Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (95 page)

Images of Hitler hung not just in private dwellings and government offices. They were everywhere in the public sphere. During the popular referendums organised by the regime, there was no escaping Hitler’s likeness. One SPD-in-exile observer wrote of the vote on 19 August 1934: “Hitler on all the billboards. Hitler in all the shop windows. Hitler indeed in every kind of window you can find. Every tram, every train, every car—Hitler looks out of every window.”
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Many Germans turned to the Chancellery to try to get a picture of their “beloved Führer” autographed. In August 1934, when Heinrich Himmler procured a picture with Hitler’s personal dedication for his parents, the Himmler household in Munich was beside itself. Gebhard Himmler, Heinrich’s father, reported: “Dear Mum was in ecstasy.”
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The Obersalzberg became a destination for pilgrimages. Thousands of devotees made their way to Hitler’s country retreat to try to get a glimpse of their hero. “The area around Wachenfeld house is constantly occupied by men and women admirers,” the president of Upper Bavaria reported in August 1934. “Even on walks in isolated spots the Reich chancellor is pursued by a throng of intrusive admirers and inquisitive persons.”
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Wiedemann found that there was “something religious” about the processions of these pilgrims: “Silently they passed with an expression which made clear that this was one of the greatest moments of their lives.”
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Wherever Hitler went in the first years of his rule, he was celebrated like a pop star. “Everywhere ovations for him…magnificent how the people are awakening!” Goebbels noted on 18 April 1933 after travelling with Hitler by car from Berchtesgaden to Munich.
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Albert Speer’s memoirs contain similar descriptions: “Two men from the military escort walked in front of the car, with three more on each side, as the car proceeded at a crawl through the pressing crowd. As I usually did, I sat right behind Hitler on the emergency seat, and I’ll never forget the impact of the jubilations, the delirium that was expressed in so many of the faces.”
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There can be no doubt that such scenes of jubilation were not organised: they were spontaneous outbursts of quasi-religious faith in the man who was credited with the powers of a miracle healer.

An incident recorded by Fritz Wiedemann illustrates these pseudo-religious components of the admiration for Hitler. During a visit to Hamburg, the crowd forced its way through the military escort, and one man succeeded in grasping Hitler’s hand. “He began dancing around as if mad and crying over and over, ‘I touched his hand, I touched his hand,’ ” recalled Wiedemann. “If the man had declared that he had been lame and could now walk again, I would not have been surprised. The crowd would have definitely believed it.”
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William Shirer witnessed similar scenes of pseudo-religious ecstasy at the Nuremberg Party Conference in 1934, when Hitler appeared for a moment on the balcony of his hotel room above a thousand-strong crowd, consisting largely of women. “They reminded me of the crazed expressions I saw once in the back country of Louisiana on the faces of some Holy Rollers who were about to hit the trail,” wrote Shirer. “They looked up at him as if he were a messiah, their faces transformed into something positively inhuman.”
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There was no way such excessive and continual hero worship could fail to affect Hitler’s self-image. “Only one German has ever been celebrated in this way—Luther!” he called out triumphantly to his entourage in the autumn of 1934, when his motorcade from Weimar to Nuremberg had trouble making its way through the masses of his admirers.
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The dictator visibly enjoyed being the centre of such unusual public appreciation. The awkwardness he had displayed on public occasions at the start of his chancellorship evaporated, and he became increasingly confident, his sense of self-importance growing as he was borne on wave upon wave of approval. Before long, he was addicted to the thrill of popular admiration. It reinforced Hitler’s belief that he had been chosen by Providence to carry out a historic mission.

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Pro-Hitler euphoria was by no means restricted to middle-class circles. It also increasingly spread to the working classes. Key to this was the regime’s success in fighting unemployment. Economic developments from 1933 were referred to as an economic miracle, and in fact the number of jobless in Germany declined far more quickly than in other industrialised nations at the time. By 1936, primarily thanks to accelerated rearmament, Germany had practically achieved full employment. The rapid economic recovery had been financed by massive deficit spending, the costs of which would only become apparent later.
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But what mattered most to workers was that a feeling of social security had been restored after the traumatic years of the Depression. As an observer for the SPD in exile in Rhineland-Westphalia reported in March 1935: “Today, having been given jobs in the arms industry, people who were to the left of us and were even Communists, defend the system, saying, ‘I don’t care about the whys and wherefores. I’ve got work. That’s something the others were never able to take care of.’ ”
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Another such report from February 1936 quotes workers who used to be members of the SPD and of the Reich Banner: “You people always made socialist speeches, but the Nazis have given us jobs…I don’t care whether I make grenades or build the autobahn. I just want to work. Why did you not take job creation seriously?”
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Hitler also increased his popularity among the working classes by taking nearly every opportunity to excoriate the lack of social respect for physical labour. “Honour labour and respect the worker!” he proclaimed at the main 1 May event in Berlin in 1933. Mental and physical labourers, he said, should never be pitted against one another: “That’s why we will root out the conceit that causes some individuals to look down on their comrades who ‘only’ work with a lathe, a machine or a plough.”
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Hitler’s message was that greater appreciation for physical labour would raise the social prestige of workers and break down stubborn social prejudices in society. Hitler’s fondness for styling himself as a “labourer” was part of his campaign to court the working classes and win them over for his regime.

Observers from the SPD in exile had no choice but to acknowledge the success of this strategy. “Major segments of the working classes have lapsed into unquestioning deification of Hitler,” one report from June/July 1934 noted ruefully. Workers were still “greatly obsessed with Hitlerism,” a report from February 1935 read, and three months later another observer concluded that “those workers who were previously indifferent are today the most submissive followers of the system and the most fervent believers in the cult of Hitler.”
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These reports are all the more credible because they were made by opponents and not adherents of the regime. Thus it was not merely wishful thinking when Goebbels repeatedly noted in his diary that workers were the “most loyal” supporters of National Socialism.
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The bloody purge of the SA in late June 1934 did nothing to diminish Hitler’s popularity among the working classes. On the contrary, many workers approved of Hitler’s “energetic” action. As one SPD report noted, “Hitler is a fellow who does nothing by half measures” was a widely held view.
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Nonetheless, the huge popularity Hitler enjoyed did not spill over to his party. With the sacrosanct Führer increasingly considered beyond banal everyday reality, criticism of aspects of the regime was concentrated on his subordinates. This mechanism became particularly apparent in the first half of 1934, a period when the public mood worsened. “Generally speaking, Adolf Hitler is exempt from criticism,” an SPD report from Berlin concluded. “He is credited with having good intentions, and people do not think he can do anything about the corruption of his subordinates.” The sentiment which one voter had scrawled upon an election ballot, “Yes to Adolf Hitler, but a thousandfold no to the brown bigwigs,”
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was widespread. Hitler benefited from comparisons with many party functionaries who flaunted their newly won power and were easily corruptible. In contrast the Führer depicted himself as a “simple man of the people,” someone with few personal needs who placed himself entirely at the service of the nation. “I am probably the only statesman in the world who does not have a bank account,” he boasted in late March 1936 in a speech to the workers at the Krupp factory in Essen. “I have no stocks or shares in any company. I don’t draw any dividends.”
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Very few people realised that the official image of Hitler’s modest lifestyle had nothing to do with reality. Moreover, the mythology of the Führer served a compensatory function; it blunted dissatisfaction over the problems and shortcomings of the Third Reich by blaming them solely on Hitler’s subordinates. If Hitler were aware of the problems, popular opinion ran, he would doubtless make sure they were alleviated.
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“If only the Führer knew” already established itself as a figure of speech in the early years of the regime.
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Hitler was well aware of the growing gap between his own beatified status and the negative image of Nazi Party functionaries. In a speech to his political directors at the Nuremberg party rally in 1935, he lashed out at all those “who would distinguish between the Führer and his followers…who would say yes to the Führer but question the necessity of the party.” Hitler told his audience: “For me, you are the political officers of the German nation and you are indivisible from me come what may.”
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But such assurances did nothing to change the fact that Hitler’s popularity was far greater than the party’s, and indeed to an extent came at the expense of the latter. Whereas the Führer received credit for all the regime’s achievements, disgruntlement was aimed exclusively at the “little Hitlers,” the Nazi Party’s local leadership.

Hitler’s reputation was based on Germany’s unexpectedly rapid economic recovery and his spectacular foreign-policy triumphs. The Saar region referendum of January 1935 and the reintroduction of compulsory military service two months later generated enthusiasm far beyond National Socialist circles. “Hitler is a guy who does not take any guff, who has backbone and who does what he thinks is right and necessary,” read one SPD-in-exile report.
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Nazi propaganda gleefully seized and expanded upon such sentiments. On the occasion of his forty-sixth birthday in 1935, the Nazi press spokesman, Otto Dietrich, celebrated Hitler as the “most supreme leader,” who had secured Germany’s ability to defend itself with his “incomparable decisiveness.” Goebbels added: “The entire people loves him, because it feels safe in his hands like a child in the arms of its mother…Just as we do, who are gathered close by him, so the last man in the farthest village says in this hour: ‘What he was, he is, and what he is, he should remain: our Hitler.’ ”
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But in the autumn of 1935, discontent over shortages of goods and inflation were once again growing. An SPD report from Saxony read: “The power of the cult of Hitler is no longer unbroken. Doubts are beginning to gnaw at the Hitler myth.” Another observer in Westphalia reported: “His star is beginning to fade.”
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When he tried to alert Hitler to the public unease, Fritz Wiedemann received a blunt rebuke. “The mood among the people is not bad—it is good,” Hitler scolded him. “I know better…Spare me such things in future.”
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Yet in truth, the dictator, who had a fine instinct for changes in the public mood, was worried himself. As we have seen, the remilitarisation of the Rhineland in March 1936 served in part to distract from domestic difficulties. Once initial fears of a military response by the Western powers proved unfounded, this risky operation unleashed a new wave of enthusiasm for Hitler, which was reflected in the results of the popular referendum of 29 March 1936. “Again and again, Hitler seems like a man of great character,” reported observers for the SPD in exile. “Again and again, people look up and admire the man credited with the monstrous achievements of National Socialist power and organisation.”
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“He is an idol for every one of us,” Goebbels noted in his diary in early October 1936, after Hitler had made another triumphant appearance at the harvest festival on Bückeberg Mountain.
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By then the mythic status of the Führer was well established. Hitler represented the strongest point of connection between the government and the people, and those who staged the Hitler cult did everything to celebrate and deify this supposed bringer of light. The National Socialist calendar of holidays, patterned after the Christian one, offered them plenty of opportunities. It kicked off on 30 January, the anniversary of the Nazi “seizure of power.” On 24 February, Hitler commemorated the proclamation of the party programme in 1920 with the old guard in Munich’s Hofbräuhaus. On 16 March, the Heroes’ Memorial Day—formerly the People’s Day of Mourning—featured a ceremonial event in the Reichstag followed by a military parade. April the 20th was the Führer’s birthday. The Day of National Labour—1 May—was staged as a celebration of the ethnic-popular community. It was followed by Mother’s Day on the second Sunday in May, the summer solstice on 21 June and the harvest festival, the “day to honour our farmers,” at Bückeberg Mountain near the town of Hameln in early October. The cycle of holidays ended on 9 November with the march of the “old fighters” from the Bürgerbräukeller to the Feldherrnhalle, where a commemorative ceremony was held for the “fallen warriors of the movement.”
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