 14 he had Hindenburg sign the first of many emergency decrees. It cut unemployment insurance payments by an average of 23 percent and restricted the period someone could collect to six weeks from thirteen; it also reduced welfare payments by an average of 15 percent. The economy needed some pumping up, but these measures were bound to have the opposite effect.25

  Papen and supporters around Hindenburg called for new elections for July 31, which they thought might give them more support but which benefited only the extremist parties. Hitler’s Party emerged as the overwhelming winner, obtaining 37.4 percent of the total and 230 seats. The Nazis more than doubled what they had obtained in the previous election. Support varied by region and social group, with Catholic areas and Communist urban ones generally immune to the Nazis. Hitler’s Party did better in rural areas than in the cities, and much better in Protestant districts.

  Unemployment was a crucial factor, but it usually had an indirect effect on the vote for the Nazis, as unemployed workers tended to go left rather than right and so voted Communist. As the stock market went down, therefore, the vote for the KPD went up, a doubly alarming development for the middle classes and elite, who were not themselves unemployed. Anxieties about the twin threats of economic collapse and Communism made these groups psychologically “ready” to vote for Hitler’s Party. Many lost faith in liberal and moderate parties, who seemed out of touch.

  Some workers also began to vote Nazi, but they tended to be in areas outside the major urban-industrial centers. Women voted for Nazis as well; for the first time in July 1932, they did so in numbers that might have exceeded men’s.26 (That trend was to become more pronounced once Hitler was appointed chancellor.) New voters added to the total, so that they picked up enough support across the social spectrum to be able to claim they were a “people’s party of protest.”27 By comparison, all the others were tied to specific classes, regions, interests, or religions.

  The social composition of the Party, especially the new joiners in 1930–32, was similar to its voters. The NSDAP prided itself on giving out membership number one million in April 1932, and Hitler liked to boast (falsely) that his was the largest organization in German political life. The real membership was below a million, and registered 849,009 on January 1, 1933.28

  The SPD, which had created the Weimar Republic and was most identified with it, came in a distant second in the elections, with 21.6 percent of the vote and 133 seats. What alarmed the middle classes was that the Communists finished a strong third, taking 14.6 percent of the vote and 89 seats. The extremist parties, which would include the German National People’s Party (DNVP), along with the Nazis and Communists, could have formed, at least in theory, a majority to get rid of the republic.

  Not only were the enemies of democracy growing, but the institutions of the republic were crumbling. In 1930–32, Germany was in the process of changing from a democracy into what was close to a presidential dictatorship. In 1930 Hindenburg issued five emergency decrees; in 1931, forty-four; and in 1932, sixty-six. The relevance of parliament declined almost to insignificance. In 1930 the Reichstag passed ninety-eight laws; in 1931, thirty-four; and in 1932, only five.29

  STREET VIOLENCE

  The end of democracy resulted not just at the polls during elections but from broader social developments. The years since 1918 had seen more violence in the streets than was ever the case before, much of it involving clashes between uniformed bands of men linked to political movements of the right or left. Paramilitary groups of one sort or another engaged in pitched battles that created an atmosphere the very opposite of the law and order so respected by Germans.

  By the late 1920s hundreds of thousands joined these organizations, carrying on politics in a new style. Most alarming for “good citizens” were the Communists. In 1924 the KPD founded the Rotefrontkämpfer-bund (Red Veterans’ League), and three years later had 127,000 members. However, the organization was poorly run, and numbers fell by more than half in the last years of the republic. To take up the slack, local Communist “self-defense” groups (mostly non-uniformed) had a membership estimated at around 100,000. The SPD’s Reichsbanner Schwarz, Rot, Gold (Reichflag Black, Red, Gold) was also formed in 1924 and soon boasted as many as 3.5 million members. By the early 1930s, the SPD recruited Schutzformationen (Protective Formations, or Schufos) for speakers and marches. There were about 160,000 member
s in the Schufos in early 1931 and some 250,000 a year later.30

  Membership in the SA went up with unemployment: there were around 60,000 in November 1930, and in 1931 the ranks more than quadrupled to 260,000. That figure had nearly doubled again to 445,000 by August 1932.31 A percentage of Nazi Party dues went to the SA, but it was largely self-financing. Members had to buy their own uniforms and, when they could not, find someone else to pay the bill. Beginning in 1929 the organization even sold its own brands of cigarettes and other items to raise money.32

  Himmler’s SS had nearly 25,000 members in August 1932 and around 52,000 in January 1933. Although not as involved in street violence, the SS was generally supportive of SA hooliganism. The Nazis often allied with the nationalist Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet), a right-wing veterans’ group, which had around 400,000 members in 1932. All in all, the Nazis could put a large number of uniformed men on the streets whose unruliness and brutality became legendary. As disruptive as some “legalistic” citizens might have found them, there was consolation in knowing these bullies were there to fight the left when no one else was going to do so.

  The SA tended to be more radical than the Nazi Party, preferring violence and a direct assault over elections. Thus, Hitler’s decision for a legal route did not always sit well. Tensions reached critical dimensions in late August 1930, when the SA demolished Berlin Party headquarters and Hitler had to sort out the “rebellion.” In a speech to the Berlin SA, he proclaimed himself head of the SA and SS and demanded total loyalty.33 Ernst Röhm, one of Hitler’s old friends, was called back from Bolivia and named chief of staff of the SA on January 1, 1931.

  The government could dissolve threatening organizations like the SA, and to forestall such a move, Hitler “purged” leaders like Walter Stennes and some five hundred of his followers in northern and eastern Germany on May 21, 1931.34

  Presidential elections were slated for 1932, and Hitler was undecided whether to run. Here the lowly corporal would be against the vaunted field marshal Hindenburg, hero of the First World War. In the end, the drama of the situation was too much to resist, and Hitler announced his decision to enter the race to an ecstatic mass meeting in Berlin.35

  His appearances in the election campaign emphasized Germany’s misfortune since the revolution of November 9, 1918. Again he gave something like history lectures, retelling the familiar narrative of the weak republic. He asked Hindenburg, “the old man,” to “step back, you can’t cover the ones we want to destroy,” but took pains not to offend or attack the man personally. The victor in the election, he said, had to “revitalize” the nation, for only out of a “healthy people” would it be possible for a “healthy economy” to grow.36

  Hindenburg got 49 percent of the votes in the first round; Hitler came second with 30 percent. Joseph Goebbels, who had been promoted to Reich propaganda leader in April 1930, made Hitler the main attraction. In the second round Hitler used an airplane to cover the country, but Hindenburg won. Hitler’s showing, with over thirteen million votes (37 percent), was sensational, and his stature grew beyond that of every other politician in the country.37

  In an interview with the London Times, Hitler said he never actually wanted to be president. He decided to run against Hindenburg “on the sole ground that this system, which we have sworn to overcome, was taking refuge behind his reputation and popularity.” The reporter said that some suggested as many as a million Communists had voted for him, a fact that Hitler doubted. If it were true, however, that would be a feather in his cap because one of his objects was to annihilate the Reds, and if that “could be effected by conversion and absorption the ideal solution to the problem of national unity would have been found.”38

  Hindenburg was persuaded only three days after his reelection to ban the SA and SS. There was concern among authorities at the state level that the elections to follow on April 24 would be disrupted and worse. Nevertheless, Hitler threw himself anew into the battle, addressing hundreds of thousands in more than two dozen major speeches. He again used an airplane to make as many personal appearances as possible.

  Once more he said little about the Jews and not much about the Marxists. Rarely did he mention opponents by name. Occasionally he admitted he would get rid of all the political parties to bring the country together, or said the peasants or some other group needed help, but that was the exception. He presented himself as the charismatic leader, above politics, bringing the positive message of national unity. The Party did well in the state elections, though it had no great breakthroughs.39

  The officer corps began to assume a still more prominent role in politics at this time. General Kurt von Schleicher had met with Hitler on May 7, 1932, and informed him that Brüning was going to be dropped and new elections called. Hitler agreed to support the new government (already selected) of Franz von Papen if they would lift the ban on the SA and SS, and they did so on June 16, 1932. Legalized again, the SA renewed its violent ways in the streets.

  The number of SA casualties rose like a barometer of violence: 2,506 in 1930; 6,307 in 1931; 14,005 in 1932. These injuries were covered by the SA’s own insurance company.40 Violence reached a new level during the July 1932 elections, the bloodiest ever held, in which eighty-six people were killed, a figure that included thirty-eight Nazis and thirty Communists. There were 461 “riots” in Prussia alone in July. It felt like the country was on the edge of social calamity.41

  In big cities there were pitched battles, with passersby killed in the cross fire, as happened when sixteen people were shot on “Bloody Sunday” (July 17, 1932) in Hamburg-Altona; two more died later. The police intervened to break up the fighting, but favored the Nazis.42

  Violent clashes, mostly involving the Nazis and the Communists, became a common feature all over the country. In Hamburg on July 2, 1931, for example, Jews returning from religious services were attacked. The Nazi version of the story was that the Jews had been assaulted by Communists and had to be rescued by the SA, who happened to be passing by. There was a meeting of Nazi students several weeks later on the theme “Hitler or Stalin?—the Bankruptcy of Bolshevism.” It ended in a melee between Nazis and Communists.43

  The incidents took place not only in the big cities and industrial centers. Even more tranquil areas like Baden in the southwest, famous for its wines and two universities, saw a dramatic increase in street violence. Communists there were few, recruited, according to the police, mainly from the unemployed, but augmented by outsiders. Though the “Bolsheviks” were no real threat in such places, the Nazis played up the theme anyway.44

  Hitler sanctioned what the SA did even when it led to murder. This was the case in the village of Potempa in Silesia, where members of the SA broke into a home at 1: 30 in the morning of August 10, 1932, dragged out a Communist sympathizer, and trampled him to death. What set this killing apart was that five SA men were eventually sentenced to death for it. The Nazi Party had held up the accused as martyrs and, upon hearing the verdicts, started a riot that led to the vandalism of Jewish shops. To the Nazi mind, there was a straight link between Communists and Jews. The “enemy within” was both Jewish and Marxist. Hitler did not condemn the killers; rather, he protested the verdicts. Chancellor Papen commuted the sentences, supposedly to avoid giving the Nazis “propaganda material.”45

  13

  “ALL POWER” FOR HITLER

  The July 1932 elections showed Hitler with by far the largest following of any politician in the country. He was the message, a social phenomenon, the führer who enthralled millions by telling them what they already knew or wanted to hear. He could draw crowds of twenty-five thousand or more almost anywhere, even as he steadfastly refused to make any specific promises of what he would do to cure Germany’s many problems.

  Hitler’s quandary after the elections was what to do next. He made an appointment with Kurt von Schleicher, Hindenburg’s most important adviser and the power broker of the moment. Goebbels wrote in his diary it was to be “all power or nothing.�
� Hitler felt “the Barons” would yield, but was unsure about the president, “the old man.”1

  On August 6, Hitler conferred with Schleicher just outside Berlin. After hours of discussion Schleicher agreed that Hitler had to be named the new chancellor, with several key ministries also going to the Nazis.2 Schleicher’s hope was to use the numerically strong SA against the Marxists and avoid a clash with the army. Goebbels’s diary entries for this period are filled with stories about the rising “wave of terror” of the Marxists and the widespread perception of a threat from the left. He spoke of Hitler waiting at the very “doors to power” and was convinced “the great moment is here.”3

  Not only Schleicher but Papen, who spoke with Hindenburg on August 10, felt it might be useful to name Hitler as chancellor. At this decisive moment in time, however, “the old man” turned out to have ideas of his own and said it would be a bit much for him to name a mere “Bohemian corporal” to be chancellor.4

  Hitler met with Papen and Schleicher on the morning of August 13 and was told that the most he could hope for was the position of vice-chancellor. But he wanted nothing less than an appointment like Mussolini’s. That afternoon Hindenburg spoke to him directly. He said that his responsibility to God, the fatherland, and his conscience would not allow him to accede to Hitler’s wishes. He appealed to the Nazi leader’s patriotism to take a lesser post and to cooperate with the government, but was stiffly refused. The official communiqué issued about the negotiations deliberately made the president appear the noble statesman and Hitler a selfish politician not content merely to be brought into the cabinet, but a man who wanted the “entire governmental authority.”5