Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (63 page)

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Hitler and his entourage welcomed Schleicher’s nomination. “Very good—it’s the old man’s final evasive manoeuvre,” Goebbels noted. “We’ll immediately start complaining and extract whatever there is to be extracted.”
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But there was also resistance within the Nazi leadership to the idea of immediate confrontation. Gregor Strasser in particular demanded a change in the course of all-or-nothing. Many historians have asserted that Schleicher offered him the post of vice-chancellor and Prussian state president at a secret meeting on 4 December, but it is far from certain whether that was indeed the case. The only primary source for the meeting is Goebbels’s
From the Hotel Kaiserhof to the Reich Chancellery
, but his diaries contain no mention of it or anything comparable to Goebbels’s assertion in the book that “not only did Strasser not refuse but said that he intended to run in the next election with a list of his own.” It is quite likely that Goebbels invented the meeting after the fact to make the idea of Strasser’s “grave betrayal of the Führer and the party” seem more plausible.
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Whatever the real story may have been, no one disputes that Gregor Strasser advocated greater flexibility towards the Schleicher cabinet and did not regard the chancellor’s office as a categorical precondition for joining the government. He was strengthened in those views by the results of the Thuringian election on 4 December. Although Hitler had been heavily involved in the campaign, the NSDAP suffered heavy losses. Compared with the Reichstag election of 31 July the party lost 40 per cent of its votes.
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The headline of the article about the election in the
Berliner Tageblatt
read: “Nimbus Destroyed,” and the newspaper wrote: “Since the NSDAP has thus far existed solely on the psychotic belief in certain victory, the reversal of this tendency must hit them all the harder.” For the
Frankfurter Zeitung
, the outcome of the Thuringian election was proof that “Less and less, and not more and more, is Herr Hitler justified to appear in public claiming to be the leader of the nation…4 December has put Herr Hitler back among the ranks of all the other political leaders where he belongs.”
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It no longer seemed inconceivable that the NSDAP would suffer dramatic losses in the next Reichstag election and see its movement decline. The mood of depression that had taken hold of the party since 6 November worsened. In December 1932, Munich’s political police observed the first signs of disintegration: “Numerous resignations occur every day, dues arrive irregularly and expulsions because of arrears become more and more frequent…All sections of the party…give the impression of being run down.”
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This backdrop explains why the conflict between Hitler and Gregor Strasser would flare up as it did.

The rivalry had been simmering for quite some time, and Goebbels had done everything in his power to discredit his former mentor and now adversary with Hitler, particularly by suggesting that Strasser was using the task of organising the party to increase his own power. “Strasser has got his hands on the party with organisational changes—very subtle,” Goebbels noted in late June 1932. “Hitler is to be gradually pushed aside. Honorary president. Hitler doesn’t want to see it. He needs to be stirred up.” Goebbels’s constant undermining of the “party Mephisto,” as he nicknamed Strasser, had its desired effect. In early September, Goebbels noted in his diary: “At noon a long conversation with Hitler. He greatly distrusts Strasser. Wants to knock his power within the party from his hands.”
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But it was no mean feat to strip Strasser of power since the Reich organisational director enjoyed great respect with the party rank and file; he was also considered by western German industrialists as one of the few National Socialists with whom one could do business. In September 1932, for example, August Heinrichsbauer, the editor of an important business journal in the city of Essen, informed Strasser that “several leading gentlemen” of industry were concerned about Hitler’s all-or-nothing principle. “Adherence to this principle in practice,” Heinrichsbauer argued, was “tantamount to self-destruction.” The NSDAP would enter into a “voluntary isolation” from which it would be difficult to escape. Moreover, the party’s “out-of-bounds, Marxist-style agitation” risked the trust “that is essential for taking over the highest forms of authority.”
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After the election defeat in November, Strasser thought the time was right to introduce a new strategy and lead the party from opposition into government. He spelled that out to Hitler in no uncertain terms. Hitler interpreted this as a challenge to his authority and reacted with commensurate venom. He was “furious with Strasser” for engaging in “sabotage,” Goebbels noted on 9 November.
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In late November 1932, things came to an initial head when Hitler, Göring, Strasser, Frick and Goebbels debated the party’s future stance towards the Schleicher cabinet in Weimar. “Strasser was for participation; otherwise he sees no hope,” Goebbels summarised. “Hitler vehemently against him. Kept his line.”
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The conflict was ratcheted up a notch at a Reich leaders’ conference in the Hotel Kaiserhof on 5 December. Beforehand Strasser and Frick had had a meeting with Schleicher at which the chancellor threatened to dissolve the Reichstag again should the National Socialists not tolerate his cabinet. Again, Strasser spoke out for a compromise while Hitler remained adamant.
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In the afternoon of 5 December, a day before the new Reichstag convened for its first session, Hitler ordered NSDAP deputies to take a hard line, arguing that “Never has a great movement been victorious if it went down the path of compromise.” The leader of the Nazis’ parliamentary faction, Frick, then pledged his “unshakeable and inviolable loyalty” on behalf of the entire faction to the Führer.
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During Hitler’s speech, Goebbels observed, Strasser’s face “turned to stone.”
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Strasser no doubt sensed that his views had isolated him within the faction and that there was no way of getting his way against Hitler in the party.

On the morning of 8 December, Strasser wrote to Hitler announcing his intention to resign from all his party offices and give up his Reichstag mandate. In justifying his decision, Strasser wrote that he thought Hitler’s strategy of trying to create political chaos in the hope that the chancellorship would then drop into his lap was “wrong, dangerous and not in the general German interest.” At the same time, Strasser assured Hitler that his resignation was not designed to put him at the “centre of an opposition movement within the party.” On the contrary, he wished to “return to the party rank and file without any hard feelings.” For that reason, Strasser wrote, he would be leaving both Berlin and Germany for an extended period.
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Immediately after writing that letter, Strasser summoned the NSDAP state inspectors present in Berlin, who each supervised numerous Gaue after a reform of the party organisation, to his office. In a hoarse voice, Strasser informed them of his decision. Hitler, he said, had not been following a “clear line” since August 1932 other than “wanting to become chancellor at all costs.” Since there was no realistic chance of that happening, Hitler was risking the disintegration and decay of the movement. There were two ways to achieve power, Strasser argued. The legal one—in which case Hitler should have accepted the position of vice-chancellor and tried to use it as a political lever. And the illegal option—which would have entailed trying to seize power violently through the SS and SA. Strasser would have followed his Führer down either path. But he was no longer prepared to wait until some indeterminate point in the future when Hitler was named chancellor. Strasser also made no bones of the fact that his resignation was personally motivated, complaining vigorously that Göring, Goebbels and Röhm all enjoyed more of Hitler’s favour than he did. For Strasser this was a demotion which he had not deserved and was no longer willing to tolerate. As one eyewitness to the meeting described it, Strasser’s surprise announcement left the state inspectors utterly dismayed. They tried to get him to reconsider, but Strasser refused, announcing that his decision was “final and thus immutable.”
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Strasser had his letter delivered to the Hotel Kaiserhof that very morning, and it created a massive stir among Hitler and his entourage. Hitler feared that it could be the harbinger of an inner-party rebellion and immediately took counter-measures. At noon, he held an audience with the state inspectors in his hotel suite, mustering all his powers of persuasion and melodrama to secure their loyalty. Hitler began his address on a very sombre note: “If one individual turns disloyal and abandons me in the most difficult hour of the party, I can overcome that. If you all intend to abandon me, my life’s work and my struggle for it no longer makes any sense, and the movement will collapse. Without this movement and the life’s mission that goes with it, I have nothing…”—at this point, Hitler glanced over at the bust of his niece Geli Raubal—“…tying me to this earth. In that case, I will bear the consequences and would only ask that you decorate my body and my coffin with the banner I once created for the movement and as a symbol of a new Germany.”

After this prelude, Hitler demanded that the state inspectors “openly and honestly” reveal the reasons Strasser had named for his resignation. Robert Ley did so, whereupon Hitler commenced a long monologue in which he tried to refute Strasser’s arguments one by one. Becoming vice-chancellor, Hitler countered, would have quickly led to fundamental differences with Papen, who would have dismissed any initiative with a cold smile and the statement that he was the chancellor and the head of the cabinet and that Hitler could resign if he did not like his course. With that Papen and his backers would have succeeded in publicly demonstrating that Hitler was incapable of governing. “I refuse to go down this road and still wait until I’m offered the chancellorship,” Hitler said. “The day will come, and probably sooner than we think.” Even less promising was the illegal path to power, since Hindenburg and Papen would not hesitate to issue orders for the army to shoot. “Gentlemen,” Hitler said, “I am not so irresponsible as to hound Germany’s youth and the war generation, the best of Germany’s manhood, in front of police and Reichswehr machine guns. Gregor Strasser will never see the day when that happens!”

Hitler also rejected all criticism of how he had treated his long-term comrade. He had been aware for quite some time that Strasser had become “reserved, sombre and reticent” towards him. “Is that my fault?” Hitler asked. “Can I help it if Göring and Goebbels show up for uninvited visits more often than Strasser?…Are these sufficient reasons for one of my most intimate and oldest colleagues to turn his back on the movement?” At this point, Hitler used his thespian ability and modulated his tone, becoming, as Hinrich Lohse, the state inspector of the northern Gaue, recalled, “ever more calm, human, friendly and solicitous.” In the end, none of those in attendance at the two-hour meeting were able to resist Hitler’s seductive logic. “He triumphed,” Lohse remembered. “In the gravest test the movement had faced he proved to his uncertain yet indispensible foot soldiers, who then collected themselves, that he was the master and Strasser was the vassal.”
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Nonetheless the mood that evening in the Goebbelses’ apartment was subdued, with Hitler looking “very pale.” At 3 a.m., Goebbels, Röhm and Himmler were summoned to an emergency meeting in the Hotel Kaiserhof. There they inspected the latest edition of the
Tägliche Rundschau
newspaper, which broke the news of Strasser’s resignation and speculated that only if he took over the party leadership would the NSDAP be able to break free of its “hopeless confusion.” Hitler saw his fears of a conspiracy confirmed. “If the party falls apart, I’ll put an end to everything in three minutes,” Goebbels quoted Hitler as saying.
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As he had after the failed putsch of 1923, Hitler toyed with the idea of suicide; it would not be the last time before 30 April 1945, when he did in fact end his own life in the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery. Despite the mood of despair, however, Hitler was astonishingly quick to take organisational measures. Strasser’s office was to be restructured and the institution of the state inspectors abolished. Hitler himself took over the leadership of political organisation, naming Robert Ley, previously the NSDAP’s Reich Inspector II, as his deputy. The Nazi departments for agriculture and education were made autonomous and handed over to Walther Darré and Goebbels respectively.
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Strasser’s resignation was the top news story of 10 December. All the major newspapers led with it. Wild rumours flew around. But it soon became clear that the departure of this once-so-powerful man would not lead to a schism within the NSDAP. Strasser had accepted he would have to take a lesser role a long time before. He had no desire to engage in a power struggle with Hitler. The day of his resignation, he boarded a train to Munich from where he travelled on to Tyrol. He would not return from this holiday until shortly before Christmas. For two weeks, not even his close friends knew where he was.
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The only Nazi leader to sympathise with him was Gottfried Feder, who had played an important role in Hitler’s rise in the early 1920s but who no longer enjoyed much political influence.
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On the afternoon of 9 December, Hitler once again spoke to the inspectors and Gauleiter before addressing Nazi Reichstag deputies. Goebbels noted: “Annihilating towards Strasser and even more towards Feder. The people howled in anger and pain. Huge triumph for Hitler. In the end a spontaneous declaration of loyalty. Everyone shook Hitler’s hand. Strasser is isolated. A dead man.”
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Two days later, after the party leadership had met in the Brown House in Munich, Goebbels remarked: “Everyone rallying around Hitler. Joy that the Strasser affair was liquidated so quickly.”
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