During this meeting, Hitler declared that, as a Catholic, he could ‘not find his way round the Protestant Church and its structures’. This was due not least to the division of the Protestant Church into twenty-eight state Churches, which were only loosely held together by the League of Protestant Churches. Hitler aimed to get rid of this lack of transparency; he wanted to establish a unified Reich Church and to ‘coordinate’ it with the aid of the ‘German Christians’, the Nazi ‘faith movement’ within Protestantism. This fitted in with the regime’s aim of achieving ‘national unity’; but it also chimed with a variety of long-held aspirations among Protestants, whose leaders, not least under Nazi pressure, now adopted the idea of a ‘Reich Church’.239 At the end of April, Hitler pushed ahead with his scheme by appointing as his representative for Protestant Church questions someone whom he could trust in the shape of the Königsberg military district chaplain, Ludwig Müller. He intended Müller to become the first ‘Reich bishop’ of a unified Protestant Church.240 However, at the end of May, the representatives of the state Churches appointed not Müller but Friedrich von Bodelschwingh as the first Reich bishop. Hitler refused to receive Bodelschwingh,241 and the ‘German Christians’ began a campaign against the Reich bishop that soon led to his resignation. On 24 June, the Prussian ministry appointed a commissioner for the Protestant state Churches in Prussia, who immediately began a purge of the Churches’ leadership.242 On 28 June, with the help of the SA, Müller took over the headquarters building of the League of Protestant Churches (which the state Churches had combined to form in 1922), claiming to be the leader of German Protestantism.243
On the same day, Hitler was forced by a courageous Berlin clergyman to comment on the situation in the Protestant Church. After a speech to the German Newspaper Publishers’ Association, on leaving the building Hitler was accosted by Erich Backhaus, a Berlin vicar and opponent of the German Christians. He appealed to him: ‘Herr Reich Chancellor, please save our Church! Preserve it from division and violation.’ Hitler engaged in a twenty-minute conversation with Backhaus, conducted in a serious manner. He denied having anything to do with ‘Church matters’, but, as Backhaus persisted, admitted that he had been ‘affronted’ by Bodelschwingh’s appointment as Reich bishop. ‘He was getting increasingly fed up’ with Church matters, he said, and had no intention, as Backhaus claimed, of making Müller Reich bishop; in fact, he would oppose such an appointment.244
When Hitler met Hindenburg the following day at his Neudeck estate, the President expressed his concern about developments in the Protestant Church. Hitler, who was seeking Hindenburg’s approval of the cabinet reshuffle following Hugenberg’s departure and wanted to avoid any disagreement with the President, made sympathetic noises. Hindenberg then recorded the content of the conversation in a letter that he released to the German press on 1 July. In the letter he committed the further development of Protestant Church policy to his Chancellor’s statesmanlike vision.245 Hitler immediately responded to the President’s admonition by taking the bull by the horns. Prior to the publication of the letter, he instructed Frick to press the Church to produce, under Müller’s direction and in the shortest possible time, a uniform ‘German Protestant Church Constitution’ and to organize Reich-wide Church elections in order to legitimize the new unified Church. The promise then to withdraw the Church commissioner provided an incentive.246
The new Church constitution was published on 11 July and the Church commissioner was in fact withdrawn. Three days later, Hitler made the personal decision to issue a Reich law ordering Church elections for 23 July.247 The day before, Hitler commented on the issue at stake in a broadcast. He said that, as with the Concordat with the Vatican, which had been agreed on 8 July, they ‘could achieve an equally clear arrangement with the Protestant Church’. However, the precondition for this was that ‘the numerous Protestant Churches would, if at all possible, be replaced by a single Reich Church’.248 As expected, the German Christians managed to secure a large majority in the elections, not least thanks to the support of the whole Party machine. They at once began a comprehensive purge of the Church organization, introducing the ‘Aryan clause’. Thus, the Protestant Church had been finally subjected to Nazi coordination. In September, the first German Protestant National Synod, meeting in Wittenberg, appointed Hitler’s candidate, Müller, Reich bishop.249
By summer 1933, the concentration of power in the hands of the government, now largely controlled by the Nazis, was complete; the cabinet had removed all vital countervailing forces and freedoms, which, in a democratic state operating under the rule of law, prevent a government from misusing its power. It had achieved this by suspending civil rights and emasculating the constitutional institutions with their independent powers, by eliminating the political parties, by coordinating associations and social organizations, by neutralizing an independent press, by excluding critical voices from cultural life, and by significantly undermining the moral authority of the Churches.
This process depended on a sophisticated technique of acquiring power in stages, which enabled the Party and the regime to concentrate all their energy on a limited number of opponents at any given time. The famous quote from Martin Niemöller, the founder of the Confessing Church, who disappeared into a concentration camp in 1937, sums up the effects of this method very well: ‘When the Nazis came for the Communists, I stayed silent because I wasn’t a Communist. When they came for the Social Democrats I stayed silent because I wasn’t a Social Democrat. When they came for the trades unionists I stayed silent because I wasn’t a trade unionist. When they came for me there was no one left to protest.’250 In the course of the various stages the Nazi leadership developed a method that very cunningly combined the violence of the activists with legal, in most cases pseudo-legal, measures. The cunning consisted in calibrating the amount of force used in order to secure particular goals, without letting the violence get out of control or directing it permanently against other groups apart from the Left, and also in giving the state measures provoked by the use of violence an appearance of legality. For it was vital that the use of force was controlled and the formal framework of the ‘rule of law’ preserved in order to retain the alliance with the conservatives.
Hitler played the central role in the complicated direction of this process, which depended on a close synchronization of the Party activists and the regime. He defined the opponents who were to be fought; he spurred on the Party activists and then called them to order; he took the initiative in setting in motion the measures necessary for the next stage of the conquest of power; he shielded the whole process from conservative opposition. He canalized and refereed the rivalries and power struggles between the individual Party functionaries. Usurping parts of the state machine at central and regional level, they combined the state responsibilities they had acquired with their Party functions, thereby acquiring their own power bases. The idea that the seizure of power happened more or less automatically, with Hitler playing only a largely passive role, limiting himself to authorizing and legitimizing the actions of others, fails to recognize his skill as an active politician.251 Hitler naturally utilized the many initiatives and suggestions of those who ‘worked towards’ him, but he was the one who directed the numerous actions of his supporters towards particular goals, coordinating them so that they served his aims.
Evolution rather than revolution
After almost six months of constant political activity devoted to taking over power, Hitler decided the time had come to put the brakes on the Party activists. He was primarily concerned about the response of the conservative establishment. Following the dissolution of the bourgeois parties, the government reshuffle, and the turbulence caused by the restructuring of the Protestant Church, Hitler wanted to prevent Party supporters from further alienating the middle classes.
Thus, on 6 June, a day after the dissolution of the Centre Party, Hitler told a meeting of Reich Governors in Berlin that the conquest of power was over: ‘The re
volution is not a permanent condition; it must not be allowed to continue indefinitely. The river of revolution that has broken free must be diverted into the secure bed of evolution.’ He made the Reich Governors responsible for ensuring that ‘no organization or Party agency claims governmental authority, dismisses people, or appoints people’. All this was the sole responsibility of the Reich government, and in the case of economic matters, the Reich Minister of Economics. The Party had ‘now become the state’.252 Six days later Hitler also demanded restraint from the Gauleiters, the state leaders of the NSBO, and the newly-appointed Reich Trustees of Labour. As far as intervention in business was concerned, they should ‘move forwards step by step without radically smashing up what already exists, thereby jeopardizing the basis of our own existence’.253
With these clear statements Hitler was inaugurating a new economic policy for his government, amounting to a break with all ‘corporatist’ [ständisch] and ‘revolutionary’ experiments.254 To achieve this, in mid-July 1933, he and the new Reich Economics Minister, Kurt Schmitt, agreed informally that the corporatist structure would be replaced by, as the new magic formula put it, an ‘organic’ economic structure.255 In practice, this meant that in future entrepreneurs would be free from arbitrary Nazi interventions, the ‘anti-capitalist agitation’ of the small business activists within the Party would be stopped, wages would be kept at a relatively low level with the aid of the Trustees of Labour, public works projects would be scaled down, and economic recovery would instead be encouraged by tax breaks and other business incentives. Instead of corporatist employee organizations, compulsory associations, subordinate to the Economics Ministry, were introduced for the various sectors of the economy. A General Economic Council was established, whose members came largely from the financial sector and heavy industry.256 However, this remained a purely symbolic act, since the Council never played any role. Schmitt ensured the implementation of these decisions in the state sector by explicitly referring to the Chancellor’s authorization. Hitler sacked his old associate, Wagener, who had been acting as Reich Commissar for the Economy since May 1933 and was making no secret of his wish to become Economics Minister. He also subordinated all Nazi Party economic policy agencies to his economic advisor, Keppler, whom he appointed the Reich Chancellor’s Representative for Economic Affairs.257
The new economic policy represented a basic compromise underpinning the Third Reich. Six months after the ‘seizure of power’ with its various upheavals Hitler had reached a deal with German business, according to which their authority within their enterprises was increased in return for an agreement to submit to overall direction by the state.258 The introduction of a few measures against department stores represented more of a symbolic gesture to the small business section within the Party, responding to the main focus of their agitation.259 The idea of permanently subjecting department stores to special taxes – a March law was a first legal step in that direction – was dropped and there was no more talk of banning them, as demanded by the Combat League of Small Business.260 Instead, on 7 August, Hitler ordered Ley to dissolve the Combat League and, albeit reluctantly, even agreed to grant financial support for department stores.261
There was, however, one economic sector where the NSDAP’s ständisch ideologues succeeded in getting their way.262 In the spring of 1933, Darré, the head of the NSDAP’s agrarian political machine, had succeeded in coordinating all the various agricultural organizations. After taking over from Hugenberg as Reich and Prussian Minister of Agriculture at the end of June, he acquired the title of Reich Peasant Leader and set about establishing the ‘Reich Food Estate’. This compulsory organization included not only all agricultural enterprises, but fisheries, agricultural trade, and the food industry. The Reich Food Estate regulated the whole agricultural sector through a special market organization fixing prices and production quotas.263 In September 1933, Darré also introduced a Reich Hereditary Farm Law, turning 700,000 farms into ‘hereditary farms’, which could not be sold, mortgaged, or divided. As mentioned above, he had already introduced such a law in Prussia. According to the preface to the law, it was intended to secure the food supply, prevent further agricultural indebtedness, and be a means of preserving the ‘peasantry’ as ‘the German nation’s blood spring’. In fact, however, its impact proved to be double-edged, as the children who were not entitled to inherit left the land, and farms could not be adequately modernized because of a lack of credit.264
Hitler’s banning of unauthorized actions carried out by the SA and other ‘revolutionary’ Nazis culminated in a number of laws agreed at the cabinet meeting on 14 July, the last before the summer break; on the one hand, they served to stabilize the regime, and, on the other, set the course for future policy.The ‘sorting out’ of the parties, which had been achieved a few days earlier through massive political pressure, was now legalized by the Law against the Creation of New Political Parties, which stated that in future ‘the National Socialist German Workers Party [will be] the sole political party’ in Germany. In the meantime, on 7 July, all Social Democratic seats in the legislatures of the Reich, the states, and local government had been withdrawn.265 The relationship with the Churches was placed on a new basis through the Concordat with the Catholic Church and the Law concerning the Constitution of the Protestant Church. The so-called Law on Plebiscites was designed to transform the democratic right to a plebiscite contained in the Weimar Constitution into an instrument of the regime, as the government was now entitled to ask the people ‘whether they approved of a measure proposed by the government or not’.266 The Law concerning the Revocation of Naturalization and the Deprivation of German Citizenship was aimed in the first instance at ‘Eastern Jews’ who had been naturalized since 1918, and at émigrés.267 In addition, there were laws that marked turning points in racial and population policy: apart from the Law for the Recreation of a German Peasantry,268 above all, the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. The latter introduced the compulsory sterilization of men and women, when specially created Genetic Health Courts diagnosed a hereditary illness that would lead to any offspring suffering serious mental or physical handicaps. However, the list of such illnesses was drawn up according to such vague criteria (‘congenital feeble-mindedness’, ‘serious alcoholism’) that in the majority of cases decisions were made not on medical grounds, but on the basis of social discrimination.269 The law caused controversy in the cabinet, with Vice-Chancellor Papen opposing it. Hitler, who had already proposed a policy of systematic birth control in Mein Kampf, responded by arguing that the measure was ‘morally irrefutable’ on the basis that ‘people suffering from a hereditary disease reproduce in considerable numbers, whereas, on the other hand, millions of healthy children [remain] unborn’.270 Thus, at this early stage, he had taken a hard line on a key issue of Nazi racial policy.
The cabinet meeting on 14 July saw the culmination of the legislative work of Hitler’s cabinet and, with this series of laws, the process of concentrating power in the hands of the NSDAP was, for the time being, concluded. After the government had ceased to be a coalition, cabinet meetings had lost their point as far as Hitler was concerned; now he could secure laws by simply getting the agreement of the most important ministers concerned via the head of the Reich Chancellery. Thus the start of the 1933 summer holidays marked a turning point in Hitler’s relationship with the government as a collective body. After forty-one meetings up until the summer break, between then and the end of the year the government met only twelve times and, during the whole of the following year, the cabinet had only eighteen meetings. After that it met only sporadically.271
Summer break
Despite Hitler’s warning to the SA and his reining in of the Party’s ‘economic experts’, with their unwelcome experiments, one reason why the Party avoided open divisions for the time being was because he demonstratively called a temporary halt to politics. Instead of mass meetings, violent incidents, and coordination slogans, th
e public sphere was now dominated by the joys of summer. Hitler spent the last week of July, in other words the days immediately following the Protestant Church elections, at the Wagner festival in Bayreuth. Newspaper photos show him wearing a tailcoat rather than a Party uniform or in the posh double-breasted suit he had worn – acting the statesman – during recent months. In the relaxed atmosphere of the festival he found time, among other things, to concern himself with the Goebbelses’ marital problems. Following a domestic row, the Propaganda Minister had arrived on his own. Hitler promptly had Magda flown in from Berlin, invited them both for the evening, and reconciled them.272
After that, he went to the Obersalzberg where, apart from a few short trips, he remained until the start of the Party rally at the beginning of September. However, during the dictator’s ‘vacation’ political decision-making by no means came to a halt. During this period, his refuge in Upper Bavaria became a kind of provisional power centre.273 Thus, on 5 August, he used the seclusion to give a three-hour speech revealing some of his more important objectives to a meeting of Reichsleiters and Gauleiters. He mentioned the plan for a Party senate, which was to be composed of the ‘oldest, most reliable, and loyal Party comrades’; his statements about Church policy were, however, more significant. For two weeks after the German Christians’ victory in the Church elections, he had come to the conclusion that his precipitate intervention in internal Church affairs – which had been prompted ultimately by the complaint made by the Reich President at the end of June – together with the coordination of the Protestant Church, had, viewed in the longer term, contributed towards maintaining, even strengthening, the institution. Given Hitler’s fundamentally anti-Christian views, this was the opposite of his intention. It was only natural, therefore, that he should tell the Reichsleiters and Gauleiters leaders that the Party was neutral in Church matters.274 In fact, it is clear from the brief note that Goebbels made of this speech that Hitler regarded this ‘neutrality’ as the first stage in the elimination of Christianity: ‘A hard line against the Churches’, he notes. ‘We shall become a church ourselves.’275 It had become clear to those present that the German Christians, with their attempt to achieve a nationalist–religious amalgamation of Nazism and Protestantism, could no longer count on the NSDAP’s or Hitler’s support. The consequences of this change in religious policy were to become apparent during the autumn.276
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