Nonetheless, the fact that Hitler had unmistakably revealed that a government led by him would do away with the rule of law and legalise political murder did not scare people off as much as Kessler hoped it would. Hjalmar Schacht, for example, who had been part of the cabinet negotiated between Hitler and Schleicher, hastened to assure the NSDAP leader of his “unalterable affection.” Although he knew that Hitler did not need words of consolation, Schacht wrote, perhaps a word of “most genuine sympathy” would not be unwelcome:
Your movement is borne internally of such powerful truth and necessity that victory in one form or another is a matter of course. In times of the movement’s rise, you have not let yourself be seduced by false idols. And I am completely convinced that now, at a time when you have been forced onto the defensive, that you will resist that temptation. If you stay true to yourself, your success is guaranteed.
Schacht concluded his letter by promising: “You can count on me as a faithful helper.”173 This was essentially a job application, made by a graduate of Hamburg’s prestigious Johanneum Gymnasium and a long-time president of the Reichsbank, for a leading position in the Third Reich whose arrival he so deeply wished for.
But how to proceed after 13 August? The situation was tied up in knots. Papen had come no closer to his goal of tying the National Socialists to the government, just as Hitler had made no progress towards achieving the decisive position of power in a cabinet that ruled by presidential decree—his desired launching pad for eradicating the Weimar “system” and erecting a dictatorship. After Hindenburg’s categorical rebuff, he seemed to have no chance of reaching this goal in the short term. So the question was whether to negotiate with the Centre Party about a coalition or, as Hitler had already threatened, to steer the NSDAP towards a stricter course of opposition to Papen’s cabinet. On 25 August, Hitler discussed the three possibilities with Goebbels in Berchtesgaden. “Either a cabinet by presidential decree. Most agreeable but least likely,” noted the latter. “Or the Centre with us. Unpleasant but relatively easy to have at present. Or the most blunt sort of opposition. Very unpleasant, but if necessary, possible.”174 While the two men conferred, Gregor Strasser arrived and reported on conversations he had had with ex-Chancellor Brüning two days earlier in the southern German town of Tübingen. According to Brüning’s memoirs, Strasser had hinted that Hitler would forgo the office of chancellor in return for a swift agreement between the Centre and Nazi Parties.175 Hitler would never have made such a commitment, as Goebbels’s diaries make clear: “Strasser very supportive of the Centre solution. Hitler and I, on the other hand, for a continuation of the idea of the cabinet by presidential decree.”176 Brüning and Hitler met once more on 29 August in the house of a manufacturer in the Berlin suburb of Grunewald, but an alliance between the two was impossible. Under no circumstances was Brüning prepared to hand over the offices of Prussian president and interior minister, with their control over the police, or to accept Hitler as chancellor of a conservative–Nazi coalition.177 Nonetheless the Nazis proceeded with informal coalition talks with the Centre Party because the spectre of a majority coalition in parliament put pressure on Hindenburg and his circles and threatened the nationalist DNVP with complete marginalisation. “There are many indications that Hitler and Brüning will reach agreement and that both we and the economy are facing a terrible regime,” Hugenberg wrote on 19 August to Albert Vögler, the chairman of the United Steelworks.178
The Papen government countered Hitler’s declaration of hostilities with a two-pronged strategy. It altered economic policy by instituting a series of measures to stimulate the domestic economy, by reducing taxes on businesses that hired new employees and by relaxing labour agreements, as employers had long demanded.179 At the same time, the cabinet intensified its pursuit of plans first suggested by Interior Minister von Gayl at a ministerial meeting on 10 August: namely to dissolve the Reichstag and delay new elections beyond the sixty-day window prescribed by Article 25 of the Weimar Constitution. “Without doubt we will come into conflict with the constitution, but that’s primarily a matter for the Reich president,” read the minutes of that meeting.180 On 30 August, Papen, Schleicher and Gayl went to Neudeck. Arguing that an “emergency of state” justified extraordinary measures, they succeeded in securing Hindenburg’s support for indefinitely postponing new elections. The Reich president also issued them a blank cheque to dissolve the Reichstag.181
The same day that Hindenburg gave the Papen cabinet permission to violate the constitution, the newly elected Reichstag convened for its inaugural session. Beforehand, Hitler underscored “the movement’s claim to power” in a speech to the NSDAP parliamentary faction, saying he had never been “more relaxed or confident.”182 Hermann Göring was elected Reichstag president with votes from the NSDAP, the Centre Party and the BVP. Although the position of first vice-president traditionally went to the second-strongest party—in this case the Social Democrats—their candidate, Paul Löbe, was defeated by a Centre Party deputy put forward by the National Socialists. The result was, in the words of the Völkischer Beobachter, “a Marxist-free Reichstag presidium.” The NSDAP’s strategy was obvious. The Nazis had got wind of the Papen cabinet’s emergency plan and wanted to demonstrate, as Göring declared in a speech on 30 August, that “the new Reichstag has a large nationalist majority capable of functioning, so that in no sense is there a state of governmental emergency.”183
Hitler took things one step further. Late in the evening of 31 August, he assembled his paladins in Göring’s apartment for a “secret conference.” Goebbels noted: “Bold plan drawn up. We’ll try to topple the old man. Silence and preparation of the essence. The old man doesn’t want us. He’s completely in the hands of the reactionaries. Thus, he himself must go.”184 The idea was to topple Hindenburg using Article 43 of the Weimar Constitution, which foresaw the removal of the Reich president if a two-thirds majority of the Reichstag backed a popular referendum and the German people were in favour of it. Hindenburg’s authority would have suffered just from such a resolution being drawn up. On 8 and 10 September, delegations from the NSDAP and the Centre Party met in Göring’s villa to discuss common action against Hindenburg. In Goebbels’s estimation, the Centre Party was not completely disinclined, but their representatives asked for more time to think things over.185 It was not until Brüning threatened to leave the party “if a single member of the faction conducted further negotiations in this direction” that the idea of cooperating with the Nazis was dropped.186 The former Reich chancellor himself had good reason to revenge himself on Hindenburg for his humiliating dismissal, but Brüning knew that if Hindenburg fell, his successor would in all likelihood be Hitler.
While negotiating with the Centre Party, Hitler stepped up his attacks on the Papen cabinet. In his speech in the Sportpalast on 1 September, he excoriated it as “a political regime that rules by the bayonet.” Hitler scoffed at the notion that serial dissolutions of the Reichstag represented a threat to the National Socialists: “For all we care, do it a hundred times. We’ll emerge as the victors. I’m not going to lose my nerve. My will is unshakeable, and I can outwait my adversaries.”187 Three days later, at the NSDAP Gau conference in Nuremberg, Hitler attacked the “reactionary clique” of aristocrats in the cabinet: “Do they truly think I can be bought off with a few ministerial seats? I don’t want anything to do with them…They can’t imagine how totally meaningless that all is to me. If God wanted things to be the way they are, we’d have all been born with monocles.”188 A further three days later, in a speech at Zirkus Krone on 7 September, Hitler even depicted himself as a defender of the German constitution: “We have a right to say that we will form the government. The fine gentlemen refuse to grant us this right. I’ll pick up the glove tossed on the ground…They say that the constitution is obsolete. I say, only now does it make sense.”189
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On 12 September, the Reichstag met for its first working session. On the agenda was a governmental decla
ration by Papen, which was to be followed by several days of general debate. But the session took an unexpected turn. Before business had even been opened, Communist deputy Ernst Torgler seized the floor, demanding an immediate vote on the motions brought by his party, which included rejecting emergency governmental measures and a declaration of no confidence in the Papen government. The KPD initiative could have been blocked had a single deputy objected, but that did not happen. In the general confusion that ensued Wilhelm Frick moved for a half-hour adjournment. While Papen used the break to have messengers fetch Hindenburg’s order to dissolve the Reichstag issued on 30 August, Hitler instructed the NSDAP faction to support the Communist motion. Hitler’s intent was to demonstrate, for all to see, how little parliamentary support the Papen government had.
After the session was reopened, Göring in his capacity as Reichstag president began to explain the various voting procedures, studiously ignoring the Reich chancellor, who repeatedly requested the floor from the government bench while brandishing a red folder containing Hindenburg’s decree. “In that situation,” Papen recalled in his memoirs, “I had no choice but to lay the dissolution order on Göring’s desk, to roars and yells from the deputies, and to leave the building with my government.”190 Shortly thereafter, Göring announced the results of the vote. Five hundred and twenty-two Reichstag members had voted to withdraw confidence in the Papen government, while only forty-two DNVP and DVP deputies had rejected the motion. “It was the most humiliating defeat imaginable,” Goebbels noted.191 The psychological effects of the vote were massive. The rug was pulled from under Papen’s feet, and his protestations that the dissolution decree had been presented before the vote, thereby rendering it moot, did nothing to undo the damage. The fact was, as Kessler concluded, that “more than nine-tenths of the Reichstag and the German people are against this chancellor of ‘national concentration.’ ”192 In the wake of the overwhelming defeat, the Papen cabinet decided on 14 and 17 September to back off from the emergency plan agreed with Hindenburg and schedule new parliamentary elections on 6 November, the last possible day within the sixty-day deadline.193 In a conversation with Brüning’s former deputy Hermann Pünder in October 1932, Kurt von Schleicher admitted that the Papen cabinet had failed in its main task of “tying the NSDAP to the government” but asserted that the Nazis had been “completely demystified.” In the coming weeks, Schleicher predicted, support for both the National Socialists and the Centre Party would erode so that a parliamentary majority would no longer be possible. At that point, he believed, the Reichstag would be willing to tolerate the government in order to avoid yet another vote.194
“Election prospects extremely pessimistic,” Goebbels noted in late September. “We’ll have to work until we burst. Then perhaps we’ll succeed again.”195 After four difficult elections, fatigue was beginning to show both among the populace in general and the Nazis’ supporters. The SA in particular had little desire to focus all its energy on an election again after the disappointment of 13 August. For the first time, the numbers of Nazi Party members declined: from 455,000 in August to 435,000 in October 1932. From around the country came reports of a “downcast” mood and a “tendency to complain.”196 Moreover, the constant election campaigns had depleted the party coffers, and it was difficult to find additional resources. “Procuring money is difficult,” Goebbels complained. “The fat cats are with Papen.”197 The Papen government, whose new economic programme was very much to the liking of entrepreneurs, could indeed count on the support of big business. Their donations went nearly exclusively to parties that favoured Papen and his cabinet, that is the DNVP and the DVP.198
In contrast to many of his underlings, Hitler projected optimism. The Papen government would soon collapse “like a house of cards,” he told the Daily Mail on 24 September.199 In a speech at the Reich propaganda conference in the Brown House on 6 October, Hitler tried to mobilise party members for the coming election: “We National Socialists will give the nation an unprecedented display of our strength of will…I head into this struggle with absolute confidence. Let the battle commence. In four weeks, we’ll emerge victorious from it.”200 The main Nazi campaign slogan was “Against Papen and the reactionaries.”201 The diplomat Ulrich von Hassell, who visited Hitler in his Munich apartment on 23 September after being named Germany’s ambassador to Italy, found the NSDAP leader still extremely bitter towards Papen and Hindenburg. “Hitler said he would place no limits upon his agitation against this government, which had fought against and ‘betrayed’ him,” wrote Hassell. “He made no bones about his feelings towards the barons.”202 The Nazi propaganda instructions issued by Goebbels ran in the same vein. Papen, Goebbels instructed, should be depicted as an “equally ambitious and incompetent representative of the reactionary old boys’ club.”203
Hitler knew what was at stake. If he did not succeed in bettering or at least maintaining his level of support from the 31 July election, it would threaten the aura of inevitable triumph surrounding National Socialism, and the momentum that had carried the movement from success to success could be reversed. He therefore submitted to an even more gruelling election campaign. The fourth “flying tour of Germany,” which he began in his Junkers 52 on 11 October, lasted three and a half weeks and took him to every corner of the country, including such provincial places as East Frisia or the Bergisches Land, which he had previously skipped. Hitler started all his speeches by justifying his decision not to join the Papen cabinet on 13 August. It was a sign of how disappointed he was at his failure to seize the office of chancellor. He had not wanted to be a “minister by Papen’s grace,” he told the crowds, adding that he was not cut out for such a “decorative role.” Using different imagery, he said that he did not want to get on board a train he would have to get off a few months later. Papen and his reactionary clique, Hitler fumed, were not interested in granting him political influence but simply getting him to “shut up.”204 Repeatedly, Hitler stressed that he was interested neither in getting a ministerial post nor in sharing power with anyone else: “The only thing that appeals to me is leadership itself, true power, and we National Socialists have a sacred right to it.”205 His opponents should be under no illusions about his “enormous determination.” Hitler had chosen his path, he assured his audiences, and would pursue it to the end: “A man like me may perish. A man like me may be beaten to death. But a man like me cannot yield!” One word that did not exist in the National Socialist vocabulary, Hitler crowed, was “capitulation.”206 But the fact that Hitler felt forced to make such assurances suggests that his confidence in victory was partially play-acted, that he himself may have feared a possible setback. Indeed, while the Nazi press once again boasted about how successful Hitler’s propaganda tour was, attendance was in reality declining. Nuremberg’s Luitpoldhalle auditorium was only half full for Hitler’s appearance on 13 October.207 A substantial number of voters who had flocked to the putative saviour in July turned their backs on him after 13 August. “They say he’s come up short,” Konrad Heiden wrote, describing the mood among parts of the German populace. “He’s just another misguided fanatic, who overreaches and achieves nothing. A falling comet in the November fog.”208
As if to bolster the impression that he himself had closed the doors to power with his inflexible fanaticism, Hitler gave free rein to his anti-Semitic hatred in his election campaign. Strangely, none of Hitler’s biographers have remarked on this shift, although it is perfectly evident. In all of his speeches, Hitler falsely claimed that Papen’s economic programme was the brainchild of the Jewish banker Jakob Goldschmidt, the former director of the Danatbank, and was “welcomed above all by Jews.” No speech was complete without a tirade against the “Jewish press of Berlin” or an invocation of the spectre of “Jewish-internationalist Bolshevism,” which Hitler characterised as a “plague that has beset almost the entire European continent and threatens to attack us.” On 30 October in Essen, Hitler thundered: “Either the German people will escape f
rom the hands of the Jews or it will degenerate into nothing. I want to be its advocate and lead it into a unified German empire.”209 Once again Hitler had made it perfectly plain that there would be no room for Jews in the new ethnically defined state.
But bourgeois voters were less disconcerted by Hitler’s naked anti-Semitism than by his polemics against Papen’s “reactionary clique” and the anti-capitalist, class-warfare tone of the party’s propaganda, which seemed to clash with the slogan of “ethnic community.” On 25 September, Goebbels had insisted that “right now the most radical socialism has to be advanced.”210 The Berlin Gauleiter put these words into practice when he saw to it that the NSDAP supported a strike by the city’s public transport workers a few days before the election. Together with the Communist-dominated Revolutionary Union Opposition (RGO), the Nazi Factory Cell Organisation (NSBO) formed picket lines and brought traffic in Berlin to a standstill. “All yesterday: strike,” Goebbels noted on 5 November. “Our people in the lead. Grave acts of terror. Already 4 dead. Revolutionary mood in Berlin. Press on!”211 Goebbels maintained constant contact with Hitler during the strike, and Goebbels noted with satisfaction that Hitler supported his position, even though cooperating with the Communists was likely to cost the Nazis votes. “Hitler has gone Marxist for the moment—the Berlin transport strike,” the Hamburg schoolteacher Luise Solmitz wrote in her diary on the day of the election.212 In July she had voted for the NSDAP, but she switched to the DNVP on 6 November. Solmitz was obviously not alone among conservative-nationalist voters: Hugenberg’s party increased its share of the vote from 5.9 to 8.9 per cent.
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