Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

by Volker Ullrich

“Never has a great movement been victorious if it went down the path of compromise.”

“Herr Hitler was a defeated man when he was given victory,” the journalist and sociologist Leopold Schwarzschild remarked in an article entitled “Chancellor Hitler” in early February 1933. “He had already lost the contest for governmental authority, when he was offered the opportunity to win it ex post facto.”6 The decisive factor in the political intrigue was access to Hindenburg, or, as Konrad Heiden more casually wrote, “who had the old man’s ear.”7 Ultimately the destiny of Germany depended on the Reich president. In his definitive Hindenburg biography, Wolfram Pyta convincingly showed that the ageing German president was not merely a marionette in the hands of his camarilla, as earlier historians had depicted him. On the contrary, Hindenburg remained in control of his decisions at all times.8 He played the leading part in the drama that preceded Hitler’s appointment to the chancellorship. Papen, State Secretary Meissner and Hindenburg’s son Oskar—although the Weimar Constitution had not foreseen a role played by the president’s son—were the most significant members of the supporting cast.

Göring was named Prussian interior minister and deputy Reich commissioner, which gave him control over the Prussian police

National Socialists celebrated Hitler’s appointment as chancellor with a torchlit parade lasting hours. “There’s a jubilant mood tonight in Berlin,” wrote Harry Kessler, who was as surprised as most people by Hitler’s elevation to chancellor. “SA and SS men, together with uniformed Stahlhelm members, are making their way through the streets, and the pavements are crowded with onlookers. In and around the Hotel Kaiserhof, it’s a veritable carnival.”110

January the 30th, 1933 saw something happen that hardly anyone would have thought possible at the end of December 1932. At the relatively young age of 43, Hitler had become the chancellor of the most powerful state in central Europe. Even his closest confidants like Goebbels regarded this twist of fate as “something out of a fairy tale.”115

“The best protection will always be enthusiastic masses of people.”225

a series of improvised decisions with which the Nazi leadership responded to and exploited unforeseeable situations.5 Administrative measures “from above” and violent activities “from below” reinforced

“All counterweights to his power were suddenly swallowed up and disappeared,” noted the Romance literature professor Victor Klemperer in his diary as early as March 1933.

almost all institutions and social groups within Germany bent over backwards to accommodate and support the new regime. The process of bringing things and people “into line”—Gleichschaltung—would never have gone so smoothly and successfully had it not corresponded with a widespread wish to be brought into line.7 Within only eighteen months, Hitler would rid himself of all rivals for power and establish a “Führer dictatorship.”

From Hitler’s governmental declaration, it was easy to get the impression that he, as head of government, intended to be more moderate and would revise the goals he had formulated prior to 1933. But it was clear on the evening of 3 February, when Hitler paid his introductory visit to the commanders of the German army and navy, that any such impressions were mistaken. The meeting called by new Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg took place in the official apartment of the army chief of staff, Kurt von Hammerstein, and Hitler was initially ill at ease among all the high-ranking officers. “He made strange humble little bows in every direction and was at a loss,” one participant remarked.14 Only after dinner, when he began a speech that would last two hours, did he shed his nervousness. No trace was left of the moderation he had displayed only two days earlier in his radio address. On the contrary, Hitler, with astonishing frankness, laid out for his military commanders what he intended to do in the years to come.15

The “sternest, authoritarian state leadership” and “the removal of the cancerous damage of democracy” were necessary to strengthen Germany’s “will to defend itself.” In the part of his speech that dealt with foreign policy, Hitler said his first goal would be “to fight against Versailles” by achieving military equality and rearming the Wehrmacht. “Universal conscription has to be reintroduced,”

The military leadership was especially pleased to hear Hitler promise that the Wehrmacht would remain the country’s only legitimate military force and that it would not be used to put down domestic opponents. The latter, Hitler declared, was the job of National Socialist organisations, particularly the SA.

22 February, Göring also ordered the creation of an auxiliary police force consisting of members of the “national associations”—the SS, the SA and the Stahlhelm—ostensibly for the purpose of combating “increasing unrest from radical left-wing and especially Communist quarters.”38 With that the Brownshirts were finally given the opportunity they had long coveted to settle the score with their hated left-wing adversaries.

The initial reactions of the top NSDAP leaders on the evening of 27 February suggest that they, too, were surprised. Hitler was with the Goebbelses, as was his habit, when Hanfstaengl called around 10 p.m. and told them that the Reichstag was in flames. At first they thought it was a bad joke,42 but the news was soon confirmed. Hitler and Goebbels hurried to the scene, where they met Göring. He greeted all those who arrived with a tirade about who was to blame, although the origins of the blaze had yet to be investigated. “This is the beginning of the Communist uprising,” Göring raged. “Now they will strike. We have not a minute to lose!”43 Goebbels accepted this version of events without question, noting: “Arson in 30 spots. Committed by the Communists. Göring a whirlwind of action. Hitler is enraged.”

the cabinet approved the draft of a Decree for the Protection of the People and the State submitted in the morning by Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick. The first paragraph “suspended until further notice” fundamental civil rights including personal liberty, freedom of speech and the press, the right to assemble, the privacy of letters and telephone conversations and the inviolability of house and home. The second paragraph enabled the government to “temporarily take over” the responsibilities of the upper administration of Germany’s states “in order to restore public security and order.”51 That opened the door not only for the Nazis to persecute anyone who disagreed with them but also to bring Germany’s often resistant states into line.

The decree of 28 February was, in the words of one German historian, “the emergency law upon which the National Socialist dictatorship based its rule until it itself collapsed,”52 and as early as 1941 the political scientist Ernst Fraenkel characterised it as the “constitutional document” of the Third Reich.53 Hindenburg

“The ruthless intervention of the national government may be somewhat alienating for many people, but there needs to be a thorough cleansing and clearing up. The anti-national forces must be rendered harmless. Otherwise no recovery will be possible.”58

On 11 March, Hitler succeeded in getting cabinet approval for the creation of a Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. With that he kept the promise he had made to Goebbels on 30 January but which violated the express assurances he had given his coalition partners that the make-up of the cabinet would not change after the election.

In his first press conference on 16 March, Goebbels announced his and his ministry’s intention “to work on the people until they accept our influence.”71

20 March, Heinrich Himmler announced the establishment of a concentration camp in a former munitions factory near the small city of Dachau. Initially, as a state facility, Dachau was guarded by Bavarian police, but on 11 April the SS assumed command. The Dachau camp became the first cell from which a national system of terror germinated. It was a kind of laboratory, under the direction of the SS, where experiments could be carried out with the forms of violence that would soon be used in the other concentration camps within the Reich. The German media reported extensively about Dachau, and the stories that were told about what went on there acted as a powerful deterrent to opposition to the Nazis. “Dear God, strike me numb / Lest to Dachau I do come” was an oft-repeated saying in the Third Reich.87

On 1 May 1933, the party leadership had to declare a temporary moratorium on new memberships because Nazi administrators could no longer deal with the flood of applications.91 Erich Ebermayer, one of the few who had retained a measure of critical distance, described the “flip-flop of the middle classes’ as “the most shameful aspect of this entire time.”92

“The best of my young friends are declaring their allegiance to National Socialism…You can’t talk to them at all. They simply believe. And there are no rational arguments against faith.”99

As far as the definitive removal of parliamentary democracy and persecution of its last defenders, the Social Democrats, were concerned, there was complete agreement between National Socialists and conservative nationalists. The Enabling Act concluded the first phase of the Nazi consolidation of power, and the next step was pre-programmed. In shutting down parliament as a state legislative organ, the political parties sacrificed their raison d’être. But Hitler’s government had not just made itself independent of the Reichstag, which henceforth would merely rubber-stamp and celebrate the regime’s decisions. It had also got rid of the president’s authority to issue emergency decrees.138

“So now we are the masters,” declared Goebbels, who sat with Hitler in the Chancellery on the evening of 23 March to listen to a rebroadcast of the Führer’s reply to Wels on the radio.139 Although the Enabling Act, which took effect the following day, was limited to four years, it was extended three times and remained the basis of National Socialist rule until the demise of the regime.

the changes in political conditions proceeded so rapidly that many contemporaries could hardly keep up with them. “It is a turbulent time that brings something new every day,” Theodor Heuss wrote in late June.193 Looking back at the summer of 1933, Sebastian Haffner described the situation of non-Nazi Germans as “one of the most difficult a human being could find himself in…a state of being completely and hopelessly overwhelmed as well as suffering from the after effects of the shock of being bowled over.” Haffner concluded: “The Nazis had us completely at their mercy. All bastions had fallen, and any form of collective resistance had become impossible.”194 Victor Klemperer saw things much the same. On 9 July 1933, he noted in his diary: “And now this monstrous internal tyranny, the break-up of all the parties, the daily emphasis on the idea that ‘We National Socialists alone have power. It is our revolution.’ Hitler is the absolute master.”195

Despite its insistence on the pretence of “legality,” the first months of the new government left no doubt as to its radically inhumane character, which was hostile towards all principles of democracy, the rule of law and morality. “This revolution boasts of its bloodlessness,” Thomas Mann wrote on 20 April 1933, Hitler’s forty-fourth birthday, “but it is the most hateful and murderous revolution that has ever been.”200

The strongest long-term stimuli driving economic recovery and the decrease in unemployment came from the rearmament of Germany, which Hitler began pursuing immediately after being named Reich chancellor. As early as February 1933, Hitler was stressing to Germany’s military and his cabinet that rearmament would be made an absolute priority. “Sums in the billions” would have to be found, Hitler declared, because “the future of Germany depends solely and alone on the reconstruction of the Wehrmacht.”221

When the Nazis had consolidated their power in the summer of 1933, the Brownshirts saw themselves robbed of their most important raison d’être: terrorising and neutralising the Nazis’ political opponents. Consequently, in early August, Göring rescinded the decree from the preceding February which made the SA an auxiliary police force. Politically there was no point any more to the Brownshirts’ violent activism, and the Nazi leadership viewed it as counter-productive. Many SA men were disappointed. They had hoped

In the battle for power that commenced with Röhm, Hitler had no qualms about publicising the former’s homosexuality and using it as a weapon against him. In mid-May, he had a one-to-one discussion with Goebbels, after which the propaganda minister noted: “Complaint about Röhm and his personnel policies under paragraph 175. Revolting.”247 Previously

ordered the commandant of the Dachau concentration camp to call upon Röhm, who was imprisoned in Stadelheim, to shoot himself. When Röhm refused, he was executed.283 “All revolutions devour their own children,” the former SA chief of staff had told Hans Frank, who visited him a few hours before.284

presented the cabinet with a draft law that would legalise the series of murders ex post facto. “The measures taken on 30 June and 1 and 2 July to put down treasonous acts against the nation and states are a legal form of emergency government defence,” the draft read. Justice Minister Franz Gürtner hastened to add that this was not tantamount to creating a new legal code, but merely confirmed the validity of the existing one. In the name of his cabinet colleagues, Werner von Blomberg thanked Hitler for his “decisive and courageous action, which has spared the German people a civil war.”286

Under the slogan of “national renewal,” a mood of optimism was created, and a social dynamic set in motion, which gave the impression that “under this government things are looking up for Germany.”5 The first signs of economic recovery in the spring of 1933 seemed to confirm this impression.