Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (78 page)

The meeting of Hitler’s cabinet on the morning of 28 February was naturally dominated by the events of the previous evening. Hitler asserted that the “psychologically correct moment” had arrived for “a ruthless reckoning with the KPD.” He said: “It would be senseless to wait any longer. The KPD is determined in the extreme. The battle against them cannot be made dependent on legal considerations.” Göring reiterated the statement that the Nazi leadership had agreed upon the previous evening: it was “impossible that one person alone could have performed this act of arson.” On the contrary, the Communists had “initiated this attack.” The material confiscated in the Karl Liebknecht House suggested that the Communists intended to form “terrorist groups,” set public buildings on fire, poison the food served in public kitchens and take “the wives and children of ministers and other high-ranking personalities hostage.”
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Although it was easy to see that this nightmare scenario was a crass invention, none of the conservative ministers objected. That very afternoon, the cabinet approved the draft of a Decree for the Protection of the People and the State submitted in the morning by Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick. The first paragraph “suspended until further notice” fundamental civil rights including personal liberty, freedom of speech and the press, the right to assemble, the privacy of letters and telephone conversations and the inviolability of house and home. The second paragraph enabled the government to “temporarily take over” the responsibilities of the upper administration of Germany’s states “in order to restore public security and order.”
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That opened the door not only for the Nazis to persecute anyone who disagreed with them but also to bring Germany’s often resistant states into line.

The decree of 28 February was, in the words of one German historian, “the emergency law upon which the National Socialist dictatorship based its rule until it itself collapsed,”
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and as early as 1941 the political scientist Ernst Fraenkel characterised it as the “constitutional document” of the Third Reich.
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Hindenburg had no qualms about signing the emergency decree, which was sold to him as a “special ordinance to fight Communist violence.” Unwittingly or not, he helped transfer political authority from the office of the Reich president to the Reich government.
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In a speech in Frankfurt am Main on 3 March, Göring made it abundantly clear what he intended to do with the new powers he had been granted. The measures he ordered, Göring promised, would not be diluted by any legal considerations: “In this regard, I am not required to establish justice. In this regard, I am required to eradicate and eliminate and nothing more!”
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This sort of language and the violent measures that accompanied Göring’s words must have horrified anyone who maintained any vestige of faith in the rule of law. Papen was not among them. When François-Poncet drew his attention to foreign diplomats’ concern at the National Socialists’ growing terror campaigns, Papen brushed aside any worries: “It’s no big deal. When they’ve scraped the velvet from their horns, everything will be fine.”
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Nor did the SA’s brutal persecution of Communists draw any condemnation from the middle classes. On the contrary, the
bête noire
of a “Communist threat,” reinforced by years of propaganda, led many people to see draconian measures as justified. “Finally, an iron broom over Prussia!” gushed Luise Solmitz.
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Elisabeth Gebensleben, the wife of the deputy mayor of Braunschweig, did not have any scruples either: “The ruthless intervention of the national government may be somewhat alienating for many people, but there needs to be a thorough cleansing and clearing up. The anti-national forces must be rendered harmless. Otherwise no recovery will be possible.”
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If appearances do not deceive, the suppression of the political Left in Germany, and especially the Communists, did nothing to dampen Hitler’s popularity. On the contrary, it increased his approval among the general populace. If Hitler stayed his course, one report from Catholic Upper Bavaria read, he would surely “have the trust of the great proportion of the German people” in the upcoming Reichstag election.
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The U.S. ambassador, Frederick Sackett, termed the elections on 5 March a “farce,” since the left-wing parties “were completely denied their constitutional right to address their supporters during the final and most important week of the campaign.”
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Discrimination was also all too apparent on election day itself. “In front of the polling station only Nazi and Black, White and Red posters, nothing from the State Party, the SPD or the KPD,” wrote Kessler.
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Bearing that in mind, the result of the vote was all the more astonishing. Despite the extraordinarily high voter turnout of 88.8 per cent, the NSDAP came up clearly short of their stated goal of an absolute majority. The Nazis took 43.9 per cent of the vote—an increase of 10.8 per cent over the November 1932 election. To secure their majority, they needed the support of the Battle Front Black, White and Red, which only received 8 per cent of the vote, less than the DNVP had got the preceding November. The SPD took 18.3 per cent of the vote (down 2.1 per cent), and despite everything, the KPD still polled 12.3 per cent (down 4.6 per cent). Notwithstanding all the obstacles placed in their way, the two left-wing parties still managed to capture almost a third of the vote. The Centre Party (11.2 per cent) and the BVP (2.7 per cent) maintained their support while the State Party (0.9 per cent) and the DVP (1.1 per cent), which had basically become fringe parties, continued their respective declines.
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“The splendid German people!” the writer Erich Ebermayer commented. “Despite everything, the working classes still solidly stand behind their leadership. The Catholics still solidly stand by their Church. There are still upstanding democrats! 48.2 per cent of the electorate had the courage to vote against Hitler or stay at home. I see this day as a victory and a reassurance.”
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But there was no reason to be reassured. The NSDAP registered strong gains in those regions—Catholic Bavaria and Württemberg and metropolitan Berlin—where it had previously performed poorly, and the party also seemed to have mobilised the majority of previous non-voters. “A glorious victory,” noted Goebbels, who had kept track of the incoming results with Hitler in the Chancellery. “Above all in southern Germany. More than a million [votes] in Berlin. Fantastic numbers. We’re all in a state of something like intoxication. One surprise after another. Hitler is very moved. We’re swimming in bliss.”
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Ambassador Sackett also reported that Hitler had achieved an “unprecedented triumph”: “Democracy in Germany has received a blow from which it may never recover.” The Third Reich long heralded by the Nazis, Sackett added, had now become reality.
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The turnaround noticeably changed the way Hitler behaved in his cabinet. Previously, he had shown respect for his conservative coalition partners and moderated cabinet meetings rather than trying to impose his will upon them. “He rarely gets his way in the cabinet,” Goebbels had noted on 2 March,
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and the ministers were impressed not only by Hitler’s knowledge of the issues, but by his ability to “distil what is essential in every problem” and to “summarise concisely the results of a long discussion.”
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But in the first meeting after the election, on 7 March, Hitler began throwing his weight around. “He considers the results of 5 March to be a revolution,” read the minutes of the meeting. “In the end, there will no longer be Marxism in Germany. An Enabling Law approved by a two-thirds majority is necessary. He, the Reich chancellor, is deeply convinced that the Reichstag will pass such a law. The representatives of the KPD will not appear at the inauguration of the Reichstag because they find themselves in detention.” Hitler could also expect to encounter no resistance from his ministers—Papen made that clear when he expressed the gratitude of the cabinet to Hitler for his “admirable performance in the election.”
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On 11 March, Hitler succeeded in getting cabinet approval for the creation of a Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. With that he kept the promise he had made to Goebbels on 30 January but which violated the express assurances he had given his coalition partners that the make-up of the cabinet would not change after the election. With the exception of Alfred Hugenberg, who objected, the members of the cabinet all accepted this breach of the coalition agreement without protest.
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On 13 March, Hindenburg signed the certificate making Goebbels Reich propaganda minister. “What a journey,” the latter wrote in his diary. “A government minister at the age of 35. Hard to believe. I have Hitler to thank. He is a good person and a brave warrior.” The next day, Hindenburg swore in the new minister, prompting Goebbels to comment that he was “like an elderly father.” The new minister added: “I thanked him that he had chosen me despite my youth. That moved him. Meissner assisted very well. A complete success.”
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With the new Propaganda Ministry, the Nazi leadership had created an instrument for influencing and manipulating the public, and it was to play an important role in the party’s gradual consolidation of power. In his first press conference on 16 March, Goebbels announced his and his ministry’s intention “to work on the people until they accept our influence.”
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No sooner had the Reichstag election been held than Hitler began planning the next step on the path towards monopolising political power: bringing the non-National Socialist German states into line. It was imperative, Hitler announced to his cabinet, to “boldly tackle the Reich states problem.”
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Goebbels seconded that sentiment: “Time to clamp down! We can no longer show any consideration. Germany is in the midst of a revolution. Resistance is futile.”
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Measures had been taken to bring Hamburg into line even before the election. Citing the Reichstag Arson Ordinance of 28 February, Interior Minister Frick had pressured the city senate, a coalition of the SPD, State Party and DVP, to take more vigorous action against the Communists. Although the Social Democrat senator for police affairs, Adolph Schönfelder, acceded to these demands and had seventy-five KPD functionaries arrested, the local NSDAP repeatedly raised the alarm and called upon Frick to maintain order by appointing a Reich commissioner for law enforcement in Hamburg. On 2 March, Frick demanded that the Social Democrat
Hamburger Echo
newspaper be banned for raising doubts as to whether Communists had truly been behind the Reichstag fire, and the city’s SPD senators were forced to resign to preserve the remnants of their dignity. Nonetheless, the SPD did remarkably well in the elections on 5 March, taking 26.9 per cent of the vote—a decline of only 1.7 per cent compared with the previous November. The KPD received 17.6 per cent, a loss of 4.3 per cent. With 44.5 per cent, the two left-wing parties outpolled the NSDAP (38.8 per cent) by nearly 6 percentage points. That, of course, did not stop the Nazis from claiming that they had received a mandate to remake the Hamburg senate along their own lines. Only an hour after polling stations had closed, Frick ordered that responsibility for the Hamburg police be transferred to SA leader Alfred Richter. What was left of the senate caved in. A new senate consisting of six National Socialists, two conservative nationalists, two members of the Stahlhelm and one representative each from the DVP and State Party was formed on 8 March.
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Germany’s other states were brought into line in the same way, with pressure from the party grass roots combining effectively with pseudo-legal measures ordered by the Reich government. Typically the local Gau leadership would start the process by demanding that a Nazi be appointed police president. The SA would stage marches, government offices would be occupied, and the swastika flag raised before public buildings. Under the pretext of having to re-establish “peace and order,” the Reich Interior Ministry would intervene and appoint Reich commissioners. In this fashion, Bremen, Lübeck, Hesse, Baden, Württemberg, Saxony and Schaumburg-Lippe were brought into line between 6 and 8 March.
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On 9 March, the final bastion, Bavaria, fell. Bavarian President Held initially resisted when the Gauleiter of Bavaria, Adolf Wagner, with support from Röhm and Himmler, demanded that the former Freikorps commander Franz Ritter von Epp be installed as general state commissioner. But when Frick appointed Epp anyway that evening, the Bavarian State Ministry had no choice but to give in. On the night of 9–10 March, leading BVP representatives were detained and abused. The worst mistreatment was reserved for Bavarian Interior Minister Karl Stützel, who was particularly hated because he had treated the NSDAP less leniently than his predecessors. Full of outrage, the leader of the Bavarian Catholic Farmers’ movement, Georg Heim, reported to Hindenburg that Stützel “was dragged out of bed, in his nightshirt and barefooted, by adherents of Epp’s party, beaten bloody and taken to the Brown House…These are conditions the like of which I’ve never seen in my Bavarian homeland, not even under the Communist rule of terror.”
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Hindenburg forwarded this message to Hitler without comment; the author never received a response. Reich Commissioner Epp named Gauleiter Wagner acting Bavarian interior minister and Himmler acting Bavarian police director. The former naval officer Reinhard Heydrich, not even 30 years old, took charge of Police Division IV, which was responsible for political crimes. For both Himmler and Heydrich, these positons were springboards from which they eventually came to dominate the Third Reich’s entire police and security apparatus.
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