Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (32 page)

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Yet while a tight-knit fellowship was forming behind prison walls, in the outside world, the ethnic-chauvinistic movement was quickly disintegrating into a host of rival groups. Gustav von Kahr had immediately banned the NSDAP and the various organisations of the Fighting Association on 9 November 1923. The
Völkischer Beobachter
was forced to cease publication, and party property was confiscated.
²⁷
Directly before he went to prison, Hitler had dictated to Helene Hanfstaengl a message for Alfred Rosenberg, asking him to lead the movement in his absence.
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It is unclear why Hitler chose Rosenberg, who was hardly the most practically oriented mind. Perhaps it was Rosenberg’s obvious lack of leadership qualities that appealed to Hitler, who did not want a competitor appearing on the scene while he was away.
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In his first newsletter, dated 3 December 1923 and signed by “Rolf Eidhalt” (an anagram of Adolf Hitler), Rosenberg announced that despite everything the leadership of the party was “once again in good hands.” Nonetheless, the ban meant that “the party from now on must be run as a secret organisation,” and everyone concerned would have to pitch in to “prevent the dissipation of our movement.”
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Yet that was precisely what happened. Hitler was the lynchpin who integrated and maintained a balance between divergent forces and interests, and the party sorely missed him. “The ups and downs in the movement after Hitler’s arrest were the best indication of his exceptional leadership personality,” commented one of his followers after the Führer’s release from Landsberg.
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Rosenberg lacked the necessary authority to hold the party together, and as Hanfstaengl observed, “everywhere busybodies and opportunists from the second or third ranks are trying to push their way forward.”
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The movement was riven with people who felt they needed to make their mark and were jealous of everyone else. Moreover, because of its weak organisational structure beyond Munich, it quickly emerged that the NSDAP was ill-equipped to deal with life as an illegal body. For that reason, in January Rosenberg and his deputy Hans Jacob founded another party, the Greater German Popular Community (Grossdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft, or GVG), which they had no trouble officially registering, even though it was a transparent surrogate for the NSDAP.
³³
But if they hoped it would serve as a reservoir for all of Hitler’s adherents, they were disappointed. A bitter rivalry soon broke out between Rosenberg, on the one hand, and Hermann Esser, who returned from Austrian exile in May, and Julius Streicher on the other. In early June, Rosenberg was forced out, and Esser and Streicher formed a new leadership duo. In a newsletter, they immediately demanded that “the emphasis of the old Hitler movement must continue to be extra-parliamentary.”
³⁴

This declaration was primarily directed against the Ethnic Block (Völkischer Block, or VB), another umbrella organisation of ethnic-chauvinist and National Socialist Bavarian groups, which had also formed in January 1924 and which had announced its intention to participate in the electoral process. In the Bavarian Landtag elections of 6 April, the VB recorded a remarkable triumph, immediately winning 17.1 per cent of the votes and 23 parliamentary seats, which made it the third-strongest political force in Bavaria behind the BVP (32.8 per cent of the vote) and the SPD (17.2 per cent). In Munich, the VB attracted 25.7 per cent of the vote—more than any other party.
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For the national elections the following month, the VB had concluded an alliance with the Ethnic German Liberation Party (Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei, or DVFP), which had been founded by three rebel members of the German National People’s Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, or DNVP), Albrecht von Graefe, Reinhard Wulle and Wilhelm Hennig, and which had its power base in northern Germany. The DVFP sensed a chance to occupy the vacuum left behind by the ban on the NSDAP and become the leading force within the ethnic-nationalist movement. Their ambitions were bolstered by Erich Ludendorff, who called for all rival ethnic-chauvinist and National Socialist groups to unite under the umbrella of one organisation.
³⁶

In the Reichstag elections on 4 May 1924, the unified list of ethnic-chauvinist parties got 6.5 per cent of the vote and 32 parliamentary seats. Twenty-two of them went to representatives of the DVFP, compared with only 10 for the National Socialists, whose deputies included Röhm, Feder, Frick and Gregor Strasser, a pharmacist from Landshut who would soon play a leading role in the NSDAP.
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The most famous member of the faction was Ludendorff, who twice visited Hitler in Landsberg and tried to win him over to the idea of an association of all ethnic-chauvinist groups. Hitler behaved in conciliatory fashion, while expressing reservations.
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But he could not prevent the Reichstag deputies from uniting under the banner of the “National Socialist Liberation Party,” when they met as a faction on 24 May. A short time later, the following declaration was published in the press: “It is the will of ethnic-popular leaders General Ludendorff, Hitler and Graefe that their followers should in future form one political organisation throughout the Reich.”
³⁹
Ludendorff underscored the validity of the declaration, by claiming that Hitler had come out “clearly and unambiguously for the necessity of the merger of the DVFP and the National Socialist Workers’ Party into one party outside the Reichstag as well.”
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Many of Hitler’s followers were opposed to the transition to parliamentary participation and the idea of a fusion with the DVFP. National Socialists in northern Germany were particularly alarmed.
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In late May they sent a four-man delegation led by Ludolf Haase, a party comrade from Göttingen, to Landsberg to discuss their concerns with Hitler, but the Führer was as evasive as he had been with Ludendorff. As far as the elections were concerned, Hitler had already written to Siegfried Wagner at the beginning of the month, telling him that he would have found it “more correct to avoid participating at least this time around.”
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But apparently he was no longer opposed to the parliamentary strategy in principle. Hitler, at least in Hess’s summary, took the view that “after others had gone to parliament against his will, activity in parliament would have to be seen…as one of many means to combat the present system.” That did not mean constructive participation in the parliamentary process, but rather opposition and obstruction. The idea was “to extend parliament or, better said, parliamentarianism,
ad absurdum
.”
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In fact, Hitler never budged an inch in his rejection of a merger of the NSDAP and the DVFP, even though to the disappointment of the northern German contingent he refused to give them a statement to that effect. His priority was to keep out of the internal party squabbles and unsavoury personal intrigues, which he correctly recognised could only damage his aura as Führer. As he told Ludolf Haase on 16 June, he could hardly be expected “to intervene in any way or assume any responsibility” from the confines of Landsberg. He had decided “to withdraw from public politics until such a time as his restored liberty made it possible for him to genuinely lead.”
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A short time later Hermann Fobke, a law student and former member of the Stosstrupp Hitler who also served time at Landsberg, told friends in northern Germany Hitler thought “that the wagon has gone so far off the road as to require a complete start from scratch when he goes free.” Nonetheless, Hitler was confident that within a few days of his release he would have “all the reins firmly in his grasp.”
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On 7 July, Hitler publicly announced his decision. In a press release, he stated that he had “stepped down from the leadership of the National Socialist movement” and would refrain from “all political activities for the duration of his imprisonment.” An additional reason was given for his decision: “Herr Hitler is writing a substantial book and wants to preserve the free time necessary for it.” He therefore requested his supporters not to pay any more visits to Landsberg.
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The pilgrimages did not abate, however, so Hitler was forced to repeat his request on 29 July. In the future, Hitler would only receive visitors who stated their purpose in advance and who were approved. “In all other cases, as much as I regret it, I’m compelled to turn visitors away,” Hitler wrote.
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Hitler’s withdrawal encouraged the ethnic-chauvinist movement to spin further out of control. A conference on 20 July in Weimar that was intended to bring unity ended in tumult, with various sides trading insults. Such scenes made him sick, declared Ludendorff, adding that if that was the German ethnic movement, then he would take his leave and express his regret that he had mistakenly spent time in its midst.
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A follow-up conference, also in Weimar, in mid-August may have achieved the merger of the NSDAP and DVFP into a “National Socialist Liberation Movement,” but that was merely a declaration on paper. Despite individual appeals for unity and solidarity, the disintegration of the NSDAP and the ethnic-chauvinist movement continued apace.
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Though constantly pressured by his followers to put his foot down, Hitler stuck rigidly to his policy of not taking sides and keeping silent about what he thought. He had to “behave with complete neutrality,” he told the northern German delegation, in order to be able to carry out the reorganisation of the party impartially as soon as he was released. “Whoever doesn’t obey then, will be out—regardless of who they are,” he threatened.
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This approach helped Hitler avoid getting drawn into fights between various groups and sub-groups. “His person remains elevated above small quarrels,” Hess noted in mid-August 1924. “When he’s back on the outside, his authority will ensure that everything will quickly be under control again.” Hess speculated that the constant feuding in the party and the movement were not altogether unwelcome for Hitler: “He thereby shows our people outside that they can’t get anything done without him and that it’s not as easy as they thought to do the work he does.”
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Some of Hitler’s followers even suspected that he deliberately encouraged the disputes “in order to secure his position at the very top.”
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Indeed, Hitler’s behaviour while in Landsberg seems to have been an example of a technique of rule that he would develop to perfection as Reich chancellor. Divide and conquer was the best way to cement his own claim to leadership.
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The declarations of July 1924 were the first indications the public got that Hitler was writing a book. In fact, he had been at it since the first weeks of his imprisonment. Even at his trial, when he was cross-examined by Hans Ehard on 13 December 1923, Hitler mentioned his plan to write a testimonial that would “tear the mask” from his detractors’ faces.
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The prison director granted him permission to procure a typewriter, and prison guard Franz Hemmrich provided him with a table and paper.
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Hitler’s testimonial has not been preserved, but its contents can be reconstructed from his speeches in front of the court.
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After he was sentenced on 1 April, Hitler continued writing. One of the first products of his work was an essay entitled “Germany’s Awakening” that appeared in a pan-Germanic monthly—many passages are repeated word for word in
Mein Kampf
.
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Hitler’s motivation for putting pen to paper remained constant. As he told Siegfried Wagner on 5 May, he was writing “to comprehensively settle accounts with those gentlemen who enthusiastically cried ‘Hurrah’ on 9 Nov. only to try to prove the ‘ill-considered nature of the insane undertaking’ on the 10th.”
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In early June, Eher Verlag—the Nazi publishing house—had announced the appearance of Hitler’s book, then entitled “4½ Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice,” for publication in July. The hastily sketched contents indicated that this was to be a one-volume work, but Hitler’s decision to withdraw from politics changed that.
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What was originally a settling of accounts was expanded to include autobiographical sections.
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Hitler began working intensively on the manuscript in the second half of June. By the end of the month, he read Hess the section on his experience on the Western Front in 1914 (
Mein Kampf
, Chapter 5) and discussed the design of the cover with him.
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On 23 July he returned to Hess’s cell asking whether he could read him the chapter about Munich which he had just completed (
Mein Kampf
, Chapter 4). “I’m still overwhelmed by my impressions,” Hess told his girlfriend. When Hess praised what Hitler had written, the latter had beamed. “What a mixture of the sober, mature superiority of the man with boundless boyish joy,” Hess wrote.
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