Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (55 page)

Alfred Hugenberg’s nationalists were excited by neither Hindenburg nor Hitler and nominated a candidate of their own: Theodor Duesterberg, the vice-chairman of the Stahlhelm veterans’ association. With that the fragile Harzburg Front finally fell apart. The KPD once again put forward their chairman, Ernst Thälmann. The SPD and the Centre Party, however, decided to forgo candidates of their own and support Hindenburg. In the party newspaper
Vorwärts
the SPD leadership declared:

Hitler in place of Hindenburg means chaos and panic in Germany and the whole of Europe, an extreme worsening of the economic crisis and of unemployment, and the most acute danger of bloodshed within our own people and abroad. Hitler in place of Hindenburg means the triumph of the reactionary part of the bourgeoisie over the progressive middle classes and the working class, the destruction of all civil liberties, of the press and of political, union and cultural organisations, increased exploitation and wage slavery.

The declaration ended with the slogan: “Defeat Hitler! Vote for Hindenburg!”
²⁸

The political fronts of 1925 had been reversed. “What a bizarre country,” Thea Sternheim noted in February 1932. “Hindenburg as the pet of the pro-democracy camp. Years ago when I heard of his election…I threw up out of fear and horror. Today, in the face of the fascist threat, a democrat has to anxiously hope for Hindenburg’s re-election.”
²⁹
The SPD’s support for Hindenburg was exactly what the NSDAP needed to go on the offensive. In the Reichstag session on 23 February, Goebbels caused a scandal when he declared that Hindenburg had “betrayed the interests of his former voters” and clearly aligned himself with Social Democracy. “Tell me who praises you, and I’ll tell who you are!” Goebbels sneered, adding that Hindenburg was drawing praise from the “gutter press in Berlin and the party of deserters.” In response to this defamation, SPD deputy Kurt Schumacher, who had been badly wounded after volunteering for military service in 1914, spoke up angrily: “If there is one thing we admire about National Socialism it’s the fact that it has succeeded, for the first time in German politics, in the complete mobilisation of human stupidity.”
³⁰
Goebbels refused to apologise for his outburst and was sent out of the chamber. Hitler did not conceal his delight, gushing, “Now battle has been declared.”
³¹

Immediately thereafter, the National Socialists kicked off their campaign, making use of the latest technology. Goebbels distributed 50,000 gramophone records of him delivering a campaign speech. A ten-minute sound film, designed to be shown on big-city squares, depicted Hitler as the coming saviour of the German people. Shrill posters reinforced the central message that Nazi propaganda had been advancing since mid-February: “Down with the system! Power to the National Socialists!”
³²
In his first campaign speech, on 27 February at the Sportpalast, which the
Völkischer Beobachter
covered in a story headlined “The Signal to Attack,” Hitler told 25,000 listeners that the “gigantic battle ahead” was not just about the presidency but about the “system” created on 9 November 1918, which in its thirteen years of existence had led Germany to the brink of the abyss. This was the tenor of all Hitler’s subsequent speeches: “For thirteen years we’ve been plaintiffs. Now the hour is at hand, my ethnic comrades. On 13 March, after thirteen years, we must become judges over that which has been destroyed by one side and over those internal values of our people which the other side has built up again!”
³³
Describing the audience’s reaction, Goebbels noted: “The people were beside themselves. An hour of euphoria. Hitler is a true man. I love him.”
³⁴

Between 1 and 11 March, Hitler maintained an exhausting schedule, speaking in Hamburg, Stettin (Szczecin), Breslau (Wrocław), Leipzig, Bad Blankenburg, Weimar, Frankfurt am Main, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Cologne, Dortmund and Hanover. He attracted huge crowds wherever he went. The
Hamburger Tageblatt
newspaper wrote about his reception in the Sagebielsäle hall, which was packed to the rafters: “A crowd of many thousands—a grey, dull, suffering army—seems to want to wipe away all its tears, anxiety and worry in a communal scream, which is both greeting and homage at once.”
³⁵
The
Schlesische Zeitung
wrote about Hitler’s appearance in Breslau’s Jahrhunderthalle, before which Hitler kept the 50,000 audience members waiting for hours:

They came from far and wide, from Hirschberg, Waldenburg, Sulau and Militsch, from all parts of Silesia. Many endured hours of travel in cramped circumstances or on the roof of an omnibus in order to hear their Führer…The people waited hour upon hour, the mood festive, not impatient. People brought lunch and dinner with them. Ambulant merchants pushed their way through the crowd selling fruit and refreshments. Orderlies and nurses stood at the ready. It was a vivid, lively scene.
³⁶

Even more than during the Reichstag elections in September 1930, Hitler’s campaign stops in the spring of 1932 were mass spectacles. For many Germans, even those who had not yet become party members, seeing Hitler was a must. They projected their desires onto him as their national saviour, someone who would release the country from misery and lead it to new prosperity. Hitler knew how to exploit these desires, denouncing the thirteen years of the Weimar Republic in ever-darker terms as a time of unmitigated decay and contrasting it with the bright future of a unified German “ethnic community.”

The chairman of the NSDAP studiously avoided attacking Hindenburg, however, having assured the Reich president in late February that he would do battle in “chivalric fashion.”
³⁷
Hitler was well aware that he could not afford to damage his relationship with Hindenburg beyond repair—for he could never come to power without permission from the president, should he fail to win the election. Thus he rarely passed up an opportunity to express his admiration for the former field marshal. At the same time, he indicated that Hindenburg was a man of the past whereas the future belonged to himself and his movement. “Venerable old man,” Hitler rhetorically addressed the president at his appearance in Nuremberg on 7 March, “you no longer bear the weight of Germany’s future on your shoulders.
We
must bear it on
our
shoulders. You can no longer assume responsibility for us; we, the war generation—must take it on ourselves. Venerable old man, you can no longer protect those who we want to destroy. Therefore, step aside and clear the way!”
³⁸

Hitler’s primary target for attack was the SPD, which he claimed was hiding behind the Hindenburg myth in an attempt to avoid taking responsibility. “Believe me,” he sneered in every one of his campaign speeches, “if I had done nothing in my life other than to lay this party at the field marshal’s feet, it would be a historic achievement. What a lovely transformation this party has undergone! What once was the party of the revolutionary proletariat is now a party of dutiful voters for the 85-year-old field marshal they used to hate so intensely.”
³⁹
Hitler was consciously trying to drive a wedge between the Social Democratic leadership and their constituency. He knew that if SPD voters cast their ballots for Hindenburg, his chances of electoral victory were slim.

Nevertheless Nazi propaganda was optimistic. “The current, continually repeated message is: Adolf Hitler is not only our candidate—he is the future president,” Goebbels wrote in a memo to Gau functionaries. “The entire party’s confidence in victory must be elevated into blind faith.”
⁴⁰
Goebbels himself vacillated between hope and anxiety. “The prognoses for Hitler, especially among p[arty] c[omrades], reach the levels of the fantastic,” he noted on 6 March. “I see a danger in this. We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves and underestimate the enemy.”
⁴¹
But only a few days later, Goebbels was confident of victory: “Spoke late at night with Hitler. He is in Stuttgart. Going from one triumph to the next. Everything is good. This will be a success.”
⁴²
Hitler was also convinced he could beat Hindenburg. In an interview with
New York Post
correspondent Hubert Knickerbocker on the eve of the election, 12 March, he predicted that he and Hindenburg would both get around 12 million votes and thus fail to secure an absolute majority. But in the run-off election on 10 April, Hindenburg would not have a chance. It had been irresponsible of Brüning, Hitler said, to have convinced the old man to stand for re-election, when his defeat was so easily foreseeable.
⁴³

Given such high expectations, the result of the election must have shocked the entire NSDAP: with 18 million votes (49.8 per cent) Hindenburg soundly defeated Hitler, who got just over 11 million (30.1 per cent). Nonetheless, Hindenburg just missed out on an absolute majority so a run-off was required. Thälmann had received 5 million votes (13.2 per cent) and Duesterberg 2.5 million (6.8 per cent).
⁴⁴
The disappointment among Nazi supporters was so great that in many places swastika flags were flown at half mast.
⁴⁵
Goebbels wrote in his diary: “We are beaten. Terrible prospects…The party comrades are depressed and downcast. A major coup is needed. Phoned Hitler. He’s completely disappointed by the result. We set our sights too high.”
⁴⁶
On election night, Hitler was already at work on an announcement to the party that downplayed the disaster. The NSDAP, he pointed out, had doubled their share of the vote compared to September 1930: “Today, we have risen to become the undisputed strongest party in Germany.” Hitler called upon NSDAP members to renew “the attack upon the front of Centrists and Marxists in the sharpest form.” The party could not afford to lose a single day. Every party member had to give “his all and his utmost” if the Nazi movement was to be victorious.
⁴⁷

—

After 1933, Otto Wagener retroactively described Hitler’s reaction to the March 1932 election result as his “finest hour.” On that “fateful evening,” Wagener opined, “the Führer rose above himself” and restored one’s faith with his “uncompromising, volcanic will.”
⁴⁸
Ernst Hanfstaengl, however, experienced a very different Hitler at home on Prinzregentenstrasse on 13 March. Hitler sat brooding in a darkened room like “a disappointed and discouraged gambler who had wagered beyond his means.”
⁴⁹
In a speech at an NSDAP event in Weimar on 15 March, Hitler was forced to admit that he had “miscalculated,” having been unable to believe that Social Democrats, “down to a man,” would vote for Hindenburg.
⁵⁰
Indeed, SPD followers had adhered to the instructions of their party leadership with remarkable discipline.

Between the initial election and the run-off, the idea briefly arose of Crown Prince Wilhelm running for president. In a letter to Hitler, Wilhelm II’s eldest son asked the Nazi leader for support, and Hitler apparently agreed to stand aside if Hindenburg did likewise. He may have speculated that if he helped the crown prince become president, the crown prince would appoint him German chancellor out of gratitude. This plan was predestined to fail. Hindenburg had no intention of standing aside shortly before he was certain to win re-election, and Wilhelm II vetoed the idea from his Dutch exile in Doorn. Crown Prince Wilhelm then officially endorsed Hitler.
⁵¹

In an interview with the Berlin correspondent of the
Daily Express
, Sefton Delmer, on 21 March, Hitler declared that he would run a campaign the likes of which the world had never seen.
⁵²
Hindenburg had declared an “Easter truce,” a moratorium on campaigning lasting from 20 March to 3 April, so by that time there was only a week left of activity before the run-off election. The lack of time, as Goebbels noted in his diary, required “completely new” methods of propaganda. The primary innovation was to charter an aeroplane so that Hitler could appear at a number of mass events every day.
⁵³
On 3 April, Hitler embarked in a Junkers D-1720 from Munich on his first “flying tour of Germany,” which would take him to more than twenty major campaign stops from the Saxon Nazi strongholds Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz and Plauen to Berlin and Potsdam, then via Pomerania to Lauenberg, Elbing and Königsberg in East Prussia. On 6 April, he flew back to southern Germany, appearing in Würzburg, Nuremberg and Regensburg. The following day supporters could see him in Frankfurt am Main, Darmstadt and Ludwigshafen. The day after that, he appeared in Düsseldorf, Essen and Münster, and on 9 April, the last day of campaigning, he spoke in Böblingen, Schwenningen and Stuttgart. “No one was able to avoid this wave of propaganda,” wrote Otto Dietrich, who had helped organise the flying tour. “It awakened sporting interests and spoke to the masses’ need for sensation as much as it addressed people’s political interests…It was a form of political propaganda that left even American methods in its shadow.”
⁵⁴