Hitler a life, p.31
Hitler- a Life, page 31
tive camp. The obvious next move, therefore, was to make overtures to these
groups and offer themselves as political allies against Weimar democracy, with
the ultimate aim of assuming the leadership as soon as possible in this marriage
of convenience and taking as many voters as possible away from the right-wing
conservative and moderate middle-class sections of the electorate.
In the summer of 1929, after some argument, Hitler managed to get
agreement for the first time on this policy of approaching the Conservatives.
The elections to the Saxon state parliament on 12 May 1929 had led to a
stalemate between a centre-right bloc and the parties of the left, and at first
it was impossible to see how a government could be formed. Then, in July
1929, Hellmuth von Mücke, who belonged to the ‘left wing’ of the Party,
floated with the SPD and KPD the possibility of support from the NSDAP
for a left-wing government. The workers’ parties refused the offer and made
Mücke’s approach public, in spite of his request for confidentiality. Hitler
A New Direction 187
distanced himself from Mücke, who in fact declared that he had taken his
initiative with the agreement of the Party leader (a matter that can no
longer be verified) and left the NSDAP. If ‘fate gives us the role of either
being neutral and thus being useful to the Marxists or of acting and facilitat-
ing a government of nationalists, even if they are weak and hollow bour-
geois nationalists’, Hitler now declared in the Völkischer Beobachter, ‘we must in spite of everything renounce neutrality and choose the lesser of two
evils’.71 This was a clear decision on the Party’s direction. Although a coali-
tion with bourgeois parties of the kind Hitler advocated did not come
about at this stage, as early as July 1929 the Nazis in Saxony were to help put
a bourgeois government in power and tolerate it in parliament.72
The gradual approach of the NSDAP to the right-wing conservative
camp, however, took place primarily through a joint initiative for a plebiscite.
Since the autumn of 1928, the veterans’ organization, the Stahlhelm, had
been pursuing a plan to use a plebiscite to change the constitution, transfer-
ring power from parliament to the Reich President, and thus to transform
Weimar democracy into an authoritarian state.73 In its search for support
the Stahlhelm turned to the NSDAP, where the project divided opinion;
Goebbels, for example, feared that Hitler would go too far in making con-
cessions to the Stahlhelm,74 and made a critical statement in his Berlin paper
Der Angriff about ‘reactionaries’.75 Hitler responded to the initiative in April 1929 in a lengthy letter to the national leadership of the veterans’ organization: The changes to the constitution sought by the Stahlhelm were, he
wrote, ‘irrelevant’ as far as the realization of a ‘German resurgence’ was
concerned. For simply redistributing powers in the context of the Weimar
constitution made no difference to the essential nature of ‘our “western-
style” democracy’. ‘A man who has been chosen by Providence . . . to be the
Führer, will in any case never allow his actions to be prescribed or confined
by the ridiculous limits on powers imposed by a constitution, if acting in
accordance with the constitution must bring his nation to ruin.’ And what,
he asked more as a tactical objection, would the Stahlhelm do if a ‘Marxist’
President were to come to power? Besides, plebiscites must arise from issues
of internal national conflict of a kind that ‘might literally split the nation
in two’, such as the restoration of the monarchy, the continuation of war
reparations, or the acknowledgement of war guilt.76 For all these reasons the
NSDAP would not be involved.
The right-wing conservatives were, however, already trying to initiate
another plebiscite, this time opposing the Young Plan, which had been
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A New Direction
accepted by the Reich government on 21 June. Although this Plan made
certain concessions to Germany in respect of reparation payments, its
opponents argued that it preserved German payments and so set them in
stone. And this time Hitler agreed. On 9 July he supported a call from the
Reich Committee for German Plebiscites that had the backing of, amongst
others, the DNVP chairman and media tycoon Alfred Hugenberg, Franz
Seldte, the national leader of the Stahlhelm, as well as Privy Councillor
Class of the Pan-Germans. It was in other words a campaign platform of the
combined parties of the right and had a national network at its disposal.77
Writing to Party comrades in the Völkischer Beobachter on 25 July 1929,
Hitler made it clear that his participation arose ‘from a desire to achieve a
tactical subordinate goal on a broad basis’, which did not affect the Party’s
‘ultimate goal’.78 On the same day he ordered Party functionaries79 not to
be drawn into joint activities by ‘partner organizations’ without express
permission from the leadership.80 The article was paving the way for the
Party Rally, which this year took place once again. Hitler’s opponents in the
Party were also positioning themselves.
On 28 July Otto Strasser published ‘14 Theses on the German Revolution’
in the newspapers of Kampf publishing house. In its essentials, this manifesto
drew heavily on the 1920 Party programme and thus presented an alterna-
tive model to Hitler’s approach to the conservatives. At the fourth Party
Rally at the beginning of August 1929 in Nuremberg Hitler found himself
having, on the one hand, to defend the fact that he had made approaches to
the right-wing conservatives and, on the other, to make clear to Party com-
rades that he was not prepared to be co-opted by the ‘reactionaries’. This
dual strategy determined the character of the Rally, whose respectability was
to be emphasized in this particular year by a number of prominent honor-
ary guests. Winifred Wagner attended as did the leading industrialist Emil
Kirdorf, who for some time had been sympathetic to the NSDAP. In
addition, Theodor Duesterberg, the second Reich chairman of the Stahlhelm
was there, demonstrating the controversial policy of alignment with the
Conservatives, also Count von der Golz, the leader of the Union of Völkisch
Associations. Some 30,000–40,000 Party supporters had made the journey,
around double the number that had attended two years before.
On 1 August, a Thursday, the nineteen panel meetings of the Rally began.
Hitler had issued the instruction ‘to ensure that, in spite of the grand set-
ting for these Rallies and the freedom to discuss, they do not degenerate
into general chaos. Experience shows that nothing ever came of endless
A New Direction 189
discussions.’81 The atmosphere that prevailed during the panel meetings
was characterized by Goebbels in a lapidary and telling manner: ‘Everyone
in agreement because nobody dared say anything.’82 Yet contrary to Hitler’s
intentions controversial views could not be suppressed altogether. At the
section for members of the Reich and state parliaments, Rudolf Rehm, the
deputy Gauleiter of Brandenburg and one of Strasser’s circle, moved that
the Party should pronounce a general ban on coalitions at Reich and state
level. This was a direct attack on Hitler’s approach to the parties of the
right. Hitler put a stop to this initiative, citing as a reason that this move
would be ‘the equivalent of forbidding a nation state ever to make alli-
ances’. The panel then declared that it had no authority to make a decision
about this matter.83
The actual delegates’ conference, with some 1,200–1,500 participants,
met in three big sessions from Friday to Sunday. Hitler exploited his wide-
ranging opening remarks, read out by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner, to make
pointed attacks on the ‘bourgeois parties’ in addition to ‘Marxists’ and ‘Jews’:
they ‘do not wish to achieve any fundamental separation of the Germans
from Marxism. . . . Our bourgeoisie has in general abandoned the völkisch
approach with its focus on and commitment to the issue of blood.’ The
bourgeois parties were thus turning into ‘defenders of the poisoning of the
nation, and in fact were downright advocates of the racial violation of their
own nation’. This vehement attack was Hitler’s demonstrative attempt to
answer criticism from the Party and he spoke twice more on the last day of
meetings.84 For several days the city was dominated by the presence of the
NSDAP: the city centre was decorated with swastikas; Nazi uniforms and
cries of ‘Heil’ were everywhere. By mounting a firework display in the
evening and a concert in the stadium, the Party also used the conference
programme to make its mark.85
On the Saturday 18,000 uniformed Nazis marched through the city. On
the Sunday a ‘commemoration of the fallen’ took place outside the hall of
honour on the Luitpoldhain, followed by the presentation of standards and
flags to the SA and SS units.86 More than 25,000 Nazis were said to have
taken part in the march afterwards through the city. On the periphery of the
Party Rally there were numerous clashes with members of the Reichsbanner†
and with communists. An exchange of gunfire in the inner city left a female
† Translators’ note: The Reichsbanner Black-Red-Gold was a paramilitary organization established in 1924 to defend parliamentary democracy against right-wing and communist paramilitaries. It was mainly composed of members of the SPD.
190
A New Direction
NSDAP member dead and another shooting incident caused the deaths of
two further Party supporters. These acts of violence were quite useful to the
NSDAP, as they provided confirmation that the Party was fighting in the
front line against ‘Marxism’.87
The National Socialist parade in Nuremberg emphasized the fact that,
compared with the last such event two years previously, the NSDAP had
grown considerably in strength. Even so, this was still a small party on the
edge of the extreme right. The subsequent months would have to demon-
strate whether Hitler’s new direction – the plan to use an alliance with the
right-wing conservative parties to lure away some of their core voters, above
all among the urban middle classes and the rural population – would be
successful.
9
Conquering the Masses
In spite of his vehement criticism of the ‘bourgeois’ parties, after the 1929
Party Rally Hitler continued to join in the campaign against the Young
Plan. Up to September 1929 the Reich Committee for the German
Plebiscite was working on a draft plebiscite that would ban the Reich gov-
ernment from accepting further financial burdens or commitments arising
from the Treaty of Versailles. Instead, it was to make a solemn declaration
retracting Germany’s acknowledgement of responsibility for the war, as
set down in the treaty, and to annul any obligations deriving from that
acknowledgement. Furthermore, members of the government or any of its
agents who concluded any agreements at variance with these provisions
would be punished as traitors. In the concluding phase of discussions this
final stipulation led to disagreement, with Hitler, who favoured a more
aggressive form of words, unable to get his way.1
In the end the plebiscite took place in the second half of October. During
this period the sponsors had to gather the signatures of 10 per cent of all
those entitled to vote as a precondition for the actual referendum. The cam-
paign propaganda was carried out by the participating organizations – the
DNVP, the Stahlhelm, and the NSDAP – by Hugenberg’s press group, and
by the Reich Committee, which produced large quantities of propaganda
material and, importantly, raised donations that were shared among the par-
ticipating organizations.2
On 25 October, Hitler himself, accompanied by Hugenberg, spoke at a
large rally of the Bavarian State Committee for the German Plebiscite at the
Circus Krone.3 He also defended the initiative in his weekly column in the
Illustrierter Beobachter, accusing the government, among other things, of rig-
ging the procedural arrangements.4 Looking back, he claimed that this
move had at least led to the political forces in favour of the treaty measures
showing their true colours.5 In using these arguments the Party leader was
192
Conquering the Masses
manifestly responding to critics from his own ranks. For the ‘Party Left’
around the Strasser brothers viewed the behaviour of the DNVP as dishon-
est, given their earlier ‘fulfilment policy’, and Goebbels, the Gauleiter of
Berlin, believed the NSDAP had been taken in by its partners in the Reich
Committee.6 He did not want to take his criticism too far, however, because
Hitler was still dangling in front of him the promise made in May 1929 that
Goebbels should take over as head of Reich propaganda and so had him on
a short lead.7 Even the Strasser brothers finally fell in with Hitler’s strategy
and tried from inside the anti-Young campaign to emphasize the ‘nationalist
revolutionary’ direction of the NSDAP, in contrast to the ‘reactionary’
Stahlhelm and ‘capitalist’ DNVP.8
Ostensibly, the Party gained very little from the considerable propaganda
effort occasioned by the campaign against the Young Plan. The Hugenberg
press gave the Nazis comparatively little space in the campaign, and it
appears that the Party’s membership of the Reich Committee did little to
improve its chances of receiving donations from industry.9 But in Hitler’s
view one result outweighed everything: through the plebiscite the NSDAP
had built bridges to the right-wing conservative camp and gained potential
allies. At the same time, by repeatedly distancing himself from his new ‘part-
ners’ and in fact even permitting himself furious and insulting tirades against
them, he ensured that the NSDAP was not simply absorbed into a united
front of the right but retained its own profile.
When at the end of October the opponents of the Young Plan had nar-
rowly achieved the 10 per cent of signatures they needed and, as expected,
parliament refused to agree to their request, the government scheduled the
referendum for the last shopping Sunday before Christmas. In spite of
another intensive propaganda effort on the part of the Reich Committee, the
referendum was heavily defeated, with only 13.8 per cent of votes in favour.10
The initiators nevertheless agreed to maintain the Reich Committee for the
time being and possibly use it as a platform for further joint initiatives.
Hitler continued to defend his actions, stressing that at least the referen-
dum had ‘stirred up public opinion in Germany in such a way that the
government parties are now feeling very uncomfortable today’.11 What
ensued seemed to prove him right: the growth of the NSDAP into a mass
movement began precisely at the time of the Young Plan campaign. Whereas
the Party had never managed to gain more than 5 per cent of the votes in
the 1929 elections up to that point, in the autumn it achieved significant
electoral successes: 7 per cent in the state parliament elections in Baden
Conquering the Masses 193
on 27 October; 8.1 per cent in Lübeck on 10 November; 5.8 per cent a
week later in the local elections in Prussia. In the elections taking place
simultaneously for the assemblies in the Prussian provinces the Party made
above-average gains in Brandenburg, Hanover, Hesse, Saxony, and Schleswig-
Holstein, with results between 5.6 per cent and 10.3 per cent.12 The NSDAP’s
propaganda machine was already in high gear as a result of the anti-Young
Plan campaign, and the Party succeeded in focusing it immediately on the
electoral battles, thereby securing a significant advantage over the DNVP,
whose potential for mobilizing support was nowhere near as great.
The electoral gains made by the NSDAP were possible only because the
entire spectrum of predominantly middle-class parties was in the meantime
in deep trouble.
Many of the ‘middle-class bloc’ coalitions formed in the mid-1920s at
local and regional level were breaking apart, and the project of expanding
the DNVP into a large nationalist-conservative party at national level was
threatening to collapse under the weight of overwhelming conflicts of
interest and the absence of compelling nationalistic slogans. In the 1928
Reichstag elections it had lost already almost a third of its voters, while the
