Hitler (66 page)

It is hard to deny a good deal of validity to the arguments of the Prussian politicians. In view of all the circumstances, their decision may well have been a reasonable one. But in the face of history their reasonableness counts for little. No thought was given to a demonstration of defiance, and in no phase of the events did Severing and his unnerved, morally broken fellows consider the possibility that going down to defeat in honor might have made people forget the halfway measures and missed opportunités of the past thirteen years, and have sparked a renewal of confidence in democracy. The real and immense importance of July 20, 1932, lies in its psychological consequences. It discouraged one side and taught the others how little fight the defenders of the republic would be likely to put up.

 

As a result, Papen's coup only increased the impatience of the Nazis. In the struggle for power three sharply divided camps now faced one another: the nationalist-authoritarian group around Papen, who in parliamentary terms represented barely 10 per cent of the voters but who had the backing of Hindenburg and the army; the exhausted democratic groups, who however could still count on considerable support by the public; and the totalitarian opposition consisting of both Nazis and Communists. Together these last held a negative majority of 53 per cent. But just as the Nazis and Communists could not work together, all the groups blocked and paralyzed one another. The summer and autumn of 1932 were marked by continuous efforts to overcome the current political rigidity by some new tactical maneuver.

On August 5 Hitler met Schleicher in Fürstenberg, Mecklenburg, near Berlin, and for the first time demanded full power: the office of Chancellor for himself, the Ministries of the Interior, Justice, Agriculture, and Air Transport, and a Propaganda Ministry to be newly created. He also insisted, on the basis of the coup of July 20, on the posts of Prussian Prime Minister and Prussian Minister of the Interior. Furthermore, he wanted a law empowering him to rule by decree with unlimited powers. For, as Goebbels remarked, “if we have the power we'll never give it up again unless we're carried out of our offices as corpses.”

Hitler left Schleicher convinced that he stood on the verge of power. As they parted, he genially proposed that a plaque be put on the house in Fürstenberg to commemorate their meeting. The storm troopers were already leaving their places of work and preparing for the day of victory with its celebrations, its excesses, and the promise of becoming big shots. To quiet them, as well as lend emphasis to his demands, Hitler had the SA units around Berlin parade within the city, and encircle it in an ever tighter ring. Throughout the Reich, but especially in Silesia and East Prussia, the number of bloody clashes increased. Thereupon, a decree of August 9 threatened the death penalty for anyone who “in the passion of the political struggle undertakes, in rage and hatred, a fatal assault upon his opponent.” The very next night five uniformed SA men in Potempa, a village in Upper Silesia, forced their way into the apartment of a Communist worker, pulled him out of bed, and literally trampled him to death before his mother's eyes.

These events obviously contributed to the sudden shift that once again barred the gates of power from the Nazis. But to what degree has not yet been clarified. Schleicher may have abandoned his idea of taming the Nazis by making Hitler Chancellor in a rightist coalition government, thus fettering him with responsibility and undermining his popularity. At any rate this plan now encountered vigorous resistance from the President, who had developed a paternal fondness for the agile and frivolous Papen. Hindenburg certainly did not care to exchange Papen for the Bohemian fanatic and ersatz messiah Hitler, who, moreover, would want to take over the Kaiser role that the President had grown attached to. On August 13 an extended round of negotiations with the National Socialist leadership was held. In conjunction with Papen, Hindenburg rejected all Hitler's claims to assume full powers and instead offered him the post of Vice-Chancellor in the existing cabinet. Furious, in the all-or-nothing mood of those days, Hitler turned down the offer, and stuck to his refusal, even when Papen broadened the terms. He would give his word of honor, he proposed, that after an interlude of “trusting and fruitful collaboration” he would resign the chancellorship in favor of Hitler.

We can be sure that Hitler had already visualized how he would offer to a dumfounded and doomed world the spectacle of his summons to rule. On the way to Berlin he had stopped in a restaurant at Chiemsee and, “while eating a large piece of sponge cake,” had described to his lieutenants how he was going to massacre the Marxists. Instead he suddenly found himself, made a fool of. And as always in response to setbacks, a dramatic gesture of despair followed hard upon the disappointment. When he was summoned to see Hindenburg that afternoon, he at first wanted to refuse to come. Only an explicit assurance from the presidential palace that nothing had yet been decided gave him hope once more. But Hindenburg merely inquired whether he was prepared to support the present administration. Hitler said no. An appeal to patriotism, such as the old man commonly sprinkled into his personal interviews, left Hitler unaffected. The meeting ended with a few admonishments and an “icy leave-taking.” In the hallway Hitler excitedly prophesied the overthrow of the President.

Hitler's bitterness increased when he found himself outmaneuvered by the official communiqué. Hindenburg, it stated, had rejected Hitler's demands “very firmly on the grounds that he could not reconcile with his conscience and his duties to the Fatherland transferring all administrative power exclusively to the National Socialist movement which intends to apply this power onesidedly.” There was also an expression of official regret that Hitler did not see fit to support, in keeping with his earlier promises, a nationalist government that enjoyed the President's confidence. In the oblique style of officialese, this was nothing less than charging Hitler with breaking his word; and for Hitler the reproach conjured up figures of the past, Seisser and the hated Herr von Kahr. Only a few months later, however, such spasms of resentment were forgotten.

For the moment, however, the National Socialists threw their whole weight into embittered opposition. When on August 22 the five who had trampled the Communist to death at Potempa were condemned to death on the basis of the new law against political terrorism, the Nazis demonstrated wildly inside the courtroom. The SA leader in Silesia, Edmund Heines, stood up in court in full uniform and shouted threats of vengeance. And Hitler sent a telegram to the five assuring them that “in the face of this monstrous, bloodthirsty sentence” he remained linked to them in “boundless loyalty.” He promised that they would soon be released. Now he was throwing off the mask of respectable conduct that he had so carefully maintained for the past two years. Once more, as in wilder early days, he was expressing solidarity with murderers. Such recklessness revealed how badly disappointed he had been—although to some extent he was driven by the need to placate his followers. Once more the SA felt itself thwarted. It was by far the largest paramilitary organization in the country, was raring to fight, and despised the tail-coated von Papen. Toughs of this sort could not comprehend why Hitler would go on accepting humiliations when he could turn loose his loyal warriors and let them take over the streets for that bloody carnival they thought they were entitled to.

At any rate, Hitler was now deploying the SA in a more and more threatening manner. And on September 2, after ten days of disorders, Papen actually backed down and sacrificed the slender remnant of his prestige: he recommended to the President commuting the five men's sentences to life imprisonment—from which they were released a few months later, hailed as glorious fighters. Yet in a speech that Hitler delivered on September 4 the rage and indignation of a man who felt he had been duped rang out:

 

I know what those gentlemen have in mind. They would like to provide us with a few posts now and silence us. But they won't ride far in that old rattletrap.... No, gentlemen, I did not form the party to haggle, to sell it, to barter it away! This isn't a lion's skin that any old sheep can slip into. The party is the party and that's all there is to it!... Do you really think you can bait me with a couple of ministerial posts? I don't even want to associate with any of you. Those gentlemen have no idea how little I give a damn about all that. If God had wanted things to be the way they are, we would have come into the world wearing a monocle. Not on your life! They can keep those posts because they don't belong to them at all.
⁴⁴

 

Hitler's fury over the snub from Hindenburg and Papen was so strong that he seemed for the first time tempted to abandon his course of legality and seize power by a bloody insurrection. The affront had not only meant a political setback; it had been a personal insult, a fresh reminder that he could not be part of respectable circles. More and more often the grim formula was uttered in demonstrations: “The hour of reckoning is coming!” He began negotiations with the Center with the aim of overthrowing the Papen government; and once during the discussions the wild proposal arose to form an alliance with the disappointed Left and force the deposing of Hindenburg by decree of the Reichstag; this would then be followed by a referendum. Then again, in the vengeful mood of those weeks, he painted for himself and his entourage the circumstances and the chances for a revolutionary seizure of the key government posts. Once again he dwelt on the bloodbath he would prepare for his Marxist opponents. In any case, the legal course he had been following for years corresponded only to the circumspect, instinctively dependent side of his nature; on the other side were his aggressiveness, his powerful imagination, and the conviction that historical greatness could not be achieved without bloodshed.

This dichotomy was on his mind when Hermann Rauschning, the Nazi President of the Danzig Senate, called upon him at Obersalzberg around this time. Rauschning was astonished at the petty bourgeois life style of the mighty tribune of the people, the cretonne curtains on the windows, the so-called peasant furniture, the chirping songbirds in the draped cage, and the society of stout elderly ladies. Hitler inveighed violently against Papen and called the nationalistic bourgeoisie “the real enemy of Germany.” He justified his protest against the Potempa sentences in grandiloquent abstract terms: “We must be cruel. We must recover the capacity to commit cruelties with a clear conscience. Only in this way can we expel our nation's softheartedness and sentimental philistinism, this
Gemütlichkeit
and easygoing evening-beer mood. We have no more time for fine feelings. We must compel our nation to greatness if it is to fulfill its historic task.”

And while he was expatiating on the historical challenge he had seen and accepted, and was comparing himself to Bismarck, he abruptly asked whether there was a formal extradition treaty between the Free City of Danzig and the German Reich. When Rauschning indicated that he did not understand the question, Hitler explained that a situation might arise in which he would need a place of refuge.

Then again his mood swung to confidence. Papen's frivolity, foolishness, and weakness, together with the President's softness toward all nationalist elements, not to speak of the old general's age (it made him laugh, Hitler publicly stated)—all these things gave him cause for hope. A few days after he had called the Potempa murderers “comrades” Hitler received a message from Hjalmar Schacht. It assured him of the writer's “unalterable sympathy,” and expressed faith that sooner or later power would come to him, one way or another. Schacht advised him for the present not to allow himself to be identified with any specific economic program, and concluded: “Wherever my work may lead me in the near future—even if some day you should see me inside the fortress—you can count on me as your reliable helper.”

When an Associated Press correspondent asked Hitler at this time whether he might not after all march on Berlin, as Mussolini had marched on Rome, he answered ambiguously: “Why should I march on Berlin? I'm already there, you know.”
⁴⁵

As you see, the Republic, the Senate, dignity dwelt in none of us.

Cicero to his brother Quintus

 

Obeying the rules of classical drama, the events of the autumn of 1932 took a turn which seemed to promise that the crisis might be overcome. The elements to which Nazism chiefly owed its rise began to be undermined. For one ironic moment the play seemed to reverse itself on every plane and to expose Hitler's expectations of power as wildly exaggerated—before the scene suddenly collapsed.

Ever since August 13 Papen had obviously made up his mind to make no more concessions to Hitler. Why he took this hard line is something of a mystery, since his own explanations do not ring true. It may be that he belatedly caught on to the trickery of the Nazis, saw through their posture, which Goebbels later accurately described as “sham moderation,” and changed his attitude accordingly. He realized also that the National Socialist Party depended heavily on a constant series of successes. Its internal situation was so precarious that it could not long stand up to determined sternness. To be sure, the government had had to give in to Nazi pressure and commute the Potempa sentences. But in the end Hitler had been outmaneuvered; he had become nervous and betrayed himself by his telegram to the murderers. Shortly afterward he once more made a serious mistake.

Papen had convoked the Reichstag for its first working session on September 12. In his drive to take vengeance on Papen, Hitler lost sight of all other considerations. Göring had in the meantime been elected President of the Reichstag, and with his help Hitler dealt the Chancellor the severest defeat in German parliamentary history, a vote of no confidence carried by a vote of 512 to 42. Papen had already obtained an order of dissolution before the session; he carried it in the traditional red portfolio for everyone to see; but Göring deliberately ignored it until the no-confidence vote had been taken. Papen was thus given his comeuppance; but the result was that the newly elected legislature was dissolved after a session lasting approximately one hour. The new elections were set for November 6.