ADOLF
HITLER
By
Wikipedia
Hitler's entry and rise
After the war, Hitler
remained in the army, which was mainly engaged in suppressing socialist
uprisings breaking out across Germany, including Munich (Bavarian
Soviet Republic), where Hitler returned in 1919. He took part in "national
thinking" courses organised by the Education and Propaganda
Department (Dept Ib/P) of the Bavarian Reichswehr Group,
Headquarters 4 under Captain Mayr. A key purpose of this group was to create
a scapegoat
for the outbreak of the war and Germany's defeat. The scapegoats were found
in "international Jewry," communists and politicians across the
party spectrum, especially the parties of the Weimar
Coalition, who were deemed "November
criminals".
In July 1919, Hitler was
appointed a V-Mann (Verbindungsmann is the German term for a
police spy) of "Aufklärungskommando" ("Intelligence
Commando") of the Reichswehr,
for the purpose of influencing other soldiers toward similar ideas and was
assigned to infiltrate
a small nationalist party, the German
Workers' Party (DAP). During his inspection
of the party, Hitler was impressed with Drexler's anti-Semitic, nationalist
and anti-Marxist
ideas. Here Hitler also met Dietrich
Eckart, one of the early founders of the party, member of Thule
Society.[2]
Hitler was discharged from
the army in March, 1920 and (with his former superiors' continued
encouragement) began participating full time in the party's activities. By
early 1921, Adolf Hitler was becoming highly effective at speaking in front
of ever larger crowds. In February, Hitler spoke before a crowd of nearly
six thousand in Munich.
To publicize the meeting, he sent out two truckloads of Party supporters to
drive around with swastikas,
cause a commotion and throw out leaflets,
their first use of this tactic. Hitler gained notoriety outside of the Party
for his rowdy, polemic
speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians and groups (especially
Marxists) and always the Jews.
The German Workers' Party
was centred in Munich which had become a hotbed of reactionary German
nationalists who included Army officers determined to crush Marxism and
undermine or even overthrow the young German democracy centred in Berlin.
Gradually they noticed Adolf Hitler and his growing movement as a vehicle to
hitch themselves to. Hitler traveled to Berlin to visit nationalist groups
during the summer of 1921 and in his absence there was an unexpected revolt
among the DAP leadership in Munich.
The Party was run by an
executive committee
whose original members considered Hitler to be overbearing and even dictatorial.
To weaken Hitler's position they formed an alliance
with a group of socialists from Augsburg.
Hitler rushed back to Munich and countered them by tendering his resignation
from the Party on July
11, 1921.
When they realized the loss of Hitler would effectively mean the end of the
Party, he seized the moment and announced he would return on the condition
that he was made chairman and given dictatorial powers. Infuriated committee
members (including founder Anton
Drexler) held out at first. Meanwhile an anonymous pamphlet
appeared entitled Adolf Hitler: Is he a traitor?,
attacking Hitler's lust for power and criticizing the violence-prone men
around him. Hitler responded to its publication in a Munich newspaper by suing
for libel and
later won a small settlement.
The executive committee of
the DAP eventually backed down and Hitler's demands were put to a vote of
party members. Hitler received 543 votes for and only one against. At the
next gathering on July
29, 1921,
Adolf Hitler was introduced as Führer
of the Nazi Party, marking the first time this title was publicly used.
Hitler changed the name of the party to the National Socialist German
Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP).
Hitler's beer hall oratory,
attacking Jews, socialists
and liberals, capitalists
and communists,
began attracting adherents. Early followers included Rudolf
Hess, the former air force pilot Hermann
Göring, and the flamboyant army captain Ernst
Röhm, who became head of the Nazis' paramilitary
organization, the SA,
which protected meetings and attacked political opponents. He also attracted
the attention of local business interests, was accepted into influential
circles of Munich society and became associated with wartime General Erich
Ludendorff during this time.
The Hitler Putsch
Encouraged by this early
support, Hitler decided to use Ludendorff as a front in an attempt
to seize power later known as the Hitler
Putsch (and sometimes as Beerhall Putsch). The Nazi Party had
copied the Italian Fascists
in appearance and also had adopted some programmatical points and now, in
the turbulent year 1923, Hitler wanted to emulate Mussolini's
"March
on Rome" by staging his own "March on Berlin". Hitler and
Ludendorff obtained the clandestine support of Gustav
von Kahr, Bavaria's de facto
ruler along with leading figures in the Reichswehr
and the police. As political posters
show, Ludendorff, Hitler and the heads of the Bavarian police and military
planned on forming a new government.
However on November
8, 1923
Kahr and the military withdrew their support during a meeting in the Bürgerbräu
beer hall. A surprised Hitler had them arrested
and proceeded with the coup. Unknown to him, Kahr and the other detainees
had been released on Ludendorff's orders after he obtained their word not to
interfere. That night they prepared resistance measures against the coup and
in the morning, when the Nazis marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian
War Ministry to overthrow what they saw as Bavaria's traitorous government
as a start to their "March on Berlin," the army quickly dispersed
them (Ludendorff was wounded and a few other Nazis were killed).
Hitler fled to the home of friends
and contemplated suicide.
He was soon arrested for high
treason and appointed Alfred
Rosenberg as temporary leader of the party but found himself in an
environment somewhat receptive to his beliefs. During Hitler's trial in
April 1924 sympathetic magistrates allowed Hitler to turn his debacle into a
propaganda stunt. He was
given almost unlimited amounts of time to present his arguments to the court
along with a large body of the German people, and his popularity soared when
he voiced basic nationalistic sentiments shared by the public. For the crime
of conspiracy to commit treason Hitler was sentenced to five years'
imprisonment at Landsberg
prison where he received favoured treatment from the guards and had much fan mail
from admirers.
While at Landsberg he dictated his political book Mein
Kampf (My Struggle) to his deputy Rudolf
Hess. The book, dedicated to Thule
Society member Dietrich
Eckart, was both an autobiography and an exposition of his political
ideology. It was published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926 respectively,
but did not sell very well until Hitler came to power (though by the late
1930s nearly every household in Germany had a copy of it). Meanwhile, as he
was considered relatively harmless, Hitler was released in December 1924.
The rebuilding of the
party
At the time of Hitler's
release, the political situation in Germany had calmed down, which hampered
Hitler's opportunities for agitation. Instead, he began a long effort to
rebuild the dwindling party.
Though the Hitler Putsch
had given Hitler some national prominence, his party's mainstay was still
Munich. To spread the party to the north, Hitler also assimilated
independent groups, such as the Nuremberg-based Wistrich, led by Julius
Streicher, who now became Gauleiter
of Franconia.
As Hitler was still banned
from public speeches, he appointed Gregor
Strasser, who in 1924 had been elected to the Reichstag,
as Reichsorganisationsleiter, auhorizing him to organise the party in
northern Germany. Gregor, joined by his younger brother Otto
and Joseph
Goebbels, steered an increasingly independent course, emphasizing the
socialist element in the party's programme. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft der
Gauleiter Nord-West became an internal opposition, threatening Hitler's
authority, but this faction was defeated at the Bamberg Conference (1926),
during which Goebbels joined Hitler.
After this encounter,
Hitler centralized the party even more and asserted the Führerprinzip
as the basic principle of party organization. Leaders were not elected by
their group but were rather appointed by their superior and were answerable
to them while demanding unquestioning obedience from their inferiors.
Consistent with Hitler's disdain for democracy,
all power and authority
devolved from the top down.
A key element of Hitler's
appeal was his ability to convey a sense of offended national pride
caused by the Treaty
of Versailles imposed on the defeated German
Empire by the Entente.
Germany had lost economically important territory in Europe along with its colonies
and in admitting to sole responsibility for the war had agreed to pay a huge
reparations
bill totaling 32 billion marks.
Most Germans bitterly resented these terms but early Nazi attempts to gain
support by blaming these humiliations on "international Jewry"
were not particularly successful with the electorate. The party learned
quickly and soon a more subtle propaganda emerged, combining anti-Semitism
with an attack on the failures of the "Weimar
system" and the parties supporting it.
Having failed in
overthrowing the Republic by a coup, Hitler now pursued the "strategy
of legality": this meant formally adhering to the rules of the Weimar
Republic until he had legally gained power and then to transform liberal
democracy into an authoritarian dictatorship. Some party members, especially
in the paramilitary SA,
opposed this strategy. Ernst
Röhm, Hitler's long-time associate and leader of the SA, ridiculed
Hitler as "Adolphe Legalité", resigned from his post and
emigrated to Bolivia.
The Brüning
administration
The political turning point
for Hitler came when the Great
Depression hit Germany in 1930. The Weimar
Republic had never been firmly rooted and was openly opposed by
right-wing conservatives, Communists and the Nazis. As the parties loyal to
the republic found themselves unable to agree on counter-measures, their Grand
Coalition broke up and was replaced by a minority cabinet. The new
Chancellor Heinrich
Brüning, lacking a majority in parliament, had to implement his
measures through the President's emergency decrees. Tolerated by the
majority of parties, the exception soon became the rule and paved the way
for authoritarian forms of government.
The Reichstag's initial
opposition to Brüning's measures led to premature elections in September
1930. The republican parties lost their majority and their ability to resume
the Grand Coalition, while the Nazis suddenly rose from relative obscurity
to win 18.3% of the vote along with 107 seats in the Reichstag,
becoming the second largest party in Germany.
Hitler emerges from
the Brown House in Munich (headquarters of the Nazi party during the
last days of the Weimar Republic) after a post-election meeting in
1930.
Brüning's measure of
budget consolidation and financial austerity
brought little economic improvement and was extremely unpopular. Under these
circumstances, Hitler appealed to the bulk of German farmers, war
veterans and the middle-class
who had been hard-hit by both the inflation
of the 1920s and the unemployment
of the Depression. Hitler received little response from the urban
working classes and traditionally Catholic regions.
Meanwhile in September 1931
Hitler's niece Geli
Raubal was found dead in her bedroom in his Munich apartment (his
half-sister Angela and her daughter Geli had been with him in Munich since
1929), an apparent suicide. Geli was much younger than he was and had used
his gun, drawing rumours of a relationship between the two. The event is
viewed as having caused lasting turmoil for him.
In 1932 Hitler intended to
run against the aging President Paul
von Hindenburg in the scheduled presidential
elections. Though Hitler had left Austria in 1913, he still had not
acquired German citizenship and hence could not run for public office. In
February however, the state government of Brunswick,
in which the Nazi Party participated, appointed Hitler to some minor
administrative post and also gave him citizenship. The new German citizen
ran against Hindenburg, who was supported by the Republican parties, and the
Communist candidate. His campaign was called "Hitler uber Duetchland"
(Hitler over Germany). The name had a double meaning. Besides an obvious
refrence to Hitler's dictitorial intentions, it also referred to the fact
that Hitler was campaigning by airplane. This was a brand new political
tactic that allowed Hitler to speak sometimes in two cities in one day,
which was then unheard of at the time. Hitler ran against Hindenburg, who
was supported by the Republican parties, and the Communist candidate. came
in second on both rounds, attaining more than 35% of the vote during the
second one in April. Although he lost, the election established Hitler as a
realistic and fresh alternative in German politics.
The cabinets of Papen and
Schleicher
President Hindenburg,
influenced by the Camarilla,
became increasingly estranged from Brüning and pushed his Chancellor to
move the government in a decidedly authoritarian and right-wing direction.
This culminated in May 1932 with the resignation of the Brüning cabinet.
Hindenburg appointed the
nobleman Franz
von Papen as chancellor, heading a "cabinet of barons". Papen
was bent on authoritarian rule and since in the Reichstag only the
conservative DNVP
supported his administration, he immediately called for new elections in
July. In these elections, the Nazis achieved their biggest success yet and
won 230 seats.
The Nazis had become the
largest party in the Reichstag without which no stable government could be
formed. Papen tried to convince Hitler to become Vice-Chancellor and enter a
new government with a parliamentary basis. Hitler however rejected this
offer and put further pressure on Papen by entertaining parallel
negotiations with the Centre
Party, Papen's former party, which was bent on bringing down the
renegade Papen. In both negotiations Hitler demanded that he, as leader of
the strongest party, must be Chancellor, but President Hindenburg
consistently refused to appoint the "Bohemian private" to the
Chancellorship.
After a vote
of no-confidence in the Papen government, supported by 84% of the
deputies, the new Reichstag was dissolved and new elections were called in
November. This time, the Nazis lost some votes but still remained the
largest party in the Reichstag.
After Papen failed to
secure a majority he proposed to dissolve the parliament again along with an
indefinite postponement of elections. Hindenburg at first accepted this, but
after General Kurt
von Schleicher and the military withdrew their support, Hindenburg
instead dismissed Papen and appointed Schleicher, who promised he could
secure a majority government by negotiations with both the Social Democrats,
the trade unions, and dissidents from the Nazi party under Gregor
Strasser. In January 1933 however, Schleicher had to admit failure in
these efforts and asked Hindenburg for emergency powers along with the same
postponement of elections that he had opposed earlier, to which the
President reacted by dismissing Schleicher.
Hitler's appointment as
Chancellor
Meanwhile Papen, resentful
because of his dismissal, tried to get his revenge on Schleicher by working
toward the General's downfall, through forming an intrigue with the camarilla
and Alfred
Hugenberg, media mogul and chairman of the DNVP.
Also involved were Hjalmar
Schacht, Fritz
Thyssen and other leading German businessmen. They financially supported
the Nazi Party, which had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the
cost of heavy campaigning. The businessmen also wrote letters to Hindenburg,
urging him to appoint Hitler as leader of a government "independent
from parliamentary parties" which could turn into a movement that would
"enrapture millions of people."[3]
Finally, the President
reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler Chancellor of a coalition government
formed by the NSDAP
and DNVP.
Hitler and two other Nazi ministers (Frick, Göring)
were to be contained by a framework of conservative cabinet ministers, most
notably by Papen as Vice-Chancellor
and by Hugenberg as Minister of Economics. Papen wanted to use Hitler as a
figure-head, but the Nazis had gained key positions, most notably the
Ministry of the Interior. On the morning of January
30, 1933,
in Hindenburg's office, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor
during what some observers later described as a brief and simple ceremony.
Reichstag Fire and the
March elections
Having become Chancellor,
Hitler foiled all attempts to gain a majority in parliament and on that
basis convinced President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag again.
Elections were scheduled for early, but before that day, the Reichstag
building was set on fire on February 27 under still unclear
circumstances. Since a Dutch independent communist was found in the
building, the fire was blamed on a Communist plot to which the government
reacted with the Reichstag
Fire Decree of February
28, which suspended basic rights including habeas
corpus. Under the provisions of this decree, the Communist
Party and other groups were suppressed; Communist functionaries and
deputies were arrested, put to flight or murdered.
Campaigning still continued,
with the Nazis making use of paramilitary violence, anti-Communist hysteria
and the government's resources for propaganda. On election day, 6 March, the
NSDAP increased its result to 43.9% of the vote, remaining the largest
party, but this success was marred by its failure to secure an absolute
majority. Hence, Hitler had to maintain his coalition
with the DNVP,
which jointly had gained a slim majority.
The Day of Potsdam and the
Enabling Act
On 21
March, the new Reichstag was constituted itself with an impressive
opening ceremony held at Potsdam's garrison church. This "Day of
Potsdam" was staged to demonstrate reconciliation and union between the
revolutionary Nazi movement and "Old Prussia" with its elites and
virtues. Hitler himself appeared not in Nazi uniform but in a tail coat, and
humbly greeted the aged President Hindenburg.
Because of the Nazis'
failure to obtain a majority on their own, Hitler's government confronted
the newly elected Reichstag
with the Enabling Act that would have vested the cabinet with legislative
powers for a period of four years. Though such a bill was not unprecedented,
this act was different since it allowed for deviations from the constitution.
As the bill required a two-thirds majority in order to pass, the government
needed the support of other parties. The position of the Centre
Party as the largest non-Marxist party, turned out to be decisive. Under
the leadership of Ludwig
Kaas, the party decided to assent to the Enabling Act in return for the
government's oral guarantees regarding the Church's
liberty, the concordats signed by German states and the existence of the
Centre Party itself.
On 23
March, the Reichstag assembled in a replacement building under extreme
turbulent circumstances. Some SA
men served as guards within while large groups outside the building
shouted slogans and threats toward the arriving deputies. Kaas announced
that the Centre would support the bill amid "concerns put aside.",
while Social Democrat Otto
Wels denounced the Act in his speech. At the end of the day, all parties
except the Social
Democrats voted in favour of the bill. The Enabling
Act was dutifully renewed every four years, even through World
War II.
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