Hitler
Page 13
Only a few months later, the Munich NSDAP leadership renewed its initiative while Hitler was away on a lengthy stay in Berlin during June and July, where among other things he visited Class, in order to tap him for funds for the Völkischer Beobachter.33 They established contact with Otto Dickel, an Augsburg schoolmaster, who had founded yet another völkisch group, the Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft.34 After a successful speech by Dickel in Munich, on 10 July, they met with him and the Nuremberg DSP in Augsburg to explore the possibility of closer cooperation. Hitler, arriving straight from Berlin, turned up at the meeting unexpectedly trying to block the impending cooperation. However, despite his abrupt departure during the negotiations, he was unable to prevent the Munich delegation from agreeing to Dickel’s suggestion for loose cooperation in future. On the following day, Hitler announced that he was in fact resigning from the NSDAP.35
Hitler was afraid that cooperation with the DSP would mean the NSDAP giving up its programme and its identity as a ‘revolutionary-nationalist’ movement hostile to any form parliamentary activity, and that Dickel would take overall control, with the main focus of action shifting to Augsburg.36 This was a particularly sensitive point, as Hitler was strongly in favour of concentrating the Party’s activities in the Munich local branch, in other words the area over which he, as the leading propagandist and celebrated speaker, exercised total control. In short, he considered the identity of the NSDAP, which he had been largely responsible for constructing, to be in danger. Whereas hitherto, as the Party’s main agitator and policy maker, he had been able to do what he liked, he now feared being bound by an alien structure that he had had no say in shaping. He rebelled against this on the principle of ‘all or nothing’, deciding, more or less overnight, to alter his previous role in the Party. However, he did not simply seek the post of chairman, for in doing so he would have been simply integrating himself in a different form into structures that he did not control; instead, he went for unlimited, total leadership.37
His threat to abandon his work for the Party was thus not the result of carefully prepared tactical calculation, not merely the pretext or the occasion for what was actually a long-held ambition to secure a dictatorial form of leadership of the Party, but instead a spontaneous reaction that reflected his unstable character, prone as it was to fits of rage and intuitive ‘decisions’. For the cooperation with Dickel, which had been agreed behind his back and initiated against his objections, represented for him an intolerable loss of face; he was in danger of suffering a defeat that would destroy his self-image as the ‘drummer’ for the nationalist cause, admired by his supporters, that he had devoted most of the previous two years to creating. After threatening to resign in the spring he now had to go through with it if he was not to lose credibility. In order to prevent such potential defeats from happening in the future he had to demand a dictatorial form of leadership for himself. From his point of view this was not a triumphal take-over of power in the Party, but rather a difficult decision that had been forced on him by outside circumstances. Significantly, in Mein Kampf Hitler dismisses the dramatic disagreements of summer 1921 in a few sentences. He does not mention his resignation, but writes, in accordance with his dogmatic separation of propaganda and organization, that the time had come when, ‘after the slow visible success of propaganda, the organization [had to be] adapted and adjusted’ to it.38 Also, the summer crisis played no role in the ‘Party legend’ that he was to repeat in hundreds of speeches in the future.
After Hitler’s threat the Party leadership gave in. Drexler, who involved Eckart as mediator, sought to conciliate Hitler, who, however, imposed conditions on his return to the Party. He demanded the summoning of an extraordinary general meeting at which the following points were to be on the agenda: the resignation and re-election of the Party committee, which was required to elect him ‘No. I. Chairman with dictatorial powers’, so that he could immediately set up a three-man ‘Action Committee’ to carry out a ‘ruthless purge of the Party’. Secondly, Hitler demanded the ‘establishment of the irrevocable principle that the headquarters is and always will be in Munich’. The Party programme and the Party’s name should not be altered for an initial period of six years. There was to be no cooperation with the DSP; such groups would have to ‘join’ the Party. Negotiations with such groups would require his prior personal approval.39 The committee yielded to Hitler. It declared its willingness ‘in view of your tremendous knowledge, your services to the movement marked by rare self-sacrifice and carried out in an honorary capacity, your remarkable rhetorical talent’ to grant Hitler ‘dictatorial powers’.40
However, Hitler’s internal Party opponents did not remain inactive. They succeeded in excluding Hermann Esser, one of Hitler’s closest associates, from the Party and an anonymous pamphlet appeared in which Hitler was accused of having ‘brought disunity and division into our ranks at the behest of dubious men acting behind the scenes’.41 Drexler informed the police that a leaflet announcing a membership meeting on 26 July had not been authorized by the Party leadership, but had been issued by opponents of the Party in Hitler’s and Esser’s camp who were no longer members of the NSDAP. Drexler explained that there were ‘two factions in the Party, which are strongly opposed to one another’, namely ‘the Hitler one, which wants to achieve the Party’s goals in a revolutionary way, possibly using terror, violence and other means’, and the ‘Drexler line’, which wished to ‘achieve [its aims] in a legal (sic!), parliamentary way’. Later, Schüssler, the Party manager, appeared seeking authorization for a poster, which contained an invitation on behalf of the Party leadership to a membership meeting on 29 July. Schüssler remarked on Hitler’s opaque sources of finance and made negative comments about his ‘protection squad’.42
However, in the end the two rival factions managed to reach an accommodation. The membership meeting called by Hitler’s opposition group for 26 July was now used to prepare for what became a demonstration of Party unity three days later.43 At this meeting in the Hofbräuhaus on 29 July, Hitler was able to push through all his demands in front of 554 members of the Party. He had been correct in acting on the assumption that the vast majority of Party members regarded him as the leading figure in the NSDAP and as indispensable, above all because of his impact in the public arena. He had never striven to become Party chairman, indeed had even declined it in the past; but now, Hitler informed the meeting, he no longer felt able to resist the request of his loyal friend, Drexler.44 The new Party statutes, carried with only one vote against, consolidated the central role of the Party leader, who in future was no longer answerable to the Party committee but only to the membership meeting. Finally, Hitler was elected Party chairman and Drexler, as Hitler had proposed, elected honorary president for life.45
Esser was welcomed back into the Party and made propaganda chief. Schüssler lost his position as Party manager and was replaced by Hitler’s former sergeant-major, Max Amann. Christian Weber was given a post in the Party headquarters to support Amann in running the organization.46 A new larger Party headquarters was established in a former pub in the Corneliusstrasse; it replaced the room in the Sterneckerbräu pub which had been rented in 1920.47 Eckart, who had warned Hitler’s critics in the Völkischer Beobachter that no one could ‘serve a cause in a more selfless, devoted, and honest way than Hitler’ but also in no ‘more decisive and vigilant’48 a way, was appointed editor of the Völkischer Beobachter; Rosenberg became his deputy.49 Its financing, however, remained uncertain. In accordance with his maxim of concentrating on Munich, in July Hitler had refused a request by the Pan-Germans to extend the activities of the NSDAP into north Germany; as a result Class did not pursue further contact.50
Hitler’s seizure of power within the Party coincided with a significant development in Bavarian politics. The dissolution of the Einwohnerwehren at the behest of the Allies had heralded the demise of the Kahr government, for they had been its main basis of support and, with this defeat, the government suffered a serious
loss of prestige. Kahr’s attempts, immediately after the dissolution of the Einwohnerwehren, to try to create a substitute organization led by the governor of the Upper Palatinate and head of the Einwohnerwehr state office, Medical Councillor Otto Pittinger, proved only partially successful. For a number of paramilitary leagues declined to join the so-called Pittinger Organization or only did so with reservations. They included Bund Oberland, which had emerged from the Free Corps Oberland, the Reichsflagge, and the Verband der Vaterländischen Bezirksvereine Münchens [League of Munich Patriotic District Associations], which former Einwohnerwehr members had joined.51
Against this background of the increasing fragmentation of the paramilitary organizations in Bavaria, the Munich Reichswehr command began to show growing interest in the NSDAP’s Gymnastic and Sports section, the Party’s relatively small protection squad. It appeared suited to producing cadres for a new paramilitary league; assistance for this was to be provided by the illegal Organisation Consul led by Captain Ehrhardt. In August 1921, immediately after his seizure of power within the Party, Hitler made an agreement with Ehrhardt to proceed along these lines. As a result, Hitler and the NSDAP were now actively involved in creating a military reserve in Bavaria, giving the Party considerably more influence. It is highly probable that NSDAP member Ernst Röhm, the Reichswehr officer responsible for arming the paramilitary leagues, played an important role in arranging this agreement. Indeed, one can go a step further and wonder whether Hitler’s success in acquiring a dictatorial position within the Party in summer 1921 was assisted by the Reichswehr, which needed a Party chairman who would support its use of the Party for paramilitary purposes. In view of the lack of sources this must remain speculation. What is certain, however, is that the inclusion in the illegal rearmament programme of what would soon acquire the name Sturmabteilung (SA), which in November 1921 had a membership of around 300,52 represented a further increase in the Reichswehr’s support for the Party, but also a greater dependence on the military. The creation of his own paramilitary league, however, enabled Hitler to establish links with other paramilitary organizations, namely those that were opposed to Pittinger’s semi-state-run umbrella organization, which came into the open in July 1922, now calling itself ‘Bayern und Reich’. The constellation that was to lead to the Hitler putsch in November 1923 was already beginning to form.53
Heading for conflict with the Bavarian government
On 26 August 1921, Matthias Erzberger, who had signed the armistice on 11 November 1918 and, as a result, had become a target of criticism for the whole of the Right, was murdered. This act of violence and the subsequent refusal of Kahr’s government to apply the national state of emergency that had been declared by Reich President Ebert in the state of Bavaria (where a state of emergency had already been in operation for years), raised the temperature of what was already a tense political atmosphere in Munich still further.54 In addition, the population was becoming discontented about the growing inflation, which, in summer 1921 and not for the first time, led to protests against rising prices.55 Hitler immediately tried to portray the protests as the result of a ‘Jewish swindle’ and generally to pour oil onto the flames; Jewish ‘crooks’ and ‘profiteers’ were to blame for the ‘people’s starvation’.56
Kahr, who had failed to get his way in his conflict with the Reich, resigned in September as prime minister together with his whole cabinet; the government was taken over by the moderate conservative, Count Lerchenfeld, with a cabinet made up of members of the Bavarian People’s Party (BVP), the German Democratic Party (DDP), and the Bavarian Peasant League. The NSDAP could no longer rely on the political support of the government as it had done under Kahr: the Bavarian Middle Party (the Bavarian branch of the DNVP) had left the government; a critic of the NSDAP, the former state secretary, Xaver Schweyer, had become interior minister; the police president, Poehner, had resigned; and the Justice Ministry had been taken over by Lerchenfeld himself.57 As a result, Hitler decided to engage in a confrontation with Lerchenfeld; he sensed the opportunity of playing a leading role in the extreme right-wing movement, which was now acting increasingly independently, and began subjecting Lerchenfeld to a series of vicious attacks.58 When he also mounted a number of provocations with the aim of drawing attention to himself, the police and judiciary did not stand idly by.
On 14 September Hitler and his supporters attempted to break up a meeting of the Bavarian Peasant League, which the NSDAP regarded as a ‘separatist’ organization. In the course of the disorder provoked by the NSDAP in the Löwenbräukeller, the chairman of the Peasant League, Otto Ballerstedt and another representative of the League were injured and the police closed the meeting.59 On the following day, the police banned the Völkischer Beobachter for two weeks and, a week later, while in the Party’s headquarters, Hitler was taken into custody for a short time and his flat searched.60 After further disorder, unauthorized demonstrations, and violent clashes between Nazis and the police during October 1921, Hitler was ordered to attend police headquarters. He was accused of causing massive public disorder and, in the event of a repetition, threatened with deportation.61 Hitler, of course, claimed to have had nothing to do with these events and declared his willingness to do his utmost to prevent such things from happening in the future. In fact, on the following day, he did warn the SA at a meeting to exercise more discipline: ‘we mustn’t ruin things with the police’. But he obviously made this declaration in order to reassure the security forces.62 However, just over a week later, there was a further incident: on 4 November his SA beat up hecklers at a meeting in the Hofbräuhaus where he was speaking, an event that Hitler described in suitably dramatic terms as the SA’s ‘baptism of fire’.63
In November the Munich police produced a list of the numerous occasions on which, during the previous months, it had banned Nazi leaflets and posters.64 In January 1922 a Munich court sentenced Hitler to three months imprisonment for the attack on Ballerstedt and, during the summer, he spent five weeks in Munich-Stadelheim prison. Hitler never forgave his opponent for the humiliation of his imprisonment; on 30 June 1934, Ballerstedt was murdered near Dachau concentration camp. More than twenty years after his dispute with the leader of the Peasant League Hitler was still maintaining that he had been ‘his biggest opponent’ and had deployed a ‘diabolical sophistry’.65 Unlike his stay in Landsberg prison in 1924, Hitler seldom referred to his Munich prison sentence in later years.
After he had been sentenced, Interior Minister Schweyer contemplated Hitler’s deportation, but, following vigorous protests from the moderate Right, it did not happen.66 Hitler was not going to let the opportunity slip and, on 12 April, took two pages of the Völkischer Beobachter to respond to the plan to deport him. He wrote that he felt himself to be a German citizen, although ‘according to the letter of the current Jewish law [I am] in fact a “foreigner”’. This was because of ‘my blood link to our nation’, ‘my clan link to Bavaria’ (his birthplace, Braunau, belonged to Bavaria until 1816), as well as ‘above all the service that I performed for nearly six years in that grey uniform, which in the old days was honoured as the king’s uniform and seemed to me at any rate the noblest uniform a citizen can wear’. Hitler maintained that the case against him had only been brought to create an opportunity to deport him and went on to attack Lerchenfeld, whom in future he referred to ironically as ‘Herr Count’.
Only two weeks after Hitler’s sentence for his attack on Ballerstedt, the NSDAP held a general membership meeting in Munich from 29 to 31 January 1922, attended by around 1,500 people in the Hofbräuhaus. Hitler greeted delegations from, among other places, Hanover, Leipzig, Halle, Zwickau, Stuttgart, Mannheim, and Nuremberg as well as from a number of Bavarian local branches.67 According to figures that he announced at the meeting, at this point the Party had ‘35 well-organized local branches’.68 In fact there were fewer than twenty active ones. The numbers had stagnated following Hitler’s take-over of the Party in July 1921, reflecting Hitler’s basic princ
iple of concentrating on building up the Party in Munich.69 This was in fact where most of the members were registered. The number of members had doubled during the course of 1921 from 2,000 to 4,000.70
In an article published in the Völkischer Beobachter to coincide with the Party meeting Hitler regaled his readers once again with his favourite topic, the history of the Party, although it was only three years old. His contribution contained a reckoning with his internal Party opponents during the summer crisis in which he once again emphasized the importance of Munich as ‘the bastion of the national socialist movement’, as the ‘model . . . school, but also granite base’. He expressed the hope that one or two of those who had come to the meeting would see beyond the ‘grumbling, complaining, slandering, and back-biting’ and be convinced that the headquarters had ‘carried out a terrific amount of work, which should give us in Munich the right to carry on and direct the organization of our movement’.71
The meeting itself was exceptionally peaceful. After the conclusion of the usual formalities, Hitler was once again elected chairman with Oskar Körner his deputy. Together with the two secretaries and treasurers, they formed the Party’s ‘main committee’.72
Looking for donors in Berlin and Munich
In December 1921 Hitler had another meeting in Berlin with Class, the chairman of the Pan-German League, the secretary, Leopold von Vietinghoff-Scheel, and with the executive chairman of the Vereinigte Vaterländische Verbände [Union of Patriotic Leagues], Fritz Geisler.73 They met in the exclusive National Club of 1919, which was associated with the DNVP. A few months later, on 29 May and 5 June 1922, Hitler was permitted to speak there in front of a large audience. These occasions were largely the result of invitations from Class, who was once again acting as Hitler’s mentor in the hope of establishing a base in Munich and subordinating him to Berlin. He even paid his travel expenses.74