The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (32 page)

But the aged President was not interested. He, whose duty it had been as Commander of the Imperial Army to tell the Kaiser on that dark fall day of November 1918 at Spa that he must go, that the monarchy was at an end, would not consider any Hohenzollern’s resuming the throne except the Emperor himself, who still lived in exile at Doom, in Holland. When Bruening explained to him that the Social Democrats and the
trade unions
, which with the greatest reluctance had given some encouragement to his plan if only because it might afford the last desperate chance of stopping Hitler, would not stand for the return of either Wilhelm II or his eldest son and that moreover if the monarchy were restored it must be a constitutional and democratic one on the lines of the British model, the grizzly old Field Marshal was so outraged he summarily dismissed his Chancellor from his presence. A week later he recalled him to inform him that he would not stand for re-election.

In the meantime first Bruening and then Hindenburg had had their first meeting with Adolf Hitler. Both talks went badly for the Nazi leader. He had not yet recovered from the blow of Geli Raubal’s suicide; his mind wandered and he was unsure of himself. To Bruening’s request for Nazi support for the continuance in office of Hindenburg Hitler answered with a long tirade against the Republic which left little doubt that he would not go along with the Chancellor’s plans. With Hindenburg, Hitler was ill at ease. He tried to impress the old gentleman with a long harangue but it fell flat. The President, at this first meeting, was not impressed by the “Bohemian corporal,” as he called him, and told Schleicher that such
a man might become Minister of Posts but never Chancellor—words which the Field Marshal would later have to eat.

Hitler, in a huff, hastened off to
Bad Harzburg
, where on the next day, October 11, he joined a massive demonstration of the “National Opposition” against the governments of Germany and Prussia. This was an assembly not so much of the radical Right, represented by the National Socialists, as of the older, conservative forces of reaction:
Hugenberg
’s German National Party, the right-wing veterans’ private army, the
Stahlhelm
, the so-called
Bismarck Youth
, the
Junkers
’ Agrarian League, and an odd assortment of old generals. But the Nazi leader did not have his heart in the meeting. He despised the frock-coated, top-hatted, be-medaled relics of the old regime, with whom, he saw, it might be dangerous to associate a “revolutionary” movement like his own too closely. He raced through his speech in a perfunctory manner and left the field before the parade of the Stahlhelm, which, to his annoyance, had shown up in larger numbers than the S.A. The
Harzburg Front
which was formed that day and which represented an effort of the old-line conservatives to bring the Nazis into a united front to begin a final assault on the Republic (it demanded the immediate resignation of Bruening) was thus stillborn. Hitler had no intention of playing second fiddle to these gentlemen whose minds, he thought, were buried in the past to which he knew there was no return. He might use them for the moment if they helped to undermine the Weimar regime and made available to him, as they did, new financial sources. But he would not, in turn, be used by them. Within a few days the Harzburg Front was facing collapse; the various elements of it were once more at each other’s throats.

Except on one issue. Both Hugenberg and Hitler refused to agree to Bruening’s proposal that Hindenburg’s term of office be prolonged. At the beginning of 1932 the Chancellor renewed his effort to get them to change their minds. With great difficulty he had prevailed on the President to agree to serving further if Parliament prolonged his term and thus made it unnecessary for him to have to shoulder the burden of a bitter election campaign. Now Bruening invited Hitler to come to Berlin for fresh discussions. The telegram arrived while the Fuehrer was conferring with
Hess
and Rosenberg in the editorial offices of the
Voelkischer Beobachter
in Munich. Thrusting the paper into their faces, Hitler cried, “Now I have them in my pocket! They have recognized me as a partner in their negotiations.”
¹

On January 7 Hitler conferred with Bruening and Schleicher, and there was a further meeting on January 10. Bruening repeated his proposal that the Nazi Party agree to prolonging Hindenburg’s term. If this were done, and as soon as he had settled the problem of cancellation of reparations and equality of armaments, he himself would retire. According to some sources—it is a disputed point—Bruening held out a further bait: he offered to suggest Hitler’s name to the President as his successor.
²

Hitler did not immediately give a definite reply. He adjourned to the
Kaiserhof hotel
and took counsel with his advisers. Gregor Strasser was in
favor of accepting Bruening’s plan, arguing that if the Nazis forced an election
Hindenburg
would win it. Goebbels and Roehm were for an outright rejection. In his diary for January 7, Goebbels wrote: “The Presidency is not the issue. Bruening merely wants to strengthen his own position indefinitely … The chess game for power begins…. The chief thing is that we remain strong and make no compromises.” The night before, he had written: “There is a man in the organization that no one trusts … This is Gregor Strasser.”
³

Hitler himself saw no reason to strengthen Bruening’s hand and thus give the Republic a further lease on life. But unlike the thickheaded Hugenberg, who rejected the plan outright on January 12, Hitler was more subtle. He replied not to the Chancellor but over his head to the President, declaring that he regarded Bruening’s proposal as unconstitutional but that he would support Hindenburg’s re-election if the Field Marshal would reject Bruening’s plan. To Otto von Meissner, the nimble Secretary of State at the Presidential Chancellery, who had zealously served in that capacity first the Socialist Ebert and then the conservative Hindenburg and who was beginning to think of a third term in office for himself with whoever the President might be—perhaps even Hitler?—the Nazi leader, in a secret conversation at the Kaiserhof, offered to support Hindenburg in the elections if he would first get rid of Bruening, name a “National” government and decree new elections for the Reichstag and the Prussian Diet.

To this Hindenburg would not agree. Nettled by the refusal of the Nazis and the Nationalists, the latter his friends and supposed supporters, to agree to spare him the strain of an election battle, Hindenburg agreed to run again. But to his resentment against the nationalist parties was added a curious spleen against Bruening, who he felt had handled the whole matter badly and who was now forcing him into bitter conflict with the very nationalist forces which had elected him President in 1925 against the liberal–Marxist candidates. Now he could win only with the support of the Socialists and the
trade unions
, for whom he had always had an undisguised contempt. A marked coolness sprang up in his dealings with his Chancellor—“the best,” he had said not so long ago, “since Bismarck.”

A coolness toward Bruening also came over the General who had propelled him into the chancellorship. To Schleicher the austere Catholic leader had been a disappointment after all. He had become the most unpopular Chancellor the Republic had ever had. He had been unable to obtain a majority in the country; he had failed to curb the Nazis or to win them over; he had bungled the problem of keeping Hindenburg on. Therefore he must go—and perhaps with him General Groener, Schleicher’s revered chief, who did not seem to grasp the ideas for the future which he, Schleicher, had in mind. The scheming General was not exactly in a hurry. Bruening and Groener, the two strong men of the government, must remain in power until Hindenburg was re-elected; without their support the old Field Marshal might not make it. After the elections their usefulness would be over.

There were a number of occasions in the career of Adolf Hitler when, faced with a difficult decision, he seemed unable to make up his mind, and this was one of them. The question he faced in January 1932 was: to run or not to run for President? Hindenburg seemed unbeatable. The legendary hero would be supported not only by many elements of the Right but by the democratic parties which had been against him in the election of 1925 but which now saw him as the savior of the Republic. To run against the Field Marshal and be beaten, as he almost certainly would be—was that not to risk the reputation for invincibility which the Nazis had been building up in one provincial election after another since their spectacular triumph in the national poll in 1930? And yet, not to run—was that not a confession of weakness, a demonstration of a lack of confidence that National Socialism was on the threshold of power? There was another consideration. Hitler was at the moment not even eligible to run. He was not a German citizen.

Joseph Goebbels urged him to announce his candidacy. On January 19 they journeyed to
Munich
together and that evening Goebbels recorded in his diary: “Discussed the question of the presidency with the Fuehrer. No decision has yet been reached. I pleaded strongly for his own candidacy.” For the next month the diary of Goebbels reflected the ups and downs in Hitler’s mind. On January 31: “The Fuehrer’s decision will be made on Wednesday. It can no longer be in doubt.” On February 2 it seemed that he had made it. Goebbels noted: “He decides to be a candidate himself.” But Goebbels adds that the decision will not be made public until it is seen what the Social Democrats do. Next day the party leaders assemble in Munich to hear Hitler’s decision. “They wait in vain,” Goebbels grumbles. “Everyone,” he adds, “is nervous and strained.” That evening the little propaganda chief seeks relief; he steals away to see Greta Garbo in a movie and is “moved and shaken” by this “greatest living actress.” Later that night “a number of old party comrades come to me. They are depressed at the lack of a decision. They fear that the Fuehrer is waiting too long.”

He may be waiting too long, but Hitler’s confidence in his ultimate triumph does not weaken. One night in Munich, the diary records, the Fuehrer has a long discussion with Goebbels on which post the latter will have in the Third Reich. The Leader has in mind for him, Goebbels says, a “Ministry of Popular Education which will deal with films, radio, art, culture and propaganda.” On another evening Hitler has a long discussion with his architect, Professor Troost, over plans for a “grandiose alteration of the national capital.” And Goebbels adds: “The Fuehrer has his plans all finished. He speaks, acts and feels as if we were already in power.”

But he does not speak yet as if he were anxious to run against Hindenburg. On February 9, Goebbels records, “the Fuehrer is back in Berlin. More debates at the Kaiserhof over the presidential election. Everything is left in suspense.” Three days later Goebbels goes over his calculations
of votes with the Fuehrer. “It’s a risk,” he says, “but it must be taken.” Hitler goes off to Munich to think it over still further.

In the end his mind is made up for him by Hindenburg. On February 15 the aged President formally announces his candidacy. Goebbels is happy. “Now we have a free hand. Now we need no longer hide our decision.” But Hitler does hide it until February 22. At a meeting that day in the Kaiserhof “the Fuehrer gives me permission,” Goebbels rejoices, “to announce his candidacy at the Sport Palace tonight.”

It was a bitter and confusing campaign. In the Reichstag Goebbels branded Hindenburg as “the candidate of the party of the deserters” and was expelled from the chamber for insulting the President. In Berlin the nationalist
Deutsche Zeitung
, which had backed Hindenburg’s election in 1925, now turned on him vehemently. “The present issue,” it declared, “is whether the internationalist traitors and pacifist swine, with the approval of Hindenburg, are to bring about the final ruin of Germany.”

All the traditional loyalties of classes and parties were upset in the confusion and heat of the electoral battle. To Hindenburg, a Protestant, a Prussian, a conservative and a monarchist, went the support of the Socialists, the
trade unions
, the Catholics of Bruening’s
Center Party
and the remnants of the liberal, democratic middle-class parties. To Hitler, a Catholic, an Austrian, a former tramp, a “national socialist,” a leader of the lower-middle-class masses, was rallied, in addition to his own followers, the support of the upper-class Protestants of the north, the conservative Junker agrarians and a number of monarchists, including, at the last minute, the former Crown Prince himself. The confusion was further compounded by the entrance of two other candidates, neither of whom could hope to win but both of whom might poll enough votes to prevent either of the leading contestants from obtaining the absolute majority needed for election. The Nationalists put up Theodor Duesterberg, second-in-command of the
Stahlhelm
(of which Hindenburg was the honorary commander), a colorless former lieutenant colonel whom the Nazis, to their glee, soon discovered to be the great-grandson of a Jew. The Communists, shouting that the Social Democrats were “betraying the workers” by supporting Hindenburg, ran their own candidate, Ernst Thaelmann, the party’s leader. It was not the first time, nor the last, that the Communists, on orders from Moscow, risked playing into Nazi hands.

Before the campaign was scarcely under way Hitler solved the problem of his citizenship. On February 25 it was announced that the Nazi Minister of the Interior of the state of
Brunswick
had named Herr Hitler an attaché of the legation of Brunswick in Berlin. Through this comic-opera maneuver the Nazi leader became automatically a citizen of Brunswick and hence of Germany and was therefore eligible to run for President of the German Reich. Having leaped over this little hurdle with ease, Hitler threw himself into the campaign with furious energy, crisscrossing the country, addressing large crowds at scores of mass meetings and whipping them up into a state of frenzy. Goebbels and Strasser, the other two spellbinders of the party, followed a similar schedule. But this was not all.
They directed a propaganda campaign such as Germany had never seen. They plastered the walls of the cities and towns with a million screeching colored posters, distributed eight million pamphlets and twelve million extra copies of their party newspapers, staged three thousand meetings a day and, for the first time in a German election, made good use of films and gramophone records, the latter spouting forth from loudspeakers on trucks.