Contact with Schacht was also very important for Hitler. Not only was Schacht held in high regard by industrialists and bankers, Hitler also valued his financial expertise, of which he himself possessed none. The former Reichsbank president was “no doubt the leading mind we have in Germany in the money sector and the financial economy,” Hitler told Wagener.118 Schacht would prove eminently useful when the NSDAP came to power.
“The economic sector is increasingly coming our way,” Goebbels rejoiced, while Hess claimed that “extremely prominent representatives of business” were secretly asking for meetings with the party.119 But in fact, the chummy behaviour of a Thyssen, Schacht or Stauss was not typical of Germany’s economic elites. There is little justification for left-wing claims that the National Socialists owed their electoral triumph to financial support from big business or that Hitler was a lap dog of major industrialists.120 The NSDAP financed their election campaigns largely from the party coffers—from membership dues, entry fees and small private donations. Thus the Nazi breakthrough to becoming a mass movement cannot be attributed to support from big business.121 Nonetheless, with their often unbridled polemics against the Weimar system, trade unions and the social welfare state, large-scale business entrepreneurs contributed indirectly to the success of the radical right. It was no coincidence that industrialist circles welcomed the disempowerment of the German parliament and the establishment of rule by Brüning’s cabinet supported by the president.122
After 14 September, the captains of industry could no longer ignore the National Socialists, but the majority still treated the radical right-wing party with caution. The business classes were justifiably skittish since no one was sure what economic course the party would pursue, and fears that the anti-capitalist strains within Nazi propaganda were not just rhetoric were bolstered by a number of parliamentary motions the NSDAP sponsored in October 1930. They included proposals to nationalise large banks, to ban the trading of securities and to restrict interest rates to 5 per cent. Business circles were particularly concerned that the NSDAP nominated Gottfried Feder as its spokesman in the debates about the 1931 budget. Feder’s constant calls for Germany to “break the yoke of interest slavery” had earned him a reputation as an anti-capitalist eccentric.123 At the end of 1930, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper published an editorial that voiced the concerns of big business about the nebulous policies of the NSDAP. It predicted that the conflict between the anti-capitalist and more moderate wings of the party would become more intense and that the outcome was “fully uncertain.”124
Hitler was at pains to dispel such fears, knowing that resistance from Germany’s major business figures would make it more difficult for him to achieve his political goals. “You underestimate these men’s political influence…and that of the economy in general,” Hitler reprimanded Otto Wagener. “I have the feeling that we won’t be able to conquer [the chancellor’s office in] Wilhelmstrasse over their heads.”125 In September 1930, Hitler met the chairman of the Hamburg–America ocean line HAPAG, the former chancellor Wilhelm Cuno, to assure him that the NSDAP would support entrepreneurial initiative and private capital, and only intervene in cases of illicitly acquired wealth.126 He made similar remarks the following month in Munich to Theodor Reismann-Grone. The publisher noted down his impressions of Hitler in his diary: “An Austrian officer type…I spoke first, but he quickly interrupted and dominated the conversation. The power of his words lies in his temperament, not in his intellect. He shakes things up. That’s what the German people need. You can only beat speed with more speed. He described the destruction of Marxism as his life’s goal.”127 In early December, Hitler spoke for a second time to Hamburg’s National Club of 1919 in the Hotel Atlantik, but he avoided addressing any current issues, instead offering vague promises that once the “tributes” had been eradicated and Germany had regained its political power, the economy would flourish. “I have pledged myself to a new doctrine,” he said at the end of his speech. “Everything that serves the best interest of my people is good and proper.”128 The well-heeled Hamburg audience, who once again showered Hitler with applause, remained pretty much in the dark as to where the NSDAP stood on economic questions and what it intended to do if it came to power.
Hitler refused to commit himself to an economic programme for the future because he wanted to keep his options regarding German industry open and because he did not want to alienate the “socialist” wing of his own party. In the spring of 1931, Hans Reupke—a lawyer working for the Confederation of German Industry who had secretly joined the NSDAP in May 1930—published a pamphlet entitled “National Socialism and the Economy” in which he assured his readership that the party had refined its anti-capitalist slogans into anti-materialist ones. Goebbels was outraged, writing: “This is a crass betrayal of socialism.” He complained to Hitler and later noted with satisfaction: “Reupke dressed down by the boss.”129 But in truth what bothered the NSDAP chairman was less the content of Reupke’s pamphlet than the idea of a fight being carried out in public. Wagener also bore the brunt of Hitler’s vacillations. In 1932, the director of the NSDAP’s economic-political division wanted to publish a collection of essays under the title “The Economic Programme of the NSDAP,” but Hitler killed the idea of Eher Verlag bringing out the volume. The collection was internally circulated and stamped with the words “For official use only.”130
The industrialists who did donate money to the NSDAP after 14 September regarded it as a kind of political insurance in case the party’s rise continued and it gained a share of power. But as a rule, the donations were made not to the party as a whole, but to individuals thought to exercise “moderating” influence. Along with Göring, the prime recipient was Gregor Strasser, who was considered the second most powerful Nazi after Hitler. Also receiving money was the former business editor of the Börsen-Zeitung in Berlin, Walther Funk, who had given up that post to devote himself to improving relations between the NSDAP and captains of industry. Funk, who officially joined the party in June 1931, quickly advanced to become Hitler’s most important economic adviser, putting himself in direct competition with Wagener.131
As far as we know, Hitler himself did not receive any donations from businessmen, nor did he solicit any. He had no need for them. Since 1930, royalties from Mein Kampf increased dramatically, and he seems to have paid taxes on only a fraction.132 At public events, Hitler liked to brag that he did not receive a salary from the party, but he claimed expenses for his numerous appearances as well as fees for his articles in the Völkischer Beobachter and the Illustrierter Beobachter—significant sources of side income. He also demanded substantial payments for interviews he granted to the foreign press as well as the occasional articles he wrote for the Hearst newspaper empire.133 The party covered the costs for Hitler’s personal staff: his private secretary, chauffeur and bodyguard. Hitler had enough money at his disposal to keep up his large apartment on Prinzregentenstrasse and his holiday home on the Obersalzberg, pursue his passion for expensive Mercedes and, as of February 1931, reside in the elegant Hotel Kaiserhof on Mohrenstrasse, diagonally across from the Reich Chancellery, whenever he was in Berlin.134
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The Nazis benefited more from the policies of the Brüning government than from the big-business donations. Despite the fact that the number of unemployed was rising from month to month, the chancellor continued his deflationary economic policies. Brüning was willing to accept mass unemployment and impoverishment in favour of his primary goal of eradicating German reparations payments. “Since the spring of 1931,” the historian Heinrich August Winkler has written, “the thread running through Brüning’s policies was not how to overcome but how to politically exploit the Depression.”135 As hard currency poured out of the country, the government was approaching insolvency. On 20 June 1931, U.S. President Herbert Hoover suggested imposing a one-year moratorium on German reparations payments. Brüning welcomed Hoover’s initiative as an intermediary step
towards getting rid of reparations once and for all. After protracted negotiations, France also agreed to the moratorium, but that move failed to have the expected calming influence on the financial markets. On 13 July, one week after the moratorium’s imposition, one of Germany’s largest commercial banks, Danatbank, collapsed. There was a widespread run on banks and savings institutions, forcing the government to suspend all banking operations for two days. “Ominous days for Germany…” the diarist Thea Sternheim wrote. “Panic everywhere.”136
The worsening of the financial crisis in the spring and summer of 1931 was wind in the sails of the NSDAP. In Landtag elections in Oldenburg on 17 May, the Nazis polled 37.2 per cent. For the first time ever they were the largest faction in a regional parliament. They also took 26.2 per cent of the vote in the city parliament election in Hamburg, becoming the second-strongest party in the city after the SPD. In Landtag elections in Hesse on 15 November, the NSDAP captured 37.1 per cent of the vote, which put the party well ahead of the rest of the pack.137 But despite this series of electoral successes, Hitler was no closer to his goal of taking power. As early as January, Goebbels had expressed his fear that “everything is taking too long and the party’s momentum could freeze up.” After the Nazis’ triumph in Oldenburg, Goebbels noted: “Hitler is always a source of strength and optimism. You have to be an optimist to lead our cause to victory.”138
In July 1931, Hitler again enlisted the support of Alfred Hugenberg and Stahlhelm leader Franz Seldte. In a joint telegram to Brüning in the name of “the entire national opposition,” the three men insisted that Germany could no longer bear “the burdens imposed upon it” and therefore should consider any new reparations obligations towards France as non-binding.139 Hitler also decided to support a public referendum put forth by the Stahlhelm to get rid of the ruling coalition in Prussia and replace it with a government “that reflects the popular will unequivocally expressed in the election of 14 September 1930.” On 9 August 1931, the eve of the referendum, Hitler issued a plea to his supporters: “As long as the Social Democrats and the Centre Party are not overcome, Germany will not be able to rise anew. And the position from which the Social Democrats today rule Germany is Prussia.”140 But the referendum was a failure: only 37.1 per cent of voters supported the premature dissolution of the Prussian Landtag. For Goebbels, this was a “grim defeat” into which the Stahlhelm had pulled the NSDAP. “We must get away from the bourgeois mush,” he demanded of Hitler. “We must be more imperious and rigorous. We must be National Socialists. That’s the source of salvation.”141
What Berlin National Socialists considered a “more rigorous” approach was made abundantly clear on the evening of 12 September 1931, the start of the Jewish New Year. Some 500 SA men ran wild on the major shopping boulevard Kurfürstendamm, chanting “Germany awaken—Judah must die,” harassing passers-by and brutally assaulting people they thought were Jewish. During the unrest, the newly appointed head of the Berlin SA, Count Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorf, drove up and down the boulevard in an open-top car with his assistant Karl Ernst issuing instructions. The Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith later spoke of “pogrom-like rioting,” while the Social Democratic newspaper Vorwärts described what had happened as a “shameful excess” and “an insult to culture.” In subsequent trials, thirty-three of the rioters who had been arrested were given jail sentences of up to a year and nine months. Helldorf and Ernst, however, each got off lightly with six months in jail and a 100-mark fine. They appealed, and in February 1932, they were cleared of charges of disturbing the peace. The sentences of most of the others who had been convicted were also significantly reduced. “What is certain,” wrote the Berliner Tageblatt, “is that with this verdict one of the most serious acts of terror has gone unatoned for, in particular by those who bore the most responsibility for it.”142 Once again, the goddess of German justice had shown that she was blind in her right eye. The SA took the affair as encouragement in their strategy of occupying public spaces and subjecting everyone present to their visible domination.
On 15 September in Munich, Hitler again cautioned his SA Gruppenführer to be “extraordinarily cautious” and “not to get drawn out,” adding that “the legal path is the only secure one at the moment.” But he also suggested that he sympathised with actions like the one taken on Kurfürstendamm. In large cities, Hitler said, the SA faced the necessity “of undertaking something to satisfy the revolutionary mood of the people.” The party would have to publicly distance itself from the SA leaders who had been involved, but Hitler assured his henchmen: “You can be certain that the party will not forget their services and will restore them to their posts as soon as the time is ripe.”143 It was the clearest signal yet that Hitler’s insistence on legality was a purely tactical manoeuvre. Once he had gained political power, he planned to overthrow the democratic state.
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Yet although Hitler’s adherence to legal means was transparently hollow, the leaders of the German military and the Reich government redoubled their efforts in the autumn of 1931 to co-opt the NSDAP into the governing coalition. On 9 September, Hess reported that various parties had tried to convince Brüning “to involve Hitler at least partly in the government.” Hess said that as a condition, Hitler had insisted on fresh elections, “which would result in another huge triumph for the movement.”144 The Reich president himself was at the forefront of the move to involve the NSDAP in the government, in the form of a “concentration of national forces” that would span the entire German right wing from Brüning to Hitler. The head of the ministerial office in the Reichswehr Ministry, General Kurt von Schleicher, told Brüning’s secretary Erwin Planck on 20 September that Hindenburg had insisted on a “reconstitution of the cabinet to enable cooperation with the far right.”145 Schleicher had been in contact with the NSDAP via Ernst Röhm since the spring, and on 3 October, he met Hitler. At that meeting, the latter reiterated his willingness to join the Brüning cabinet, but only after fresh elections. “First we will be willing to forgo Prussia, once we’ve achieved a significant position of power in the Reich,” was how Goebbels summarised Hitler after the meeting. “In Prussia, a state commissioner will suffice to force Marxism to its knees.”146 Schleicher, who had a follow-up meeting with Hitler a few days later, came away with a positive impression: “An interesting man with an extraordinary speaking talent. In his plans he tends to get above himself, however. One has to tug him back down to reality by his coat-tails.”147 The general-turned-politician Schleicher believed he would be capable of influencing Hitler’s political ambitions, thereby “taming” him. For Schleicher, that mistake would ultimately prove fatal.
On the morning of 10 October, Brüning met Hitler. The chancellor would later recall that the leader of the NSDAP possessed “a far greater aura of self-confidence.” Again, Hitler did not reject the idea of joining the government, but he did refuse to endorse Hindenburg, who was standing for re-election in early 1932. “On the face of it, it was an extremely cordial conversation,” Brüning wrote in his memoirs.148 At the chancellor’s request, Hindenburg met with Hitler and Göring for two hours that very evening. The Reich president was none too pleased that during his appearances in East Prussia young National Socialists had greeted him with cries of “Germany awaken!” But Hitler was able to defuse the situation by slipping into the role of the First World War private full of reverence for the former field marshal.149 Hindenburg made it clear to the two Nazi leaders that he would vigorously oppose any attempt to gain power without his consent. Their meeting ended without yielding any concrete results. Hitler talked a good game, Hindenburg was quoted as saying, but was best suited for the office of postmaster “so that he can lick me from behind—on my stamps.”150 But other sources suggest that Hitler made a more positive impression on Hindenburg than has often been assumed. “Hitler was very appealing,” the Reich president told one of his old comrades, General Karl von Einem. In a letter to his daughter of 14 October, Hindenburg
wrote that the “national opposition” had failed to use its first chance. But he did not rule out a second one: “If the right wing had not issued repeated refusals, everything would have been all right.”151 Hitler, too, was satisfied. “The result: we’re fit for good society,” Goebbels noted. “The old man has met us face to face. The boss called him worthy of respect.”152
In the autumn of 1931, Hindenburg approved the reconstitution of the governing cabinet. Brüning agreed to dismiss several ministers, including Interior Minister Joseph Wirth from the left wing of the Centre Party, whom Hindenburg considered insufficiently conservative. Wirth was replaced on an interim basis by Reichswehr Minister Wilhelm Groener, who thereby became the second most powerful man in the cabinet. Chancellor Brüning took over the Foreign Ministry himself. The new cabinet was less tightly connected to political parties than the old one since the DVP was no longer represented. That fact was a sign that the business circles were distancing themselves from Brüning.153 On 16 October, the new Brüning cabinet barely survived a vote of no confidence—thanks only to votes from the SPD faction. A short time before, in a long open letter to the chancellor, Hitler tried to justify why the NSDAP continued to strictly oppose the government. Hitler thought the idea of reviving Germany economically before entering into negotiations with the Western powers to revise the Treaty of Versailles was putting the cart before the horse. Without an end to reparations, he argued, there could be no economic recovery. Brüning’s deflationary economic policies, Hitler scoffed, were like declaring the operation a success after the patient had died. The criticism was not without justification. Hitler failed to mention, however, that the National Socialists were the main beneficiaries of these policies, which had only worsened Germany’s economic crisis.154
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