Hitler

by Peter Longerich

  Hitler gave a very different justification for the measures taken on 30 June 1934, one much closer to the truth, in a secret speech to the Party’s district leaders at the Ordensburg Vogelsang on 29 April 1937. He stated: ‘. . . to my great sadness I had to break that man and I destroyed him and his followers’ and gave as his justification: ‘the need to show the most brutal loyalty’ to the army, whereas the SA’s idea of a militia would have resulted in a ‘militarily completely useless bunch of people’.133

  On 20 July, Hitler ordered that, ‘in view of its great services, particularly in connection with the events of 30 June 1934’, the SS was to be promoted to be an ‘autonomous organization within the NSDAP’. The leader of the SS, who previously had been subordinate to the chief of staff of the SA, would in future be directly subordinate to him in his capacity as ‘Supreme SA leader’134. In this way Hitler prepared the path for SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, one of his most important allies during the 30 June action, to build up his ‘Black Order’ to become one of the main centres of power in the Third Reich.

  The crisis of spring and early summer 1934 had resulted from a whole number of factors, as we have seen: against the background of the Reichswehr’s rapid rearmament, the SA had been quickly forced out of its military role and was searching aggressively but unsuccessfully for new tasks. This was a process that was bound to lead to numerous conflicts and, above all, raised the question of the goals of the ‘National Socialist revolution’, one which could never be decisively answered. In addition, there were supply problems as well as a shortage of foreign exchange; the unresolved conflict within the Protestant Church and the equally unresolved issue of the Catholic associations; the discontent with the high-handed behaviour of the local Party bosses; and, finally, the growing self-confidence of the conservatives around Vice-Chancellor von Papen, who wanted to take advantage of the confused situation while Reich President von Hindenburg was still alive. Basically, a power struggle was developing between the regime, the Reichswehr, and the SS/political police on the one hand and the two very different centres of opposition around the SA and Papen’s circle on the other.

  Hitler’s response to this complex pattern of conflicts was typical of him: radical, almost hysterical, driven by his wish to avoid the threat of a loss of face. The orgy of violence, including the settling of old personal scores, went beyond the need to deal with the actual political conflicts that existed. Hitler wanted to make it clear once and for all how he proposed to deal with opponents of any kind and to take revenge for past humiliations. Consequently, he subsequently took responsibility for the murders, under the cover of an incredible tissue of lies.

  By removing his opponents in the SA leadership and the Papen circle, and simultaneously intimidating the Catholic Church, he had gained considerable room for manoeuvre; he had succeeded in shifting the political balance of forces in his favour. Yet most of the causes of the crisis remained and would, as a result, re-emerge in another temporal context and in a different constellation. This is confirmed by the official regime reports on the mood of the population and by the observations of the Social Democratic underground movement. Apart from the shock and horror the events had produced, the reports initially reflected the ‘positive’ interpretation put out by the regime’s propaganda. For large sections of the population Hitler once more appeared as the decisive political leader, who in his ‘resort to drastic measures’ had the ‘welfare of the state’ at heart. However, ‘relief’ at being liberated from the irksome and loutish behaviour of the SA lasted only a short time; for it soon became clear that 30 June was not, as many hoped, the start of a general purge of the Party of all the ‘bigwigs’, the beginning of an energetic drive against the misuse of power and corruption. It was not long before there was a general revival of ‘whingeing’ and grumbling’.135

  The Austrian putsch

  A few weeks after his victory over his domestic political opponents, Hitler thought he could solve another major problem facing the young Third Reich: the so-called Austrian question. He was convinced that he had secured the most important precondition for the solution of this problem: Mussolini’s agreement to an Anschluss.

  On 14 June, Hitler had carried out his first state visit to Italy. He and his Foreign Minister Neurath had met the ‘Duce’ and the most important Italian politicians in Venice.136 Austria had been at the top of the agenda during the two detailed discussions Hitler had with Mussolini in Venice. The ‘Führer’ had made it clear: ‘the question of the Anschluss was not a matter of interest since it was not pressing and, as he well knew, could not be carried out in the present international situation’. However, he demanded an end to the Dollfuss regime: ‘the Austrian government [must] be headed by a neutral personality, i.e one not bound by party ties’, elections must be held, and then Nazis must be included in the government. All matters affecting Austria must be decided by the Italian and German governments. While the Italians agreed these points, Mussolini responded to Hitler’s insistence that Italy should ‘withdraw its protective hand from Austria’ by merely ‘taking note’ of it. It is incomprehensible how Hitler could have gained the impression from these conversations that Mussolini would not respond to an attempted coup by the Austrian Nazis, authorized by Hitler a few weeks later. For Mussolini, under pressure from the Reich, had let it be known that he would at best tolerate the Austrian Nazis, forcing new elections to be held and a reconstruction of the government. However, he was by no means prepared to accept a bloody coup d’état; indeed, in view of Hitler’s explicit renunciation of an Anschluss, he was bound to consider it a breach of faith. This fateful mistake, a complete misunderstanding of his ‘friend’, delayed for years both the alliance with Italy, to which he had aspired since the 1920s, and his Austrian plans. It can only be explained in the light of the euphoria and wishful thinking gripping Hitler during the domestic political crisis of early summer 1934. Thus, he believed that two basic aims of his foreign policy were about to be realized: the alliance with Italy and the ‘coordination’ of Austria, goals that he had had to play down the previous year. Yet neither Hitler’s wishes nor his ideas reflected reality.

  The meeting in Venice was the starting point for the Austrian Nazis’ preparations for a putsch. They were organized by Theodor Habicht, the ‘Landesinspekteur’ for the Austrian NSDAP, appointed by Hitler, and by the leader of the Austrian SA, Hermann Reschny, who, after the ban on the Austrian NSDAP, had established an ‘Austrian Legion’ in the Munich area, composed of SA members who had fled Austria. The third figure in the conspiracy was the former SA chief, Pfeffer. He was now a member of the NSDAP’s liaison staff in Berlin and, apart from his role as Hitler’s representative for Church questions, was now given the task of solving the Austrian question by force. In the historical literature there has been much speculation that the affair was basically triggered by competition between Habicht and Reschny.137 According to these historians, cooperation between the SA and SS had been so damaged by the events of 30 June that Reschny, an SA leader, had not properly supported the actual putsch force, an SS unit. Hitler had remained largely passive and had simply ‘let things drift’, as Kurt Bauer put it a few years ago in a substantial work on the July putsch.138 This perspective reflects the ‘functionalist’ interpretation of a dictator, who, as a result of his wait-and-see style of leadership, encouraged his subordinates, who were trying to ‘work towards him’ and at the same time competing with each other, to make great efforts to do what they perceived as his bidding. This, in turn, allegedly led to a radicalization of the decision-making process. In this model Hitler appears, above all, as one factor among many others within the system’s own dynamic; it is the system that acts and not the dictator.

  However, this version can be refuted with the aid of Goebbels’s diary for the summer of 1934, which was published in 2006. For it is clear from Goebbels’s diary that, on 22 July, accompanied by Goebbels, Hitler received in Bayreuth, first, Major-General Walter von Reichenau, Chief of
the General Staff in the Defence Ministry, and then the three organizers of the putsch: Habicht, Rechny, and Pfeffer.139 Concerning the content of these negotiations, Goebbels noted: ‘Austrian question. Will it succeed? I’m very sceptical.’140 Goebbels’s scepticism was to prove justified. On 25 July, members of an Austrian SS Standarte carried out the putsch that Hitler had ordered. They occupied the Austrian broadcasting station and the Federal Chancellor’s office, seriously injuring Chancellor Dollfuss and letting him bleed to death in his office. However, on the same day, the putsch was crushed in Vienna by troops loyal to the government,141 and, during the following days, the uprising, which had spread quite widely, was completely suppressed.142 The Goebbels diaries show in detail that, while in Bayreuth, Hitler was carefully and anxiously following developments in Austria.143

  On 26 July, Habicht and Pfeffer appeared in Bayreuth to give their report. Habicht was forced to resign and, a few days later, the Austrian NSDAP headquarters was dissolved. Mussolini’s immediate support for the Austrian government was decisive for the failure of the putsch.144 Hitler was extremely disappointed; he could not bring himself to admit that he had completely misunderstood Mussolini in Venice.145 On 26 July, in order to cover up the involvement of German agencies, Hitler issued a statement that ‘no German agency had anything to do with these events’. The fact that the putsch had been supported by reports from the Munich radio station was a mistake for which Habicht was held responsible.146 Hitler also decided to appoint Papen, who had lost his post as Vice-Chancellor, as the new ambassador in Vienna. His close connections with the Catholic Church were intended to help restore the damaged relationship with Austria.147

  The death of Hindenburg

  The signing of Papen’s accreditation document as special ambassador on 31 July was the last official act Reich President von Hindenburg was capable of carrying out. For having withdrawn to his Neudeck estate at the beginning of June on grounds of ill health, at the end of July his condition worsened.148 Hindenburg’s imminent death gave Hitler the opportunity decisively to expand his power. As is clear from Goebbels’s diary, he had already discussed the steps to be taken with senior cabinet members and the Reichswehr leadership. They involved the Reichswehr and the cabinet ‘declaring Hitler to be Hindenburg’s successor immediately after [Hindenburg’s] demise. Then the Führer will appeal to the people’.149 On 1 August, Hitler flew to East Prussia, where he saw Hindenburg, still alive but barely responsive.150 Back in Berlin, on the evening of 1 August, Hitler told the cabinet that, within 24 hours, Hindenburg would be dead. At that point it was decided – not as originally envisaged immediately after the President’s death – to issue a law stating that on Hindenburg’s death his office would be combined with that of the Reich Chancellor, and so the presidential powers would transfer to the ‘Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler’. This totally contradicted the Enabling Law of 24 March 1933, which expressly stated that the rights of the Reich President remained unaffected.151

  As a result of this legal change, Hitler also became head of the armed forces. At the cabinet meeting, Defence Minister von Blomberg announced, evidently on his own initiative, that, after Hindenburg’s death, he wished the Reichswehr to swear allegiance to Hitler personally, although the constitution stipulated an oath of allegiance to the President. The following day, news of Hindenburg’s death arrived,152 and, only a few hours later, throughout the Reich soldiers swore ‘absolute obedience to the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht’. The Reichswehr leadership hoped that, by getting soldiers to swear allegiance to Hitler personally, they would strengthen the special relationship between the dictator and the armed forces, thereby underlining the position of the army as the ‘Führer’s’ most important instrument of power.153 The new form of oath clearly revealed the dissolution of the constitutional bonds binding the Supreme Commander and the armed forces. The armed forces had sworn allegiance to a Supreme Commander who no longer exercised this function within the context of a constitutional office, but in his capacity as ‘Führer of the German Reich and people’, in which he was not bound by constitutional law. The cabinet met again that evening. They agreed that Hindenburg should have a magnificent state funeral and decided, at Hitler’s request, to have the succession, which had already been legally confirmed, ratified by a plebiscite.154 On the same day, Hitler issued an instruction to the Reich Interior Minister that in future he did not wish to bear the title of Reich President, but to be known as before as ‘Führer and Reich Chancellor’.155

  Figure 5. As this example from the Spreewald shows, not even the smallest village escaped the propaganda campaign in the plebiscite for Hitler as Reich President, although in some places, as here, the creation of posters was left to local Party officials.

  Source: Scherl/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo

  By combining the offices of head of the government and head of state, and taking over the supreme command of the armed forces, Hitler had successfully finished concentrating power in his own hands. And this was only a few weeks after, having raised himself to the status of ‘Supreme Judge’, he had settled accounts with the SA leadership and finally neutralized his conservative ‘coalition partners’. Through the offices of Party chief, Chancellor, President, and Supreme Commander of the armed forces he exercised an enormous amount of real power. But, in addition, by combining these offices in his position as officially legitimized ‘Führer’, he had created an omnipotent position, which was not limited by any constitutional organ or body whose approval he was required to seek. He had succeeded in a little more than eighteen months in establishing a dictatorship of which he was solely in command. This decisive step has rightly been described as the ‘usurpation of state sovereignty for his own person’.156

  Hitler had good reason to celebrate Hindenburg’s departure as the farewell to a bygone age. On 6 August, at a memorial ceremony in the Reichstag, he paid tribute to the merits of the deceased President,157 and on the following day, he spoke again at Hindenburg’s funeral. Despite Hindenburg’s wish to be buried in Neudeck, the funeral took place at the memorial to the Battle of Tannenberg, in other words at the place in East Prussia, where, through his victory over a Russian army in 1914, he had established the basis for his aura as a national hero.158 The interment in the castle-like grounds saw a display of the uniforms and flags of the old army; the funeral was a farewell in a very comprehensive sense: ‘It’s the last turn-out of old Germany’, noted Goebbels.159 In his funeral sermon the senior Protestant Wehrmacht chaplain, Franz Dohrmann, described Hindenburg in the way the latter had seen himself, as a nationalist conservative Protestant nationalist who had been marked by a simple faith in God, raising him above all animosity. In his address, Hitler, by contrast, concentrated on paying tribute to the ‘military commander’, and in his final sentence intentionally introduced a contrasting emphasis: ‘Great commander, in death now enter Valhalla’.160

  Despite careful preparation and assiduous manipulation of the electoral process, the result of the plebiscite that followed on 19 August was, as far as the Nazis were concerned, disappointing. Only 89.9 per cent of the valid votes were for ‘yes’; if one includes those who did not vote and those whose votes were invalid, only 84.5 per cent of those entitled to vote were in favour, more than 5 per cent fewer than in autumn 1933,161 and this in a process that was designed to secure unanimity. This clear reduction in voter support was discussed by Hitler and his immediate entourage as a matter of concern.162 The regime’s popularity was in decline as power became increasingly concentrated in Hitler’s hands.

  * Translators’ note: This refers to the paragraph in the Penal Code dealing with homosexuality.

  † Translators’ note: This refers to the ‘Kulturkampf’ waged by Bismarck, the Prussian government, and the Liberals against the Catholic Church during the 1870s.

  PaRt IV

  Consolidation

  17

  Domestic Flashpoints

&nbs
p; By the summer of 1934 Hitler had stripped the SA leadership of power, removed the conservative opposition, and taken over the office of Reich President, thereby achieving a significant increase in his own power. But the price was high. Within the SA, an organization that, in spite of many conflicts, had provided Hitler since 1921 with important, indeed vital back-up, 30 June had resulted in general frustration. The middle classes were happy about the removal of the SA and the disruption it caused, but this response was mixed with consternation at the bloody, disproportionate, and unlawful methods Hitler had employed and at the many victims in the conservative camp. From every point of view, the failed putsch in Austria had been a political catastrophe, and, however much Hitler tried to distance himself from events there, the standing of his regime had been damaged. In addition, he had persistent economic problems arising from rearmament, as well as the unresolved issue of the ‘reform’ of the Protestant Church. Over all, this was not what one would call success.