The merger plans were abandoned. Hitler’s uncompromising conditions were accepted with acclaim at an extraordinary general meeting on 29 July: they culminated in the demand that he should be made Party chairman ’with dictatorial powers’ and that the Party be purged of the ‘foreign elements which have now penetrated it’.44 Having secured his complete mastery over the Nazi Party, Hitler now enjoyed its full support for the propaganda campaign he quickly unfolded. It soon descended from provocation to violence.
