An incident recorded by Fritz Wiedemann illustrates these pseudo-religious components of the admiration for Hitler. During a visit to Hamburg, the crowd forced its way through the military escort, and one man succeeded in grasping Hitler’s hand. “He began dancing around as if mad and crying over and over, ‘I touched his hand, I touched his hand,’ ” recalled Wiedemann. “If the man had declared that he had been lame and could now walk again, I would not have been surprised. The crowd would have definitely believed it.”27 William Shirer witnessed similar scenes of pseudo-religious ecstasy at the Nuremberg Party Conference in 1934, when Hitler appeared for a moment on the balcony of his hotel room above a thousand-strong crowd, consisting largely of women. “They reminded me of the crazed expressions I saw once in the back country of Louisiana on the faces of some Holy Rollers who were about to hit the trail,” wrote Shirer. “They looked up at him as if he were a messiah, their faces transformed into something positively inhuman.”28
There was no way such excessive and continual hero worship could fail to affect Hitler’s self-image. “Only one German has ever been celebrated in this way—Luther!” he called out triumphantly to his entourage in the autumn of 1934, when his motorcade from Weimar to Nuremberg had trouble making its way through the masses of his admirers.29 The dictator visibly enjoyed being the centre of such unusual public appreciation. The awkwardness he had displayed on public occasions at the start of his chancellorship evaporated, and he became increasingly confident, his sense of self-importance growing as he was borne on wave upon wave of approval. Before long, he was addicted to the thrill of popular admiration. It reinforced Hitler’s belief that he had been chosen by Providence to carry out a historic mission.
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Pro-Hitler euphoria was by no means restricted to middle-class circles. It also increasingly spread to the working classes. Key to this was the regime’s success in fighting unemployment. Economic developments from 1933 were referred to as an economic miracle, and in fact the number of jobless in Germany declined far more quickly than in other industrialised nations at the time. By 1936, primarily thanks to accelerated rearmament, Germany had practically achieved full employment. The rapid economic recovery had been financed by massive deficit spending, the costs of which would only become apparent later.30 But what mattered most to workers was that a feeling of social security had been restored after the traumatic years of the Depression. As an observer for the SPD in exile in Rhineland-Westphalia reported in March 1935: “Today, having been given jobs in the arms industry, people who were to the left of us and were even Communists, defend the system, saying, ‘I don’t care about the whys and wherefores. I’ve got work. That’s something the others were never able to take care of.’ ”31 Another such report from February 1936 quotes workers who used to be members of the SPD and of the Reich Banner: “You people always made socialist speeches, but the Nazis have given us jobs…I don’t care whether I make grenades or build the autobahn. I just want to work. Why did you not take job creation seriously?”32
Hitler also increased his popularity among the working classes by taking nearly every opportunity to excoriate the lack of social respect for physical labour. “Honour labour and respect the worker!” he proclaimed at the main 1 May event in Berlin in 1933. Mental and physical labourers, he said, should never be pitted against one another: “That’s why we will root out the conceit that causes some individuals to look down on their comrades who ‘only’ work with a lathe, a machine or a plough.”33 Hitler’s message was that greater appreciation for physical labour would raise the social prestige of workers and break down stubborn social prejudices in society. Hitler’s fondness for styling himself as a “labourer” was part of his campaign to court the working classes and win them over for his regime.
Observers from the SPD in exile had no choice but to acknowledge the success of this strategy. “Major segments of the working classes have lapsed into unquestioning deification of Hitler,” one report from June/July 1934 noted ruefully. Workers were still “greatly obsessed with Hitlerism,” a report from February 1935 read, and three months later another observer concluded that “those workers who were previously indifferent are today the most submissive followers of the system and the most fervent believers in the cult of Hitler.”34 These reports are all the more credible because they were made by opponents and not adherents of the regime. Thus it was not merely wishful thinking when Goebbels repeatedly noted in his diary that workers were the “most loyal” supporters of National Socialism.35 The bloody purge of the SA in late June 1934 did nothing to diminish Hitler’s popularity among the working classes. On the contrary, many workers approved of Hitler’s “energetic” action. As one SPD report noted, “Hitler is a fellow who does nothing by half measures” was a widely held view.36
Nonetheless, the huge popularity Hitler enjoyed did not spill over to his party. With the sacrosanct Führer increasingly considered beyond banal everyday reality, criticism of aspects of the regime was concentrated on his subordinates. This mechanism became particularly apparent in the first half of 1934, a period when the public mood worsened. “Generally speaking, Adolf Hitler is exempt from criticism,” an SPD report from Berlin concluded. “He is credited with having good intentions, and people do not think he can do anything about the corruption of his subordinates.” The sentiment which one voter had scrawled upon an election ballot, “Yes to Adolf Hitler, but a thousandfold no to the brown bigwigs,”37 was widespread. Hitler benefited from comparisons with many party functionaries who flaunted their newly won power and were easily corruptible. In contrast the Führer depicted himself as a “simple man of the people,” someone with few personal needs who placed himself entirely at the service of the nation. “I am probably the only statesman in the world who does not have a bank account,” he boasted in late March 1936 in a speech to the workers at the Krupp factory in Essen. “I have no stocks or shares in any company. I don’t draw any dividends.”38 Very few people realised that the official image of Hitler’s modest lifestyle had nothing to do with reality. Moreover, the mythology of the Führer served a compensatory function; it blunted dissatisfaction over the problems and shortcomings of the Third Reich by blaming them solely on Hitler’s subordinates. If Hitler were aware of the problems, popular opinion ran, he would doubtless make sure they were alleviated.39 “If only the Führer knew” already established itself as a figure of speech in the early years of the regime.40
Hitler was well aware of the growing gap between his own beatified status and the negative image of Nazi Party functionaries. In a speech to his political directors at the Nuremberg party rally in 1935, he lashed out at all those “who would distinguish between the Führer and his followers…who would say yes to the Führer but question the necessity of the party.” Hitler told his audience: “For me, you are the political officers of the German nation and you are indivisible from me come what may.”41 But such assurances did nothing to change the fact that Hitler’s popularity was far greater than the party’s, and indeed to an extent came at the expense of the latter. Whereas the Führer received credit for all the regime’s achievements, disgruntlement was aimed exclusively at the “little Hitlers,” the Nazi Party’s local leadership.
Hitler’s reputation was based on Germany’s unexpectedly rapid economic recovery and his spectacular foreign-policy triumphs. The Saar region referendum of January 1935 and the reintroduction of compulsory military service two months later generated enthusiasm far beyond National Socialist circles. “Hitler is a guy who does not take any guff, who has backbone and who does what he thinks is right and necessary,” read one SPD-in-exile report.42 Nazi propaganda gleefully seized and expanded upon such sentiments. On the occasion of his forty-sixth birthday in 1935, the Nazi press spokesman, Otto Dietrich, celebrated Hitler as the “most supreme leader,” who had secured Germany’s ability to defend itself with his “incomparable decisiveness.” Goebbels added: “The entire people loves him, because it feels safe in his hands
like a child in the arms of its mother…Just as we do, who are gathered close by him, so the last man in the farthest village says in this hour: ‘What he was, he is, and what he is, he should remain: our Hitler.’ ”43
But in the autumn of 1935, discontent over shortages of goods and inflation were once again growing. An SPD report from Saxony read: “The power of the cult of Hitler is no longer unbroken. Doubts are beginning to gnaw at the Hitler myth.” Another observer in Westphalia reported: “His star is beginning to fade.”44 When he tried to alert Hitler to the public unease, Fritz Wiedemann received a blunt rebuke. “The mood among the people is not bad—it is good,” Hitler scolded him. “I know better…Spare me such things in future.”45 Yet in truth, the dictator, who had a fine instinct for changes in the public mood, was worried himself. As we have seen, the remilitarisation of the Rhineland in March 1936 served in part to distract from domestic difficulties. Once initial fears of a military response by the Western powers proved unfounded, this risky operation unleashed a new wave of enthusiasm for Hitler, which was reflected in the results of the popular referendum of 29 March 1936. “Again and again, Hitler seems like a man of great character,” reported observers for the SPD in exile. “Again and again, people look up and admire the man credited with the monstrous achievements of National Socialist power and organisation.”46
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“He is an idol for every one of us,” Goebbels noted in his diary in early October 1936, after Hitler had made another triumphant appearance at the harvest festival on Bückeberg Mountain.47 By then the mythic status of the Führer was well established. Hitler represented the strongest point of connection between the government and the people, and those who staged the Hitler cult did everything to celebrate and deify this supposed bringer of light. The National Socialist calendar of holidays, patterned after the Christian one, offered them plenty of opportunities. It kicked off on 30 January, the anniversary of the Nazi “seizure of power.” On 24 February, Hitler commemorated the proclamation of the party programme in 1920 with the old guard in Munich’s Hofbräuhaus. On 16 March, the Heroes’ Memorial Day—formerly the People’s Day of Mourning—featured a ceremonial event in the Reichstag followed by a military parade. April the 20th was the Führer’s birthday. The Day of National Labour—1 May—was staged as a celebration of the ethnic-popular community. It was followed by Mother’s Day on the second Sunday in May, the summer solstice on 21 June and the harvest festival, the “day to honour our farmers,” at Bückeberg Mountain near the town of Hameln in early October. The cycle of holidays ended on 9 November with the march of the “old fighters” from the Bürgerbräukeller to the Feldherrnhalle, where a commemorative ceremony was held for the “fallen warriors of the movement.”48
But the undisputed high point of the National Socialist calendar was the Nuremberg party rally in early September. Hundreds of thousands of functionaries, SA, SS and Labour Service men, Hitler Youth and League of German Girls members gathered each year in the ancient city of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation for the party’s “general roll call.” This painstakingly organised series of events bore hardly any resemblance to a traditional party conference. The rallies were not held to discuss controversial issues—which did not exist anyway in a party ruled by an infallible leader—but rather to glorify the regime and, in particular, the man who headed it. Contemporaries saw the rallies as “the epitome of the Third Reich’s glamour and power.”49 All means available were employed here to visually represent the movement’s capacity for mobilisation, dynamics and solidarity.
The Nazis had initially staged their 1927 and 1929 party rallies in Nuremberg, although the city fathers had not been particularly keen to host the event. For Hitler, the location offered the chance to portray himself as the reviver of the old German Empire in front of an appropriately Romantic, medieval backdrop. From 1930 to 1932, with the Nazis battling for power, no rallies were held, and the decision to revive the spectacle after Hitler became chancellor was taken relatively late. “Nuremberg rally decided,” noted Goebbels in late July 1933. “It will be really big.”50 Much of the four-day celebration seemed a bit improvised—not surprisingly given the lack of preparation time. SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm had a major place at Hitler’s side and accompanied him step for step at the ceremony honouring the dead in Luitpoldhain Park. The next year, after Röhm and his followers had been liquidated, the ceremony changed. The SA no longer enjoyed a central role. Along with the Labour Service, the Reichswehr took part in the rally for the first time, underscoring its status, guaranteed by Hitler, as “the nation’s sole bearer of arms.”51
With the 1934 Nuremberg rally, the event took on its permanent form, except for a few minor amendments made in the following years. The duration was extended from four to first seven and then eight days, and each day had a specific theme. The course of events was by now “so well rehearsed that it proceeds like military mobilisation,” Hess reported about the spectacle in 1937.52 It began with Hitler’s arrival in the city, either by specially chartered train or plane, and the trip to his hotel, the Deutscher Hof. William Shirer, who attended the 1934 rally, was initially unimpressed, writing: “He fumbled his cap with his left hand as he stood in his car acknowledging the delirious welcome with somewhat feeble salutes from his right arm.”53 In the afternoon, Hitler was received by Nuremberg’s mayor, Willy Liebel, in the main town hall ballroom. In 1938, this ceremony had a special note in the form of insignia and jewellery from the Holy Roman Empire that had been brought from Vienna to Nuremberg after the Anschluss.54 The first day of the rally concluded with a performance of Wagner’s Meistersinger von Nürnberg, usually conducted by the director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler. “A fantastic cast and a great performance,” noted Goebbels in September 1938. “Furtwängler is a musical genius. I sat right behind him and could observe him closely. What a man. The Führer, too, was boundless in his enthusiasm.”55
On the morning of the second day, from the balcony of the Deutscher Hof, which was constantly surrounded by curiosity-seekers, the Nazi leader inspected the Hitler Youth as they marched by with their flags. After that the party congress was opened in the Luitpoldhalle. Hitler and his vassals marched into the auditorium to the strains of the “Badenweiler March,” a Bavarian military march, composed in honour of Germany’s first victory over France in the First World War. One contemporary described the scene as follows: “The hall is decked out in white satin curtains, with the places for the guests of honour, the diplomatic corps, the orchestra and the choir decorated in deep red. A giant swastika surrounded by gold oak clusters on a black background dominates the space.”56 To music by Wagner, hundreds of standards, the “field banners of the movement,” were brought into the hall, first and foremost the “blood banner” from the failed November putsch. For Shirer, the whole ceremony had “something of the mysticism and religious fervor of an Easter or Christmas mass in a great Gothic cathedral.” After opening remarks by Rudolf Hess, who tried to outdo himself year after year in his hymns of praise for Hitler, and the subsequent ceremony in memory of the movement’s “blood witnesses,” Adolf Wagner—the Gauleiter of Munich-Upper Bavaria—read out the “Führer’s proclamation.” As Shirer noted, “Curiously, [he] has a voice and a manner of speaking so like Hitler’s that some of the correspondents who were listening back at the hotel thought it was Hitler.”57 The evening featured a “culture conference” in the opera house, which was introduced by Alfred Rosenberg and concluded with a speech by Hitler. As of 1937, this ceremony included the presentation of a “National Prize for Art and Science,” the Nazi Party’s answer to the embarrassing awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the writer Carl von Ossietzky, who was imprisoned in Esterwegen concentration camp.58
The third day began with a march of Labour Service men to the Zeppelin Field. “Standing there in the early-morning sunlight which sparkled on their shiny spades, 50,000 of them, with the first thousand bared above the waist, suddenly made the
German spectators go mad with joy when, without warning, they broke into a perfect goose-step,” wrote Shirer, adding: “The goose-step has always seemed to me to be an outlandish exhibition of the human being in his most undignified and stupid state, but I felt for the first time this morning what an inner chord it strikes in the strange soul of the German people.”59 The high point of this event was a call-and-response from the choir, which ended with: “Let the work of our hands succeed / For every cut of the spade we take / Shall be a prayer for Germany.”60 After being addressed by Reich Labour Leader Konstantin Hierl and Hitler, the columns of workers marched through the city past the Deutscher Hof. The ceremony demanded stamina of both Hitler and the members of his entourage. “Four hours of marching,” Goebbels carped. “The sun beating down. Barely endurable.”61 In 1937, with the introduction of a “Day of Community,” the rhythm of marches and roll calls was interrupted by young women and men entertaining spectators at the Zeppelin Field with dances and athletic performances. In the evening, the Nazi political leaders marched by torchlight past the Deutscher Hof. “Watched from the Führer’s balcony,” Goebbels gushed. “A wonderful, colourful spectacle. All the Gaue led by the old Gauleiter.”62
The fifth day commenced with special meetings of the party congress. The main attraction was the march of the political directors onto the Zeppelin Field. Since 1936, this was held in the evening, and Albert Speer had come up with a special idea. The moment that Hitler’s arrival was announced, 130 spotlights positioned around the field were switched on. The beams of light reached up to eight kilometres into the night sky. “Now, in a heartbeat, the spotlights tear through the black sky beyond the ramparts,” an official report on the rally excitedly described the spectacle. “Blue cords of light ascend to the heights. They make their way together, join with one another and form a dome of fluid light above the people’s heads.”63
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