In many respects the anti-Schleicher conspiracy resembled the campaign against Brüning’s purported “agrarian Bolshevism” that had led to his dismissal in late May 1932. Hindenburg, who as the owner of a large estate in Neudeck was thoroughly receptive to the concerns of the East Elbian agrarians, was once again easily influenced. Schleicher’s position, already weakened by Papen and the failure of the plans for a “cross-party front,” was further undermined. “Schleicher has a conflict with the Landbund—the farmers are going wild,” Goebbels noted. In a revised version of his diary from 1934, he was even more explicit: “That serves us quite well at the moment.”32 But perhaps even more damaging to Schleicher was the deterioration since late 1932 of his relationship with Oskar von Hindenburg, who served as a military adjutant and close adviser to his father. We do not know what precisely caused the rift between the two men, but the consequences were serious. Schleicher lost his most important advocate in the house of Hindenburg.33
As if the situation were not bad enough, the DNVP also distanced itself from the government. On 13 January, Alfred Hugenberg offered to join the Schleicher cabinet as minister of economics and agriculture, but only on the condition that the chancellor implemented a strictly authoritarian regime that ruled independently of parliament. Schleicher, however, had made clear in his radio address of 15 December that he “could hardly sit on the point of a bayonet” and “could not rule for very long without broad popular approval behind him” and therefore refused Hugenberg’s offer.34 Consequently, a week later, on 21 January, the DNVP Reichstag faction attacked the Schleicher government in tones no less harsh than the Landbund. Schleicher’s government “tended towards internationalist socialism,” the faction declared in a statement. “It runs the risk of Bolshevism in the countryside and is liquidating the authoritarian idea that the Reich president created when he appointed the Papen cabinet.”35
All of this was grist for the mill of Schleicher’s enemies. During the night of 10–11 January, after attending a performance of Verdi’s La Traviata, Hitler met again with Papen in a villa belonging to the sparkling-wine merchant Joachim von Ribbentrop in the wealthy Berlin district of Dahlem. Ribbentrop, a former military officer who had gone into business after the First World War and got rich by marrying the daughter of winemaker Otto Henkell, had met Hitler in August 1932 and joined the NSDAP soon thereafter. Thanks to the excellent social contacts Ribbentrop enjoyed as a member of the exclusive Gentlemen’s Club, he was an ideal mediator between conservative circles and the National Socialists.36 We do not know precisely what Hitler and Papen discussed at their second meeting, but apparently they did not make much progress since Hitler declined at short notice an invitation to continue the exchange of opinions over lunch in Dahlem on 12 January. “Everything still up in the air,” noted Goebbels.37
—
Hitler’s attention at this time was focused on the Landtag election in Lippe-Detmold, which he hoped would prove that the NSDAP had recovered from the crisis of the end of the previous year and was back on the path to victory. “Lippe is the first opportunity to go from the defensive back on the offensive,” Goebbels announced in his capacity as propaganda director.38 The small region of 174,000 inhabitants, including 117,000 eligible voters, was flooded by an unprecedented wave of propaganda in the first two weeks of January. The NSDAP sent all their well-known speakers there, including Goebbels, Göring, Frick and Prince August Wilhelm. Hitler himself spoke at sixteen events in ten days. In an article entitled “Hitler Hits the Villages,” the Lippische Landes-Zeitung concluded: “The NSDAP must be in serious trouble if the great ‘Führer’ himself is travelling to tiny villages.”39 Because the venues in Lippe were too small, Nazi campaign directors rented three tents, the largest of which could accommodate 4,000 people. In order to fill them, audience members were brought in great numbers from elsewhere: six specially chartered trains arrived on 4 January alone for Hitler’s appearance at the opening of the campaign.40
Hitler’s speeches offered little that was new. Once again, he justified his decision not to join the government in August and November 1932: “If I wanted to sell myself for a plate of lentils, I would have already done so.” Whoever conquered the hearts of people, Hitler boasted, would inevitably be given the power of government one day. He had inherited a “thick peasant’s skull” from his ancestors, he told audiences, and could wait until “Providence deems the time is at hand.” Attentive listeners might have pricked up their ears at Hitler’s repeated assertion that he did not want to enter the halls of power “through the back door but rather through the main gate.” This—entry into the Chancellery—was precisely what Hitler was busily preparing in his meetings with Papen. Hitler’s only reference of local interest was when he utilised the myth of the Germanic warrior Arminius to promote the Nazi ethnic-popular community. On 5 January, he invoked “the first communal, powerful and successful appearance of the German nation under Arminius against Roman tyranny,” adding: “Internal fragmentation and squandering of strength has caused great injury to the German people down the years. The National Socialist ethnic-popular community will put an end to this situation.”41 One week later, Hitler and Goebbels visited the monument to Arminius near Detmold, which commemorated the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest at which the Roman general Varus’s legions had been annihilated in A.D. 9. “Was covered in fog and made such a grand impression,” Goebbels noted. “Defiant towards France. That’s always been the thrust of German politics.”42
Unnoticed by the public, Hitler established his election headquarters in Grevenburg, a waterfront estate belonging to Baron Adolf von Oeynhausen, right on the border with Lippe. From there, he could get to all parts of the small state with ease. “No inquisitive journalist’s nose discovered our scent, and no reporter found our tracks,” Otto Dietrich reported. “We arrived and then disappeared again without anyone knowing where from or where to.”43 The constant topic of evening conversations around the fireplace was Gregor Strasser, whose intentions were still unclear to Hitler and his consorts. They knew that Strasser had returned to Berlin at the start of January and that Schleicher had proposed making him vice-chancellor in a new cabinet. When it became known in Grevenburg on 12 January that Strasser had been received by Hindenburg, the Nazi leadership’s worst fears seemed to have been confirmed. “That’s how I imagine a traitor,” Goebbels fumed. “I knew it all along. Hitler is very dismayed. Everything depends on Lippe.”44
By the evening of 15 January, the results were in. The NSDAP had received 39,064 votes (39.5 per cent), 6,000 more than in November but still 3,500 fewer than in the election of June 1932.45 The Vossische Zeitung newspaper commented: “If the concentrated and massive Hitler propaganda is only able to win a minority in this entirely Protestant and primarily rural region—39 per cent against 61 per cent—we can only conclude that the demands for 100 per cent power are a presumption consisting of deception and self-deception.”46 The influential editor in chief of the Berliner Tageblatt, Theodor Wolff, was even more pointed: “In truth, Hitler has brought home from his heroic struggle in Lippe only a fly impaled on the tip of his sword.”47 By contrast, Nazi propaganda celebrated the election result as a triumph. “The party is back on the offensive,” Goebbels noted with satisfaction. “It was worth it in the end.”48 The Völkischer Beobachter also interpreted the election result as a success: “[It is] incontrovertible evidence that the stagnation of the NSDAP has been fully overcome and a new upward development has begun. The National Socialist wave is rising once more.”49 This sort of propaganda had a psychological effect. Hitler’s position within the party was reinforced, and that put him in a better bargaining position with Papen.
Hitler also used this new momentum to settle accounts with Gregor Strasser at a Gauleiter conference in Weimar on 16 January. There he spoke for three solid hours, and if anyone present sympathised with the former NSDAP Reich organisational director, he did not speak up. “Hitler has achieved a complete victory,” Goebbels recorded.
“The Strasser issue has been dealt with…Everyone is abandoning him…I’m glad this is happening to this fraud. He’ll end up as nothing, just as he deserves.”50 Strasser’s career was over. To avoid being expelled from the party, he had to pledge to avoid any political activity for two years, and Hitler cancelled a meeting with him planned for 24 January in Munich at short notice.51 The party leader never forgave the colleague he had formerly valued so much for putting him in a tight spot. Hitler would have Strasser murdered during the Night of the Long Knives on 30 June 1934.
—
From Weimar, Hitler went directly to Berlin to continue secret talks about the formation of a government under his leadership. The NSDAP chairman was “in the best of moods and obviously quite satisfied with how things were going,” Wilhelm Keppler told Kurt von Schröder.52 On 17 January, Hitler met Hugenberg and the DNVP parliamentary chairman, Otto Schmidt-Hannover, in Göring’s apartment. The former partners in the Harzburg Front had bitterly attacked one another in the November election, but now relations were more relaxed. On 28 December 1932, Hugenberg had written to Hitler directly and suggested discussing whether they might not be able to restore unity and end “the political division of parts of the movement for national renewal that actually belong together.”53 A rapprochement with the NSDAP was part and parcel of the DNVP’s increasing distance from the Schleicher cabinet. The two men’s talks on 17 January yielded no concrete results, but Hitler did assure Hugenberg of a major post in his cabinet if he was made chancellor. Hitler was quite contemptuous of Hindenburg, dismissing him as “not an independent factor,” a man who talked “like a gramophone record” and “whose political vocabulary consisted of the same eighty sentences.” For his part, Hugenberg seemed to “have found lots of common ground with Hitler, although their mutual understanding was not perfect,” DNVP Deputy Chairman Reinhold Quaatz noted after being extensively briefed about the meeting that evening.54
At noon on 18 January, Hitler, Röhm and Himmler once again travelled to Ribbentrop’s villa in Dahlem to continue talks with Papen. His position strengthened by the Lippe election results, Hitler demanded the chancellorship more forcefully than at the earlier meetings. Papen responded that he did not have enough influence to get Hindenburg to grant this wish, whereupon the negotiations seemed once again to have reached a dead end. To overcome the blockade, Ribbentrop suggested introducing Hitler to Oskar von Hindenburg. Then the discussion broke up without a date for the next meeting being agreed.55 Papen wrote to the Ruhr Valley industrialist Fritz Springorum that he had tried “in every way to bring about a national concentration but had been greeted by fierce resistance from Hitler who objected, after the Lippe elections, to becoming the junior partner in a governing cabinet.”56 At this point, Papen still hoped to become chancellor himself—an option that would have been welcome to most Ruhr industrialists.
Although Hitler was quite preoccupied by the conspiracy to overthrow Schleicher, he still found plenty of opportunities for entertainment. On the evening of 18 January, he and Goebbels took in the film The Rebel, directed by and starring Luis Trenker, about a Tyrolean student who sacrifices his life in the anti-Napoleonic resistance. “A great achievement,” Goebbels gushed: “a Tyrolean national uprising. Fantastic crowd scenes…It shows you what film can do. And what we will do with film some day.” Hitler was so carried away that he watched the film a second time the next evening. Then they sat together and reminisced at Göring’s residence until 5 a.m. “Hitler very funny,” Goebbels noted. “We laughed ourselves silly.”57
Despite the tug of war for political power, Hitler retained his daily routine and tried to project calm and confidence. On most afternoons, he could be seen taking tea and cake with his entourage in the Hotel Kaiserhof. Late in the evening, after the political work was done, Hitler usually relaxed in the company of Joseph and Magda Goebbels. It was rare for him to leave before 3 a.m. Goebbels fretted about his health: “The boss doesn’t feel well at all. He gets too little sleep and doesn’t eat enough.”58 On 20 January, Hitler put on a star performance in front of 10,000 party functionaries in the Sportpalast. “A storm of applause erupted such as cannot be described in words,” wrote the Nazi newspaper Der Angriff about Hitler’s entrance into the auditorium. “You thought the place would collapse. The music was drowned out. The Führer strode to the front of the hall through a forest of arms raised in salute, accompanied by SS men and his constant companions.”59 Once again, Hitler told his followers not to be discouraged by setbacks or be infected by “accursed defeatism”—a jibe at Strasser—but to work with determination towards the “great goal,” the establishment of a “new ethnic-popular community.” In conclusion he appealed to his audience: “We have to forge our will and make it even harder. We have to consecrate this will with camaraderie and obedience. With it, we will defy every misery of this age. May our will become the will of the German people and overcome the time of great misery!”60 Hitler’s entire speech aimed to prepare the party faithful for an extended struggle for power. No one listening would have been able to imagine that in only ten days’ time Hitler would be appointed Reich chancellor.
During the afternoon of 22 January, at the Nicolai cemetery in the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg, Hitler unveiled a memorial to Horst Wessel, the SA street fighter who had been elevated to a martyr after his death in February 1930. Hitler praised Wessel as a “blood witness,” whose song “Die Fahne hoch”—“Hold High the Flag”—had already become a “battle hymn for millions.” By sacrificing his life, Hitler said, Wessel had created a “monument more lasting than stone and bronze.”61 Before the Berlin SA units assembled at the cemetery, they had marched past the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus, the KPD headquarters, on Bülowplatz. Berlin’s police president had refused permission for a Communist counter-demonstration and deployed 14,000 police officers to prevent clashes between the two groups. Everything proceeded relatively calmly. The KPD leadership had called upon their followers not to let themselves be provoked by the SA march. Nazi propaganda, however, celebrated the absence of confrontation as a great victory. “The SA marched,” Goebbels noted. “Massive loss of prestige for the KPD. Bülowplatz is ours. We’ve won a battle.”62 The Social Democratic Vorwärts commented:
The fact that on 22 January 1933 in Berlin Hitler’s brown hordes were allowed to march outside the windows of the KPD headquarters with the conscious intention of challenging and humiliating their enemies, and that they were able to do so without any possibility of effective resistance, was a very bitter pill for the entire labour movement.63
That evening, Hitler gave another speech dedicated to Horst Wessel in the Sportpalast and then left at around 10 p.m. to travel with Frick and Göring to Dahlem, where Papen was waiting. Notably, State Secretary Meissner and Oskar von Hindenburg were also present. To keep their participation at the meeting secret, the two men had conspicuously attended the opera on Unter den Linden and discreetly slipped out of the theatre before the final curtain.64 Shortly after arriving in Ribbentrop’s villa, Hitler asked the president’s son for a private word. What the two men talked about during their two-hour discussion has been the subject of much speculation. It is hardly probable, as one rumour had it, that Hitler threatened to reveal that the president had improperly transferred the Neudeck estate to his son Oskar in 1928 to avoid paying inheritance tax. It is quite possible, however, that Hitler may have promised to use his influence, if made chancellor, to wipe out the debts on the estate that had resulted from extensive renovations.65 Hitler was apparently unable to overcome all of Oskar von Hindenburg’s reservations, but on the trip back to central Berlin, the president’s son did tell Meissner he had been taken with what Hitler had to say.66 Hitler for his part was less impressed. “Young Oskar is an unusual picture of stupidity,” he remarked a few days later to Goebbels.67
More significant was the fact that after his private talk with the younger Hindenburg, Hitler had made clear progress in his negotiations with Papen. For the first time, the man
who had Hindenburg’s ear suggested that he might warm to the idea of Hitler becoming chancellor while contenting himself with the post of vice-chancellor.68 But when Papen visited President von Hindenburg on the morning of 23 January to argue for that idea, he was rebuffed. Ribbentrop took on the task of breaking the bad news to Hitler.69 That evening, the latter travelled to Munich, where he met Goebbels at the Brown House. Hitler still seemed confident about how things were developing. “Terrain smoothed,” noted Goebbels. “Papen wants to be vice-chancellor. Schleicher’s position very precarious. He seems to suspect nothing.”70 In Hitler’s absence, Frick and Göring continued negotiations with Papen in Dahlem. They agreed that the best way to overcome Hindenburg’s resistance to a Hitler chancellorship was to present him with a cabinet of “national concentration” that would reunite all former members of the Harzburg Front. Ribbentrop succinctly noted: “Decision reached about a national front to support Papen with Hindenburg.”71 On the evening of 21 January, Meissner had told Hugenberg: “Hindenburg attaches great importance to the participation of the German nationalists.” The German president also wanted to retain the right to appoint the Reich defence and foreign ministers himself, arguing that according to Germany’s constitution he was head of state and represented the Reich under international law and therefore bore direct responsibility for those positions.72
—
The Reich chancellor’s demise was getting closer and closer. “Schleicher’s position is very bad,” Goebbels noted on 22 January. “When will he fall?”73 Two days before that, the Reichstag Council of Elders decided that Germany’s parliament would indeed be called to session on 31 January. Given that only the tiny DVP faction had declared its support for the government, Schleicher was headed for a devastating vote of no confidence, just like Papen before him. Schleicher had already threatened on 16 January to present parliament with a written dissolution order in case the Reichstag put such a vote on the agenda. In so doing he was resorting to the same plan his predecessor had drawn up towards the end of his tenure: dissolving the Reichstag and postponing fresh elections beyond the sixty-day limit imposed by the German constitution, to the autumn, in the hope that the economy would further recover later in 1933. Surprisingly Foreign Minister von Neurath and Finance Minister Schwerin von Krosigk, who had rejected a violation of the constitution in early 1932, both supported Schleicher’s idea.74 The question, though, was whether Hindenburg could be persuaded—especially since Schleicher had got Papen and his government dismissed by arguing that precisely this sort of violation of the constitution would lead to civil war.
Hitler Page 46
