Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power (5 page)

At a ball in honor of their daughter and a niece, the Houghtons welcomed “four hundred members of the diplomatic set and high German officialdom, and many representative Americans,” Wiegand reported. This “brilliant fete,” he added, was a huge boost to American prestige. Presumably, the outfits of the daughter (“a gown of silver brocade cloth”) and niece (“a gold-banded net over a novel gold cloth”) all contributed to the success of the evening—as did the fact that the two young women also carried “enormous rose-colored feather fans.” So, too, did an American jazz band that supplied the music, while “a moving picture machine added color by flashing alternate shades on the dancing throng.” All this a half a century before the disco era.

While Wiegand enjoyed such stories, he knew that his editors wanted him to keep explaining Germany’s turbulent political scene as well—a charge he took very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he became the first American correspondent to interview a local agitator in Munich who was beginning to make his name as a fiery orator. That agitator’s name was Adolf Hitler.

Wiegand declared that he had first met Hitler in 1921, but he only began taking him seriously enough to feature him prominently in his reports a year later. Given the proliferation of extremists in Bavaria at the time, that was hardly surprising. Every encounter with a radical of the right or the
left hardly merited a separate story or even a mention in print. But by November 1922, following Benito Mussolini’s power grab in Italy, there was a growing sense that the right was on the rise throughout Europe, providing the perfect peg for a feature about the leader of the German “Fascisti.”

“
Hitler Styled
Mussolini of Teuton Crisis,” proclaimed the headline of Wiegand’s story datelined November 12, 1922, in the
New York American
, one of the Hearst papers. “The shadow of the Fascisti is arising in Germany,” Wiegand wrote. Explaining that Hitler—“leader of the movement which is causing no less uneasiness in Communist and Socialist circles than in Government quarters in Berlin and Munich”—had spelled out his program to him that day, the writer offered a summary that would leave the average reader confused about the true nature of this new political movement.

While denouncing the terms of the Versailles Treaty, Hitler insisted that he wanted reconciliation with France. The idea of war, he told Wiegand, “would be suicidal, if it were not idiocy.” As for domestic policy, he called on Germans to work two extra hours a day to pay off reparations and free them of their debts. He denied any intention to restore the monarchy or push separatism for Bavaria, and he attacked the Marxists head-on. “True socialism is the welfare of all the people, and not of one class at the expense of others. Therefore we oppose class warfare,” he declared.

But for American readers who hadn’t heard of this new politician, what probably registered the most in Wiegand’s article was his personal description of Hitler. Calling him “a man of the people” who had served in the trenches of World War I and afterward worked as a carpenter-turned-master builder (almost certainly an exaggerated description of Hitler’s early days as a handyman), Wiegand described him as “a magnetic speaker having also exceptional organizing genius.” He then spelled out the key characteristics of “the German Mussolini,” as he promptly dubbed him:

“Aged thirty-four, medium tall, wiry, slender, dark hair, cropped toothbrush mustache, eyes that seem at times to spurt fire, straight nose, finely chiseled features with a complexion so remarkably delicate that many a woman would be proud to possess it, and possessing a bearing that creates an impression of dynamic energy well under control . . .

“That is Hitler—one of the most interesting characters I have met in many months.

“With apostolic fervor and gifted with convincing oratory and a magnetism which is drawing him followers even out of the inner communistic and socialistic circles, Hitler has the earmarks of a leader. Whether it be merely a band or a great movement, only the future will tell.

“He believes firmly that his mission is to arouse and save Germany from its internal foes . . .”

Wiegand concluded his article by reporting: “The Bavarian Fascisti, like the Italians, are working secretly in the Reichswehr and the police, and there is fear that Hitler may one day proclaim himself dictator of Bavaria.”

Even before he filed that story, Wiegand had been telling Ambassador Houghton in Berlin about the disarray in the southern part of the country, and warning that General Erich Ludendorff might be planning to topple the government and impose a right-wing dictatorship. Ludendorff had led the German war effort in its latter stages and, after a brief exile, had returned to Germany and taken up with Hitler and other agitators in Munich. Instead of accepting responsibility for Germany’s military defeat, he blamed Socialists, leftists and Jews, laying the groundwork for what would become known as the “stab-in-the-back” theory.

Houghton decided that he needed more information about what was happening in the south. “
Something is brewing
in Bavaria and no one seems to know exactly what it is,” he wrote in his diary. “Probably it will result in nothing definite, but too much is at stake to permit us to run any danger.” To check out the situation, he turned to his young assistant military attaché, Captain Smith. At the same time that Wiegand was filing his first story about Hitler, Smith was preparing to follow in his footsteps—and to become the first American official to meet the future leader of Nazi Germany.

Smith would later point out that most foreign diplomats in Berlin at the time had written off the National Socialists as “
being without
significance and its leader, Adolf Hitler, as an uneducated madman.” Houghton,
by contrast, “seems to have had, even at this early date, a premonition that the movement and its leader might play an important role in the disturbed Germany of the early twenties.” The ambassador and the embassy’s military attaché Lieutenant Colonel Edward Davis, Smith’s immediate superior, urged the captain to “try to make personal contact with Hitler himself and form an estimate of his character, personality, abilities, and weaknesses.”

Arriving in Munich on November 15, Smith had
a clear-cut set
of questions to address based on the hot topics of conversation among diplomats in Berlin. First, in light of the open hostility of “the reactionary government in Munich” to “the moderately leftist Reich government in Berlin,” was there a danger that Bavaria would declare itself independent? Second, was there a danger of another Communist revolt in Bavaria (a “Bavarian Soviet Republic” was briefly proclaimed in 1919)? And, third, “Did the possibility exist that Hitler’s National Socialists were strong enough to seize power in Bavaria?” He was also supposed to check on the loyalty of the 7th Division of the Reichswehr, as the Army was called, and on the significance of the sporadic incidents between the Bavarians and the Allied Military Control commissions, which were still operating in Germany following that country’s defeat.

Smith set out to fulfill his assignment by meeting as many people as possible, recording his discussions and impressions in his notebooks. In typical military style, he referred to himself in the third person in these notes.

Upon his arrival, he first went to the U.S. Consulate, where he met with Robert Murphy, the acting consul. Since the consulate had reopened in 1921, the four consular officers assigned there had been overwhelmed with paperwork, issuing on average about
four hundred visas
a day. “It seemed to us that the whole of Bavaria wanted to emigrate,” Murphy recalled. But the consular officers also attempted to monitor the turbulent local politics, trying to get a fix on Hitler and other radicals. “
It was a welcome
relief from those chores to transform ourselves into political reporters for the benefit of the State Department,” Murphy noted.

Murphy told Smith
that the new Bavarian Minister President Eugen von Knilling was weak and easily manipulated by right-wing politicians.
Then their conversation turned to Hitler and the Nazis. Smith summarized Murphy’s views: “The National Socialists are increasing their strength rapidly. Hitler, their leader, is of Austrian origin and a pure and simple adventurer. Nevertheless, he is a real character and is exploiting all latent discontent to increase his party’s strength.”

Murphy also passed along a rumor that Hitler had “a shady past” and may have misappropriated government funds in Austria. In Germany, he now commanded 40,000 men—“largely roughnecks but devoted to their leader.” While some reports had suggested he might have up to 200,000 men, Murphy pointed out that even his smaller force could prove effective if well led. “Hitler thoroughly understands the Bavarian psychology. Whether he is big enough to take the lead in a German national movement is another question; probably not.” Noting that the National Socialists were not working together with “the other monarchist groups,” he added that the Bavarian government was permitting the Nazis “to do what they want.” Still, Murphy confessed that it was difficult to assess all the competing groups. “All these nationalist societies are so mixed up among themselves that it is hard to keep them distinct.”

That was only the beginning of Smith’s rounds, where he asked everyone he met about Hitler. General Kress von Kressenstein, the artillery commander of the 7th Division, hadn’t met Hitler, but he called his nationalist movement a “
healthy drift away
from socialism.” The general had the impression that the man was “an oratorical genius,” but he felt that “Hitler was not as radical as his speeches made him out.” He was anti-Semitic in “a healthy sense,” Kressenstein continued, since he wanted to keep Jews out of government positions. Barring some mistake, he predicted to Smith, his movement had “a great future before it.” He added that the National Socialists favored “an evolutionary development, not a revolutionary one.”

Friedrich Trefz
, the chief editor of the
Münchner Neueste Nachrichten,
concurred that the National Socialists were a growing force. “Hitler was a marvelous speaker. None better,” Smith recorded him as saying. Trefz told Smith he had gone to a Nazi meeting and sat between a general and a Communist; both had come out of simple curiosity—and, afterward, both signed up as party members. Trefz’s conclusion: “The National
Socialists present no immediate danger to the government. The ground is fertile, however, and the party will grow.”

Finally, Smith made it to the informal headquarters of the Nazis at Georgenstrasse 42. There, he first met with Max Erwin von
Scheubner-Richter
, an early confidant of Hitler. He claimed that the party had 35,000 members in Munich, 200,000 sympathizers and a “militarily organized” underground, armed with clubs and pistols. As for the party’s anti-Semitism, he assured his American visitor that it was “purely for propaganda.”

In the midst of the conversation, there was a sudden flurry of activity. The National Socialists had been planning to hold a meeting in Regensburg that evening, but the Reich Ministry of Railroads had just denied them permission for a special train to transport Hitler’s men. Scheubner-Richter explained that the Regensburg event had been postponed but that Hitler would be reviewing his troops, the Brownshirts, nearby. Smith was invited to watch this in the company of party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg.

“A remarkable sight indeed,” Smith noted. “Twelve hundred of the toughest roughnecks I have ever seen in my life pass in review before Hitler at the goosestep under the old Reichflag wearing red armbands with
Hakenkreuzen
(swastikas).”

Addressing his followers, Hitler explained that while the German government had stopped them from getting to Regensburg that day, the National Socialists would “clean up the town” the following week. In his notebook, Smith added: “He then shouts, ‘Death to the Jews’ etc. and etc. There was frantic cheering. I never saw such a sight in my life.” Afterward, Smith was briefly introduced to Hitler, who promised to talk with him two days later.

While waiting, Smith visited
General Ludendorff
at home. The famed commander had a blunt message: “The Allies
must
support a strong German government capable of combating Marxism,” he insisted. As for the Fascist movement, he described it approvingly as “the beginning of a reactionary awakening in Europe.” His conclusion: “America must understand that only a strong nationalist government can preserve the country from chaos and insure reparations being paid to the Allies.”

Returning to the Nazi headquarters on Monday, November 21,
Smith met Hitler at 4
P.M
. The American was startled by his quarters, which reminded him of a dreary back room of a
New York tenement house
. Later, Smith would express regret that he focused so much on the substance of Hitler’s political message rather than on more observations about his personality. But his impressions that day, which he recorded in his notebook once he had returned to his room in the Hotel Marienbad, were right to the point. “
A marvelous demagogue
,” he wrote. “I have rarely listened to such a logical and fanatical man. His power over the mob must be immense.” Hitler’s message was unequivocal: “
Parliament and
parliamentarianism must go. No one can govern with it in Germany today. Only a dictatorship can bring Germany to its feet.”

In a report he filed after returning to Berlin, Smith echoed those points and added this assessment:

The question whether
Hitler’s National Socialists can play a role in Germany equivalent to the role of the Fascisti in Italy can still not be answered with any degree of certainty. In the limited area of Bavaria, south of the Danube, Hitler’s success cannot be gainsaid. Important gains have been registered by the National Socialists from the extreme socialist parties. It is believed that not only in Munich but in all Germany, there is a fertile field even among the factory workers for a national movement, provided the idea of a monarch, which has dominated all preceding national movements, be entirely left aside. It seems hardly probable, furthermore, that with the results already achieved, there will be any lack of money for the propagation of the idea of a national dictatorship. These facts, coupled with the magnetism and oratorical ability of the National Socialist leader, speak for a rapid and consistent development of the German “Fascisti.”