Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (54 page)

This narrative had little to do with reality. Hitler’s path to power was hardly an inevitable and triumphal march. It was a contest that could have ended either way. The National Socialists had declared 1932 to be “the year of decisions,”
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and in five major elections the party had the opportunity to demonstrate its organisational and propagandistic strength. The NSDAP again achieved major successes, becoming by far the largest party in the Reichstag in the elections of late July 1932. The chancellor’s office on Wilhelmstrasse did indeed seem ripe for the taking. But by inflexibly insisting on all-or-nothing and refusing to share power with anyone else, Hitler also sent his party down a dead-end street. In the elections of early November, the NSDAP suffered significant losses for the first time. Its aura of invincibility was tarnished, and the party’s trust in its leadership shaken. The NSDAP went through its worst crisis since the ban on the party of 1923–4. By the end of 1932, the German economy also showed initial signs of recovery. The depths of the Depression seemed to lie in the past. Thus, there were good reasons to think that the danger posed by the Nazis could have been averted. “The development of this, the German year of 1932, will be an object of most intense study for future historians and politicians,” the left-wing journalist Leopold Schwarzschild wrote in his weekly
Das Tage-Buch
on 31 December. Only with the benefit of hindsight, Schwarzschild predicted, would humanity be able to understand “what historic miracle deflected the line [of events] at the last minute.”
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At the start of the year, Hitler had encouraged optimism. In his New Year’s address, he contended that Germany was preparing “to go National Socialist with great rapidity.” The party had fifteen million supporters—“a triumph without parallel in the history of our people.”
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In an interview with the Japanese newspaper
Tokyo Asahi Shimbum
on 3 January, he said he was confident that his party “would soon seize power in Germany…and found a new, Third Reich.”
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Hitler, knew, however, that he was dependent on support from others, including business circles. In the autumn of 1931, as Hess reported, he had already put a lot of effort, “with great success,” into “undermining the remaining pillars of support for the current government in the industrial and banking worlds.”
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In fact, it was Chancellor Brüning’s misguided policy of deflation, which worsened the Depression, that had cost him support from big business, but that did not mean that the NSDAP immediately profited. Many entrepreneurs remained deeply sceptical about a movement whose leading representatives spoke with forked tongues where economic policies were concerned. To improve his party’s image and recommend himself as a future head of government, therefore, Hitler accepted an invitation on 26 January 1932 to speak to the Industrial Club of Düsseldorf, the meeting point for the economic elite of Rhineland-Westphalia.
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Some 700 people packed the large ballroom in Düsseldorf’s Park Hotel. Hitler himself had to enter through a side door because Nazi supporters and opponents were clashing violently in front of the building. To fit in, he had swapped his brown uniform for a dark frock coat and striped trousers. Anyone who expected him to talk about what measures a Hitler government would introduce to end the Depression came away sorely disappointed, however. In his two-and-a-half-hour speech, Hitler merely reiterated what he had said on similar occasions, for instance to Hamburg’s National Club of 1919: that only a strong state could set the parameters for a flourishing economy, and that whoever believed in the concept of private property had to reject the idea of democracy. “It is nonsense to build upon the concept of achievement, the value of personality and thus personal authority in an economic sense,” Hitler told his audience, “while rejecting the authority of personality and replacing it with the law of greater numbers—democracy—in a political sense.” Hitler once again summoned the bogeyman of Bolshevism, which, if it continued to be successful, “would subject the world to a transformation as total as Christianity had in its day.” The National Socialist movement was the only force that could prevent Germany from sinking into “Bolshevist chaos.” Hitler added: “And if people accuse us of being impatient, we proudly embrace that charge. We have made an undying vow to pull out the last roots of Marxism in Germany.” Hitler studiously avoided any openly anti-Semitic pronouncements and only hinted at his ambition of conquering “living space” in Russia. On the contrary, he ended his speech by stressing that a revitalised Germany under his leadership would be prepared to live in “friendship and peace” with its neighbours.
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A number of legends have sprung up around Hitler’s appearance in the Düsseldorf Industrial Club. Most of them originated in Dietrich’s essay “With Hitler to Power.” Dietrich had been present at the speech, and his supposedly authentic account described Hitler whipping an initially cool audience into a frenzy. “Their faces began to blush, their eyes hung on the Führer’s lips and you could feel their hearts warming,” Dietrich wrote. “At the beginning they only put their hands together hesitantly, but soon salvos of applause erupted. When Adolf Hitler was finished, he had won a battle.” For Dietrich, 26 January 1932 was the “memorable day” on which Hitler achieved his “breakthrough” with the western German captains of industry: “The ice was broken—the National Socialist idea had found fertile soil in important and influential circles within the system.”
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But the American historian Henry A. Turner and others following in his footsteps have corrected this outmoded narrative about the relationship between National Socialism and major German industry.
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By no means had the entire economic elite of the Ruhr Valley attended Hitler’s speech. The early Hitler admirer Fritz Thyssen was present of course, as were Ernst Poensgen and Albert Vögler from United Steelworks, Ernst Brandi from the Mining Association and mining magnate Karl Haniel, who was also the Industrial Club’s chairman. But a number of leading representatives remained conspicuously absent, including Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the chairman of the Reich Association of German Industry, as well as the steelworks manager Paul Reusch, Carl Duisberg from IG Farben, Fritz Springorum from Hoesch Steelworks and mining entrepreneur Paul Silverberg.
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The crowd’s reaction to Hitler was also by no means as positive as Dietrich’s report had its readers believe. When Thyssen concluded his short word of thanks with the word’s “Heil, Herr Hitler,” most of those in attendance found the gesture embarrassing.
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Hitler’s speech also did little to increase major industrialists’ generosity when it came to party donations. Even Dietrich himself admitted as much in his far more sober memoirs from 1955: “At the ballroom’s exit, we asked for donations, but all we got were some well-meant but insignificant sums. Above and beyond that there can be no talk of ‘big business’ or ‘heavy industry’ significantly supporting, to say nothing of financing, Hitler’s political struggle.”
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On the contrary, in the spring 1932 Reich presidential elections, prominent representatives of industry like Krupp and Duisberg came out in support of Hindenburg and donated several million marks to his campaign.
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The main political topic in the early months of 1932 was whether Hindenburg would be re-elected. To spare the 85-year-old the strain of a second election, Chancellor Brüning had hit upon the idea of asking the Reichstag to extend his period of office. That, however, required a change in the constitution and a two-thirds majority, which was only possible if the National Socialists and the radical right-wing nationalists were on board.
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On the evening of 6 January, Brüning sent Defence and Interior Minister Wilhelm Groener to meet Hitler in order to persuade the NSDAP chairman to support the idea. “A likeable impression, modest, orderly man who wants the best,” was Groener’s take on Hitler. “External appearance of an ambitious autodidact. Hitler’s intentions and goals are good but he’s an enthusiast, glowing and multifaceted.”
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A series of negotiations commenced. Hitler initially seemed willing to compromise but he made his support for Hindenburg’s candidacy contingent upon the Reichstag being dissolved and fresh elections called. Brüning was having none of that, since in the event of the expected NSDAP election victory he would no longer have a parliamentary majority tolerating him.

On 12 January, Hitler informed Brüning that despite “his great personal respect for the Reich president,” he had no choice but to reject the suggested extension of the term of office. As a reason, he cited constitutional concerns. These were well founded but sounded hollow coming from Hitler’s mouth since the NSDAP chairman had never left any doubt that as soon as possible after taking power, the National Socialists intended to do away with the constitution.
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Hitler’s decision, however, confronted him with a dilemma. If Hindenburg did decide to run for a second term despite his advanced age, Hitler would have to throw his hat in the ring, and the risk of losing a direct duel with the “victor of Tannenberg,” who was very popular among right-wingers, was great. Hitler’s aura as the seemingly invincible Führer rushing from one victory to the next might be damaged. On 19 January, Goebbels discussed the “Reich presidency question” for the first time with Hitler: “I’m pleading for him to run. He alone will take Hindenburg out of the running. We calculate with numbers, but the numbers are deceiving. Hitler has to become Reich president. That’s the only way. That’s our slogan. He hasn’t decided yet. I’ll continue to drill away.”
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Much to Goebbels’s dismay, Hitler put off making a decision for weeks and weeks. Apparently he was more sceptical about his chances than his head of propaganda. “Hitler is waiting too long,” Goebbels complained on 28 January. Two days later, he noted: “When will Hitler decide? Does he not have the nerve? If so, we need to give it to him.”
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It was not until 3 February, when Goebbels had largely concluded preparations for the election in the Brown House, that Hitler signalled his willingness to run against Hindenburg. The announcement of Hitler’s decision was delayed until after Hindenburg had declared his candidacy and the SPD had come out in support of him. The logic behind this was obvious: if the pro-democracy camp supported the man they had so vigorously opposed in 1925, Hitler would be all the better able to claim that only he represented the nationalist right wing. “First Hindenburg has to commit himself, and the SPD has to come out in support,” Goebbels noted. “Only then our decision. Machiavelli. But correct.”
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Similar calculations also led Hindenburg to delay announcing
his
decision for as long as he could. In late January, he told Brüning that he would only accept a nomination to run for president if it “did not meet with the joint resistance of the entire right wing.”
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It was not enough for the Reich president that a petition in early February calling on him to run, which was sponsored by Berlin Lord Mayor Heinrich Sahm, quickly attracted more than three million signatures. It was only on 15 February, when the Kyffhäuser League, the umbrella association of German veterans’ groups, pledged their loyalty that Hindenburg announced that he would seek re-election. “A day of fateful significance for Germany,” Reich Chancellery State Secretary Hermann Pünder noted in his journal.
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Hitler waited another week before having Goebbels proclaim his candidacy in a speech in Berlin’s Sportpalast on the evening of 22 February. “Ten minutes of enthusiasm, ovations, the people stood up and cheered me,” Goebbels wrote in his diary.
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“The roof almost caved in. It’s fantastic. If this keeps up, we’ll win.”

But one hurdle remained. To run for the office, Hitler had to be a German citizen. In July 1930, Wilhelm Frick—then Thuringian interior minister—had made a misguided attempt to secure Hitler citizenship by nominating him commissioner for gendarmes in the town of Hildburghausen. When this failed bit of foolishness became public knowledge in February 1932, people were baffled. In the meantime, the party leadership believed it had hit on a far more elegant solution. The NSDAP interior minister of Braunschweig, who was part of a coalition government with the DNVP and the DVP, was instructed to have Hitler made a civil servant, which would have been a first step towards German citizenship. The original plan was to appoint him extraordinary professor of “Organic Social Theory and Politics” at Braunschweig’s Technical University.
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But that was too much even for the NSDAP’s coalition partners. Instead, Hitler was appointed government counsel for Braunschweig’s consulate in Berlin. There, on the afternoon of 26 February, Hitler accepted his appointment certificate and swore to “be loyal to the Reich and Land constitutions, obey the law and faithfully fulfil the duties” of his office.
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With that his official “duties” were already over. He immediately applied for a leave of absence, which was granted as a matter of course, until after the Reich presidential elections. The appointment was only a means to a political end. “Just got word that he’s been named Braunschw[eig] counsel—which makes him citizen Hitler,” Goebbels cynically noted in his diary on 26 February. “Congratulations.”
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