Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

In the period 1924-1930 the party continued, without any real growth, as a “lunatic fringe,” subsidized by the industrialists. Among the chief contributors to the party in this period were Carl Bechstein (Berlin piano manufacturer), August Borsig (Berlin locomotive manufacturer), Emil Kirdorf (general manager of the Rhenish-Westphalian Coal Syndicate), Fritz Thyssen (owner of the United Steel Works and president of the German Industrial Council) and Albert Vogler (general manager of the Gelsenkirchen Iron and Steel Company and formerly general manager of United Steel Works). During this period neither Hitler nor his supporters were seeking to create a mass movement. That did not come until 1930. But during this earlier period the party itself was steadily centralized, and the Leftish elements (like the Strasser brothers) were weakened or eliminated. In April 1927, Hitler spoke to 400 industrialists in Essen; in April 1928, he addressed a similar group of landlords from east of the Elbe; in January 1932 came one of his greatest triumphs when he spoke for 3 hours to the Industrial Club of Düsseldorf and won support and financial contributions from that powerful group. By that date he was seeking to build his movement into a mass political party capable of sweeping him into office. This project failed. As we have indicated, by the end of 1932 much of the financial support from industry had been cut off by Papen, and party membership was falling away, chiefly to the Communists. To stop this decline, Hitler agreed to become chancellor in a Cabinet in which there would be only three Nazis among eleven members. Papen hoped in this way to control the Nazis and to obtain from them the popular support which Papen had so sorely lacked in his own chancellorship in 1932. But Papen was far too clever for his own good. He, Hugenberg, Hindenburg, and the rest of the intriguers had underestimated Hitler. The latter, in return for Hugenberg’s acceptance of new elections on March 5, 1933, promised that there would be no Cabinet changes whatever the outcome of the voting. In spite of the fact that the Nazis obtained only 44 per cent of the ballots in the new election, Hitler became dictator of Germany within eighteen months.

One of the chief reasons for this success rests on the position of Prussia within Germany. Prussia was the greatest of the fourteen states of Germany. Covering almost two-thirds of the country, it included both the great rural areas of the east and the great industrial areas of the west. Thus it included the most conservative as well as the most progressive portions of Germany. While its influence was almost as great under the republic as it had been under the empire, this influence was of quite a different character, having changed from the chief bulwark of conservatism in the earlier period to the chief area of progressivism in the later period. This change was made possible by the large numbers of enlightened groups in the Rhenish areas of Prussia, but chiefly by the fact that the so-called Weimar Coalition of Social Democrats, Center Party, and Liberal Democrats remained unbroken in Prussia from 1918 to 1932. As a consequence of this alliance, a Social Democrat, Otto Braun, held the position of prime minister of Prussia for almost the whole period 1920-1932, and Prussia was the chief obstacle in the path of the Nazis and of reaction in the critical days after 1930. As part of this movement the Prussian Cabinet in 1930 refused to allow either Communists or Nazis to hold municipal offices in Prussia, prohibited Prussian civil servants from holding membership in either of these two parties, and forbade the use of the Nazi uniform.

This obstacle to extremism was removed on July 20, 1932, when Hindenburg, by presidential decree based on Article 48, appointed Papen commissioner for Prussia. Papen at once dismissed the eight members of the Prussian parliamentary Cabinet and granted their governmental functions to men named by himself. The dismissed ministers were removed from their offices by the power of the army, but at once challenged the legality of this action before the German Supreme Court at Leipzig. By its verdict of October 25, 1932, the court decided for the removed officials. In spite of this decision, Hitler, after only a week in the chancellorship, was able to obtain from Hindenburg a new decree which removed the Prussian ministers from office once more and conferred their powers on the federal vice-chancellor, Papen. Control of the police administration was conferred on Hermann Göring. The Nazis already held, through Wilhelm Frick, control of the Reich Ministry of Interior and thus of the national police powers. Thus Hitler, by February 7th, had control of the police powers both of the Reich and of Prussia.

Using this advantage, the Nazis began a twofold assault on the opposition. Göring and Frick worked under a cloak of legality from above, while Captain Rohm in command of the Nazi Party storm troops worked without pretense of legality from below. All uncooperative police officials were retired, removed, or given vacations and were replaced by Nazi substitutes, usually Storm Troop leaders. On February 4, 1933, Hindenburg signed an emergency decree which gave the government the right to prohibit or control any meetings, uniforms, or newspapers. In this way most opposition meetings and newspapers were prevented from reaching the public.

This attack on the opposition from above was accompanied by a violent assault from below, carried out by the SA. In desperate attacks in which eighteen Nazis and fifty-one opposition were killed, all Communist, most Socialist, and many Center Party meetings were disrupted. In spite of all this, it was evident a week before the election that the German people were not convinced. Accordingly, under circumstances which are still mysterious, a plot was worked out to burn the Reichstag building and blame the Communists. Most of the plotters were homosexuals and were able to persuade a degenerate moron from Holland named Van der Lubbe to go with them. After the building was set on fire, Van der Lubbe was left wandering about in it and was arrested by the police. The government at once arrested four Communists, including the party leader in the Reichstag (Ernst Torgler).

The day following the fire (February 28, 1933) Hindenburg signed a decree suspending all civil liberties and giving the government power to invade any personal privacy, including the right to search private homes or confiscate property. At once all Communist members of the Reichstag, as well as thousands of others, were arrested, and all Communist and Social-Democrat papers were suspended for two weeks.

The true story of the Reichstag fire was kept secret only with difficulty. Several persons who knew the truth, including a Nationalist Reichstag member, Dr. Oberfohren, were murdered in March and April to prevent their circulating the true story. Most of the Nazis who were in on the plot were murdered by Göring during the “blood purge” of June 30, 1934. The four Communists who were directly charged with the crime were acquitted by the regular German courts, although Van der Lubbe was convicted.

In spite of these drastic measures, the election of March 5, 1933, was a failure from the Nazi point of view. Hitler’s party received only 288 of 647 seats, or 43.9 percent of the total vote. The Nationalists obtained only 8 percent. The Communists obtained 81 seats, a decrease of 19, but the Socialists obtained 125, an increase of 4. The Center Party fell from 89 to 74, and the People’s Party from 11 to 2. The Nationalists stayed at 52 seats. In the simultaneous election to the Prussian Diet, the Nazis obtained 211 and the Nationalists 43 out of 474 seats.

The period from the election of March 5, 1933, to the death of Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, is generally called the Period of Coordination (Gleichschaltung). The process was carried on, like the electoral campaign just finished, by illegal actions from below and legalistic actions from above. From below, on March 7th throughout Germany, the SA swept away much of the opposition by violence, driving it into hiding. They marched to most offices of trade unions, periodicals, and local governments, smashing them up, expelling their occupants, and raising the swastika flag. Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick condoned these actions by naming Nazis as police presidents in various German states (Baden, Saxony, Württemburg, Bavaria), including General von Epp in Bavaria. These men then proceeded to use their police powers to seize control of the apparatus of state government.