Hitler, Triumphant
Published by Matthew Moses at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Matthew Moses
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Hitler…who was he?
I have asked myself that question a thousand times, and nothing is more difficult to answer.
Approximately two hundred thousand books have dealt with the Second World War and with its central figure, Adolf Hitler. But has the real Hitler been discovered by any of them? “The enigma of Hitler is beyond all human comprehension,” the left-wing German weekly ‘Die Zeit’ once put it.
The mountains of Hitler books based on blind hatred and ignorance do little to describe or explain the most powerful man the world has ever seen. How, I ponder, do these thousands of disparate portraits of Hitler in any way resemble a single man?
People have come to accept fiction, repeated a thousand times over, as reality. Yet they have never seen Hitler, never spoken to him, never heard a word from his mouth. The very name of Hitler immediately conjures up a grimacing devil, the fount of all of one’s negative emotions. Like Pavlov’s bell, the mention of Hitler is meant to dispense with substance and reality. In time, however, history will demand more than these summary judgments.
After 1945 Hitler was accused of every cruelty, but it was not in his nature to be cruel. He loved children. It was an entirely natural thing for him to stop his car and share his food with young cyclists along the road. Once he gave his raincoat to a derelict plodding in the rain.
Hitler’s most notable characteristic was ever his simplicity. The most complex of problems resolved itself in his mind into a few basic principles. His actions were geared to ideas and decisions that could be understood by anyone. The laborer from Essen, the isolated farmer, the Ruhr industrialist, and the university professor could all easily follow his line of thought. The very clarity of his reasoning made everything obvious.
His behavior and his life style never changed even when he became the ruler of Germany. He dressed and lived frugally. During his early days in Munich, he spent no more than a mark per day for food. At no stage in his life did he spend anything on himself. Throughout his 13 years in the chancellery he never carried a wallet or ever had money of his own.
Hitler was self-taught and made no attempt to hide the fact. His intellectual curiosity was limitless. He could quote entire paragraphs of Schopenhauer from memory, and for a long time carried a pocket edition of Schopenhauer with him. Nietzsche taught him much about willpower.
His thirst for knowledge was unquenchable, especially in mechanics. He knew how engines worked; he understood the ballistics of various weapons. The universality of Hitler’s knowledge may surprise or displease those unaware of it, but it is nonetheless a historical fact.
More than just an artist, Hitler was above all an architect. Hundreds of his works were notable as much for the architecture as for the painting. From memory alone he could reproduce in every detail the onion dome of a church or the intricate curves of wrought iron. Indeed, it was to fulfill his dream of becoming an architect that Hitler went to Vienna at the beginning of the century.
When one sees the hundreds of paintings, sketches and drawings he created at the time, which reveal his mastery of three dimensional figures, it is astounding that his examiners at the Fine Arts Academy failed him in two successive examinations. German historian Werner Maser, no friend of Hitler, castigated these examiners: “All of his works revealed extraordinary architectural gifts and knowledge. The builder of the Third Reich gives the former Fine Arts Academy of Vienna cause for shame.”
In his room, Hitler always displayed an old photograph of his mother. The memory of the mother he loved was with him until the day he died. Before leaving this earth, on April 30, 1945, he placed his mother’s photograph in front of him. She had blue eyes like his and a similar face. Her maternal intuition told her that her son was different from other children. She acted almost as if she knew her son’s destiny. When she died, she felt anguished by the immense mystery surrounding her son.
Throughout the years of his youth, Hitler lived the life of a virtual recluse. His greatest wish was to withdraw from the world. At heart a loner, he wandered about, ate meager meals, but devoured the books of three public libraries. He abstained from conversations and had few friends.
It is almost impossible to imagine another such destiny where a man started with so little and reached such heights. Alexander the great was the son of a king. Napoleon, from a well-to-do family, was a general at 24. Fifteen years after Vienna, Hitler would still be an unknown corporal. Thousands of others had a thousand times more opportunity to leave their mark on the world.
During the first 30 years of Hitler’s life, the date April 20, 1889, meant nothing to anyone. In time that would change.
Hitler had not yet focused on politics, but without his rightly knowing, that was the career to which he was most strongly called. Politics would ultimately blend with his passion for art. People, the masses, would be the clay the sculptor shapes into an immortal form. The human clay would become for him a beautiful work of art like one of Myron’s marble sculptures, a Hans Makart painting, or Wagner’s Ring Trilogy.
His love of music, art and architecture had not removed him from the political life and social concerns of Vienna. He was a silent spectator, but nothing escaped him: not the vanity and egoism of the bourgeoisie, not the moral and material misery of the people, nor yet the hundreds of thousands of workers who surged down the wide avenues of Vienna with anger in their hearts.
Thus Hitler was to live for several years in the crowded city of Vienna as a virtual outcast, yet quietly observing everything around him. His strength came from within. He did not rely on anyone to do his thinking for him. Exceptional human beings always feel lonely amid the vast human throng. Hitler saw his solitude as a wonderful opportunity to meditate and not to be submerged in a mindless sea. In order not to be lost in the wastes of a sterile desert, a strong soul seeks refuge within himself. Hitler was such a soul.
The lightning in Hitler’s life would come from the word.
All his artistic talent would be channeled into his mastery of communication and eloquence. Hitler would never conceive of popular conquests without the power of the word. He would enchant and be enchanted by it. He would find total fulfillment when the magic of his words Inspired the hearts and minds of the masses with whom he communed.
He would feel reborn each time he conveyed with mystical beauty the knowledge he had acquired in his lifetime.
Hitler’s incantory eloquence will remain, for a very long time, a vast field of study for the psychoanalyst. The power of Hitler’s word is the key. Without it, there would never have been a Hitler era.
It is with trepidation, but grave interest, that I dare to venture into what may have been if this man had achieved his goals. So follow this rough road never taken and see what Hitler’s fate may have been if he had made certain choices.
Early Years
Childhood
Adolf Hitler was born at around 6:30 p.m. on 20 April 1889 at the Gasthof zum Pommer, an inn in Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary, the fourth of six children to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl.
When he was three years old, his family relocated to Kapuzinerstrasse 5 in Passau, Germany, where Hitler would acquire Lower Bavarian rather than Austrian as his lifelong native dialect. In 1894, the family relocated to Leonding near Linz, then in June 1895, Alois retired to a small landholding at Hafeld near Lambach, where he tried his hand at farming and beekeeping. During this time, the young Hitler attended school in nearby Fischlham. As a child, he played "Cowboys and Indians" and, by his own account, became fixated on war after finding a picture book about the Franco-Prussian War among his father's belongings.
His father's efforts at Hafeld ended in failure, and the family relocated to Lambach in 1897. Hitler attended a Catholic school located in an 11th-century Benedictine cloister, where the walls were engraved in a number of places with crests containing the symbol of the swastika. It was in Lambach that the eight-year-old Hitler sang in the church choir and took singing lessons. In 1898, the family returned permanently to Leonding.
His younger brother Edmund died of measles on 2 February 1900, causing permanent changes in Hitler. He went from a confident, outgoing boy who excelled in school, to a morose, detached, sullen boy who constantly battled his father and his teachers.
Hitler was attached to his mother, though he had a troubled relationship with his father, who frequently beat him, especially in the years after Alois' retirement and disappointing farming efforts. Alois wanted his son to follow in his footsteps as an Austrian customs official, and this became a huge source of conflict between them. Despite his son's pleas to go to classical high school and become an artist, his father sent him to the Realschule in Linz, a technical high school of about 300 students, in September 1900. Hitler rebelled, and confessed to failing his first year in hopes that once his father saw "what little progress I was making at the technical school he would let me devote myself to the happiness I dreamed of." Alois never relented, however, and Hitler became even more bitter and rebellious.
German Nationalism quickly became an obsession for Hitler, and a way to rebel against his father, who proudly served the Austrian government. Most people who lived along the German-Austrian border considered themselves German-Austrians, but Hitler expressed loyalty only to Germany. In defiance of the Austrian monarchy, and his father who continually expressed loyalty to it, Hitler and his young friends liked to use the German greeting "Heil," and sing the German anthem "Deutschland Über Alles" instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem.
After Alois' sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's behavior at the technical school became even more disruptive, and he was asked to leave. He enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr in 1904, but upon completing his second year, he and his friends went out for a night of celebration and drinking, and an intoxicated Hitler tore his school certificate into four pieces and used it as toilet paper. When someone turned the stained certificate in to the school's director, he "... gave him such a dressing-down that the boy was reduced to shivering jelly. It was probably the most painful and humiliating experience of his life." Hitler was expelled, never to return to school again.
Early Adulthood in Vienna and Munich
From 1905 on, Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna on an orphan's pension and support from his mother. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907–1908), citing "unfitness for painting," and was told his abilities lay instead in the field of architecture. Following the school rector's recommendation, he too became convinced this was his path to pursue, yet he lacked the proper academic preparation for architecture school:
In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become an architect. To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studies I had neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed. One could not attend the Academy's architectural school without having attended the building school at the Technic, and the latter required a high-school degree. I had none of all this. The fulfillment of my artistic dream seemed physically impossible.
On 21 December 1907, Hitler's mother died of breast cancer at age 47. Ordered by a court in Linz, Hitler gave his share of the orphans' benefits to his sister Paula. When he was 21, he inherited money from an aunt. He struggled as a painter in Vienna, copying scenes from postcards and selling his paintings to merchants and tourists. After being rejected a second time by the Academy of Arts, Hitler ran out of money. In 1909, he lived in a shelter for the homeless. By 1910, he had settled into a house for poor working men on Meldemannstraße. Another resident of the house, Reinhold Hanisch, sold Hitler's paintings until the two men had a bitter falling-out.
Hitler said he first became an anti-Semite in Vienna, which had a large Jewish community, including Orthodox Jews who had fled the pogroms in Russia:
There were very few Jews in Linz. In the course of centuries the Jews who lived there had become Europeanized in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion. As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic anti-Semitism. Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I carefully watched the man stealthily and cautiously but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?
Hitler claimed that the Jews were enemies of humanity. He held them responsible for Austria's crisis. He also identified certain forms of socialism and Bolshevism, which had many Jewish leaders, as Jewish movements, merging his anti-Semitism with anti-Marxism. Later, blaming Germany's military defeat in the Great War on the 1918 revolutions, he considered Jews the culprits of Imperial Germany's downfall and subsequent economic problems as well.
Hitler received the final part of his father's estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich beginning a new phase in his life. In Munich, he became more interested in architecture and, he says, the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. When Germany entered the Great War in August 1914, he petitioned King Ludwig III of Bavaria for permission to serve in a Bavarian regiment. This request was granted.
The Great War
When Hitler was twenty-five years old, both Austria-Hungary and the German Empire became involved in the Great War. Hitler, at the time an Austrian citizen, had already developed strong Germanic ideals and, instead of serving in the military of his native land, chose to serve in a Bavarian Regiment.
The German military at the time was a collection of national forces organized under the authority of the various German Kingdoms with the military establishment itself dominated by Prussia. The German General Staff were mostly German nobility and, years later, Hitler expressed his distaste for the "generals with 'vons' in front of their names."
During the war, Hitler served in France and Belgium in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment (called Regiment List after its first commander); Hitler originally enlisted as a Schütze and was promoted to the rank of Gefreiter.
Hitler's primary duty was as a message runner on the Western Front, "a relatively safe job" based at regimental headquarters, several miles from the Front. Hitler was present at a number of major battles, including the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras and the Battle of Passchendaele. The Battle of Ypres (October 1914), which became known in Germany as the Massacre of the Innocents saw approximately 40,000 men (between a third and a half) of the nine infantry divisions present killed in 20 days, and Hitler's own company of 250 reduced to 42 by December.
Hitler found the war to be "the greatest of all experiences" and was praised by a number of his commanding officers for his bravery, twice decorated with the Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1914 and Iron Cross, First Class, in 1918, an honor rarely given to a Gefreiter.
Hitler's duties at regimental headquarters gave him time to pursue his artwork. He drew cartoons and instructional drawings for an army newspaper. In 1916, he was wounded in either the groin area or the left thigh during the Battle of the Somme, but returned to the front in March 1917. He received the Wound Badge later that year.
On 15 October 1918, Hitler was admitted to a field hospital, temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack. Hitler was a hospital patient when the war ended, and was outraged by the subsequent Treaty of Versailles, which deprived Germany of various territories, demilitarized the Rhineland and imposed other economically damaging sanctions. Hitler was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918 even while the German army still held enemy territory. Like many other German nationalists, Hitler believed in the Dolchstoßlegende which claimed that the army, "undefeated in the field," had been "stabbed in the back" by civilian leaders and Marxists back on the home front.
While in hospital at Pasewalk suffering from blindness allegedly caused by gas, Hitler said "When I was confined to bed, I had a vision that I would liberate Germany, that I would make it great. I knew immediately that it would be realized."
Early Political Life
Entry into Politics
After the war, Hitler remained in the army and returned to Munich. After the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, he took part in "national thinking" courses organized by the Education and Propaganda Department (Dept Ib/P) of the Bavarian Reichswehr Group, Headquarters 4 under Captain Karl Mayr, whose main goal was to identify and remove threats to the Reich.
It was during this time that Hitler wrote what is often deemed his first anti-Semitic text, requested by Mayr for one Adolf Gemlich, who participated in the same "educational courses" Hitler had taken part in. Viewing International Jewry, with its domination of global finance and support of socialist revolution, as the chief threat to German safety, Hitler compiled a report on how to deal with this “syphilitic threat.” In this report Hitler argued for a "rational anti-Semitism" which would not resort to pogroms, but instead "legally fight and gradually remove the privileges enjoyed by the Jews as opposed to other foreigners living among us. Its final goal, however, must be the irrevocable removal of the Jews themselves."
In July 1919, Hitler was appointed a Verbindungsmann (police spy) of an Aufklärungskommando of the Reichswehr, both to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate a small party, the German Workers' Party (DAP).
During his inspection of the party, Hitler was impressed with founder Anton Drexler's anti-Semitic, nationalist, socialist, and anti-Marxist ideas, which favored a strong active government and mutual solidarity of all members of society. Drexler was impressed with Hitler's oratory skills and invited him to join the party. Hitler joined the DAP on 12 September 1919 and became the party's 55th member. He was also made the seventh member of the executive committee.
Here Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of the early founders of the party and member of the occult Thule Society. Eckart became Hitler's mentor, exchanging ideas with him, teaching him how to dress and speak, and introducing him to a wide range of people.
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 the spring of 1920, Hitler was named chief of propaganda and engineered the party’s change of name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party. In the same period, under his influence the party adopted a modified swastika along with the Roman salute used by Italian fascists. By early 1921, Hitler was becoming highly effective at speaking in front of large 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 (including monarchists, nationalists and other non-internationalist socialists) and especially against Marxists and Jews.
The NSDAP was centered in Munich, a hotbed of German nationalists who included Army officers determined to crush Marxism and undermine the Weimar Republic. Gradually they noticed Hitler and his growing movement as a suitable vehicle for their goals. Hitler traveled to Berlin to visit nationalist groups during the summer of 1921, and in his absence there was a revolt among the DAP leadership in Munich.
The party was run by an executive committee whose original members considered Hitler to be overbearing. 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 11 July 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 replace Drexler as party chairman, with unlimited powers. Infuriated committee members (including 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 violent 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 NSDAP 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 29 July 1921, Adolf Hitler was introduced as Führer of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, marking the first time this title was publicly used.
Hitler's beer hall oratory, attacking Jews, social democrats, liberals, reactionary monarchists, capitalists and communists, began attracting adherents. Early followers included Rudolf Hess, the former air force pilot Hermann Göring, and the army captain Ernst Röhm, who eventually became head of the NSDAP's paramilitary organization the SA, which protected meetings and attacked political opponents. As well, Hitler assimilated independent groups, such as the Nuremberg-based Deutsche Werkgemeinschaft, led by Julius Streicher, who became Gauleiter of Franconia. Hitler 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.
Beer Hall Putsch
Encouraged by this early support, Hitler decided to use Ludendorff as a front in an attempted coup later known as the "Beer Hall Putsch." With the clandestine support of Gustav von Kahr, Bavaria's de facto ruler, along with leading figures in the Reichswehr and the police, Hitler initiated the coup with plans on forming a new government.
On 8 November 1923, Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting headed by Kahr in the Bürgerbräukeller, a large beer hall in Munich. He declared that he had set up a new government with Ludendorff and demanded, at gunpoint, the support of Kahr and the local military establishment for the destruction of the Berlin government. Kahr withdrew his support and fled to join Hitler’s opposition at the first opportunity. The next day, 2000 NSDAP and Fascist sympathizers led by Hitler marched from the Burgerbraukeller to the Bavarian War Ministry, intending to free Ernst Rohm and his men, who had been captured there while trying to seize control of the facility; thereafter, the putschists would (it was hoped) convince Bavaria's government to join the putschists and complete the coup d'etat by marching on Berlin. The Bavarian authorities, however, were of a different mind and ordered the Bavarian police to stand their ground. The putschists were dispersed after a short but ferocious firefight in the streets near the Feldherrnhalle; in all, sixteen putschists and four policemen were killed.
Hitler fled to the home of Ernst Hanfstaengl and contemplated suicide; Hanfstaengl's wife Helene talked him out of it. He was soon arrested for high treason. Alfred Rosenberg became temporary leader of the party. During Hitler's trial, he was given almost unlimited time to speak, and his popularity soared as he voiced nationalistic sentiments in his defense speech. A Munich personality thus became a nationally known figure. On 1 April 1924, Hitler was sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg Prison. Hitler received favored treatment from the guards and had much fan mail from admirers. He was pardoned and released from jail on 20 December 1924, by order of the Bavarian Supreme Court on 19 December, which issued its final rejection of the state prosecutor's objections to Hitler's early release. Including time on remand, he had served little more than one year of his sentence.
Kampf
While at Landsberg, he dictated Kampf to his deputy Rudolf Hess. The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart, was an exposition of his ideology. Kampf spoke at length on the evolution of life, the right of might, the importance of technology interlaced with mysticism, religion, propaganda, a biological view of political states including the need for “living space,” the Great War, the twin evils of communism and Judaism, and the future of the Reich. Above all, Hitler proclaimed his desire to redeem and restore the Reich to its proper place.
Hitler’s philosophy revealed his political views. Overall, Hitler was a Pan-Germanic hyper-nationalist whose ideology was built around a philosophically authoritarian, anti-Marxist, anti-Semitic, anti-democratic worldview. Strength, passion, frank declarations of feelings, and deep devotion to family and community were valued. German romanticism in particular expressed these values.
Hitler’s idealization of German tradition, folklore, volkisch culture, leadership (as exemplified by Frederick the Great and as eventually instantiated in the Fuhrerprinzip), their rejection of the liberalism and parliamentarianism of the Weimar Republic, and calling the German state the “Third Reich” (which traces back to the medieval First Reich and the pre-Weimar Second Reich) has led some to regard him as reactionary.
Considered a political and philosophical masterpiece by many, it was published in 1925 and 1926, selling about 240,000 copies between 1925 and 1934. By the end of the war, about 10 million copies had been sold or distributed.
Rebuilding of the Party
At the time of Hitler's release, the political situation in Germany had calmed and the economy had improved, which hampered Hitler's opportunities for agitation. Though the "Hitler Putsch" had given Hitler some national prominence, Munich remained his party's mainstay.
The NSDAP and its organs were banned in Bavaria after the collapse of the putsch. Hitler convinced Heinrich Held, Prime Minister of Bavaria, to lift the ban, based on representations that the party would now only seek political power through legal means. Even though the ban on the NSDAP was removed effective 16 February 1925, Hitler incurred a new ban on public speaking as a result of an inflammatory speech. Since Hitler was banned from public speeches, he appointed Gregor Strasser, who in 1924 had been elected to the Reichstag, as Reichsorganisationsleiter, authorizing him to organize the party in northern Germany. Strasser, joined by his younger brother Otto and Joseph Goebbels, steered an increasingly independent course, emphasizing the socialist element in the party's program. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Gauleiter Nord-West became an internal opposition, threatening Hitler's authority, but this faction was defeated at the Bamberg Conference in 1926, during which Goebbels joined Hitler.
After this encounter, Hitler centralized the party even more and asserted the Führerprinzip ("Leader principle") as the basic principle of party organization. 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 evoke a sense of offended national pride caused by the Treaty of Versailles imposed on the defeated German Empire by the Western Allies. 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 132 billion marks. Most Germans bitterly resented these terms, but early NSDAP 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 pursued a "strategy of legality:" this meant formally adhering to the rules of the Weimar Republic until he had legally gained power. He would then use the institutions of the Weimar Republic to destroy it and establish himself as dictator. Some party members, especially in the paramilitary SA, opposed this strategy; Röhm and others ridiculed Hitler as "Adolphe Legalité."
Rise to Power
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 (including monarchists), communists and the NSDAP. As the parties loyal to the democratic, parliamentary 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 of the Roman Catholic Centre Party, lacking a majority in parliament, had to implement his measures through the president's emergency decrees. Tolerated by the majority of parties, this rule by decree would become the norm over a series of unworkable parliaments 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 NSDAP suddenly rose from relative obscurity to win 18.3% of the vote along with 107 seats. In the process, they jumped from the ninth-smallest party in the chamber to the second largest.
In September–October 1930, Hitler appeared as a major defense witness at the trial in Leipzig of two junior Reichswehr officers charged with membership of the NSDAP, which at that time was forbidden to Reichswehr personnel. The two officers, Leutnants Richard Scheringer and Hans Ludin, admitted quite openly to NSDAP membership, and used as their defense that NSDAP membership should not be forbidden to those serving in the Reichswehr. When the Prosecution argued that the NSDAP was a dangerous revolutionary force, one of the defense lawyers, Hans Frank, had Hitler brought to the stand to prove that the NSDAP was a law-abiding party. During his testimony, Hitler insisted that his party was determined to come to power legally, that the phrase "National Revolution" was only to be interpreted "politically," and that his Party was a friend, not an enemy of the Reichswehr. Hitler's testimony of 25 September 1930 won him many admirers within the ranks of the officer corps.
Brüning's measures of budget consolidation and financial austerity brought little economic improvement and were 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.
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, who was believed to be in some sort of romantic relationship with Hitler, was 19 years younger than he was, and had used his gun. His niece's death was viewed as a source of deep, lasting pain for him.
In 1932, Hitler intended to run against the aging President Paul von Hindenburg in the scheduled presidential elections. His 27 January 1932 speech to the Industry Club in Düsseldorf won him, for the first time, support from a broad swath of Germany's most powerful industrialists. Though Hitler had left Austria in 1913 and had formally renounced his Austrian citizenship on 7 April 1925, he still had not acquired German citizenship and hence could not run for public office. For almost seven years Hitler was stateless and faced the risk of deportation from Germany. On 25 February 1932, however, the NSDAP interior minister of Brunswick (the NSDAP were part of a right-wing coalition governing the state) appointed Hitler as administrator for the state's delegation to the Reichsrat in Berlin. This appointment made Hitler a citizen of Brunswick. In those days, the states conferred citizenship, so this automatically made Hitler a citizen of Germany as well and thus eligible to run for president.
The new German citizen ran against Hindenburg, who was supported by a broad range of nationalist, monarchist, Catholic, republican and even social democratic parties. Another candidate was a Communist and member of a fringe right-wing party. Hitler's campaign was called "Hitler über Deutschland" (Hitler over Germany). The name had a double meaning; besides a reference to his dictatorial ambitions, it referred to the fact that he campaigned by aircraft. Hitler came in second on both rounds, attaining more than 35% of the vote during the second one in April. Although he lost to Hindenburg, the election established Hitler as a realistic alternative in German politics.
Appointment as Chancellor
Meanwhile, Papen 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 and international bankers. They financially supported the NSDAP, which had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the cost of heavy campaigning. The businessmen 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."
Finally, the president reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler Chancellor of a coalition government formed by the NSDAP and DNVP. However, the NSDAP was to be contained by a framework of conservative cabinet ministers, most notably by Papen as Vice-Chancellor and by Hugenberg as Minister of the Economy. The only other NSDAP member besides Hitler to get a portfolio was Wilhelm Frick, who was given the relatively powerless interior ministry (in Germany at the time, most powers wielded by the interior minister in other countries were held by the interior ministers of the states). As a concession to the NSDAP, Göring was named minister without portfolio. While Papen intended to use Hitler as a figurehead, the NSDAP gained key positions.
On the morning of 30 January 1933, in Hindenburg's office, Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor during what some observers later described as a brief and simple ceremony. His first speech as Chancellor took place on 10 February. The NSDAP's seizure of power subsequently became known as the Machtergreifung or Machtübernahme.
Reichstag Fire and the March Elections
Having become Chancellor, Hitler foiled all attempts by his opponents to gain a majority in parliament. Because no single party could gain a majority, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag again. Elections were scheduled for early March, but on 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Since a Dutch independent communist was found in the building, the fire was blamed on a communist plot. The government reacted with the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February which suspended basic rights, including habeas corpus. Under the provisions of this decree, the German Communist Party (KPD) and other groups were suppressed, and Communist functionaries and deputies were arrested, forced to flee, or murdered.
Campaigning continued, with the NSDAP 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 its victory was marred by its failure to secure an absolute majority, necessitating maintaining a coalition with the DNVP.
"Day of Potsdam" and the Enabling Act
On 21 March, the new Reichstag was constituted with an opening ceremony held at Potsdam's garrison church. This "Day of Potsdam" was staged to demonstrate reconciliation and unity between the revolutionary NSDAP movement and "Old Prussia" with its elites and virtues. Hitler appeared in a tail coat and humbly greeted the aged President Hindenburg.
Because of the NSDAP’s 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. Since the bill required a ⅔ majority in order to pass, the government needed the support of other parties. The position of the Centre Party, the third largest party in the Reichstag, turned out to be decisive: under the leadership of Ludwig Kaas, the party decided to vote for the Enabling Act. It did so in return for the government's oral guarantees regarding the Church's liberty, the concordats signed by German states and the continued existence of the Centre Party.
On 23 March, the Reichstag assembled in a replacement building under extremely 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 Party would support the bill with "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 favor of the bill. The Communists, as well as some Social Democrats, were barred from attending. The Enabling Act, combined with the Reichstag Fire Decree, transformed Hitler's government into a legal dictatorship.
Removal of Remaining Limits
With this combination of legislative and executive power, Hitler's government further suppressed the remaining political opposition. After the rapid dissolution of the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was banned, leading to a 10 May court order that all property and assets be seized. The Steel Helmets (Great War veterans) on 26 April were placed under Hitler's leadership with a guarantee they would exist as an autonomous organization to be called upon as an auxiliary police force. On 2 May, stormtroopers ransacked and destroyed every trade union office in the country, and 4 May the Christian Trade Unions and all other unions vowed allegiance to Hitler. The State Party dissolved on June 28. The 60 year old People's Party officially dissolved on 4 July. The Catholic Church was given no choice but to support Hitler after dissolution of their Centre Party on 5 July. The right wing German Nationalist Front was forced to incorporate its small paramilitaries into the SA and dissolved per the "Friendship Agreement." Finally, on 14 July, the NSDAP was declared the only legal party in Germany as big business and the army stood on the sidelines.
Hitler used the SA paramilitary to push Hugenberg into resigning, and proceeded to politically isolate Vice-Chancellor Papen. Because the SA's demands for political and military power caused much anxiety among military and political leaders, Hitler used allegations of a plot by the SA leader Ernst Röhm to purge the SA's leadership during the Night of the Long Knives. As well, opponents unconnected with the SA were murdered, notably Gregor Strasser and former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher.
President Paul von Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934. Rather than call new elections as required by the constitution, Hitler's cabinet passed a law proclaiming the presidency vacant and transferred the role and powers of the head of state to Hitler as Führer und Reichskanzler. This action effectively removed the last legal remedy by which Hitler could be dismissed and with it, nearly all institutional checks and balances on his power.
On 19 August a plebiscite approved the merger of the presidency with the chancellorship winning 84.6% of the electorate. This action technically violated both the constitution and the Enabling Act. The constitution had been amended in 1932 to make the president of the High Court of Justice, not the chancellor, acting president until new elections could be held. The Enabling Act specifically barred Hitler from taking any action that tampered with the presidency. However, no one dared object.
As head of state, Hitler now became Supreme Commander of the armed forces. When it came time for the soldiers and sailors to swear the traditional loyalty oath, it had been altered into an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler. Normally, soldiers and sailors swear loyalty to the holder of the office of supreme commander/commander-in-chief, not a specific person.
In 1938, two scandals resulted in Hitler bringing the Armed Forces under his control. Hitler forced the resignation of his War Minister (formerly Defense Minister), Werner von Blomberg, after evidence surfaced that Blomberg's new wife had a criminal past. Prior to removing Blomberg, Hitler and his clique removed army commander Werner von Fritsch on suspicion of homosexuality. Hitler replaced the Ministry of War with the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, headed by the pliant General Wilhelm Keitel. More importantly, Hitler announced he was assuming personal command of the armed forces. He took over Blomberg's other old post, that of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, for himself. He was already Supreme Commander by virtue of holding the powers of the president. The next day, the newspapers announced, "Strongest concentration of powers in Führer's hands!"
Third Reich
Having secured supreme political power, Hitler went on to gain public support by convincing most Germans he was their savior from the economic Depression, the Versailles treaty, communism, the "Judeo-Bolsheviks," and other "undesirable" minorities. The NSDAP eliminated opposition through a process known as Gleichschaltung.
Economy and Culture
Hitler oversaw one of the greatest expansions of industrial production and civil improvement Germany had ever seen, mostly based on debt flotation (refinancing long term debts into cheaper short term debt) and expansion of the military. NSDAP policies toward women strongly encouraged them to stay at home to bear children and keep house. In a September 1934 speech to the National Socialist Women's Organization, Adolf Hitler argued that for the German woman her "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home." This policy was reinforced by bestowing the Cross of Honor of the German Mother on women bearing four or more babies. The unemployment rate was cut substantially, mostly through arms production and sending women home so that men could take their jobs.
Hitler oversaw one of the largest infrastructure-improvement campaigns in German history, with the construction of dozens of dams, autobahns, railroads, the Breitspurbahn, the building of a new capital, Germania, on the Muritzsee Lake in Mecklenburg, and other civil works. This revitalizing of industry and infrastructure came at the expense of the overall standard of living, at least for those not affected by the chronic unemployment of the later Weimar Republic, despite a 25% increase in the cost of living. Laborers and farmers, the traditional voters of the NSDAP, however, saw an increase in their standard of living.
Hitler's government sponsored architecture on an immense scale, with Albert Speer becoming famous as the first architect of the Reich implementing Hitler's classicist reinterpretation of German culture. In 1936, Berlin hosted the summer Olympic games, which were opened by Hitler and choreographed to grant the Third Reich an international presence of great magnitude. Germany would lead the Olympics, the disappearance of Jesse Owens being the sole misstep in an otherwise perfect event displaying the grandeur of the Third Reich.
Hitler contributed to the design of the car that later became the Volkswagen Beetle and charged Ferdinand Porsche with its design and construction as the future vehicle of the German worker.
Hitler further proved his subtle brilliance in dealing with the publishing industry, newspapers and periodicals in particular. Rather than close them down or forcibly feed them stories, he restricted access to government figures and important sites of interest to periodicals that wrote negative stories involving the regime. As long as the various newspapers published positive and/or neutral stories, in general, concerning the administration, Hitler granted them leeway on reporting on various other issues.
The education system remained largely untouched, though a new veneer was applied to lessons which encouraged fidelity among all Germans, service to the state, and a gradual alteration of morals toward the Spartan model.
Hitler further ingratiated himself to German citizens by dealing with corruption among his various political underlings. Hitler would not allow vast graft when he was struggling to find the funds to prepare Germany for the future. He proved his pragmatism by gradually removing many of the old fighters and replacing them with technocrats and neutral political appointees.
On 20 April 1939, a lavish celebration was held in honor of Hitler's 50th birthday, featuring military parades, visits from foreign dignitaries, thousands of flaming torches and NSDAP banners.
In his first four years of government the number of unemployed dropped from 6 million to 900 thousand people, the gross national product grew 102%, he doubled the per capita income, augmented companies' profits from 175 million to 5 billion Reichmarks and reduced hyperinflation to a maximum of 25% a year.
Rearmament and New Alliances
In a meeting with his leading generals and admirals on 3 February 1933, Hitler spoke of "conquest of Lebensraum in the East and its ruthless Germanisation" as his ultimate foreign policy objectives. In March 1933, the first major statement of German foreign policy aims appeared with the memo submitted to the German Cabinet by the State Secretary at the Auswärtiges Amt, Prince Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, which advocated Anschluss with Austria, the restoration of the frontiers of 1914, the rejection of the Part V of Versailles, the return of the former German colonies in Africa, and a German zone of influence in Eastern Europe as goals for the future. Hitler found the goals in Bülow's memo to be too modest. In March 1933, to resolve the deadlock between the French demand for sécurité and the German demand for gleichberechtigung at the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald presented the compromise "MacDonald Plan." Hitler endorsed the "MacDonald Plan," correctly guessing that nothing would come of it, and that in the interval he could win some goodwill in London by making his government appear moderate, and the French obstinate.
In May 1933, Hitler met with Herbert von Dirksen, the German Ambassador in Moscow. Dirksen advised the Führer that he was allowing relations with the Soviet Union to deteriorate to an unacceptable extent, and advised him to take immediate steps to repair relations with the Soviets. Much to Dirksen's intense delight, Hitler informed him that he wished for a pro-Soviet understanding until the time came for otherwise and took steps to rectify the differences between both states.
In June 1933, Hitler was forced to disavow Alfred Hugenberg of the German National People's Party, who while attending the London World Economic Conference put forth a program of colonial expansion in both Africa and Eastern Europe, which created a major storm abroad. Speaking to the Burgermeister of Hamburg in 1933, Hitler commented that Germany required several years of peace before it could be sufficiently rearmed enough to risk a war, and until then a policy of caution was called for. In his "peace speeches" of 17 May 1933, 21 May 1935, and 7 March 1936, Hitler stressed his supposed peaceful goals and a willingness to work within the international system. In private, Hitler's plans were something less than peaceful. At the first meeting of his Cabinet in 1933, Hitler placed military spending ahead of unemployment relief, and indeed was only prepared to spend money on the latter if the former was satisfied first. When the president of the Reichsbank, the former Chancellor Dr. Hans Luther, offered the new government the legal limit of 100 million Reichmarks to finance rearmament, Hitler found the sum too low, and sacked Luther in March 1933 to replace him with Hjalmar Schacht, who during the next five years was to advance 12 billion Reichmarks worth of "Mefo-bills" to pay for rearmament.
A major initiative in Hitler's foreign policy in his early years was to prepare for a future confrontation with Britain. In the 1920s, Hitler wrote that a future National Socialist foreign policy goal was "the destruction of the former Entente in order to overturn the false victory of the Reich’s enemies." This policy included splitting the Soviet Union away from Britain and France, achieving concessions from Britain that would allow the Kriegsmarine to expand, and, in October 1933, Hitler pulling Germany out of both the League of Nations and World Disarmament Conference after his Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath made it appear to world public opinion that the French demand for sécurité was the principal stumbling block. This policy proved successful as the Soviet Union increasingly became alienated from the West and Britain’s concessions to Germany pushed France away from their former alliance and toward alliances with the new Eastern European states which Germany successfully used to support its view that France was the antagonist.
In the fall of 1934, Hitler was seriously concerned over the dangers of inflation damaging his popularity. In a secret speech given before his Cabinet on 5 November 1934, Hitler stated he had "given the working class his word that he would allow no price increases. Wage-earners would accuse him of breaking his word if he did not act against the rising prices. Revolutionary conditions among the people would be the further consequence."
Although a secret German armaments program had been on-going since 1919, in March 1935, Hitler rejected Part V of the Versailles treaty by publicly announcing that the German army would be expanded to 600,000 men (six times the number stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles), introducing an Air Force and increasing the size of the Navy while, covertly, creating an agency for the development of atomic weapons. But there was no weapon Hitler was more fixated with than torpedoes.
The G7e Torpedo: Hitler's Obsession
Hitler’s disdain for the British, which began with Britain’s intervention in the Great War and grew with each obstacle they put in his way, had led him to fixate over the Kriegmarine’s ability to thwart the Royal Navy’s power at sea. This had led to strict scrutiny of the German Navy’s forces, its arsenal in particular. Grasping the importance of U-Boats and their affect on British shipping during the Great War, Hitler focused a great amount of time on torpedo functionality.
A U-boat was built for one purpose only – and that was to torpedo enemy ships. If it failed in this, then it failed in its mission. And the weapon of choice of U-boat commanders was the torpedo, for which there was no other alternative during a submerged attack.
Early German torpedoes were a combination of two worlds. They were both technologically sophisticated, and yet unreliable. During the Great War, standard U-boat torpedoes were driven by an alcohol fueled engine which possessed good characteristics of speed and range. The contact detonators used on these torpedoes were also of simple design, making them mechanically reliable. All the U-boat commander had to do was to calculate the right torpedo firing solution, and if he fired it right, then he could count on it to run true to its course.
However, two main drawbacks existed. First, the alcohol fuel engine left a telltale trail of bubbles on its way to its target. This could alert a watchful lookout and give the enemy time to perform evasive maneuvers. Second, the contact detonator, although mechanically reliable, was designed for the torpedo to explode on impact with the side of the ship. Often it would take more than one torpedo to sink its target, and if the opportunity did not present itself, then the ship often managed to limp back to port.
German scientists worked to improve their torpedoes, so that it would not leave a visible trail of bubbles and where it would take just one torpedo to sink a ship. The solution was a highly classified and sophisticated torpedo – the wakeless electrically powered G7e torpedo, armed with a completely new magnetic detonator. Even the Allies had no knowledge that the Germans had successfully developed a wakeless electrically powered torpedo. The new battery powered motor meant that no exhaust gases were expelled, and the magnetic detonator was designed to travel under the keel of a ship and then detonate. Such underbelly explosions could break a ship’s hull in two, sinking it with just one torpedo. Not only the propulsion system and firing mechanisms were new, in fact almost every part of the G7e torpedo was redesigned.
Under Hitler’s direct orders, the G7e was thoroughly tested to determine how useful this great new weapon would be. Fatal flaws were rapidly discovered. Reports of poor range and speed as well as early detonation and failure to detonate were frequent problems, resulting in a 250-40% failure rate of all torpedoes fired.
Enraged by this discovery, Hitler ordered the Torpedo Directorate chief Oskar Wehr sacked and greater attention placed on solving this critical problem.
Design flaws were quickly discovered. Often times, when a problem was discovered and corrected, other new problems were uncovered as a result of the fix. Problems fell into three main categories: contact detonator, magnetic detonator and depth keeping ability.
The detonator itself had been completely redesigned to transfer the impact of the blow backwards through a series of complicated levers. In theory, it was supposed to provide a wide impact angle of 69 degrees to perpendicular. However, in practice, this was closer to 40 degrees.
The magnetic detonator proved immune to simple fixes. It was supposed to detonate when it passed underneath a ship’s keel, as it was triggered by a sudden change in magnetic fields. This did not work as intended due to the earth’s magnetic fields varying at different geographical locations and influence by iron ore deposits beneath the sea bed. Only when the completely redesigned Pi2 detonator had been introduced in December 1937, was the problem of the magnetic detonator solved.
But even if the detonators had been working flawlessly, problems with depth keeping meant that torpedoes were running two to three meters too deep. The depth keeping device worked by using an atmospheric chamber which controlled running depth. The Torpedo Directorate conducted new tests and could not discover any flaws. This occurred because the test torpedoes were launched from normal atmospheric conditions. But since atmospheric pressure inside a U-boat varied greatly, especially after prolonged submerged activity, air would leak into the torpedo chamber, effectively recalibrating the depth sensor. The solution would not come until Hitler himself sarcastically asked whether they were firing torpedoes in proper conditions, i.e. underwater.
By mid-1939, these studies led to the development of the G7e/T3, a far more deadly weapon in the Kriegmarine’s arsenal that would come to wreak great havoc on the Royal Navy.
Reactions
to Hitler's Policies
Britain, France, Italy and the League of Nations quickly condemned German re-armament. However, after re-assurances from Hitler that Germany was only interested in peace, no country took any action to stop this development and German re-armament continued. Later in March 1935, Hitler held a series of meetings in Berlin with the British Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon and Eden, during which he successfully evaded British offers for German participation in a regional security pact meant to serve as an Eastern European equivalent of the Locarno pact while the two British ministers avoided taking up Hitler's offers of alliance. During his talks with Simon and Eden, Hitler first used what he regarded as the brilliant colonial negotiating tactic, when Hitler parlayed an offer from Simon to return to the League of Nations by demanding the return of the former German colonies in Africa.
Domestic issues proved more problematic. Starting in April 1935, disenchantment with how the Third Reich had developed in practice as opposed to what been promised led many in the NSDAP, especially the Alte Kämpfer (Old Fighters; i.e., those who joined the Party before 1930, and who tended to be the most ardent anti-Semitics in the Party), and the SA into lashing out against Germany's Jewish minority as a way of expressing their frustrations against a group that the authorities would not generally protect. The rank and file of the Party were most unhappy that two years into the Third Reich, and despite countless promises by Hitler prior to 1933, no law had been passed banning marriage or sex between Germans and Jews. A Gestapo report from the spring of 1935 stated that the rank and file of the NSDAP would "set in motion by us from below," a solution to the "Jewish problem," "that the government would then have to follow." As a result, NSDAP activists and the SA started a major wave of assaults, vandalism and boycotts against German Jews.
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