A number of legends have sprung up around Hitler’s appearance in the Düsseldorf Industrial Club. Most of them originated in Dietrich’s essay “With Hitler to Power.” Dietrich had been present at the speech, and his supposedly authentic account described Hitler whipping an initially cool audience into a frenzy. “Their faces began to blush, their eyes hung on the Führer’s lips and you could feel their hearts warming,” Dietrich wrote. “At the beginning they only put their hands together hesitantly, but soon salvos of applause erupted. When Adolf Hitler was finished, he had won a battle.” For Dietrich, 26 January 1932 was the “memorable day” on which Hitler achieved his “breakthrough” with the western German captains of industry: “The ice was broken—the National Socialist idea had found fertile soil in important and influential circles within the system.”10
But the American historian Henry A. Turner and others following in his footsteps have corrected this outmoded narrative about the relationship between National Socialism and major German industry.11 By no means had the entire economic elite of the Ruhr Valley attended Hitler’s speech. The early Hitler admirer Fritz Thyssen was present of course, as were Ernst Poensgen and Albert Vögler from United Steelworks, Ernst Brandi from the Mining Association and mining magnate Karl Haniel, who was also the Industrial Club’s chairman. But a number of leading representatives remained conspicuously absent, including Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the chairman of the Reich Association of German Industry, as well as the steelworks manager Paul Reusch, Carl Duisberg from IG Farben, Fritz Springorum from Hoesch Steelworks and mining entrepreneur Paul Silverberg.12
The crowd’s reaction to Hitler was also by no means as positive as Dietrich’s report had its readers believe. When Thyssen concluded his short word of thanks with the word’s “Heil, Herr Hitler,” most of those in attendance found the gesture embarrassing.13 Hitler’s speech also did little to increase major industrialists’ generosity when it came to party donations. Even Dietrich himself admitted as much in his far more sober memoirs from 1955: “At the ballroom’s exit, we asked for donations, but all we got were some well-meant but insignificant sums. Above and beyond that there can be no talk of ‘big business’ or ‘heavy industry’ significantly supporting, to say nothing of financing, Hitler’s political struggle.”14 On the contrary, in the spring 1932 Reich presidential elections, prominent representatives of industry like Krupp and Duisberg came out in support of Hindenburg and donated several million marks to his campaign.15
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The main political topic in the early months of 1932 was whether Hindenburg would be re-elected. To spare the 85-year-old the strain of a second election, Chancellor Brüning had hit upon the idea of asking the Reichstag to extend his period of office. That, however, required a change in the constitution and a two-thirds majority, which was only possible if the National Socialists and the radical right-wing nationalists were on board.16 On the evening of 6 January, Brüning sent Defence and Interior Minister Wilhelm Groener to meet Hitler in order to persuade the NSDAP chairman to support the idea. “A likeable impression, modest, orderly man who wants the best,” was Groener’s take on Hitler. “External appearance of an ambitious autodidact. Hitler’s intentions and goals are good but he’s an enthusiast, glowing and multifaceted.”17 A series of negotiations commenced. Hitler initially seemed willing to compromise but he made his support for Hindenburg’s candidacy contingent upon the Reichstag being dissolved and fresh elections called. Brüning was having none of that, since in the event of the expected NSDAP election victory he would no longer have a parliamentary majority tolerating him.
On 12 January, Hitler informed Brüning that despite “his great personal respect for the Reich president,” he had no choice but to reject the suggested extension of the term of office. As a reason, he cited constitutional concerns. These were well founded but sounded hollow coming from Hitler’s mouth since the NSDAP chairman had never left any doubt that as soon as possible after taking power, the National Socialists intended to do away with the constitution.18 Hitler’s decision, however, confronted him with a dilemma. If Hindenburg did decide to run for a second term despite his advanced age, Hitler would have to throw his hat in the ring, and the risk of losing a direct duel with the “victor of Tannenberg,” who was very popular among right-wingers, was great. Hitler’s aura as the seemingly invincible Führer rushing from one victory to the next might be damaged. On 19 January, Goebbels discussed the “Reich presidency question” for the first time with Hitler: “I’m pleading for him to run. He alone will take Hindenburg out of the running. We calculate with numbers, but the numbers are deceiving. Hitler has to become Reich president. That’s the only way. That’s our slogan. He hasn’t decided yet. I’ll continue to drill away.”19
Much to Goebbels’s dismay, Hitler put off making a decision for weeks and weeks. Apparently he was more sceptical about his chances than his head of propaganda. “Hitler is waiting too long,” Goebbels complained on 28 January. Two days later, he noted: “When will Hitler decide? Does he not have the nerve? If so, we need to give it to him.”20 It was not until 3 February, when Goebbels had largely concluded preparations for the election in the Brown House, that Hitler signalled his willingness to run against Hindenburg. The announcement of Hitler’s decision was delayed until after Hindenburg had declared his candidacy and the SPD had come out in support of him. The logic behind this was obvious: if the pro-democracy camp supported the man they had so vigorously opposed in 1925, Hitler would be all the better able to claim that only he represented the nationalist right wing. “First Hindenburg has to commit himself, and the SPD has to come out in support,” Goebbels noted. “Only then our decision. Machiavelli. But correct.”21
Similar calculations also led Hindenburg to delay announcing his decision for as long as he could. In late January, he told Brüning that he would only accept a nomination to run for president if it “did not meet with the joint resistance of the entire right wing.”22 It was not enough for the Reich president that a petition in early February calling on him to run, which was sponsored by Berlin Lord Mayor Heinrich Sahm, quickly attracted more than three million signatures. It was only on 15 February, when the Kyffhäuser League, the umbrella association of German veterans’ groups, pledged their loyalty that Hindenburg announced that he would seek re-election. “A day of fateful significance for Germany,” Reich Chancellery State Secretary Hermann Pünder noted in his journal.23 Hitler waited another week before having Goebbels proclaim his candidacy in a speech in Berlin’s Sportpalast on the evening of 22 February. “Ten minutes of enthusiasm, ovations, the people stood up and cheered me,” Goebbels wrote in his diary.24 “The roof almost caved in. It’s fantastic. If this keeps up, we’ll win.”
But one hurdle remained. To run for the office, Hitler had to be a German citizen. In July 1930, Wilhelm Frick—then Thuringian interior minister—had made a misguided attempt to secure Hitler citizenship by nominating him commissioner for gendarmes in the town of Hildburghausen. When this failed bit of foolishness became public knowledge in February 1932, people were baffled. In the meantime, the party leadership believed it had hit on a far more elegant solution. The NSDAP interior minister of Braunschweig, who was part of a coalition government with the DNVP and the DVP, was instructed to have Hitler made a civil servant, which would have been a first step towards German citizenship. The original plan was to appoint him extraordinary professor of “Organic Social Theory and Politics” at Braunschweig’s Technical University.25 But that was too much even for the NSDAP’s coalition partners. Instead, Hitler was appointed government counsel for Braunschweig’s consulate in Berlin. There, on the afternoon of 26 February, Hitler accepted his appointment certificate and swore to “be loyal to the Reich and Land constitutions, obey the law and faithfully fulfil the duties” of his office.26 With that his official “duties” were already over. He immediately applied for a leave of absence, which was granted as a matter of course, until after the Reich presidential electi
ons. The appointment was only a means to a political end. “Just got word that he’s been named Braunschw[eig] counsel—which makes him citizen Hitler,” Goebbels cynically noted in his diary on 26 February. “Congratulations.”27
Alfred Hugenberg’s nationalists were excited by neither Hindenburg nor Hitler and nominated a candidate of their own: Theodor Duesterberg, the vice-chairman of the Stahlhelm veterans’ association. With that the fragile Harzburg Front finally fell apart. The KPD once again put forward their chairman, Ernst Thälmann. The SPD and the Centre Party, however, decided to forgo candidates of their own and support Hindenburg. In the party newspaper Vorwärts the SPD leadership declared:
Hitler in place of Hindenburg means chaos and panic in Germany and the whole of Europe, an extreme worsening of the economic crisis and of unemployment, and the most acute danger of bloodshed within our own people and abroad. Hitler in place of Hindenburg means the triumph of the reactionary part of the bourgeoisie over the progressive middle classes and the working class, the destruction of all civil liberties, of the press and of political, union and cultural organisations, increased exploitation and wage slavery.
The declaration ended with the slogan: “Defeat Hitler! Vote for Hindenburg!”28
The political fronts of 1925 had been reversed. “What a bizarre country,” Thea Sternheim noted in February 1932. “Hindenburg as the pet of the pro-democracy camp. Years ago when I heard of his election…I threw up out of fear and horror. Today, in the face of the fascist threat, a democrat has to anxiously hope for Hindenburg’s re-election.”29 The SPD’s support for Hindenburg was exactly what the NSDAP needed to go on the offensive. In the Reichstag session on 23 February, Goebbels caused a scandal when he declared that Hindenburg had “betrayed the interests of his former voters” and clearly aligned himself with Social Democracy. “Tell me who praises you, and I’ll tell who you are!” Goebbels sneered, adding that Hindenburg was drawing praise from the “gutter press in Berlin and the party of deserters.” In response to this defamation, SPD deputy Kurt Schumacher, who had been badly wounded after volunteering for military service in 1914, spoke up angrily: “If there is one thing we admire about National Socialism it’s the fact that it has succeeded, for the first time in German politics, in the complete mobilisation of human stupidity.”30 Goebbels refused to apologise for his outburst and was sent out of the chamber. Hitler did not conceal his delight, gushing, “Now battle has been declared.”31
Immediately thereafter, the National Socialists kicked off their campaign, making use of the latest technology. Goebbels distributed 50,000 gramophone records of him delivering a campaign speech. A ten-minute sound film, designed to be shown on big-city squares, depicted Hitler as the coming saviour of the German people. Shrill posters reinforced the central message that Nazi propaganda had been advancing since mid-February: “Down with the system! Power to the National Socialists!”32 In his first campaign speech, on 27 February at the Sportpalast, which the Völkischer Beobachter covered in a story headlined “The Signal to Attack,” Hitler told 25,000 listeners that the “gigantic battle ahead” was not just about the presidency but about the “system” created on 9 November 1918, which in its thirteen years of existence had led Germany to the brink of the abyss. This was the tenor of all Hitler’s subsequent speeches: “For thirteen years we’ve been plaintiffs. Now the hour is at hand, my ethnic comrades. On 13 March, after thirteen years, we must become judges over that which has been destroyed by one side and over those internal values of our people which the other side has built up again!”33 Describing the audience’s reaction, Goebbels noted: “The people were beside themselves. An hour of euphoria. Hitler is a true man. I love him.”34
Between 1 and 11 March, Hitler maintained an exhausting schedule, speaking in Hamburg, Stettin (Szczecin), Breslau (Wrocław), Leipzig, Bad Blankenburg, Weimar, Frankfurt am Main, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Cologne, Dortmund and Hanover. He attracted huge crowds wherever he went. The Hamburger Tageblatt newspaper wrote about his reception in the Sagebielsäle hall, which was packed to the rafters: “A crowd of many thousands—a grey, dull, suffering army—seems to want to wipe away all its tears, anxiety and worry in a communal scream, which is both greeting and homage at once.”35 The Schlesische Zeitung wrote about Hitler’s appearance in Breslau’s Jahrhunderthalle, before which Hitler kept the 50,000 audience members waiting for hours:
They came from far and wide, from Hirschberg, Waldenburg, Sulau and Militsch, from all parts of Silesia. Many endured hours of travel in cramped circumstances or on the roof of an omnibus in order to hear their Führer…The people waited hour upon hour, the mood festive, not impatient. People brought lunch and dinner with them. Ambulant merchants pushed their way through the crowd selling fruit and refreshments. Orderlies and nurses stood at the ready. It was a vivid, lively scene.36
Even more than during the Reichstag elections in September 1930, Hitler’s campaign stops in the spring of 1932 were mass spectacles. For many Germans, even those who had not yet become party members, seeing Hitler was a must. They projected their desires onto him as their national saviour, someone who would release the country from misery and lead it to new prosperity. Hitler knew how to exploit these desires, denouncing the thirteen years of the Weimar Republic in ever-darker terms as a time of unmitigated decay and contrasting it with the bright future of a unified German “ethnic community.”
The chairman of the NSDAP studiously avoided attacking Hindenburg, however, having assured the Reich president in late February that he would do battle in “chivalric fashion.”37 Hitler was well aware that he could not afford to damage his relationship with Hindenburg beyond repair—for he could never come to power without permission from the president, should he fail to win the election. Thus he rarely passed up an opportunity to express his admiration for the former field marshal. At the same time, he indicated that Hindenburg was a man of the past whereas the future belonged to himself and his movement. “Venerable old man,” Hitler rhetorically addressed the president at his appearance in Nuremberg on 7 March, “you no longer bear the weight of Germany’s future on your shoulders. We must bear it on our shoulders. You can no longer assume responsibility for us; we, the war generation—must take it on ourselves. Venerable old man, you can no longer protect those who we want to destroy. Therefore, step aside and clear the way!”38
Hitler’s primary target for attack was the SPD, which he claimed was hiding behind the Hindenburg myth in an attempt to avoid taking responsibility. “Believe me,” he sneered in every one of his campaign speeches, “if I had done nothing in my life other than to lay this party at the field marshal’s feet, it would be a historic achievement. What a lovely transformation this party has undergone! What once was the party of the revolutionary proletariat is now a party of dutiful voters for the 85-year-old field marshal they used to hate so intensely.”39 Hitler was consciously trying to drive a wedge between the Social Democratic leadership and their constituency. He knew that if SPD voters cast their ballots for Hindenburg, his chances of electoral victory were slim.
Nevertheless Nazi propaganda was optimistic. “The current, continually repeated message is: Adolf Hitler is not only our candidate—he is the future president,” Goebbels wrote in a memo to Gau functionaries. “The entire party’s confidence in victory must be elevated into blind faith.”40 Goebbels himself vacillated between hope and anxiety. “The prognoses for Hitler, especially among p[arty] c[omrades], reach the levels of the fantastic,” he noted on 6 March. “I see a danger in this. We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves and underestimate the enemy.”41 But only a few days later, Goebbels was confident of victory: “Spoke late at night with Hitler. He is in Stuttgart. Going from one triumph to the next. Everything is good. This will be a success.”42 Hitler was also convinced he could beat Hindenburg. In an interview with New York Post correspondent Hubert Knickerbocker on the eve of the election, 12 March, he predicted that he and Hindenburg would both get around 12 million votes and thus fail to sec
ure an absolute majority. But in the run-off election on 10 April, Hindenburg would not have a chance. It had been irresponsible of Brüning, Hitler said, to have convinced the old man to stand for re-election, when his defeat was so easily foreseeable.43
Given such high expectations, the result of the election must have shocked the entire NSDAP: with 18 million votes (49.8 per cent) Hindenburg soundly defeated Hitler, who got just over 11 million (30.1 per cent). Nonetheless, Hindenburg just missed out on an absolute majority so a run-off was required. Thälmann had received 5 million votes (13.2 per cent) and Duesterberg 2.5 million (6.8 per cent).44 The disappointment among Nazi supporters was so great that in many places swastika flags were flown at half mast.45 Goebbels wrote in his diary: “We are beaten. Terrible prospects…The party comrades are depressed and downcast. A major coup is needed. Phoned Hitler. He’s completely disappointed by the result. We set our sights too high.”46 On election night, Hitler was already at work on an announcement to the party that downplayed the disaster. The NSDAP, he pointed out, had doubled their share of the vote compared to September 1930: “Today, we have risen to become the undisputed strongest party in Germany.” Hitler called upon NSDAP members to renew “the attack upon the front of Centrists and Marxists in the sharpest form.” The party could not afford to lose a single day. Every party member had to give “his all and his utmost” if the Nazi movement was to be victorious.47
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After 1933, Otto Wagener retroactively described Hitler’s reaction to the March 1932 election result as his “finest hour.” On that “fateful evening,” Wagener opined, “the Führer rose above himself” and restored one’s faith with his “uncompromising, volcanic will.”48 Ernst Hanfstaengl, however, experienced a very different Hitler at home on Prinzregentenstrasse on 13 March. Hitler sat brooding in a darkened room like “a disappointed and discouraged gambler who had wagered beyond his means.”49 In a speech at an NSDAP event in Weimar on 15 March, Hitler was forced to admit that he had “miscalculated,” having been unable to believe that Social Democrats, “down to a man,” would vote for Hindenburg.50 Indeed, SPD followers had adhered to the instructions of their party leadership with remarkable discipline.
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