Hitler

by Volker Ullrich

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  A series of factors helped Hitler along, one of which was that the Versailles system was already beginning to fall apart when he took office. At the Lausanne Conference of June 1932, Papen had succeeded in freeing Germany from the pressures of reparations payments, reaping the fruit Brüning had sown before him. The Schleicher government, too, had achieved a spectacular foreign-policy triumph with the Five-Power Declarations of 11 December 1932, which acknowledged as a basic principle that the German Reich would be allowed to arm itself like any other nation. While the declaration stipulated that the details would be decided at a League of Nations arms conference in Geneva, it was nonetheless apparent that German foreign policy had gained far more leeway during the phase of presidentially appointed governments than it had enjoyed in the Stresemann era.10

  This trend was encouraged by the effects of the Great Depression, which caused Britain and France massive economic and social problems and limited their ability to take action abroad.11 Moreover, in the two leading democratic nations of Europe, the trauma of the First World War had given rise to powerful pacifist movements that rejected any thought of another European war and restricted their respective governments’ ability to maintain their military strengths. Particularly in Britain, many people thought that the Versailles system was unjust and that Germany was owed something.12 Hitler also profited from the fear of communism rampant among western Europe’s bourgeois political elites. By casting himself as a radical vanguard opponent of Bolshevik Russia, the Führer was able to overcome numerous doubts about himself personally and his government.

  Additionally, what has often been called the “crisis of democracy” in inter-war Europe put the wind in Hitler’s sails. To a degree, Mussolini had kicked off this trend with his “March on Rome” in October 1922 and his establishment of a Fascist regime in Italy. Only two of the new nations formed after 1918–19, Finland and Czechoslovakia, had remained democratic through the post-war years of crisis. All the others—the Austrian Republic, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia (as of 1929 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), Poland and the Baltic states—had sooner or later all become authoritarian regimes. Even states that had existed prior to 1918, including Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Portugal and Spain were subjugated to “authoritarian transformation.”13 Hitler and National Socialism benefited from this general development. The regime they created, so it seemed at least, was part of the mainstream of the epoch.

  Foreign Minister von Neurath articulated his ministry’s future foreign policy for the first time at a cabinet meeting on 7 April 1933. The presentation was based on a lengthy memorandum which Bülow had produced in March. The primary goal was the complete eradication of the Treaty of Versailles, and the plan was to proceed in stages. First, Germany had to focus on rearming itself and regaining its economic strength, all the while taking care not to provoke a pre-emptive strike by France or Poland. The second phase aimed at “territorial revisions of borders,” with the main aim being the redrawing of Germany’s eastern border so as to regain the territory ceded to Poland in 1919. Further goals were pushing back the northern border in Schleswig and regaining the German-speaking parts of Belgium. Later aims included retaking Alsace-Lorraine, regaining Germany’s former colonies or acquiring new ones, and merging with Austria. An understanding between Germany and France, Neurath said, was “as good as impossible,” while an understanding with Poland was “neither feasible nor desirable,” which meant that for the time being Germany had to stay on good terms with Russia. Moreover, Germany should pursue friendly relations with Britain and “the closest possible cooperation” with Italy and “wherever there are mutual interests.” Neurath concluded that foreign conflicts had to be avoided “until we have completely regained our strength.”14 This long-term strategy developed by the top diplomats at the Foreign Ministry continued in the tradition of German imperialism—although, as soon became clear, it only partly conformed to Hitler’s own ideas.

  The Foreign Ministry, the Reichswehr and Hitler also agreed that Germany’s accelerated rearmament had to be disguised and that foreign nations had to be deceived about the true intentions of German policy by demonstrative gestures of peace. That was the goal of Hitler’s first major foreign-policy speech to the Reichstag on 17 May 1933. In it, he emphasised Germany’s demands for equal status but rejected any hint of war or force:

  No new European war would be able to replace the unsatisfactory conditions of today with anything better. On the contrary, neither politically nor economically could the use of violence call forth a better situation than the one we have now…It is the profound wish of the national government of the German Reich to work honestly and actively to prevent any non-peaceful developments.

  Hitler also declared his respect for the national rights of other people, claiming that the idea of “Germanification” was alien to the National Socialists. This was an out-and-out lie. In his speech of 3 February to the German generals, he himself had called for the “ruthless Germanification” of the territories to be conquered in eastern Europe. Hitler also spoke with a forked tongue when he signalled German willingness to disarm during the very phase when the country was rearming itself to the teeth. Moreover, Hitler’s assurances of his peaceful intentions always contained the calculated, implicit threat that Germany might withdraw from the Geneva Disarmament Conference and quit the League of Nations, should the country continue to be denied equal status.15

  Hitler’s “peace speech” hit its mark. In terms of foreign policy Hitler played the role of the moderate, conciliatory politician so convincingly that even the SPD Reichstag faction, decimated though it was by oppression, voted for the government’s declaration. “Even our bitter enemy Adolf Hitler seemed moved for a moment,” recalled SPD deputy Wilhelm Hoegner. “He stood up and applauded us.”16 The nationalist Elisabeth Gebensleben’s admiration for Hitler knew no bounds after the speech. “This man is so excellent he could become the leader [Führer] of the world,” she wrote to her daughter in Utrecht. “I’m proud again to be German, boundlessly proud.” Her daughter wrote back that Dutch newspapers had been full of approval of Hitler’s speech, adding that it “made up for much of the sympathy Germany had lost abroad in recent years.”17

  Indeed, the foreign reception of the speech was overwhelmingly positive. In London The Times wrote that for the first time the world had seen Hitler the statesman.18 Count Harry Kessler, who himself found the speech “surprisingly moderate,” reported on 18 May from Paris that it had put the French press in a bind. “They have to admit that there is nothing objectionable in it,” he wrote.19 By contrast, Thomas Mann saw through the charade with unusual penetrating vision. “Hitler’s speech in the Reichstag a complete pacific retreat—ridiculous,” he remarked succinctly and correctly.20

  At the Geneva disarmament negotiations, which resumed in February 1933, German and French interests collided head-on. The British government tried to mediate but hesitated, in deference to French demands for security, to give Germany full equality in terms of arming itself. By May, Blomberg and Neurath were determined to scupper the conference. Hitler, however, who was fully occupied with pushing forward his campaign to Nazify Germany and had no interest in foreign-policy disputes for the moment, reacted with greater tactical flexibility. He had the diplomat Rudolf Nadolny instruct the German delegation not to reject all offers of mediation on principle. While he was uninterested in a breakthrough in Geneva, Hitler wanted to avoid creating the impression that Germany was trying to sabotage the proceedings. Instead the blame was to fall on the other side. As Hitler’s representative, Goebbels travelled to Geneva in September to take part in the annual meeting of the League of Nations as part of the German delegation. “Depressing” was his verdict. “An assemblage of the dead. Parliamentarianism of nations.”21 That October, when British Foreign Minister John Simon presented a revised disarmament plan that included a four-year trial period for Germany, in which German arms would have been internationally monitored, he gave
the German delegation the pretext it wanted to abruptly quit the conference.22

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  On 13 October, Hitler informed his cabinet about his decision to “break up the conference” and announce Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations the following day. This step was to be supported by a re-election of the Reichstag, which had only been in office since 5 March. This would give the German people, Hitler argued, the chance “to identify itself through a plebiscite with the peace policies of the Reich government.” In turn, the world could no longer “accuse Germany of aggressive politics.” In the face of possible League of Nations sanctions, the main thing was “to keep our nerve and stay true to our principles.”23

  As Goebbels noted in his diary, Hitler “struggled long and hard with himself” before reaching this decision, since quitting the League of Nations was not without risk.24 German rearmament was still in its early stages, and the Reich would hardly have been prepared for a military confrontation. Sanctions could also do real harm to the process of German economic recovery. At the very least, Germany faced the danger of diplomatic isolation. “Our departure from the community of nations that had been created with great difficulty over fifteen years is of massive import, the significance of which we cannot anticipate today,” wrote Erich Ebermayer in Leipzig.25 Kessler spoke of the “most portentous European event since the occupation of the Ruhr,” adding that it “could within a short time lead to a blockade of Germany or perhaps even war.”26

  On the evening of 14 October, Hitler turned to the world in a radio address in which he used for the first time the double strategy that would be instrumental in a series of foreign-policy coups. On the one hand, he announced irrevocable decisions without regard for diplomatic niceties while, on the other hand, he deflected potential consequences with nebulous rhetoric, conciliatory gestures and seductive offers. “Both victors and vanquished,” Hitler said, “will have to find their way back into the community of mutual understanding and trust.” He particularly appealed to Germany’s “perennial but venerable adversary,” France. “It would be a huge event for all of humanity if these two people were able to ban violence once and for all from their mutual existence,” Hitler intoned.27 Goebbels was particularly enthused about this passage from Hitler’s speech: “A hand extended to France. Really powerful. Well, he can do it like no one else.”28 Goebbels was right. In terms of lying and dissembling, no other European politician was a match for Hitler.

  By 17 October, Hitler could reassure his cabinet: “Neither have threatening steps been taken against Germany not are they to be expected…The critical moment seems to have passed. The excitement will probably calm down shortly.”29 Goebbels, too, was relieved: “World echo fabulous. Better than I thought. The others are already looking for ways out. We have the upper hand again. Hitler’s coup was daring but correct.”30 On 18 October, Hitler gave a lengthy interview to the correspondent of the Daily Mail, George Ward Price, in which he sought to dispel the worries of the British government and populace about Germany going it alone in foreign policy. Hitler stressed how happy he would be if Germany and Britain, which he characterised as related nations, rediscovered their former friendship. He also emphasised his desire for an honest agreement with France and denied planning war against Poland. He did not rule out Germany rejoining the League of Nations, but only on the condition that it was recognised as a full equal. He also promised that Germany would honour all its agreements and treaties: “What we have signed up to we will fulfil to the best of our abilities.”31

  On 24 October, Hitler opened the campaign for the Reichstag election and the referendum on his foreign policy with a speech in Berlin’s Sportpalast. With great pathos, he announced that he would “rather die” than sign anything he was convinced was not in the interest of the German people. “If I ever lose my way in this regard or if the German people should come to believe that it cannot stand behind my actions, it can have me executed,” Hitler exclaimed. “I will stand calm and still.”32 During the days that followed, he flew from city to city—Hanover, Cologne, Stuttgart, Frankfurt am Main, Weimar, Breslau, Elbing and Kiel—as he had during the hotly contested elections of 1932. On his approach to Kiel on 6 November, Captain Hans Baur briefly lost his orientation, and Hitler’s plane only just reached Travemünde airport.33

  On 8 and 9 November, Hitler interrupted his election tour to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the 1923 putsch in Munich. On the evening of 8 November, he spoke in the Bürgerbräukeller, the spot where he had proclaimed a “national revolution” a decade earlier. Back then, he said, he had not acted rashly, but rather “on behalf of a higher power.” It was down to the “wisdom of Providence” that the putsch had not succeeded, since the time had not been ripe. Nonetheless, it was then that the young National Socialist movement had gained the “heroism” that had led to the successful “rebellion” of 1933.34 At noon on 9 November, a parade of the “old fighters” from the beer hall to the Feldherrnhalle underscored the mythic reinterpretation of the events of 1923. The ceremony would be repeated every year and became a fixed component of the Nazi holiday calendar.

  “Hitler looked very pale,” Goebbels noted after seeing his performance at the ceremony at the Feldherrnhalle.35 What the chancellor had put himself through in the preceding weeks would have exhausted even a man of the strongest physical constitution. On 10 November, the day after the Munich festivities, he appeared before workers in the Berlin factory district of Siemensstadt, with Goebbels producing the accompanying radio report as he had in March. Hitler cleverly adapted to his audience by presenting a home-made legend about his childhood and passing himself off as a man of proletarian origins and sentiment. “In my youth, I was a worker like you,” he told his audience. “I worked my way up by working hard, learning and, I can also say, by going hungry.” He went on to brag about the government’s initial successes in combating unemployment and reiterated his desire for peace: “I should not be accused of being insane enough to want war.”36

  It seems that the role of peace-loving labour leader allowed Hitler to score some points. Goebbels, in any case, wrote of the audience’s reaction: “Great celebrations. Only workers. A year ago they would have struck us dead. The boss in his best form. Huge success. Hard to get out of the hall.”37 Victor Klemperer, who listened to the speech on the radio, had an entirely different reaction: “A largely hoarse, overly shouted, excitable voice, long passages in the self-pitying tone of a preaching sectarian…disordered but passionate. Every sentence was a lie, but I almost think an unconscious lie. The man is a narrow-minded fanatic. And he’s learned nothing.”38 As accurate as Klemperer’s assessment might have been, the fact that Hitler was an arriviste autodidact led even an educated and intelligent person like the Dresden professor to underestimate him. The same was doubly true of Count Harry Kessler, who noted in his diary in mid-October that Hitler was “ultimately nothing more than a hysterical, half-educated house painter, whose big mouth has earned him a position for which he is not qualified.”39

  On 12 November, 45 million Germans had their say on the question: “Do you, German man and German woman, approve of this policy of your Reich government and are you prepared to declare it to be your own view and your own will to solemnly profess your belief in it?” A total of 40.5 million (95.1 per cent) voted yes, 2.1 million (4.9 per cent) voted no, and 0.75 per cent of the ballots were declared invalid. In the Reichstag elections, the Nazi Party list received 39.6 million (92.2 per cent) valid and 3.4 million invalid votes.40 The Nazi leadership celebrated this as a great triumph. “Moved, Hitler put his hands on my shoulders,” noted Goebbels, who himself took most of the credit for the result. “It has been achieved. The German people are unified. Now we can confront the world.”41 Electoral approval may have been higher than expected, but the picture of a single unified people was propaganda. Klemperer, who had twice voted no, in so far as his non-Jewish wife turned in two empty ballots, concluded: “That was almost an act of bravery since the entir
e world expected that the ballots would not be secret.”42

  Indeed, there were so many irregularities in the election that the result can only be seen as a partially accurate reflection of the prevailing mood.43 On the other hand, there is no denying that the vast majority of Germans willingly gave the Hitler regime their approval. In the estimation of the Swiss envoy in Berlin, Paul Dinichert, the broad masses of Germans voted yes to the question “because they believed that they had to defend ‘German honour,’ saw inequalities in disarmament as intolerable and never had much affection for the League of Nations, and also because the vast majority pins its hopes for a better future on Hitler, whom they regard as their saviour from political, social and economic misery.”44 Even the observers working for the SPD leadership in exile could not deny that “the mood of patriotism” had gained “the upper hand” among blue-collar workers.45 Within Catholic and Social Democratic milieus, too, which had resisted National Socialism prior to 1933, Hitler’s standing had demonstrably improved.

  Within the cabinet, Papen took on the task of expressing positively Byzantine thanks to Hitler on behalf of the conservative ministers: “Everyone was completely bowled over by the unique, overwhelming expression of faith such as no nation ever before had given to its leader.” In just nine months, Papen added, Hitler’s “genius” had succeeded in converting “an internally divided people into a Reich unified by its hopes for and belief in the future.”46 What the vice-chancellor must have repressed at this point was his own dramatic loss of political influence, which meant that he could no longer serve as a counterweight to the Nazi leader and his lust for power. The fact that after Papen’s encomium, the ministers all rose from their seats to honour the chancellor spoke louder than any words at how completely Hitler now dominated the cabinet. And in foreign-policy matters, too, he began increasingly to take the lead.