Hitler
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The first phase began in the spring of 1937, Hitler giving instructions at the same time for work to be accelerated. It is significant, however, that the scale of the project as a whole was at first not made public.104 It was only when the topping out was celebrated on 2 August that Hitler was prompted to make the project public. In a speech not published verbatim and made in the Deutschland Hall to the workers involved in the project, Hitler explained the extraordinary speed of construction by referring to his wish to hold a reception for diplomats there in the coming January and to show the world how his state tackled projects of whatever kind with ‘German speed’.105 In fact the building was completed on time on 7 January 1939 and five days later the annual reception for diplomats did take place there.106 The monumental building in the Nazi classical style stretched for more than 400 metres along Vossstrasse. Official visitors were received in a grand courtyard and then had to walk more than 200 metres through a series of lavishly appointed rooms – foyer, mosaic room, circular room, marble gallery, reception room – before reaching the hub of the complex, Hitler’s office, a space 27 metres long and 14.5 metres wide and almost ten metres high.107
In the meantime Speer’s plans for the capital, begun in 1936, were far advanced. In November 1937 Hitler considered that the time had come to make an official announcement about the redevelopment of Berlin. At the ceremony on 27 November 1937 to lay the foundation stone for the new Defence Faculty at the Technical University, he made it known that it was his ‘unalterable will and decision to equip Berlin with those streets, buildings, and public squares that will make it appear fitted and worthy for all time to be the capital of the German Reich. The size of these developments and projects is not to be judged according to the needs of 1937, 1938, 1939 or 1940, but shall be determined by the knowledge that our task is to build the nation a city to last a thousand years for the incalculable future ahead of it; that nation has existed for a thousand years and has a thousand years of history and culture behind it and must have a city of commensurate stature.’ In the years following he often reiterated the claim to be building for millennia, in particular in his official speeches on art.108 The new plans for Berlin were presented in their entirety to the public in January 1938.109 In addition to the east–west axis, the expansion of which had already begun in 1937 and was inaugurated on Hitler’s birthday on 20 April 1939, a north–south axis 120 metres wide was planned and lined with the most important monumental buildings. At the intersection of these axes a domed hall 320 metres high and able to hold more than 150,000 people would be built as the new landmark of the city. The ‘Führer Palace’, planned to stand close to the domed hall and opposite the old Reichstag building, would have been considerably bigger than the New Chancellery. The ‘diplomats’ walk’ would have been more than 500 metres long, while there were plans for a dining room for 2,000 as well as its own theatre.110
In December 1938, in a speech at the opening of the second Architecture Exhibition in Munich, Hitler responded to criticism of his mania for building with reflections on power politics: ‘Another objection is to ask, “Must we build so much just at this moment?” Yes! We must build now more than ever before because in times past nothing was built or things were built depressingly badly. And secondly: . . . People will associate it with the era in which the German nation had its greatest resurrection and founded a huge, great, strong empire!’111 For, as he explained on 10 February 1939 to army officers he had invited to inspect the Reich Chancellery, it was not megalomania that prompted these building projects. Rather, he based his thinking ‘dispassionately’ on the assumption ‘that it is only through such imposing projects that a nation can be given the self-confidence’ to believe it is not ‘of second-class status’. In Hamburg, for example, he was building the ‘biggest bridge in the world’ as well as ‘skyscrapers . . . as mighty as American ones’, to show that the Germans were not lagging behind the Americans. ‘We can do just as well’.112
Politics but not a cult
Hitler’s decision during the course of 1937 to place new emphasis on culture can, as already mentioned, be considered an attempt to impress on the Churches the cultural and ideological superiority of National Socialism precisely at the point when it was in conflict with them. In the process Hitler had for tactical reasons avoided making any public statement about his obviously anti-Christian attitude; instead, it seemed to him more opportune for the time being to present Nazis as the better Christians. At the same time, however, in the summer of 1937 he had appeared to be claiming the support of supernatural forces in the form of ‘providence’, and at internal Party events in the autumn he had clearly distanced himself from Christianity. By his own admission, his somewhat pessimistic estimate of his own life expectancy made him feel resentful at that time, reinforcing this anti-Christian attitude. Even so, the idea of developing Nazism into a sort of religion, a quasi-religious ‘myth’ or ‘cult’, something like a Germanic faith, did not appeal to him. He refused to be the founder of a religion, nor did he wish to be made into a god. His comments on the matter do, however, show that there were those around him who toyed with this idea.
Yet his standpoint on this subject during previous years had not been entirely consistent. From 1933 onwards, big Nazi rallies had increasingly employed quasi-religious rituals and Hitler had not only not rejected this trend but had actively promoted it. This was particularly true of the Nuremberg Party Rallies, one example being the ritual honouring of the dead, which always took place on a Sunday during the SA and SS roll call in the Luitpold Arena. Hitler, accompanied only by the SA chief of staff and by the Reichsführer SS, would cross the arena where the SA and SS formations were assembled and stand before an enormous wreath and, flanked by two lighted sacrificial bowls, pay silent homage to the dead at the city of Nuremberg’s war memorial. The ritual of touching the new Party flags with the ‘Blood Flag’ from 1923, which Hitler initiated, was clearly influenced by liturgical practice.113 Since 1935 a choric element had been integrated into the mustering of the Reich Labour Service (RAD), a so-called ‘hour of consecration’ or, as Hierl, the RAD leader called it in his speech in 1938, a ‘service’. Hitler nevertheless avoided speaking about these ritual elements in his addresses to the RAD men. From 1934 onwards, when the evening March of the Political Leadership onto Zeppelin Field took place, they were framed by a ‘cathedral of light’ created by anti-aircraft searchlights.
Robert Ley, the head of the Party organization, had been emphasizing these rituals since 1936 and Hitler’s speeches to the Party functionaries reflected this trend.114 Thus in 1936, for example, he conjured up the mythical connection between himself and his audience, speaking to them as if they were a group of disciples whom he had brought into the light: ‘In this moment, how can we not again feel conscious of the miracle that brought us together! You heard a man’s voice back then and it touched your heart. It awakened you and you followed that voice. You carried on for years without even having seen the owner of that voice; you only listened to one voice and followed it. When we meet here we are filled with the wonder of this gathering. Not every one of you can see me and I cannot see every one of you. But I sense you and you sense me! We are now one.’ In this night-time setting the mythic union of ‘Führer’ and retinue, evoked by Hitler to create a rhetorical climax, acquired positively erotic dimensions.115
In 1935 he resumed the solemn march in remembrance of 9 November 1923 and even extended the ceremony.116 This had first taken place in 1933 and had then been shortened the following year because of its proximity to the events of 30 June. After his speech in the Bürgerbräukeller on the evening of 8 November he went first to the Feldherrnhalle, where the coffins of the sixteen ‘Fallen’ of 1923 had been set out and commemorated them in silence as part of a night-time act of mourning. He then made a further speech to members of the SS who had assembled in front of the hall to be sworn in.117 The next day, as in 1933, the march of remembrance took place from the Bürgerbräukeller t
o the Feldhernnhalle, where the marchers were saluted with sixteen salvos fired by an army artillery detachment. Hitler then laid a wreath and the coffins were taken to Königsplatz on gun carriages and there placed in bronze sarcophagi in the two newly constructed ‘temples of honour’. In 1936 a new element in the form of a kind of gesture of reconciliation was added: The Minister for War, Blomberg, and the general in command of the Munich district, Reichenau, joined the march of remembrance from the Feldherrnhalle to Königsplatz. From then on the format for this event did not change.
It is not difficult to discern in this ritual not only features reminiscent of military and civilian ceremonial, but also essential elements of Christian liturgies of sacrifice and resurrection. The annual speech Hitler made on the evening of 8 November to the ‘old fighters’ in the Bürgerbräukeller was reminiscent of the ritualized last supper of the faithful. This was followed the next day by the march of remembrance to the city centre, a solemn procession at which a symbol of salvation (the ‘Blood Flag’) was held aloft. The reading out of the names of all the victims of the ‘time of struggle’ over loudspeakers on pylons erected for this purpose along the route recalled the Stations of the Cross, and at the end Hitler, who marched at the head of the procession, conducted the act of commemoration on the ‘altar’ of the Feldherrnhalle. Then the procession took on the character of a triumphal march ending at Königsplatz at the temples honouring the victims. On arrival, Hitler entered the sunken interior of both temples in something like a descent to the shades. The construction of the two temples, which consisted of pillars and were open to the skies, can be interpreted as deriving from the religious notion of resurrection, though with very much an earthly meaning, as Hitler showed when they were inaugurated in 1935: ‘. . . as they marched then as defenceless civilians, may they now lie exposed to the elements – winds, storms, and rain, snow and ice, and also sunshine. . . . To us they are not dead and these temples are not crypts but rather two sentry posts, for here they stand guard over Germany and our nation.’118 In the roll-call of the dead that followed a thousand voices called out ‘Here’ after each name. This was done by members of the Hitler Youth assembled on Königsplatz who had become members of the Party that day. The idea that the dead lived on in the public avowals of the young also underlay the idea of using the same day to swear in first the new army recruits and at midnight the new members of the SS in front of the Feldherrnhalle.
Yet from Hitler’s point of view this well-rehearsed ‘Cult of dead heroes’ did not primarily serve to transfigure, as it were, the events of the past. The external form of this cult of death and resurrection was designed to emphasize a political message that was central to legitimizing his position as leader of the movement and to moulding the Nazi past as a success story. The failure of the putsch, as he repeated in endless variations like a mantra, already bore the seeds of future success. In 1923 he, Hitler, had not made a serious tactical error. He had not failed, but rather his courageous actions had prepared the ground for the later rise of National Socialism. The martyrdom of the sixteen victims had not been in vain! This message, which, reinforced by the bombastic commemoration, was raised to the status of a dogma, was in the final analysis the result of an avoidance strategy on Hitler’s part. What was a debacle at the time was through exaggerated, quasi-religious veneration to be transformed in people’s memories into a myth of sacrifice and heroism.
At the 1938 Party Rally, however, Hitler did set clear boundaries with regard to this trend towards introducing quasi-religious elements into Party ceremonies, even though he had tolerated it and even promoted it in previous years. In his address on culture he attacked ‘any mysticism that goes beyond the purpose and goal of our doctrine’. National Socialism was ‘certainly a popular movement but under no circumstances a religious movement’ and represented a ‘völkisch political doctrine derived exclusively from our understanding of race’. The NSDAP had ‘no places of worship but only halls for the people’, ‘no places of worship, but rather places for people to assemble and parade grounds’, ‘no sacred groves but rather sports stadia and playing fields’. No ‘cult activities’ were put on but rather ‘only people’s rallies’. If therefore any ‘mystically inclined devotees of the occult with their eyes on the afterlife’ were to ‘insinuate themselves’ into the movement this could not be tolerated. For ‘religious activities are not our responsibility, but that of the Churches!’ It was quite a different matter, however, to preserve certain types of ceremony as belonging to Party ‘tradition’.119
Thus, however much Hitler liked to make use of quasi-religious forms, his concern was not at all with metaphysics or with the founding of a new or substitute religion. Rather, his aim was to develop something like a Party tradition that could be passed on and create a clearly defined framework for public Party events. Speer, who created the Nuremberg that served as a backdrop, recalled while a prisoner in Spandau that in 1938 Hitler had explained to him how he intended to establish the Nuremberg ceremonial practices so firmly during his lifetime that they would become ‘an unchanging ritual’. If a weaker man succeeded him he would then have at his disposal a framework that would ‘support him and give him authority’.120
Ultimately, therefore, in Hitler’s mind cultic or quasi-religious rituals were rooted in politics. Their purpose was purely functional as a means of securing and extending his own power.
23
Hitler’s Regime
In assuming the office of Reich President in August 1934, Hitler, whose official title from now on was ‘Führer and Reich Chancellor’, had finally established himself as sole dictator. Moreover, the Nazis believed their regime had a clear constitutional basis. For in their view Hitler’s position did not depend on his having been appointed by the President in 1933 and then becoming President himself after a plebiscite, but on the principle that, because of his historic mission, only he was capable of enacting the ‘will of the nation’ in a ‘pure and unadulterated’ manner. This was the view of Ernst Rudolf Huber, one of the leading constitutional lawyers in the Third Reich.1 According to Huber, this regime was based not on popular sovereignty but on the sovereignty of the ‘Führer’: ‘The Führer unites in himself all sovereign power in the Reich; all public power exercised within the state and in the movement is derived from the Führer’s power. . . . For political power is not invested in the state as an impersonal entity, but rather it is invested in the Führer as the one who implements the common will of the Volk [ethnic nation]. The Führer’s power is comprehensive and total; it unites in itself all the agencies that shape the political sphere; it extends to all areas of the ethnic nation’s life; it encompasses all national comrades, who in turn have a duty of loyalty and obedience to the Führer.’2 Thus the personal will of the ‘Führer’ had taken the place of the government. His word could have the force of law. As Huber put it, ‘In truth there is only one lawgiver in the German Reich and that is the Führer himself . . .’3
Hitler had paved the way for this development from an early stage. Even in 1933 the government’s importance had diminished relatively quickly. After the cabinet had ceased to be a coalition in mid-1933 the Chancellor called meetings less and less frequently. The last routine cabinet meeting was on 9 December 1937, although on 5 February 1938 ministers assembled once again to hear a statement from Hitler on the Blomberg–Fritsch crisis.4 After that Lammers, the head of Hitler’s Reich Chancellery, made repeated attempts to set a date for a meeting, but Hitler always found new reasons to put it off.5 In effect he simply let cabinet meetings peter out; no official decision to abandon them was ever announced.
Instead, Hitler increasingly used Lammers to clarify draft legislation directly with the ministries concerned. Formal approval was then given through the ‘circulation procedure’*.6 Thus the Reich government was soon no longer working as a single committee but fragmented into a ‘polycratic’ collection of specialist departments, all of which were individually subordinate to
the head of government.7 The marginalization of the cabinet as a collective body meant that the work of producing legislation increasingly lost its unity; government legislation was gradually replaced by decrees issued by individual ministries, and by Hitler himself, for he had ‘Führer decrees’ or ‘Führer edicts’ published in the Reichsgesetzblatt and these were regarded as having the force of law. As far as Lammers could manage it, they too had been agreed beforehand with the responsible departments, but if he had not managed it, repeated mistakes and awkward situations ensued.8
This increasing lack of clarity prompted the Interior Minister to try in 1937 to secure a ranking order among the ministries with regard to their responsibility for legislation. The project, tellingly, came to nothing because of opposition from Hitler, who decided instead to extend the Enabling Act [which was limited to four years] as a less complicated solution.9 However, he appears to have recognized that this act was not a substitute for establishing his dictatorship permanently on a constitutional basis, for, on a number of occasions, he referred to plans to create a senate that would determine the succession and establish the outlines of a future constitution. As early as 1930 a ‘senate chamber’ had been set up in the Brown House, but in the end no such institution to lead the Party was created, any more than a senate was established to be the highest constitutional body in the Third Reich.10 Hitler had in any case already settled his succession late in 1934, although this had not been made public. In December 1934 he had nominated deputies to stand in for him in the event of his being unable to carry out his responsibilities as Chancellor and President: Blomberg would be responsible for army and defence matters, Hess for Party matters, and Göring for ‘all other government matters’. Also in December 1934 he had issued a decree naming Göring as his successor if he should die. Both sets of provisions were top secret. In addition, to make the process even more secure, he subsequently enacted a law that was never made public, giving him the power to determine his own successor.11