Hitlers first hundred da.., p.38
Hitler's First Hundred Days, page 38
The past also lives on because what was supposed to be behind us suddenly appears up ahead on the right.
If history is continuity and discontinuity, resolution and catastrophe, it is also surprise and unanimity; a total fascist state that in January 1933 was highly contested and rather improbable was widely accepted and broadly realized one hundred days later. History works that way—overriding regular rhythms and the day’s expectations, opinion’s sensible explanations, and sometimes even scary forecasts for the future. We must not lose our sense of surprise or shock so as to remain true to our faith, but we must also do so without slipping into the complacent thinking that the other side does not exert appeal. A good friend of mine once told me that I was attracted to the fascist aesthetic because I took it seriously. The second part is true: I do take it seriously. Yet I am not attracted to its aesthetic: Fascism disrespects the individual and violates the body. Was fascism less true than liberalism? Is it? I would say yes, but not for a long time, not for everybody, and not when it counted.
This book is dedicated to my parents, Hellmut, born in Berlin in 1927, and Sybille, born in the same city in 1931.
Berlin is also the place where all the members of my supportive and indulgent family were either born or have lived for a long time: my in-laws, Andreas and Irene Bautz; my wife, Franziska; and my children, Lauren, Eric, Elisabeth, Joshua, and Matteo. I want to thank two Berliners for their time during interviews: Heinrich George’s son, Jan George, down in Dahlem and Jürgen Hochschild, the informal historian of the old socialist settlement “Freie Scholle,” up in Tegel. Unfortunately, the “Freie Scholle” did not make it into this book. Berlinkenner David Murphy and Jennifer Evans offered valuable readings and valuable advice. I have to shout out to the marvelous staff of the Interlibrary Loan Department at the library of the University of Illinois. I am grateful for the solidarity of my agent, Andrew Wylie, and the comrades there, Kristina Moore and now Hannah Townsend. Writers may write, but they will not publish or speak or make sense or stop without the experts at the editorial office, in this case at Basic Books. Thank you ever so much to Lara Heimert, Brian Distelberg, and Claire Potter in New York City and to Jennifer Kelland in Greece.
Urbana, September 17, 2019
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PETER FRITZSCHE is the W. D. & Sarah E. Trowbridge Professor of History at the University of Illinois and author of ten previous books, including An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitler and the award-winning Life and Death in the Third Reich. He lives in Urbana, Illinois.
ALSO BY PETER FRITZSCHE
An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitler
The Turbulent World of Franz Göll
Life and Death in the Third Reich
Notes
Introduction: Quarter Past Eleven, One Hundred Days, a Thousand Years
1. Joachim C. Fest, Hitler (New York, 1973), 337.
2. Henry Ashby Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power: January 1933 (Reading, MA, 1996), 137.
3. Karl Kraus, Die dritte Walpurgnisnacht (Munich, 1967), 9; Kurt Tucholsky, quoted in Philipp W. Fabry, Mutmassungen über Hitler. Urteile von Zeitgenossen (Düsseldorf, 1969), 63.
4. Dorothy Parker, “I Saw Hitler!,” Hearst’s International-Cosmopolitan 92, no. 3 (March 1932): 160.
5. Joseph Goebbels, “Das grosse Wunder,” December 24, 1932, in Wetterleuchten. Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich, 1939), 357.
6. Heinrich Brüning, Memoiren 1918–1934 (Stuttgart, 1970), 650.
7. This was the case in Berlinchen, a small town northwest of Berlin. See “Frühere Kommunisten verbrennen ihre Fahne,” Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, no. 124, March 14, 1933.
8. Time, May 22, 1933, 21; Newsweek, May 20, 1933, 14. The Newsweek reference appears to be the first use of the term “Holocaust” in the context of the Third Reich.
9. Ernst Robert Curtius, quoted in Detlev Grieswelle, Propaganda der Friedlosigkeit. Eine Studie zu Hitlers Rhetorik 1920–1933 (Stuttgart, 1972), 68.
10. Benjamin Ziemann, “Weimar Was Weimar: Politics, Culture and the Emplotment of the German Republic,” German History 28, no. 4 (2010): 542–571, at 556.
11. Quoted in Karl Christian Führer, “High Brow and Low Brow Culture,” in Weimar Germany, ed. Anthony McElligott (Oxford, UK, 2009), 274.
12. Hans Ostwald, Sittengeschichte der Inflation: Ein Kulturdokument aus den Jahren der Marktsturzes (Berlin, 1931), 149; Eugen Diesel, Das Land der Deutschen (Leipzig, 1931), 222.
13. Heinrich Zille, “Plakatwand [1919],” akg-images, https://www.akg-images.co.uk/archive/Plakatwand-2UMDHUQAZX13.html.
14. Martin Geyer, Verkehrte Welt: Revolution, Inflation, und Moderne, München 1914–1924 (Göttingen, 1998), 283; entries for September 16 and 21, 1919, in Victor Klemperer, Leben sammeln, nicht fragen wozu und warum: Tagebücher 1918–1924 (Berlin, 1996), 179, 183; entry for January 6, 1925, in Victor Klemperer, Leben sammeln, nicht fragen wozu und warum: Tagebücher 1925–1932 (Berlin, 1996), 7.
15. Henry Ashby Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power: January 1933 (Reading, MA, 1996), 146–147.
16. Entry for September 2, 1941, in Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, 1933–1941: A Diary of the Nazi Years (New York, 1998), 428.
17. Entries for April 12, 1933, and March 17, 1940, in Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, 1933–1941: A Diary of the Nazi Years (New York, 1998), 14, 329.
18. “April [1935] Bericht über die Lage in Deutschland,” in Berichte über die Lage in Deutschland. Die Meldungen der Gruppe Neu Beginnen aus dem Dritten Reich 1933–1936, ed. Bernd Stöver (Bonn, 1996), 444.
19. Entry for March 22, 1933, in Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, 1933–1941: A Diary of the Nazi Years (New York, 1998), 8–9.
20. Entry for September 11, 1938, in Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, 1933–1941: A Diary of the Nazi Years (New York, 1998), 267–268.
21. Völkischer Beobachter, no. 151, May 31, 1931, quoted in Thomas Balistier, Gewalt und Ordnung. Kalkul und Faszination der SA (Muenster, 1989), 92.
Chapter One: “Crisis, if You Please”
1. Egon Jacobsohn, “12 Stunden unerkannt durch Gross-Berlin,” Berliner Morgenpost, no. 317, November 16, 1919.
2. Alfons Arenhövel, Arena der Leidenschaften: Der Berliner Sportpalast und seine Veranstaltungen 1910–1973 (Berlin, 1990); Eugen Szatmari, Das Buch von Berlin (1927; rpt. Leipzig, 1997), 171–172.
3. “Krise gefällig?,” BZ am Mittag, no. 109, May 7, 1932.
4. Alexander Graf Stenbock-Fermor, Deutschland von unten. Reise durch die proletarische Provinz, eds. Christian Jäger and Erhard Schütz (1931; rpt. Berlin, 2016), 203; Heinz Rein, Berlin 1932: Ein Roman aus der grossen deutschen Arbeitslosigkeit (Berlin, 1946), 170. Rein drafted his novel in 1935.
5. Heinz Rein, Berlin 1932: Ein Roman aus der grossen deutschen Arbeitslosigkeit (Berlin, 1946), 169.
6. Entry for November 24, 1932, in Abraham Plotkin, An American in Hitler’s Berlin. Abraham Plotkin’s Diary, 1932–33, eds. Catherine Collomp and Bruno Groppo (Urbana, 2009), 14–16.
7. Franz Hessel, Walking in Berlin: A Flaneur in the Capital (Cambridge, 2017), 211–212.
8. Walter Schönstedt, Kämpfende Jugend—Roman der arbeitenden Jugend (Berlin, 1932), 7, 80; Harry Schreck, “Im Spiegel des Schlagers,” Vossische Zeitung, no. 83, February 18, 1933.
9. Justus Ehrhardt, Strassen ohne Ende (Berlin, 1931), 44; Walter Schönstedt, Kämpfende Jugend—Roman der arbeitenden Jugend (Berlin, 1932), 7.
10. Entry for December 10, 1932, in Abraham Plotkin, An American in Hitler’s Berlin. Abraham Plotkin’s Diary, 1932–33, eds. Catherine Collomp and Bruno Groppo (Urbana, 2009), 57; “Berlin zu 72% elektrifiziert,” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, no. 520, November 4, 1932; on toilets, see Jens Flemming, Klaus Saul, and Peter-Christian Witt, eds., Familienleben im Schatten der Krise: Dokumente und Analysen zur Sozialgeschichte der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1988), 107.
11. Entry for December 10, 1932, in Abraham Plotkin, An American in Hitler’s Berlin. Abraham Plotkin’s Diary, 1932–33, eds. Catherine Collomp and Bruno Groppo (Urbana, 2009), 57–58.
12. “Unser Täglich Brot…,” in Ruth Fischer and Franz Heimann, eds., Deutsche Kinderfibel (Berlin, 1933), 95–100.
13. See the comparison between 1907 and 1926 in Jens Flemming, Klaus Saul, and Peter-Christian Witt, eds., Familienleben im Schatten der Krise: Dokumente und Analysen zur Sozialgeschichte der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1988), 75.
14. “Auf dem Arbeitsnachweis,” Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung, no. 5 (1930).
15. “‘Freizeit’ ohne Ende. Vier Arbeitslose erzahlen aus ihrem Leben…,” Berliner Tageblatt, no. 563, November 27, 1932; Bruno Nelissen Haken, Stempelchronik. 261 Arbeitslosenschicksale (Hamburg, 1932), 32.
16. Jens Flemming, Klaus Saul, and Peter-Christian Witt, eds., Familienleben im Schatten der Krise: Dokumente und Analysen zur Sozialgeschichte der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1988), 176–177; Detlev Peukert, “The Lost Generation: Youth Unemployment at the End of the Weimar Republic,” in The German Unemployed: Experiences and Consequences of Mass Unemployment from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich, eds. Richard J. Evans and Dick Geary (New York, 1987), 179; Heinz Rein, Berlin 1932: Ein Roman aus der grossen deutschen Arbeitslosigkeit (Berlin, 1946), 18–20, 41, 65.
17. “Auf dem Arbeitsnachweis,” Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung, no. 5 (1930).
18. Walter Schönstedt, Kämpfende Jugend—Roman der arbeitenden Jugend (Berlin, 1932), 22–23.
19. Justus Ehrhardt, Strassen ohne Ende (Berlin, 1931), 32–33.
20. Süd-Berlin, no. 39, February 15, 1933. Advertisements in Berliner Tageblatt, no. 516, October 30, 1932; no. 3, January 3, 1933; Süd-Berlin, no. 9, January 11, 1933.
21. “Eine Verkäuferin verfolgt eine Plündererbande. Schliemannstrasse im Berliner Norden,” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, no. 22, January 13, 1933.
22. “‘Freizeit’ ohne Ende. Vier Arbeitslose erzahlen aus ihrem Leben…,” Berliner Tageblatt, no. 563, November 27, 1932; “Jedem Bettler 2 Pfennig,” Vossische Zeitung, no. 593, December 11, 1932; Elisabeth Gebensleben to Irmgard Brester, February 3, 1933, in Hedda Kalkshoven, ed., Between Two Homelands: Letters Across the Borders of Nazi Germany (Urbana, 2014), 57.
23. “Täglich 225,000 Fahrgäste weniger,” Vossische Zeitung, no. 622, December 28, 1932.
24. “Not—wie noch nie—Ansprüche wie noch nie,” Tempo, no. 258, November 4, 1931; H. R. Knickerbocker, The German Crisis (New York, 1932), 29.
25. Jochen Hung, “‘Die Zeitung der Zeit.’ Die Tageszeitung Tempo und das Ende der Weimarer Republik,” in “Der ganze Verlag ist einfach eine Bonbonniere.” Ullstein in der ersten Hälfte des 20 Jahrhunderts, eds. Davil Oels und Ute Schnieder (Berlin, 2015), 146; entry for August 19, 1933, in Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, 1933–1941: A Diary of the Nazi Years (New York, 1998), 30.
26. “Die Fahrt ins Blaue,” Ulk, no. 42, October 20, 1932, reprinted in Erich Mühsam, Berliner Feuilleton. Ein poetischer Kommentar auf die missratene Zähmung des Adolf Hitlers, ed. Heinz Hug (Grafrath, 1992).
27. See, for example, “Österreicher Alpenwinter,” Vossische Zeitung, no. 41, January 25, 1933; Oskar Maria Graf, Der Abgrund (1936; rpt. Munich, 1994), 77, 80.
28. Elisabeth Gebensleben to Irmgard Brester, July 21 and December 11, 1931, in Hedda Kalshoven, ed., Between Two Homelands: Letters Across the Borders of Nazi Germany (Urbana, 2014), 31, 39.
29. Elisabeth Gebensleben to Irmgard Brester, March 4 and June 22, 1932, in Hedda Kalshoven, ed., Between Two Homelands: Letters Across the Borders of Nazi Germany (Urbana, 2014), 44, 48.
30. Elisabeth Gebensleben to Irmgard Brester, December 7, 1929, October 18, 1931, and July 20, 1932, in Hedda Kalshoven, ed., Between Two Homelands: Letters Across the Borders of Nazi Germany (Urbana, 2014), 18, 36, 52.
31. Elisabeth Gebensleben to Irmgard Brester, March 4 and June 22, 1932, in Hedda Kalshoven, ed., Between Two Homelands: Letters Across the Borders of Nazi Germany (Urbana, 2014), 44, 48.
32. Entries for January 4 and 24, 1933, in Abraham Plotkin, An American in Hitler’s Berlin. Abraham Plotkin’s Diary, 1932–33, eds. Catherine Collomp and Bruno Groppo (Urbana, 2009), 94, 98, 101, 127.
33. Entries for January 26–28 and 30, 1933, in Abraham Plotkin, An American in Hitler’s Berlin. Abraham Plotkin’s Diary, 1932–33, eds. Catherine Collomp and Bruno Groppo (Urbana, 2009), 129–130, 133.
34. Elisabeth Gebensleben to Irmgard Brester, November 10, 1931, and December 1, 1932, in Hedda Kalshoven, ed., Between Two Homelands: Letters Across the Borders of Nazi Germany (Urbana, 2014), 38, 55.
35. “Conférence zwischen Eisbein und Molle,” 8-Uhr Abendblatt, no. 289, December 9, 1932; Harry Schreck, “Traktat vom Rodeln,” Vossische Zeitung, no. 95, February 25, 1933.
36. Siegfried Kracauer, “Schreie auf der Strasse,” Frankfurter Zeitung, July 19, 1930, reprinted in Kracauer, Strassen in Berlin und anderswo (Berlin, 1987), 27–29.
37. Karl Aloys Schenzinger, Der Hitlerjunge Quex (Berlin, 1932), 109–110.
38. Entries for January 4 and 7, 1933, in Abraham Plotkin, An American in Hitler’s Berlin. Abraham Plotkin’s Diary, 1932–33, eds. Catherine Collomp and Bruno Groppo (Urbana, 2009), 92, 106.
39. Karl Aloys Schenzinger, Der Hitlerjunge Quex (Berlin, 1932), 100; Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir (New York, 2002), 92, 109.
40. “Es kamen fast 10,000,” Tempo, no. 249, October 22, 1932; J. K. von Engelbrechten and Hans Volz, eds., Wir wandern durch das nationalsozialistische Berlin: Ein Führer durch die Gedenkstätten des Kampfes um die Reichshauptstadt (1937; rpt. Dresden, 2007), 201.
41. Eugen Szatmari, Das Buch von Berlin (1927; rpt. Leipzig, 1997), 197; Magnus Brechtken, Albert Speer. Eine deutsche Karriere (Munich, 2017), 31–36. On the “Neue Welt,” see the advertisements in almost any January issue of the Berliner Morgenpost.
42. Martin Schuster, “Die SA in der nationalsozialistischen »Machtergreifung« in Berlin und Brandenburg 1926–1934” (PhD diss., Technical University, Berlin, 2004), 45, 50–51; Ruth Glatzer, ed., Berlin zur Weimarer Zeit: Panorama einer Metropole (Berlin, 2000), 413; J. K. von Engelbrechten and Hans Volz, eds., Wir wandern durch das nationalsozialistische Berlin: Ein Führer durch die Gedenkstätten des Kampfes um die Reichshauptstadt (1937; rpt. Berlin, 2007), 36–37.
43. Joseph Goebbels, Kampf um Berlin. Der Anfang (Munich, 1932), 60.
Chapter Two: Mystery Tour
1. David Andrew Hackett, “The Nazi Party in the Reichstag Election of 1930” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1971), 224–225; Detlev Grieswelle, Propaganda der Friedlosigkeit. Eine Studie zu Hitlers Rhetorik 1920–1933 (Stuttgart, 1972), 31, 33; Thomas Balistier, Gewalt und Ordnung. Kalkul und Faszination der SA (Muenster, 1989), 63.
2. Friedrich Kurz, “Meine Erlebnisse in der Kampfzeit,” December 25, 1936, Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS26/529.
3. Thomas Balistier, Gewalt und Ordnung. Kalkul und Faszination der SA (Muenster, 1989), 63; Sven Reichardt, Faschistische Kampfbünde. Gewalt und Gemeinschaft im italienischen Squadrismus und in der deutschen SA (Cologne, 2002), 103.
4. Georg Bernhard, Die deutsche Tragödie. Der Selbstmord einer Republik (Prag, 1933), 275; “Das grosse Zirkussterben,” Berliner Tageblatt, no. 223, May 12, 1932; “Ein Zirkus vor dem Bankrott,” Vossische Zeitung, no. 625, December 30, 1932; Hans Fallada, Little Man, What Now?, trans. Susan Bennett (Brooklyn, 2009), 59.
5. William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922–1945, rev. ed. (Brattleboro, 2014), 142–143.
6. Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919–1933 (Chapel Hill, 1983), 268–269.
7. Jürgen Falter, “The Two Hindenburg Elections of 1925 and 1932: A Total Reversal of Voter Coalitions,” Central European History 23 (1990): 225–241.
8. Diary entries for June 24 and 26, 1934, in Theodore Abel, The Columbia Circle of Scholars: Selections from the Journal (1930–1957), ed. Elzbieta Halas (Frankfurt, 2001), 178, 181.
9. Theodore Abel, Why Hitler Came to Power (New York, 1938).
10. Trude Mauerer, “From Everyday Life to a State of Emergency: Jews in Weimar and Nazi Germany,” in Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618–1945, ed. Marion A. Kaplan (Oxford, 2005), 335.
11. Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris (New York, 1999), 36, 60.
12. Klaus Theweleit quoted in Josef Kopperschmidt, “War Hitler ein grosser Redner? Ein redekritischer Versuch,” in Hitler der Redner, ed. Josef Kopperschmidt (Munich, 2003), 190.
13. Detlev Grieswelle, Propaganda der Friedlosigkeit. Eine Studie zu Hitlers Rhetorik 1920–1933 (Stuttgart, 1972), 79, 85; “Hitler Would Scrap Versailles Treaty and Use Guillotine,” New York Times, September 26, 1930.
14. Gerhard Paul, Aufstand der Bilder: Die NS-Propaganda vor 1933 (Bonn, 1990); Peter Kurth, American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson (Boston, 1990), 157.
15. Knickerbocker quoted in Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939 (New York, 2016), 385.
16. Werner Goerendt, “Meine Erinnerungen aus der Kampfzeit,” n.d. [1937], Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS26/530.
17. Elisabeth Gebensleben to Irmgard Brester, October 18, 1931, in Hedda Kalshoven, ed., Between Two Homelands: Letters Across the Borders of Nazi Germany (Urbana, 2014), 34–37.
18. According to Michael Mann, Fascists (Cambridge, 2004), 14, “fascism is the pursuit of a transcendent and cleaning nation-statism through paramilitarism.”
19. Benjamin Carter Hett, The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic (New York, 2008), 30.
20. Daniel Siemens, The Making of a Nazi Hero: The Murder and Myth of Horst Wessel (London, 2013), 65; Peter H. Merkl, Political Violence Under the Swastika: 518 Early Nazis (Princeton, 1975).
