On January 24, 1933, a cartoon appeared in a German newspaper showing Adolf Hitler in the graveyard of his failed political movement. He was depicted as a Hamlet figure, holding his own skull and staring at it among a forest of swastika-shaped gravestones.
If only!
Germany’s non-Nazi wishful thinkers had managed to convince themselves that the danger had passed. Despite the fact that Hitler had traveled more than 40,000 miles by plane during the recent election campaign and had demonstrated all his oratorical tricks in packed halls across the country, his National Socialist party had not yet come close to achieving the necessary 51 percent of the national votes for the elections. a parliamentary majority.
In the Reichstag elections on November 6, two-thirds of German voters had rejected him. He had lost two million votes since the previous elections in July. And his party was bankrupt: 90 million Reichsmarks in debt.
Even Goebbels, Hitler’s devoted acolyte, admitted in his vitriolic, terse diary that ‘the year 1932 was one long series of misfortunes. You have to smash it to pieces.”
Hitler is cheered by an adoring crowd after being appointed chancellor in 1933
German President Paul von Hindenburg with Chancellor Adolf Hitler after his election victory
Yet, just six days after that ridiculous cartoon, Reich President Field Marshal von Hindenburg would appoint the little “Bohemian Corporal” (as he called him) as his new Chancellor. Hindenburg could hardly stand the man. So how on earth did it happen?
As I read Timothy Ryback’s excellent and forensic account of the complicated events in German politics in the six months leading up to that fateful moment, I found myself prepared for the end result not to happen. I clung to the misguided opinions of so many commentators at the time: “Hitler is out of the running.” “His reputation is on the decline.” Even on January 28, 1933, Ryder writes, German newspapers were still predicting a variety of impending coalitions, none of which included Hitler.
But none of these commentators took into account the basic fact that we now know to be true: nothing could stop Hitler. He screamed and ranted like an angry toddler until he got his way. As resilient as steel, he was positively strengthened by adversity and played his cards just right to get what he wanted: total, dictatorial power.
As he had written in Mein Kampf, recalling his unhappy Austrian childhood, even his father’s most severe caning could not have shaken his resolve. Ryder’s book is a chilling testament to the triumph of stubbornness.
“No,” Hindenberg said politely but firmly to Hitler when this book opened in August 1932. Hitler had arrived to meet the president, fully expecting to be appointed chancellor. Having won 37 percent of the country’s votes, he insisted that this gave him the right to become the country’s leader.
But Hindenburg told him that he could never entrust the government to a party whose members were so intolerant, undisciplined and violent. Just five days earlier, Hitler’s stormtroopers had entered the home of communist trade unionist Konrad Pietzuch and murdered him in front of his mother. “But, Herr Reich President,” Hitler pleaded, “understand that my people sometimes get a little excited.”
Admitting that the National Socialists were now a party with strong national support, Hindenburg asked Hitler if he would agree to participate in the government. To which Hitler replied with equal force: ‘Nein.’ He wasn’t about to play second fiddle to anyone.
Over the next five months, politicians tried many times to bribe or force him to join them in the coalition government. “I would rather besiege a fortress than be imprisoned there,” was Hitler’s scornful reply.
He insisted that a one-party government was the only possible solution to Germany’s myriad problems. “Dictatorship,” he explained to an American journalist, “is the only viable future for Germany.”
It was true that the German parliamentary system was virtually bankrupt due to the chaos of too many short-lived, weak coalitions.
Hindenburg increasingly resorted to using his ‘Article 48’ powers to issue dictatorial-style emergency decrees without parliamentary approval.
At the end of that meeting in August 1932 it was agreed that Hitler would go into opposition. The current chancellor, Von Papen, would remain in office. And Hitler promised to make life difficult for both of them. He would bring the Reichstag (parliament) to an impasse and sow political and social chaos.
This is exactly what he did, hence the new elections in November, in which the Nazis did poorly.
But the other parties did not do well either. Von Papen resigned because he knew he could not bridge the divisions within the party and find a way to govern. No one could, it seemed.
Hindenburg appointed Kurt von Schleicher as the new (and, as it turned out, last) chancellor of the Weimar Republic, hoping that he could work with the Nazis to create a viable government. Others fervently hoped that the nationalist business magnate Alfred Hugenberg could enter into a coalition with the other, slightly more agreeable Nazi Gregor Strasser. I admit that by then my head was spinning with all the possible political permutations.
By mid-January 1933, constitutional paralysis had set in. Schleicher became frustrated trying to run the government without a mandate to rule by dictatorial decree. Hindenburg became irritated by him and Schleicher, who found himself isolated and in the cold, resigned.
Von Papen, who despised Schleicher, saw his opportunity. He remained loyal to Hindenburg and proposed forming a new government led by Hitler.
“Are you telling me,” Hindenburg said, “that I have the unpleasant task of appointing this fellow Hitler as the next chancellor?” Papen nodded.
Hitler imagined himself rehearsing a speech in front of a mirror in 1933
The Führer’s first cabinet meeting in Berlin, on January 30, 1933, including Hermann Göring, Vice Chancellor Franz Von Papen and Minister of Economic Affairs Alfred Hugenberg
Until the last minute, even when they had taken a Mercedes from their hotel to the Reichstag on January 30, we see Hitler and the power-hungry Hugenberg engaged in a struggle on the stairs, both red with anger, arguing over who was the one. is in the cabinet.
The president was annoyed at having to wait while the two men fought it out. Hugenberg only softened and withdrew when Hitler promised that after new elections he would listen to all voices and ‘try to build a broad majority’. They went upstairs into the president’s office, and the deal was signed. Hitler was the new chancellor. The next day, Hugenberg told a friend, “I just made the biggest mistake of my life.”
You certainly did that, Hugenburg, and so did Hindenburg. Exhausted, they had heralded the beginning of what Hitler had promised: his ‘thousand-year Reich’.
Within three weeks of the March 1933 new elections, the Reichstag, instead of “building a broad majority,” passed an enabling law that established Hitler’s government as a dictatorship.
The rest is history.
Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power by Timothy W. Ryback is out now (Headline, £25)