Meanwhile the negotiations between the Nazis and Papen had reached a decisive stage. On 24 January Frick and Göring again had a meeting with Papen at Ribbentrop’s villa, where there was a discussion about whether a Hitler/Papen cabinet could attract support from a wider circle of conservatives.128 The ‘Harzburg Front’ was therefore to be revived. To that end offers were made in the days following to Hugenberg and Seldte. Whereas the leader of the Stahlhelm was ready to talk, the negotiations with Hugenberg proved more difficult. On 27 January a meeting took place between, on the one side, Hugenberg and the chair of the DNVP Reichstag parliamentary party, Otto Schmidt-Hannover, and, on the other Hitler, Göring, and Frick, at which Hitler demanded the Prussian and the Reich Interior Ministries for the NSDAP. When Hugenberg objected and indeed demanded numerous appointments for his party, Hitler terminated the discussions and threatened to leave for Munich.129 Papen, however, who met afterwards with Ribbentrop and heard from him about Hitler’s furious reaction, indicated to the Nazis that he attached no great importance to Hugenberg’s uncooperative attitude. He himself was now fully behind Hitler as Chancellor and would do his very best to get the President to agree to it.130
Around midday on 28 January Schleicher, who was looking for support, once again had an interview with the President. When Hindenburg once and for all refused to grant him the crucial instrument, namely the dissolution order, Schleicher, who that morning had agreed on this course of action with his cabinet, offered his government’s resignation, which the President accepted.131 Hindenburg then officially gave Papen the task of conducting talks leading to the creation of a new cabinet. Papen, however, had been notified that same morning by the President of Schleicher’s imminent resignation and at around 11 a.m. had told Ribbentrop that after a lengthy discussion with Hindenburg he considered it possible that Hitler might be made Chancellor. Ribbentrop and Göring passed on this message to Hitler at the Kaiserhof. Both tried to dissuade Hitler from making any new demand, namely the post of Reich Commissar for Prussia. In the end Hitler declared himself prepared to reconsider the matter and to meet Papen the following day.132
On the afternoon of 28 January Papen succeeded in overcoming Hugenberg’s resistance to the appointment of National Socialists to the two Interior ministries. In addition, he managed to persuade the majority of members of the old government to remain in office under a Hitler/Papen government.133 The same evening representatives of the Centre Party and the BVP contacted Hitler and declared themselves prepared to participate in a majority cabinet led by him, but met with no response.134 When Papen called on Hindenburg once again in the late evening135 the latter now in fact indicated that he would not stand in the way of Hitler becoming Chancellor, provided appropriate safeguards were built in. These included the continuation in office of the majority of serving ministers, among whom Hindenburg was particularly keen to see the Foreign Minister, Konstantin von Neurath, remain. He also insisted on Papen’s agreement to serve as Vice-Chancellor and the appointment of Werner von Blomberg, commander of the East Prussian defence district and military adviser to the German disarmament delegation in Geneva, as Defence Minister.136
On 29 January there were further negotiations between Hitler, Göring, and Papen at which Hitler got agreement to Frick becoming Reich Minister of the Interior and Göring Prussian Minister of the Interior, while in return accepting Hindenburg’s demand that Papen be appointed Vice-Chancellor and Reich Commissar in Prussia. In addition, Hitler now for the first time demanded the dissolution of parliament and fresh elections, stipulating also that the new Reichstag should provide him with an enabling act. He regarded both these demands as crucial if he was later to circumvent the safeguards that Papen and Hindenburg had built into the composition of the government.137 At a round of talks in the afternoon Papen sought to gain the support of the Stahlhelm and the DNVP by offering Seldte the Ministry of Labour and Hugenberg the Ministries of Economics and Agriculture in the Reich and in Prussia in a Hitler-led cabinet. Papen kept quiet about Hitler’s demand for fresh elections.138 Whereas Seldte and Hugenberg were inclined to agree to this proposal, Duesterberg, the number two national Stahlhelm leader, and a series of prominent German nationalist politicians strongly opposed these coalition plans and tried to influence Hugenberg and Papen to bring about a Presidential cabinet under Papen that would govern, as it were, dictatorially.139
Then, all of a sudden, rumours began circulating in Berlin that Hindenburg in fact intended to appoint a Presidential government under Papen – and that the army leadership was planning to prevent this by force. This false information, the source of which cannot be established, accelerated the formation of the government. The Defence Minister designate, Blomberg, was met at Anhalter Station by Oskar von Hindenburg, who brought him to the Presidential office, where he was to be sworn in by Hindenburg as the new Defence Minister, even before the cabinet was officially appointed.140 Hindenburg’s son arrived just ahead of another officer who was supposed to bring Blomberg to Schleicher so that he could be persuaded not to accept the appointment. President Hindenburg, who demonstrated by this move his particular confidence in the ‘unpolitical’ General Blomberg, did not at this point know of the existence of special contacts between Hitler and Blomberg’s staff in Königsberg.141
On the evening of 29 January Papen presented Hindenburg with the list of cabinet members he had negotiated and agreed that they would be sworn in the next morning. In doing so he had complied with the President’s wishes in two respects. The latter could believe that the new government was beholden to him personally, as his go-between Papen and not the future Reich Chancellor had concluded the negotiations,142 and he could see that the Nazi members of the government were ‘framed’ by conservative politicians and experts. Four politically unaligned ministers from Schleicher’s government were to be in the cabinet: Neurath (Foreign Office), Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk (Finance), Paul von Eltz-Rübenach (Post and Transport), and Günther Gereke as Reich Commissar for Work Creation. Hugenberg was to be ‘Super Minister’ for Economics and Agriculture, Blomberg Minister of Defence, Seldte Minister of Labour, Papen as Deputy Reich Chancellor (a title that was supposed to emphasize his significance as Vice-Chancellor) and Reich Commissar for Prussia. The Nazis were represented only by the Chancellor, the future Minister of the Interior, Frick, and by Göring as Reich Minister without portfolio and Reich Commissar for Aviation. The simultaneously agreed appointment of the Nazis Göring and Bernhard Rust as Reich Commissars in Prussia responsible for the Ministry of the Interior (Göring) and the Ministry of Education (Rust) respectively was to be balanced by the fact that the other Reich Commissars in Prussia were on the conservative wing (in addition to Papen there was Hugenberg for Economics and Agriculture, Johannes Popitz for Finance, and Heinrich Hölscher as acting state secretary in the Justice Ministry).143 In addition, Papen hoped to persuade the President to assume the post of ‘State President in Prussia’, which would have completed the ‘framing’ of the Nazis.144 This ‘framing’ notion proved to be illusory, however. Instead, in the next few weeks the Nazis exploited precisely the arrangements created for Prussia as a lever by which to free themselves from this ‘framing’, in fact using the Prussian police, now in Göring’s hands, as their instrument. Within a very short time Hitler, Göring, and Frick proved able to coordinate their actions and thus lay the foundations for the dictatorship. They could do this because, thanks to Papen’s Prussian coup of 20 July 1932, the old balance of power between the Reich and the largest German state, which had been controlled by democratic forces and in previous years had acted as a crucial barrier to the ultimate destruction of the Weimar Republic, had ceased to exist.
On 29 January the Reich Minister of Justice had not yet been appointed. Papen thus gave Hindenburg the impression that this ministry was being reserved for the Centre Party, which would most likely also participate in the government. Thus, on the evening of 29 January, Hindenburg gave his approval to a government that he assumed would
sooner or later be able to command a majority in the Reichstag.145
On the morning of 30 January a meeting took place at Papen’s house at which Duesterberg and Schmidt-Hannover expressed serious reservations about the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor. A little later Hitler and Göring arrived. Hitler succeeded in allaying Duesterberg’s fears by assuring him that he deeply regretted the attacks the Nazi press had made on him personally (some months previously it had come to light that some of Duesterberg’s ancestors had been Jewish).146 The designated cabinet members then went to the nearby Reich Chancellery. Immediately before they were sworn in there was a final row when Hugenberg found out that Papen had told Hitler he could have fresh elections. Hugenberg refused to agree to this demand, whereas Hitler absolutely insisted on it. After a heated debate, which almost caused the negotiations to collapse, Hitler gave Hugenberg his word of honour that after the elections he would not alter the composition of the government. Under great pressure, for it was already 15 minutes past the time agreed for them to meet the President, Hugenberg finally gave way.147 The new government was sworn in at 11.30 a.m.
Anyone examining the way in which the Hitler/Papen government came into being is struck by the extraordinary skill and low cunning of Papen. A reckless gambler, Papen had done much to undermine the reputation of his successor, Schleicher, with the President and had secured his assignment of negotiating a government by at first keeping quiet to Hindenburg about Hitler’s demand for the Chancellorship, while creating in Hitler the impression that Hindenburg approved of him as Chancellor. He pulled off the feat of convincing the President that he, Hindenburg, had the final say on the formation of the government while simultaneously making it appear that Hitler’s government was searching for a parliamentary majority. He managed to bring Hugenberg and Hitler together by making Hugenberg believe that he would become a sort of economic dictator, while on the other hand granting the Nazis the Reich and Prussian Ministries of the Interior, and making Hindenburg believe that he, Papen, as Vice-Chancellor and Reich Commissar for Prussia, could prevent the Nazis from taking control of the Prussian police. Finally, he delayed telling Hugenberg of Hitler’s crucial demand for fresh elections, forcing him to concede them at the very last moment. For all his negotiating acrobatics, however, he had created an extremely fragile edifice dependent on conflicting and unfulfillable commitments. It could not survive.
On the Nazi side, Ribbentrop and Göring had performed important roles as mediators, while Hitler had taken more of a patient and passive role as the candidate Papen was wooing, until, having seen through Papen’s deceptive and risky negotiating strategy, he exploited it gradually to introduce three crucial demands that in the end would give him the upper hand in the new government. At first he had left the question of his claim to the Chancellorship open, then demanding it all the more insistently and finally succeeding. He had demanded the Interior ministries and then managed to get fresh elections. To achieve all this he had several times put at serious risk the whole project of a government that included the NSDAP through his abrupt and unbending attitude. Yet what his negotiating partners may have construed as an unrestrained, irrational, even hysterical side to his character can also be interpreted as calculated unpredictability, which he used to put his opponents under pressure to act, knowing full well that they had no alternative.
Since 1929 Hitler had tried various strategies on his path to power, sometimes using them in parallel, sometimes trying one and then the other: cooperation with the Right, agreements with the Centre Party, working with the President, or the NSDAP pressing forward on its own, whether taking a constitutional path (as in the case of the Presidential elections) or by recourse to ‘revolutionary tactics’, in spite of the Party’s official policy of ‘legality’. In the end he came to power through a combination of these strategies. He revived the Harzburg Front, but within the framework of Presidential government, and he created the impression that he wished to include the Centre Party in the government. At the same time, he gave the impatient ‘revolutionary’ elements in the Party some prospect of a ‘show-down’ with their political opponents (the SA had offered a foretaste of this with its wave of terror in the summer of 1932) and exploited these elements as an unmistakable threat always in the background. Finally, contrary to all agreements and safeguards he was successfully to secure a monopoly of power for the Party.
Hitler was neither swept into the Chancellor’s office by a mass movement nor hoisted into the saddle by a conservative clique that aimed to use him as a means to an end. While both elements are essential to any explanation of the particular constellation leading to Hitler’s becoming Chancellor, anyone wishing to get to the bottom of how this arrangement would inevitably lead to dictatorship must factor in Hitler’s actions as an individual. He exploited the room for manoeuvre he enjoyed in late 1932 and early 1933, precisely after his party had lost some of its electoral support, to create an arrangement that (a) satisfied the conservatives, (b) still allowed him the possibility of a ‘seizure of power’ by the NSDAP, and (c) as a result, provided a safety valve for the pent-up dissatisfaction in the Party.
Hitler’s persistent demand at the end of 1932 to be made Chancellor governing through Presidential decree only appeared to be leading to a dead-end from which he was rescued by Papen. In fact through his unwavering refusal to join a government supported by Presidential decree merely as a minister or to be made to commit himself to a course of tolerating a conservative government, he put pressure on his conservative opponents, thereby involving Papen in the process. For within the Presidential regime Hindenburg and his advisers had in the meantime exhausted all possible political options and were faced with the question of whether they should suspend the constitution and set up a military dictatorship. As they could not bring themselves to take this step, however, they had no choice but to give the office of Chancellor to the leader of the strongest party, Hitler, a man who in the final stages of negotiation exploited his position without scruple, consistently stepped up his demands, and thus made the safeguards that had originally been planned ineffective. Thus at the end of January 1933 Hitler had with considerable political skill created the crucial base from which a change of Chancellor could be turned into a comprehensive take-over of power.
PaRt III
Establishing the Regime
12
‘The Seizure of Power’
When Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30 January 1933 the Weimar Republic had already ceased to function as an effective democracy. Under the authoritarian Presidential regime parliament and the political parties had been marginalized in the political process, the democratic ‘bulwark’ of Prussia had been destroyed by Papen, and, for some years, the state and the judiciary had been encouraging right-wing extremism. Nevertheless, at the turn of the year 1932/33, the NSDAP still had no more than one-third of the electorate behind it and it was by no means a matter of course that the whole of the state apparatus, as well as the wide range of very varied social organizations would simply yield to the Nazis’ drive for power. Significantly, the majority of political observers did not regard the new government as the start of a change of regime, but rather reckoned with another brief government that would soon be exhausted by the major problems confronting it.1 Thus the establishment of a dictatorship was not the inevitable result of Hitler’s becoming Chancellor. On the contrary, the transformation of the Presidential government of Hitler/Papen/Hugenberg into a Hitler dictatorship was a complicated process, lasting eighteen months and requiring a considerable amount of direction and great political skill.
Hitler was able to establish his dictatorship only because he had an army of millions of active supporters behind him bent on taking over power. However, this support was heterogeneous, with very diverse goals. The SA, nearly 500,000 strong, wanted first of all to take revenge on their political opponents; these so-called ‘brown shirts’, however, also assumed that under the new regime they would be rewarded for all their eff
orts and sacrifices during the ‘time of struggle’ and would be looked after in some way. The Party functionaries (the NSDAP had around 850,000 members at the beginning of 1933) were after jobs in the state apparatus; those small retailers organized in the Kampfbund für den gewerblichen Mittelstand [Combat League for Small Business] wanted to put an end to department stores; the members of the National Socialist Factory Cell Organization (NSBO) demanded workers’ participation in business; industrialists who supported the Nazis demanded an end to trade union representation on company boards; and journalists, doctors, teachers, and the like who were members of the Party’s professional associations wanted to dominate their various professional bodies. Thus, this very diverse movement wanted to bring every organization in the state and society under its control, and the Party membership’s ambition to take over power provided the real dynamic behind the measures adopted by Hitler and the Party leadership.
While Hitler and the Party leadership needed to keep these various, and to some extent contradictory, claims in view, to satisfy them, and in some cases to reconcile them, they had at the same time to make sure that these diverse ambitions did not undermine the alliance with the conservatives or damage the economy. Thus, it was vital to acquire power in stages, so as to allow the Nazis to concentrate on one goal, or a limited number of goals, at a time. Basically, this process took place in two stages. In the first, which lasted until the summer of 1933, political power was concentrated in the hands of the largely Nazi-controlled government. In the second, which came to an end in the late summer of 1934, the decisive moves were the action taken against the SA on 30 June 1934 and the take-over of the office of Reich President. These enabled Hitler permanently to exclude the conservatives from influence in the government, to eliminate opposition within the Party, and to establish a dictatorship without any constitutional limitations.
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