Hitler

by Peter Longerich

  Both meetings were followed by further correspondence between Hitler and Hindenburg’s state secretary Meissner,82 in which Hitler made it clear that under the conditions laid down by the President it was impossible to secure a parliamentary majority and repeated his suggestion of an ‘enabling law’.83 We can infer from Goebbels’s diary that Göring meanwhile had contacted the Centre Party and discovered that there was ‘no objection to Hitler as Chancellor’. On the other hand, Hugenberg, representing the DNVP, was prepared to negotiate only with Hitler personally, which the latter refused to do. Now ‘the Presidential solution was the only one worth considering’. This diary entry shows that Hitler had absolutely no interest in serious discussions to achieve a parliamentary majority. Goebbels’s view that Hindenburg’s offer was a trap to ‘exclude Hitler from power, make it his own fault, and thus destroy him’ sums up the attitude at the Kaiserhof.84

  Thus on 23 November Hitler pronounced the task the President had given him of negotiating a solution to be impossible.85 The NSDAP leadership now decided to make the whole correspondence public and Göring did so at a press conference on 24 November, saying that the Nazis would as a result ‘neither support nor tolerate any cabinet whatsoever. They would bring down any cabinet in the very same way they had brought down Papen’s cabinet. The German nation could be saved only by Hitler.’86 Among the material published was the following passage from a letter from Meissner to Hitler, which could not be clearer: The President did not believe he could

  justify to the German nation giving his prerogatives as President to the leader of a party that had continually emphasized its exclusive claims and that had taken up a predominantly negative position with regard to him personally as well as with regard to the political and economic measures he considered necessary. Under these circumstances the Reich President inevitably fears that any cabinet under your leadership ruling by Presidential decree would develop into a party dictatorship with all the consequences that would ensue as regards an escalation of the conflicts in the German nation. He could not be true to his oath or his conscience if he had been responsible for bringing about such a situation.87

  On 23 November Hitler once again met Schleicher, who reported back to the cabinet on 25 November. Hitler was unwilling in any circumstances to join the government, even if Papen were not the Chancellor, and would not allow any other Nazi, whether as a minister or as ‘an observer or go-between’, to be part of a cabinet of which he was not the leader. He wished to have no connection with the Reich government at all.88 In spite of this, Schleicher entertained hopes of the Nazi parliamentary party tolerating the government, although one led by another Chancellor.

  Hitler then convened a meeting of leading Party comrades in Weimar for 29 November.89 Goebbels commented on the deliberations: ‘Schleicher can’t bring it off. Wants us to tolerate it. Conditions for and against.’ The situation was discussed at length with Göring, Strasser, and Frick: ‘Strasser wants to take part. Otherwise it will be a disaster. Hitler strongly against him. Sticks to his guns. Bravo! Göring and I back him up to the hilt. Strasser gives in. Hitler has the right view of the situation.’90 On 30 December Hitler decided to respond to an invitation from Meissner to come to Berlin to discuss the situation with the Reich President with a polite ‘No’.91 Instead, Schleicher was asked to send a ‘negotiator’ to Weimar.

  The next day Schleicher’s close friend Lieutenant Colonel Eugen Ott arrived in Weimar. Goebbels learned from Hitler about the deliberations that followed: ‘Reichstag adjourned until January. In exchange amnesty, the streets clear [for the SA] and the right to self-defence. Otherwise we go on fighting. Total chaos in Berlin. Our seed corn is ripening.’92 The next day, on 1 December, Hitler spoke for several hours to Ott, telling him that Schleicher should not take the office of Chancellor himself so as not to harm the army. However, Goebbels noted that Ott had received a telephone message from Berlin that for Schleicher there was ‘no going back’: ‘He’s asking us to tolerate him.’93

  In response to Schleicher’s request for the Chancellorship, however, Hindenburg saw no prospect of a government led by him surviving if it were dependent on toleration. Instead, he preferred once again to give Papen the task of forming a new government.94 But in fact Schleicher had already begun taking steps to succeed Papen. On 2 December he had his colleague Ott, just back from Weimar, present to the cabinet the results of a ‘war games’ exercise carried out by the Defence Ministry. In essence they boiled down to the fact that, in the event of a serious domestic or foreign crisis, the Reich’s and federal states’ security forces would be incapable of maintaining law and order in the face of the Nazis and communists. The study gave the clearest indication possible that the armed forces were no longer prepared to support Papen’s policies, if necessary by introducing martial law. This presentation reinforced the cabinet’s already existing inclination to appoint Schleicher Chancellor.95 The President appointed him the very same day.

  Crisis in the Party

  Hitler’s uncompromising demands had not brought him one step closer to becoming Chancellor. Instead, the Party was facing new problems. At a meeting of Party leaders on 5 December at the Kaiserhof to discuss what attitude to take towards the new government, Frick and Strasser revealed they had spoken to Schleicher, who intended to dissolve parliament ‘if we won’t tolerate [his government]’.96 In the meantime the NSDAP saw fresh elections as a serious threat to the existence of the Party, for in the local elections in Thuringia on 4 December it had suffered serious losses in comparison with the previous Reichstag elections.97 The Nazi leadership responded by formulating conditions under which they would agree to an adjournment of parliament: ‘Amnesty, social improvements, the right of self-defence and to demonstrate.’ At the following meeting of the parliamentary party Hitler, according to Goebbels, ‘strongly rejected compromises’. ‘Strasser becomes stony-faced. Deputies are unanimous about us maintaining consistent course. If possible, no dissolution before Christmas.’98

  When in 1934 Goebbels published extracts from his diary under the title Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei [From the Kaiserhof to the Reich Chancellery] he inserted a passage that revealed that the previous evening Schleicher had offered Strasser the post of Vice-Chancellor. Strasser, Goebbels wrote, had not only agreed but had informed Schleicher that at the next elections he would run for election with a ‘Strasser list’ of candidates, which according to Goebbels represented ‘the worst kind of treachery towards the Führer and the Party’. Closer comparison of the published book with the original diary shows that Goebbels made numerous other alterations to make Strasser appear to be Hitler’s malevolent opponent who had planned his ‘treachery’ over a long period. Goebbels’s tampering with his own diary laid the foundation for a long-lasting legend, namely the idea that at the beginning of December 1932 Schleicher had attempted to use the offer of the Vice-Chancellorship to split the NSDAP with the aim of getting rid of the sclerotic party system and of governing with the support of a ‘cross-front’ made up of trades unions, employees’ associations, and ‘left-wing’ Nazis. In fact this idea of bypassing the chaotic situation in domestic politics had been frequently mooted in Schleicher’s entourage, but in the concrete political situation that prevailed at the start of his Chancellorship he was preoccupied first and foremost with reaching agreement with the NSDAP over the modalities of their tolerating his government.99

  Whereas Strasser was prepared to compromise and indeed recommended that the NSDAP join the government (in which case he would in fact have been the main candidate for Vice-Chancellor) Hitler set out more stringent conditions for any agreement with the Chancellor. When parliament next met, from 6 to 9 December, a possible arrangement between the NSDAP and the government was already emerging. With the votes of the NSDAP parliament passed resolutions fully in line with the demands the Party leadership had put to Schleicher. An amnesty law was passed and important welfare cuts that had been contained in Papen’s emergency measures of 4 September we
re reversed.100 In December stringent measures introduced during the previous months to control domestic political terrorism were relaxed, in accordance with the Nazis’ demands for the ‘right of self-defence’ and ‘freedom to demonstrate’. Amongst other things the special courts set up in August were suspended.101 Parliament was then adjourned until the middle of January. Schleicher assured his government on 7 December ‘that the National Socialists have decided to opt for toleration’.102 During this time Hitler, who had been staying in Berlin for the parliamentary session, was seen at various evening parties looking relaxed. There was no sign of any crisis in the NSDAP.103

  This changed on 8 December, when Strasser suddenly decided to inform Hitler by letter that he was relinquishing all Party offices. Among the explanations Strasser gave for this move was the fact that Hitler was undermining Strasser’s reform of the Party organization. Above all, however, he warned that Hitler’s political strategy, which aimed to create ‘chaos . . . and present this as the Party’s moment of destiny’, was neglecting the Party’s real task, namely ‘to create a large and broad front of working people and bring them into a reformed state.’104 The letter came as a bombshell to the Party leadership. Around midday Hitler heard that Strasser had explained his motives in detail to the Party’s regional inspectors, at least to those who were in Berlin. One of those present recalled that Strasser had criticized Hitler’s policy of staking everything on being appointed Chancellor as a failure. Hitler therefore invited the same group of people, a total of seven top NSDAP functionaries, to the Kaiserhof in order to refute Strasser’s argument point by point.105 In the middle of the night Hitler, alarmed by newspaper reports about a serious crisis in the NSDAP, called an emergency meeting at the Kaiserhof attended among others by Goebbels, Röhm, and Himmler. From Hitler’s perspective, the crisis seemed to threaten to split the Party. Goebbels quotes him as saying, ‘If the Party falls apart I’ll end it all in three minutes.’106

  At the meeting Hitler decided to dismantle the Party apparatus created by Strasser. He took personal charge of the Party administration, appointing Robert Ley as his ‘chief of staff’.107 During the following days he disbanded several departments within the extensive bureaucracy, carried out additional changes, and finally established under Rudolf Hess a ‘Political Central Committee’. Supported by three subcommittees, it was to be responsible for promoting and monitoring the work of the Party’s elected representatives both at federal state and local level, for supervising the Nazi press, and for dealing with economic issues.108 Hitler explained the reorganization of the Party headquarters in a two-part memorandum that he sent out to the NSDAP department heads and Gauleiters in December. It contained clear criticism of the principles on which Strasser had restructured the Party during the summer, emphasizing the need in future for ‘as clear as possible a separation between the structures of the movement’s administration and those of its political leadership.’109

  Yet on 9 December, the day after Strasser’s resignation, Hitler’s primary concern was to prevent the crisis from escalating into a Party revolt. He therefore spoke in Göring’s official residence first to the Gauleiters and Party inspectors and then to the NSDAP Reichstag deputies. Goebbels’s impression was that his words had a devastating impact: ‘They were all howling with rage and pain. A really great success for Hitler. At the end a spontaneous demonstration of loyalty. They all shake Hitler’s hand. Strasser is isolated. A dead man!’110 Goebbels’s satisfaction may have been boosted by the fact that Strasser’s departure meant he was rid of the rival who had achieved greater success with the key issues on which he had focused in the 1932 summer election campaign than Hitler and Goebbels with their Führer propaganda in the autumn.

  In the days following Hitler spoke at a series of meetings for NSDAP functionaries in Breslau, various cities in Central Germany, and in Hamburg. The overarching message he attempted to convey was confidence in victory and internal unity and he mentioned the conflict with Strasser only in passing as a crisis that had already been resolved. In a speech to the NSDAP deputies in the Prussian state parliament on 16 December he also concentrated on criticizing Schleicher’s government and made only ironic and fleeting reference to ‘hopes entertained in certain circles of splitting the NSDAP’.111

  Towards a Hitler–Papen government

  During the early days of 1933 the Party was concentrating all its efforts on the elections due to take place on 15 January in the small state of Lippe. Between 5 and 14 January Hitler spoke at sixteen different events, while other leading Party figures were keen to follow his example.112 Hitler made Grevenburg Castle, an old moated castle owned by Baron Adolf von Oeynhausen, the headquarters of his Lippe campaign; from there he could easily reach all his speaking engagements.113

  On 4 January, en route to the Lippe campaign, Hitler had a confidential meeting with ex-Chancellor Papen arranged by the Cologne banker Kurt von Schröder at his house. Hitler was accompanied by Hess, Keppler, and Himmler, but he and Papen had their discussion without them. Schröder noted that there had been talk of a coalition of right-wing conservatives and Nazis, with Hitler laying claim to the Chancellorship for himself. In view of the composition of parliament such a solution would still be dependent on Presidential powers. It was decided to continue the discussions.114 A few days later Hitler revealed further details to Goebbels during a night-time journey to Berlin. Papen was ‘dead set against Schleicher’. He wanted to ‘topple’ him and ‘remove him entirely’, and had the ‘old man’s ear’ in this. An ‘arrangement’ had been prepared in which the Nazis would be granted either the Chancellorship or ‘power ministries’, in other words Defence and Interior. The diary entry makes clear that Hitler had not made the Chancellorship a condition for continuing discussions. And Goebbels learnt something else: Schleicher had no order from the President entitling him to dissolve parliament and so did not have carte blanche to prevent a parliamentary defeat.115

  This strictly confidential meeting was, however, made public as the result of an indiscretion and prompted wild speculation in the press. As a result, Papen decided to go on the offensive. At a meeting with Schleicher he evidently created the impression that Hitler had demanded the Defence and Interior Ministries for himself – in a government with Schleicher as Chancellor.116 As Hindenburg would never give Hitler the Ministry of Defence (a conclusion Schleicher passed on to his cabinet), the assumption was that Hitler could not really be interested in entering the government.117 A few days later, on the other hand, at an audience with Hindenburg Papen declared that during the talks Hitler had relaxed his demand for a Chancellorship supported by Presidential powers and was now in fact prepared to join a government under conservative leadership. Hindenburg received Papen’s report in a positive spirit, authorizing him to continue working behind the scenes on a conservative–National Socialist coalition.118 Mean-while Schleicher’s government was still losing ground. On 11 January the Reichslandbund presented their grievances about the cabinet’s agricultural policy to the President and Chancellor and the same evening issued a declaration of war on the government.119 In the meantime Schleicher was trying to gain support from another quarter; in mid-January the leadership of the NSDAP put about the rumour that Strasser, who was presumed to have had a meeting with Hindenburg on 6 January, might join Schleicher’s cabinet as Vice-Chancellor.120 At the cabinet meeting on 16 January Schleicher did in fact speculate that it might be necessary for the government to create ‘a broad basis, perhaps ranging from Strasser to the Centre Party’. Strasser, he said, would ‘gladly’ join the cabinet, although it was doubtful whether he ‘would bring many supporters with him’.121

  One day before this, on 15 January, the NSDAP had gained 39.5 per cent of the votes in the Lippe elections, less than in the record-breaking July election, but considerably more than in the Reichstag election in November. Party propaganda declared the result an overwhelming victory, dispelling any idea of the Party’s having ground to a standstill.122 Hitler i
mmediately set about putting an end once and for all to his association with Strasser. At a Gauleiters’ meeting he had summoned for 16 January he at first left it to Ley to present ‘the case’. There was a lively exchange of views, after which all the Gauleiters supported Hitler, who did not appear in the hall until after this discussion had taken place. He then made a three-hour speech dealing with Party principles, which, as Gauleiter Rudolf Jordan recorded, turned the event into a ‘something like a profession of faith’.123 Their confidence boosted by the Lippe elections, the NSDAP leaders continued the exploratory talks with Papen. On 18 January there was a meeting at the villa of the urbane wine and spirits wholesaler Joachim von Ribbentrop. This time Hitler was accompanied by Röhm and Himmler. Hitler again demanded to be made Chancellor and when Papen raised objections he refused to continue discussions. Papen, however, arranged a further meeting with Hitler for 22 January at Ribbentrop’s villa, taking with him Hindenburg’s son, Oskar, and his state secretary Meissner.124 On this occasion Papen indicated that he would be prepared to settle for the post of Vice-Chancellor.125

  The following day Papen reported back to Hindenburg, but the President was still unwilling to accept Hitler as Chancellor.126 Schleicher too was unsuccessful in getting what he wanted. That morning, apprised of the meeting between Papen and Hitler, he had asked Hindenburg for an undated dissolution order for the Reichstag in order to prevent any no confidence vote that might arise when parliament convened a few days later. In addition, he wished to delay the fresh elections that were due beyond the time frame of sixty days laid down in the constitution – a move that the President had consented to already under Papen’s government. In the meantime, however, Schleicher, who had taken up office promising to bring the Nazis on board, had blocked his own path to finding an extra-constitutional solution to the crisis by ‘proving’ by means of the ‘war games’ exercise worked out with von Ott that in a civil war situation the army would not be capable of resisting the forces of the radical Left and Right. It was therefore only logical for Hindenburg to refuse his request and tell him simply to reconsider dissolving parliament.127