10
The ‘Fairy Tale’
For Hitler and the NSDAP, his appointment as chancellor was a moment of pure euphoria. In the late morning of 30 January 1933, Hitler was received by Hindenburg. Shortly after, he held a victory party in the Kaiserhof Hotel. In the course of the day, Hitler issued a proclamation calling upon the party to stand by him as he tackled the ‘massive’ task ahead.1 In the late afternoon, he convened his first cabinet meeting. The day concluded with a torchlight parade by the SA through Berlin, watched by Hitler and Hindenburg from separate windows in the Chancellery. These celebrations were broadcast by all German radio stations, with one significant exception; of this, more presently. ‘Am I dreaming or am I awake?’ Hess wrote to his wife the next day, describing how he was sitting in the office of the new chancellor in the Imperial Chancellery on the Wilhelmsplatz, while ministerial bureaucrats approached silently on plush carpets to bring documents to Hitler. Outside, the crowd sang the national anthem and shouted ‘heil’. Hess could hardly believe that ‘what [he] had not thought possible to the last moment’ was now ‘reality’.2 The Gauleiter of Swabia, Karl Wahl, recalled how he was overcome by tears of emotion.3 ‘Hitler is chancellor,’ Goebbels wrote in his diary, ‘it is like a fairy tale.’4
Over the coming years, this sense of enchantment spread to what was probably the majority of the German population.5 The process of electoral seduction, which had never claimed more than 37 per cent of the votes in free and fair contests, now continued with all the resources of the state at Hitler’s disposal. In an incessant round of speeches, parades, congresses and other events, he relentlessly wooed the German people, and they–by and large–submitted to his advances. The regime’s claim that Germany had united solidly behind the ‘Führer’ was exaggerated, but essentially true.6
For many others, 30 January 1933 was the beginning of a nightmare. They wept tears of a different sort at Hitler’s victory. Within hours, SA squads fanned out across the country to arrest and beat leftists, Jews and, to a lesser extent, Catholics and conservatives as well. Over the next weeks and months, a brutal, and increasingly efficient, terror apparatus sprang into action. Thousands were incarcerated in basements and warehouses and often subject to severe mistreatment. There were many murders. Organized labour was crushed; the trade unions soon abolished. Much of the repression was conducted through the politicized regular court system rather than the extrajudicial security apparatus.7 Violence was thus at the heart of the Nazi regime from the very beginning.8 To be sure, there was widespread complicity and cooperation with the regime, with denunciations as important as surveillance.9 Despite all the consensus, however, the Third Reich would not have functioned without coercion. Hitler had taken office legally enough, but he was to consolidate and retain power illegally.
The challenge facing Hitler at the start of his rule was massive, both at home and abroad. The chancellorship did not give him absolute power, only the power to achieve that power. For now, he was still ‘boxed in’ by the old elites. The old civil service was still fundamentally sceptical.10 His ‘seizure of power’ could only take place in stages.11 In the short term, Hitler feared a military-backed conservative coup.12 He also worried about the threat of a communist revolt, or at least of a general strike.13 If he got through the first few weeks, Hitler would need to assert his control within the government, and to co-opt, sideline or eliminate both the Centre Party and his conservative coalition partners. More generally, Hitler would have to win over and mobilize major institutions and sectors such as the army and industry. He also needed to dismantle German federalism, especially in Bavaria, whose state radio had refused to broadcast the celebrations on 30 January 1933. Abroad, his immediate worry was to keep ‘international Jewry’ at bay and to fend off the threat of a preventive war waged by France and Poland before Germany was ready.
In the medium term, Hitler wanted to prepare the Reich for armed conflict, both physically and mentally.14 On Hitler’s reckoning, this required the elimination of the Jews from German national life, the removal of all other supposedly harmful elements, the encouragement of allegedly positive racial strands within the German people, and the ‘gathering’ of as many racially sound Germans into the new Reich as possible. Hitler wanted to begin by restoring Germany’s position in Europe and establish strong alliances, not only with sympathetic powers such as the Italy of Mussolini–his envoy Renzetti was summoned to the Chancellery on 30 January to witness the torchlight parade at Hitler’s side–but especially with Britain. He also had his eye on the capture of Lebensraum in the east–that is, Russian lands beyond Poland–necessary in his view to enable Germany to survive any future blockade and to feed its surplus population.
The realization of these short- and medium-term aims required Hitler to lull his adversaries, at home and abroad, into a false sense of security. Often this took the form of deliberate deception. Hitler’s first speech to the Reichsrat immediately after taking power suggested quite disingenuously that he intended to maintain the federal structure and spirit in Germany. He also frequently made speeches proclaiming his pacifist intent, or reassured foreign diplomats and visitors in private conversation. Sometimes, Hitler ‘hid in plain sight’, revealing his ultimate plans without provoking a storm of concern. On other occasions, however, Hitler was entirely frank, as he needed to be if he hoped to win western support for, or at least acquiescence in, his plans for territorial expansion in the east. Besides, the undisciplined behaviour of the Nazi rank and file, as well as some leaders, was such that the fundamental nature of the regime, the true extent of its hostility to Jews and its aggressive foreign policy were constantly on view or even being blurted out. The overall result was to lend to Hitler’s intentions all the secrecy of a stage whisper, audible to everybody but the entirely or wilfully deaf (of which there proved to be many).
There was, in fact, nothing mysterious about Hitler’s long-term aim, which had been public knowledge since the 1920s. This was to make the Reich one of the great world powers, not necessarily the sole or dominant one. Here his point of reference was the British Empire and, especially, the United States. The capture of Lebensraum in the east was not conceived of as a final showdown with the Jews or Slavs, but rather as a necessary measure to gain the critical territorial mass and resources to balance Anglo-America. It would also provide the necessary space for the racial elevation of the Germans into a position of parity with the Anglo-Saxons. In short, after taking power, Hitler sought to implement the programme which he had set out in general terms in numerous writings and speeches over the previous fourteen years.
If the content and sequencing of these aims were clear in 1933, at least to Hitler himself, his timetable was not. He was clearly in a hurry to achieve his short-term objectives, but the schedule for his medium- to long-term plans varied considerably. Sometimes, Hitler seems to have envisaged that Germany would be ready for a major war within a decade. On other occasions, he seems to have had a much longer timeframe in mind. What is clear is that Hitler expected the complete racial transformation of the German people to take generations, with a completion date well after his own death. For that reason, he seems to have wanted to avoid a confrontation with the British Empire and the United States if at all possible, or at least until the homogeneity and mental strength of the German people were on a par with those of Anglo-America. In the end, of course, events took a different turn.
To the surprise of many, Hitler rose quickly to the challenge of government. Those who dealt with him during the first years of his chancellorship were impressed by his command of the issues. Hitler gripped the cabinet–which was full of experienced and hard-bitten rivals–from the start.15 He made no attempt to monopolize proceedings and with a few exceptions refrained from launching into the kind of lengthy tirades which he famously indulged in later. Likewise, the military were astonished by the speed with which this ex-soldier from the ranks asserted his superiority over them at their first encounter only days after the t
akeover of power.16 Photographs and footage from the time show a dapper man who appeared physically fit, trim and very much in charge. ‘The chief is performing here with unbelievable authority,’ Hess wrote to his wife the day after the appointment, ‘and [his new] punctuality’ was such that ‘I have even decided to buy myself a watch’, before adding: ‘A new time period and a new division of time has begun.’17
In office, Hitler kept formal hours, at least to begin with, and even when he began to revert to earlier patterns, his overall level of commitment did not change. The total amount of time that Hitler ‘worked’, organizing repression and mobilization at home and the planning of aggressive war abroad, was considerable. His legislative programme was massive, and ran to thirty-three volumes before the outbreak of war.18 Moreover, as we shall see, Hitler never really let go, even when he was supposedly relaxing on the Obersalzberg, watching films in his private cinema or being uplifted at Bayreuth. He worked so to speak ‘from home’,19 but he was still working. Hitler was therefore in no sense a ‘lazy’ chancellor.20
Hitler’s first moves were devoted to consolidating his grip on power in Germany. A few days after he was appointed chancellor, the ‘Decree for the Protection of the German People’ gave the government draconian powers to suppress the right to free assembly and political expression, at first used primarily against communists. The feared conservative coup and communist uprising never materialized; the only serious public protest was in the little Swabian town of Mössingen. Hitler increasingly wriggled out of the corset put in place by Papen. He could count on the collaboration of key figures in the army, especially the new Reichswehr minister, Werner von Blomberg, who supported his plans for total mobilization, and his head of the ministerial office, Walther von Reichenau,21 with whom he had already been in contact before the takeover of power. The new foreign minister, Konstantin von Neurath, was less pliable, but he too had met Hitler before 1933, and the two men saw eye to eye if not on the ultimate goal then at least on the first steps. President Hindenburg himself, widely expected to act as a powerful restraint on Hitler, became his greatest supporter. They differed on some important issues, but their relationship grew more and more cordial.22
The Führer’s next aim was to gain a working majority in the Reichstag. One method, which Hindenburg favoured, was to bring in the Centre Party. Hitler’s negotiations with their leader, Monsignor Kaas, did not win the Catholics over, but he did manage to pin the blame for the failure of the discussions, and thus for the dissolution of the Reichstag, on them.23 The other path was to win the Reichstag elections called on 1 February after the collapse of negotiations with the Centre Party; these were scheduled for early March. Hitler rallied the conservatives in the cabinet against the left by fighting the forthcoming election under the slogan ‘Attack against Marxism’.24 All this reassured President Hindenburg, from whom Hitler’s authority still derived.
Throughout February and early March 1933, Hitler’s principal domestic focus was on the Reichstag election. He now had the entire apparatus of central government at his disposal, including most public radio stations. The south German states of Bavaria and Württemberg were important exceptions. To Hitler’s fury, the broadcast of one of his speeches was interrupted in Stuttgart by saboteurs; a war of words with the Land government of Dr Bolz followed.25 In the rest of Germany, however, Hitler’s dominance of the airwaves was pretty much complete. His radio broadcast of 2 February 1933, approved by the cabinet, was entitled ‘Fourteen years of Marxism have ruined Germany’.26 Hitler’s fear of communism was real enough, but he hammed it up for electoral purposes. He did not want to ban the KPD immediately.27 Hitler even suggested deferring repressive legislation so as to avoid thereby ‘reducing’ the ‘communist threat’ in the ‘election campaign’.28 The subordinate relationship of communism to capitalism was emphasized again during the Reichstag election campaign. ‘Marxism,’ one Nazi poster headlined, ‘is the guardian angel of capitalism.’29
During the first weeks of his chancellorship Hitler evaluated every move in the light of its electoral implications and its potential impact on his political standing more generally. At a meeting of the ‘Committee on Economic Policy’ of the government, Hitler stressed that ‘decisions’ must be taken ‘with regard’ to their impact on the ‘coming election campaign’.30 For example, he supported a ‘raising of the tax on department stores’ as the ‘most popular form of taxation’, but suggested avoiding ‘all detail’ on the government’s economic programme ‘in electoral propaganda’. Hitler reminded the cabinet that the government needed 18 or 19 million votes. ‘An economic programme that will meet the approval of such a large group of voters,’ he remarked pointedly, ‘does not exist in the whole world.’31 Hitler was not always successful: his attempt to remove the charge for medications provoked such conservative hostility that he only managed to get it halved.32 Otherwise, Hitler took the view that there should be no major initiatives before the elections. ‘Reforms need time,’ he explained, and could only be ‘tackled once the people had decided for or against the government.’33 The six weeks following the takeover of power were thus characterized by the signalling of intent rather than concrete measures.
On 3 February, Hitler set out his strategic vision to the Reichswehr leadership at their request.34 He promised to crush ‘pacifism’, to strengthen the ‘will to resist’ and the ‘extermination of Marxism root and branch’. More importantly, he promised that he would make no attempt to amalgamate the army and the SA. Hitler also argued that unemployment could only be tackled and the German peasant could only be ‘saved’ through an active ‘settlement policy’, which required an expansion of Germany’s Lebensraum, which was ‘too small’. He considered an economic solution–‘the attainment of new export possibilities’–but favoured ‘the capture of new living space in the east and its ruthless Germanization’. One could only ‘Germanize’ territory, he insisted over and over, not the people living in it. These remarks were made in secret, but their principal content differed little from the thoughts Hitler had already elaborated in Mein Kampf and countless speeches before he took power. The timeline he had in mind was ‘six to eight years in order to completely exterminate Marxism’, after which ‘the army would be ready to pursue an active foreign policy’, namely ‘the expansion of the living space of the German people’, probably in the east. Significantly, Hitler expected that the following stage, the establishment of a ‘completely healthy state’, would take ‘a period of 50–60 years’,35 by which time he himself would be long dead.
In public, Hitler sought to conceal his intentions in foreign policy, at least until he was ready to throw off the mask. His main fear was a Franco-Polish preventive war, and perhaps also a Franco-Russian alliance. ‘The most dangerous time,’ he told the Reichswehr chiefs only a few days after the takeover of power, ‘is the period of the building-up of the Wehrmacht.’ ‘Then it will be clear,’ he continued, ‘whether France has statesmen.’ If she did, Hitler went on, then she ‘would not leave us time but fall on us, presumably with [her] eastern satellites’.36 Hitler sought to head off the danger through a series of interviews with British, American and Italian journalists. In them, he emphasized the threat from Bolshevism and Soviet Russia. Hitler denied giving inflammatory speeches, and on the same day he addressed the military leaders about his expansionist plans he told a group of Anglo-American journalists that ‘everyone who, like me, knows war, [also] knows what a cost it represents in resources’. Towards the end of February 1933, Hitler gave an interview to Louis Lochner of Associated Press in which he reassured the world that his proposed labour service was not a paramilitary force in disguise.37
Hitler’s domestic policy was primarily designed to provide the means to implement his foreign policy programme. He told the cabinet a few days after the Reichswehr meeting that ‘every publicly supported work-creation measure must be judged under the aspect of whether it is necessary’ in order to give the German people back the capacity to defen
d themselves. For the benefit of those who had not got this message, which Hitler was to repeat ad nauseam over the next weeks, months and years, ‘the chancellor underlined once again that the supreme principle over the next 4–5 years must be everything for the Wehrmacht’.38 On 20 February, Hitler told a group of specially selected businessmen, some of them leaders of German industry, that he planned to use the mandate he expected from the March election to end parliamentary democracy in Germany for good, and crush the left.39
The burning of the Reichstag building on the evening of 27 February came as a serious shock to Hitler, and to many ordinary Germans. A Dutch communist drifter, Marinus van der Lubbe, was arrested that same night. What exactly happened is still unclear, but there can be no doubt that, whatever the role of individual Nazis, Hitler himself neither ordered nor knew of the deed in advance. 40 He was completely taken by surprise and seems genuinely to have believed the communists to be responsible.41 Hitler responded with the draconian decree for the ‘protection of the people and state’. This abolished the rights of assembly, freedom of the press, and of expression as well as increasing police powers of surveillance. Significantly, the legislation also suspended the autonomy of the federated states if they failed to guarantee public order, and conferred upon Hitler, rather than on the president, the right to impose imperial commissars on them. The main target may have been the Communist Party, which was now subjected to even greater repression, but the secondary objective was clearly to facilitate an attack on German federalism. Hitler now had an instrument to tackle the Länder and an argument–their failure to deal with the Marxist threat–for doing so.
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