Hitler Versus Hindenburg: The 1932 Presidential Elections and the End of the Weimar Republic 1107022614, 9781107022614

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Hitler versus Hindenburg Hitler versus Hindenburg provides the first in-depth study of the titanic struggle between the two most dominant figures on the German Right in the last year before the establishment of the Third Reich. Although Hindenburg was reelected as Reich president by a comfortable margin, his authority was severely weakened by the fact that the vast majority of those who had supported his candidacy seven years earlier had switched their support to Hitler in 1932. What the two candidates shared in common, however, was that they both relied upon charisma to legitimate their claim to the leadership of the German nation. The increasing reliance upon charisma in the 1932 presidential elections greatly accelerated the delegitimation of the Weimar Republic and set the stage for Hitler’s appointment as chancellor nine months later. larry eugene jones is a professor of modern European History at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, and is the author of German Liberalism and the Dissolution of the Weimar Party System, 1918–1933. Most recently he is the editor of The German Right in the Weimar Republic. Studies in the History of German Conservatism, Nationalism, and Antisemitism. He is currently working on a history of the German Right from 1918 to 1934.

Hitler versus Hindenburg The 1932 Presidential Elections and the End of the Weimar Republic

LARRY EUGENE JONES Canisius College

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107022614 © Larry Eugene Jones, 2016 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2015 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jones, Larry Eugene. Hitler versus Hindenburg : the 1932 presidential elections and the end of the Weimar Republic / Larry Eugene Jones. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-107-02261-4 (Hardback) 1. Presidents–Germany–Election–1932. 2. Hindenburg, Paul von, 1847-1934. 3. Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945. 4. Germany–Politics and government–1918-1933. I. Title. dd240.J59 2016 324.9430 085–dc23 2015026702 isbn 978-1-107-02261-4 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

To my wife Nancy and sons Matthew and Daniel

Contents

List of Figures

page ix

Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations

xi xv

Prologue: Setting the Stage

1

1 Introducing the Protagonists: Hindenburg and Hitler

11

2 Hindenburg and the Brüning Gambit 3 The Road to Harzburg

55 87

4 Parliamentary Prelude 5 Agonies of the Paramilitary Right

119 149

6 The Demise of Harzburg

176

7 The Hindenburg Offensive 8 Disarray on the Radical Right

205 240

9 Not One, but Two Elections 10 End of the Brüning Era

274 314

Epilogue: From Papen to Hitler Bibliography Index

346 363 395

vii

Figures

1 Portrait of Reich president Paul von Hindenburg on the cover of a DNVP publication commemorating his eightieth birthday, October 1927 page 39 2 Cover of a Nazi campaign brochure featuring Adolf Hitler from the 1932 presidential elections, March 1932 44 3 Photograph of Major General Kurt von Schleicher, 1932 58 4 Photograph of the Brüning cabinet, March 1930 62 5 Photograph of DNVP Party Chairman Alfred Hugenberg and the leaders of the Stahlhelm reviewing the parade of troops at the Harzburg rally, October 1931 115 6 Campaign portrait of Stahlhelm leader Theodor Duesterberg as the candidate of the Combat Front Black-White-Red, February 1932 194 7 Hans Schweitzer/Mölner, “Schluss jetzt! Wählt Hitler,” Hitler campaign placard from the 1932 presidential elections 253 8 Otto Flecthner, “Ein Frontsoldat wählt Adolf Hitler,” Hitler campaign placard from the 1932 presidential elections 254 9 Franz Paul Glass, pro-Hindenburg campaign placard from the 1932 presidential elections 256 10 Unknown graphic designer, “Wählt Hindenburg!!!” campaign placard from March 1932 257 11 Hans Schweitzer/Mjölner, “Unsere letzte Hoffnung: Hitler,” campaign placard from the 1932 presidential elections 258 12 Felix Albrecht, “Landvolk in Not,” campaign placard from the 1932 presidential elections 260

ix

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List of Figures

13 Felix Albrecht, “Männer! Frauen! Rettet die deutsche Familie,” campaign placard from the 1932 presidential elections 14 Theo Ivlatejko, “Haltet ein mit der deutschen Selbstzerfleichung!” campaign placard from April 1932 15 Unknown graphic designer, “Schluss jetzt mit Hitlers Volksverhetzung!” campaign placard from the 1932 presidential elections 16 Unknown graphic designer, “. . .und wer rettet uns vor Hitler?” campaign placard from April 1932

294 309

310 311

Acknowledgments

One of the great pleasures in bringing a project like this to a conclusion is the opportunity to thank those without whose help and support this would not have been possible. In some cases, this is difficult. For although the writing of this book required a little more than three years, the research upon which it is based goes back over forty years so that many of those who helped me in the early stages of my professional career are no longer alive. Let me begin, however, by acknowledging my intellectual debt to two scholars in whose shadow I will always stand, Karl Dietrich Bracher and Hans Mommsen. Bracher’s Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik was the first German-language book in my library, and it was on this book that I cut my teeth on learning how to read German in connection with my doctoral dissertation at the University of WisconsinMadison. I then had the pleasure of spending two years in the late 1960s as a Fulbright Fellow at Bracher’s Institut für Politische Wissenschaft at the University of Bonn. My relationship with Hans Mommsen has been more intimate over the years. He served as my mentor for the two years in the mid-1970s that I held a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the University of the Ruhr in Bochum, and he played a major role in shaping my understanding of modern German history. Hans passed away on 5 November 2015, and I remain deeply indebted to the support and encouragement he provided in the forty-odd years I knew him. To their names I would like to add those of two American scholars who are unfortunately no longer living, Gerald Feldman and Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. Both were extremely generous not only in their support and encouragement in the early years of my development but also in sharing with me some of the materials upon which this project is based. I am xi

xii

Acknowledgements

equally indebted to Georg Iggers for his constant support as well as to a host of younger scholars who are too numerous to mention here. I have benefited in particular from the wisdom of William Patch, Jr., and Wolfram Pyta, both of whom read sections of the manuscript and provided me with extensive comments and suggestions for improvement. All of this has only helped me realize more firmly than ever that scholarship is truly a collective enterprise where we stand on the shoulders of those who went before us and remain indebted to their work, enterprise, and support. This is no less true of the various institutions that have supported my work over the course of the previous five decades. I have been the recipient of extremely generous support without which I could not have possibly completed this work. Major grants from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the German Marshall Fund, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars were instrumental in helping me complete much of the initial research for a project on the history of the German Right in the Weimar Republic of which this study is only a part. Grants from my home institution, Canisius College made it possible for me to return to Germany in the spring of 2011 and the summer of 2013 to complete the last stages of my research. I would also like to express a debt of gratitude to the various research institutions I visited during these trips, most notably the Bundesarchiv in Berlin-Lichterfelde and Koblenz, the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg im Breisgau, the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv in Munich, the Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen – Abteilung Westfalen in Münster, the Landesarchiv Berlin, the Brandenburgischer Landeshauptstaatsarchiv in Potsdam, the Handschriften-Abteilung of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. I would especially like to thank the Bundesarchiv for permission to use images of political placards from its extensive on-line collection of visual materials on various aspects of modern German history and to David Devereux, chairman of the Canisius College Department of History, for having let me tap the resources of the Frank Walter Fund to cover the cost of using these materials. I am particularly grateful to my long-time friend and colleague Hans-Dieter Kreikamp for his extraordinary generosity in providing me with access to materials in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz and BerlinLichterfelde and his ability to track down documents and publications that I needed for the purposes of this study. Similarly, Sabine Kneib of the Archiv der sozialen Demokratie at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Bonn, Hans-Hermann Pogarell of the Unternehmensarchiv Bayer A.G. in Leverkusen, and Thorsten Dette of the Stadtarchiv Wuppertal were

Acknowledgements

xiii

exceptionally gracious in providing assistance and in some cases supplying me with copies of materials from collections in their custody. And lastly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the interlibrary loan department at the Canisius College Library for its untiring efforts to locate and secure the often obscure items I requested for this project. I would like to express a special debt of gratitude to the heirs of Kuno Graf von Westarp for having provided me with unfettered access to the materials in their possession at the family estate in Gärtringen. The Westarp papers remain the most important single source on the history of the German Right during the Weimar Republic. Friedrich Freiherr Hiller von Gaertringen granted me access to his grandfather’s papers as well as to those of his father Berthold Freiherr Hiller von Gaertingen, nearly fifty years ago. His brother Hans Freiherr Hiller von Gaertringen made certain that the Westarp papers remained accessible to scholars after Friedrich’s death in 1999 and sponsored a major conference on Westarp that underscored just how valuable these papers were for the political history of the late Second Empire and Weimar Republic. Scholars like myself are deeply indebted to Karl Mayer, who worked closely with the two Hiller von Gaertringen brothers to organize and catalogue the collection so that it could be made available to a wider scholarly audience. Lastly, Hans’ daughter and the person currently responsible for the Westarp papers, Verena Gräfin von Zeppelin-Aschhausen, is to be commended for continuing the tradition of free and open access to the Westarp papers after her father’s death in 2004. I have also benefited from the generosity of a host of younger scholars who have graciously shared the results of their research with me and in some cases provided me with copies of materials that I have used in the preparation of this book. Particularly helpful in this regard have been Daniela Gasteiger, Björn Hofmeister, Barry A. Jackisch, Rainer Orth, Edward Snyder, and Lisa M. Stallbaumer. Their industry, resourcefulness, and enthusiasm for the political history of the Weimar Republic have reassured me that the future of that history is in good hands. I also need to express a special debt of thanks to Bridget Sendziak, my undergraduate student assistant at Canisius College. Bridget has read every page of the manuscript, caught many mistakes that I overlooked, and diligently checked footnotes to the point of exhaustion. Her resourcefulness and hard work were instrumental in helping me to complete this project as expeditiously as possible. I am also extremely grateful to Mark Gallimore for the excellent assistance he provided me in the technical preparation of the manuscript.

xiv

Acknowledgements

I would also like to thank Lewis Bateman, my editor at Cambridge University Press, for his long-standing interest in my work. It was, after all, Lew who first suggested this project after hearing me complain about how complicated I had found the events surrounding the elections and about how little had been done in the way of serious scholarship on the subject. It was his instincts as editor and publisher that alerted me to the potential of this project. I remain deeply indebted to Lew not just for his role in getting me started on this project but also for his friendship and loyalty over the years. Lastly, I would like to thank my family for its support and patience in seeing this through to completion. My younger son Daniel helped by locating many of the prints of campaign posters from the 1932 presidential elections that are featured in this book, while his older brother Matthew arranged for me to present the preliminary results of my research on Germany’s conservative elites and the formation of the Hitler cabinet at Aberystwyth University in Wales in March 2013. But it is to my wife and fellow historian Nancy Rosenbloom to whom I owe my greatest debt of gratitude. Without her encouragement and support, it is unlikely that this project would even have seen the light of day. Nancy has endured my erratic work habits, my late hours at the computer, my not infrequent research trips to Germany, and my all too frequent bouts of absent-mindedness with patience, understanding, and a sense of humor tempered by a healthy dose of good plain common sense. To her my deepest thanks and love. Buffalo, New York

Abbreviations

Organizations ADGB Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund/General German Trade-Union Federation ADV Alldeutscher Verband/Pan-German League AKD Arbeitsgemeinschaft Katholischer Deutscher/Coalition of Catholic Germans BBMB Bayerischer Bauern-und Mittelstandsbund/Bavarian Peasant and Middle Class League BLB Bayerischer Landbund/Bavarian Rural League BVP Bayerische Volkspartei/Bavarian People’s Party CNBLP Christlicher-nationale Bauern-und Landvolkpartei/ Christian-National Peasants and Farmer’s Party CSVD Christlich-Sozialer Volksdienst/Christian-Social People’s Service DAG Deutsche Adelgenossenschaft/German Nobles’ Society DAP Deutsche Arbeitspartei/German Worker’s Party DDP Deutsche Demokratische Partei/German Democratic Party DGB Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund/German Trade-Union Federation DHK Deutscher Herrenklub/German Lord’s Club DHV Deutschnationaler Handlungsghilfen-Verband/German National Union of Commercial Employees DNVP Deutschnationale Volkspartei/German National People’s Party xv

xvi

DOB DRKB DStP DVP GCG

KPD KVP NSDAP RDI RLB RPL SA SPD SS TLB VKV VNR WBP WBWB WP WPA

List of Abbreviations Deutscher Offizier-Bund/German Officer’s League Deutsche Reischskriegerbund Kyffhäuser/German Reich Warriors’ Kyffhäuser League Deutsche Staatspartei/German State Party Deutsche Volkspartei/German People’s Party Gesamtverband der christlichen Gewerkschaften Deutschlands/United Federation of Christian Trade Unions Kommunistiche Partei Deutschlands/German Communist Party Konservative Volkspartei/Conservative People’s Party Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpareti/National Socialist German’s Worker Party Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie/National Federation of German Industry Reichs-Landbund/National Rural League Reichspropaganda-Leitung der NSDAP/Reich Propaganda Leadership of the NSDAP Sturm-Abteilungen der NSDAP/Storm Detachments of the NSDAP Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands/Social Democratic Party of Germany Schutzstaffel der NSDAP/Security Forces of the NSDAP Thüringer Landbund/Thüringian Rural League Volkskonservative Vereinigung/People’s Conservative Association Volksnationale Reichsvereinigung/People’s National Reich Association Württembergische Bürgerpartei/Württemberg Burgher Party Württembergischer Bauern-und Weingärterbund/ Württemberg Peasants and Winegrowers’ League Wirtschaftspartei or Reichspartei des Deutschen Mittelstandes/Business Party Wirtschaftspolitische Abteilung der NSDAP/Economic Policy Department of the NSDAP

List of Abbreviations

Archives ACDP Sankt-Augustin BA Berlin BA Bildarchiv BA Koblenz BA-MA Freiburg BHStA Munich BLHA Potsdam DHV-Archiv Hamburg FZH Hamburg HA Krupp Essen IfZ Munich LA Berlin NSStA Osnabrück PA AA Berlin RWWA Cologne SAA Munich StA Hamburg StA Mönchen-Gladbach StA Wuppertal TKA Dortmund VWA Münster WA Bayer WWA Dortmund

xvii

Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Politik, Sankt Augustin Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, Berlin Bundesarchiv, Bildarchiv, On-Line Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Koblenz Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg im Breisgau Bayerische Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich Brandenburgischer Landeshauptstaatsarchiv, Potsdam Archiv des Deutschen Handels-und Industrieangestellten-Verband, Hamburg Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg, Hamburg Historisches Archiv, Friedrich Krupp GmbH, Essen Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich Landesarchiv Berlin, Berlin Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv/Staatsarchiv Osnabrück, Osnabrück Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv zu Köln, Cologne Munich Werner-von-Siemens Institut für die Geschichte des Hauses Siemens, Munich Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Hamburg Stadtarchiv Mönchen-Gladbach, MönchenGladbach Stadtarchiv Wuppertal ThyssenKrupp Konzenarchiv, Außenstelle Hoesch, Dortmund Vereinigte Westfälische Adelsarchive, Münster Werksarchiv Bayer A.G., Leverkusen Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, Dortmund

Prologue Setting the Stage

The last years of the Weimar Republic witnessed a dramatic shift to the right that culminated on 30 January 1933 in Adolf Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. At the heart of this process stood two men, the first an icon of the authoritarian and military traditions with which Germany’s rise to world power was so closely associated and the other a self-styled political revolutionary who saw the destruction of German democracy as an indispensable precondition for Germany’s return to great power status. Not only did Paul von Hindenburg, president of the German Republic since 1925 and focal point of the restorationist hopes of the German Right, and Hitler represent two fundamentally different strategies for solving the crisis in which Germany had found itself since the end of World War I, but in the spring of 1932 they faced off against each other in two epic elections that defined the struggle for political power in the last months of the Weimar Republic. The elections, both in their execution and their outcome, were to have a particularly profound impact on the German Right. After all, Hindenburg was a candidate around whom the entire German Right should have rallied, as it had done in 1925. But in one of the many ironies that marked the late Weimar Republic, the bulk of Hindenburg’s support now came from those parties that had opposed his candidacy seven years earlier. Many of Hindenburg’s erstwhile supporters on the German Right were bitterly disappointed by his performance as Reich president and particularly by his dogged determination to exercise the powers of his office according to the letter, if not the spirit, of the Weimar Constitution. The campaign would thus draw into sharp focus the deep-seated cleavages that had developed within the German

1

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Prologue

Right since his election to the Reich presidency and destroy the last vestiges of right-wing unity in the struggle against Weimar democracy. At the risk of gross oversimplification, one can distinguish between three basic positions on the German Right in the last years of the Weimar Republic. In the first place, there were those more moderate conservative pragmatists who, despite their profound reservations about the political system that Germany had inherited from the November Revolution of 1918, had come to realize that little could be accomplished with a policy of uncompromising opposition to Germany’s new republican order and were prepared to work within the framework of the existing political system to effect its reform and transformation in accordance with what they held to be the tried and true principles of German conservatism. This was the faction that had come to the fore with Heinrich Brüning’s installation as chancellor in the spring of 1930 and his efforts to right the ship of state by anchoring it to Hindenburg’s magnetic aura. But Brüning’s mandate to govern was severely compromised by the deepening economic crisis and his government’s failure to ameliorate the suffering this entailed for virtually every sector of German society. Not only did this have a radicalizing effect upon those strata of the German public upon which Brüning depended for the bulk of his political support, but it emboldened those on the German Right to whom any concession to the existing political order was tantamount to an act of national treason to redouble their efforts to drive Brüning from office. But even among those who opposed the Brüning government, there was a sharp division between those who sought to use promises of support for Hindenburg’s candidacy to force a change in the national government and those who sought to get rid of Hindenburg altogether. Not only would the balance between these two options constantly shift during the negotiations that preceded the campaign as well as during the campaign itself, but the negotiations themselves would reveal much about the evolution of Hitler’s negotiating tactics with respect to the non-Nazi elements of the German Right. What emerges from this analysis is a picture of a Hitler who at the outset seemed quite tentative and indecisive in his relations with the non-Nazi Right but who gained confidence in himself and his sense of mission as the campaign unfolded. Yet for all their attendant drama and their undeniable impact upon the subsequent course of political development in the last year of the Weimar Republic, the 1932 presidential elections have received only scant attention in the existing body of historical literature on the end of the Weimar and the ultimate triumph of Nazism. To be sure, the Hindenburg

Prologue

3

campaign is mentioned in all of the classic Hindenburg biographies by Walter Görlitz, Andreas Dorpalen, and Walther Hubatsch, as well as the Marxist study by the East German historian Wolfgang Ruge.1 The presidential elections have also been covered in various monographs on the political parties that lined up behind Hindenburg’s bid for the Reich presidency, though rarely in sufficient detail to provide a clear picture of what was happening.2 By the same token, neither Wolfram Pyta’s authoritative Hindenburg biography nor the two more specialized Hindenburg studies by Anna von der Goltz and Jesko von Hoegen are sufficiently detailed in their analysis of the 1932 presidential elections or go beyond exploring the mythic dimensions of the Hindenburg candidacy.3 Aside from Volker Berghahn’s pioneering article from 1965 on the Harzburg Front and the 1932 presidential elections,4 an article I wrote some thirty years later on the dilemma that German conservatives faced in the 1932 presidential campaign,5 and a more recent article that Anna von der Goltz published under her maiden name Anne Menge on Hindenburg as an icon in the political culture of the Weimar Republic,6 the strategic calculations that surrounded the Hindenburg candidacy and the political repercussions of the campaign itself have not received the serious scholarly attention they deservedly merit. The same could also be said of Hitler and the challenge his candidacy posed not just to the conservative moderates who sought to deploy Hindenburg’s mythic stature in support of their political agenda but also

1

2 3

4 5 6

For example, see Walter Görlitz, Hindenburg. Ein Lebensbild (Bonn, 1953), 353–60; Andreas Dorpalen, Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic (Princeton, NJ, 1964), 254– 300; Walther Hubatsch, Hindenburg und der Staat. Aus den Papieren des Generalfeldmarschalls und Reichspräsidenten von 1878 bis 1934 (Göttingen, 1966), 120–30; and Wolfgang Ruge, Hindenburg. Porträt eines Militaristen (Berlin, 1974), 327–45. The one notable exception to this is the detailed study by Ludwig Richter, Die Deutsche Volkspartei 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2002), 746–59. In this respect, see Wolfram Pyta, Hindenburg: Herrschaft zwischen Hohenzollern und Hitler (Berlin, 2007); 645–84, Anna von der Goltz, Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis (Oxford, 2009), 144–66; and Jesko von Hoegen, Der Held von Tannenberg: Genese und Funktion des Hindenburg-Mythos (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2007), 345–61. Volker R. Berghahn, “Die Harzburger Front und die Kandidatur Hindenburgs für die Reichspräsidentenwahlen 1932,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 13 (1965): 64–82. Larry Eugene Jones, “Hindenburg and the Conservative Dilemma in the 1932 Presidential Elections,” German Studies Review 20 (1997): 235–59. Anna Menge, “The Iron Hindenburg: A Popular Icon of Weimar Germany,” German History 26 (2008): 357–82.

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Prologue

to his supposed allies in the so-called national opposition.7 This lacuna is all the more regrettable in light of the critical role that the 1932 presidential elections would play in the evolution of Hitler’s strategy and tactics for dealing with the non-Nazi elements of the German Right in the period leading up to his appointment as chancellor. To be sure, Hitler’s Herculean efforts as a candidate for the Reich presidency and his barnstorming cross-country flights to virtually every corner of the Reich have figured prominently in both the standard Hitler biographies from Alan Bullock to Ian Kershaw and the more generalized histories of the Weimar Republic from Erich Eyck to Heinrich August Winkler and Hans Mommsen,8 though interestingly not in the most recent English-language study of the Weimar Republic by Eric Weitz.9 Not even Kershaw, in his highly acclaimed two-volume biography of Hitler, goes significantly beyond the all too familiar bromides about the whirlwind of activity that Hitler unfurled in pursuit of the Reich presidency or devotes sufficient attention to the Nazi party leader’s negotiations with the non-Nazi Right in the critical months between the Harzburg rally and the fall of the Brüning cabinet. In general, the period between the stunning Nazi victory in the September 1930 Reichstag elections and the dismissal of the Brüning cabinet at the end of May 1932 remains something of a black hole in the scholarly literature on Hitler’s rise to power. That this was a critical period in the evolution of the strategy and tactics that Hitler and his immediate entourage would employ in their pursuit of power has largely escaped the attention of even the most astute of serious Hitler scholars.10 7

8

9 10

On the tensions within the national opposition during the 1932 presidential campaign, see Volker R. Berghahn, Der Stahlhelm – Bund der Frontsoldaten 1918–1935 (Düsseldorf, 1966), 198–219, as well as the recent biography of the nationalist politician Otto Schmidt-Hannover by Maxmilian Terhalle, Deutschnational in Weimar. Die politische Biographie des Reichstagsabgeordneten Otto Schmidt(-Hannover) 1888–1971 (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2009), 293–303. The older study by John A. Leopold, Alfred Hugenberg: The Radical Nationalist Campaign against the Weimar Republic (New Haven, CT, and London, 1977), 107–15, is badly outdated but still useful for a general overview of developments. In this respect, see Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, 2nd edn. (New York, 1962), 199–202, and Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889–1935: Nemesis (New York, 2000), 360–65, as well as Erich Eyck, A History of the Weimar Republic, vol. 2: From the Locarno Conference to Hitler’s Seizure of Power, trans. by Harlan P. Hanson and Robert G. L. Waite (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 350–92; Heinrich August Winkler, Weimar, 1918–1933: Die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Demokratie (Munich, 1993), 444–54; and Hans Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, trans. by Elbort Forster and Larry Eugene Jones (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996), 404–11. Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton, NJ, 2007), 352–56. For example, see the brief, though insightful, treatment of the elections in Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York, 2004), 277–83. For a partial

Prologue

5

The following study uses the 1932 presidential elections as an optic through which the development of the German Right in the last years of the Weimar Republic may be viewed. What becomes increasingly apparent through the use of this optic is that by the beginning of the 1930s, the German Right had become so fragmented along lines of ideology, interest, and tactics that it was no longer capable of formulating a coherent response to the deepening economic crisis and the paralysis of Weimar democracy. In point of fact, the divisions within the German Right had roots that could be traced back to the late Second Empire and accounted in no small measure for its general ineffectiveness during the Weimar Republic. But it was only with the paralysis of Germany’s parliamentary institutions in the early 1930s – a paralysis for which the more radical elements on the German Right were in no small way responsible – and the dramatic swing of the political pendulum to the right in the wake of the world economic crisis that the consequences of these divisions became tragically apparent. At the precise moment that the burden of political responsibility shifted from the parties that had remained loyal to the republican form of government to the forces of the German Right, those forces were so deeply divided that they proved incapable of acting in any sort of coherent or effective fashion. This, in turn, created a vacuum into which the most radical faction on the German Right, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), insinuated itself with a combination of skill, flair, and ruthlessness. At the center of this process lay the 1932 presidential elections. The combination of acute economic distress and political paralysis produced a systemic breakdown in which the actions of individual political actors were suddenly invested with a causal immediacy that they otherwise would never have possessed. Here it is useful to recall Harold James’s cautionary note from 1990 that the collapse of Weimar democracy and Hitler’s installation as chancellor represented “two logically separate processes” that require fundamentally different analytical strategies.11 While the former may have been a necessary, if not indispensable, precondition for the latter, it does not follow that Hitler’s appointment as

11

corrective to this deficit, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Adolf Hitler and the 1932 Presidential Elections: A Study in Nazi Strategy and Politics,” in Von Freiheit, Solidarität und Subsidiarität – Staat und Gesellschaft der Moderne in Theorie und Praxis. Festschrift für Karsten Ruppert zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Markus Raasch and Tobias Hirschmüller (Berlin, 2013), 550–73. Harold James, “Economic Reasons for the Collapse of the Weimar Republic,” in Weimar: Why Did German Democracy Fail, ed. Ian Kershaw (New York, 1990), 30.

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chancellor was the only way in which this crisis could been resolved. What this suggests is that in understanding how and why Hitler came to power the structural mode of analysis that has been so useful in explaining the paralysis of Weimar democracy and the impotence of the traditional German Right must give way to a different mode of analysis that focuses more closely on questions of human agency and intentionality. To be sure, this is not to be construed as a plea for resurrecting the great man theory of history with all of its inherent weaknesses and inadequacies as a mode of historical analysis. Nor is this to suggest that suddenly all things were possible. Individual action, after all, was still circumscribed by structurally and culturally determined constraints as to what was and what was not possible. It is, however, to argue that at moments of systemic crisis like the one that gripped Germany at the end of 1932 the actions of specific individuals suddenly acquire a causal immediacy they otherwise would never have possessed. To borrow from Max Weber, they became switchmen, or Weichensteller, whose actions determined the tracks along which the long-range forces of historical change would move at a time when those forces had lost the full weight of their causal agency.12 One of the major purposes of the following study is to focus on the actions of specific individuals, to understand not merely their hopes and intentions but also on the consequences of what they did or hoped to do. In this respect, it will focus not just on the actions of the two principal protagonists Paul von Hindenburg and Adolf Hitler but also on those of a host of secondary actors, the most important of whom were the chancellor Heinrich Brüning, his Defense Minister Wilhelm Groener, the enigmatic Kurt von Schleicher as the Reichswehr’s principal strategist, and various nationalist politicians such as Alfred Hugenberg and the leaders

12

Max Weber, “The Social Psychology of World Religions,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Oxford, 1948), 268. Much of the foregoing argument has been taken from Larry Eugene Jones, “Why Hitler Came to Power: In Defense of a New History of Politics,” in Geschichtswissenschaft vor 2000. Perspektiven der Historiographiegeschichte, Geschichtstheorie, Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte. Festschrift für Georg G. Iggers zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Konrad H. Jarausch, Jörn Rüsen, and Hans Schleier (Hagen, 1991), 256–76, esp. 271–76. For the classic formulation of this position, see Theodor Eschenburg, “The Role of Personality in the Crisis of the Weimar Republic: Hindenburg, Brüning, Groener, Schleicher,” in Republic to Reich: The Making of the Nazi Revolution, ed. Hajo Holborn (New York, 1972), 3–50. In a similar vein, see the path-breaking study of Karl D. Bracher, Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik. Eine Studie Problem des Machtverfalls in der Demokratie, 4th edn. (Villingen/Schwarzwald, 1960).

Prologue

7

of the paramilitary Right. And occasionally the foibles of lesser players like Hindenburg’s son Oskar or the self-serving cupidity of men like the former Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht carry much heavier weight than during periods of less dramatic change. But at other times, as we will see, this was not always the case, and individuals acted instead in ways that appeared confused, erratic, or arbitrary, in ways that often left both their contemporaries and the historians who later sought to understand them befuddled and dismayed. None of these men, however, acted in a vacuum. For as much as the systemic breakdown of the late Weimar Republic may have invested their actions with much greater causal efficacy than might otherwise have been the case, they still operated within the framework of a structurally determined range of options that defined what they could and could not do. Within this range of options, however, it was still the action of specific individuals – individuals not always motivated by any grand design but often by petty vanities, jealousies, and antipathies – that determined which of these options was eventually exercised.13 The purpose of this study, therefore, is to place an analysis of individual political behavior before, during, and immediately after the 1932 presidential campaign in the larger context of the structures within which these individuals operated. The panorama here will be quite broad, stretching from the working-class parties on the Marxist Left through the plethora of parties large and small that inhabited the political center to the various parties, patriotic associations, and special-interest organizations that constituted the German Right. The primary focus, however, will remain the German Right and to a lesser extent the political center, for it was here that the struggle for the Reich presidency was fought and ultimately decided. A secondary but no less important theme in this study is the role that Germany’s conservative elites – with particular emphasis on Germany’s agricultural, industrial, and military elites – played not just in the presidential elections but in the more general reshaping of Germany’s political landscape in the last years of the Weimar Republic. In the early and middle years of the Weimar Republic, Germany’s conservative elites had tried, though with varying degrees of resolve and success, to secure their vital interests by seeking alliances with the leadership of the various nonsocialist parties. Nowhere was this tactic more explicitly embraced than in the case of Carl Duisberg, president of the National

13

Jones, “Why Hitler Came to Power,” 266–70, 274–76.

8

Prologue

Federation of German Industry (Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie or RDI) from 1925 to 1931.14 A similar trend could be seen in the ascendancy of Martin Schiele within the National Rural League (ReichsLandbund or RLB), the largest of Germany’s agricultural interest organizations and a powerful voice in Germany’s conservative establishment.15 But with the deepening economic crisis of the early 1930s and the effective paralysis of Germany’s parliamentary institutions, the leadership of both industry and agriculture abandoned whatever faith they might once have had in working within the framework of the existing political system and, in search of new political options, began to gravitate more and more into the orbit of the radical Right. This coincided with the decisive intervention of Schleicher and the Reichswehr in the spring of 1930 and the experiment in government by presidential decree that began with the formation of the Brüning cabinet. By the end of 1931 even Schleicher had become increasingly skeptical that Brüning was capable of carrying out the far-reaching reform of Germany’s political, economic, and fiscal structures that he regarded as essential for Germany’s return to great power status and began to explore the possibility of an opening to the antiparliamentary German Right.16 All of this came together in the planning, execution, and outcome of the 1932 presidential elections. The urgency of the elections had the effective of intensifying and accelerating the disintegrative forces that were already at work in Weimar political culture. To be sure, Brüning and the presidential entourage hoped that the elections could be avoided through a parliamentary maneuver that would extend Hindenburg’s term of office until some undetermined point in the future. But when this fell through, the sheer immediacy of the elections created a state of great uncertainty, if not panic, in almost all of Germany’s political parties as

14

15 16

In this respect, see Wolfram Pyta, “Vernunftrepublikanismus in den Spitzenverbänden der Deutschen Industrie,” in Vernunftrepublikanismus in der Weimarer Republik. Politik, Literatur, Wissenschaft, eds. Andreas Wirsching and Jürgen Eder (Stuttgart, 2008), 87–108. For further information, see Stephanie Merkenich, Grüne Front gegen Weimar. ReichsLandbund und agrarische Lobbyismus 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf, 1998), 195–246. The literature on Schleicher is quite extensive and by no means in agreement in its assessment of Schleicher and his political objectives. The most reliable treatment of Schleicher and the Reichswehr’s role in the last years of the Weimar Republic remains Thilo Vogelsang, Reichswehr, Staat und NSDAP. Beiträge zur Deutschen Geschichte 1930–1932 (Stuttgart, 1962), while Peter Hayes, “‘A Question Mark with Epaulettes’? Kurt von Schleicher and Weimar Politics,” Journal of Modern History 52 (1980): 35–65, is still the most useful summary of Schleicher’s goals and tactics.

Prologue

9

they began to grasp just what was at stake. The net effect of this was to greatly exacerbate the tensions both within and between the various nonsocialist parties, but nowhere more so than among the parties, veterans’ organizations, and patriotic leagues that constituted the so-called national opposition. Here the campaign for the Reich presidency triggered a bitter conflict between the Nazis and the non-Nazi elements of the national opposition for the leadership of the struggle against the hated Weimar system. At the end of all of this, the outcome was anything but clear. For Hindenburg the sweetness of his victory over Hitler was tempered by the bitter realization that the vast majority of those who had catapulted him to victory in 1925 had deserted him for the Nazi party leader seven years later.17 For Brüning and those who had embraced Hindenburg’s candidacy on the assumption that only his election could hold Hitler at bay, Hindenburg’s triumph would quickly prove a Pyrrhic victory as the newly reelected Reich president would dispense with Brüning as Reich chancellor in pursuit of a new government based upon the forces of the national opposition. Even those moderate conservatives who had rallied behind the Reich president’s candidacy were unable to translate their willingness to work with each other during the campaign and were reduced to insignificance by the outcome of the state elections that took place in Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, and several smaller states just two weeks after the final round of voting in the presidential campaign. In the meantime, the struggle between the Nazis and the non-Nazi elements of the national opposition had taken a severe toll on the latter, leaving them exhausted and in no condition whatsoever to resume the struggle for political supremacy. Only the Nazis stood unscathed at the end of the battle. Hitler and the forces around him were invigorated by the Nazi party leader’s performance at the polls, more confident of victory than ever before, and well positioned for whatever the next chapter in the struggle for power might bring. Existing literature on the late Weimar Republic has generally viewed the 1932 presidential elections as a side show in the series of events that culminated in Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. It has consistently failed to recognize the extent to which Weimar electoral politics were transformed by the way in which the contest between Hindenburg and Hitler highlighted the mythic qualities of two men who consciously relied upon their personal charisma to legitimate their respective claims to the 17

Jürgen W. Falter, “The Two Hindenburg Elections of 1925 and 1932: A Total Reversal of Voter Coalitions,” Central European History 23 (1990): 225–41.

10

Prologue

leadership of the German nation. The net effect of this was to validate charisma as an authentic mode of political legitimation and to reshape the dynamics of German political life in ways that greatly favored Hitler in his struggle with the non-Nazi elements of the national opposition. It was not enough that the elections exacerbated the divisions among those elements on both the moderate and radical Right that opposed Hitler’s rise to power to the point where they were unable to formulate any sort of coherent response to the threat that Nazism posed to their political aspirations. But, more importantly, the very manner in which both Hindenburg and Hitler deployed their personal charisma as a way of legitimating their claim to the leadership of the German nation in the eyes of the German electorate accelerated the political delegitimation of the Weimar Republic – based as it was upon the inherently more rational method of representing and reconciling divergent social and economic interests through the mechanisms of a popularly elected legislature – and, in so doing, effectively redefined the dynamics of German political life. The 1932 presidential elections thus constituted a decisive moment in the transformation of Weimar political culture that set the stage for Hitler’s appointment as chancellor a scant nine months later in ways that neither the most recent studies of Hindenburg’s charisma nor the authoritative Hitler biography by Kershaw, let alone the most recent contribution to the topic of Hitler’s charisma by Laurence Rees,18 have fully appreciated or understood. To be sure, this did not mean that Hitler’s accession to power was in any way inevitable. There were still too many variables and too many personal idiosyncrasies to trace a direct line from the elections to Hitler’s installation as chancellor. But the events surrounding the 1932 presidential elections and the way in which charisma had effectively displaced more rational modes of political legitimation as the foundation of Germany’s national life meant that Hitler’s chances of acceding to the chancellorship had greatly improved.

18

Laurence Rees, Hitler’s Charisma: Leading Millions into the Abyss (New York, 2012).

1 Introducing the Protagonists Hindenburg and Hitler

As the year 1931 drew to a close, the situation in which Germany found itself seemed as hapless as ever. As the Great Depression spread its tentacles over increasingly large sectors of German society, a deep spiritual malaise began to take hold of Germany’s national culture. Nowhere was this captured with greater poignancy than in a passage from Karl Jaspers’ Man in the Modern Age from earlier that summer: Beyond question there is a widespread conviction that human activities are unavailing; everything has become questionable; nothing in human life holds good; that existence is no more than an unceasing maelstrom of reciprocal deception and self-deception by ideologies. Thus the epochal consciousness becomes detached from being. One who holds such a view cannot but be inspired with a consciousness of his own nullity. His awareness of the end as annihilation is simultaneously the awareness that his own existence is null. The epochal consciousness has turned a somersault in the void.1

But Jaspers’ was only one of the voices that bemoaned the spiritual crisis that had descended upon Germany by the end of the 1920s. To this one might also add those of Oswald Spengler, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Martin Heidigger, Carl Gustav Jung, and Sigmund Freud, to mention only a few of those who tried to come to terms with the eminent demise of their cultural heritage. It was a situation in which none of the inherited ideologies of the prewar period seemed relevant and in which

1

Karl Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age, trans. by Eden and Cedar Paul (London, 1951), 21. For the broader context of Jaspers’ statement, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Culture and Politics in the Weimar Republic,” in Modern Germany Reconsidered, 1870–1945, ed. Gordon Martel (London and New York, 1992), 74–95, the quote from 86–87.

11

12

Hitler versus Hindenburg

the calls for some sort of revolutionary break with the existing social and political order found greater and greater resonance. At the heart of this lay a longing for regeneration that had far from exhausted itself in expressionism’s quest for the “new man” and that now manifested itself in the call for a “conservative revolution.” A term first coined by the Austrian poet and playwright Hugo von Hofmannstahl in a famous lecture at the University of Munich in January 1927, the conservative revolution sought to overcome the estrangement of spirit, or Geist, from life and to create “a new German reality in which the entire nation could take part.” Against the fragmentation of German social and political life, Hofmannstahl sought to invoke the healing power of German culture.2 While it is unlikely that Hofmannstahl ever appreciated the political implications of what he was saying, his lament over the estrangement of spirit from life and his invocation of a revolution that sought nothing less than the rebirth of the human spirit struck a responsive chord among those who had become disillusioned with the individualistic and materialistic trappings of modern mass democracy.3 A second and by no means unrelated by-product of the spiritual malaise that had gripped Germany’s national life by the beginning of the 1930s was an increasingly powerful longing for a messiah who could rescue Germany from the deep distress in which it currently found itself. The messianic impulse was deeply entrenched in Germany’s national culture and had been reinforced by the neo-conservative critique of the modern age with all its individualistic and materialistic excesses. If Germany was ever to experience the rebirth of the human spirit and the regeneration of the nation that Hofmannstahl had invoked with his call for a conservative revolution, then it would require the charismatic force of a great leader, a messiah blessed with a sense of providence and the special gift of grace that it would take to overcome the fragmentation of modern political life and unite the German people into a genuine national community, a Volksgemeinschaft that transcended the social,

2 3

Hugo von Hofmannstahl, Das Schriftum als geistiger Raum der Nation (Munich, n.d. [1927]), 31. The secondary literature on the conservative revolution is both extensive and exhaustive. Aside from the classic synopsis by Armin Mohler, Die konservative Revolution in Deutschland. Handbuch, 2nd edn. (Darmstadt, 1972), two more recent studies by Stefan Breuer, Anatomie der konservativen Revolution (Darmstadt, 1993), and Roger Woods, The Conservative Revolution in the Weimar Republic (New York and London, 1996), offer useful synthetic overviews of the subject.

Introducing the Protagonists: Hindenburg and Hitler

13

confessional, and regional cleavages so deeply embedded in the fabric of Germany’s national life. Not only had the defeat of 1918, the runaway inflation of the early 1920s, and the outbreak of the world economic crisis a decade later helped create a state of anomie in which increasingly large numbers of individuals were no longer able to reconcile their personal values and aspirations with those of society at large, but these developments had also done much to undermine patterns of political legitimation that were either rooted in tradition or based upon the rational subordination of means to ends and to intensify the longing for a messiah who, sustained by the force of his personal charisma, could lead Germany away from the abyss of national disintegration to the promised land of social harmony and national greatness.4 With the virtual dissolution of German society into a Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes, the longing for redemption through the agency of a messiah became an increasingly powerful motif in the political culture of the late Weimar Republic.5 Against the background of these developments, two men – Reich president Paul von Hindenburg and Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler – would lay claim to the messianic impulse that sought to redeem Germany from the spiritual and political malaise that held the nation in its grip. The last year of the Weimar Republic would witness an epic struggle between these two men as each – the first, an icon who epitomized the values and traditions of all that was associated with Germany’s rise to greatness and the second, a self-proclaimed prophet of Germany’s return to great power status – tried to invoke the power of his personal charisma to legitimate his claim to the leadership of the German nation. In his classic formulation of the concept, German sociologist Max Weber defined charisma as “a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural,

4

5

For the classic statement of this argument, see the path-breaking essays rom 1942 by Talcott Parsons, “Democracy and Social Structure in Pre-Nazi Germany,” and “Some Sociological Aspects of the Fascist Movements,” in Talcott Parsons, Politics and Social Structure (New York and London, 1969), 65–97. On the messianic impulse and the function of charisma in Germany’s national culture, see Klaus Schreiner, “‘Wann kommt der Retter Deutschlands?’ Formen und Funktionen von politischem Messianismus in der Weimarer Republik,” Saeculum 49 (1998): 107–60, esp. 141–54, and Thomas Mergel, “Führer, Volksgemeinschaft und Maschine. Politische Erwartungsstrukturen in der Weimarer Republik und dem Nationalsozialismus 1918–1936,” in Politische Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit 1918–1939, ed. Wolfgang Hardtwig (Göttingen, 2005), 91–127.

14

Hitler versus Hindenburg

superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional qualities.”6 The legitimating function of charisma lay precisely in the power of its emotional appeal and its ability to override patterns of behavior that were based either upon tradition or the rational subordination of means to ends, or in other words what Weber defined as “purposive-rational [zweckrationell]” behavior. In this sense, charisma represented a truly revolutionary force in the process of historical change that could, under certain circumstances, enlist the energies and passions of those who bound themselves to the charismatic legitimacy of their leader to bring about fundamental changes in the structure of the world in which they lived. At the same time, however, charisma constituted the least stable of Weber’s modes of political legitimation and required constant validation in the form of repeated – and presumably greater – successes that could be celebrated as proof of the leader’s supernatural or divine grace. Failure to validate one’s special calling through success, on the other hand, only invited disaster and the dissolution of the hegemonic base upon which the leader’s authority to lead ultimately rested.7 It is important to note, however, that Weber’s typology of political legitimation was only part of a larger methodological strategy that involved the use of “ideal types” to highlight particular aspects of an infinitely complex and irreducible social reality so that the historian or social scientist might better understand “the unique individual character of cultural phenomena.”8 In this respect, Weber reminds us that under no circumstances should “ideal types” be confused with historical or social reality itself, that “they are pure mental constructs, the relationships of which to the empirical reality of the immediately given is problematical in 6

7 8

Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans.by A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons and with an introduction by Talcott Parsons (New York and London, 1964), 358. For a particular useful discussion of charisma, see the introduction to Max Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building:Selected Papers, edited and with an introduction by S. N. Eisenstadt (Chicago and London, 1968), xviii–xxvi, as well as the pioneering essay by Edward A. Shils, “Charisma, Order and Status,” American Sociological Review 30 (1965): 199–23. On Weber’s view of the role of charisma in the process of historical change, see Wolfgang J. Mommsen, “Max Weber’s Political Sociology and His Philosophy of History,” International Social Science Journal 17 (1965): 23–45, and idem, The Age of Bureaucracy: Perpsectives on the Political Sociology of Max Weber (Oxford, 1974), 72–94, as well as the more recent study by Joshua Derman, Max Weber in Politics and Social Thought: From Charisma to Canonization (Cambridge, 2014), 176–85. Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organization, 360. Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, trans. by Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch and with a foreword by Edward A. Shils (New York, 1949), 96–104, the quote from 101.

Introducing the Protagonists: Hindenburg and Hitler

15

every individual case.”9 What this means in a practical sense is that charisma as an “ideal type” is almost never to be found in a pure or pristine state and that in the empirical world it is almost invariably combined with elements appropriated from the other modes of political legitimation. This insight is particularly useful for understanding the uniqueness of Hindenburg’s appeal and what distinguished his brand of charisma from that of his Nazi rival. For not only was the “hero of Tannenberg” portrayed in a way that clearly set him apart from ordinary men and endowed him with almost supernatural and superhuman leadership qualities, but by virtue of his aristocratic pedigree and forty-odd years as a career Prussian army officer he also personified the best virtues of the Prussian tradition. It was precisely the success with which Hindenburg and his supporters were able to fuse the traditional and charismatic elements of his public persona into a durable and persuasive synthesis that accounted for his overpowering mythic stature in German political and public life.10 Hitler, on the other hand, was a charismatic leader of an entirely different sort. It was not just that Hitler lacked Hindenburg’s noble pedigree or that he had never risen above the rank of lance corporal during his four years of military service in World War I but that he embraced a radical, if not apocalyptic, sense of mission that stood in sharp contrast to the decidedly more restorationist aspirations evoked by the mythos surrounding Hindenburg.11

9 10

11

Ibid, 103. The charismatic qualities of Hindenburg’s political leadership have been the subject of three recent biographical studies, none of which, in my opinion, have brought sufficient attention to the differences between the ways in which charisma was used in the construction of the Hindenburg and Hitler myth respectively. On Hindenburg, see Wolfram Pyta, “Paul von Hindenburg als charismatischer Führer der deutschen Nation,” in Charismatische Führer der deutschen Nation, ed. Frank Möller (Munich, 2004), 109–47, as well as Pyta’s authoritative Hindenburg biography, Hindenburg. Herrschaft zwischen Hohenzollern und Hitler (Berlin, 2007), esp. 57–68, 285–94; Jesko von Hoegen, Der Held von Tannenburg. Genese und Funktion des Hindenburg-Mythos (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2007); and Anna von der Goltz, Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis (Oxford, 2009). In this respect, see M. Rainer Lepsius, “The Model of Charismatic Leadership and Its Applicability to the Rule of Adolf Hitler,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 7 (2006): 175–90, and Dirk van Laak, “Adolf Hitler,” in Charismatische Führer der deutschen Nation, ed. Frank Möller (Munich, 2004), 149–69. The recent book by Laurence Rees, Hitler’s Charisma: Leading Millions into the Abyss (New York, 2012), is an interesting biography of Hitler organized around the concept of charisma but is based in large part upon published secondary works and does little to advance the existing body of scholarship on the specific function of charisma in Hitler’s political career or the

16

Hitler versus Hindenburg

Who was Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg? Born in 1847 in the Prussian fortress town of Posen as the eldest son of a prominent Prussian aristocrat from whom he received his distinctive surname, Hindenburg had pursued a career in the Prussian and German armies that saw him rise to the rank of a general in the infantry before retiring from active service in 1911. Recalled to duty following the outbreak of World War I, Hindenburg was assigned to the command of the Eighth Army in East Prussia, where he quickly earned the reputation of a national hero with decisive victories over the Russians in the Battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. In August 1916 the “hero of Tannenberg,” having earned the rank of field marshal two years earlier by virtue of his successes on the eastern front, replaced Erich von Falkenhayn as commander-in-chief of the German armed forces. Over the next two years, Hindenburg assumed almost mythic proportions as he and his circle of military advisors, including the mercurial Erich Ludendorff as his chief of staff, took Germany to the brink of what the public had been led to believe would be a great and decisive German victory.12 None of this sat particularly well with Kaiser Wilhelm II, who became increasingly jealous of Hindenburg’s popularity despite his dependence upon his general’s prestige and success at the front. The fact that the so-called Hindenburg Plan for the full economic mobilization of the domestic economy for the German war effort was named after his commander-inchief bore dramatic testimony to the way in which Hindenburg’s nimbus had begun to eclipse that of the Kaiser. Nowhere was the primacy of the Hindenburg mythos more apparent than in the fact that Hindenburg was able to survive the defeat of November 1918 with his prestige and influence intact, whereas the Kaiser was forced to abdicate in a scenario that was to a large extent orchestrated by none other than his commander-inchief Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg.13

12

13

history of the Third Reich. Rees’ book is particularly disappointing in what it has to say about the function of charisma in the 1932 presidential elections. On Hindenburg’s military career, see Pyta, Hindenburg, 13–55, 91–113, 177–323, as well as two older studies by Andreas Dorpalen, Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic (Princeton, NJ, 1964), 6–13; and Walther Hubatsch, Hindenburg und der Staat. Aus den Papieren des Generalfeldmarschalls und Reichspräsidenten von 1878 bis 1934 (Göttingen, 1966), 13–32. For the most detailed account of Hindenburg’s role in orchestrating the Kaiser’s abdication, see Pyta, Hindenburg, 361–80. For the perspective of the Kaiser, see John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900–1941 (Cambridge, 2014), 1180–87. See also the detailed reconstruction of the events surrounding the fall of the monarchy in Kuno von Westarp, Das Ende der Monarchie am 9. November 1918

Introducing the Protagonists: Hindenburg and Hitler

17

Throughout all of this, Hindenburg and his supporters were hard at work embellishing the field marshal’s image not only so that it might survive the debacle of 1918 with all of its mythic and charismatic trappings intact but even more importantly, so that it might serve as the focal point around which the forces of national regeneration could coalesce. In this respect, however, it is important to realize that charisma is not simply the effervescence of a truly dynamic or captivating personality but, as we shall see not only in the case of Hindenburg but also in that of his rival Adolf Hitler, a political construct that can only be adequately understood in light of the specific historical circumstances in which it manifests itself and in terms of the activity of those sectors of society, no matter how small or large, whose interests it serves. In other words, charisma is not a spontaneous historical event or an accident of historical change but something that happens precisely because it serves the psychological and emotional needs of a society in crisis and can be used by specific sectors of that society to advance their own social and political interests.14 The construction of the Hindenburg myth began almost immediately after his victory at Tannenberg and, though it appears not to have been the creation of the wartime propaganda machine, certainly helped the German public ignore failures at the front or cracks in the domestic political consensus that might have diminished its enthusiasm for the war effort. As the war progressed, Hindenburg became the focal point of a vast body of adulatory literature that extolled him as the embodiment of German national unity and the struggle against the barbaric Slavic hordes to the east. Perhaps even more telling was the rich and variegated iconography that extended to virtually every home in the German Reich and to which none but the most obstinate could remain immune.15 Remarkably, the Hindenburg mythos survived the debacle of November 1918 intact. This stemmed in no small measure from the fact that

14

15

(Munich, 1952), as well as the more recent contribution by Martin Kohlrausch, “Die Flucht des Kaisers – Doppeltes Scheitern adlig bürgerlicher Monarchiekonzepte,” in Adel und Bürgertum in Deutschland II. Entwicklungslinien und Wendepunkte im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Heinz Reif (Berlin, 2001), 65–101. In this respect, see the introduction by Frank Möller, “Zur Theorie des charismatischen Führers im modernen Nationalstaat,” in Charismatische Führer der deutschen Nation, ed. Frank Möller (Munich, 2004), 1–18, esp. 5–6. This has been argued most persuasively with regard to Hitler by Ludolf Herbst, “Der Fall Hitler – Inzenierungskunst und Charismapolitik,” in Virtuousen der Macht. Herrschaft und Charisma von Perikles bis Mao, ed. Wilfried Nippel (Munich, 2000), 171–91. This is best described in von der Goltz, Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis, 67–69. See also Hoegen, Held von Tannenburg, 40–48, 77–98.

18

Hitler versus Hindenburg

Germany’s military defeat was not placed at his doorstep but was blamed instead on the collapse of the home front and the intrigues of those domestic politicians who had allegedly stabbed the German soldier in the back for the sake of their own domestic agenda. By claiming that the collapse of the home front and not the ineptitude of Germany’s political and military elites was responsible for Germany’s defeat in 1918, the “stab-in-the-back legend” was a convenient ruse that allowed the leaders of Germany’s conservative establishment to deflect responsibility for the catastrophic course of events that had befallen Germany since 1914 from themselves to the founders of the new German Republic.16 Hindenburg himself was quick to embrace the “stab-in-the-back legend” as an explanation for Germany’s military defeat and the collapse of the Second Empire, and no one would work more diligently at its propagation than the commander-in-chief of the German armed forces. Appearing in November 1919 before the Reichstag’s official inquiry into the causes of Germany’s military collapse, Hindenburg not only absolved Germany of any responsibility for the outbreak of the war but also blamed the “disintegration of the people’s will to conquer” on the petty factionalism of the parties in the Reichstag and their inability to set aside their differences for the sake of a military victory. Hindenburg then proceeded to lend the full weight of his reputation and prestige to what had already begun to establish itself as an article of faith for the German Right when he concluded his statement with a quote from a British general that the German army had been “stabbed in the back.”17 This was a refrain to which Hindenburg would return the following year when he wrote what was clearly intended as his epitaph to the next generation in the closing pages of his memoir Aus meinem Leben: Like Siegfried, struck down by the treacherous spear of the wrathful Hagen, so collapsed our exhausted front. In vain it had tried to tap new life from the depleted spring of our national energies. Now it was our task to save what still remained of

16

17

On the immediate implications of the “stab-in-the-back legend,” see Wilhelm Deist, “Der militärische Zusammenbruch des Kaiserreiches. Zur Realität der ‘Dolchstoßlegende’,” in Wilhelm Deist, Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft. Studien zur preußisch-deutschen Militärgeschichte (Munich, 1991), 211–33. For a study of its broader political implications, see Boris Barth, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration. Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2003), esp. 197–227, 432–85. This episode is described most vividly in John W. Wheeler-Bennett, The Wooden Titan: Hindenburg in Twenty Years of German History, 1914–1934 (New York, 1936), 233–37.

Introducing the Protagonists: Hindenburg and Hitler

19

the strength of our army for rebuilding the Fatherland. The past had been lost. All that remained was hope for the future.18

Although Hindenburg did not invent the “stab-in-the-back legend,” his stature as a national hero and the utter lack of reserve with which he embraced it, contributed in no small measure to its widespread popularization in the early years of the Weimar Republic. Not only did it remain a staple of Hindenburg’s political credo, but it undermined the legitimacy of the new republican institutions that had taken the place of the old imperial order.19 A second and no less important ingredient of Hindenburg’s political credo was his faith in the recuperative powers of the German nation. Although it is difficult to determine the extent to which Hindenburg had embraced the heady euphoria of August 1914 and the sense of national unity to which this had supposedly given birth,20 he now hailed the selfless sacrifice of those who had served at the front as the source of Germany’s national rebirth. If the national concept and a sense of national consciousness are to rise again, then for those of us who are back from the great war it will be from that war – a war in which no nation can take more justified pride or view with a purer conscience than ours – and out of the bitter seriousness of the current situation that ethically valuable fruits will ripen. The blood of all those who fell for their faith in Germany’s greatness will not have fallen in vain. It is in this firm belief that I set aside my pen and place my trust in you – the German youth.21

Hindenburg clearly intended these words as an epitaph to that generation of Germans into whose hands the responsibility for resurrecting Germany from the ravages of war and revolution now passed. By the time these words were in print, Hindenburg had retired from active service at the age of seventy-three and had embarked upon what he certainly intended as his second and final retirement. Symbolically, Hindenburg submitted his resignation on the day after the Versailles Treaty had been signed so as not to be associated with a treaty he regarded as a disgrace and abomination for all Germans but whose imposition by force, as he knew all too well, Germany lacked the resources to resist.22 The “hero of Tannenburg” thus retired to his home in Hanover where he studiously avoided 18 19 20

21

Paul von Hindenburg, Aus meinem Leben (Leizpig, 1920), 403. Hoegen, Held von Tannenburg, 241–49. On the “ideas of 1914,” see Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth, and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge, 2000). On Hindenburg’s embrace of these ideas, see Pyta, Hindenburg, 113. 22 Hindenburg, Aus meinem Leben, 405–06. Pyta, Hindenburg, 392–402.

20

Hitler versus Hindenburg

being drawn into the partisan politics of the early Weimar Republic despite at least two invitations to run for public office from the German National People’s Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei or DNVP), the party for which he held the greatest sympathy.23 In the meantime, his former staff officers in the German high command – most notably his quartermaster general Wilhelm Groener – as well as a host of right-wing publicists continued to embellish the Hindenburg myth in the hope that it might still serve as the pole around which a defeated and badly fragmented German nation might unite. As Groener wrote to legal expert Berthold Freudenthal in late 1923: “I believed that it was in the interests of the new army that the myth of Hindenburg should be preserved. It was necessary that one great figure should emerge from the war free from the blame that had attached to the General Staff. That figure had to be Hindenburg.”24 Hindenburg spent the next four years out of the political limelight. A staunch and unreconstructed monarchist, Hindenburg had little desire to serve a system of government in which he had no confidence even if his advanced age had not afforded him an excellent pretext for remaining aloof from the morass of republican politics. Yet despite his deep-seated aversion to Germany’s new republican system, he remained opposed to schemes for its violent overthrow and was careful to distance himself from the Kapp-Lüttwitz putsch in the spring of 1920 without publicly disavowing its instigators or their actions.25 For Hindenburg there was a painful irony in all of this because only days before the putsch he had consented, at the urging of the DNVP’s Oskar Hergt and Gustav Stresemann from the right-liberal German People’s Party (Deutsche Volkspartei or DVP), to challenge the sitting Reich president Friedrich Ebert in an open election for the highest office of the land. Realizing that his own chances of being elected had been severely hurt by the polarizing effects the putsch had had upon the German public, Hindenburg withdrew his candidacy even before the election was officially cancelled by the Reichstag.26 From this point on, Hindenburg avoided becoming too closely associated with any of Germany’s political parties, the DNVP included, and cultivated a public stance of bipartisan neutrality in so far as the political climate of the early 1920s would permit. After the death of his wife in May 1921, 23 24 25 26

Dorpalen, Hindenburg, 22. Groener to Freudenthal, 31 Dec. 1923, quoted in Dorpalen, Hindenburg, 41–42. Pyta, Hindenburg, 450–52. Goltz, Hindenburg, 72–75; Pyta, Hindenburg, 443–51.

Introducing the Protagonists: Hindenburg and Hitler

21

Hindenburg receded more and more into the background only to discover on trips to his favorite haunts in East Prussia that he still enjoyed the adoration of significant sectors of the German public, not the least of which was the youth to which he had addressed the final chapter of his memoirs. Despite repeated entreaties from spokesmen for the German Right, Hindenburg showed little inclination to exchange the tranquility of retirement for the demands of a more active public life. It would seem that he was content to enjoy his status as an icon of the old order without having any great desire to translate that into a program for political action.27 Given Hindenburg’s advanced age, it is unlikely that this would have ever changed had there not been a significant shift in Germany’s political environment. The tumultuous events of 1923 – beginning with the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr in January and culminating in the collapse of the German currency and the abortive Hitler–Ludendorff putsch in November – had had a sobering effect upon the more moderate elements of the German Right and underscored the need for conservatives to work within the framework of a governmental system they rejected on emotional and ideological grounds in order to prevent the complete collapse of the state and Reich.28 The struggle within the DNVP Reichstag delegation over the ratification of the Dawes Plan in the summer of 1924 marked the beginning of a strategic reorientation by the more moderate elements on the German Right that reached a preliminary climax in the DNVP’s entry into the national government in January 1925. It was against the background of these developments that conservative strategists began to take aim once again at the Reich presidency. The German Right had never recognized the legitimacy of Ebert’s election as Reich president by the Weimar National Assembly and had vigorously opposed the Reichstag’s decision in the fall of 1922 to extend his term of office through the summer of June 1925.29 By the same token, the leaders 27 28

29

Pyta, Hindenburg, 452–58. On the dilemma in which the leaders of the right-wing and monarchist German National People’s Party found themselves, see the letters to future party leader Count Kuno von Westarp from Alfred Tirpitz, 30 Aug. 1923, and Karl Helfferich, 19 Nov. 1923, both in the unpublished Nachlaß of Kuno Graf von Westarp, Archiv der Freiherren Hiller von Gaertringen in Gärtringen (hereafter cited as NL Westarp, Gärtringen), VN 38 and II/9 respectively. For further details, see Maik Ohnezeit, Zwischen“schärfster Opposition” und dem “Willen zur Macht. “Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP) in der Weimarer Republik 1918–1928 (Düsseldorf, 2011), 232–47. For further information, see Walter Mühlhausen, Friedrich Ebert 1871–1925. Reichspräsident der Weimarer Republik (Bonn, 2006), 527–51, esp. 542–45. For further

22

Hitler versus Hindenburg

of Germany’s conservative establishment realized that the conservative cause could no longer be effectively served either by remaining in the opposition until the Right had finally achieved a majority in the Reichstag or by conspiring to overthrow the republic in the fashion of Kapp and Hitler. It was with this in mind that Germany’s conservative leadership began to lay the groundwork for a presidential campaign it hoped would result in a fundamental change in the existing political system even before Ebert’s untimely death on 28 February 1925.30 The initial impetus here came from two principal directions. Following the split in the DNVP Reichstag delegation in the August 1924 vote on the Dawes Plan, Germany’s paramilitary Right had begun to coalesce behind the leadership of Baron Wilhelm von Gayl, a Nationalist deputy in the Prussian State Council (Preußischer Staatsrat), in hopes of ultimately restoring the unity of the German Right. As their first practical goal, Gayl and his associates hoped to unify Germany’s paramilitary combat leagues and conservative economic interest organizations behind a single candidate in the presidential elections that were scheduled to take place sometime in the summer of 1925.31 This effort paralleled a no less ambitious undertaking by the Reich Citizens’ Council (Reichsbürgerrat), an ostensibly nonpartisan but aggressively middle-class and antisocialist forum for constitutional and political reform that had been founded in the

30

31

information on the position of the right-wing German National People’s Party (DNVP), see the letter from DNVP party chairman Oskar Hergt to Gustav Stresemann, chairman of the German People’s Party (DVP), 5 Oct. 1922, in Stresemann’s unpublished Nachlaß, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin (hereafter cited as PA AA Berlin, NL Stresemann), 252/144427, as well as the memorandum by the DVP’s Adolf Kempkes on his conversation with Oskar Hergt and Count Kuno von Westarp of the DNVP party leadership, 6 Oct. 1922, ibid, 252/144428–30. See also Eberhard Kolb, “Vom ‘vorläufigen’ zum definitiven Reichspräsidenten. Die Auseinandersetzungen um die Volkswahl des Reichspräsidenten 1919–1922,” in Friedrich Ebert als Reichspräsident. Amtsführung und Amtsverständnis, ed. Eberhard Kolb (Munich, 1997), 109–56, esp. 139–56. For a particularly incisive analysis of conservative strategy in the 1925 presidential elections, see Noel D. Cary, “The Making of the Reich President, 1925: German Conservatism and the Nomination of Paul von Hindenburg,” Central European History 23 (1990): 179–204. Also useful, particularly for the Bavarian context, is Hanns-Jochen Hauss, Die erste Volkswahl des deutschen Reichspräsidenten. Eine Untersuchung ihrer verfassungspolitischen Grundlagen, ihrer Vorgeschichte und ihres Verlaufs unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Anteils Bayerns und der Bayerischen Volkspartei (Kallmünz, 1965). In this respect, see the eight-page handwritten note by Gayl, n.d., in the unpublished Nachlaß of Wilhelm Freiherr von Gayl, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Gayl), 23. A more detailed account of Gayl’s relationship with the paramilitary Right is to be found in ibid, 4/17–29.

Introducing the Protagonists: Hindenburg and Hitler

23

immediate aftermath of the November Revolution.32 Friedrich von Loebell and the leadership of the Reich Citizens’ Council were critical of the way in which the German party system had developed since the founding of the Weimar Republic and sought a remedy for the “tyranny of political parties” in a constitutional reform that would, first, create a second legislative chamber consisting of corporate, state, and legislative appointees and, second, expand the powers of the Reich presidency at the expense of the Reichstag and the national cabinet.33 To implement such a reform, however, it was first necessary to elect a new Reich president who, free from the petty party politics of his day, would use the powers of his office to effect a fundamental transformation in the fabric of German public life.34 With Ebert’s unexpected death at the end of February 1925, the timetable for new presidential elections was greatly accelerated. A special committee that Loebell had convened for the purpose of nominating a candidate for the Reich presidency held three meetings in the first week of March.35 At the conclusion of his committee’s deliberations, Loebell informed the DVP’s Karl Jarres, the former Reich minister of interior now serving as lord mayor of Duisburg, on 9 March that he had been selected as his committee’s candidate to run for the Reich 32

33

34

35

On the origins, goals, and political orientation of the Reich Citizens’ Council, see the reports by Köhler, Meyer-Absberg, and Marx, in Verhandlungsbericht über die Ersttagung des Reichsbürgerrats im Preußischen Abgeordnetenhause zu Berlin am 5. Januar 1919 (N.p. [Berlin], n.d. [1919]), 26–41, 110–14. There is no satisfactory history of the Reich Citizens’ Council, although its activities in the first years of the Weimar Republic have been adequately documented in Hans-Joachim Bieber, Bürgertum in der Revolution. Bürgerräte und Bürgerstreiks in Deutschland 1918–1920 (Hamburg, 1992), 56–81. In this respect, see the series of articles by Loebell, “Der Kampf um den Staat,” Der Deutschen-Spiegel. Politische Wochenschrift 1, no. 1 (1 Sept. 1924): 12–15; no. 3 (19 Sept. 1924): 10–13; no. 12 (21 Nov. 1924): 30–32; and no. 13 (28 Nov. 1924): 26–29. See also the informative essay by Kriegk, “Der Weg zur Staatspolitik,” ibid, 1, no. 12 (21 Nov. 1924): 8–23. Loebell, “Die Reichspräsidentenwahl,” Der Deutschen-Spiegel 1, no. 15 (12 Dec. 1924): 13–19. See also Loebell to Hepp, 2 Feb. 1925, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Karl Hepp, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichtenfelde (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, NL Hepp), 2/129–30, as well as Loebell’s introductory remarks at the first organizational meeting of the Loebell committee for the upcoming presidential elections, 12 Feb. 1925, in the corporate records of the Hapag-Lloyd Shipping Company, in the Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Hapag-Reederei, Handakten Cuno (hereafter cited as StA Hamburg, Hapag-Reederei, Handakten Cuno), 1503. A summary of this meeting is also to be found in an attachment to the letter from Zapf to Stresemann, 13 Feb. 1925, PA AA Berlin, 20/158154–56. For further details, see Friedrich von Loebell, “Die Verhandlungen des LoebellAusschusses. Eine objective Darstellung,” Der Deutschen-Spiegel 2, no. 13 (27 Mar. 1925): 581–87.

24

Hitler versus Hindenburg

presidency.36 Despite last-minute attempts by the German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei or DDP) and the Bavarian People’s Party (Bayerische Volkspartei or BVP) to derail his candidacy in favor of Defense Minister Otto Gessler,37 Jarres was officially nominated as the candidate of the Loebell committee on 12 March.38 Yet despite the strong declarations of support he received from both the DVP and DNVP,39 Jarres stood little, if any, chance of securing the absolute majority that was necessary for election on the first ballot. Both the Center and DDP refused to endorse his candidacy and proceeded to field candidates of their own in Wilhelm Marx and Willy Hugo Hellpach respectively, as did the Bavarian People’s Party with the nomination of Heinrich Held in an ostensible protest against the allegedly sectarian character of Jarres’ candidacy.40 Even the Nationalists, who tried to portray Jarres as a conservative activist who was every bit as committed to a fundamental change in the existing political system as they themselves,41 remained cool to his candidacy in large part because they feared it would help consolidate the political position of Germany’s foreign minister and DVP party chairman Gustav Stresemann. Moreover, Jarres’ nomination met with strong opposition from the Young German Order (Jungdeutscher Orden), an organization on Germany’s paramilitary Right which had withheld its endorsement until the last week of March in hopes that the Loebell

36

37

38 39 40

41

Loebell to Jarres, 9 Mar. 1925, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Karl Jarres, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Jarres), 23. See Hepp’s handwritten notes on the meeting of the Loebell committee, 6 Mar. 1925, BA Berlin, NL Hepp, 2/140. See also Loebell, “Warum Jarres,” n.d., BA Koblenz, NL Gayl, 23. For a fuller discussion of the Jarres candidacy with excerpts and facsimiles of much of the relevant documentation, see Jürgen D. Kruse-Jarres, Karl Jarres. Ein bewegtes Politikerleben – vom Kaiserreich zur Bundesrepublik (Munich, 2006), 162–90. On the Gessler candidacy, see Heiner Möllers, Reichswehrminister Otto Geßler. Eine Studie zu “unpolitischer” Militärmacht in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt a.M. and New York, 1998), 289–306. Loebell, “Verhandlungen des Loebell-Ausschusses,” 581–87. For further details, see Hauss, Volkswahl, 57–63. Mitteilungsblatt des Reichsblocks zur Durchführung des Reichspräsidentenwahl, 17 Mar. 1925, no. 2, and 19 Mar. 1925, no. 3. Hauss, Volkswahl, 65–72. On the Held candidacy, see the report from Haniel to the Reich chancery, 16 Mar. 1925, in the unpublished records of the Reich chancery, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, Bestand R 43 I (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, R 43 I), 584/18. For example, see Westarp, “Jarres,” Mitteilungsblatt des Reichsblocks zur Durchführung der Reichspräsidentenwahl, 17 Mar. 1925, no. 2.

Introducing the Protagonists: Hindenburg and Hitler

25

Committee might reconsider its decision and nominate the commanderin-chief of the Reichswehr, General Hans von Seeckt.42 Whatever the reasons might have been, the Jarres candidacy failed to generate the popular enthusiasm for which the leaders of the Reich Bloc (Reichsblock) – as the Loebell Committee reconstituted itself on 12 March – had hoped. To be sure, Jarres received 38.8 percent of the popular vote in the first trip to the polls on 29 March 1925 and thus outdrew his rivals by a substantial margin, but he still fell considerably short of an absolute majority. Moreover, the fact that the three candidates representing the parties of the Weimar coalition – Braun from the SPD, Marx from the Center, and Hellpach from the DDP – received 49.2 percent of the popular vote among themselves meant that Jarres stood virtually no chance of being elected if these parties were to unite behind a single candidate in the next round of voting.43 His prospects became even dimmer when five days after the election the parties of the Weimar coalition coalesced to form the People’s Bloc (Volksblock) and announced that they would support Marx in the runoff election that was now set for 25 April.44 At this point, the Nationalists began to press their case for another candidate who in their eyes would stand a better chance of being elected than Jarres.45 And the person to whom they turned was none other than Hindenburg, whose name had surfaced in the initial round of deliberations but had been dropped for several reasons. Not only was Hindenburg an unreconstructed monarchist whose disdain for the world of practical politics and uncompromising hostility to the Weimar Republic hardly recommended him to Loebell and his associates as someone who could carry out the vigorous reform program they expected of the new Reich president, but his deep-seated opposition to the policy of fulfillment and his close identification with the Prussian military establishment posed a serious problem for the conduct of Stresemann’s foreign policy. Moreover, there was the question of Hindenburg’s advanced age

42

43 44

45

In this respect, see Mahraun to Gayl, 13 Mar. 1925, and Gayl to Mahraun, 28 Mar. 1925, as well as excerpts from the protocol of a meeting of the paramilitary combat leagues held under Gayl’s chairmanship, 13 Mar. 1925, all in BA Koblenz, NL Gayl, 23. For the election results, see Hauss, Volkswahl, 72–77. Ibid, 77–84. On Marx’s nomination as the unity candidate of the People’s Bloc, see Jürgen Hehl, Wilhelm Marx 1863–1946. Eine politische Biographie (Mainz, 1987), 335–41. Rheinbaben to Bredt, 25 Mar. 1925, in Johann Victor Bredt, Erinnerungen und Dokumente von Joh. Victor Bredt 1914 bis 1933, ed. Martin Schumacher (Düsseldorf, 1970), 347–49. See also Sorge to Jarres, 3 Apr. 1925, BA Koblenz, NL Jarres, 23.

26

Hitler versus Hindenburg

and his willingness to assume the burdens of political office. By 1925 Hindenburg was already seventy-seven years old, and it was by no means certain that he would accept the nomination even if it were offered to him. None of this would deter the leaders of the DNVP in their pursuit of a Hindenburg candidacy. To the Nationalists, Hindenburg epitomized the traditions that were associated with Germany’s rise to national greatness and held the key to redressing the horrible shame that had been visited upon Germany with the defeat and collapse of November 1918.46 At the same time, the Nationalists were driven by their desire to secure the nomination of a candidate whose election would not help Stresemann in consolidating his domestic political position. In their pursuit of Hindenburg, however, the Nationalists faced two major problems. First, they had to convince the other members of the Reich Bloc that Hindenburg stood a better chance of winning against Marx than Jarres and that his election would be consistent with the general goals for which the Loebell Committee had been constituted. In this respect, the Nationalists would have to outmaneuver the DVP and co-opt its leaders into supporting a candidate for whom they felt little genuine enthusiasm. Secondly, the Nationalists would have to persuade Hindenburg that it was in Germany’s national interest for him to accept the nomination and run for the presidency.47 After the results of the first round of voting on 29 March revealed the futility of a Jarres candidacy in the runoff election that was scheduled to take place four weeks later, the Nationalists dispatched Wilhelm Ditfurth, a member of the DNVP Reichstag delegation from Hanover, to meet with Hindenburg in an attempt to overcome his reservations about becoming a candidate for the Reich presidency. Not yet ready to commit himself, Hindenburg responded to Ditfurth that the “appeal of all patriotic 46 47

In this respect, see Weiß to Westarp, 4 Mar. 1925, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 55. For an excellent insight into the Nationalist strategy, see Westarp to Tirpitz, n.d. [Apr. 1925], in the unpublished Nachlaß of Alfred Tirpitz, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau (hereafter cited as BA-MA Freiburg, NL Tirpitz), 176, as well as the entries for 7–8 Apr. 1925, in a handwritten memorandum by Westarp covering the period 20 Mar–9 Apr. 1925, NL Westarp, Gärtringen. For further details, see Ohnezeit, DNVP in der Weimarer Republik, 310–19, as well as the unpublished dissertation by Manfred Dörr, “Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei 1925 bis 1928” (PhD diss., Universität Marburg, 1964), 110–21. See also the short, but insightful essay by Raffael Scheck, “Höfische Intrige als Machtstrategie in der Weimarer Republik. Paul v. Hindenburgs Kandidatur zur Reichspräsidentschaft 1925,” in Adel und Moderne. Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Eckart Conze and Monika Wienfort (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2004), 107–18.

Introducing the Protagonists: Hindenburg and Hitler

27

[nationalgesinnte] Germans” and not the nomination by one or another party constituted an essential precondition for a run at the presidency that stood a better chance of success than the one by Jarres.48 Hindenburg’s response was a good less than what the Nationalists had been hoping for. Upon receiving the text of Hindenburg’s note to Ditfurth, the DNVP Reichstag delegation voted on 2 April to intensify its efforts on Hindenburg’s behalf and dispatched a second delegation consisting of Ditfurth, Otto Schmidt-Hannover, and Hans Schlange-Schöningen to meet with the retired war hero at his home in Hanover to reassure themselves of Hindenburg’s willingness to stand for election.49 Once again, Hindenburg responded that while he was not “disinclined” to run for the presidency, he would do so only if the Reich Bloc was united behind his candidacy and if Jarres agreed to go along with his nomination.50 Given Hindenburg’s reticence about running for office, efforts to draft Hindenburg as a candidate for the Reich presidency might very well have collapsed had it not been for a group of deputies within the Bavarian People’s Party who announced that they were prepared to support Hindenburg in a showdown with Marx and that they would use their influence within the BVP to secure its endorsement for the retired war hero should he agree to stand for election. The fact that the Held candidacy received nearly 260,000 fewer votes than the BVP had polled in the December 1924 Reichstag elections no doubt contributed to this decision.51 In light of the fact that the BVP had balked at supporting Jarres in the first round of voting on 29 March, this announcement was of enormous significance and immediately prompted a new round of 48

49

50 51

On Ditfurth’s meeting and subsequent correspondence with Hindenburg, see the recently published memoirs of Otto von Feldmann, Turkei, Weimar, Hitler. Lebenserinnerungen eines preußischen Offiziers und deutschnationalen Politikers, ed. Peter von Feldmann (Borsdorf, 2014), 264–66. On the reasons for Hindenburg’s reticence, see his letter to Cramon, 27 Mar. 1925, in the unpublished Nachlaß of August von Cramon in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau (hereafter cited as BA-MA Freiburg, NL Cramon), 24/14. On the first round of negotiations between the DNVP and Hindenburg, see Hindenburg to Cramon, 4 Apr. 1925, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Cramon, 24/25. See also the reliable contemporary account by Dieter von der Schulenburg, Welt um Hindenburg. Hundert Gespräche mit Berufenen (Berlin, 1935), 57–70. Far less reliable is the account in Otto Schmidt-Hannover, Umdenken oder Anarchie. Männer – Schicksäle – Lehren (Göttingen, 1959), 185–95. See also the relevant chapters in Dorpalen, Hindenburg, 64–75, and Pyta, Hindenburg, 461–78. Hans Schlange-Schöningen, Am Tage danach (Hamburg, 1946), 30. For further information on the situation in Bavaria, see the reports from Haniel to the Reich chancery, Mar. 31 and Apr. 7, 1925, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 584/418, 31–32.

28

Hitler versus Hindenburg

negotiations between the DNVP, the Reich Bloc, and Hindenburg’s entourage.52 For his own part, however, Hindenburg continued to pledge his support of Jarres and disclaimed any interest in the Reich presidency as long as Stresemann and the DVP remained opposed to his candidacy. On 7 April Hindenburg informed Loebell that in light of his advanced age he no longer wished to be considered a candidate for the Reich presidency and reiterated his support for Jarres.53 Informed of Hindenburg’s decision, the Nationalists dispatched another delegation, this time headed by the venerable Tirpitz, to his home in Hanover in hopes of persuading him to reconsider his decision. Not only did Tirpitz appeal to Hindenburg’s patriotism and underscore the importance of his candidacy to the strategic objectives of the German Right, but he also pointed to the strong support the retired war hero enjoyed among conservative Catholics who were almost certain to choose him over Marx if he stood for election. After listening to Tirpitz’s arguments, Hindenburg agreed to retract his decision but only if the Reich Bloc was no longer prepared to support Jarres.54 In the meantime, Jarres had become so annoyed by Nationalist intrigues against his candidacy that on the evening of 7 April he informed Loebell that he would withdraw from the race if his nomination encountered serious difficulties at the meeting of the Reich Bloc that was scheduled for the following day. This set the stage for a heated and tumultuous meeting of the Reich Bloc on 8 April, during which the Nationalists pressed their case for Hindenburg’s nomination and Loebell read the text of the communiqué he had received from Jarres the night before. Fearful that the committee might be left without a candidate to oppose Marx, Loebell then placed a telephone call to Hindenburg to reassure himself and his colleagues that the retired war hero was willing to accept the Reich Bloc’s nomination if his conditions were met. After a further exchange of telephone calls in which Jarres and Hindenburg agreed upon the precise wording of a statement confirming the former’s withdrawal 52 53 54

Hauss, Volkswahl, 92–95. See also Klaus Schönhoven, Die Bayerische Volkspartei 1924–1932 (Düsseldorf, 1972), 122–31. Schulenburg, Welt um Hindenburg, 64–65. Ibid, 66. See also the memorandum by Keudell, “Mit Tirpitz in Hannover bei Hindenburg,” from 1968 in the unpublished Nachlaß of Walther von Keudell, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, 102, as well as the letter from Schmidt-Hannover to Spahn, 11 Apr. 1925, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Otto Schmidt-Hannover, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover), 73, and the account in Schmidt-Hannover, Umdenken oder Anarchie, 191–93. On Tirpitz’s role in these developments, see Raffael Scheck, Alfred von Tirpitz and German Right-Wing Politics, 1914–1930 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1998), 194–202.

Introducing the Protagonists: Hindenburg and Hitler

29

from the race, the Reich Bloc formally announced its endorsement of Hindenburg for the Reich presidency.55 While Hindenburg’s nomination represented a clear and unequivocal triumph for the German National People’s Party and its new chairman, Friedrich Winckler,56 Loebell, Gayl, and the leaders of the Reich Citizens’ Council were disappointed by the outcome of the deliberations. For although they could console themselves with the argument that Hindenburg’s nomination – and particularly Jarres’ willingness to make this possible by removing himself as a candidate – represented a triumph of Staatspolitik over Parteipolitik,57 both Loebell and Gayl harbored lingering resentment over the way in which the DNVP had monopolized their overtures on behalf of a truly nonpartisan candidacy.58 Their reservations over the wisdom of a Hindenburg candidacy only mounted when the grizzled war hero let it be known that he had no intention of taking an active part in the Reich Bloc’s campaign on his behalf and left the management of his campaign in the hands of a special committee in Hanover under the direction of his adjutant, retired Lieutenant Colonel Otto von Feldman.59 Aside from his annual Easter address on 11 April, Hindenburg confined his activity during the campaign to a speech and press conference in Hanover and a radio address to the nation. The tone of these statements was remarkably moderate, particularly in light of the more extreme expectations that had attached themselves to Hindenburg’s candidacy. Speaking in Hanover, Hindenburg took special pains to underscore the nonpartisan character of his candidacy and surprised his 55

56

57 58

59

Meeting of the Reich Bloc, 8 Apr. 1925, in the unpublished records of the German People’s Party, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, Bestand R 45 II (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, R 45 II), 311/217–25. See also the account by Baltrusch, “Geschichtliches zur Wahl Hindenburgs,” n.d. [Feb. 1932], in the unpublished Nachlaß of Fritz Baltrusch, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Baltrusch), 11, as well as “Bericht über Sitzungen des Loebell-Ausschusses,” 31 Mar.–7 May 1925, in Bredt, Erinnerungen und Dokumente, ed. Schumacher, 349–51. Schulenburg, Welt um Hindenburg, 70. On Winkler’s role in securing the support of the Gayl–Loebell faction for Hindenburg’s candidacy, see the report on the meeting of the DNVP party leadership, 7 Apr. 1925, StA Hamburg, Hapag Reederei, Handakten Cuno, 1503. For example, see Kriegk, “Hindenburg,” Der Deutschen-Spiegel 2, no. 16 (17 Apr. 1925): 726–30. Handwritten note by Gayl, n.d., BA Koblenz, NL Gayl, 23. Disappointment over this turn of events is also mirrored in Jarres’ correspondence with former chancellor Wilhelm Cuno, 8 Mar.–17 Apr. 1925, StA Hamburg, Hapag Reederei, Handakten Cuno, 1503, and BA Koblenz, NL Jarres, 23. Memorandum of a conversation between Hindenburg and members of the Reich Bloc, 9 Apr. 1925, BA Koblenz, NL Gayl, 23.

30

Hitler versus Hindenburg

critics by expressing a commitment to exercise the powers of the presidency “on the basis of the existing constitutional foundation and Germany’s present situation in the world.” What ultimately mattered, Hindenburg contended, was “not the form of government but the spirit that animated the form of government.”60 Whether or not this was what his patrons on the Right wanted to hear remained to be seen. Hindenburg’s motives in seeking the Reich presidency are difficult to decipher, particularly in light of the personal sacrifices that a successful candidacy would almost certainly entail. That Hindenburg refused to identify himself with a specific political position – and especially with that of the right-wing DNVP and its call for a restoration of the monarchy – was more than a calculated strategy aimed at winning votes from outside the conservative milieu that had championed his candidacy. For it also bore the distinct imprint of the way in which Hindenburg had defined himself during the last years of World War I and in the early years of the Weimar Republic, namely, as a charismatic leader of the German people who transcended the social, political, and confessional cleavages that had become so deeply embedded in the fabric of the German nation. Hindenburg’s mission, as he came to see it in the immediate postwar period, was to unite the German nation through the sheer power of his personal charisma. The mere fact that the Bavarian People’s Party had rallied to the support of his candidacy foreshadowed a breakthrough into the ranks of organized political Catholicism in a way that seemed to validate his sense of purpose and claim to the leadership of a united German nation. By the same token, the way in which Hindenburg had assiduously avoided being seen as someone who actively pursued the Reich presidency only to set aside all of his personal reservations and eventually succumb to the entreaties of Loebell, Gayl, and their associates on the German Right, not only shielded Hindenburg’s nimbus against the consequences of defeat, but was perfectly consistent with the sense of destiny that informed his self-image as a charismatic leader who had become an instrument of Germany’s national will.61 Over the course of the next several days, virtually all of the organizations that belonged to the Reich Bloc rallied to Hindenburg’s support. Even the Stahlhelm, which continued to express a preference for Jarres’ run right up until the eve of Hindenburg’s nomination, overcame the 60 61

[Paul von Hindenburg], Hindenburg: Briefe, Reden, Berichte, ed. Fritz Endres (Munich, 1934), 144–45. On Hindenburg’s motives, see Pyta, Hindenburg, 471–74.

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severe strain that had developed in its relations with the Young German Order as a result of the latter’s behavior during the nominating process and joined the rest of the patriotic movement in supporting Hindenburg’s bid for the presidency.62 By the same token, the Bavarian People’s Party officially joined the Reich Bloc and called upon its followers to vote for Hindenburg after having refused to support Jarres in the initial ballot.63 Of the various organizations that had supported Jarres’ presidential campaign, only the DVP remained aloof from the excitement that greeted the news of Hindenburg’s candidacy. While Stresemann was no doubt concerned about foreign reaction to Hindenburg’s election, he was also embarrassed by the way in which the DNVP had tried to transform the campaign into a referendum on Germany’s form of government and withheld his personal endorsement until the last week of the campaign.64 The Nationalists, in the meantime, hailed Hindenburg as the “savior of the German people” whose election would mark the beginning of Germany’s national recovery at home and abroad. Those who voted for Marx, on the other hand, were stigmatized as “reactionaries” responsible for perpetuating a “rotten and corrupt system” of government.65 Nationalist hyperbole had the effect of greatly increasing the political stakes involved in the outcome of the election. If, for example, Hindenburg were to be defeated, this would be a great victory for Germany’s beleaguered republican forces and an unmitigated defeat for those who continued to oppose the principles enshrined in the Weimar Constitution – in all likelihood, a defeat from which the German Right might never have recovered.66 Consequently, the leaders of the DNVP – and particularly 62

63

64

65 66

Circular from Seldte to the leaders of the Stahlhelm local organizations, 10 Apr. 1925, BA Koblenz, NL Gayl, 23. For further information, see Alois Klotzbücher, “Der politische Weg des Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten in der Weimarer Republik. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der ‘Nationalen Opposition’ 1918–1933” (PhD diss., Universität Erlangen, 1964), 58–59, and Volker R. Berghahn, Der Stahlhelm – Bund der Frontsoldaten 1918–1935 (Düsseldorf, 1966), 73–74. Hauss, Volkswahl, 103–24. On the situation within the BVP, see Cuno to Jarres, 15 Apr. 1925, BA Koblenz, NL Jarres, 23 (also in STA Hamburg, Hapag Reederei, Handakten Cuno, 1503), as well as Schönhoven, Bayerische Volkspartei 1924–1932, 123–28. Stresemann, “Deutsche Volkspartei und Reichspräsidentenwahl,” Die Zeit, 19 Apr. 1925, no. 160. See also Jonathan Wright, Gustav Stresemann:Weimar’s Greatest Statesman (Oxford, 2002), 307–10, and Ludwig Richter, Die Deutsche Volkspartei 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2002), 379–85. Dörr, “Deutschnationale Volkspartei,” 126–28. For example, see the sentiments expressed in circular no. 74 from the DNVP national headquarters to all DNVP district organizations, 9 Apr. 1925, in the unpublished records

32

Hitler versus Hindenburg

Winckler, Westarp, and those governmental conservatives who were in control of the party – committed themselves and the resources at their disposal without any reservation whatsoever to the task of securing Hindenburg’s election. At the same time, the leaders of the Stahlhelm, the Young German Order, and other elements on the paramilitary Right were able to set aside their antipathy toward the world of Weimar party politics and provide massive organizational support for the Hindenburg campaign. These efforts were rewarded when on 26 April 1925 Hindenburg captured more than 14.6 million votes – or 48.3 percent of the total popular vote – and defeated Marx by slightly more than 900,000 votes. The secret to Hindenburg’s victory lay not only in his ability to attract the support of many of those who had stayed at home on 29 March – approximately three million more voters went to the polls in April than the month before – but also in his popularity with Bavarian Catholics who may have shared Marx’s religion but not his sympathy for the Social Democrats.67 Although Hindenburg’s election was doubtlessly a major triumph for the German Right, its immediate impact on German political life was ambiguous and difficult for contemporaries to assess. The confusion over what the outcome of the election was supposed to mean stemmed in no small measure from the fact that at the time of his inauguration, Hindenburg took special pains to defuse fears of a new assault against the social and political legacy of the November Revolution by reaffirming his commitment to exercise the powers of his office within the framework of the existing constitutional order.68 But if such remarks did much to reassure the defenders of the Weimar Republic that Hindenburg’s election did not signal an immediate swing to the right in domestic and foreign policy, they found little favor with the more irascible anti-republicans on the DNVP’s extreme right wing. Even before the conclusion of the campaign, many Nationalists had expressed private fears that the election of a man of Hindenburg’s mythic stature as president of the German Republic

67

68

of the DNVP Osnabrück district organization, Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv Osnabrück, Bestand Erw. C 1 (hereafter cited as NSStA Osnabrück, C 1), 17 II/75. For further information, see John K. Zeender, “The German Catholics and the Presidential Election of 1925,” Journal of Modern History 35 (1963): 366–81, and Karl Holl, “Konfessionalität, Konfessionalismus und demokratische Republik — zu einigen Aspekten der Reichspräsidentenwahl von 1925,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 17 (1969): 254–75. [Hindenburg], Briefe, Reden, Berichte, ed. Endres, 150–51.

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would only expedite its political legitimation and thus make its replacement by a more authoritarian political system all the more difficult.69 Not only did Hindenburg’s oath of loyalty to the Weimar Constitution tend to confirm such fears, but his election also demonstrated to influential elements within Germany’s conservative establishment just how much one might accomplish by working within rather than outside the existing political system. As the DNVP’s Martin Schiele explained in an essay for Politische Praxis, Hindenburg’s election “greatly strengthened the structure of German state power” at the same time that it demonstrated “support for the state [Staatsbejahung]” and “a sense of national feeling” that “offers the strongest guarantee for the strength and permanence of our state system.”70 Hindenburg’s election was one of the most celebrated events in the history of the Weimar Republic. News of his victory met with an enthusiastic response throughout the country that was partly spontaneous and partly orchestrated by organizations on the paramilitary Right like the Stahlhelm and Young German Order. For the beleaguered burghers in Protestant Germany, Hindenburg’s triumph at the polls afforded them an opportunity to reclaim the public space that had been staked out by the parties of the Marxist Left in the years since the collapse of the Second Empire and to inspire a new spirit of civic activism that had been conspicuously absent from the political life of early Weimar. At the heart of this lay a longing for national unity that had been suppressed by the fragmentation of bourgeois party politics and that none of Germany’s non-socialist parties could satisfy.71 Yet almost from the outset, it was unclear whether the faith of those who celebrated his victory was fully warranted. For at the national level, the immediate effect of Hindenburg’s victory was to facilitate an accommodation by the more moderate elements on the German Right with Germany’s new republican order and to isolate those extremist elements who remained irreconcilably opposed to any form of collaboration with the existing political system. Coming on the heels of the split in the Nationalist vote on the ratification of the Dawes

69

70 71

Martin Spahn, “Die Wahl zum Reichspräsidenten: Das Amt und der Mann,” in Friedrich Wilhelm Loebell, ed., Hindenburg. Was er uns Deutschen ist. Eine Festgabe zum 80. Geburtstag (Berlin, 1927), 113. Schiele, “Innere Politik,” in Politische Praxis 1926, ed. Walther Lambach (Hamburg, n.d. [1926]), 48. Peter Fritzsche, “Presidential Victory and Popular Festivity in Weimar Germany: Hindenburg’s 1925 Election,” Central European History 23 (1990): 205–24.

34

Hitler versus Hindenburg

Plan and the DNVP’s entry into the national government, Hindenburg’s election thus represented another step in the gradual accommodation of Germany’s conservative establishment to the possibility of pursuing its social and political objectives within the existing system of government and bore dramatic testimony – though not without a touch of irony in light of his opposition to Hindenburg’s candidacy – to the success of Stresemann’s strategy of stabilizing the republic from the Right.72 Much to the chagrin of those who had championed his candidacy and most likely to the embarrassment of the Reich president himself, Hindenburg would evolve into an icon of republican stability and become a surrogate for the exiled Kaiser who now retreated more and more into the recesses of public consciousness.73 All of this came as a bitter disappointment to Hindenburg’s erstwhile champions in the DNVP, the Stahlhelm, the German Officers’ League (Deutscher Offizier-Bund or DOB), and other organizations on Germany’s anti-republican Right. Hindenburg’s pledge to fulfill the responsibilities of his office according to the provisions of the Weimar Constitution sewed widespread confusion among the ranks of those who had voted for him in the expectation that he would immediately use the powers of his new office to do away with the hated Weimar system.74 An even more serious blow to their faith in Hindenburg as the agent of Germany’s national rebirth was his refusal to block implementation of the Locarno Accords that Stresemann had negotiated with the Allies in the summer and early fall of 1925 in an effort to defuse tensions with France and Belgium by renouncing the use of force to change Germany’s postwar western boundaries.75 No organization was more outspoken in its denunciation of the Reich president as a traitor of Germany’s national cause than the Pan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband or ADV) under the leadership of Heinrich Claß. Founded in the early 1890s as a nationalist pressure group for the creation of a German colonial empire, the ADV had evolved into one of the best financed and most virulently antisemitic

72

73 74 75

In this respect, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Stabilisierung von Rechts: Gustav Stresemann und das Streben nach politischer Stabilität 1923–1929,” in Politiker und Bürger. Gustav Stresemann und seine Zeit, ed. Karl Heinrich Pohl (Göttingen, 2002), 162–93. Anna Menge, “The Iron Hindenburg: A Popular Icon of Weimar Germany,” German History 26 (2008): 357–82. Ohnezeit, DNVP in der Weimarer Republik, 318–19. In this respect, see Jonathan Wright, “Stresemann and Locarno,” Contemporary European History 4 (1995): 109–31.

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organizations on the prewar German Right.76 Following the tumultuous events of November 1918, the ADV quickly positioned itself as a resolute and uncompromising opponent of the changes that had taken place in German political life at the end of World War I and remained steadfast in its opposition to any accommodation with Germany’s new republican order.77 In the crisis over Locarno the Pan-Germans moved quickly to mobilize opposition to the proposed accord at the local and regional levels of the DNVP’s national organization and played a major role in forcing the DNVP out of the national government in October 1925.78 But when this failed to deter Stresemann from going ahead with the ratification of the Locarno accords, the Pan-Germans, along with the Stahlhelm and other paramilitary organizations on the German Right, took their case to Hindenburg in the hope that he could be persuaded to use the weight of his office to block acceptance of the treaty. The Reich president, however, quickly came to see that under the existing conditions there was no viable alternative to the basic principles of Stresemann’s foreign policy and, much to the dismay of his supporters on the anti-republican Right, set aside his reservations about specific elements of the Locarno accord to sign it into law on 28 November 1925.79 Hindenburg’s failure to block ratification and implementation of the Locarno accords constituted an act of betrayal in the eyes of many of

76

77

78

79

On the origins and ideology of the ADV, see the brief overview by Michael Peters, “Der ‘Alldeutsche Verband’,” in Handbuch zur “Volkischen Bewegung” 1871–1918, ed. Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, and Justus H. Ulbricht (Munich, 1996), 302–15, as well as the more recent monograph by Rainer Hering, Die konstruierte Nation. Der Alldeutsche Verband 1890 bis 1939 (Hamburg, 2003), 110–18, 319–96. Hering, Konstuierte Nation, 138–62. See also the recent study by Barry A. Jackisch, The Pan-German League and Radical Nationalist Politics in Interwar Germany, 1918–39 (Farnham, 2012), esp. 13–39, as well as the unpublished dissertation by Björn Hofmeister, “Between Monarchy and Dictatorship:Radical Nationalism and Social Mobilization of the Pan-German league, 1914–1939” (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2011), 134–244, and the recent biography of the Pan-German leader Heinrich Claß by Johannes Leicht, Heinrich Claß 1868–1953. Die politische Biographie eines Alldeutschen (Paderborn, 2012), esp. 343–45. Barry A. Jackisch, “Kuno Graf von Westarp und die Auseinandersetzungen über Locarno. Konservative Außenpolitik und die deutschnationale Parteikreise 1925,” in “Ich bin der letzte Preuße. “Der politische Lebensweg des konservativen Politikers Kuno Graf von Westarp, ed. Larry Eugene Jones and Wolfram Pyta (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2006), 147–62, and Robert P. Grathwohl, Stresemann and the DNVP: Reconciliation or Revenge in German Foreign Policy, 1924–1928 (Lawrence, Ks., 1980), 121–44. Pyta, Hindenburg, 491–94. For further detail, see Harald Zaun, Paul von Hindenburg und die deutsche Aussenpolitik 1925–1934 (Cologne, 1999), 387–438.

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

those who had supported his candidacy only a few months earlier and only further strained his already problematic relations with the radical Right. The change in Hindenburg’s public stature after Locarno could be easily seen not only in the way in which he suddenly went from being an icon of the authoritarian Right in its crusade against the Weimar Republic to the object of mean-spirited caricatures in the right-wing public media, but also by how left-wing publications like Simplicissimus began to portray the Reich president as a bastion of Germany’s fledgling democratic system.80 For his own part, Hindenburg worked behind the scenes to steer the ship of state toward the right but was repeatedly frustrated by the vicissitudes of Weimar party politics and the constantly shifting party alliances in the Reichstag. The DNVP’s demonstrative resignation from the national government in October 1925 threw a temporary wrench into Hindenburg’s efforts to shift the fulcrum of power more to the right and left him with a series of bourgeois minority governments that fell far short of fulfilling the hopes that had inspired his bid for the presidency. It was not until after the collapse of the third Marx cabinet amid Social Democratic revelations about the Reichswehr’s secret collaboration with the Red Army in direct violation of the Versailles peace treaty that Hindenburg asserted his authority as Reich president in the domestic political arena.81 In a series of meetings with various party leaders on 10 January 1927, Hindenburg emphasized that a return of the “Great Coalition” was no longer possible and threw the full weight of his office behind the creation of a governmental coalition reaching from the Center through the BVP, the DVP, and the Business Party (Wirtschaftspartei/Reichspartei des deutschen Mittelstandes or WP) to the right-wing DNVP.82 Then, when negotiations threatened to bog down in the third week of January, Hindenburg interceded directly with the DNVP’s Westarp and the Center’s Theodor von Guérard to negotiate an agreement where by the sitting chancellor Wilhelm Marx would be entrusted with the

80 81

82

In this respect, see the insightful article by Richard Scully, “Hindenburg: The Cartoon Titan of the Weimar Republic, 1918–1934,” German Studies Review 35 (2012): 541–65. For the strategic considerations that informed Hindenburg’s example, see “Bemerkungen zur Regierungsbildung,” 18 Dec. 1926, in the unpublished records of the Präsidialkanzlei, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, Bestand R 601 (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, R 601), 402/7–9. Much of the relevant documentation has been published in Walther Hubatsch, Hindenburg und der Staat. Aus den Papieren des Generalfeldmarschalls und Reichspräsidenten von 1878 bis 1934 (Göttingen, 1966), 256–66. See also Hehl, Marx, 389–401. Meissner, “Aktennotiz über die Besprechungen des Herrn Reichspräsidenten, betreffend die Neubildung der Reichsregierung,” 10 Jan. 1927, BA Berlin, R 601, 402/26–36.

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responsibility for conducting a new round of negotiations aimed at the creation of a broadly based bourgeois government without, however, committing the DNVP to accept Marx as chancellor of the new government.83 In the final analysis, however, the DNVP was left with little choice but to accept Marx as chancellor in return for four ministerial posts in the new cabinet that took office on 29 January 1927.84 Hindenburg’s eightieth birthday on 2 October 1927 afforded the German Right a unique opportunity to reclaim the Reich president for its own political agenda. To be sure, the celebration of Hindenburg’s birthday was not confined to the German Right but extended to the national government, the various middle parties that had supported his election two years earlier, and even elements of the Christian labor movement.85 But the festivities, which began with a military celebration on the eve of Hindenburg’s birthday including what Germans called the Großer Zapfenstreich or military tattoo, was choreographed from beginning to end to distance the Reich president from the symbols, institutions, and personalities of the republic and to reaffirm his credentials as the leader of the German Right in all of its myriad diversity.86 Nowhere, however, were the aspirations of the German Right more transparent than in the plans to purchase Hindenburg’s ancestral estate Neudeck as a special birthday gift from the German nation. The idea of honoring Hindenburg in this way was the brainchild of Elard von OldenburgJanuschau, whose own property just happened to border on the Neudeck estate. Oldenburg-Januschau, who in many respects served as a perfect prototype of the arch-reactionary Prussian Junker, stood on the extreme right wing of the DNVP and was bitterly opposed to the role his party had played in the political stabilization of the Weimar Republic in the second half of the 1920s.87 Oldenburg-Januschau had originally hoped that Chancellor Marx could be persuaded to finance the purchase of Neudeck by tapping the resources of a special fund that had been established in

83

84 85 86 87

Meissner, memorandum of Hindenburg’s meetings with Westarp and Guérard, 15 Jan. 1927, BA Berlin, R 601, 402/42–46. See also Hindenburg to Marx, n.d. [20. Jan. 1927], ibid, 402/74–75. On the DNVP’s role in the negotiations that culminated in the formation of the fourth Marx cabinet, see Ohnezeit, DNVP in der Weimarer Republik, 362–68. The extent to which the forces loyal to the republic joined in the celebration of Hindenburg’s birthday has been stressed in particular by Dorpalen, Hindenburg, 133–34. Pyta, Hindenburg, 541–42. On Oldenburg-Januschau’s politics and relationship to Hindenburg, see Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau, Erinnerungen (Leipzig, 1936), 218–23.

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

Hindenburg’s name for the support of disabled veterans and the dependents of soldiers who had died during the war.88 When Marx declined on the grounds that this would have been incompatible with the reasons that had led Hindenburg to lend his name to the fund,89 the indefatigable Oldenburg-Januschau turned first to his peers in the East Elbian aristocracy and then, when this produced only a fraction of what was needed to purchase the estate, to veterans’ organizations like the Stahlhelm and German Reich Warriors’ Kyffhäuser League (Deutsche Reichskriegerbund Kyffhäuser or DRKB) and, last but not least, to the German business community.90 Oldenburg-Januschau’s initiative received unexpectedly enthusiastic support from Carl Duisberg, the chief executive of the large chemical conglomerate known as I. G. Farben and, as president of the National Federation of German Industry, one of the most influential leaders of the German industrial establishment. Of the 1.2 million marks that Oldenburg-Januschau and his supporters were able to raise for the purchase of Neudeck, 805,000 marks came from German industry, while the patriotic organizations and various German banks contributed another 180,000 and 109,000 marks respectively.91 The official presentation of the documents transferring ownership of the estate to Hindenburg and his son Oskar took place in Berlin on 1 October as part of the official celebration of the Reich president’s birthday with Duisberg handing over the documents on behalf of a grateful German nation.92 In the final analysis, it was not the champions of Weimar democracy but organizations like the DNVP, the Young German Order, and the Stahlhelm that claimed center stage in the commemoration of Hindenburg’s long life of service to the German nation.93 While it would be a mistake to assume

88 89 90 91

92 93

Oldenburg-Januschau to Marx, 21 June 1927, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 580/33–34. Marx to Oldenburg-Januschau, 28 June 1927, ibid, 35–36. Oldenburg-Januschau, Erinnerungen, 222–23. For a detailed study of the purchase and transfer of the estate to Hindenburg, see Wolfgang Weßling, “Hindenburg, Neudeck und die deutsche Wirtschaft. Tatsachen und Zusammenhänge einer‚ ‘Affäre’” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 64 (1977): 41–73, esp. 47–55. Ibid, 53–54. For example, see the special issue of the Nachrichtenblatt der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei, Ortsgruppe Berlin-Schöneberg, 1 Oct. 1927, as well as Krafft, “Unser Hindenburg,” in Hindenburg zu Ehren! Festschrift anläßlich des 2. Deutschen Reichskriegertages in Berlin am 2. u. 3. Oktober 1927 und des 80. Geburtstages des GeneralFeldmarschall v. Hindenburg, ed. Reichskriegerverband Berlin e.V. (Berlin, n.d. [1927]), 7–14.

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figure 1: Portrait of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg on the cover of a DNVP publication commemorating his eightieth birthday, October 1927. From the private collection of the author.

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

that this immediately made Hindenburg the pawn of those who had organized the gift, the net effect of this episode was nevertheless to cement the Reich president’s emotional and social ties to some of the most reactionary elements in German political life.94 The extent to which this would affect his political thinking and behavior, however, would not become fully apparent until several years later. In the meantime, Hindenburg’s role in the formation of the fourth Marx cabinet represented a dramatic departure from previous practice and set the stage for the turn to government by presidential authority at the beginning of the 1930s. The Marx government lasted for about a year before falling apart in a dispute over the Reich School Bill in January 1928. Hindenburg was powerless to prevent the dissolution of the government in whose creation he had played such a critical role. When new national elections in May 1928 resulted in heavy losses for the DNVP and significant gains for the SPD, he made no effort to obstruct a return to the “Great Coalition” and dutifully presided over the installation of a new government headed by the SPD’s Hermann Müller. In the meantime, the DNVP began its descent into the murky world of opposition politics that reached a preliminary climax with the election of press and film magnate Alfred Hugenberg to the DNVP party chairmanship in October 1928.95 Hugenberg was a founding member of the Pan-German League, and he charted a course of unconditional opposition to the existing political system that would eventually lead him and his party into a fateful alliance with the nascent National Socialist German Workers’ Party under the charismatic leadership of Adolf Hitler.96 All of this came as a bitter disappointment to the aging Reich president, and in the last months of 1929 and early 1930 he found himself at the center of a bitter confrontation with the radical Right over the Young Plan that Stresemann had negotiated with the Allies in the search for a permanent solution to Germany’s reparations problem. Not only did Hindenburg refuse to

94 95

96

The emotional impact the gift of Neudeck had upon Hindenburg has been stressed in particular by Wheeler-Bennett, Wooden Titan, 310–13. On this turn of events, see John A. Leopold, “The Election of Alfred Hugenberg as Chairman of the German National People’s Party,” Canadian Journal of History 7 (1972): 149–71; Heidrun Holzbach, Das “System Hugenberg”: Die Organisation bürgerlicher Sammlungspolitik vor dem Aufstieg der NSDAP (Stuttgart, 1981), 192–253; and most recently Ohnezeit, DNVP in der Weimarer Republik, 411–48. On Hugenberg’s courtship of Hitler and the NSDAP in the crusade against the Young Plan, see John A. Leopold, Alfred Hugenberg: The Radical Nationalist Campaign against the Weimar Republic (New Haven, CT, and London, 1977), 55–83.

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endorse the referendum that Hugenberg, Hitler, and their allies on the German Right initiated in the summer of 1929 in an attempt to block ratification of the controversial plan, but in March 1930 he added insult to injury by attaching his signature to the documents that translated the agreement into German law.97 As in 1925, the Pan-Germans responded with a vicious attack on Hindenburg’s integrity and sense of national honor that only underscored the severe strain that had developed in his relations with the more radical elements on the German Right.98 All of this makes it all the more difficult to situate Hindenburg on the spectrum of the German Right. First of all, the way in which Hindenburg carefully and self-consciously cultivated the Hindenburg mythos as the source of his authority and relied upon charisma instead of more conservative patterns of political legitimation to define his status in Weimar political culture clearly set him apart from traditional conservatives like Kuno von Westarp, the chairman of the DNVP Reichstag delegation from 1924 to 1930 and DNVP party chairman from 1926 to 1928. At the same time, Hindenburg’s dogged determination, at least in the early stages of his presidency, to exercise the functions of his office according to the letter of the Weimar Constitution left him painfully estranged from the vast majority of those who had supported him in 1925 on the assumption that he would use the powers of the Reich presidency to initiate a thorough overhaul of the existing governmental system.99 At the very least, what this suggests is that the legitimating function of the Hindenburg mythos was in danger of exhausting itself. It is hard to imagine anyone who could have presented a better study in contrasts to Hindenburg than Adolf Hitler. Hindenburg was born into a 97

98

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Hindenburg defended his decision in two long letters to retired Admiral Ludwig Schröder, the first from 4 Nov. 1929, reprinted in Hubatsch, Hindenburg und der Staat, 294–99, and the second dated 3 Mar. 1930, in the unpublished Nachlaß of August von Mackensen, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau (hereafter cited as BA-MA Freiburg, NL Mackensen), 270/27–49. See also Pyta, Hindenburg, 549–51, and Zaun, Hindenburg, 462–95. For example, see Claß, “Abschied von Hindenburg,” Deutsche Zeitung, 14 Mar. 1930, no. 61. For a detailed discussion of the deterioration of the ADV’s relationship with Hindenburg, see the unpublished second volume of Claß’s memoirs, “Wider den Strom,” in the Claß Nachlaß, Bundesarchiv Berlin (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, NL Claß), 3/906–12. In this respect, see Wolfram Pyta, “Das Zerplatzen der Hoffnungen auf eine konservative Wende. Kuno Graf von Westarp und Hindenburg,” in “Ich bin der letzte Preuße”: Der politische Lebensweg des konservativen Politikers Kuno Graf von Westarp (1864–1945), ed. Larry Eugene Jones and Wolfram Pyta (Cologne, 2006), 163–88.

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

family of privilege. Hitler came from modest circumstances and never enjoyed the advantages of wealth or status. Hindenburg’s career as a Prussian officer was staked out for him almost from the moment he was born. Hitler was a lost man who survived as a young adult on the margins of a society into which he never succeeded in integrating himself. Hindenburg rose to the pinnacle of fame as commander-in-chief of the German armed forces in the last years of World War I. Hitler, on the other hand, was the prototypical front soldier who served with bravery and distinction but anonymously for four years on the western front without ever rising above the rank of lance corporal. And whereas Hindenburg resigned from active military service in the summer of 1919 to begin his second retirement as an icon that was firmly embedded in the minds of most, if not all, Germans, Hitler was just beginning to discover his vocation as an orator and public agitator. Yet for all of their differences, the two men shared two things in common: their deep and abiding abhorrence at the events that had accompanied Germany’s defeat in World War I and their faith in the redemptive power of their personal charisma. Who, then, was Adolf Hitler? It is not always easy to separate the real story of Hitler’s life from the elaborate myth that he and a handful of his cronies fabricated and carefully nurtured from the time he first discovered politics as his vocation.100 Nor is it easy, as no less a Hitler scholar than Ian Kershaw readily concedes, to determine precisely when and under what circumstances Hitler developed his pathological obsession with the Jewish problem.101 Hitler was born in April 1889 in the small Austrian village of Braunau on the Inn River, the son of a low-ranking customs official Alois and his third wife Klara. There was certainly nothing in Hitler’s early life that would foreshadow his rise to political fame and fortune. Following the completion of his secondary education in Linz, Hitler moved to Vienna, where – if we are to believe Hitler’s account in Mein Kampf – he first encountered the Jew as the ubiquitous threat whose pernicious influence extended to all corners of the modern world.102 But Hitler’s account of his Vienna years, at least in the eyes of the Austrian historian Brigitte Hamann who has reconstructed the world that Hitler 100

101 102

In this respect, see Anton Joachimsthaler, Korrektur einer Biographie. Adolf Hitler 1908 bis 1920 (Munich, 1989), esp. 6–14. For the classic dissection of the Hitler myth, see Ian Kershaw, The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford and New York, 1987). Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (New York and London, 1988), 60. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. by Ralph Mannheim (Boston, 1943), 19–66.

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inhabited from 1909 to 1913 in painstaking detail, seems to have been written more to fit the circumstances that existed in Germany after the World War I than to describe what life in prewar Vienna was like. For while it is certainly likely that Hitler was exposed to the racial antisemitism of writers like Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels for the first time in his life and no doubt came to recognize in the Viennese Ostjude something discernibly different from what it meant to be German,103 this in itself is not sufficient to explain the pathological and obsessive character of Hitler’s antisemitism.104 Moreover, as Hamann points out in her reconstruction of Hitler’s Vienna, Hitler had Jewish friends, patrons, and benefactors during his Vienna years and showed none of the paranoid hatred of the Jews that became the indelible signature of his mature political thought.105 The formative experience in Hitler’s life was not the four years he spent in Vienna – though elements of his Vienna experience would continue to influence the way in which he shaped his own self-narrative – but World War I. Hitler joined the Bavarian branch of the German army immediately after the German declaration of war against Czarist Russia, served almost without interruption for four years on the western front, and was decorated with the Iron Cross for bravery on two accounts. The war would transform Hitler from a young man who had survived anonymously on the margins of society into a front soldier with a sense of belonging and a sense of mission that would stay with him for the remainder of his life. Or so Hitler would have us believe.106 For, as a recent study of Hitler’s wartime experience by Thomas Weber has argued, all of this was concocted to create an image of Hitler profoundly at odds with historical fact. Weber reconstructs the way in which Hitler and his political neophytes in the postwar period carefully manipulated the historical record of his years in the war to project an image of himself as the prototypical front soldier who, under the baptism of fire, experienced a spiritual transformation that he would use to legitimize his claim to the

103

104

105

Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship, trans. by Thomas Thorton (New York and Oxford, 1999), 200–35. See also Joachimsthaler, Korrektur einer Biographie, 15–98. This point has been made most emphatically by Robert G. L. Waite, “Adolf Hitler’s Anti-Semitism: A Study in History and Psychoanalysis,” in The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History, ed. Benjamin Wolman (New York, 1971), 192–230, here 193–95, 199–203. 106 Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna, 325–59. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 157–75.

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figure 2: Cover of a Nazi campaign brochure from the 1932 presidential elections, March 1932. From the private collection of the author.

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leadership of the German nation.107 But relying upon previously unexamined regimental records and obscure sources from those who served with Hitler in the List Regiment, Weber shows just how far removed Hitler’s account of his years at the front was from his actual experience. Not only does Weber contend that as a regimental dispatch runner, or Meldegänger, Hitler experienced much less of the wartime violence at the front that he described in Mein Kampf than that of the average front solider and that his chances of survival were actually much better than those of his comrades in the trenches108 Weber also argues that there is little, if any, evidence of the virulent antisemitism that colors his depiction of his Jewish comrades in Mein Kampf and other postwar statements.109 While it is certainly likely that Hitler’s wartime service gave him a sense of purpose and belonging that had been noticeably absent from his life before the war, the war did not have the profound transformative effect upon his later political ideas and values that he later ascribed to it. Nor is Mein Kampf a particularly reliable source for what Hitler had to say about his political baptism in Munich in the immediate postwar period. To be sure, it came as a bitter shock to Hitler when Germany sued for peace and signed the armistice with the Allies on 11 November 1918, a day that after his mother’s death some nine years earlier was, if we are to believe Hitler’s account in Mein Kampf, the worst day of his life.110 Although the extent to which Hitler embellished all of this for the sake of his political image remains unclear,111 it seems that the shock of Germany’s defeat and the way in which he accounted for this played a defining role in the formation of Hitler’s distinctive world view. Like Hindenburg, Hitler immediately embraced the “stab-in-the-back legend” as an explanation for Germany’s defeat, and he discovered his vocation as an orator by using this legend to explain why Germany had lost the war to soldiers returning from the front.112 But unlike Hindenburg, Hitler invested the “stab-in-the-back legend” with a virulent antisemitism that saw the Jew as the principal agent of Germany’s defeat and postwar humiliation. For Hitler the Jew was the common thread that united the 107

108 110 111 112

Thomas Weber, Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (Oxford, 2010), esp. 1–8, 268–75. See also Joachimsthaler, Korrektur einer Biographie, 99-178. 109 Weber, Hitler’s First War, 222–23. Ibid, 172–78, 215–16. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 204. Joachimsthaler, Korrektur einer Biographie, 179–256; Weber, Hitler’s First War, 227–54. Kershaw, Hitler, 109–25.

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pacifist, socialist, and democratic camps he held responsible for the betrayal of the German soldier, the common denominator of the archconspiracy that led to Germany’s military and political collapse in November 1918. It was the effect of the war and, more importantly, the trauma of Germany’s defeat that transformed whatever residual antisemitism Hitler had inherited from his years in Vienna or had acquired during his years at the front into a paranoid and pathological obsession with the ubiquitous Jewish menace.113 From the beginning Hitler’s antisemitism had nothing to do with religion but was firmly and inextricably rooted in the concept of race. Not only did Hitler embrace a racial theory of history, but he was an unabashed Aryan supremacist who believed, like Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Edmond Drumont before him, that the Aryan and the Jew were locked in a life-and-death struggle for the future of humankind. For Hitler the Jews were subhuman and, along with Slavs and Negros, sought to destroy the great culture that the Aryan race, in its migration from ancient Persia to central and western Europe, had created for the benefit of all humanity. But in Hitler’s case, his antisemitism was informed by something else, something from the East that had given new form to the Jewish struggle for world conquest: Bolshevism. The person who receives credit for first having alerted Hitler to the dangers of the Jewish– Bolshevik symbiosis is Karl Mayr, a Reichswehr intelligence officer who enjoyed close ties to Bavaria’s paramilitary Right and who nurtured Hitler’s political ambitions following the suppression of the Munich Soviet in May 1919.114 No less important in this regard were Hitler’s contacts with Baltic German émigrés like Alfred Rosenberg and particularly Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter who had settled in Munich in the years immediately following the end of the war. Under their tutelage, Hitler came to recognize in Bolshevism another tentacle of the international Jewish conspiracy that sought to advance Jewish world dominance by fomenting revolution throughout the industrialized countries of the western world. To those who had been traumatized by the spread of revolutionary upheaval from Russia to eastern and central Europe during the last years of the war, the symbiosis of Jew and Bolshevism added a new and emotionally powerful dimension to their fear and hatred of the

113 114

Ibid, 67. Kershaw, Hitler, 122–29. On Mayr, see the recent article by Benjaman Ziemann, “Hitler’s Turncoat Tutor,” History Today 63 (2013): 42–49.

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Jews.115 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a preposterous forgery outlining the details of Jewish plans for world conquest that had been concocted in the 1890s by the Russian secret police to justify the terror being visited upon the shtetl of the Russian Empire and that had been published in German translation in early 1920, only cemented Hitler’s view of the Jew as the archenemy of the Aryan race and as the architect of the world revolution emanating from Moscow under the auspices of the Third International.116 What made the symbiosis of the Jew and Bolshevism credible in the eyes of many Germans was the palpable fear of social revolution. For not only was the collapse of the German Empire in November 1918 accompanied by a revolution that thrust the Social Democrats – the archenemy of Germany’s propertied classes – into power in Berlin, but the period from 1917 to 1922 also experienced a veritable wave of revolutionary upheaval that spread from St. Petersburg and Moscow to consume the three great empires – the Habsburg, the Russian, and the Ottoman – that had dominated the map of central and eastern Europe before 1914. As difficult as it was for contemporaries to contemplate the enormity of what had happened, there was, however, an explanation that, if nothing else, offered the virtue of simplicity: the international Bolshevik conspiracy that had been hatched by Jewish revolutionaries intent upon overthrowing the existing social, economic, and political order as a way of advancing the cause of Jewish world conquest. This was an explanation that appealed in particular to the conspiratorial mindset of those Germans who already embraced the “stab-in-the-back legend” as an explanation for Germany’s defeat in World War I.117 And nowhere was 115

116

117

This connection has been explored in great detail by Michael Kellogg, The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism (Cambridge, 2006), esp. 217–44. On the veritable explosion of antisemitic sentiment in Germany in the immediate postwar period, see the seminal essay by Werner Jochmann, “Die Ausbreitung des Antisemitismus,” in Deutsches Judentum in Krieg und Revolution, ed. Werner E. Mosse and Arnold Paucker (Tübingen, 1971), 409–510. For a more recent treatment of this phenomenon, see Joachim Schröder, “Der Erste Weltkrieg und der ‘jüdische Bolschewismus’,” in Nationalsozialismus und Erster Weltkrieg, ed. Gerd Krumeich in collaboration with Anke Hoffstadt and Arndt Weinrich (Essen, 2010), 77–96. Kershaw, Hitler, 152–53. For the Nazi use of the Protocols, see Alfred Rosenberg, Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion und die jüdische Weltpolitik (Munich, 1923). On Rosenberg’s influence on Hitler and the Nazi elite in the early years of the Weimar Republic, see Ernst Piper, Alfred Rosenberg: Hitler‘s Chief Ideologue (Munich, 2005), 29–55, 63–75. For a more recent treatment of this phenomenon, see Joachim Schröder, “Der Erste Weltkrieg und der ‘jüdische Bolschewismus’,” in Nationalsozialismus und Erster

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the fear of Bolshevism more palpable than in Munich, where in February 1919 the moderate socialist government that had assumed power the previous November was overthrown by more radical socialists who sought to imitate the success of the Bolshevik revolutionaries in Russia by creating a soviet republic of their own.118 The Munich Soviet, which lasted for four months before it was forcibly deposed by regular army units, militias, and Free Corps in early May 1919, magnified middle-class fears of Bolshevism and created an environment conducive to the emergence and growth of radical right-wing groups like the secretive German Workers’ Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or DAP) that Anton Drexler, Karl Harrer, and a handful of fanatic antisemites from the Thule Society (Thule Gesellschaft) had founded earlier that January.119 By the fall of 1919 – and in fact before Hitler himself had become involved in the affairs of the DAP – all of this would congeal into a distinctive world view that would remain more or less unaltered for the balance of Hitler’s life.120 Rooted in a crude social Darwinism that saw race and racial conflict as the key to understanding human history, Hitler’s antisemitism is best described as what Saul Friedländer termed “redemptive antisemitism.”121 Hitler conceived of the Jews as an evil that pervaded virtually every aspect of German life, an evil from which the

118

119

120

121

Weltkrieg, ed. Gerd Krumeich in collaboration with Anke Hoffstadt and Arndt Weinrich (Essen, 2010), 77–96. On the veritable explosion of antisemitic sentiment in Germany in the immediate postwar period, see the seminal essay by Werner Jochmann, “Die Ausbreitung des Antisemitismus,” in Deutsches Judentum in Krieg und Revolution, ed. Werner E. Mosse and Arnold Paucker (Tübingen, 1971), 409–510. On the Munich Soviet and its role in the radicalization of Bavarian political life, see Anthony Nicholls, “Hitler and the Bavarian Background to National Socialism,” in German Democracy and the Triumph of Hitler: Essays in Recent German History, ed. Anthony Nicholls (New York, 1972), 99–128, as well as the more recent monographs by Wolfgang Zorn, Bayerns Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert. Von der Monarchie zum Bundesland (Munich, 1986), 145–209, and David Clay Large, Where Ghosts Walked: Munich’s Road to the Third Reich (New York, 1996), 74–122. On the origins and ideological orientation of the DAP, see Dirk Stegmann, “Zwischen Repression und Manipulation: Konservative Machteliten und Arbeiter-und Angestelltenbewegung 1910–1918. Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte der DAP/NSDAP,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 12 (1972): 351–432. See also Kershaw, Hitler, 116–28, and Weber, Hitler’s First War, 227–54. The earliest statement of Hitler’s antisemitism in any sort of coherent form is to be found in a letter written to Adolf Gemlich, 16 Sept. 1919, reprinted in Ernst Deuerlein, “Hitlers Eintritt in die Politik und der Reichswehr,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 7 (1959): 177–227, here 201–02. On the concept of “redemptive antisemitism,” see Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York, 1997), 73–112. For a succinct and still useful analysis of Hitler’s political Weltanschauung, see Alan Bullock,

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German nation would have to redeem itself if it was ever to regain the freedom and power to determine its destiny among the nations of the world. In exposing the damage that the Jews had done to the moral and material fabric of German life, Hitler recited the whole litany of charges that Theodor Fritzsch, Paul de Lagarde, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain had leveled against them in a steady spate of antisemitic diatribes from the late nineteenth into the early twentieth century.122 But in proposing a solution to the Jewish problem, Hitler rejected an antisemitism of emotion and eschewed the violence of the pogroms in Imperial Russia in favor of a systematic and rational approach that would attack “the [Jewish] evil at its root and eradicate it root and branch.” But to achieve this, as Hitler reminded his followers at a rally of the newly rebaptised National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) on 6 April 1920, “all means are justified, even if it means allying ourselves with the devil.”123 Hitler spelled out precisely what this meant in political terms in a speech aptly entitled “Politik und Judentum” three weeks later before an estimated 1,200 members and supporters of the fledgling NSDAP. Here Hitler attributed the excessive partisanship that was running the German nation into the ground to the skill with which the Jews were able to play one group off against another according to the maxim “first divide, then conquer.”124 The obvious antidote to this sad state of affairs was to unite the German nation behind a strong and powerful dictator who possessed both the resolute will and the necessary ruthlessness to free Germany from the yoke of international Jewry at home and abroad and to carry the struggle against Jews abroad to a final and decisive victory from which the Jews would never recover.125 It was with rhetoric like this that Hitler led the NSDAP out of the shadowy anonymity of Munich beer halls into the public limelight where it could contest for power. Hitler’s career as an agitator was nothing short of meteoric. Not only did the size

122

123 124 125

“Hitler’s Political Ideas,” in International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies, The Third Reich (London, n.d. [1955]), 350–78. For Hitler’s most elaborate statement on the Jewish problem in the immediate postwar period, see Reginald Phelps, “Hitlers ‘grundlegende’ Rede über den Antisemitismus,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 16 (1968): 390–420. Reginald Phelps, “Hitler als Parteiredner im Jahre 1920,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 11 (1963): 274–33, here 277–78. Speech by Hitler, “Politik und Judentum,” 27 Apr. 1920, ibid, 299–301, the quote from 300. Ibid, 299.

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of the crowds he attracted to Nazi party rallies in the first years of the Weimar Republic steadily grow from one rally to the next, but his success as an agitator also attracted the attention of the Reichswehr’s Bavarian leadership, which had used Hitler in 1919 and the first months of 1920 as one of its special confidantes, or Vertrauensmänner, to report on the various fringe organizations that had sprung up in Bavaria in the immediate postwar period.126 It had been in this capacity that Hitler first came into contact with the founders of the German Workers’ Party before eventually joining the party toward the end of 1919. Drexler, the DAP’s national chairman, was quick to recognize Hitler’s talents as an agitator and placed him in charge of recruitment as the party’s Werbeobermann. After a power struggle with the DAP’s second-in-command Karl Harrer from which he emerged victorious, Hitler began to refashion the DAP according to his own political ideas, first by rebaptising it the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in February 1920 and then by giving it a program of its own known as the “Twenty-Five Point Program.”127 The next fifteen months witnessed a period of phenomenal growth for the fledgling Nazi Party that was directly related to Hitler’s growing popularity as a political agitator, and by the summer of 1921 he had become so inseparably identified with the party that he was able to displace Drexler as the NSDAP’s national leader after another conflict with profound implications for the party’s future political course.128 Although Hitler’s start in politics benefited greatly from the support of the Reichswehr, his rise to political prominence in the early 1920s stemmed to a far greater extent from the success with which he and a handful of his closest collaborators – Rosenberg, Scheubner-Richter, Hermann Esser, Rudolf Hess, and perhaps the most important of the group, the alcoholic poet Dietrich Eckhart – were able to fashion a political myth capable of sustaining Hitler’s use of charisma to legitimate his claim to the political leadership

126 127

128

Kershaw, Hitler, 121–25. See also Deuerlein, “Hitlers Eintritt in die Politik,” 179–81. Kershaw, Hitler, 140–46. For further details on the history of the DAP, see Reginald Phelps, “Hitler and the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei,” American Historical Review 68 (1963): 974–86. By far the most detailed treatment of Hitler’s initiation to Munich political life is to be found in Anton Joachimstaler, Hitlers Weg begann in München 1913–1923 (Munich, 2000), 198–271. See also the useful essay by Hellmuth Auerbach, “Hitlers politische Lehrjahre und die Münchener Gesellschaft 1919–1923. Versuch einer Bilanz anhand der neueren Forschung,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25 (1977): 1–45. For the details of Hitler’s takeover of the party, see Kershaw, Hitler, 160–65.

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of the German nation.129 Here it is important to remember that in the age of mass media charisma – and nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the case of Adolf Hitler – is not so much the spontaneous effervescence of a truly dynamic or captivating personality as a political construct crafted to serve the psychological and emotional needs of a society in crisis by specific sectors of that society intent upon advancing their own political agenda. This is particularly important in the case of Hitler because the Nazi party leader lacked all the qualities that one normally associates with the idea of a charismatic personality and yet was in every respect a true and effective charismatic leader of the German nation.130 The strength of Hitler’s charisma was such that it allowed him to survive the disastrous Beer Hall putsch of November 1923 with little long-term loss of influence or authority. No doubt the way in which Hitler was able to turn his trial for high treason in the spring of 1924 into an indictment of the existing political order helped him reestablish his authority over the disparate groups that constituted the racist Right in the aftermath of the abortive coup with little difficulty.131 More importantly, the nine months that Hitler would then spend in prison at Landsberg as part of the five-year sentence he had received for his role in the abortive coup provided him with a rare opportunity to recharge his batteries and plot his course for the future. Far from being disconsolate over the recent turn of events, Hitler found himself surrounded by friends and associates who were hard at work reinforcing the idea that he and he alone was the man providence had chosen to lead Germany out of the morass in which it currently found itself. The effect of his imprisonment, therefore, was to reinforce the charismatic roots of his claim to political leadership and to stamp in his own mind an even stronger sense of himself as the messianic leader of the German nation.132 It was against the background of these developments that Hitler began to dictate the text of what would become

129

130 131

132

In this respect, see the excellent study by Ludolf Herbst, Hitler’s Charisma. Die Erfindung eines deutschen Messias (Frankfurt a.M., 2010), 136–50. On Eckart’s involvement, see Margarete Plewnia, Auf dem Weg zu Hitler. Der völkische Publizist Dietrich Eckart (Bremen, 1970), 27–93, esp. 66–85. This argument is stated most concisely in Herbst, “Der Fall Hitler,” 172–76. For a fuller statement of this position, see Herbst, Hitlers Charisma, 59–95. Ibid, 167–78. On the Hitler trial, see Kershaw, Hitler, 213–19. On the Nazi party during Hitler’s internment, see David Jablonsky, The Nazi Party in Dissolution: Hitler and the Verbotzeit, 1923–25 (London, 1989), esp. 54–158. This point has been argued most persuasively by Kershaw, Hitler, 240–41, 250–53.

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the first volume of his infamous autobiography Mein Kampf. Here Hitler explained the origins of his distinctive view of the world but offered little in the way of a concrete political program. That would be left for the second volume that appeared in December 1926. What emerged as the most salient feature of the first volume and its depiction of Hitler’s struggle through the promulgation of the “Twenty-Five Point Program” in February 1920 was its obsessive antisemitism and the way in which Jews, Bolshevism, and World War I were all conflated to create a conspiratorial view of world history in which the fate of the German nation rested in the hands of the self-anointed messiah Adolf Hitler. Upon his release from prison, Hitler immediately set himself to the task of rebuilding his political movement. In resurrecting the officially defunct Nazi party in Munich’s fashionable Bürgerbräukeller on 27 February 1925, Hitler reasserted the charismatic foundations of his claim to political leadership and made this an unshakable tenet of his party’s political identity.133 Hitler’s invocation of charisma as the basis of his claim to leadership would play a particularly important role in the resolution of his conflict with the leaders of the party’s left wing – Gregor and Otto Strasser and Joseph Goebbels – in the summer of 1926 and in preventing what could very easily have developed into a major schism within the party.134 At the same time, Hitler eschewed the path of violence that had led to the debacle of November 1923 and privately reassured officials like the Bavarian Minister President Heinrich Held that he was irrevocably committed to the pursuit of power by legal means only, that is, within the framework and according to the provisions of the Weimar Constitution.135 But the next years were not particularly kind to Hitler. For although he succeeded in reestablishing his authority as leader of the NSDAP and in uniting most of the racist and antisemitic groups on the radical Right behind the Nazi banner,136 his own leadership qualities remained suspect in the eyes of many. As Edgar Julius Jung, a

133 134 135 136

On the refounding of the NSDAP in February 1925, see Kershaw, Hitler, 261–70, and Herbst, Hitler’s Charisma, 222–26. Ibid, 270–79. For the classic statement of this argument, see Joseph Nyomarky, Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party (Minneapolis, MN, 1967). See the account of Hitler’s meeting with Held on 4 Jan. 1925 in Kershaw, Hitler, 262–63. In this respect, see the two standard histories of the NSDAP by Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, 1919–1933 (Pittsburgh, PA, 1969), 51–59, and Wolfgang Horn, Führerideologie und Parteiorganisation in der NSDAP (Düsseldorf, 1972), 209–30.

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neoconservative pundit who would become one of Hitler’s victims in the blood purge of 30 June 1934, wrote to a close associate of his in February 1930, “it is hard to imagine that the German people would ever entrust itself to a man who has failed as dismally as Adolf Hitler failed in the November days of 1923.”137 At the same time, his party had been relegated to the fringes of German political life after winning just 2.3 percent of the popular vote and fourteen Reichstag mandates in the May 1928 Reichstag elections. No one seemed to regard either Hitler or his party as a serious threat to the stability of the Weimar Republic. There is a curious dissymmetry to the ways in which the careers of Hindenburg and Hitler converged in the spring of 1932 from divergent paths beginning seven years earlier with the former’s election to the Reich presidency and the latter’s return to the political limelight following his premature release from prison at the end of 1924. For just as Hindenburg was preparing himself for the responsibilities of the Reich presidency as a man who enjoyed the trust and devotion of broad sectors of German society, Hitler was about to launch a political comeback that would catapult him from the fiasco of November 1923 to the brink of power as the leader of the party with the second largest complement of deputies in the German Reichstag. Although neither felt the slightest bit of affection for the republican institutions that Germany had inherited from the collapse of 1918, Hindenburg would become a symbol of republican stability from 1925 to 1932, while Hitler would eschew the putschism that had led to the disaster of 1923 and commit himself instead to the pursuit of power within the framework of the much maligned Weimar Constitution. It is indeed a sad commentary on the Weimar Republic that neither of the two men who competed for the presidency in the spring of 1932 was committed to the preservation of the political system they would be elected to serve. A further similarity was that both relied upon the strength of their political charisma to mobilize the support of the German people. To be sure, there were profound differences between the charisma of a Hindenburg who drew strength from the way in which he supposedly embodied the best virtues of the Prussian tradition and that of a Hitler who articulated his vision of Germany’s future in an apocalyptic and messianic language that had no place for the role of tradition. Still, Hindenburg and Hitler both conceived of themselves and their place in 137

Jung to Wiessner, 3 Feb. 1930, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Edgar Julius Jung, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv München (hereafter cited as BHStA Munich, NL Jung), 30.

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German history in mythic terms and embraced a conception of politics that devalued the role of reason for the sake of myth, charisma, and the irrational forces that lurked beneath the veneer of civilized society. How this would all play out in the 1932 presidential elections remained to be seen.

2 Hindenburg and the Brüning Gambit

For all intents and purposes, Weimar democracy was dead by the beginning of 1930. Not only had the untimely death of Gustav Stresemann in early October 1929 robbed Germany’s republican leadership of the one person capable of holding the increasingly fragile coalition of prorepublican forces together, but the onset of the world economic crisis and the enormous strain this placed on Germany’s finances effectively paralyzed Germany’s parliamentary institutions to the point where it was no longer capable of forging a viable domestic consensus for the formulation and implementation of a national political agenda.1 Moreover, the evacuation of the last contingent of Allied troops from the Rhineland in June 1930 deprived the Allies of whatever leverage they might still have had over Germany’s political leadership, thus providing the German Right with the opportunity for which it had been waiting ever since the end of World War I to seize the reins of power and turn the political clock back to where it had been before the upheavals of 1918. The absence of an Allied presence on German soil constituted an indispensible

1

On the collapse of the Weimar Republic, see the classic study by Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik. Eine Studie zum Problem des Machtverfalls in der Demokratie, 4th edn. (Villingen/Schwarzwald, 1960), esp. 287–363, as well as the still insightful article by Werner Conze, “Die Krise des Parteienstaates in Deutschland 1928/ 30,” Historische Zeitschrift 178 (1954): 47–83. For two succinct summaries of the crisis of Weimar democracy, see Richard Bessel, “Why Did the Weimar Republic Collapse?,” in Why Did German Democracy Fail?, ed. Ian Kershaw (New York, 1990), 120–52, and Andreas Wirsching, “Koalition, Opposition, Interessenpolitik. Probleme der Weimarer Parteiparlamentarismus,” in Parlamentarismus in Europa. Deutschland, England und Frankreich im Vergleich, ed. Marie Luise Recker (Munich, 2004), 41–64.

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prerequisite for the success of conservative plans to dismantle the democratic institutions that Germany had inherited from the November Revolution and to move the fulcrum of German political life once more to the right.2 In the context of these developments, the iconic stature of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg took on particular significance. As someone who consciously identified himself with the best of the Prussian tradition, Hindenburg had served as the focal point for the hopes of the more moderate elements on the German Right for a fundamental reform of the existing political system ever since his election to the Reich presidency in the spring of 1925. With the increasing paralysis of Weimar democracy in the late 1920s, the pressure on Hindenburg to take a more active role in setting Germany’s political course began to grow. Much of this came from Germany’s military leadership, which had prided itself upon its political neutrality and steadfast refusal to become involved in partisan political bickering. With the political and economic stabilization of the Weimar Republic in the second half of the 1920s, the Reichswehr leadership had grown accustomed to pursuing its objectives within the framework of Germany’s new republican order despite the deep-seated misgivings that many high-ranking military leaders continued to harbor about Germany’s experiment in parliamentary democracy.3 No one better epitomized this willingness to adapt to the realities of Weimar democracy than Wilhelm Groener, the former chief of the German general staff during the last days of World War I who had been called out of retirement in January 1928 to assume leadership of the ministry of defense.4 But as it became increasingly clear with the onset of the great depression that Germany’s republican institutions were incapable of mediating the social and political tensions generated by the deteriorating economic situation, whatever willingness there may have existed within Germany’s military leadership to work within the framework of the existing political system

2

3

4

This is a point that is often overlooked in the secondary literature on the Weimar Republic but receives proper emphasis in Hans Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, trans. by Elborg Forster and Larry Eugene Jones (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996), 298–99. For a recent and concise survey of the military and its place in the Weimar Republic, see William Mulligan, “The Reichswehr and the Weimar Republic,” in Weimar Germany, ed. Anthony McElligott (Oxford, 2009), 78–101. On Groener, see the detailed studies by Johannes Hürter, Wilhelm Groener. Reichswehrminister am Ende der Weimarer Republik (1928–1932) (Munich, 1993), and Klaus Hornung, Alternativen zu Hitler: Wilhelm Groener. Soldat und Politiker in der Weimarer Republik (Graz, 2008).

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quickly began to evaporate. At the same time, the intellectual culture of Germany’s military elite was characterized by what one author has recently called a sense of “fear and loathing,” a sense of disdain and contempt for all the iterations of modernity that had come to define Weimar.5 The key political strategist in the German military establishment was Major General Kurt von Schleicher. An enigmatic figure whose rise to the upper echelons of the German military establishment had been nothing short of meteoric, Schleicher had been attached to the German general staff for the duration of World War I with the exception of a short, yet distinguished stint in Galicia for several months in the late spring and summer of 1917. Schleicher quickly attracted the attention of senior officers like Groener, who would serve as his mentor and political patron through the early and middle years of the Weimar Republic. After the war Schleicher served as a liaison between the army high command and Germany’s new republican government. From 1920 to 1926 he was assigned to the Troop Office, or Truppenamt, that had assumed the place of the German general staff after its dissolution in compliance with the armament provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty. Then, in 1926 Schleicher was appointed chief of the Armed Forces Department, or Wehrmachtabteilung, within the ministry of defense, an office that was responsible for a wide range of political functions, including intelligence, border security, and working with the paramilitary combat leagues. Three years later following Groener’s appointment as defense minister in January 1928, Schleicher would achieve still another plateau with his appointment as head of the newly created Office of Ministerial Affairs (Ministeramt) in the defense ministry, an appointment that placed him on the same level as the state secretaries in the other cabinet ministries.6 As chief of the Office of Ministerial Affars, Schleicher was responsible for coordinating and implementing the Reichswehr’s strategy for dealing with the cabinet, the Reichstag, the various political parties, and, perhaps most importantly, the office of the Reich president. Schleicher’s ultimate goal was to rebuild and modernize Germany’s military capacities and to restore Germany’s sovereignty over its military affairs in so far as this was possible within the limits imposed by the Versailles Peace Treaty. In 5 6

See the insightful essay by Emre Sencer, “Fear and Loathing in Berlin: German Military Culture at the Turn of the 1930s,” German Studies Review 37 (2014): 19–39. On Schleicher’s political ascendancy, see Thilo Vogelsang, Kurt von Schleicher. Ein General als Politiker (Göttingen, 1965), 9–57.

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figure 3: Photograph of Major General Kurt von Schleicher as Minister of Defense, 1932. Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Bild 136-B0228.

pursuing this goal, Schleicher followed two basic principles. First, Schleicher compared the situation in which Germany found itself after World War I to the situation of Prussia after its defeat by Napoleon in 1807 and argued that Germany must concentrate its energies on internal problems and pursue a foreign policy of conciliation and international understanding. As Friedrich Wilhelm I had done at the beginning of the nineteenth century, so must Germany’s new political leadership seek to reduce antagonisms between the army and the public by fusing the various paramilitary organizations on the German Right into a national militia and thus convert them from a source of unrest into a pillar of stability. Second, Schleicher argued that repressing restive mass movements was counterproductive and only increased the threat they posed to

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state and society. The best way to deal with such movements was to link them to the state on the basis of mutual self-interest, thereby co-opting them into becoming part of the existing political order. As in the case of the Social Democrats after the end of World War I, this would oblige oppositional movements to moderate the tone of their political rhetoric and assume a more responsible role in the political process.7 As the paralysis of Germany’s parliamentary institutions became more and more apparent by the end of 1929 and beginning of 1930, Schleicher moved quickly to mobilize the resources of the presidential palace behind his efforts to lay the foundation for a new government based upon the parties of the middle and moderate Right that would not be as tightly tied to the Reichstag as its predecessor.8 But, as Schleicher lamented in a private conversation with the Stahlhelm’s Siegfried Wagner in October 1928, the German Right was far more fragmented than it had been two years earlier.9 Here Schleicher was alluding to the situation within the DNVP, where a bitter internal fight between party moderates and those who remained categorically opposed to any form of collaboration with the existing political order had been resolved in favor of the latter with the election of film and press magnate Alfred Hugenberg to the party chairmanship in the fall of 1928.10 Hugenberg’s policies as DNVP party chairman only aggravated the situation within the party and provoked the secession of twelve

7

8

9

10

This analysis is indebted to the insightful essay by Peter Hayes, “‘A Question Mark with Epaulettes’? Kurt von Schleicher and Weimar Politics,” Journal of Modern History 52 (1980): 35–65. For the most detailed analysis of Schleicher’s domestic political strategy in the last years of the Weimar Republic, see the classic study by Thilo Vogelsang, Reichswehr, Staat und NSDAP. Beiträge zur Deutschen Geschichte 1930–1932 (Stuttgart, 1962). See also the insightful study by Francis L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics, 1918–1933 (Oxford, 1966), 296–308, 325–50. Less useful and more problematic in its reading of Schleicher’s intentions is the recent monograph by Irene Strenge, Kurt von Schleicher. Politik im Reichswehrministerium am Ende der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 2006). Groener to Gleich, 4 Jan. 1930, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Wilhelm Groener, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau (hereafter cited as BA-MA Freiburg, NL Groener), 36/1a–5, reprinted in Dorothea Groener-Geyer, General Groener. Soldat und Staatsmann (Frankfurt a.M., 1955), 262. Wagner to Duesterberg, 4 Oct. 1928, in the unpublished records of the Stahlhelm, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, Bestand R 72 (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, R 72), 264/30–33. In this respect, see Larry Eugene Jones, “German Conservatism at the Crossroads: Count Kuno von Westarp and the Struggle for Control of the DNVP, 1928–30,” Contemporary European History 18 (2009): 147–77. On Hugenberg’s election to the DNVP party chairmanship, see John A. Leopold, “The Election of Alfred Hugenberg as Chairman of the German National People’s Party,” Canadian Journal of History 7 (1972): 149–71, and Heidrun Holzbach, Das “System Hugenberg.” Die Organisation bürgerlicher Sammlungspolitik vor dem Aufstieg der NSDAP (Stuttgart, 1981), 192–253.

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members of the DNVP Reichstag delegation, including Schleicher’s close confidant G. R. Treviranus, in early December 1929.11 For his own part, Schleicher had encouraged the secessionists in their decision to break with Hugenberg and hoped that this would pave the way for the creation of a moderate conservative party that would replace the Social Democrats as the party with which the Center and the other middle parties could form a governmental coalition.12 In the meantime, the Reich president had grown increasingly impatient with the lack of progress in bringing about a change in the composition of the national government. On 15 January 1930 Hindenburg met with Count Kuno von Westarp, chairman of the DNVP Reichstag delegation since 1925 until he had resigned his post following the secession of the DNVP moderates in December 1929, in an effort to assess the situation within the DNVP. Hindenburg indicated that it was his intention to undertake a reorganization of the national government following the ratification of the Young Plan and sought to determine whether or not the DNVP could be counted upon to participate in the formation of a new coalition government that would derive its legitimacy not from a parliamentary majority in the Reichstag but from the authority of the Reich president. But nothing Westarp had to say offered any hope for a change in the attitude of the DNVP party leadership or could dispel the gloomy prospects for the success of Schleicher’s strategy.13

11

12

13

For further details, see Westarp’s twenty-four-page memorandum on the origins and course of the crisis that Westarp most likely wrote in December 1929, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, II/61, as well as the entry in the diary of Reinhold Quaatz, 2 Dec. 1929, in Quaatz’s unpublished Nachlaß, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz), 16, reprinted in Die Deutschnationalen und die Zerstörung der Weimarer Republik. Aus dem Tagebuch von Reinhold Quaatz 1928–1933, ed. Hermann Weiß and Paul Hoser (Munich, 1989), 92–3. For further information, DNVP, see Attila A. Chanady, “The Disintegration of the German National People’s Party 1924–1930,” Journal of Modern History 39 (1967): 65–91, and Thomas Mergel, “Das Scheitern des deutschen Tory-Konservatismus. Die Umformung der DNVP zu einer rechtsradikalen Partei 1928–1932,” Historische Zeitschrift 276 (2003): 323–68, as well as the recent biographical study by Maximilian Terhalle, Deutschnational in Weimar. Die politische Biographie des Reichstagsabgeordneten Otto Schmidt(-Hannover) 1888–1971 (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2009), 207–36. Gottfried R. Treviranus, “Zur Rolle und zur Person Kurt von Schleichers,” in Staat, Wirtschaft und Politik in der Weimarer Republik. Festschrift für Heinrich Brüning, ed. Ferdinand A. Hermens and Theodor Schieder (Berlin, 1967), 363–82, here 371. In a similar vein, see Groener to Gleich, 4 Jan. 1930, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Groener, 36/1a–5. Westarp’s memorandum on his conversation with Hindenburg, 15 Jan. 1930, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, II/61, reprinted in Politik und Wirtschaft in der Krise 1930–1932. Quellen zur Ära Brüning, ed. by Ilse Maurer and Udo Wengst, with an introduction by Gerhard Schulz, 2 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1980), 1: 13–18. On Hindenburg’s involvement in

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That Hugenberg could not be counted upon to take part in the realignment of political forces that Hindenburg and Schleicher were envisaging as a solution to the political crisis that gripped Germany at the end of 1929 quickly became an unshakable premise of Schleicher’s strategic thinking in the spring of 1930. With an accommodation with Hugenberg’s DNVP apparently out of the question, Schleicher turned his attention to Heinrich Brüning from the German Center Party with DVP party chairman Ernst Scholz as the fallback should Brüning’s candidacy run into difficulty.14 It is uncertain just when Brüning first caught Schleicher’s eye as a candidate for the chancellorship. In his memoirs Brüning recalls a conversation with Schleicher around Easter 1929 where the latter outlined his views on the impending political crisis and tried to enlist Brüning’s support for the formation of a cabinet that would use the special emergency powers authorized by Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to implement the reforms that were necessary to restore order in Germany’s domestic and foreign affairs. Schleicher also envisaged a revision of the Weimar Constitution that would strengthen the powers of the executive at the expense of the legislature. By his own account, Brüning expressed skepticism not so much about the thrust and intent of Schleicher’s plans – the two supposedly even agreed on the ultimate desirability of restoring the monarchy – as about the general’s sense of timing and warned that any move in the direction of a constitutional reform would have to await ratification of the Young Plan and the evacuation of the last Allied troops from the Rhine. In the meantime, Brüning continued, it would be best to proceed with the necessary reforms in the areas of fiscal and economic policy on the basis of the existing governmental coalition for as long as the coalition could be held together.15

14

15

the cabinet negotiations in the spring of 1930, see Wolfram Pyta, Hindenburg. Herrschaft zwischen Hohenzollern und Hitler (Munich, 2007), 555–76. On Groener’s role in these developments, see Hürter, Groener, 240–60. In this respect, see the undated notes composed by Schleicher’s aide Ferdinand Noeldechen most likely in the early spring of 1930 in the unpublished Nachlaß of Kurt von Schleicher, Bundesarchiv-Militärabteilung, Freiburg im Breisgau (hereafter cited as BAMA Freiburg, NL Schleicher), 29/1–3. Heinrich Brüning, Memoiren 1918–1934 (Stuttgart, 1970), 145–47. The extent to which Brüning’s memoirs provide an accurate representation of Brüning’s long-term political objectives has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate. In this respect, see Rudolf Morsey, Zur Entstehung, Authentizität und Kritik von Brünings “Memoiren 1918–1934” (Opladen, 1975), as well as the particularly critical assessment by Andreas Rödder, “Dichtung und Wahrheit. Der Quellenwert von Heinrich Brünings Memoiren

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figure 4: Photograph of the Brüning cabinet at the time of its installation, March 1930. Sitting from right to left: Joseph Wirth (Interior), Hermann Dietrich (Economics), Heinrich Brüning (Chancellor), Julius Curtius (Foreign Affairs), Georg Schätzel (Post Office); standing from right to left: Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (Occupied Territories), Martin Schiele (Agriculture), Johann Victor Bredt (Justice), Adam Stegerwald (Labor), Paul Moldenhauer (Finance), Theodor von Guérard (Transportation). Not present: Wilhelm Groener (Defense). Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Bild 146–2004–0144.

Brüning’s assets as a candidate for the chancellorship were obvious. As veteran of the Great War, the forty-nine-year-old Brüning would be the first of the so-called front generation to serve as chancellor, a fact that was not lost upon the Reich president.16 Moreover, Brüning had received his political apprenticeship in the Christian trade-union movement and enjoyed close ties to Adam Stegerwald and other prominent Christian

16

und seine Kanzlerschaft,” Historische Zeitschrift 265 (1997): 78–116. On the question of monarchism, see the insightful essay by William L. Patch, Jr., “Heinrich Brüning’s Recollections of Monarchism: The Birth of a Red Herring,” Journal of Modern History 70 (1998): 340–70. On Brüning’s youth, academic preparation, and early political career, see the two excellent biographical studies by William L. Patch, Jr., Heinrich Brüning and the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic (Cambridge, 1998), 14–48, and Herbert Hömig, Brüning: Kanzler in der Krise der Republik. Eine Weimarer Biographie (Paderborn, 2001), 27–114.

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labor leaders from both the Center and other political parties. As a young trade-union secretary in the early 1920s, Brüning had played a major role in the founding of the German Trade-Union Federation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund or DGB) and in drafting the oft-cited “Essen Program” that Stegerwald promulgated at the 1920 Essen congress of the Christian labor unions in hopes of stimulating a reform and reorganization of the German party system.17 At the same time, Brüning nurtured close ties with the young conservative movement in the early years of the Weimar Republic and, for several months in 1920–21, was intensely involved in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to build bridges between the neo-conservative Ring Movement and Christian labor.18 Elected to the Reichstag in May 1924, Brüning quickly earned a reputation as one of the Reichstag’s most highly respected specialists in the fields of taxation and finance. Brüning’s fiscal conservatism and his determination to balance the budget through the systematic reduction of government spending at the federal, state, and municipal levels made his candidacy for the chancellorship particularly attractive to the leaders of Germany’s industrial establishment.19 After his friend and mentor Adam Stegerwald joined the national government in April 1929, Brüning succeeded him as head of the Center Reichstag delegation, first in an interim capacity and then by a unanimous vote of the entire delegation on 5 December 1929.20 The following month Brüning resigned his post as secretary general, or 17

18

19

20

Leo Schwering, “Stegerwalds und Brünings Vorstellungen über Parteireform und Parteiensystem,” in Staat, Wirtschaft und Politik in der Weimarer Republik. Festschrift für Heinrich Brüning, ed. Ferdinand A. Hermens and Theodor Schieder (Berlin, 1967), 23– 40, and Larry Eugene Jones, “Adam Stegerwald und die Krise des deutschen Parteiensystems. Ein Beitrag zur Deutung des ‘Essener Programms’ vom November 1920,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 27 (1979): 1–29. On Brüning’s role in the founding of the DGB, see the detailed report he filed with the DGB executive committee, 24 Nov. 1921, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Adam Stegerwald, Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Politik an der Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung, Sankt Augustin (hereafter cited as ACDP Sankt-Augustin, NL Stegerwald), I-206/018. For a convincing assessment of Brüning’s ties to the neoconservative Right, see Peer Oliver Volkmann, Heinrich Brüning (1995–1970). Nationalist ohne Heimat (Düsseldorf, 2007), 48–58. Brüning’s views on fiscal and economic position had taken shape well before his emergence as a possible successor to Müller. See Rudolf Morsey, “Brünings Kritik an der Reichsfinanzpolitik 1919–1929,” in Geschichte – Wirtschaft – Gesellschaft. Festschrift für Clemens Bauer zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. Erich Hassinger, J. Heinz Müller, and Hugo Ott (Berlin, 1974), 359–73. Minutes of the Center Reichstag delegation, 5 Dec. 1929, in Die Protokolle der Reichstagsfraktion und des Fraktionsvorstandes der Deutschen Zentrumspartei 1926–1933, ed. Rudolf Morsey (Mainz, 1969), 348–49.

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Geschäftsführer, of the German Trade-Union Federation so that he could concentrate his full attention on his new responsibilities as chairman of the Center’s delegation to the Reichstag.21 Schleicher remained in contact with Brüning through the summer of 1929, but it was not until late 1929 that he resumed his efforts to enlist Brüning’s support for the plans he had outlined the previous spring.22 By then the political constellation in Germany had been fundamentally altered by the onset of the world economic crisis and the secession on the DNVP’s left wing. Brüning had followed developments within the DNVP closely, sympathized with the aspirations of the anti-Hugenberg elements around Treviranus, and privately hoped that “clarification on the Right” would make it possible to govern without the Social Democrats.23 On 26 December 1929 Brüning met with Schleicher, Treviranus, and Hindenburg’s state secretary Otto Meissner – Groener had been invited but was unable to attend – in the Berlin home of Schleicher’s close associate Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Willisen. According to Treviranus’ memoirs, Schleicher pressed his case for the immediate formation of a presidential cabinet armed with Article 48 emergency powers but was unable to overcome either Brüning’s deep sense of loyalty to the sitting chancellor Hermann Müller or his visceral aversion to such a radical departure from established parliamentary procedures. Brüning, on the other hand, insisted that the Müller cabinet should remain in office at least until after the evacuation of the Rhineland later that fall and predicted that a new right-wing government saddled with responsibility for the unpopular fiscal and social reforms required for the implementation of the Young Plan would almost certainly fail.24 In the meantime, Hindenburg came under increasingly heavy pressure from Hugenberg and the radical Right to use the influence of his office to prevent ratification of the Young Plan.25 For his own part, Hindenburg 21 22 23

24

25

Hömig, Brüning, 131. For example, see Schleicher to Brüning, 14 Dec. 1929, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 76/158. Brüning to Gehrig, 1 Nov. 1929, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Otto Gehrig, Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Politik der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Sankt-Augustin, Bestand I-087, 001/2. Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, Das Ende von Weimar. Heinrich Brüning und seine Zeit (Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1968), 114–15. For Brüning’s recollection of this meeting, see Brüning, Memoiren, 150–52. Meissner’s memorandum on Hindenburg’s meeting with Hugenberg and DNVP Reichstag delegation chairman Ernst Oberfohren, 17 Feb. 1930, in a letter to Müller, 18 Feb. 1930, in Akten der Reichskanzlei: Das Kabinett Müller II.28. Juni 1928 bis 27.

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remained resolute in his determination to see the Young Plan enacted into law but expected a reorganization of the national government as compensation for the odium he had brought upon himself by his strong and unpopular stand in support of the new reparations plan. On 1 March 1930 Hindenburg met with Brüning for the first time in an official capacity in an unsuccessful effort to overcome his resistance to the formation of a new cabinet resting upon the parties of the middle and moderate Right.26 At a second meeting ten days later, the Reich president informed Brüning, who by now had emerged as the clear favorite to succeed Müller, that ratification of the Young Plan required more than a narrow majority and that the support of the Center was therefore necessary if he was going to sign it. But Hindenburg also acknowledged the Center’s concerns regarding the fiscal reforms that would be necessary to implement the new plan and assured Brüning of his full support in securing their passage.27 After signing the documents that formally ratified the Young Plan on the morning of 13 March, Hindenburg sent Müller a respectful, yet forcibly worded letter in which he outlined his political agenda that specified, among other things, a reform of German finances with the goal of eliminating the mounting deficit in the national budget.28 As the Müller cabinet wrestled with the implications of Hindenburg’s demarche over the course of the next several weeks, Brüning never wavered in his support of the existing governmental coalition and worked assiduously to hammer out a compromise that would placate the mutinous pro-business elements on the DVP’s right wing. The DVP party chairman Ernst Scholz struck a conciliatory tone when in his keynote address at the DVP’s Mannheim party congress on 22 March he proclaimed to the great dismay of his party’s right wing “that a government against or even without the Social Democrats was simply not possible for

26

27 28

März 1930, ed. Martin Vogt, 2 vols. (Boppard am Rhein, 1970), 2: 1471–72. For Hugenberg’s version of this meeting, Claß, “Wider den Strom,” BA Berlin, NL Claß, 3/ 906. For an elaboration of Hugenberg’s position, see Hugenberg and Quaatz, Gegen die marxistisch-liberale Unterwerfungspolitik! Die Reden von Dr. Hugenberg und Dr. Quaatz, am 11. und 12. Februar 1930 im Reichstag, DNVP-Flugblatt, no. 538, in BA Koblenz, NL Wegener, 31/145–48. Brüning’s protocol of 4 Mar. 1930 on his conversation with Hindenburg, 1 Mar. 1930, in Rudolf Morsey, “Neue Quellen zur Vorgeschichte der Reichskanzlerschaft Brüning,” in Staat, Wirtschaft und Politik in der Weimarer Republik. Festschrift für Heinrich Brüning, ed. Ferdinand A. Hermens and Theodor Schieder (Berlin, 1967), 207–32, here 213–15. “Wie es zur Regierung Brüning kam,” in Das Zentrum. Mitteilungsblatt der Deutschen Zentrumspartei 1, no. 4 (Apr. 1930): 75–81, here 79–80. Hindenburg to Müller, 13 Mar. 1930, in Das Kabinett Müller II, ed. Vogt, 2: 1580–82.

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an extended period of time.”29 But hopes that this might salvage the Müller cabinet were definitively dashed at a stormy session of the SPD Reichstag delegation five days later when representatives of the socialist labor unions sided with the leaders of the party’s left wing to reject the Brüning compromise, thereby sealing the fate of the Müller cabinet.30 On the following morning the chancellor tendered his resignation in a private audience with Hindenburg. Throughout the crisis, Brüning had done everything in his power to salvage the “Great Coalition.” At no point during the deliberations that accompanied the collapse of the Müller cabinet did Brüning advance a personal agenda or his own candidacy for the chancellorship. Yet when the dust had settled, Brüning had clearly emerged as the most likely candidate to succeed Müller, and on the morning of 28 March Hindenburg summoned him to his office to hand him the task of forming a new government. At the same time, Hindenburg assured Brüning of his willingness to use the special emergency powers vested in his office by Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to solve the enormous problems, particularly in the area of fiscal and economic policy that confronted the German state.31 Over the course of the next two days Brüning met with various individuals from the parties that stood to the right of the SPD before finally presenting his new cabinet to the Reich president on 30 March. Hindenburg played a major role in the formation of the new cabinet, insisting upon the retention of Wilhelm Groener at the ministry of defense and the appointment of Martin Schiele as the new minister of agriculture.32 The appointment of Schiele, who had served as the minister of agriculture in 1927–28 and who had strongly opposed Hugenberg’s leadership of the party both as president of the National Rural League

29

30

31

32

Minutes of the DVP’s Mannheim party congress, 21–23 Mar. 1930, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 331/131–55. See also the abbreviated text of Scholz’s speech in DVP, Reichsgeshäftsstelle, ed., 8. Reichsparteitag der Deutschen Volkspartei in Mannheim vom 21. bis 23. März 1930 (Berlin, n.d. [1930]), 3–6. For further details, see Heinrich August Winkler, Der Schein der Normalität. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1924 bis 1930 (Berlin and Bonn, 1985), 802–23, as well as the more recent essay by Eberhard Kolb, “Rettung der Republik: Die Politik der SPD in den Jahren 1930 bis 1933,” in Weimar im Widerstreit. Deutungen der ersten deutschen Republik im geteilten Deutschland, ed. Heinrich August Winkler (Munich, 2002), 85–104, esp. 87–89. For Brüning’s account of this meeting, see his Memoiren, 161–62. See also Brüning’s report to the executive committee of the Center Reichstag delegation, 27 Mar. 1930, in Protokolle der Zentrumsfraktion 1926–1933, ed. Morsey, 425–26. Brüning, Memoiren, 161–62. See also Breitscheid’s memorandum of his conversation with Brüning, 29 Mar. 1930, in Morsey, “Neue Quellen,” 227–28.

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and as a member of the DNVP Reichstag delegation,33 was crucial from the perspective of Hindenburg’s strategic objectives in so far as the Reich president had thrown the full weight of his office behind an agrarian reform that would attack the widespread indebtedness of East Elbian agriculture through a combination of increased tariffs on meat and grain, subsidies of 200 million marks for each of the next 5 years, and a freeze on future increases in unemployment insurance contributions.34 At the same time, Brüning went out of his way to placate the Social Democrats by appointing Stegerwald and Joseph Wirth, the nominal leader of the Center’s left wing, to his cabinet as the ministers of labor and the interior, respectively.35 But this did little to alter the fact that, in terms of its composition and political orientation, the Brüning cabinet stood further to the right than any other cabinet in the history of the Weimar Republic with the possible exception of the fourth Marx cabinet that had taken office in January 1927. To be sure the brainchild of Schleicher, the Brüning cabinet bore the indelible footprint of the Reich president. As in the case of the fourth Marx cabinet, Hindenburg had assumed an active role in the formation of the Brüning government. Not only had Hindenburg insisted on Schiele’s appointment on terms that severely limited Brüning’s ability to balance the budget and restore a modicum of fiscal sanity,36 but the Reich 33

34

35

36

Schiele to Traub, 4 Feb. 1930, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Gottfried Traub, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, 67/106-07. Schiele was particularly outspoken in his criticism of the way in which Hugenberg conducted the referendum against the Young Plan in the fall of 1929. For some of the relevant documentation, see Dieter Gessner, “‘Grüne Front’ oder ‘Harzburger Front.’ Der Reichs-Landbund in der letzten Phase der Weimarer Republik zwischen wirtschaftlicher Interessenpolitik und nationalsozialistischem Revisionsanspruch,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 29 (1981): 110–23. For the terms of Schiele’s appointment, see his letter to Brüning, 29 Mar. 1930, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Hermann Pünder, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Pünder), 131/231–34, reprinted in Akten der Reichskanzlei: Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II.30. März 1930 bis 10. Oktober 1931.10. Oktober 1931 bis 1. Juni 1932, ed. Tilman Koops, 3 vols. (Boppard am Rhein, 1985 and 1989), 1: 1–4. See also Schiele to Hindenburg, 29 Mar. 1930, BA Berlin, R 601, 404/9-14. On the formation and composition of the Brüning cabinet, see Brüning’s own account in his Memoiren, 163–68. For further information, see the introduction by Tilman Koops in Die Kabinette Brüning, ed. Koops, 1: xx–xxx, as well as the relevant sections in Patch, Brüning, 72–79, and Hömig, Brüning, 149–56. On the appointments of Stegerwald and Wirth, see Bernhard Forster, Adam Stegerwald (1874–1945). Christlich-nationaler Gewerkschafter – Zentrumspolitiker – Mitbegründer der Unionsparteien (Düsseldorf, 2003), 491–92, and Ulrike Hörster-Philipps, Joseph Wirth 1879–1956. Eine politische Biographie (Paderborn, 1998), 380–84. On the role that the agrarian crisis played in the formation of the Brüning cabinet, see Dieter Gessner, Agrarverbände in der Weimarer Republik. Wirtschaftliche und soziale Voraussetzungen agrarkonservativer Politik vor 1933 (Düsseldorf, 1976), 183–218.

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president had also had a hand in Groener’s retention at the ministry of defense and Treviranus’s appointment to the cabinet as a minister for the occupied territories.37 All told, the complexion of the Brüning cabinet, with the possible exception of Wirth, clearly reflected the Reich president’s own sense of political priorities and left little doubt that the new government enjoyed his full and unqualified blessing. All of this represented an enormous and indeed unprecedented investment of prestige and influence on the part of the Reich president in the internal politics of the Weimar Republic and belied the widespread impression of Hindenburg as a president who either took little interest in the mundane intricacies of parliamentary politics or only reluctantly became involved in the domestic political fray. At the same time, this provided Brüning with the cover he needed to proceed with his own political agenda. Whether the new Reich chancellor was seriously committed to implementing his policies with the support of a parliamentary majority or was determined from the outset to circumvent parliament through the use of presidential emergency powers remains a point of considerable disagreement among historians today. In this connection, it is unclear whether Brüning seriously hoped to win over the support of Hugenberg and the entire DNVP or simply intended from the first days of his chancellorship to drive a wedge between the moderate and radical wings of the DNVP and thus provoke a second secession on the party’s left wing. Brüning remains a figure embroiled in controversy not only over the ends he pursued but also over the means by which he sought to pursue those ends. The problem of properly understanding his intentions is rendered all the more difficult by an evidentiary base that is very thin and subject to conflicting interpretations.38 37 38

Brüning, Memoiren, 161–62. The interpretations of Brüning’s intentions run the gamut from those like Patch, Brüning, 73–89, and Hömig, Brüning, 211–29, who stress the chancellor’s commitment to the principles of parliamentary democracy to those like Volkmann, Brüning, 110–74, and Hans Mommsen, who are critical not just of Brüning’s methods but also of the objectives that lay behind those methods. My own reading of Brüning is particularly indebted to two seminal essays by Hans Mommsen, “Staat und Bürokratie in der Ära Brüning,” in Tradition und Reform in der deutschen Politik. Gedenkschrift für Waldemar Besson, ed. Gotthard Jasper (Frankfurt am Main, 1976), 81–137, and “Heinrich Brünings Politik als Reichskanzler: Das Scheitern eines politischen Alleingangs,” in Wirtschaftskrise und liberale Demokratie. Das Ende der Weimarer Republik und die gegenwärtige Situation, ed. Karl Holl (Göttingen, 1978), 16–45. Werner Conze, on the other hand, stresses the lack of genuine options that Brüning confronted as chancellor. For example, see Werner Conze, “Brüning als Reichskanzler. Eine Zwischenbilanz,” Historische Zeitschrift 214 (1972): 310–34.

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What seems most likely is this: When Brüning assumed the chancellorship in March 1930, he was committed to implementing his fiscal and economic reforms by parliamentary means in so far as this was possible. He was, after all, a tried and proven parliamentarian who recognized both the strengths and weaknesses of parliamentary government and probably did not share the passion of those like Schleicher who sought to decouple the exercise of executive authority from the vicissitudes of constantly shifting party alignments in the Reichstag. At the same time, however, Brüning was well aware of the heavy social cost that restoring fiscal sanity would necessarily entail and was fully prepared, at least according to the diary of his state secretary Hermann Pünder, to dissolve the Reichstag and call for new elections if this would expedite the implementation of his fiscal and economic reforms.39 Apprehensive about the prospects of new elections, the leaders of the DNVP reached out to Brüning through Schiele and begrudgingly agreed to support the cabinet in its first test of strength with the Social Democrats in a key confidence vote in the Reichstag on 3 April 1930.40 Brüning quickly availed himself of Hindenburg’s aura to drive a wedge between the moderate and radical factions in the DNVP Reichstag delegation on 12 April 1930 in an attempt to secure passage of a finance bill that sought to close the budget gap through a combination of new taxes and austerity measures. Two days later Brüning honored his pledge to those within the DNVP who had supported his tax program by introducing a bill for agrarian relief that also received a Reichstag majority with the support of the anti-Hugenberg dissidents on the DNVP’s left wing.41 But when Brüning reprised this strategy in July 1930 to use the special emergency powers that Article 48 39

40

41

Entry in Pünder’s diary, 4 Apr. 1930, reprinted in Hermann Pünder, Politik in der Reichskanzlei. Aufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1929–1932, ed. Thilo Vogelsang (Stuttgart, 1961), 47–48. Ibid. See also the entries in Quaatz’s diary, 1–3 Apr. 1930, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 16, reprinted in Die Deutschnationalen und die Zestörung der Weimarer Republik, ed. Weiß and Hoser, 107–08. On the agrarian revolt against Hugenberg’s leadership of the DNVP, see Andreas Müller, “Fällt der Bauer, stürzt der Staat.” Deutschnationale Agrarpolitik 1928–1933 (Munich, 2003), 158–76. For further information on the situation within the DNVP, see Terhalle, Deutschnationale in Weimar, 242–75. On the crisis in the DNVP, see the the minutes of the DNVP party representation (Parteivertretung), 9 Apr. 1930, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Maximilian Dziembowski, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich (hereafter cited as BHStA Munich, NL Dziembowski), 18, as well as the entries in Quaatz’s diary, 12 and 14 Apr. 1930, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 16, reprinted in Die Deutschnationalen und die Zerstörung der Weimarer Republik, ed. Weiß and Hoser, 109–10. See also the detailed discussion of this crisis in Terhalle, Deutschnationale in Weimar, 344–46.

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of the Weimar Constitution had vested in the office of the Reich president to enact a sweeping reform of German finances that had been rejected by the Reichstag, Hugenberg and the DNVP supported a Social Democratic motion to suspend the government’s emergency powers that carried by a 236-221 margin.42 With Hindenburg’s blessing, Brüning then proceeded to dissolve the Reichstag, call for new elections, and enact his fiscal reform by presidential decree. The Rubicon that separated parliamentary democracy and authoritarian government had been crossed.43 Despite his dependence upon the Reich president’s political support, Brüning was reluctant to invoke the Hindenburg mythos in the campaign for the Reichstag elections that had been set for 14 September 1930. For Brüning the more pressing task was to reassure his supporters of his democratic credentials and to dispel their fears that he was intent on dismantling Germany’s republican system. Speaking to the party faithful in Cologne on 8 August, Brüning not only rejected charges that he was oblivious to the pain that his policies had inflicted upon the less fortunate sectors of society but argued that his true intent was not to destroy but to rescue parliamentary government from the crisis that currently afflicted it: It is not a matter of working against parliament but rather one of working for parliament. And if we have taken up the struggle, if the Reichstag has been dissolved, if Article 48 has been used, then I want to make this plain and clear: This is not a struggle against parliament, but it is rather a struggle to save parliament.44

In a similar vein, the Center portrayed Brüning in almost heroic terms as the last line of defense against radicalism and party dictatorship.45 But if Brüning chose not to wrap himself in Hindenburg’s mantle for fear of the 42

43

44

45

On the negotiations between Brüning and the DNVP party leadership, see Pünder’s memoranda from 12 and 19 July 1930, in Die Kabinette Brüning, ed. Koops, I: 301–03, 326–29, as well as the minutes of the DNVP Reichstag delegation, 17 July 1930, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 72a. Thomas Wisser, “Die Diktaturmaßnahmen im Juli 1930 – Autoritäre Umwandlung der Demokratie?,” in Offene Staatlichkeit. Festschrift für Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Rolf Grawert, Bernhard Schlink, Rainer Wahl, and Joachim Wieland (Berlin, 1995), 415–34. For a more recent statement of this argument, see Wolfram Pyta, “Die Präsidialgewalt in der Weimarer Republic,” in Parlamentarismus in Europa. Deutschland, England und Frankreich im Vergleich, ed. Marie Luise Recker (Munich, 2004), 65–95, esp. 81–94. Brüning, “Im Kampf um die Sanierung. Vor der Rheinischen Zentrumspartei am 8. August 1930 in Köln,” in Heinrich Brüning, Zwei Jahre am Steuer des Reichs. Reden aus Brünings Kanzlerzeit (Cologne, 1932), 12–19, the quote from 18. On Brüning’s campaign in the 1930 Reichstag elections, see Patch, Brüning, 96–8, and Hömig, Brüning, 190–95. Mit Brüning gegen Radikalismus und Parteiherrschaft für Wahrheit und Verantwortung (Cologne, n.d. [1930]).

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effect this might have upon his supporters in the Center and SPD, the various middle parties that formed the backbone of his coalition displayed no such scruple when it came to invoking the Hindenburg mythos as a way of legitimating their own campaigns. This was particularly true of the German People’s Party, which opened the campaign with the slogan “Mit Hindenburg für Deutschlands Rettung.”46 By the same token, the German State Party (Deutsche Staatspartei or DStP), which had been launched on 28 July by the leaders of the German Democratic Party and Young German Order in an effort to activate the “state-supporting elements of the German bourgeoisie” through their consolidation into a vigorous and united political phalanx,47 hoisted Hindenburg on its shield as an example of one whose selfless devotion to the state and nation served as an example that all Germans should emulate.48 No less significant in this respect is the fact that all of the three parties that emerged from the ruins of the DNVP’s left wing – the Christian-National Peasants and Farmers’ Party (Christlich-Nationale Bauern und Landvolkpartei or CNBLP), the Christian-Social People’s Service (Christlich-sozialer Volksdienst or CSVD), and the newly founded Conservative People’s Party (Konservative Volkspartei or KVP) – all availed themselves of the legitimizing force of the Hindenburg mythos in their struggle to establish themselves as viable alternatives to Hugenberg’s DNVP.49 And when finally, under heavy pressure from prospective backers in the German industrial establishment, the DVP, KVP, and Business Party

46 47

48

49

Mit Hindenburg für Deutschlands Rettung!, ed. Reichsgeschäftsstelle der Deutschen Volkspartei. Als Manuskript gedruckt (Berlin, n.d. [1930]), 24–26. Artur Mahraun, Die Deutsche Staatspartei. Eine Selbsthilfeorganisation Deutschen Staatsbürgertums (Berlin, 1930), 3–4, 8–10. For further information on the founding of the DStP, see Larry Eugene Jones, German Liberalism and the Dissolution of the Weimar Party System, 1918–1933 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1988), 366–77. For the hostile reaction of the DVP party leadership to these developments, see Ludwig Richter, Die Deutsche Volkspartei 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2002), 651–61. For example, see [Jungdeutscher Orden], Unser Weg zur Deutschen Staatspartei, Der Staatsbürger, no. 30 (Berlin, 1930), 4–8, as well as the more fully formulated statement by Artur Mahraun, Die neue Front. Hindenburgs Sendung (Berlin, 1928). On the fragmentation of the moderate right in the campaign for the 1930 Reichstag elections and the failure of efforts to reconstitute the various factions that had broken away from the DNVP into a united political front, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Sammlung oder Zersplitterung? Die Bestrebungen zur Bildung einer neuen Mittelpartei in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik 1930–1933,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25 (1977): 265–304. On the founding of the KVP, see Erasmus Jonas, Die Volkskonservativen 1928–1933. Entwicklung, Struktur, Standort und staatspolitische Zielsetzung (Düsseldorf, 1965), 79–82.

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agreed on 22 August to set aside their differences for the duration of the campaign, this too was done in the name of Hindenburg’s reform plan.50 Brüning and his supporters in the Reich chancery clearly hoped that the efforts to consolidate the various middle parties that stood between the Center and DNVP into some sort of united front for the September 1930 Reichstag elections would prove successful. Although no one believed that this would have given the chancellor enough support to govern without the use of Article 48, a united bloc of fifty to seventy deputies on the moderate Right would have significantly strengthened his position in the Reichstag.51 But the outcome of the September 1930 Reichstag elections came as a severe shock to the Reich chancery and dealt a severe blow to Brüning’s strategic calculations. For not only did the forces of Germany’s moderate Right enter the campaign badly divided and exhausted much of their precious resources in fruitless polemics against each other, but the disunity of the parties between the Center and DNVP provided the most militant of Germany’s right-wing parties, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, with an opening it quickly and effectively exploited. Contrary to government expectations that the Nazis would win something in the vicinity of fifty Reichstag mandates,52 the NSDAP scored a smashing victory at the polls in which it received over 6.4 million votes – or 18.2 percent of the popular vote – and a startling 107 seats in the Reichstag. Of the parties that supported the Brüning government, the fledgling Conservative People’s Party ended up with only four Reichstag seats, while the other two parties that had emerged from the ruins of the DNVP’s left wing – namely, the CNBLP and CSVD – ended up with nineteen and fourteen Reichstag seats, respectively. By the same token, the DVP lost a third of its seats in the Reichstag, while the DStP elected five fewer deputies than its predecessor, the German Democratic Party, had elected in 1928. The Business Party, on the other hand, held on to all of the twenty-three deputies it had elected two years earlier but nevertheless sustained losses in earlier strongholds that were only partially offset by gains in other parts of the country. Of the various parties that supported the Brüning cabinet, only the Center

50

51 52

Nationalliberale Correspondenz, 22 Aug. 1930, no. 162. On the earlier stages of these negotiations, see Westarp, “Bericht über Verhandlungen mit der DVP wegen Zusammenwirkens für das Hindenburg-Programm,” n.d. [Aug. 1930], NL Westarp, Gärtringen, II/61. Entry for 14 Sept. 1930, in Pünder, Politik in der Reichskanzlei, 58–59. On the government’s election predictions, see the memorandum by Pünder, 15 Sept. 1930, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 134/228–30.

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and its Bavarian counterpart, the Bavarian People’s Party, were able to weather the Nazi onslaught.53 The outcome of the 1930 Reichstag elections – and in particular the surprising triumph of the NSDAP – left the Brüning cabinet far more dependent upon the goodwill and support of the Reich president than it had been before the election. Under these circumstances, it was unclear just how long the aura of Hindenburg’s mythos would continue to provide the Reich chancellor with the legitimacy he needed to implement his reform agenda before it finally exhausted itself on the hard realities of German economic life. In early October, Brüning met with Hitler in an attempt to assess the extent to which his party might be prepared to support his efforts at fiscal and economic reform but ended up listening to an hour-long monologue that only underscored how far apart the two men were.54 Similarly, Brüning’s efforts to reach an understanding with Hugenberg and the DNVP party leadership foundered on the Nationalists’ adamant refusal to consider any change in their position as long as the Social Democrats remained in the Prussian state government.55 In the meantime, the coalition of parties that had united behind Brüning’s reform program in the spring and summer of 1930 had begun to fall apart as first the Christian-National Peasants and Farmers’ Party and then the Business Party broke with the cabinet.56 It was, therefore, only through the toleration of the Social Democrats that Brüning was able to prevent the Reichstag from stripping his government of its emergency 53

54

55

56

On the 1930 election results, see Alfred Milatz, “Das Ende der Parteiein im Spiegel der Wahlen 1930 bis 1933,” in Das Ende der Parteien 1933, ed. Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey (Düsseldorf, 1960), 743–93, esp. 744–58. On the correlation between economic crisis and the rise of the radical parties, see Jürgen W. Falter and Reinhard Zintl, “The Economic Crisis of the 1930s and the Nazi Vote,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 19 (1988): 55–85. The most detailed account of this meeting is to be found in a memorandum that Pünder prepared on Brüning’s meeting with the Reich president, 8 Oct. 1930, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 678/31–32, reprinted in Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II, ed. Koops, 1: 510–12. See also the entry for 7 Oct. 1930 in Pünder, Politik in der Reichskanzlei, ed. Vogelsang, 65. Brüning’s own account in Memoiren, 191–96, is not entirely consistent with the contemporary record, particularly in its reference to the ultimate restoration of the monarchy. See also Hömig, Brüning, 204-08, and Patch, Brüning, 134–35. Hugenberg and Oberfohren to Brüning, 14 Oct. 1930, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 2654/250–51. See also Ernst Oberfohren, Kampfprogramm der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei. Rede am 17. Oktober 1930 im Reichstag, Deutschnationale Flugschrift, no. 350 (Berlin, 1930). For further details, see Martin Schumacher, Mittelstandsfront und Republik. Die Wirtschaftspartei – Reichspartei des deutschen Mittelstandes 1919–1933 (Düsseldorf, 1972), 144–60, and Markus Müller, Die Christlich-Nationale Bauern- und Landvolkpartei 1928–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2001), 189–98.

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powers and keep the second of his emergency decrees in December 1930 from being repealed.57 None of this, however, affected the strong support the chancellor continued to receive from Hindenburg, Groener, and Schleicher through the winter of 1930–31 and into the following spring.58 In the meantime, the economic situation continued to deteriorate. The agrarian relief package that Brüning and Schiele had enacted with such great fanfare in April 1930 had done little to alleviate the increasingly desperate situation in which German agriculture found itself as a result of rising production costs and the collapse of agricultural prices on the world market.59 The situation was particularly desperate among the large landowners east of the Elbe, where estates large and small were faced with insolvency, bankruptcy, and foreclosure.60 All of this severely weakened the position of the Brüning cabinet in the German agricultural community. In October 1930 Hansjoachim von Rohr-Demmin from the Pomeranian Rural League (Pommerscher Landbund) organized a revolt against the government’s farm policy at the upper echelons of the National Rural League that resulted in the resignation of Schiele and the CNBLP’s Karl Hepp from the RLB presidium and the election of Count Eberhard von Kalckreuth as the new RLB president.61 Kalckreuth was an outspoken advocate of East Elbian estate agriculture and a close ally of the DNVP’s Alfred Hugenberg, and at the February 1931 congress of the National Rural League in Berlin he sharply criticized Schiele’s performance as 57 58 59 60

61

In this respect, see Patch, Brüning, 112–15, and Hömig, Brüning, 244–50. For example, see the entry for 2 Dec. 1930, in Pünder, Politik in der Reichskanzlei, 77–80. For a telling description of the situation in the German countryside, see the letter from Hammerstein-Loxten to Brüning, 28 Apr. 1931, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 9. For a detailed regional study of the agrarian crisis and its political implications, see Mechthild Hempe, Ländliche Gesellschaft in der Krise. Mecklenburg in der Weimarer Republik (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2002), esp. 317–46. On the anti-Schiele fronde in the RLB, see Wilmowsky to Krupp, 28 Oct. 1930, in the Familienarchiv Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Historisches Archiv Krupp, Essen (hereafter cited as HA Krupp Essen), FAH 23/504. On the initiative of the Pomeranian Rural League, see the letter from the executive committee of the Pomeranian Rural League to the RLB presidium, 6 Sept. 1930, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 60/145–47, and Rohr-Demmin to Duesterberg and Darré, 25 Oct. 1930, BA Berlin, R 72, 40/109, as well as the letter from Arnim-Boitzenburg to Rohr, 1 Oct. 1930, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Count Dietlof von Arnim-Boitzenburg, Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv, Potsdam, Rep. 37 (Boitzenburg) (herafter cited as BLHA Potsdam, NL Arnim-Boitzenburg, 4434/73. For further details, see Rainer Pomp, Bauern und Großgrundbesitzer auf ihrem Weg ins Dritte Reich. Der Brandenburgische Landbund 1919–1933 (Berlin, 2011), 322–25.

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Reich minister of agriculture and aligned the RLB with the forces of the so-called national opposition in their struggle against the Brüning cabinet.62 The increasing radicalization of the conservative farm lobby could also be seen in the fact that scarcely a week after Kalckreuth’s broadside, Albrecht Wendhausen and three other members of the CNBLP Reichstag delegation broke ranks with their party leadership and joined the DNVP and NSDAP in seceding from the Reichstag to protest the changes in the rules of parliamentary procedure that the Reichstag had just approved to expedite adoption of the government’s most recent tax and economic program.63 In explaining his motives, Wendhausen read a brief statement before the Reichstag on behalf of himself and his colleagues in which he hailed the national opposition as the “true Germany” and declared their solidarity with its objectives.64 All of this underscored the increasing radicalization of the German countryside and the weakness of the Brüning cabinet among conservative farm leaders who had initially welcomed his installation as chancellor. But the ineffectiveness of the Brüning-Schiele farm program in face of the deepening agrarian crisis had given the NSDAP and the forces of the national opposition an opening into which they rapidly insinuated themselves.65 In the meantime, the Brüning cabinet had to face another crisis that was even more daunting, namely, the German banking crisis. In May 1931, the Austrian Credit Institute for Trade and Commerce (Österreicher Credit-Anstalt für Handel und Gewerbe) shocked the international banking community by declaring bankruptcy. It was only a matter of time 62

63

64

65

For the text of Kalckreuth’s speech, see the report in Der Reichs-Landbund 11, no. 6 (7 Feb. 1931): 78–82. On Kalckreuth’s triumph and political course, see Stephanie Merkenich, Grüne Front gegen Weimar. Reichs-Landbund und agrarische Lobbyismus 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf, 1998), 304–9. See also Wilmowsky to Krupp, 2 Feb. 1931, HA Krupp Essen, FAH 23/504. The ulterior motives that lay behind the secession can be inferred from the DNVP, Mitteilungen Nr. 4 der Parteizentrale, 17 Feb. 1931, NSSA Osnabrück, C 1, 22/57–59. For the best analysis of the secession, particularly from the Nazi perspective, see Martin Döring, “Parlamentarischer Arm der Bewegung.” Die Nationalsozialisten im Reichstag der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 2001), 276–85. “Die Erklärungen der nationalen Opposition beim Auszug aus dem Reichstag am 10. Februar 1931,” in Das freie Deutschland. Nationale Zeitschrift für Politik und Wirtschaft 1, no. 20 (14 Feb. 1931): 748–51. On the split in the CNBLP, see the report in the Nassauische Bauern-Zeitung. Organ und Verlage der Bezirksbauernschaft für Nassau und den Kreis Wetzlar e.V., 11 Feb. 1931, no. 34. For a particularly insightful analysis of the Nazi breakthrough into Germany’s rural and small-town Protestant middle classes, see Wolfram Pyta, Dorfgemeinschaft und Parteipolitik 1918–1933. Die Verschränkung von Milieu und Parteien in den protestantischen Landgebieten Deutschlands in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1996).

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before the ripple effects of the Credit Institute’s collapse would be felt in Germany, and on the weekend of 11–12 July 1931, the Darmstadt and National Bank (Darmstädter-und Nationalbank or, as it was more commonly known, the Danat-Bank) under the direction of Jakob Goldschmidt closed its doors as a result of speculative investments and the subsequent falsification of financial reports in the North German Wool Carding and Worsted Spinning Company (Nordeutsche Wohlkämmerei und Kammgartspinnerei) of Bremen.66 The collapse of the Danat-Bank sent shock waves throughout the entire German banking community and prompted a series of emergency measures by the Brüning government designed to prevent a run on the mark and the complete collapse of the German economy.67 But if the banking crisis was the most dramatic event of the German depression, then the most visible sign of the deepening economic crisis was unemployment. The number of those officially registered as unemployed would rise from 1.6 million in October 1929 to a peak of 6.13 million in February 1932. This statistic, however, did not reveal the full extent of the unemployment crisis in that it did not include the “invisible” unemployed whose entitlement to benefits had expired and therefore no longer bothered to register with government authorities or the various categories of female and younger workers who were excluded from benefits by a series of changes in unemployment insurance coverage. Estimates of just how many unemployed workers escaped official statistics range from one to three million, with the result that the actual number of those who found themselves without a job at the peak of the depression was somewhere between seven and nine million.68 All of this began to place an increasingly heavy strain on Brüning’s already fragile ties to Germany’s industrial elite. Given the weakness of the bourgeois party spectrum and the repeated failure of efforts to consolidate the parties of the middle and moderate Right into a cohesive 66

67 68

Gerald D. Feldman, “Jakob Goldschmidt, the History of the Banking Crisis of 1931, and the Problem of Freedom of Manoeuvre in the Weimar Economy,” in Zerrissene Zwischenkriegszeit. Wirtschaftshistorische Beiträge. Knut Borchardt zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Christoph Buchheim, Michael Hutter, and Harold James (Baden-Baden, 1994), 307–27. For further details, see the classic study by Karl Erich Born, Die deutsche Bankenkrise 1931. Finanzen und Politik (Munich, 1967), as well as the pertinent section in Harold James, The German Slump: Politics and Economics, 1924–1936 (Oxford, 1986), 283–323. Patch, Brüning, 165–67. For further detail, see Born, Bankenkrise, 110–77. Peter D. Stachura, “Introduction: The Development of Unemployment in Modern German History,” in Unemployment and the Great Depression in Weimar Germany, ed. Peter D. Stachura (New York, 1986), 1–28, here 14.

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political force,69 Germany’s industrial leadership had little recourse but to rely upon its access to the cabinet and ministerial bureaucracy to influence the legislative agenda of the national government. In this respect, however, German industry – and particularly the leaders of Ruhr heavy industry – was determined to use the deepening economic crisis to force fundamental changes in the structure of German economic life. Nothing figured more prominently in the calculus of Germany’s industrial leadership than the need to overhaul the system of compulsory arbitration as part of a more sweeping strategy to reduce wages and production costs throughout the economy as a whole.70 Although what industry had in mind was clearly in line with Brüning’s objective of reducing production costs so that Germany could regain dominance on the international market once the crisis had passed, it ran into strong opposition not only from Brüning’s own supporters in the Christian labor movement but more importantly from the Social Democrats who had begrudgingly tolerated his austerity program since the fall of 1930 rather than bring down his government and clear the way for the installation of a new government that might have been even more reactionary than the one in power.71 As long as the chancellor continued to rely upon the toleration of the Social Democrats to remain in office, there was little likelihood that he would accede to industry’s demands for a fundamental overhaul of the existing wage structure and system of binding arbitration. The first signs of a crack in industrial support for the Brüning cabinet appeared in late April 1931 when Fritz Springorum from the Hoesch Steel Works in Dortmund announced to his peers in the National Federation of German Industry that he was no longer prepared to share responsibility for the half-measures of the national government and that, at the appropriate moment, he would come out in open opposition to its policies.72

69 70

71 72

In this respect, see Silverberg to Jarres, 17 Oct. 1930, BA Koblenz, NL Jarres, 45. For further details, see Bernd Weisbrod, “Industrial Crisis Strategy in the Great Depression,” in Economic Crisis and Political Collapse: The Weimar Republic, 1924–1933, ed. Jürgen von Kruedener (New York, Oxford, and Munich, 1990), 45–62, as well as his more fully documented analysis in “Befreiung von den ‘Tariffesseln’: Deflationspolitik als Krisenstrategie der Unternehmer in der Ära Brüning,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 11 (1985): 295–325. Heinrich August Winkler, “Choosing the Lesser Evil: The German Social Democrats and the Fall of the Weimar Republic,” Journal of Contemporary History 25 (1990): 205–27. Springorum to Reusch, 20 Apr. 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Fritz Springorum in the ThyssenKrupp Konzernarchiv, Außenstelle Hoesch-Archiv, Dortmund (hereafter cited as TKA Dortmund, NL Springorum), B 1a 78. See also Blank to Reusch, 25 Apr. 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Paul Reusch in the Rheinisch-Westfälisches

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Springorum then proceeded to call a special meeting of the membership of the Langnamverein in Düsseldorf on 3 June 1931. The Langnamverein represented the economic interests of Ruhr heavy industry, where antiBrüning sentiment was considerably stronger than in most other sectors of the German industrial establishment. Alerted as to what was about to happen, Brüning was able to dissuade Springorum from having the Langnamverein take a public stand that might compromise his position as chancellor just as he was about to embark upon an important initiative in the reparations question.73 As a result, the resolution adopted at the close of the meeting stopped short of a break with the Brüning cabinet but nevertheless sent a clear signal, as the closing remarks by Albert Vögler from the United Steel Works stressed, that none of what was necessary to restore industrial profitability would be possible without firm and decisive action on the part of a national government that stood above the concerns of individual political parties.74 This resolution reflected a clear shift to the right on the part of the Ruhr industrial establishment with its implicit demand that Brüning distance himself from the Social Democrats and place himself at the head of a truly national cabinet that could address Germany’s economic crisis without concern for the special interests of the various political parties. In contrast to the Langnamverein, the National Federation of German Industry continued to support the chancellor, in large part because it saw no viable alternative to Brüning as head of the national government. But even here Ruhr heavy industry was busy at work intensifying its pressure on the RDI in the hope that it too would line up behind its demands for an

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Wirtschaftsarchiv, Cologne, Abteilung 130 (hereafter cited as RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch), 4001012024/8b. The meeting took place on 20 May 1931 despite reservations on the part of Springorum’s associates that such a meeting was advisable. See Springorum to Blank, 15 May 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 4001012024/8. Vögler’s role as a mediator between Brüning and the radical Right was no doubt critical in persuading Springorum to meet with the chancellor. In this respect, see Blank to Reusch, 27 Apr. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 4001012024/8. For further information, see Reinhard Neebe, Paul Silverberg und der Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie in der Krise der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen, 1981), 90–93. For the text of the resolution, see the published minutes of the membership meeting of the Langnamverein, 3 June 1931, in Mitteilungen des Vereins zur Wahrung der gemeinsamen wirtschaftlichen Interessen in Rheinland und Westfalen, Neue Folge, Heft 20 (1931), 49–51. For Vögler’s speech, see 44–49. See also the detailed discussion of this meeting in Michael Grübler, Die Spitzenverbände der Wirtschaft und das erste Kabinett Brüning. Vom Ende der Großen Koalition 1929/30 bis zum Vorabend der Bankenkrise 1931. Eine Quellenstudie (Düsseldorf, 1982), 443–46.

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even more aggressive course of action with respect to the Brüning cabinet. Carl Duisberg, the RDI’s president since 1925 and a leading figure in the German chemical industry, was nearing seventy and had already announced his intention to step down as the RDI’s chief executive on his next birthday in September. Duisberg was a political moderate who had continued to support Brüning despite the difficulties in which the chancellor currently found himself.75 But Reusch, Springorum, and the leaders of Ruhr heavy industry had grown weary of Duisberg’s softness toward the Social Democrats and organized labor, and in the spring of 1931 they began to lay the groundwork for the election of a new president who would presumably take a harder line with respect to the Brüning cabinet. The person they quickly settled on was Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the chief executive of one of Germany’s largest industrial enterprises and a member of the “Ruhrlade” since its creation at the beginning of 1928.76 Though politically more moderate than the vast majority of his peers in the Ruhr industrial establishment, Krupp was unequivocally committed to the preservation of the capitalist economic system and vigorously opposed efforts by the socialist Left to undermine the individualistic foundations of German economic life.77 But not even his election could mollify the more militant elements within Ruhr heavy industry or reconcile them to the Brüning chancellorship. As the Gutehoffnungshütte’s Paul Reusch, perhaps the most politically astute of the Ruhr industrial barons, wrote to the RDI’s Ludwig Kastl on 6 September 1931: It is my humble opinion that Brüning, after he has failed to fulfill all of the hopes we had placed in him and after he has not found the courage to break with the

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For example, see Duisberg to Kirdorff, 26 June 1931, Bayer-Archiv, Leverkusen (hereafter cited as WA Bayer, Leverkusen), Autographen-Sammlung, reprinted in Carl Duisberg (1861–1935). Briefe eines Industriellen, ed. Kordula Kühlen (Munich, 2012), 651–54. For an overview of Duisberg’s political activities in the Weimar Republic, see Gottfried Plumpe, Die I. G. Farbenindustrie AG. Wirtschaft, Technik und Politik 1904–1945 (Berlin, 1990), 491–545. On the preparations for Krupp’s election, see Reusch to Krupp, 5 May 1931, and Krupp to Duisberg, 10 June 1931, both in RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 4001012024/8. On Krupp’s political views in the Weimar Republic, see R. J. Overy, “‘Primacy Always Belongs to Politics’: Gustav Krupp and the Third Reich,” in R. J. Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1994), 119–43, here 126–27. On the general context in which the change in the RDI leadership took place, see Reinhard Neebe, “Unternehmerverbände und Gewerkschaften in den Jahren der Großen Krise,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9 (1983): 302–30, esp. 317–20.

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Social Democrats, must now be fought by business and the Reich Association [of German Industry] in the sharpest possible terms and that industry should openly state its lack of confidence in him.78

This was nothing less than a declaration of war against the Brüning cabinet and bore dramatic testimony to the extent to which the Ruhr industrial elite had become alienated from the chancellor and his policies. The disaffection that had made itself so apparent among Germany’s agricultural and industrial elites extended to the leaders of the German military as well.79 Here the key figure was Schleicher, who had served as the linchpin between the cabinet and Reich president and who had provided the chancellor with the political cover he needed to carry out his social and economic reforms with the use of the president’s emergency powers under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. Like Brüning, Schleicher too had frequented the salons of the young conservative movement in the early 1920s and shared the chancellor’s concern about how the limitations of the existing party system affected and constrained the conduct of national policy.80 Schleicher enjoyed close ties to the young conservatives and had been on cordial terms with Heinrich von Gleichen from the German Lords’ Club (Deutscher Herrenklub or DHK) since at least the fall of 1927.81 Since its founding in late 1924, the German Lords’ Club had provided a common ground upon which representatives of Germany’s bourgeois and aristocratic elites could meet. The DHK had distanced itself from the revolutionary conservatism of its immediate

78

79

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Reusch to Kastl, 6 Sept. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101220/11b. In a similar vein, see Reusch to Betz, 11 Oct. 1931, ibid, 4001012007/6, and Springorum to Winkhaus, 4 Sept. 1931, TKA Dortmund, NL Springorum, B 1a 51. For further information on Reusch’s political activities, see Gerald D. Feldman, “Paul Reusch and the Politics of German Heavy Industry 1908–1933,” in People and Communities in the Western World, ed. Gene Brucker, 2 vols. (Homewood, IL, and Georgetown, Ont., 1979), 2: 293–331, as well as the two more recent studies by Christian Marx, Paul Reusch und die Gutehoffnungshütte. Leitung eines deutschen Großunternehmens (Göttingen, 2012), 308–25, and Peter Langer, Macht und Verantwortung. Der Ruhrbaron Paul Reusch (Essen, 2012), esp. 459–512. By far the best analysis of the military’s strategic calculations in the late summer and fall of 1931 is still the classic study by Vogelsang, Reichswehr, Staat und NSDAP, 123–33. See also the incisive critique of the Reichswehr leadership in 1931–32 in Francis L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford, 1966), 325–38. For Brüning’s views on the German party system, see Leo Schwering, “Stegerwalds und Brünings Vorstellungen über Parteireform und Parteiensystem,” in Staat, Wirtschaft und Politik in der Weimarer Republik. Festschrift für Heinrich Brüning, ed. Ferdinand A. Hermens and Theodor Schieder (Berlin, 1967), 23–40. Gleichen to Schleicher, 23 Nov. 1927, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 7/9.

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predecessor, the June Club (Juniklub), and embraced a brand of young conservatism that was more attuned to the economic interests of Germany’s agricultural and industrial elites.82 Though preferring to remain out of the political limelight so that they might pursue their political goals as unobtrusively as possible,83 the leaders of the Lords’ Club paid particularly close attention to developments within the DNVP and reacted to Hugenberg’s election as the new party leader in October 1928 with expressions of concern about the party’s future.84 In a speech at the DHK’s annual banquet in December 1929 just after the first of two secessions on the DNVP’s left wing had taken place, DHK president Bodo von Alvensleben assailed “the irresponsible demagogy of an increasingly radicalized opposition” in what was a thinly veiled reference to Hugenberg’s leadership of the German Right.85 After the second secession from the DNVP in July 1930, Gleichen and the leaders of the DHK threw their moral and journalistic support behind the newly founded Conservative People’s Party in the hope that it would establish itself as a broadly based party of conservative opposition to the 82

83

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On the DHK’s unabashed elitism, see Stephan Malinowski, “‘Führertum’ und ‘Neuer Adel.’ Die Deutsche Adelsgenossenschaft und der Deutscher Herrenklub in der Weimarer Republik,” in Adel und Bürgertum in Deutschland II. Entwicklungslinien und Wendepunkte im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Heinz Reif (Berlin, 2001): 173–211. See also the analysis of the DHK membership in what still remains the most detailed history of the organization by Manfred Schoeps, “Der Deutsche Herrenklub. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Jungkonservatismus in der Weimarer Republik” (Ph.D. diss., Universität ErlangenNürnberg, 1974), 46–52. Yuji Ishida, Jungkonservative in der Weimarer Republik. Der Ring-Kreis 1928–1933 (Frankfurt am Main, 1988), provides a detailed study of the DHK’s strategy and tactics, while two more recent studies by Berthold Petzinna, Erziehung zum deutschen Lebenstil. Ursprung und Entwicklung des jungkonservativen “Ring”-Kreises 1918–1933 (Berlin, 2000), and André Postert, Von der Kritik der Parteien zur außerparlamentarischen Opposition. Die Jungkonservative Klub-Bewegung in der Weimarer Republik und ihre Auflösung im Nationalsozialismus (Baden-Baden, 2014), provide a broader overview on the organizational structure and ideological breadth of young conservatism in the Weimar Republic. For a statement of the DHK’s strategic objectives, see Gleichen, “Die neue Front!,” Der Ring. Politische Wochenchrift 1, no. 33 (12 Aug. 1928): 613–14, as well as the statements by Alvensleben and Hardenberg at a meeting of the DHK executive committee, 14 Sept. 1928, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Ferdinand von Lüninck in the Vereinigtes Westfälisches Adelsarchiv, Münster (hereafter cited as VWA Münster, NL Lüninck), 819. For further insight into Gleichen’s strategic objectives, see his letter to Jung, 14 Dec. 1930, BHStA Munich, NL Jung, 22. In this respect, see the article series by Gleichen, “Staat, Opposition und Nation,” Der Ring 1, no. 46 (11 Nov. 1928): 873–75; no. 47 (18 Nov. 1928): 893–95; no. 48 (25 Nov. 1928): 913–15; no. 49 (2 Dec. 1929): 933–38; and no. 50 (9 Dec. 1928): 955–58. For the text of Alvensleben’s remarks, see Schmidt-Pauli, “Jahresessen des Deutschen Herrenklubs,” Politik und Gesellschaft 3, no. 6 (30 Dec. 1929): 26–28.

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existing political system.86 But unlike the People’s Conservatives, the DHK did not rally to the support of Brüning when he assumed the chancellorship in the spring of 1930. From the perspective of the DHK, the new chancellor was too much a parliamentary tactician to provide the strong, independent leadership necessary to free the German state from the grip of the parties and organized economic interests. The very fact that Brüning still felt compelled to seek parliamentary sanction for critical components of his fiscal and economic program suggested that he was not an appropriate vehicle for bringing about the fundamental changes in the constitutional foundations of German political life that the Lords’ Club regarded as essential.87 In April 1931 Gleichen founded the Civil Casino for the ostensible purpose, as he explained in a series of letters to Schleicher in late 1930 and early 1931, of bringing the leaders of the Ring Movement together with high-ranking government officials in a forum designed to facilitate a free and open exchange of ideas on the major political issues of the day without requiring the former to abandon their critical stance toward the Brüning cabinet.88 But the real purpose of the Civil Casino, as a letter from Gleichen to Reichsbank president Hans Luther in mid-June 1931 clearly revealed, was actually far more insidious. In what was a blatant, if not shameless, attempt to enlist Luther’s support for the campaign against Brüning, Gleichen urged the Reichsbank president to dissociate himself publicly from Brüning’s political course and to assume the initiative in the struggle for a sweeping overhaul of the existing political system that would include a reform of Germany’s federal structure and severe limitations on the prerogatives of the Reichstag in favor of a decidedly more authoritarian form of government.89 In proposing this, however, Gleichen was not advocating the transfer of political power from Brüning to the parties of the national opposition but the formation of an

86 87

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Gleichen to Westarp, 26 July 1930, with the enclosure “Information zur Beurteilung der innerpolitischen Lage,” 24 July 1930, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, II/40. In this respect, see the two articles “Die Flucht vor der Verantwortung,” Der Ring 3, no. 13 (30 Mar. 1930): 241, and “Wir warnen!,” ibid, 3, no. 15 (13 Apr. 1930): 281. See also Ishida, Jungkonservative, 139–42. For example, see Gleichen to Schleicher, 15 Sept. 1930, and 11 Dec. 1930, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 7/32–33, and his two letters from 10 Mar. 1931, ibid, 7/ 45–46, as well as their correspondence from 14 Jan. 1929 to 18 Mar. 1932, ibid, 77/ 77–86. See also the “Richtlinien” and “Satzungen” of the Civil Casino, n.d. [Mar.-Apr. 1931], ibid, 7/53–57. Gleichen to Luther, 15 June 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Hans Luther, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Luther, 336.

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entirely new authoritarian cabinet capable of operating in complete independence from all of Germany’s political parties, the NSDAP included.90 Although Schleicher had been actively involved in the deliberations that led up to the founding of the Civil Casino, this did not necessarily mean that Gleichen’s strategic objectives enjoyed his personal blessing.91 Among other things, Brüning continued to enjoy Schleicher’s full support well into the early fall of 1931 and was not yet in danger of losing the confidence of Germany’s military leadership.92 Schleicher and his associates, however, had grown increasingly weary of Brüning’s efforts to prevent a repudiation of his policies in the Reichstag by playing the Left off against the Right and were pressing the chancellor for a definitive break with the Social Democrats for the sake of closer ties to the German Right.93 The strategic reassessment that was beginning to take shape in the defense ministry was clearly reflected in a memorandum on foreign and domestic policy that Schleicher and his associates prepared in August 1931 and that identified three possible solutions to the dilemma in which the Brüning cabinet found itself if it failed to create a broad popular front for the government’s winter program. The chancellor could expand his government to the Right even though this would most likely drive the Social Democrats into bitter and uncompromising opposition. Or, conversely, he could align himself with the Social Democrats, in which case he would almost certainly alienate the German Right. Or, as a last resort, 90 91

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In this respect, see the correspondence between Heinrichsbauer and Gleichen, 12–13 June 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Luther, 336. Schleicher declined to join the Casino Club in the late spring of 1931. See Schleicher to Regendanz, 11 May 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 7/52. Schleicher did not join the Casino until Sept. 1931. See Radowitz to Schleicher, 22 Oct. 1931, ibid, 7/70. Schleicher’s reluctance to join the Casino Club may very well have been related to two articles critical of Brüning that appeared in the DHK’s organ, Der Ring. In this respect, see Meynen to Silverberg, 21 May 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Paul Silverberg, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (Hereafted cited as BA Koblenz, NL Silverberg), 578/26. For example, see the correspondence between Schleicher and Erwin Planck, a highranking official in the Brüning administration, in Aug.–Sept. 1931, in Planck’s upublished Nachlaß, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Handschriften Abteilung, Bestand NL 334 (hereafter cited as Stabi Berlin, NL Planck), vols. 68–69, as cited in Astrid von Pufendorf, Die Plancks. Eine Familie zwischen Patriotismus und Widerstand (Berlin, 2006), 246–54. Schleicher’s reluctance to join the Casino Club may very well have been related to two articles critical of Brüning that appeared in the DHK’s organ, Der Ring. On Brüning’s displeasure with the editorial policy of Der Ring, see Meynen to Silverberg, 21 May 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Paul Silverberg, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Silverberg), 578/26. Planck to Schleicher, 18 Aug. 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 21/81–84, also in Stabi Berlin, NL Planck, 69.

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Brüning could simply govern without the support of a parliamentary majority in the Reichstag.94 Of the three options, it was clearly the first that Schleicher and his entourage favored. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the great sense of relief that Erwin Planck, a close Schleicher associate and a high-ranking official in the Reich chancery, expressed upon learning that the chancellor was no longer contemplating the addition of the SPD’s Carl Severing, the Prussian minister of the interior, to his cabinet in return for Prussia’s support for a reform of Germany’s federal structure.95 Schleicher’s reassessment of Brüning’s political strategy also reflected the mood in the presidential palace. In fact, as Schleicher’s correspondence with Planck from the late summer of 1931 indicates, frustration with Brüning’s political course and pressure for a change in the direction and composition of the national cabinet were actually much greater among the presidential entourage than at the upper echelons of Germany’s military establishment.96 For although Hindenburg continued to respect Brüning’s accomplishments in the field of foreign policy and believed that he was indispensable for the success of Germany’s efforts to free itself from the burden of reparations, he had grown increasingly disenchanted with Brüning’s domestic policies and his failure to reverse the economic downturn that now gripped the nation. Like Schleicher, Hindenburg too believed that problems facing the nation could be solved if only Brüning would free himself from the influence of the Social Democrats and reorganize his government by including the parties on the antigovernment Right.97 It was with this in mind that Hindenburg met with the DNVP’s Alfred Hugenberg on 1 August 1931 for the first time in over a year and a half in an attempt to gauge the strength of the DNVP’s hostility toward the Brüning cabinet. The Reich president was rewarded for his efforts with a commitment from the DNVP party chairman to meet with the chancellor at some point in the near future.98 In the meantime, 94 95

96 97 98

Undated memorandum from the ministerial office of the Reich defense ministry [Aug. 1931], BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 1/85–88. Planck to Schleicher, 26 Aug. 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 21/98–99. See also Schleicher to Groener, 28 Aug. 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Groener, 147/18–19, reprinted in Gordon A. Craig, “Briefe Schleichers an Groener,” Die Welt als Geschichte 11 (1951): 122–33, here 129. In this respect, see Schleicher to Planck, 20 Sept. 1931, Stabi Berlin, NL Planck, 68, quoted in Pufendorf, Die Plancks, 252–53. On Hindenburg’s estrangement from Brüning, see Patch, Brüning, 187–92. Memorandum by Meissner on Hindenburg’s meeting with Hugenberg, 1 Aug. 1931, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 2655/45–53.

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Schleicher had begun to send out feelers of his own to the National Socialists in an attempt to assess the sincerity of the pledge that Hitler had given at the trial of the three Ulm lieutenants in the fall of 1930 that he was committed to pursue the conquest of power by legal means only. What one has here are the origins of Schleicher’s infamous “taming strategy,” a strategy that in subsequent explanations of his policies toward the NSDAP Schleicher would date back to the summer of 1931.99 This strategy was predicated upon the assumption that alongside the more radical elements in the Nazi party, there existed a cadre of party leaders and officials who were committed to making a positive contribution to the solution of Germany’s social and economic problems. Saddling the Nazi beast with the burden of governmental responsibility would leave party leaders with no choice but to moderate the tone of their antigovernment rhetoric at the same time it would provide party moderates with the leverage they needed to wrest control of the party from the radicals around Joseph Goebbels and Ernst Röhm. Just where Hitler – or Brüning, for that matter – stood in all of this was far from clear.100 The idea that one could tame Nazism by saddling it with the burden of governmental responsibility so that it would then have no choice but to moderate the tone of its political rhetoric and to act as a responsible member of the ruling coalition was not new. Such an idea had been broached by no less savvy a politician than the former DNVP party leader Count Westarp in the immediate wake of the NSDAP’s electoral breakthrough in the 1930 Reichstag elections,101 and it would gain even greater currency within the ranks of Germany’s industrial elite over the summer and early fall of 1931.102 To be sure, no one in Germany’s industrial or military elite was at this point in time contemplating a transfer of power to Hitler and his Nazi minions. The assumption here was that giving the Nazis a share of power under conditions dictated by Germany’s conservative 99

100

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On this point, see the letter from Schleicher to Körner, 5 Aug. 1933, BA Berlin, R 601, 405/601–03. See also Schleicher’s letter to the editorial board of the Vossische Zeitung, 30 Jan. 1934, in the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich, NL Schleicher, ED 74. On Schleicher’s “taming strategy,” see Bracher, Auflösung der Weimarer Republik, 423–31, and Patch, Brüning, 220–31, as well as Hayes, “Question Mark with Epaulettes?,” 43–49. See also Gotthard Jasper, Die gescheiterte Zähmung. Wege zur Machtergreifung Hitlers 1930–1934 (Frankfurt a.M., 1986), 69–70, 73–74. Westarp, “Was nun?,” Volkskonservative Stimmen, 20 Sept. 1930, no. 36. See also Westarp to Fumetti, 20 Sept. 1930, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, II/40. For an excellent exposition of the “taming strategy” from the perspective of Ruhr heavy industry, see August Heinrichsbauer, Schwerindustrie und Politik (Essen-Kettwig, 1948), 40–42.

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elites would temper Nazi radicalism and, if successful, would either transform their party into a responsible coalition partner for the conservatives or drive a split between the moderate and radical wings of the Nazi party. But the mere fact that influential elements within Germany’s conservative elites were beginning to take such ideas seriously was a telling barometer of elite estrangement from the Brüning cabinet, if not from the one man with who had invested his prestige and reputation in its formation, Reich President Paul von Hindenburg. The real danger here was that what had begun as a crisis of confidence in the Brüning cabinet might quickly develop into a crisis of confidence in the Reich president himself. In so far as Hindenburg’s experiment in presidential government sought to restore and solidify the hegemonic aspirations of Germany’s conservative elites, the failure of that experiment posed a direct threat to the aura of Hindenburg’s own charisma and provided the radical Right with an opening into which it quickly sought to move.

3 The Road to Harzburg

As Brüning’s mandate to govern through the special emergency powers that the Weimar Constitution had vested in the office of the Reich president began to unravel in the summer and early fall of 1931, the radical Right was gearing up for a full-scale offensive directed not so much against the chancellor himself as against the system of government that made it possible for him to stay in power. Although the radical Right had been greatly energized by the deteriorating economic crisis and the radicalizing effect this had had upon significant sectors of the German population, it was nevertheless riddled by political divisions that were every bit as frustrating as those that bedeviled the forces supporting Brüning. At the heart of this disunity lay two fundamentally different political strategies. For whereas the DNVP and NSDAP both sought to polarize the nation through the annihilation of the various parties that stood between them and the socialist Left, the leaders of the Stahlhelm hoped to create a broad national front that included not only the DNVP and NSDAP but also the very parties that Hugenberg and Hitler had slated for annihilation. Behind this there lurked the even more contentious question of the role of National Socialism. To what extent and under what conditions were the forces of the non-Nazi Right – in this case not only the DNVP and Stahlhelm but also the more moderate right-wing parties that inhabited the political space between the DNVP and the Center – prepared to collaborate with the National Socialists in what the leaders of Germany’s radical Right envisaged as a common crusade against Weimar and all for which it supposedly stood? In other words, were the Nazis reliable allies in the struggle against Weimar, or did they

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represent a revolutionary force that would have to be domesticated before it could be harnessed in the service of a restorationist political agenda? The fact that the NSDAP had emerged from the 1930 Reichstag elections as the second strongest party in the Reichstag gave the Nazis a clear head start on the other organizations in the so-called national opposition when it came to filling the vacuum on the radical Right that had been created by the atrophy of the DNVP. But relations between the NSDAP and the more moderate organizations in the national front had been strained ever since the spring of 1930 when Hitler had resigned from the National Committee for the German Referendum (Reichsausschuß für das deutsche Volksbegehren), the umbrella organization that had been created to combat the Young Plan, in protest against Hugenberg’s decision to support the Brüning cabinet in its first parliamentary test of strength with the Social Democrats.1 After meeting with Hugenberg, Hitler agreed to postpone announcing his party’s withdrawal from the National Referendum Committee for fourteen days so that Hugenberg would have an opportunity to restore order in his party and bring it back in line with the opposition to the Brüning cabinet.2 But these plans were torpedoed when, much to Hitler’s great annoyance, Gregor Strasser, the Reich organization leader of the NSDAP and an outspoken opponent of his party’s ties to Hugenberg, broke the news of the NSDAP’s resignation from the National Referendum Committee in the columns of his own party paper, Der Nationalsozialist.3 It was against the background of these developments that the Stahlhelm, a nationalist veterans’ organization with an estimated 500,000 members and one of the most influential organizations on Germany’s paramilitary Right, tried to restore the unity of the national opposition by scheduling a meeting of the leaders of the National Rural League and the various parliamentary factions that stood to the right of the Center and DDP in Berlin’s fashionable Hotel Kaiserhof on the morning of 26 April 1930. The purpose of this meeting, as Stahlhelm leaders Franz Seldte and Theodor Duesterberg explained in a letter to Hitler, was to 1

2 3

In this respect, see Hitler to the presidium of the National Referendum Committee, 3 Apr. 1930, and Hugenberg to Hitler, 11 Apr. 1930, both in BA Koblenz, NL SchmidtHannover, 30. The episode is fully discussed in Maximilian Terhalle, Deutschnational in Weimar. Die politische Biographie des Reichstagsabgeordneten Otto Schmidt(-Hannover) 1888–1971 (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna), 2009, 242–44. Entry for 4 Apr. 1930 in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, 5 vols. (Munich and New York, 1997–2004), I/1, 124. Entry for 8 Apr. 1930, ibid, 125.

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counter the splintering that had taken place within the ranks of the antiMarxist parties and to lay the groundwork for closer cooperation between those parties in the event of new parliamentary or presidential elections.4 But the response to the Stahlhelm’s overture was anything but reassuring. Of the seventeen leaders who received invitations, only a half dozen or so agreed to make themselves available for the meeting on 26 April, whereas Hitler, Gregor Strasser, and the entire Nazi contingent declined to take part on the pretext that their presence was required for a two-day party leadership conference in Munich.5 By the same token, DNVP party chairman Alfred Hugenberg and Ernst Oberfohren, chairman of the DNVP Reichstag delegation, also declined to take part in the proposed meeting.6 Founded by Franz Seldte and a contingent of veterans of the Great War from Magdeburg in early 1919, the Stahlhelm had emerged from the plethora of free corps, combat leagues, and veterans’ organizations of the immediate postwar period to become the largest and most influential organization on Germany’s paramilitary Right.7 As the Stahlhelm grew in size and number, it also gravitated more and more into the orbit of radical nationalists like Theodor Duesterberg, who were hostile to Germany’s republican government and who favored the cultivation of closer ties to the right-wing DNVP. All of this posed a serious threat to the Stahlhelm’s internal solidarity and led to a compromise in the spring of 1927 whereby the organization’s national leadership was henceforth shared by Seldte

4

5 6 7

Seldte and Duesterberg to Hitler, 15 Apr. 1930, in the unpublished records of the Stahlhelm, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, Bestand R 72 (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, R 72), 14/118. For a fuller statement of the rationale behind this action, see Wagner, “Grundsatz und Kampfkunst,” as well as the report on the attacks in the Nazi press in Der Stahlhelm 12, no. 16 (20 Apr. 1930): 1. For a list of those invited to take part in this meeting, see “Einladungen an die führenden Persönlichkeiten der parlamentarischen Rechten,” n.d. [Apr. 1930], BA Berlin R 72, 14/137. In this respect, see Hess to Ausfeld, 17 Apr. 1930, BA Berlin, R 72, 14/86; Epp to Ausfeld, 20 Apr. 1930, ibid, 14/90; and Strasser to Ausfeld, 22 Apr. 1930, ibid, 14/81. Bureau of the DNVP Reichstag delegation to Ausfeld, 25 Apr. 1930, BA Berlin, R 72, 14/ 83. The milieu out of which the Stahlhelm emerged and the role of paramilitary violence in the early postwar period has received renewed attention in much recent work. In particular, see Robert Gerwarth, “The Central European Counter-Revolution: Paramilitary Violence in Germany, Austria and Hungary after the Great War,” Past and Present 200, no. 1 (Aug. 2008): 175–209, and Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, “Vectors of Violence: Paramilitarism in Europe after the Great War, 1917–1923,” Journal of Modern History 83 (2011): 489–512, as well as the collection of essays in Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, eds., War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (Oxford, 2012).

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and Duesterberg as coequal partners.8 For a brief period in the second half of 1920s, the Stahlhelm flirted with the idea of subverting the existing political system from within under the slogan “Hinein in die Politik” but quickly abandoned this tactic for the sake of a full-scale assault against the Weimar Republic.9 The “Fürstenwald Hate Declaration” issued by Brandenburg Stahlhelm leader Elard von Morocowicz in October 1928 bore dramatic testimony to the increasing radicalization of the Stahlhelm’s national leadership and resulted in a complete rupture of its ties to Stresemann’s German People’s Party.10 Though distressed by the chronic disunity of Germany’s nonsocialist parties and the two secessions on the DNVP’s left wing in 1929–30, the Stahlhelm took its place at Hugenberg’s side in the internecine struggles that accompanied the installation of the Brüning cabinet and the invocation of the Hindenburg mythos to legitimate the experiment in government by presidential decree.11 Lamenting the increasing fragmentation and impotence of the German Right, the Stahlhelm was desperate to rescue the national cause from the fires of political partisanship that threatened to consume it.12 The outcome of the 1930 Reichstag elections only confirmed the Stahlhelm’s worst fears about the fragmentation of Germany’s 8

9 10

11

12

The best history of the Stahlhelm remains Volker R. Berghahn, Der Stahlhelm – Bund der Frontsoldaten 1918–1935 (Düsseldorf, 1966), although for the earlier years the unpublished dissertation by Alois Klotzbücher, “Der politische Weg des Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, in der Weimarer Republik. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der ‘Nationalen Opposition’ 1918–1933” (PhD diss., Universität Erlangen, 1965), is probably more useful. On the 1927 leadership compromise, see 109–10. For a sense of the Stahlhelm’s strength at the grass-roots level of German political life, see the insightful essay by Peter Fritzsche, “Between Fragmentation and Fraternity: Civic Patriotism and the Stahlhelm in Bourgeois Neighborhoods during the Weimar Republic,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 17 (1988): 123–44. For the most recent contribution to the growing body of scholarly literature on the Stahlhelm, see Anke Hoffstadt, “Frontgemeinschaft? Der ‘Stahlhelm. Bund der Frontsoldaten’ und der National Sozialismus,” in Nationalsozialismus und Erster Weltkrieg, ed. Gerd Krumeich (Essen, 2010), 191–206. Klotzbücher, “Weg des Stahlhelm,” 91–112. Berghahn, Stahlhelm, 113–18. For the full text of Morocowicz’s speech, see Elard von Morocowicz, ed., Die “Haß”-Botschaft von Fürstenwalde (Oranienberg and Beinau, n.d. [1928]). For example, see Eduard Stadtler, Seldte–Hitler–Hugenberg. Die Front der Freiheitsbewegung (Berlin, 1930), esp. 56–59, 68–76, 114–18, 174–77. On the defeat of the moderates in the Stahlhelm, see Volker R. Berghahn, “Das Volksbegehren gegen den Youngplan und die Ursprünge des Präsidialregimes 1928–1930,” in Industrielle Gesellschaft und politisches System. Beiträge zur politischen Sozialgeschichte. Festschrift für Fritz Fischer zum siebzigsten Geburtstag, ed. Dirk Stegmann, Bernd Jürgen Wendt, and Peter-Christian Witt (Bonn, 1978), 431–46. Duesterberg, “Aufgaben des Stahlhelm,” Der Stahlhelm, 24 Aug. 1930, no. 34.

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parliamentary Right. Not only had the DNVP suffered a serious defeat that not even party disclaimers to the contrary could conceal,13 but none of the parties that had emerged from the ruins of its left wing were able to reunite the dissidents who had broken away from the DNVP into a comprehensive and cohesive political force. Not even the NSDAP’s unexpectedly strong performance at the polls could assuage the deep-seated misgivings that many Stahlhelm leaders felt about Hitler’s ability to control the more radical elements within his movement and thus make a positive contribution to the solution of the problems that Germany faced at home and abroad.14 All of this underscored the need for a new initiative on the part of the Stahlhelm leadership, an initiative that would at one and the same time allow the Stahlhelm to claim the leadership of the national movement and forge a new sense of unity among the divided and disparate elements of the German Right. It was with this in mind that Seldte called for the introduction of a referendum to force the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag at the eleventh annual Reich Front Soldiers’ Congress in Koblenz on 4–5 October 1930. The fight for Prussia possessed enormous emotional and symbolic significance for the more traditional elements on the German Right. Not only had Prussia, as the largest of the German states, been dominated by the Social Democrats and the forces of the Weimar Coalition ever since the collapse of November 1918, but the Prussian tradition, identified with the likes of Fredrick the Great and Bismarck, was synonymous with Germany’s national greatness. Forcing the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag would both strike a blow at the citadel of socialist power in postwar Germany and unite a badly fragmented German Right around the one issue upon which all of those in the national front could agree: the fear and hatred of Marxism.15 13

14

15

Alfred Milatz, “Das Ende der Parteien im Spiegel der Wahlen 1930 bis 1933,” in Das Ende der Parteien 1933, ed. Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey (Düsseldorf, 1960), 743–93, here 744–58. For example, see Soldau to Seldte, 24 Sept. 1930, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Heinz Brauweiler, Stadtarchiv Mönchen-Gladbach (hereafter cited as StA Mönchen-Gladbach, NL Brauweiler), 112, and Lenz to Huller, 26 Sept. 1930, in the unpublished records of the Bavarian branch of the Stahlhelm, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich, Abteilung IV (hereafter cited as BHStA Munich, Abt. IV, Stahlhelm), 1. See also Klotzbücher, “Weg des Stahlhelm,” 237–39. See Seldte’s keynote address, “Der Stahlhelm – das Bollwerk Deutschlands. Festrede gehalten am 3. Oktober 1930 in der Stadthalle zu Koblenz,” Der Stahlhelm, 12 Oct. 1930, no. 41, also as a leaflet in Zeitgeschichtliche Sammlung 1, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, ZSg 1), 88/9 (6). For the strategic objectives that lay behind the Stahlhelm’s call for a referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, see Wagner, “Löst den Landtag auf!” Der Stahlhelm, 19 Oct. 1930, no. 42. See also

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On 8 November, the Stahlhelm’s chancellor Siegfried Wagner invited representatives from the DNVP, NSDAP, CNBLP, DVP, Business Party, National Rural League, and United Patriotic Leagues (Vereinigte Vaterländische Verbände Deutschlands or VVVD) to a meeting that was to be held four days later in Berlin’s Hotel Prince Albrecht. The purpose of the meeting would be to discuss the text of the proposed referendum and the tactics that the participating organizations would follow.16 Originally the Stahlhelm had planned a two-part referendum that would combine a paragraph calling for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag with a second paragraph seeking voter approval for a series of specific proposals for a revision of the Weimar Constitution.17 But after preliminary consultations with the Stahlhelm’s prospective allies revealed little support for the proposed revision of the Weimar Constitution, the Stahlhelm leadership opted to forego its efforts at a constitutional reform in order to ensure the unity of the national front.18 In this respect, the leaders of the Stahlhelm were particularly solicitous of Hitler and the NSDAP party leadership, in part because they suspected that the National Socialists were uncomfortable with the fact that it was the Stahlhelm and not they themselves that had seized the initiative in trying to force the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag.19 Although the leaders of the Nazi delegations to the Reichstag and Prussian Landtag were both prepared to cooperate with the Stahlhelm, they made their participation in the meeting that had been called for 12 November contingent upon Hitler’s approval.20 But for reasons that were never made clear to the Stahlhelm leadership, the Nazi party leader refused to tip his hand and failed to give his subordinates the green light for which they had been waiting. Without Hitler’s imprimatur, they were left with no choice but to back out of the meeting at the very last minute.21 Without the National Socialists the meeting on 12 November was inconclusive. To be sure, the participants were able to agree on the

16

17 18 19 20 21

Seldte’s closing statement at the Koblenz rally, 5 Oct. 1930, Der Stahlhelm, 19 Oct. 1930, no. 42, as well as Hans Hübotter, Warum Volksbegehren? (Berlin, 1931). For example, see Wagner to Kube (NSDAP), 8 Nov. 1930, and Hugenberg, 8 Nov. 1930, BA Berlin, R 72, 300/83–86, and Wagner to Dingeldey, 8 Nov. 1930, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 322/9–10. Der Stahlhelm, 19 Oct. 1930, no. 42. Wagner, circular to the Stahlhelm’s state leaders, 31 Oct. 1930, BHStA Munich, Abt. IV, Stahlhelm, 77. Wagner to Seldte and Duesterberg, 7 Nov. 1930, BA Berlin, R 72, 300/87–88. Duesterberg to Wagner, 1 Nov. 1930, BA Berlin, R 72, 300/89. Kube to Wagner, 11 Nov. 1930, BA Berlin, R 72, 300/82.

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wording of the proposed referendum, reducing it to the lowest common denominator so that it simply read: “The Landtag elected on 20 May 1928 is to be dissolved.” In order for the referendum to succeed, the initiators of the action estimated that in addition to the signatures of the nine million voters who had voted for one of the participating parties in the 1930 Reichstag elections, another four million signatures would be needed. Here they hoped to attract the votes not only of those who had abstained from voting in the 1930 elections but also from the right wing of the Center Party and from Social Democrats who had become disenchanted with the tactics and compromises of their own party bureaucracy. But the various political parties – and this was particularly true for those that supported the Brüning cabinet – were reluctant to proceed with the referendum without the full and unconditional participation of the National Socialists.22 Not even the Nationalists were willing to proceed without a clear and unequivocal commitment from the Nazis.23 From the perspective of the non-Nazi German Right, the involvement of the Nazis was absolutely essential for the success of the undertaking. For they feared that if the Nazis did not participate and the referendum failed, this would leave them vulnerable to a new round of attacks from Hitler and his party.24 Over the course of the next several months, the leaders of the Stahlhelm met with both the leaders of the NSDAP and DNVP in what developed into a series of triangular negotiations over the fate of the proposed referendum. Throughout the course of these negotiations, the Stahlhelm pressed the NSDAP and DNVP for a commitment that would make it possible to go ahead with the referendum but ran into increasingly stiff resistance from both Hitler and Hugenberg. Although the two party leaders agreed in principle to the proposed referendum at a meeting with the Stahlhelm leadership on 4 December 1930, they refused to commit themselves to a timetable for its initiation on the presumption that the Landtag would soon be dissolved without the need for outside pressure.25 Not only were Hitler and Hugenberg reluctant to concede leadership of the national opposition to the Stahlhelm, but they had little 22 23 24 25

Report by Kempkes (DVP) on the meeting of 12 Nov. 1930, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 322/ 13–17. Brosius to Hugenberg, 12 Nov. 1930, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Alfred Hugenberg, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg), 189/220–22. Report by Kempkes on the meeting of 12 Nov. 1930, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 322/13–17. Undated memorandum of unknown provenance [Dec. 1930], BHStA Munich, Abt. IV, Stahlhelm, 77/2.

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desire to affiliate themselves with a venture that might very well fail and thus bring the odium of defeat upon the forces of the national opposition. By the same token, they had profound strategic reservations about being part of an alliance that included parties that supported the Brüning cabinet and felt that their collaboration in such an undertaking would only validate the parties of the middle and moderate Right as members of the national opposition.26 As a result, neither Hitler nor Hugenberg felt much enthusiasm for the proposed referendum, and both would have been happier if the entire project had been scuttled as long as they were not saddled with responsibility for its collapse.27 As it became increasingly clear in the first weeks of 1931 that the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag was not imminent, the leaders of the Stahlhelm became increasingly impatient with the indecisiveness of the two party leaders, and a second round of talks was scheduled for late January. But when Hitler once again kept a meeting that had been set to take place in Munich on 21 January from taking place,28 the leaders of the Stahlhelm became so frustrated with the apparent disdain the two right-wing parties had shown toward the proposed referendum that they decided to go ahead without further consultation with the two party leaders.29 This set the stage for a final meeting the Stahlhelm leadership called for 4 February, at the conclusion of which it planned to announce the introduction of the referendum on the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag with or without the support of the two right-wing parties. While Hugenberg, despite his skepticism about the entire undertaking, seemed to be relenting in his opposition to the Stahlhelm’s plans for a referendum,30 Hitler met with the DNVP party leader on 3 February in a 26

27

28 29 30

Some of the reservations the leaders of the two right-wing parties had about their participation in the referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag are spelled out in the letter from Brosius to Hugenberg, 12 Nov. 1930, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 189/220-22. In this respect, see Schmidt-Hannover to Wegener, 7 Feb. 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Leo Wegener, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Wegener), 75. The meeting can be dated from Gilsa to Reusch, 31 Jan. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/4b. Duesterberg to Seldte, 26 Jan. 1931, BA Berlin, R 72, 301/7. See also Gilsa to Reusch, 31 Jan. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/4b. Hugenberg met with Seldte, Duesterberg, and Wagner from the Stahlhelm leadership on 29 January 1931. That such a meeting took place can be established from an undated list of the meetings between the Stahlhelm and representatives of the two right-wing parties, BA Berlin, R 72, 301/67. What transpired at this meeting can be inferred from the letter from Schmidt-Hannover to Wegener, 7 Feb. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover,

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last-minute and apparently successful attempt to stiffen the DNVP party leader’s opposition to the proposed referendum. But when Hitler failed to attend the meeting with the Stahlhelm leadership the following day, not only were Seldte, Duesterberg, and their associates furious – “white hot” in the words of one participant – over the Nazi party leader’s erratic and obstructionist behavior, but whatever objections Hugenberg might have wanted to register with the proponents of the referendum fell on deaf ears. After four hours of heated discussion, Hugenberg was unable to persuade the leaders of the Stahlhelm to postpone the referendum until the middle of the month and could do little more than offer his party’s reluctant support.31 At this point, the Nazis indicated that they too would support the referendum but reserved the right to issue a separate statement of their own.32 With all of the major parties and organizations on the German Right finally on board, the Stahlhelm filed the paperwork for the referendum with the Prussian ministry of the interior at the close of the meeting. At the heart of the difficulties that bedeviled the unity of the national opposition in the matter of the Prussian referendum lay two fundamentally different strategies for bringing about a fundamental change in the existing political system. Whereas the DNVP and NSDAP both sought to polarize the nation through the annihilation of the various parties that stood between them and the Marxist Left, the leaders of the Stahlhelm hoped to create a broad national front that included not only the DNVP and NSDAP but also the very parties that Hugenberg and Hitler had targeted for annihilation.33 When Seldte claimed in a speech in Munich on 12 February 1931 that with the formal initiation of the referendum to dissolve the Prussian Landtag, the Stahlhelm was now prepared to assume the leadership of the movement for Germany’s national regeneration, the challenge that Seldte’s remarks posed to the Stahlhelm’s partners in the national opposition was not lost upon the leaders of Germany’s two largest right-wing parties. Resentful of the way in which the Stahlhelm was trying to usurp what they regarded as their political mandate, the leaders of the DNVP and NSDAP moved quickly to reassert their claim to the leadership of the national opposition by staging a dramatic demonstration in the Reichstag. The Reichstag was scheduled to reconvene in

31 32 33

75. See also Wagner’s report on the state of the negotiations at the meeting of the Stahlhelm executive committee, 31 Jan.–1 Feb. 1931, BA Berlin, R 72, 15/66–79. Hugenberg to Hitler, 5 Feb. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 30. See also Schmidt-Hannover to Wegener, 7 Feb. 1931, ibid, 75. Wagner to Seldte, 12 Feb. 1931, BA Berlin, R 72, 40/241–46. Gilsa to Reusch, 17 Jan. 1931, RWWA Cologne, NL Reusch, 400101293/4b.

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early February to pass a budget and dispose of other parliamentary business. The economic situation, particularly in the countryside, had deteriorated markedly since the Reichstag had last met, with the result that the parties of the radical Right felt emboldened to intensify their agitation against the Brüning cabinet. Consequently, when the Reichstag approved changes in the rules of parliamentary procedure that would expedite the adoption of the government’s program, the parliamentary leadership of the DNVP and NSDAP read separate declarations on 10 February in which they denounced these changes as a breach of the Weimar Constitution and accused Brüning of dictatorial methods that mocked the principles to which he and his supporters were supposedly committed. Then, to underscore their outrage over the chancellor’s “rape of the opposition,” the Nationalist and Nazi delegations, along with three deputies from the CNBLP Reichstag delegation, marched out of parliamentary chambers in an act of defiance that carried the unmistakable signature of the national opposition.34 Notwithstanding the audacity with which it was defended as an effort to rescue the constitution from the dictatorial aspirations of the Brüning cabinet,35 the secession of 10 February 1931 was little more than a dramatic ploy to force the campaign for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag into a more radical direction than the leaders of the Stahlhelm had planned to take and exploit the tensions that existed within those parties in the middle and on the moderate Right that supported both the referendum and the Brüning cabinet.36 From this perspective, the secession only complicated the task the Stahlhelm already faced in uniting a badly divided national front behind the referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag and gave rise to new concerns about the future of its ties to the more moderate right-wing parties it had hoped to integrate into the national opposition.37 For the Nazis, on the other hand, the secession promised to inject new life into the national opposition. As a jubilant Goebbels confided to his diary:

34 35 36

37

Der Tag, 11 Feb. 1931, no. 36. Oberfohren, “Warum Ausmarsch?” Unsere Partei 9, no. 5 (1 Mar. 1931): 65–67. The ulterior motives that lay behind the secession can be inferred from DNVP, Mitteilungen Nr. 4 der Parteizentrale, 17 Feb. 1931, NSStA Osnabrück, C1, 22/57–59. For the Stahlhelm’s concerns, see Brauweiler to Seldte, 11 Feb. 1931, StA Mönchen-Gladbach, NL Brauweiler, 111. For the best analysis of the secession, particularly from the Nazi perspective, see Martin Döring, “Parlamentarischer Arm der Bewegung.” Die Nationalsozialisten im Reichstag der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 2001), 276–85. Gilsa to Mahnken, 12 Feb. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Jarres, 58.

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The opposition is back in form. The ice of rigidity will melt. The struggle for the nation begins again. I can say with pride: that is my work! We will decline our per diems; we will let ourselves be thrown into prison. But we will persevere in resistance. Now it all depends on who has the more patience. Outside it is a bright winter day. Let the persecutions begin.38

The referendum to force the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag was part of a much broader strategy that sought not just to strike a blow at the citadel of Marxism and the bulwark of Weimar democracy in Germany’s largest and most important state but also to either drive Brüning from office or, at the very least, end his dependence upon the Social Democrats. By forcing new elections in Prussia, the proponents of the referendum hoped to make a continuation of the Great Coalition in Prussia impossible and drive a wedge between the Center and Social Democrats not just in Prussia but in the Reich as well. This would then force the Center to seek new allies on the Right, something that Hugenberg had first proposed to Center party chairman Ludwig Kaas in November 1929.39 All of this, Hugenberg argued in a letter to the arch conservative DNVP Reichstag deputy Elard von Januschau-Oldenburg, would clear the way for a fundamental realignment of political forces in both Prussia and the Reich that would put an end to the follies of Weimar democracy and return power to the hands of Germany’s traditional conservative elites.40 With the official start of the campaign for the referendum to dissolve the Prussian Landtag, the leaders of the Stahlhelm moved quickly to form nonpartisan referendum committees throughout the country.41 Whereas representatives from the DNVP, DVP, Business Party, and conservative agricultural interests were actively involved in the efforts of local Stahlhelm leaders to set up bipartisan referendum committees in various parts of the country,42 the Nazis disdained any sort of association with the 38 39 40

41

42

Entry for 10 Feb. 1931 in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen 1923–1941, 5 vols. (Munich and New York, 1997–2004), I/2, 19. Hugenberg to Kaas, 20 Nov. 1929, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 192/389–91. For a candid statement of Hugenberg’s strategic objectives, see his letter to OldenburgJanuschau, 16 Feb. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 72. See also Steuer’s report on the Prussian referendum at a meeting of the state executive committee of the Bavarian DNVP, 28 Mar. 1931, BHStA Munich, Abt. V, NL Hilpert, 1/103–09. On the Stahlhelm’s preparations for the referendum campaign, see Wagner’s presentation at the meeting of the Stahlhelm staff leaders in Berlin, 15 Feb. 1931, BA Berlin, R 72, 301/ 28–37. For example, see Gilsa to Dingeldey, 14 Feb. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Jarres, 58. See also Gilsa to Reusch, 14 Feb. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/4b. Gilsa to Stendel, 20 Feb. 1931, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 322/21–25. See also Gilsa to Jarres, 19 Feb. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Jarres, 58.

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more moderate elements in the referendum campaign. As the NSDAP’s Rudolf Hess explained in a letter to the Stahlhelm’s Seldte, Hitler had always expressed reservations about the referendum and insisted that precisely how and to what extent the NSDAP would participate in the campaign would be left to the party itself.43 Hitler continued to block the participation of high-ranking party officials in bipartisan planning for the referendum and what might follow should it succeed even as the initial stages of the campaign were drawing to a close in the first part of April.44 What this clearly suggested to the leaders of the Stahlhelm and the parties with which they were working was that the Nazis were participating in the referendum campaign only to score political capital at the expense of the other parties that were involved in the campaign. In other words, the value of the Prussian campaign for the Nazis lay in the opportunities it afforded them for penetrating and mobilizing for its own partisan purposes the rank-and-file support of the other right-wing parties with which they were presumably cooperating in the struggle to force the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag.45 All of this placed the more moderate parties on the German Right at an enormous disadvantage. This was particularly true of those parties like the DVP, WP, and CNBLP that both continued to support the Brüning cabinet and embraced the Stahlhelm’s campaign to force the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag. That there was a fundamental contradiction between support for the Brüning government and participation in the referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag was not always apparent to those on the ground. Speaking before a group of his party’s industrial and business supporters in Berlin on 16 February 1931, DVP party chairman Eduard Dingeldey denounced the February secession of the national opposition from the Reichstag as a “flight from responsibility” and reaffirmed his party’s commitment to pursuing its objectives within the framework of the parliamentary system of government.46 43 44 45

46

Hess to Seldte, 13 Mar. 1931, BA Berlin, R 72, 301/162. Memorandum by Schmidt-Hannover, 7 Apr. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 38/ 284–85. For a more detailed analysis of the Nazi strategy in the campaign for the Prussian campaign, see Sabine Höner, Der nationalsozialistische Zugriff auf Preußen. Preußischer Staat und nationalsozialistische Machteroberungsstrategie 1928–1934 (Bochum, 1984), 127–46. Eduard Dingeldey, Staatsautorität und Parlamentarismus im heutigen Deutschland.Vortrag, gehalten am 17. Februar 1931 vor der Vereinigung für Handel und Industrie bei der Deutschen Volkspartei Berlin im Hotel Esplanade zu Berlin (Berlin, n.d. [1931]), 4–5, 14–15.

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Dingeldey saw no contradiction between his commitment to the parliamentary form of government and his willingness to cooperate with the militantly anti-republican Stahlhelm in its campaign for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag.47 The situation was no less confused within the Christian-National Peasants and Farmers’ Party, where the secession of the national opposition from the Reichstag had exposed severe fault lines within the party leadership and organization.48 The CNBLP party leadership was quick to denounce the exodus of the national opposition from the Reichstag as a blow to the effectiveness with which the German agricultural community could defend its vital interests and publicly censured the dissident deputies for their breach of party discipline.49 The three CNBLP deputies who had taken part in the secession – Albrecht Wendhausen, Heinrich von Sybel, and Karl Heinrich Sieber – were subsequently expelled from the party but refused to resign their seats in the Reichstag and joined the NSDAP Reichstag delegation as guests.50 Yet for all of the fervor with which Karl Hepp, Günther Gereke, and other party leaders insisted that the representation of agricultural economic interests took precedence over the antics of the so-called national opposition,51 they could not conceal the fact that the campaign for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag had done much to exacerbate the tensions that already

47

48

49 50

51

Circular from the DVP party leadership, 4 Mar. 1931, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 322/31–32. For further details, see Ludwig Richter, Die Deutsche Volkspartei 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2002), 697–704. For example, see the minutes of the BLB central committee, 15 Feb. and 8 Mar. 1931, IfZ Munich, BLB-Akte, in a collection of documents on the Bavarian Rural League (Bayerischer Landbund or BLB) in the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich (hereafter cited as IfZ Munich, BLB-Akte), 142–52. The author would like to thank Manfred Kittel for having placed these documents at his disposal. For further information on the Bavarian context, see Manfred Kittel, “Weimar” im evangelischen Bayern. Politische Mentalität und Parteiwesen 1918–1933 (Munich, 2001), 176–82. Gereke, “Landwirtschaft und Opposition,” Nassauische Bauern-Zeitung, 17 Feb. 1931, no. 39, also in Bayerischer Landbund 33, no. 8 (22 Feb. 1931). On their expulsion from the CNBLP, see the report in the Nassauische Bauern-Zeitung, 14 Feb. 1931, no. 37. On their subsequent affiliation with the NSDAP Reichstag delegation, see Döring, “Parlamentarischer Arm der Bewegung,” 285–88. For example, see the report of speeches by Hepp, “Warum blieb die Landvolkpartei im Reichstag?” in Weilburg, 16 Feb. 1931, in Nassauische Bauern-Zeitung, 18 Feb. 1931, no. 40, and Gereke, “Die gerade Linie der Landvolkpolitik,” in Kassel, 16 Feb. 1931, Der Landbürger. Kommunalpolitisches Organ der Christlich-nationalen Bauern- und Landvolkpartei 7, no. 5 (2 Mar. 1931): 69–70. See also Julius Berg, ed., Das Landvolk im Kampf um Preußen, ed. Deutsches Landvolk/Christl. Nationale Bauern- u. Landvolkpartei (Berlin, n.d. [1932], 17–19.

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existed within the ranks of their party and left it increasingly exposed to the agitation of the radical Right.52 As developments within the DVP and CNBLP clearly indicated, the referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag had greatly intensified the centrifugal pressures that were already at work within the ranks of those parties that continued to support the Brüning cabinet. What these parties found so damaging, as Westarp explained to the leaders of the Stahlhelm at the beginning of April 1931, was that the propaganda for the referendum was laced with pejorative comments about the Brüning cabinet that only alienated elements within those parties whose cooperation was essential for the success of the referendum. Westarp was particularly offended at the way in which the NSDAP and DNVP typically dismissed the more moderate right-wing parties that supported the Prussian referendum as “groups of the half-Right [Halbrechtsgruppen].”53 Yet as insulting as comments like this might have been, they did not keep the more moderate right-wing parties, including those that supported the Brüning cabinet, from coming out in support of the referendum. First the CNBLP, then the DVP, the Business Party, the People’s Conservatives, and eventually the Christian-Social People’s Service all set aside whatever reservations they might have had about becoming involved in a project that also involved the DNVP and NSDAP to declare their full and unconditional support for the referendum to force the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag.54 But the contribution of the middle parties to the conduct of the campaign was negligible. In the final analysis it was the organizational strength of the Stahlhelm and DNVP along with a last-minute surge by the National Socialists that made the difference.55 When the results were finally announced at the end of June, the referendum to dissolve the Prussian Landtag had received the signatures of 5,955,996 eligible voters – or approximately 700,000 more than were needed to force a vote in the Landtag.56 To be sure, this was still significantly short of the popular vote that the parties supporting the referendum had received in the September 1930 Reichstag elections, a fact that sponsors of the referendum

52 53 54 55 56

For example, see Gereke to Dingeldey, 2 Apr. 1931, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 322/137. Westarp to the Stahlhelm, 4 Apr. 1931, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 24. For the position of the Christian-Socials, see the resolution adopted by the CSVD executive committee, 1 Mar. 1931, in Der Volksdienst, 7 Mar. 1931, no 10. DNVP Parteizentrale, Rundschreiben no. 11, 21 Apr. 1931, NSStA Osnabrück, C1, 23/ 117–19. Horst Möller, Parlamentarismus in Preußen 1918–1932 (Düsseldorf, 1985), 319–21.

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registered with great bitterness and disappointment.57 But the referendum had met the legal requirements for success, with the result that the proposal to dissolve the Landtag and call for new elections would then go to the Landtag. The parliamentary debate on the referendum calling for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag was set for 8–9 July 1931, at the conclusion of which the Landtag rejected the bill by a 229-190 margin. A plebiscite that could override the results of the vote in the Landtag if it received the support of a majority of Prussia’s eligible voters was scheduled for 9 August. At the outset the Prussian government was confident that the plebiscite would fail since there was no chance that the right-wing parties would be able to amass the votes needed to overturn the vote in the Landtag. But the situation changed dramatically when on 22 July the leaders of the Communist Party endorsed the plebiscite and urged their supporters throughout the state of Prussia to support it at the polls on 9 August.58 At the same time, public confidence in the Brüning government had been seriously shaken by the sensational collapse first of the Austrian Credit Institute in May 1931 and then of the Danat-Bank later that summer. The position of the Brüning cabinet was further weakened by the unpopularity of the various measures it had taken to stabilize German finances with the promulgation of its second emergency decree on 5 June 1931.59 Not only did these developments greatly improve prospects that the plebiscite might actually succeed, but they also had a radicalizing effect upon the conduct of the referendum campaign. For whereas beforehand the leadership of the Stahlhelm had counseled restraint in attacks against the Brüning cabinet for fear of losing the support of those parties that still supported it,60 they were now determined to exploit the full political potential of the deepening banking crisis regardless of the impact this might have upon the parties of the middle and moderate Right that were still affiliated with the national government.61

57

58 59 60 61

For example, see Bang to Claß, 18 Apr. 1931, in the unpublished records of the Alldeutscher Verband, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, Bestand R 8048 (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, R 8048), 287/301–02. For a more sanguine view of the referendum’s results, see Stadtler to Buchner, 15 Aug. 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of historian Max Buchner, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Buchner), 30. In this respect, see Gilsa’s report of his conversation with Seldte in his letter to Reusch, 5 Aug. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101293/4b. For further details, see Hömig, Brüning, 274–77. Wagner to Westarp, 11 Apr. 1931, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 24. Wagner to Dingeldey, 15 July 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 40/22–24.

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Under these circumstances, both the Nationalists and National Socialists began to intensify their agitation in support of the plebiscite. Here, their objective was not so much to help the plebiscite succeed but to transform it into a ringing indictment of the entire Weimar system. The two parties concentrated much of their attention on Prussia’s Catholic electorate in hopes of securing a major breakthrough into the ranks of the Center, a breakthrough that would cascade into a repudiation of the Brüning cabinet and a sweeping realignment of political forces in both Prussia and the Reich. For the Nationalists, the plebiscite offered them an opportunity to showcase their party’s newly resuscitated Reich Catholic Committee (Reichskatholikenausschuß der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei),62 while Catholic conservatives like Ferdinand von Lüninck made one more effort – though again without appreciable success – to break down the resistance of the church hierarchy to the participation of lay Catholics in the activities of right-wing paramilitary organizations like the Stahlhelm.63 Even then, however, the degree of cooperation between the two right-wing parties left much to be desired. Hugenberg had hoped that Hitler and the NSDAP would be willing to cooperate with his own party in developing a coordinated strategy for the final stages of the campaign, but his overtures met with an indifferent response from the Nazi party leader.64 Hugenberg would like to have issued a joint statement with Hitler,65 but, as he had done in April at the time of the referendum on the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, the Nazi party leader insisted on issuing a separate appeal of his own in which he called upon his party’s

62

63

64

65

For example, see “An die katholischen Deutschen in Preußen!” n.d., appended to Nagel to Weilnböck, 31 July 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Luitpold von Weilnböck, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Weilnböck), 44a. See also “An die katholischen Deutschen in Preußen!Aufruf rechtsgerichteter Katholiken zum Volksbegehren,” Unsere Partei 9, no. 8 (15 Apr. 1931): 114–15. For further information on the DNVP’s Catholic wing, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Catholics on the Right: The Reich Catholic Committee of the German National People’s Party, 1920–33,” Historisches Jahrbuch 126 (2006): 221–67, here 258–60, and and most recently Christoph Hübner, Die Rechtskatholiken, die Zentrumspartei und die katholische Kirche in Deutschland bis zum Reichskonkordat von 1933. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Scheiterns der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 2014), 643–66. In this respect, see Lüninck’s correspondence with prelate Albert Lenné from the bishop’s council in Cologne, 14–20 July 1931, VWA Münster, NL Lüninck, 721. For further information, see Hübner, Rechtskatholiken, 688–89. For example, see Hess to Schmidt-Hannover, 20 Apr. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL SchmidtHannover, 30. On strains between the two right-wing parties, see Blank to Reusch, 22 Apr. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 4001012024/8a. Wagner to Seldte, 21 July 1931, BA Berlin, R 72, 40/234–38.

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faithful to vote yes on 9 August in the plebiscite to force new elections and put an end to the tyranny of the Marxist parties in Prussia.66 Of Prussia’s 26.5 million voters, a majority would have to support the plebiscite on 9 August in order for it to take effect. Even with Communist participation, the plebiscite still fell three and a half million votes short of what it needed for an absolute majority. In the final analysis, only 10.2 million voters – or 38.3 percent of the Prussian electorate – had supported the plebiscite at the polls. The defeat of the plebiscite brought an important chapter in the history of the German Right to a close. This would be the last of the public referenda the German Right would initiate in its efforts to mobilize the German public behind its political agenda, and its defeat highlighted its inability to achieve a significant breakthrough into either of the two blocs that continued to frustrate its bid for power, the Catholics and organized labor. While it is difficult to determine the extent to which the Communists went to the polls on 9 August, there can be no doubt that without Communist participation the plebiscite would have gone down to an even more ignominious defeat than the one it suffered. For the German Right, however, the plebiscite was never seen as an end in itself but only as a means for forging a greater sense of unity among those who rejected the existing system of government and its record of failure at home and abroad. The challenge now confronting the German Right was to see if the sense of unity, though admittedly fragile and imperfect, that had asserted itself in the crusade for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag could be sustained in the months ahead. For the leaders of the Stahlhelm, the failure of the plebiscite required a reevaluation of their strategy for bringing about a change in the existing political system. If beforehand the Stahlhelm had hoped to overcome the political fragmentation of the German bourgeoisie through popular mobilization from below, its leaders had now come to realize that popular referenda were of limited effectiveness and that only the consolidation of the various bourgeois parties that stood to the right of the Center into a united national bloc offered any real prospect of success.67 Not only did this reflect the eclipse of Stahlhelm moderates like Heinz Brauweiler at the 66

67

Hitler, “Nationalsozialisten!Nationalsozialistinnen! Preußen!” 8 Aug. 1931, in Adolf Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen. Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933, 5 vols. in 12 parts (Munich, London, New York, and Paris, 1992–98), 4/2, 65–67. Blank to Reusch, 11 Aug. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 4001012024/9. Much of the following has been taken, though augmented by important new material, from Larry Eugene Jones, “Nationalists, Nazis, and the Assault against Weimar:

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upper echelons of the Stahlhelm leadership, but it also confirmed the organization’s continued drift into the orbit of the more radical elements on the German Right. The leaders of the Stahlhelm had drawn increasingly close to Hugenberg and the DNVP party leadership during the course of the campaign in Prussia, a development that augured well for the success of their efforts to forge a united national front. In early April 1931 Hugenberg and the Stahlhelm leadership agreed to hold a rally for the entire national opposition approximately eight days before the Reichstag was scheduled to reconvene later that fall. The participation of the National Socialists in such a venture remained an open question, all the more so because neither Hitler nor one of his subordinates attended the April meeting.68 The task of securing Hitler’s cooperation fell to Hugenberg. The DNVP party leader had remained on cordial terms with Hitler through the summer of 1931, even to the point of confiding the results of his private meeting with the Reich president at the beginning of August.69 But it was not Hugenberg but Hitler who took the initiative in trying to arrange a meeting between the two party leaders almost immediately after the failure of the Prussian referendum.70 By this time, however, Hugenberg had left Berlin and did not return to the capital until the last week of August for a caucus of the DNVP Reichstag delegation and a meeting with the Reich chancellor. In his meeting with Hugenberg at the beginning of the month, Reich President Paul von Hindenburg had encouraged the DNVP party leader to meet with Brüning and had promised to use his influence with the chancellor to pave the way for the creation of a new

68

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Revisiting the Harzburg Rally of October 1931,” German Studies Review 29 (2006): 483–94. For further information, see Berghahn, Stahlhelm, 179–86, and John A. Leopold, Alfred Hugenberg: The Radical Nationalist Campaign against the Weimar Republic (New Haven and London, 1977), 84–106. See also the brochure published on the 75th anniversary of the Harzburg Rally by Spurensuche Goslar e.V., Harzburger Front von 1931 – Fanal zur Zerstörung einer demokratischen Republik. Historisches Ereignis und Erinnern in der Gegenwart. Eine Dokumentation, Spuren Harzer Zeitgeschichte, Heft 2 (Claustal-Zellerfeld, 1997). Memorandum by Schmidt-Hannover, 8 Apr. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 38/ 284–85. See also Hugenberg to Wegener, 18 Apr. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Wegener, 66/ 21–22. Hugenberg to Hitler, 1 Aug. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Wegener, 73/183. See also the entry in Quaatz’s diary, 15 July. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17, reprinted in Die Deutschnationalen und die Zerstörung der Weimarer Republik, ed. by Weiß and Hoser, 139. Confidential memorandum of unknown provenance, 5 Sept. 1931, BHStA Munich, NL Diezembowksi, 18.

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government that included the forces of the national opposition.71 Brüning, on the other hand, had put off meeting with Hugenberg until pressure from the presidential palace had left him with no alternative but to act on the assurances that Hindenburg had given Hugenberg at their meeting at the beginning of August. A meeting was arranged for 27 August, but on the night before it was scheduled to take place, Brüning informed Hugenberg that the Center party chairman Ludwig Kaas would also be taking part.72 The inclusion of Kaas changed the meeting from what Hugenberg had hoped would be a meeting between the Reich chancellor and the putative leader of the national opposition into a meeting of party leaders with an entirely different agenda from what he had originally imagined. Frustrated by Brüning’s refusal to recognize him as the leader of the national opposition or to acknowledge the legitimacy of any of the issues that he sought to raise, the DNVP party chairman became increasingly irascible during the course of the meeting before it finally ended in a series of harsh exchanges that left no room for compromise.73 Once it had become clear that Brüning was not about to moderate his stance against the inclusion of the national opposition in the national government, Hugenberg decided it was time to take Hitler up on his request for a meeting.74 Immediately after his meeting with Brüning and Kaas, the DNVP party chairman retired along with his political adjutant Otto SchmidtHannover to Kreth on the Tegernsee in Upper Bavaria, not all that far from the Bavarian hamlet of Dietramszell where Hindenburg was enjoying his annual cure. From Kreth Hugenberg and Schmidt-Hannover used their proximity to the Reich president to press their case for a change in the composition and direction of the national government that would 71 72 73

74

Memorandum by Meissner on Hindenburg’s meeting with Hugenberg, 1 Aug. 1931, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 2655/45–53. Confidential memorandum of unknown provenance, 5 Sept. 1931, BHStA Munich, NL Diezembowksi, 18. For an embellished version of his meeting with Brüning and Kaas, see Hugenberg to Oldenburg-Januschau, 29 Aug. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. See also the press release on his meeting with Hugenberg and Quaatz, 27 Aug. 1931, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 2655/67–73, as well as Quaatz’s detailed account of the meeting in his diary, 27 Aug. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17, reprinted in Die Deutschnationalen und die Zestörung der Weimarer Republik, ed. Weiß and Hoser, 143–45. The disdain with which the DNVP party leadership dismissed Brüning’s overtures can also be seen in the handwritten notes that ADV chairman Heinrich Claß took on Quaatz’s verbal report on the meeting with Brüning and Kaas, 27 Aug. 1931, BA Berlin, R 8048, 396/118–21. See the narrative oulined in the confidential memorandum from 5 Sept. 1931, BHStA Munich, NL Diezembowksi, 18.

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include Brüning’s removal as chancellor.75 In a similar vein, Hugenberg’s close associate, Heinrich Claß from the Pan-German League, wrote to Hindenburg in an attempt to persuade the Reich president that the time to get rid of Brüning and to form a new government based on the forces of the national opposition had arrived.76 While this had done little to shake the Reich president’s confidence in his chancellor, it apparently did have an effect upon Hindenburg’s son Oskar, who now began to add his voice to those clamoring for a change in the national government.77 At the same time that Hugenberg and the Pan-Germans were trying to soften up the aging Reich president for a sharp swing to the Right, the leaders of the non-Nazi Right were also hard at work trying to solidify ties with the NSDAP. In late August Heinrich von Mahnken, a high-ranking Stahlhelm official from the Rhineland, appealed directly to Gregor Strasser, the Reich organization leader of the NSDAP and the second most important person in the Nazi party organization, in an attempt to overcome what he thought might be his objections to an alliance with the more conservative elements in the so-called national front.78 Two days later Hugenberg met directly with Hitler in the Kreth home of his long-time friend and associate Leo Wegener. Following a friendly exchange about possible candidates in the upcoming presidential elections, Hugenberg proceeded to outline his plans for a demonstration of the entire national opposition in the resort city of Bad Harzburg in the second week of October. Hitler quickly agreed, and on the following day, Strasser and Wilhelm Frick from the NSDAP’s party headquarters in Munich arrived in Kreth to finalize the details of the arrangement.79 In reporting on the recent developments at a meeting of the managing committee (Geschäftsführender Ausschuß) of the Pan-German League in Berlin on 5 September, ADV chairman Heinrich Claß confirmed that a meeting with the NSDAP had indeed taken place and that relations between the DNVP and the NSDAP were “stronger than ever.”80 But 75

76 77 78 79 80

Heinrich Brüning, Memoiren 1918–1934 (Stuttgart, 1970), 380. The letter from Hugenberg to Oldenburg-Januschau, 27 Aug. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17, must also be seen in this context. Claß to Hindenburg, 27 Aug. 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 80/120–21. Brüning, Memoiren, 380. Mahnken to Strasser, n.d., appended to Mahnken to Wagner, 28 Aug. 1931, VWA Münster, NL Lüninck, 785. Schmidt-Hannover, Umdenken oder Anarchie, 273–5. See also Terhalle, Deutschnationale in Weimar, 262–93. Claß’s remarks before the ADV managing committee, 5 Sept. 1931, BA Berlin, R 8048, 167/8–9.

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just as it seemed that everything was falling into place for the upcoming demonstration at Bad Harzburg, Hitler sent Hugenberg a letter in which he complained bitterly about the DNVP’s failure to stand behind his party in a reshuffling of the state government in Brunswick and gave the DNVP party chairman until 16 September to rectify the situation or else the NSDAP would declare its withdrawal from the so-called national opposition.81 Hitler’s letter was a clear act of political extortion that Hugenberg correctly attributed to resistance within the NSDAP to the establishment of closer ties with the non-Nazi elements of the national front.82 Nazi propaganda leader Joseph Goebbels was particularly critical of Hitler’s sense of deference with respect to Hugenberg and privately hoped that the NSDAP would sever ties with the so-called national opposition.83 But Hitler continued to profess a high regard and deep sense of loyalty toward the DNVP party leader,84 something that Hugenberg would use in trying to overcome whatever reservations Hitler might have had about his party’s role in the national opposition.85 In the meantime, similar difficulties had surfaced with the Stahlhelm’s second-in-command, Theodor Duesterberg. Though generally regarded as the more radical of the two Stahlhelm leaders, Duesterberg was profoundly distrustful of the Nazi party leader and made no secret of his opposition to the alliance with the NSDAP.86 Hugenberg did his best to reassure Duesterberg of Hitler’s political reliability before departing for the DNVP national party congress in Stettin on 18–20 September 1931.87 At Stettin Hugenberg informed the DNVP executive committee of the plans for the upcoming rally in Bad Harzburg and observed that relations with both the National Socialists and Stahlhelm were greatly improved 81

82 83 84

85 86 87

Hitler to Hugenberg, 5 Sept. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 30. This letter, along with Hugenberg’s replies of 7 and 9 Sept. 1931, was subsequently published in Unsere Partei 10, no. 20 (15 Oct. 1932): 341–44. See also the entry for 12 September 1931 in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 96–97. Hugenberg to Hitler, 7 Sept. 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Alfred Hugenberg, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg), 192/163–66. Entry for 12 Sept. 1931 in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 96–97. For an indication of this, see Levetzow to Donnersmark, 28 Aug. 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Magnus von Levetzow, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 83/64–71, reprinted in Gerhard Granier, Magnus von Levetzow. Seeoffizier, Monarchist und Wegbereiter Hitlers. Lebensweg und ausgewählte Dokumente (Boppard am Rhein, 1982), 297–307. Hugenberg to Hitler, 9 Sept. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 192/161–62. Manuscript of Duesterberg’s unpublished memoirs in the Nachlaß of Theodor Duesterberg, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Duesterberg), 46/161. Hugenberg to Duesterberg, 17 Sept. 1931, BA Berlin, R 72, 282/204.

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despite the despicable methods with which the NSDAP sometimes waged its political struggle.88 Then in his keynote address on German domestic politics on the final day of the congress, Hugenberg publicly affirmed his party’s solidarity with the patriotic leagues, the Stahlhelm, and the National Socialists in the struggle against the hapless national government and the Marxist tyranny that had taken grip of Germany body and soul. With the collapse of the Brüning system at hand, it was now more crucial than ever, Hugenberg insisted, to forge the solidarity and firm national resolve that would be necessary to seize the reins of power and lead Germany out of the morass in which it currently found itself.89 With Hugenberg setting the tone, the Stettin party congress marked the beginning of a new and intensified attack against the Brüning cabinet and the system of government of which it was allegedly a part.90 Whether it was the result of Hugenberg’s reassurances or persistent pressure from his own colleagues in the Stahlhelm, Duesterberg set aside whatever reservations he might have had about the alliance with the NSDAP, and by the beginning of October, he too was expressing public support for the upcoming rally in Harzburg.91 The leaders of the Stahlhelm had, no doubt, been buoyed by the strong support their efforts to establish closer ties between the various parties, interest groups, and patriotic associations that constituted the national opposition had received from conservative industrialists who, for their own part, continued to hope that the Stahlhelm might emerge as the crystallization point around which a united German Right could form.92 To be sure, the Stahlhelm’s plans for a united German Right ran counter to what both Hugenberg and certainly Hitler had in mind, for all that the two party leaders had agreed upon at the time of their rapprochement in the summer of 1931 was a joint

88

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90 91

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Hugenberg’s remarks before the DNVP executive committee in Stettin, 18 Sept. 1931, in the unpublished records of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei, Bundesarchiv BerlinLichterfelde, Bestand R 8005 (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, R 8005), 57/33–34. [Alfred Hugenberg], Hugenbergs innenpolitisches Programm. Rede, gehalten auf dem 10. Reichsparteitag der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei am 20. September 1931 in der Messehalle Stettin, Deutschnationale Flugschrift, no. 353 (Berlin, n.d. [1931]), 18–19. For further details, see the official report of the Stettin party congress in Unsere Partei 9, nos. 18–19 (1 Oct. 1931): 222–38. See Duesterberg’s endorsement of the Stahlhelm’s cooperation with the NSDAP in Theodor Duesterberg, Stahlhelm-Politik. Ansprache am 2. Oktober 1931, Nationalklub von 1919, c.V., Hamburg, no. 3. (Hamburg, 1931), 12–15. In this respect, see Blank to Reusch, 11 Aug. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 4001012024/9. See also Springorum to Traub, 19 June 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 92/311–12.

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meeting of the DNVP and NSDAP Reichstag delegations that fall. But under the guiding hand of Otto Schmidt-Hannover, a Hugenberg confidante who served as the DNVP’s special liaison to the Stahlhelm, and his two adjutants Herbert von Bose and Oskar Werdermann, what had originally been conceived of as simply a joint session of the two Reichstag delegations was gradually transformed into a major demonstration that was scheduled to take place on 11 October, the Sunday before the Reichstag was scheduled to reconvene.93 Not only the parliamentary delegations of the two right-wing parties but also representatives from the Stahlhelm, the Pan-German League, the United Patriotic Leagues, and the National Rural League as well as a number of prominent industrialists, Prince Oskar von Preußen, retired army officers such as General Field Marshall August von Mackensen and General Otto von Below, and young conservative intellectuals like Edgar Julius Jung and Franz Mariaux would be invited to take part in the rally. Moreover, the Stahlhelm, the Nazi Storm Detachments (Sturm-Abteilungen der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei or S.A.), and other paramilitary organizations allied with the national opposition would stage a military review designed to provide visual testimony to the sense of unity that the organizers of the Harzburg rally hoped to create.94 Buoyed by the belief that they would soon be asked to take the lead in forming a new national government, the leaders of the national opposition put the finishing touches on the plans for the Harzburg rally, though without ever clarifying the precise role that they or their respective organizations were to play in the formation of the new government. Responsibility for finalizing arrangements and sending out the invitations lay in the hands of a three-man committee consisting of the NSDAP’s Wilhelm Frick, the DNVP’s Otto Schmidt-Hannover, and the Stahlhelm’s Siegfried Wagner.95 The invitations were mailed out on 2 October, and the steering committee met one last time in Bad Harzburg on 8 October to make 93

94

95

On Bose and his role at Harzburg, see Forschbach to Bauch, 8 Oct. 1970, in Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Zeitgeschichtliche Sammlung Bodo Bauch, Bestand ZSg 134, 6. For further information, see Otto Schmidt-Hannover, Umdenken oder Anarchie. Männer – Schicksäle – Lehren (Göttingen, 1959), 268–80, and Edmund Forschbach, Edgar J. Jung. Ein konservativer Revolutionär 30. Juni 1934 (Pfillingen, 1984), 35–36, as well as Terhalle, Deutschnational in Weimar, 278–83. On the preparations for the Harzburg rally, see Blank to Reusch, 5 Oct. 1931, Abt. 130, RWWA Cologne, NL Reusch, 4001012024/9, reprinted in Politik und Wirtschaft, ed. Schulz, 2: 1017–18. See also the undated report attached to the letter from Blumenthal of the Stahlhelm Press Office to Baltes, 10 Oct. 1931, BA Berlin R 72, 282/166–68. Schmidt-Hannover, Umdenken oder Anarchie, 274–75.

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certain that everything was in place when the participants would begin arriving two days later.96 But as the final plans for the Harzburg demonstration were taking shape, Hitler and the Nazi party leadership became more and more nervous. Opposition was particularly strong on the left wing of the Nazi party, where any form of collaboration with the more reactionary elements on the German Right – and particularly with the capitalistic interests epitomized by Hugenberg – was immediately suspect.97 At the same time, Hitler was annoyed by the way in which the more conservative elements within the national opposition had monopolized planning for the Harzburg rally, thereby making it appear as if he and the NSDAP were actually in the tow of Hugenberg, the Stahlhelm, and their associates.98 Even before preparations for the Harzburg rally had entered their final phase, Hitler had tried to escape the noose that Hugenberg and the more conservative elements of the national opposition were trying to hang around his neck by meeting secretly with Baron Kurt von Hammerstein, commander in chief of the German armed forces, for four hours on 12 September. After doing his best to dispel whatever reservations Hammerstein might have had about his intentions, his movement, and his character, Hitler then approached retired army officer and military archivist Wilhelm Magnus von Eberhardt, a Schleicher protégé in whose Berlin apartment the meeting with Hammerstein had taken place, to see if he would sound out the Reich president’s son Oskar about setting up a meeting with his father.99 Any meeting with Hindenburg, however, would first have to be cleared through Schleicher, the Reichswehr’s “cardinal in politics.”100 For his own part, Schleicher harbored a visceral dislike of Hugenberg and was critical of the way in which the DNVP party leader was trying to organize the national opposition under his personal command. The recent meeting between Brüning and Hugenberg could only have confirmed Schleicher’s worst fears about the DNVP party 96 97

98 99 100

Weiß to the Stahlhelm’s Berlin headquarters, 8 Oct. 1931, BA Berlin, R 72/173–76. For example, see Krebs to Strasser, 14 Oct. 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Albert Krebs, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Krebs), 7/262–67, also in the unpublished records of the NSDAP Reichorganisationsleitung, Bundesarchiv Berlin, Bestand NS 22 (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, NS 22), 1052. For example, see the entries 9–10 Oct. 1931, in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 119–20. Kunrat von Hammerstein, “Schleicher, Hammerstein und die Machtübernahme,” Frankfurter Hefte 11 (1956): 11–18, 117–28, 163–76, here 17. This phrase comes from Groener in his letter to retired general Gerold von Gleich, 4 Jan. 1930, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Groener, 36/1a–5.

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leader’s intractability and dashed whatever hopes he might have had of a change in the DNVP’s opposition to the Brüning cabinet. Schleicher was now more open than ever before to the possibility of an understanding with the Nazi party leader. As a politician, Schleicher had always sought to keep his political options open and to explore new options whenever they presented themselves. Frustrated by Hugenberg’s political rigidity, Schleicher now saw an opportunity to determine whether or not it might be possible to use Hitler as a counterweight to Hugenberg’s influence in the national opposition. It was with this in mind that Schleicher conferred with the Nazi party leader in the first week of October and sought to assess the sincerity of the Nazi party leader’s pledge to reject violence and pursue the conquest of power by legal means only. In response to three questions that Schleicher posed at the outset of the meeting, Hitler answered – but only after a lengthy harangue that left Schleicher frustrated – that under no circumstances would the NSDAP tolerate the Brüning cabinet, that his party was prepared to enter the Brüning cabinet but only on the condition that new elections were held, and lastly that, if asked, he and his party were indeed fully prepared to assume sole responsibility for the conduct of national affairs.101 In the final analysis, however, the outcome of the meeting was ambiguous. Although the Nazi party leader came away from the meeting confident that things were beginning to turn his way, Schleicher was frustrated by his inability to engage Hitler in a meaningful discussion about the NSDAP’s role in Germany’s political future and remained uncertain about just how the Nazi party leader fitted in with his own political calculations.102 101

102

Entry for 5 Oct. 1931 in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed Fröhlich, 2/II, 116–7. Schleicher’s motives in meeting with Hitler can be discerned from the draft of a letter to Brüning, n.d. [Sept. 1931], BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 25/26–28, reprinted in Staat und NSDAP 1930–1932, ed. Ilse Mauer and Udo Wengst and with an introduction by Gerhard Schulz (Düsseldorf, 1977), 197–8. For further details, see Irene Strenge, Kurt von Schleicher. Politik im Reichswehrministerium am Ende der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 2006), 81–2. In this respect, see Hanshenning Holtzendorff, “Die Politik des Generals von Schleicher gegenüber der NSDAP 1930–1933. Ein Beitrag zur Frage Wehrmacht und Partei,” 22 June 1946, in Holtzendorff’s unpublished Nachlaß, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau (hereafter cited as BA-MA Freiburg, NL Holtzendorff), 5/8–15, here 8. See also Schleicher’s disparaging references to Hitler from October 1931 cited by Anton Hoch and Hermann Weiß, “Die Erinnerungen des Generalobersten Wilhelm Adam,” in Misecellanea. Festschrift für Helmut Krausnick zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. Wolfgang Benz (Stuttgart, 1980), 32–62, 39, as well as those recorded by retired general Magnus von Eberhardt, “Verschiedene Aussprüche aus Deutschlands schwerster Zeit,”

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It was against the background of these developments that Schleicher, in a move that his detractors denounced as a cynical ploy to sabotage the unity of the national front,103 arranged a meeting between Hitler and the Reich president on the afternoon of 10 October only hours before the Nazi party leader was scheduled to appear in Harzburg for a conference with Hugenberg and the other leaders of the national opposition. The meeting, which took place in the presence of the Reich president’s state secretary Otto Meissner and the NSDAP’s Hermann Göring, was in itself innocuous. At Hindenburg’s invitation, Hitler opened the meeting with a forty-five minute monologue on the history and goals of the Nazi movement. In the course of his remarks Hitler reassured the Reich president of his party’s commitment to pursuing its objectives on the basis of the existing constitutional system but complained about the illegal means authorities in Prussia and other states had used to repress his movement. When the Nazi party leader was finished, Hindenburg then asked Hitler to specify the parties that he would include in his cabinet if he were called upon to form one, a question to which the Nazi party leader responded that he was willing to work with all parties that were willing to march in step toward the goal of planting a new spiritual attitude, or Geistesverfassung, in the heart and soul of the German people. When asked why his movement could not support the current Reich chancellor, Hitler replied that he had offered to cooperate with the national government the previous winter but Brüning had preferred to align himself with the Left rather than form a majority with the parties of the Right. After a further exchange in which Hindenburg complained about the rowdiness and occasional violence of the Nazi movement in the countryside, the meeting ended on a cordial note as each man reassured the other of their shared commitment to do what was necessary to guarantee the unity of the German people.104

103 104

n.d., in Eberhardt’s unpublished Nachlaß, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau (hereafter cited as BA-MA Freiburg, NL Eberhardt), 25. Schmidt-Hannover, Umdenken oder Anarchie, 280–87. A protocol of this meeting prepared by Meissner and dated 10 Oct. 1931, has survived in BA-MA Freiburg, NL Eberhardt, 35. See also the account of this meeting in the unpublished memoirs of Hindenburg’s second adjutant Wedige von der Schulenburg, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau, Militärgeschichtliche Sammlung 2-13421 (hereafter cited as BA-MA Freiburg, MSg 2-13421), 65–68, and in the letter from Levetzow to Donnersmarck, 14 Oct. 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 83/ 124–32, reprinted in Granier, Levetzow, 307–11. For further analysis of this meeting, see Wolfram Pyta, Hindenburg. Herrschaft zwischen Hohenzollern und Hitler (Berlin, 2007), 235–37.

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Although the meeting between Hindenburg and Hitler on the afternoon of 10 October 1931 amounted to very little, it nevertheless had the effect of inflating Hitler’s sense of self-importance to the point where the sense of solidarity that Hugenberg and the leaders of the Stahlhelm hoped to celebrate at Harzburg was in serious jeopardy.105 Hitler did not leave Berlin until late that evening and arrived too late for a meeting to which he had summoned Hugenberg and the other leaders of the national opposition – including Strasser, Frick, and Konstantin Hierl from his own party – ostensibly because the Nazi party leader was not satisfied with the social content of the resolution that was to be read during the course of the demonstration scheduled for the following day. Hugenberg and his confederates worked well into the following morning to revise the resolution, but with no sign of Hitler.106 To compound the insult, Hitler failed to take part in a joint meeting of the DNVP and NSDAP Reichstag delegations but met separately with the Nazi delegation, which then proceeded to issue a special resolution of its own in clear violation of the guidelines to which all the participating organizations had previously agreed.107 Then, in the military review that took place later in the morning, Hitler publicly offended the leaders of the Stahlhelm by leaving the podium just as their detachments were marching by.108 This bit of impudence was followed by a bitter exchange between Hitler and the Stahlhelm leadership, to which a petulant and unrepentant Hitler reacted by refusing to speak at the main celebration that was scheduled for that afternoon.109 At this point Hugenberg, in a state of panic that everything

105 106

107 108

109

This is reflected in the entry for 12 Oct. 1931, in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/ II, 121–23. The best first-hand account of the events at Harzburg is to be found in the appendix to the unpublished memoirs of the ADV’s Heinrich Claß, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Licherfelde (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, NL Claß), 3, Appendix, 41–49, here 42–43. See also the account in Duesterberg’s memoirs, BA Koblenz, NL Duesterberg, 46/161–65, as well as the lengthy entry for 12 Oct. 1931, in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 121–23. Blank to Reusch, 12 Oct. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 4001012024/9. Ibid. See also the report by Heine, “Die Harzburger Tagung,” 12 Oct. 1931, and the correspondence between Heine and Wagner, 14–22 Oct. 1931, all in StA MönchenGladbach, NL Brauweiler, 109. Hitler’s mood was attributed by the Stahlhelm leadership to the fact that the Stahlhelm had shown up at Harzburg with 1,500 men instead of the 1,000 that had been stipulated in the original agreement with Hitler and that the Nazi party leader therefore had to recruit an additional 500 men at the last minute from SA detachments in the neighboring towns. For varying accounts of this, see Wagner to Ziegenrücker, 17 Oct. 1931, BA Berlin, R 72, 281/271, as well as the correspondence between Wagner and the Stahlhelm leadership in Bremen, 10–11 Dec. 1931, ibid, 281/313–15.

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he had worked for would come crashing down, took the Nazi party leader aside and pleaded with him to honor the commitments he had made earlier that year. In the meantime, the audience had begun taking its seats and was waiting for the last two seats at the speakers’ table – those reserved for Hitler and Hugenberg – to be filled. Only Hugenberg’s argument that the sole beneficiary of a collapse of the national opposition would be Brüning and that nothing could do more to strengthen his position than its demise dissuaded Hitler from carrying through with his threat.110 There was little sign of the discord backstage when Hitler and Hugenberg appeared to outbursts of applause and cheering to take their place on the stage. Aside from the fact that several additional speakers had been added to the roster, the remainder of the rally went more or less according to plan.111 Hugenberg opened the demonstration with a general broadside against the catastrophic policies of the Brüning cabinet and the chaos that had descended upon Germany as a result. The German people, Hugenberg continued, found itself in a two-front war against the forces of international Marxism on the one hand and the forces of international capitalism on the other. Only a fundamental change in the existing system of government through the transfer of power to the forces of the national opposition, Hugenberg concluded, could possibly rescue the German people from the unemployment, hunger, and ruin that had become its lot under Brüning and the system for which he stood.112 Hugenberg was then followed by Hitler, who echoed much of what the DNVP party chairman had said and underscored the determination of the national opposition to carry the battle for German, Western, and Christian culture against Bolshevism with all the means at its disposal to a final conclusion.113 Then, in fairly rapid succession, Franz Seldte and Theodor Duesterberg from the Stahlhelm, Count Eberhard von Kalckreuth as president of the National Rural League, former Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht, the Pan-German League’s Heinrich Claß, and Count Rüdiger

110

111 112 113

On Hugenberg’s intervention with Hitler, see both Claß’s memoirs, BA Berlin, NL Class, 3, Appendix, 46–47, as well as the aide de memoir by one of Harzburg’s principal organizers Oskar Werdemann, “Weitere Notizen über Harzburg,” 18 Dec. 1953, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 78. For the Nazi perspective on these developments, see Levetzow to Donnersmarck, 14 Oct. 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 83/ 124–32, as well as the entry for 12 Oct. 1931, in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/ II, 121–23. Blank to Reusch, 12 Oct. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 4001012024/9. For the text of Hugenberg’s speech, see Unsere Partei 9, no. 20 (17 Oct. 1931): 246–47. For the text of Hitler’s speech, see Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen,4/2, 123–32.

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figure 5: Photograph of DNVP party chairman and the leaders of the Stahlhelm reviewing the procession of the Stahlhelm at the Harzburg rally, October 1932. Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Bild 227–32.

von der Goltz from the United Patriotic Leagues all took the podium to assail the policies of the Brüning cabinet, to condemn the political system they held ultimately responsible for Germany’s national weakness, and to reaffirm their commitment to bringing about the fundamental changes in Germany’s governmental system that held the key to Germany’s economic recovery and political regeneration.114 Little, if any, of this was new. The only real novelty of the rally was the appearance of Schacht, the former president of the German Reichsbank who had broken with the government during the campaign against the Young Plan and who since his first meeting with the Nazi party leader in December 1930 had steadily gravitated into the orbit of Hitler and the National Socialists.115 Schacht, who spent several days in September at 114

115

On the subsequent course of the demonstration, see Unsere Partei 9, no. 20 (17 Oct. 1931): 246–47, as well as the report in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 13 Oct. 1931, nos. 469–70. See also the account in Schmidt-Hannover, Umdenken oder Anarchie, 280–7. For the text of the speeches by the two Stahlhelm leaders, see Der Stahlhelm, 18 Oct. 1931, no. 42. On Schacht’s move to the Right in the last years of the Weimar Republic, see Christopher Kopper, Hjalmar Schacht. Aufstieg und Fall von Hitlers mächtigstem Bankier (Munich

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the Württemberg estate of industrialist Paul Reusch exchanging ideas on Germany’s political situation with the influential director of the Gutehoffnungshütte,116 had been added to the list of speakers for Harzburg only days before the rally was scheduled to take place.117 As a result, Claß and von der Goltz were obliged to cut their remarks to five minutes apiece so that those in attendance could still catch the last trains leaving the resort.118 Speaking with the authority of one of Germany’s leading financial experts, Schacht leveled a blistering attack against the fiscal policies of the Brüning cabinet and his successor as head of the German Reichsbank, Hans Luther, that was scarcely discernible from the tone and content of radical right-wing rhetoric. Not only did Schacht denounce the government and the existing political system for the appalling state of German finances and the deceitful financial manipulations by which it had been hidden from the German people, but he capped his remarks by embracing the national tempest that was sweeping through the German nation as the way to national self-assertiveness and economic recovery.119 Although the hyperbole of Schacht’s remarks clearly went beyond what the more politically circumspect Reusch thought prudent,120 his presence at Harzburg no doubt helped compensate for the fact that, aside from Fritz Thyssen, none of Germany’s industrial elite had attended the demonstration despite their increasing dissatisfaction with the policies of the Brüning cabinet and their sympathy for the antigovernment camp.121 Even

116 117 118

119

120 121

and Vienna, 2006), 188–96. On his first contacts with the Nazi party leadership, see the entry for 6 Jan. 1931 in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/I, 4. Peter Langer, Macht und Verantwortung. Der Ruhrbaron Paul Reusch (Essen, 2012), 483–84. Schmidt-Hannover to Wagner, 5 Oct. 1931, BA Berlin, R 72, 282/181. Claß’s memoirs, BA Berlin, NL Class, 3, Appendix, 48. Claß’s recollection of Schacht’s appearance at Harzburg differs significantly from Schacht’s own account in Hjalmar Schacht, 76 Jahre meines Lebens (Wörishofen, 1953), 366–67. See also Kopper, Schacht, 191–93. For the text of Schacht’s remarks at Harzburg, see the appendix to his letter to Reusch, 20 Oct. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/33a. The text of his speech may also be found in BA Berlin, R 43 I, 2685/85–91, and was reprinted in Hjalmar Schacht, Nationale Kreditwirtschaft (Berlin, 1934), 5–11. Langer, Macht und Verantwortung, 484–85. On Thyssen’s politics and his attraction to National Socialism, see Carl-Freidrich Baumann, “Fritz Thyssen und der Nationalsozialismus,” Zeitschrift des Geschichtsvereins Mühlheim a. d. Ruhr 70 (1988): 139–54, as well as the more recent study by Hans Otto Eglau, Fritz Thyssen. Hitlers Gönner und Geisel (Berlin, 2003), 107–27. See also Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (New York and Oxford, 1985), 158–66.

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Schacht was critical of the reluctance of Germany’s industrial leadership to identify itself publicly with the goals of the national opposition and, like the organizers of the Harzburg rally, privately questioned the sincerity of its commitment to the cause of the national opposition.122 Though disappointed by the timidity of Germany’s industrial elite, the organizers of the Harzburg rally could nevertheless derive a measure of consolation from the fact that the list of those who attended the demonstration included the names of several prominent parliamentarians from the middle parties that had heretofore supported the Brüning cabinet. The DVP Reichstag delegation was represented by former army commander in chief Hans von Seeckt, retired admiral Ernst Hintzmann, and Erich von Gilsa, the party’s principal liaison to the Stahlhelm and Reusch’s political informant.123 Also in attendance were Gotthard Sachsenberg from the Business Party and a renegade faction from the Christian-National Peasants and Farmers’ Party headed by Albrecht Wendhausen and Heinrich von Sybel,124 as well as politically unaffiliated Catholic conservatives like the two von Lüninck brothers Hermann and Ferdinand from the Rhineland and Westphalia.125 All of this lent a measure of credence to the claim of those who had organized the rally that at Harzburg the German Right had at long last broken out of its isolation and was now beginning to stretch its nimbus over the German middle parties and those who had formerly supported the Weimar state. What the display of unity at Harzburg scarcely concealed was the existence of a bitter three-sided conflict between the Stahlhelm, DNVP, and NSDAP for the leadership of the German Right. Each of the protagonists had its own set of objectives and tactics. For the Stahlhelm, the goal was the creation of a comprehensive national front that included not just 122

123

124 125

Gilsa to Reusch, 13 Oct. 1931, RWWA Cologne, NL Reusch, 400101293/4b. See also Schacht to Reusch, 20 Oct. 1931, ibid, 400101290/33. On industry’s reaction to the Harzburg rally, see Henry A. Turner, Jr., German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (Oxford, 1985), 167–68. Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 13 Oct. 1931, nos. 469–70. See also Gilsa to Reusch, 13 Oct. 1931, RWWA Cologne, NL Reusch, 400101293/4b. On Seeckt’s involvement, see his remarks before the DVP Reichstag delegation, 13 Oct. 1931, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 367/ 341–42. On Reusch and Gilsa, see Peter Langer, “‘v. Gilsa an Reusch (Oberhausen)’: Wirtschaftsinteressen und Politik am Vorabend der Großen Krise,” in Oberhausen 1874–1999. Abenteuer Industriestadt. Beiträge zur Stadtgeschichte 1874–1999 (Oberhausen, 2001), 103–24. For Sybel’s position, see his letter to Darré, 20 Oct. 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of R. Walther Darré, Stadtarchiv Goslar, 87. On this point, see the letter from Ferdinand to Hermann von Lüninck, 13 Oct. 1931, VWA Münster, NL Lüninck, 785.

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the DNVP and NSDAP but also those smaller parties in the middle and moderate Right that were in the process of disentangling themselves from the Brüning cabinet, parties like the German People’s Party, the Business Party, and the Christian-National Peasants and Farmers’ Party. For Hugenberg and the DNVP party leadership, on the other hand, the goal was the pulverization of the various parties that stood between themselves and the Center and the polarization of the German party system so that the long-awaited struggle between the nationalist Right and the Marxist Left could take place. And for Hitler and the Nazi party leadership, the ultimate goal was the establishment of a national dictatorship, a goal that could be achieved only through the cooptation of all other parties and organizations on the German Right into a united national front under the leadership of Hitler and the NSDAP. The way in which these differences were resolved would have a profound impact not just on the conduct and outcome of the 1932 presidential elections but on the very future of the Weimar Republic itself.

4 Parliamentary Prelude

In retrospect, the Harzburg rally on 11 October 1931 revealed just how disunited the forces of the German Right were at the precise moment that their chances of seizing the reins of power were best. Not only was there a deep and ultimately irreconcilable antagonism between those on the moderate Right who hoped to bring about a conservative regeneration of the German state on the basis of the existing system of government and the elements around Hugenberg and Hitler that were opposed to any form of collaboration with the hated “Weimar system,” but even within the ranks of those who sought the overthrow of Germany’s republican government there was virtually no agreement whatsoever as to what should take its place once that had been accomplished. The events at Harzburg revealed a bitter split within the ranks of the German Right that was to resurface in an even more virulent form at the time of the 1932 presidential electionsand that would persist right up to and after the establishment of the Third Reich. The Harzburg rally was carefully timed to coincide with the reopening of the Reichstag three days later. The forces on the radical Right looked forward to their return to parliament for the first time since their dramatic exodus from the Reichstag the previous February and eagerly anticipated a confrontation with the Brüning cabinet that they felt confident would end with the transfer of political power into the hands of the national opposition.1 But looming over all of this was a much larger question and one that would be of far greater significance for the fate of the Weimar 1

For an indication of the expectations of a change in government that existed among the leaders of the national opposition, see the letter from Levetzow to Donnersmarck, 14 Oct. 1931,

119

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Republic, namely, the election of a new Reich president. Hindenburg had just turned eighty-four earlier in the month, and there were rumors that he was tiring of his office and might prefer to spend what might still remain of his golden years on his estate at Neudeck away from the tussle of political life in Berlin. Given his advanced age and all the uncertainty that surrounded the fate of his office, there was far more at stake than Brüning’s survival as chancellor or the composition of a new national government. Under these circumstances, the reopening of the Reichstag in October 1931 and the struggle for power that would unfold between the chancellor and the forces of the radical Right would take on even greater significance. Brüning had been under increasingly heavy pressure since the late summer of 1931 to reorganize his cabinet and to extend the base of his governmental coalition to the right. There was growing concern, particularly among business circles in the Rhine-Ruhr industrial basin, over the government’s restrictive fiscal policies and its inability to secure the international commitments that would have provided a measure of relief from the deepening economic crisis.2 In the meantime, influential conservative newspapers like the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung had been busy at work laying the groundwork for a reorganization of the Brüning cabinet ever since the spring of 1931 and were exerting increasingly heavy public pressure on the chancellor for an extension of his governmental coalition to the right.3 For his own part, Brüning had already begun to explore ways of broadening the base of his governmental coalition by meeting first with the Social Democrats and then with Hugenberg and the DNVP party leadership.4 But both the presidential palace and the Reichswehr were growing impatient with the slow pace of the chancellor’s progress toward a new governmental coalition, and neither shared any enthusiasm for the

2

3

4

BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 83/124–32, as well as the correspondence between the ADV’s Salm-Horstmar and Claß, 26–30 Oct. 1931, BA Berlin, R 8048, 454/62, 71. For example, see Lersner to Schleicher, 24 July 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 78/ 103–04. See also Fritz Klein, “Zur Vorbereitung der faschistischen Diktatur durch die deutsche Großbourgeoisie (1929–1933),” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 1 (1953): 872–904, here 893–96. Wolfgang Ruge, “Die ‘Deutsche Allgemine Zeitung’ und die Brüning-Regierung. Zur Rolle der Großbourgeoisie bei der Vorbereitung des Faschismus,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 16 (1968): 19–53, esp. 32–39. On Brüning’s negotiations with the Social Democrats, see the protocol of his conversation with the Theodor Leipart and Napthali from the General German Trade-Union Federation (Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund or ADGB), 1 Aug. 1931, in Die Gewerkschaften in der Endphase der Republik 1930–1933, ed. Peter Jahn, Quellen zur Geschichte der deutschen Gewerkschaftsbewegung im 20. Jahrhundert, 11 vols. (Cologne, 1985–98), 4: 369–72.

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chancellor’s inclusion of the Social Democrats in his schemes for a broadened governmental coalition.5 No one, however, was more persistent in pressing for a realignment of the national government with the forces of the radical Right than the Reich president himself. To be sure, Hindenburg had grown weary of his office and had been trying to identify a suitable successor for several years. But when these hopes were dashed first by the unexpected death of Admiral Reinhard Scheer in late November 1928 and then when the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II refused in the summer of 1931 to give his blessing to the choice of Count Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg, Hindenburg returned to the duties of the presidency with a renewed determination to complete what he hoped would become his legacy to the German people, the consummation of German unity through the integration of the national opposition into the affairs and life of the state without regard as to how this might be accomplished or who might claim the political leadership of such a project.6 Brüning was reluctant to give in to the pressure from the presidential palace for a realignment of the governmental coalition that would jeopardize the success of his foreign and domestic policies. A strong and vocal opposition could be useful, as Brüning had observed in a conversation with the KVP’s Westarp in early October 1930, in strengthening the government’s hand in negotiations with the allies,7 but bringing it into the government was an entirely different matter. In their meeting on 1 August Hindenburg had encouraged Hugenberg to confer with Brüning,8 but the chancellor had put off meeting with the DNVP party chairman until a directive from an annoyed Reich president made it impossible to do so any longer.9 On 24 August, however, Brüning made a special trip to Bad Wildbad, where Schleicher and army Commander in Chief Baron Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord were taking a short summer vacation, to

5 6 7 8

9

See the disparaging comment on Brüning’s tactics in Planck to Schleicher, 18 Aug. 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 21/81–84, also in Stabi Berlin, NL Planck, 69. Wolfram Pyta, Hindenburg. Herrschaft zwischen Hohenzollern und Hitler (Berlin, 2007), 613–27. Peer Oliver Volkmann, Heinrich Brüning (1883–1970). Nationalist ohne Heimat (Düsseldorf, 2007), 191. Meissner’s protocol of Hindenburg’s meeting with Hugenberg, 1 Aug. 1931, BA Koblenz, R 43 I, 2655/45–53. See also Hugenberg to Hitler, 1 Aug. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Wegener, 73/183. In the respect, see the entries in Quaatz’s diary, 9, 14, and 21 Aug. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17, reprinted in Die Deutschnationalen und die Zestörung der Weimarer Republik. Aus dem Tagebuch von Reinhold Quaatz 1928–1933, ed. Hermann Weiß and Paul Hoser (Stuttgart, 1989), 142–43.

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reassure himself of their continued support before meeting with Hugenberg. Schleicher, whose interest in a realignment of the national government with the forces of the national opposition had temporarily abated, reassured Brüning that his middle-of-the-road course enjoyed not just the military’s support but that of the Reich president as well.10 In his meeting with Hugenberg two days later, Brüning stressed that he would not stand in the way of bringing the national opposition into the national government and that he was fully prepared to resign as chancellor in order to make this happen. But when Hugenberg refused to commit himself to Hindenburg’s reelection as Reich president – something that Brüning regarded as a sine qua non for a reorganization of the national government to the right – this only confirmed his deep-seated conviction that the national opposition was not yet prepared to accept a responsible role in shaping the affairs of state.11 The Nationalists, on the other hand, did not take Brüning’s overture seriously and remained intractable in their opposition to any form of cooperation with his government.12 While Brüning enjoyed the support of the Reich president and Germany’s military leadership through the end of August 1931, his position as chancellor became less and less tenable after the collapse of the German-Austrian customs union project in early September 1931 and the chorus of right-wing demands it had unleashed on the radical Right for the resignation of his Foreign Minister Julius Curtius.13 Brüning had pinned his hopes of stabilizing his domestic political position by a dramatic triumph in the field of foreign policy. But neither his talks with the British government at Chequers and London earlier in the summer nor Curtius’s pursuit of the German-Austrian customs union project a month later had 10

11 12

13

Brüning, Memoiren, 373–4. See also Schleicher to Groener, 28 Aug. 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Groener, 147/18–19, reprinted in Gordon Craig, “Briefe Schleichers an Groener,” Die Welt als Geschichte 11 (1951): 122–33, here 129. Brüning, Memoiren, 375–78. For example, see Hugenberg to Oldenburg-Januschau, 29 Aug. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17, reprinted in Die Deutschnationalen und die Zestörung der Weimarer Republik, ed. Weiß and Hoser, 149–53. The disdain with which the DNVP party leadership dismissed Brüning’s overtures can also be seen in the handwritten notes that ADV chairman Heinrich Claß took on Quaatz’s verbal report on the meeting with the chancellor, n.d., BA Berlin, R 8048, 396/120–21. On Curtius’s dilemma and decision to resign, see his correspondence with DVP party chairman Eduard Dingeldey, 4–8 Sept. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 57/1–3, as well as the discussion at the meeting of the DVP Reichstag delegation, 8 Sept. 1931, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 367/337. For the best discussion of the factors that led to the collapse of the customs union project, see Iago Gil Aguado, “The Creditanstalt Crisis of 1931 and the Failure of the Austro-German Customs Union Project,” The Historical Journal 44 (2001): 199–21.

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brought him the diplomatic success he needed to maintain his political course.14 Although Schleicher continued to express confidence in Brüning’s performance as chancellor,15 pressure from the presidential palace for a radical change in the composition and course of the national government continued to mount in the days leading up to the Harzburg rally. In part this reflected the effects of an ambitious campaign coordinated by the PanGerman sympathizer and activist Prince Otto zu Salm-Horstmar to deluge the Reich president with letters demanding Brüning’s dismissal and the transfer of power into the hands of the national opposition.16 Brüning’s position was further weakened when on 29 September eleven of Germany’s most important nonagricultural economic interest organizations as disparate as the National Federation of German Industry, the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Deutscher Handels- und Industriekammertag), and the Hansa-Bund for Commerce, Trade, and Industry (HansaBund für Gewerbe, Handel und Industrie) published an economic manifesto under the title “Gemeinsame Erklärung der Deutschen Wirtschaftsverbande” that represented a virtual declaration of war against the fiscal and economic policies of the Brüning cabinet.17 And if this were not enough, Hindenburg met with Wilhem Cuno, chief executive of HAPAG Shipping Lines and himself an aspirant to the Reich presidency, on the

14

15

16

17

For the best overview of Brüning’s foreign policy, see Hermann Graml, Zwischen Stresemann und Hitler. Die Aussenpolitik der Präsidialkabinette Brüning, Papen und Schleicher (Munich, 2001), 39–198. See also the relevant sections of William L. Patch, Jr., Heinrich Brüning and the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic (Cambridge, 1998), 118–71, and Herbert Hömig, Brüning. Kanzler in der Krise. Eine Weimarer Biographie (Paderborn, 2000), 296–309, as well as the detailed monograph by Edward W. Bennett, Germany and the Diplomacy of the Financial Crisis, 1931 (Cambridge, MA, 1962), esp. 124–30, 295–306. Schleicher to Planck, 20 Sept. 1931, Stabi Berlin, NL Planck, 68, also quoted in Astrid von Pufendorf, Die Plancks. Eine Familie zwischen Patriotismus und Widerstand (Berlin, 2006), 252–53. “Brief an den Reichspräsidenten,” Deutsche Zeitung, 5 Sept. 1931. Of particular interest in this connection are the letters from Salm-Horstmar to Arnim-Boitzenburg, 15 Sept. 1931, BLHA Potsdam, NL Arnim, 4506/130–31; to Class, 17 Sept. 1931, BA Berlin, R 8048, 454/ 46; and to Hertzberg, 22 and 28 Sept. 1931, ibid, 454/47–48. See also the copy of Hindenburg’s letter to Salm-Horstmar, 24 Oct. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17, reprinted in Deutschnationalen und die Zestörung der Weimarer Republik, ed. Weiß and Hoser, 159. For the text of the manifesto, see “Gemeinsame Erklärung deutscher Wirtschaftsverbände,” 29 Sept. 1931, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 1140/145–53, reprinted in Akten der Reichskanzlei: Die Kabinette Brüning Brüning I u. II. 30. März 1930 bis 10. Oktober 1931. 10. Oktober 1931 bis 1. Juni 1932, ed. Tilman Koops, 3 vols (Boppard am Rhein, 1985 and 1989), 2: 1764–69. On its political implications, see Klein, “Zur Vorbreitung der faschistischen Dikatatur,” 894–95.

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evening of 5 October to receive a proposal for the reorganization of the Brüning cabinet that accorded with the wishes of German heavy industry and that foresaw changes in the foreign office and the ministries of the interior, economics, finance, and justice. Of those serving in the Brüning cabinet, only Brüning as chancellor and Stegerwald, Groener, and possibly Schiele at the ministries of labor, defense, and agriculture respectively were to be retained. In all other cases, the cabinet posts were to be filled by either men who were favorably disposed to the interests of German industry or experts without ties to any of the political parties.18 As pressure on Brüning mounted in the days leading up to the reopening of the Reichstag, the leaders of the various parties between the Center and the DNVP launched yet another effort to set aside their differences for the sake of a united parliamentary front in support of the beleaguered chancellor. Here the initiative came from August Weber, chairman of the DStP Reichstag delegation, and Wilhelm Abegg, a highranking official in the Prussian ministry of the interior. They were subsequently joined by Hans Schlange-Schöningen, a former DNVP moderate who had gone over to the CNBLP at the beginning of 1930 and the man whom Brüning would soon tap as Reich Commissar for Eastern Relief (Reichskommissar für Osthilfe).19 Though skeptical about their prospects of success, the three expanded their efforts to include representatives from the other parties between the Center and DNVP with the twofold aim of buttressing Brüning’s position in the Reichstag and increasing the influence of the parties of the middle and moderate Right over the government’s legislative program.20 Abegg and his associates received strong encouragement not only from Brüning’s confederates in the Reich chancery21 but also from Eduard Hamm, president of the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry.22 In the last two weeks of September, Abegg and

18 19

20

21 22

Klein, “Zur Vorbreitung der faschistischen Dikatatur,” 897–900. On Schlange-Schöningen, see Günter J. Trittel, “Hans Schlange-Schöningen. Ein vergessener Politiker der ‘Ersten Stunde’,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 35 (1987): 25–63, esp. 29–32. Entry in Passarge’s diary, 8 Sept. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Passarge, 6/3–7. For a more detailed discussion of these negotiations, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Sammlung oder Zersplitterung? Die Bestrebungen zur Bildung einer neuen Mittelpartei in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik 1930–1933,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25 (1977): 265–304, here 273–76. Franz Kempner to Hamm, 13 Sept. 1931, in Hamm’s unpublished Nachlaß in the Bayerischen Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich, vol. 86. Pünder’s memorandum on his conversation with Hamm, 21 Sept. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 140/151–53. See also Brüning, Memoiren, 394. Aside from the letter mentioned

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his associates met with representatives from the DVP, the CNBLP, the Christian-Social People’s Service, and the People’s Conservative movement on three occasions in Berlin’s fashionable Deutsche Gesellschaft 1914. At the second meeting on 21 September Schlange-Schöningen made an impassioned plea for closer cooperation in support of the Brüning cabinet that succeeded, at least for the moment, in overcoming the reservations that Westarp and the People’s Conservatives had expressed about the prominence of the State Party in the early stage of the negotiations. Thanks to forcefulness of Schlange’s rhetoric, the group agreed to a two-stage strategy that envisaged both the publication of an appeal calling upon the parties of the middle and moderate Right to close ranks behind the national government and the presentation of a joint statement by the participating parties in support of the Brüning cabinet at the opening session of the Reichstag.23 If successful, these negotiations would have placed a contingent of more than a hundred parliamentary deputies at the chancellor’s disposal. As it was, however, the divisions among the parties of the middle and moderate Right were simply too great to overcome in two weeks of negotiations. Much of the problem stemmed from the indecisiveness of the DVP party leadership, which was already in the process of reassessing its relationship to the Brüning cabinet and realigning itself with the forces of the national opposition.24 As a result, the compromise that Schlange-Schöningen had hammered out in the meeting on 21 September began to unravel when reports of the agreement appeared in the German press. This, in turn,

23

24

in the previous footnote, the Hamm Nachlaß contains no additional material on the negotiations in the fall of 1931. For further information on Hamm, see the recent and insightful essay by Wolfgang Hardtwig, “Der Weimarer Demokrat Eduard Hamm (1879–1944). Persönliches Profil und politisches Handeln zwischen Kaiserreich und Widerstand,” in Wolfgang Hardtwig, Deutsche Geschichtskultur im 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2013): 313–55. Passarge’s handwritten notes on the meeting in the Deutsche Gesellschaft 1914, 21 Sept. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Passarge, 6/29–31. See also Weber’s report to the DStP executive committee, 26 Sept. 1931, BA Koblenz, R 43 III, 49/134–37. For the conservative perspective, see Passarge to Schlange-Schöningen, 23 Sept. 1931, ibid, 6/33–37, as well as the letter from Westarp to Simpfendörfer, Rademacher, and HammersteinLoxten, 22 Sept. 1931, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 106. For example, see the comments by the DVP’s Ernst Scholz in the meeting on 13 Sept. 1931, as recorded in Passarge’s diary, BA Koblenz, NL Passarge, 6/10–11. For further information, see Ludwig Richter, “National-Liberalismus, Nationalsozialismus und die Krise der Weimarer Republik. Zur innerparteilichen Diskussion in der Deutschen Volkspartei 1929–1933,” Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 11 (1999): 107–33, esp. 121–24.

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unnerved the conservatives around Westarp to the point where the CNBLP’s Wolfgang Hauenschild withdrew from the project just as representatives from the participating parties were about to meet again on 29 September. Stunned by the news of Hauenschild’s withdrawal, the meeting ended in a virtual impasse that left little hope for anything more elaborate than a purely nonbinding joint declaration when the Reichstag reconvened on 13 October.25 This turn of events not only underscored the deep divisions that separated the parties of the middle and moderate Right but also deprived the chancellor of the solid base of support outside of his own party that would help him resist pressure from Hindenburg and Schleicher for a realignment of his cabinet with the forces of the national opposition. In the meantime, the Nationalists had all but taken themselves out of the running for a place in the new national government that Brüning was in the process of putting together. Convinced after meeting with Brüning on 27 August that the Center’s reluctance to break with the Social Democrats in Prussia would continue to stand in the way of the national opposition’s efforts to gain access to the corridors of power,26 Hugenberg and the DNVP party leadership proceeded to use the upcoming national party congress in Stettin on 19–20 September 1931 to reaffirm their party’s commitment to the goals of the national opposition and the crusade for the overthrow of the existing political system. In his closing speech on the last day of the congress, Hugenberg lashed out at what he depicted as a “dictatorship of the Center” whose sole purpose was to prevent the establishment of a new government of the German Right. In a refrain that would become the constant leitmotif of his tenure as DNVP party chairman, Hugenberg claimed that Germany was in the midst of a civil war that would bring the definitive triumph of Bolshevism if the forces of the national opposition failed in their historic mission to destroy the existing system of government and unite the German people into a solid phalanx capable of defending all of that that had made Germany great against the tide of international Marxism.27

25

26

27

Passarge to Schlange-Schöningen, 29 Sept. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Passarge, 6/39–45. On the reservations of the group around Westarp, see Rademacher to Westarp, 24 Sept. 1931, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 106, and Philipp to Westarp, 26 Sept. 1931, ibid, VN 15. The disappointment that Hugenberg and his entourage felt about the outcome of the meeting and the practical implications they drew from it can be seen in the letter from Quaatz to Hugenberg, 29 Aug. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. [Alfred Hugenberg], Hugenbergs innenpolitisches Programm. Rede, gehalten auf dem 10. Reichsparteitag der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei am 20. September 1931 in der Messehalle Stettin, Deutschnationale Flugschrift, no. 353 (Berlin, n.d. [1931]), 3–4, 16–19.

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The discord among the parties of the middle and moderate Right and the intransigence of the radical Right severely limited Brüning’s options when it came to forming a new cabinet. At the same time, Cuno’s visit and the letter-writing campaign orchestrated by Salm-Horstmar had only heightened the Reich president’s impatience with Brüning’s lack of progress toward fulfillment of the goals he had set for himself and the German nation. Brüning himself could sense that the wind had changed when Hindenburg summoned him to a conference in the presidential palace late in the afternoon of 5 October to discuss details of the third presidential emergency decree that was scheduled for promulgation the following day. When Hindenburg used the meeting as an opportunity to bring up the reorganization of the national cabinet, this provoked a sharp response from Brüning, who suggested that the president should use his authority as head of state to appoint his own cabinet of the Right. Brüning offered the support of the Center for such a government but stipulated that, under no circumstances, would he be part of it. In return, the parties of the radical Right would have to state in public that they would support Hindenburg in the upcoming presidential elections. From Hindenburg Brüning demanded a promise not to dissolve the Reichstag until after the reparations negotiations with the allies had been brought to a successful conclusion. Otherwise Brüning feared that the prolonged parliamentary recess would provide the parties on the extreme Right with even greater electoral gains than they had already experienced.28 Although the meeting between Brüning and Hindenburg revealed how strained relations between the two men had become, it did not produce the open break for which the leaders of the national opposition had been hoping. Brüning met with the Reich president again on the morning of 7 October, at which time he demanded that the president either accept his resignation or give him the freedom to act on his own responsibility. Hindenburg responded by insisting that Brüning replace two of the four Centrists who belonged to his cabinet as well as Curtius at the foreign office, a condition to which Brüning acceded in light of the fact that this would allow him to move the base of his government to the right without risking its parliamentary majority.29 Although his options were severely

28

29

The foregoing is based extensively on the account in Hömig, Brüning, 386–87. See also the account in Brüning, Memoiren, 421–23, as well as Brüning’s brief report on his meeting with Hindenburg at a ministerial conference, 6 Oct. 1931, in Akten der Reichskanzlei: Kabinette Brüning, ed. Koops, 2: 1816. Brüning, Memoiren, 423–24.

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restricted by the obstinacy of the radical Right and the instability of the parties that stood between it and the Center, Brüning negotiated furiously over the course of the next several days but experienced little success in building a governmental coalition that would, at one and the same time, satisfy the Reich president and withstand the challenge of the radical Right.30 Brüning moved first to solidify his position with German industry by securing the cooperation of the more moderate elements within the Ruhr industrial establishment, but neither Paul Silverberg nor Albert Vögler were willing to assume cabinet posts because they could not count on the backing of their peers in Ruhr heavy industry.31 In a similar vein, Brüning had hoped to tie the DVP more tightly to his cabinet by persuading the former party chairman Ernst Scholz to accept an appointment as his new minister of justice, but on 9 October Scholz withdrew his name from further consideration, citing not only concern for his health but also his conviction that it was more urgent than ever to attract the forces of the German Right to a policy of responsible cooperation.32 When Brüning presented his new cabinet to the president on the morning of 9 October, it was a cabinet of hasty compromises, a series of Verlegenheitslösungen that stood little chance of winning the respectability it needed to stabilize his position as chancellor.33 Brüning himself had been obliged to assume the responsibilities of the German foreign office, while Groener, a man whose influence with Hindenburg was already in eclipse, added the ministry of the interior to the ministry of defense that he already held. Brüning’s new economics minister was Hermann Warmbold, who came not from heavy industry but from chemicals and who therefore did not provide the chancellor with the coverage he needed to protect his cabinet against attacks from Ruhr heavy industry. While Schiele, Dietrich, Stegerwald, and Centrist Curt Joël all remained at their previous posts, Treviranus was moved from the ministry 30

31 32 33

Ibid, 425–8. For the best secondary treatments of the reorganization of the Brüning cabinet in the fall of 1931, see Patch, Brüning, 184–200, and Hömig, Brüning, 390–9, as well as the superb overviews by Bracher, Auflösung der Weimarer Republik, 415–23; Hans Mommsen, Die verspielte Freiheit. Der Weg der Republik von Weimar in den Untergang 1918 bis 1933 (Berlin, 1989), 404–09; and Gerhard Schulz, Von Brüning zu Hitler. Der Wandel des politischen Systems in Deutschland 1930–1933 (Berlin, 1992), 504–71. Silverberg to Krupp, 12 Oct. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Silverberg, 234/23–27. Scholz to Brüning, 9 Oct. 1931, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 1308/695. Schäffer, “Das zweite Kabinett Brüning,” 10 Oct. 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Hans Schäffer, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich, ED 93 (hereafter cited as IfZ Munich, NL Schäffer, ED 93), 31/429–34.

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responsible for the administration of the Eastern Relief Program to the ministry of transportation. None of this came close to meeting the high expectations that not only Germany’s agricultural, industrial, and military elites but the Reich president himself had held for the reorganization of the Brüning cabinet. The effects of all of this were mixed. Although the reshuffling of the Brüning cabinet had done much to stabilize the system of presidential government that had emerged in stages over the course of the previous year and a half, it also left the chancellor substantially weakened and subject to the whims of the presidential entourage. The installation of the second Brüning cabinet took place just as the forces of the radical Right were assembling in Harzburg to sound what they hoped would be the death knell of the Brüning system. Although it was difficult to know what might happen if the chancellor failed to find a parliamentary majority for his new cabinet,34 the leaders of the national opposition were convinced that the chancellor’s demise was imminent and returned to Berlin eager for a test of strength they felt confident of winning. But the optimism with which the leaders of the national opposition faced the prospect of a showdown with the Brüning government blithely ignored the divisions that had surfaced within their ranks at Harzburg. Hitler’s bizarre behavior during the rally and, in particular, his absence from the podium as detachments of the Stahlhelm marched by had done much to sour relations between the NSDAP and its more conservative allies in the national opposition.35 There were also signs of dissent within the NSDAP, where party propaganda leader Joseph Goebbels, speaking at the Berlin Sport Palace on the eve of the Harzburg rally, had set clear and precise limits to the NSDAP’s involvement in the national opposition. The meaning of “the great demonstration of the national opposition in Harzburg,” Goebbels insisted, was purely tactical and pertained to what the party needed to do to achieve power and not what it would do with that power once it had achieved it. In no way whatsoever, Goebbels reassured his

34

35

For the speculation that surrounded the fate of the second Brüning cabinet, see Schäffer, “Das zweite Kabinett Brüning,” 10 Oct. 1931, IfZ Munich, NL Schäffer, ED 93, 31/ 429–34, as well as Lersner’s draft of a letter for Bosch, 16 Oct. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 7/77–80. In this respect, see the correspondence between the Stahlhelm’s Theodor Duesterberg and Hitler, 23 Nov.–1 Dec. 1931, BA Berlin, R 8048, 271/27, 29–32. On the quarrel at Harzburg, see Blank to Reusch, 12 Oct. 1931, RWWA Cologne, NL Reusch, 4001012024/9, as well as the report by Heine, “Die Harzburger Tagung,” 12 Oct. 1931, and the correspondence between Heine and Wagner, 14–22 Oct. 1931, all in the StA Mönchen-Gladbach, NL Brauweiler, 109.

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audience, did the NSDAP’s participation in the demonstration affect “the firm and unalterable character” of the National Socialist program.36 Goebbels’ forceful defense of the NSDAP’s independence vis-à-vis the non-Nazi members of the national opposition and Hitler’s bizarre behavior at Harzburg could only have aggravated the uncertainties that already existed among the NSDAP’s more conservatives allies about its true intentions and goals. What this reflected was not only the deep-seated antipathy that the so-called Nazi revolutionaries like Goebbels felt toward the “social reactionaries” around Hugenberg or the “bourgeois nationalists” like Seldte and Duesterberg but also the struggle that had developed between Hitler, Hugenberg, and the Stahlhelm over the leadership of the national movement. Whereas the leaders of the national opposition all left Harzburg for Berlin confident that the upcoming test of strength in the Reichstag would result in Brüning’s defeat and the transfer of power into the hands of the radical Right, there had been no agreement among the leaders of the organizations assembled at Harzburg as to who would assume the reins of power once Brüning had been driven from office. To be sure, both Hitler and Hugenberg had each left Harzburg confident that he would be the one to whom Hindenburg would turn when it came to appointing a new government. Whereas Hitler was convinced that the DNVP party chairman would immediately contact him if and when he received the summons from Hindenburg, Hugenberg had no such confidence in Hitler and feared that he would be left out in the cold should the Reich president designate the Nazi party leader as Brüning’s successor.37 Fueled by Hitler’s behavior at Harzburg, the distrust that Hugenberg and his confederates felt toward the Nazi party leader ran true and deep.38 In presenting his new cabinet at the opening session of the reconvened Reichstag on 13 October, Brüning lashed out once again at his detractors on the German Right. Contrasting his policy of Sachlichkeit to the demagogy of the national opposition, Brüning argued that success began with 36

37 38

Entry in Goebbels’ diary, 10 Oct. 1931, in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, Teil 1, Bd. 2/II (Munich, 2004), 120. For the substance of Goebbels’ argument, see his article “Von Harzburg nach Braunschweig,” Der Angriff, 21 Oct. 1931, no. 187. For further details, see Levetzow to Donnersmarck, 14 Oct. 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 83/124–32. Entry in Quaatz’s diary, 18 Oct. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. In this regard the pioneering study by John A. Leopold, Alfred Hugenberg: The Radical Nationalist Campaign against the Weimar Republic (New Haven, 1977), 84–106, has been superceded by the recent study by Maximilian Terhalle, Deutschnational in Weimar. Die politische Biographie des Reichstagsabgeordneten Otto Schmidt(-Hannover) 1887–1971 (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2009), 262–93.

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“the recognition of reality” and defended the hard and unpopular measures his government had taken as steps that already placed Germany ahead of other major countries in dealing with the effects of the world economic crisis. Brüning then threw down the gauntlet to the leaders of the national opposition: “I would rather be reviled as a traitor to the fatherland or abused in some other way than for a single moment lose my nerve and depart from the path that I have set for myself.” Continuing in this vein, Brüning singled out in particular those at Harzburg whose agitation had exceeded the bounds of common decency and whose carelessness and “seductive siren tones” could “shake the faith of the German people in its currency.”39 The thrust of Brüning’s remarks, however, was directed more at Hugenberg and the DNVP than at Hitler and carefully avoided any direct reference to the Nazi party leader.40 In fact, Brüning had met with Hitler as recently as the morning of 10 October in the hope of driving a wedge between Hitler and Hugenberg.41 But any hopes Brüning might have had of sabotaging the unity of the Harzburg Front by artificially inflating the self-esteem of Hitler and the Nazi party leadership were dashed when Hitler responded to Brüning’s speech with a long open letter in which the Nazi party leader staked his claim to the leadership of the national movement. In affirming the willingness of the national opposition to assume the heavy burden of Germany’s national leadership, Hitler questioned the sincerity of Brüning’s overtures to the German Right and claimed that they had never been followed by concrete steps suggesting that they were anything more than empty platitudes. At the same time, Hitler criticized the chancellor for failing to live up to the promises he had made at the time he became chancellor and argued that it would have been impossible for him to succeed given the way in which his hands had been tied by the Young Plan, reparations, and the legacy of Versailles. It was only, Hitler concluded, when Germany had freed itself from the snare of international Bolshevism through the ruthless destruction of the existing political system that the spiritual and material forces of the German nation would prevail over all that had plagued it for the last twelve years.42 39

40 42

Brüning, “Rechenschaft. Reichstagsrede vom 13. Oktober 1931,” in Heinrich Brüning, Zwei Jahre am Steuer des Reichs. Reden aus Brünings Kanzlerzeit (Cologne, 1932), 34–41, esp. 38–39. For a fuller discussion of this speech, see Hömig, Brüning, 406–08. 41 Brüning, Memoiren, 428. Ibid, 391–92. Hitler, open letter to Brüning, 14 Oct. 1931, in Hitlers Auseinandersetzung mit Brüning (Munich, 1932), 17–40, reprinted in Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen. Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933, ed. Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 5 vols. in 12 parts (Munich, London, New York, and Paris, 1992–98), 4/2: 134–58.

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As the lines were being drawn for the final showdown in the Reichstag, the fate of the Brüning cabinet lay very much in the hands of the parties of the middle and moderate Right. Of the various parties that stood between the Center and the DNVP, only the German State Party, the Christian-Social People’s Service, the People’s Conservative Association, and the People’s National Reich Association (Volksnationale Reichsvereinigung or VNR) could be counted on to support Brüning in his test of strength with the radical Right.43 But even with the support of the Center, the Bavarian People’s Party, and the Social Democrats, Brüning still lacked a clear majority in the Reichstag. Moreover, the German People’s Party had decided, under heavy pressure from the industrial interests on its right wing and after a bitter struggle with the party’s left wing, to oppose the Brüning government and join forces with the radical Right in its efforts to drive Brüning from office.44 The DVP’s decision to align itself with the forces of the national opposition dealt a severe blow to Brüning’s prospects in the Reichstag and placed increasingly heavy pressure on the CNBLP and WP. Having walked a fine line between supporting Reich Agricultural Minister Martin Schiele and opposing the Brüning cabinet, the leaders of the CNBLP were under heavy pressure from the leaders of the National Rural League to vote against the Brüning cabinet,45 just as there was considerable sentiment from within the CNBLP’s national organization for the party to align itself with the forces of the national opposition in its crusade against the existing political system.46 Not even 43

44

45

46

For an insightful analysis of the situation in the Reichstag, see Westarp to Rademacher, 12 Oct. 1931, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 106. For an overview of the political situation, see the informative circular from the leadership of the Young German Order, 16 Oct. 1931, in the NSDAP Hauptarchiv, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, Bestand NS 26 (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, NS 26), 858. Angriff und Abwehr, ed. Reichsgeschäftsstelle der Deutschen Volkspartei, Merkblatt Nr. 59 (Berlin, 1931). See also the minutes of the DVP Reichstag delegation, 10 Oct. 1931, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 367/340–43. For further details, see Jones, Liberalism, 429–31, and Richter, Deutsche Volkspartei, 713–38. See Kalckreuth’s remarks at a meeting of the RLB executive committee, 6 Oct. 1931, as well as the resolution released at the conclusion of the meeting, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 145/ 51–56. For example, see the resolution adopted by the Münster district organization of the CNBLP, 10 Oct. 1931, appended to Abseberg to Lüninck, 10 Oct. 1931, VWA Münster, NL Lünick, 785, as well as the five-page report from the Baron Franz Schenck von Stauffenberg to the executive committee of the Württemberg Peasants and Wine Growers’ League (Württembergischer Bauern- und Weingärtnerbund), n.d. [Oct. 1931], in the unpublished Nachlaß of Baron Berthold Hiller von Gaertringen in the Archiv der Freiherren von Gaertringen in Gärtringen (hereafter cited as NL Hiller von Gaertringen, Gärtringen). For further information on the situation within the CNBLP, see Markus

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the recent appointment of Schlange-Schöningen as Brüning’s commissar for Eastern Relief would overcome the strong anti-Brüning stance the leaders of the CNBLP had taken since the fall of 1930,47 and on 15 October the CNBLP’s Friedrich Döbrich announced to the Reichstag that his party would support the motions of no-confidence that the parties of the national opposition had brought against the Brüning cabinet.48 Attention now switched to the Business Party, which remained deeply divided in its attitude toward the Brüning cabinet despite the fact that the middle-class interest groups that provided the WP with the bulk of its popular and electoral support had been severely hurt by the government’s fiscal and economic policies.49 But the leaders of the WP were uncertain as to what might follow the Brüning government if it should be driven from office and remained cool to the hysterics of the national opposition.50 Brüning opened the session on 16 October 1931 with an impassioned speech in which he not only singled out the CNBLP for particular criticism but also castigated those who had gathered at Harzburg for their lack of unity and clarity as to what they actually hoped to accomplish.51 By now, the forces around Brüning felt increasingly confident that they had the votes to survive the challenge from their opponents on the Left and the Right.52 But even as he spoke, two factors were working in Brüning’s favor: the discord within the DVP Reichstag delegation where the leaders of the party’s left wing balked at following Dingeldey’s decision to oppose the Brüning cabinet53 and the uncertainty in the Business

47 48 49

50

51 52

53

Müller, Die Christlich-Nationale Bauern- und Landvolkpartei 1928–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2001), 225–66. In this respect, see Hauenschild’s comments at a press conference as reported in the Sächsische Bauern-Zeitung 41, no. 38 (11 Oct. 1931): 411–12. Verhandlungen des Reichstags, 446: 2150–52. For example, see Drewitz to Brüning, 5 Aug. 1931, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 659/188, as well as the petition from the German Chamber of Artisans and Small Business (Deutscher Handwerksund Gewerbetag) and the National Federation of the German Artisanry (Reichsverband des Deutschen Handwerks) to Brüning, 12 Oct. 1931, ibid, 2015/220–25. Report of a speech by former WP national party chairman Hermann Drewitz in Altenburg, 17 Oct. 1931, in the Kölnische Zeitung, 21 Oct. 1931, no. 574. For further details, see Martin Schumacher, Mittelstandsfront und Republik. Die Wirtschaftspartei – Reichspartei des deutschen Mittelstandes 1919–1933 (Düsseldorf, 1972), 177–82. Brüning, “Rechtfertigung. Reichstagsrede vom 16. Oktober 1931,” in Brüning, Zwei Jahre, 41–44. In this respect, see the letter from Ada Gräfin von Westarp to Westarp’s two daughters, 12 Oct. 1931, as well as the detailed report that Westarp dictated to his wife, 14 Oct. 1931, NL Westarp, Gärtringen. For example, see Mittelmann, “Die Haltung der Deutschen Volkspartei,” Vossische Zeitung, 13 Oct. 1931, no. 482.

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Party where the interim party chairman Johann Victor Bredt succeeded in persuading his colleagues from his sickbed in Marburg that the forces of the national opposition were in no position whatsoever to assume the reins of power.54 Consequently, when the Reichstag voted on a Communist no-confidence motion late on the morning of 16 October, Brüning prevailed by a 295-270 margin as all twenty-one WP deputies and five members of the DVP Reichstag delegation voted to support his cabinet. In eight subsequent votes calling for either the dissolution of the Reichstag or the suspension of the cabinet’s emergency powers, the government had its way by margins of fifty to a hundred votes each.55 Having thus survived the challenge of the radical Right, the chancellor adjourned parliament until the following February. Although Brüning had survived his test of strength with the forces of the Harzburg Front, his position as chancellor was far from secure. Not only did his victory depend upon a fortuitous set of circumstances in the Business Party and the mutiny of a handful of deputies in the German People’s Party against the anti-Brüning course of their party’s national leadership, but the reorganization of his cabinet fell far short of what Germany’s military, industrial, and agricultural elites had expected from the chancellor’s repeated promises to move the base of his governmental coalition to the right. From their perspective, the second Brüning cabinet was something of a sham that offered the appearance but not the substance of a real shift to the right. At the same time, Germany’s conservative elites remained wary of the National Socialists even though Hitler and his confederates had begun to make significant inroads into their ranks. Still, the radical Right was plagued by severe internal divisions of its own. For in many respects the Harzburg Front too was something of a sham that offered the appearance but not the substance of right-wing political unity. In this respect, it was unclear whether Hitler’s bizarre behavior at Harzburg was simply a momentary aberration or a harbinger of things to come. Nor would relations improve after Brüning survived the no-confidence vote that the national opposition had brought against his new cabinet in the dramatic Reichstag vote on 16 October. Hugenberg 54

55

Confidential circular from the WP leadership to friends of the party, 17 Oct. 1931, in NSDAP Nachrichtendienst, Information über den Gegner, Dec. 1931, BA Berlin, NS 26, 285. See also Bredt’s account in Erinnerungen und Dokumente von Joh. Victor Bredt 1914 bis 1933, ed. Martin Schumacher (Düsseldorf, 1970), 272–74, as well as the recent Bredt biography by Martin Grosch, Johann Victor Bredt. Konservative Politik zwischen Kaiserreich und Nationalsozialismus. Ein politische Biographie (Berlin, 2014), 341–43. Verhandlungen des Reichstags, 446: 2231–42.

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and his confederates were convinced that Brüning would have been driven from office and that the national opposition would have come to power had it not been for Hitler’s antics at Harzburg and the public perception of discord on the antigovernment Right.56 At the same time, Hugenberg’s supporters blamed Schleicher for having encouraged Hitler’s eccentric behavior at Harzburg by arranging his meetings with Brüning and Hindenburg only hours before the national opposition was scheduled to meet in Harzburg57 but were powerless to influence the Nazi party leader in the interest of greater harmony and closer cooperation among the parties and organizations of the national opposition.58 All of this combined to give the Brüning government a new, albeit short, lease on life. Despite the persistence with which he continued to foster the illusion that the Harzburg demonstration contained the seeds of a viable political alliance,59 Hugenberg remained profoundly distrustful of the Nazi party leader and feared that one day Hitler would present the DNVP with an ultimatum threatening a declaration of war if it did not show him its unconditional support.60 Hugenberg was particularly suspicious of the NSDAP’s social and economic policies and doubted whether Hitler and his party were prepared to accept the heavy price the German people would have to pay in order to put the nation’s economic house back in order.61 Nowhere were the implications of the discord on the German Right more apparent or meaningful than in the deliberations surrounding the search for a new Reich president in the spring of 1932. Hindenburg’s term as Reich president was scheduled to expire in May, and it was far from certain that the eighty-four-year-old Reich president was willing to subject himself to the rigors of another campaign. Under these 56

57 58 59 60 61

In this respect, see Salm-Horstmar to Claß, 26 Oct. 1931, BA Berlin, R 8048, 454/62, and Claß to Salm-Horstmar, 30 Oct. 1931, ibid, 454/71. For an indication of the bitterness that Hugenberg and his associates felt about Hitler’s behavior, see Wegener to Donnersmarck, 26 Dec. 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 83/218–20. Otto Schmidt-Hannover, Umdenken oder Anarchie. Männer – Schicksäle – Lehren (Göttingen, 1959), 285–87. For example, see the frustration expressed in the letter from Schmidt-Hannover to Wagner, 3 Dec. 1931, BA Berlin, R 72, 281/94–95. For example, see Hugenberg’s speech, “Der Sinn von Harzburg,” Darmstadt, 8 Nov. 1931, in Unsere Partei 9, no. 23 (1 Dec. 1931): 275–76. Lersner, draft of a letter to Bosch, 21 Nov. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 8/144–47. Hugenberg to Goerdeler, 13 Nov. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 36/276–80. See also Gilsa’s account of his conversation with Hugenberg in a letter to Reusch, 7 Nov. 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Hermann Kellermann in the unpublished records of the Gutehoffnungshütte, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, Cologne, Abt. 130 (hereafter cited as RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Kellermann), 400101308/9.

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circumstances, Hindenburg’s supporters began to explore the possibility of having his term of office extended by means of a special initiative in the Reichstag that, since it would involve suspending Article 41 of the Weimar Constitution, would require a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag.62 Hindenburg, on the other hand, was fully determined to leverage his willingness to stand for reelection against Brüning’s reluctance to include the national opposition in his governmental coalition. The recent reorganization of the Brüning cabinet fell far short of what Hindenburg had expected from his chancellor, and he remained fully committed to the inclusion of the national opposition in the governmental coalition.63 What Hindenburg had in mind lined up perfectly with Schleicher’s own intentions. After Hindenburg’s meeting with Hitler on 10 October and after meeting with Hitler himself for a second time later in the month,64 Schleicher had convinced himself that Hitler’s interest in improving relations with the chancellor was indeed sincere and that the Nazi party leader was committed to developing a more positive relationship with the national government.65 Like Hindenburg, Schleicher was bitterly disappointed with the cabinet that Brüning presented to the Reichstag on 13 October66 and expressed doubts in a meeting with the Stahlhelm’s Siegfried Wagner two weeks later as to whether or not the chancellor, given his history of animosity toward the Right, was the right choice for reaching out to the forces of the national opposition and integrating them into the governmental coalition.67 In the weeks following the rally in Harzburg, Schleicher was busy at work trying to lay the foundation for a rapprochement between Brüning and Hitler that he hoped would lead to the NSDAP’s entry into a national cabinet in which Brüning would either continue as chancellor or serve as foreign minister.68 At the same time, Schleicher reached out to Hugenberg on the assumption that if the NSDAP were to join the national government, the DNVP would have

62

63 64 65 66 67 68

Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik. Eine Studie Problem des Machtverfalls in der Demokratie (Villingen, 1960), 443–49. For further details, see Patch, Brüning, 231–38, and Hömig, Brüning, 487–89. Pyta, Hindenburg, 645–48. On Schleicher’s second meeting with Hitler, see the entries for 25 and 27 Oct. 1931, in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 133, 135. Notes by Lersner, 24 Nov. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 8/148–51. Entry in Quaatz’s diary, 20 Oct. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. Wagner to Duesterberg and Seldte, 29 Oct. 1931, BA Berlin, R 72, 264/286–87. Notes by Lersner, 24 Nov. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 8/148–51.

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no choice but to follow.69 But relations between the two parties remained strained through the last months of 1931 as the DNVP decided to end its boycott of the Reichstag in order to take part in the deliberations on pension cuts as a way of further distancing itself from the Nazis at the same time that they tried to dispel rumors that it was about to dissolve itself and recommend that its members join the NSDAP.70 The idea of a Brüning-Hitler alliance received strong editorial support within the Christian labor movement and in particular from the leadership of the German National Union of Commercial Employees (Deutschnationaler Handlungsgehilfen-Verband or DHV), whose nearly 400,000 members made it the largest of Germany’s white-collar unions. Alarmed by the strength that the forces of social and political reaction had recently demonstrated at Harzburg, the DHV’s chief political strategist Max Habermann publicly floated the idea of a Brüning-Hitler coalition in a lead article for the Deutsche Handels-Wacht in late October 1931.71 Habermann was one of Brüning’s closest political advisors, and although his proposal did not carry the chancellor’s imprimatur, it was clearly designed to exploit the divisions within the national opposition that had surfaced at Harzburg and to peel the Nazis off from the reactionary core of the radical Right.72 Speaking before the Center Party’s national committee (Reichsparteiausschuß) on 5 November, Brüning launched into a sharp attack against the national opposition in which the Nazis were spared the vitriolic criticism the chancellor directed against Hugenberg and the more reactionary elements on the radical Right.73 Not only was

69

70

71

72

73

In this respect, see the draft of a letter from Lersner to Hugenberg, n.d. [Nov. 1931], BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 8/184. See also the entries in Quaatz’s diary, 20 and 22 Oct. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. Lersner, draft of a letter for Bosch, 21 Nov. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 8/144–47. For further information on the situation within the DNVP, see the entries in Quaatz’s diary for 29 Oct. and 17 Nov. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17, as well as Terhalle, Deutschnational in Weimar, 262–93. Habermann, “Brüning und Hitler,” Deutsche Handels-Wacht. Zeitschrift des Deutschnationalen Handlungsgehilfen-Verbandes 38, no. 16 (25 Oct. 1931): 310–12. For a fuller discussion of the dilemma in which the DHV leadership found itself in the last years of the Weimar Republic, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Between the Fronts: The German National Union of Commercial Employees from 1918 to 1933,” The Journal of Modern History 48 (1976): 462–82. On the strategic objectives that lay behind Habermann’s plan, see the unpublished Habermann biography by Albert Krebs, “Max Habermann. Eine biographische Studie,” n.p., n.d, in the Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg, Bestand 12/H. Brüning, “Starke Nerven. Im Reichsparteiausschuß des Zentrums am 5. November 1931,” Brüning, Zwei Jahre, 44–47.

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Brüning’s speech a rhetorical success that helped him solidify his position within the Center,74 but it set the stage for a series of high-level secret meetings between Habermann, DHV national chairman Hans Bechly, and the two most important figures in the Nazi party leadership, Hitler and Reich organization leader Gregor Strasser, that took place the following day in Munich. Although the meeting did not produce the outcome for which Habermann and the DHV leadership had been hoping,75 the fact that it took place with Brüning’s foreknowledge and apparent approval would suggest that for the moment the chancellor was willing to follow Schleicher’s lead in seeking an accommodation with the Nazis.76 Whatever hopes Brüning – or Schleicher for that matter – may have had that Habermann’s overtures to the Nazi party leadership would split the ranks of the national opposition and persuade Hitler to support his own government rested upon a fundamental misreading of Hitler’s intentions and stood little, if any chance, of realization. Given the strong opposition from Goebbels and some of his closest associates to any sort of accommodation with the existing system of government, it is unlikely that Hitler was ever sincerely interested in joining a Brüning cabinet along the lines envisaged by Schleicher. Under these circumstances it is far more likely that Hitler was simply playing for time and testing his opponents for weaknesses that might later be exploited. The dramatic gains the Nazis recorded in the Hessian state elections on 15 November only confirmed Hitler’s sense of destiny and made it even more difficult for the more conservative 74 75

76

Lersner, draft of a letter for Bosch, 7 Nov. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 8/125–26. On the meeting between the DHV and Nazi leadership, 6 Nov. 1931, see the entry in Krebs’ diary, 6 Nov. 1931, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Albert Krebs, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Krebs), 1/185, and the confidential memorandum from Habermann to the DHV district leaders, 7 Nov. 1931, DHV-Restakten in the Archiv des Deutschen Handels-und Industrieangestellten Verband, Hamburg (hereafter cited as DHV-Archiv Hamburg), as well as the account in Albert Krebs, Tendenzen und Gestalten. Erinnerungen an die Frühzeit der NSDAP (Stuttgart, 1959), 33. For a somewhat rosier portrayal of the meeting, see Habermann to Burckhardt, 26 Nov. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Krebs, 2/161. For further information on the relationship between the DHV and NSDAP in the last years of the Weimar Republic, see Peter Rütters, “Der Deutschnationalen Handlungsgehilfen-Verband und der Nationalsozialismus,” Historisch-politische Mitteilungen 16 (2009): 81–108. On Habermann’s contacts with Brüning, see the entry in Krebs’ diary, 31 Oct. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Krebs, 1/181–82, as well as the memorandum from Habermann to the DHV district leaders, 7 Nov. 1931, DHV-Archiv Hamburg, DHV-Restakten. For a more detailed study of Brüning’s overtures to the NSDAP, see Josef Becker, “Brüning, Prälat Kaas und das Problem einer Regierungsbeteilitung der NSDAP 1930–1932,” Historische Zeitschrift 196 (1963): 74–111, here 88–95.

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elements in the national opposition to deal with his party.77 By the end of November the Nazis had lost all interest in an accommodation with Brüning and were confident that they would eventually come to power without having to deal with a Brüning cabinet.78 The last hopes of a rapprochement between Brüning and Hitler evaporated in a bitter polemic that saw the chancellor publicly question the sincerity of the NSDAP’s commitment to the path of legality in a radio address on 8 December.79 When the Nazi party leader responded five days later with an open letter in which he upbraided the chancellor for the catastrophic effects of his most recent emergency decree, the failure of his foreign policy, and – most seriously of all – his feeble efforts to prop up the system that was responsible for all the ills that plagued Germany at home and abroad,80 the dream of a Brüning-Hitler coalition lay in ruins. Schleicher had obviously hoped that bringing the National Socialists into the government would make them more amenable to Hindenburg’s retention in office, whether it was to be by reelection or a special initiative in the Reichstag. Hitler himself disclaimed any interest in the Reich presidency and insisted that it would be demeaning – “beneath his worth” was the phrase he used – for himself or any other member of his party to assume a title and office that had been created by the “criminal” revolution of 1918. The ideal solution, as Hitler explained to retired Admiral Magnus von Levetzow in a private conversation in mid-November 1931, would be for Hindenburg to continue in office and give him the task of forming a new government with authorization to dissolve the Reichstag so that he and his party could proceed with the “public strangulation” of those who had betrayed Germany in its hour of need.81 All hyperbole aside, what this suggests is that Hitler had already settled on the strategy that would serve him so well in January 1933. But whether or not he would stick to this strategy in the short term after the dramatic escalation of his anti-Brüning rhetoric in 77

78 79 80 81

Entry in Quaatz’s diary, 12 Dec. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. On the Nazi victory in the 1931 Hessian state elections in which the NSDAP received 37.1 of the popular vote and twenty-seven of seventy seats in the Hessian Landtag, see Willy Seipel, “Entwicklung der nationalsozialistischen Bauernbewegung in Hessen,” in Eugen Schmahl and Willy Seipel, Entwicklung der völkischen Bewegung (Giessen, n.d. [1934]), 133–67, here 163–64. Krebs, Tendenzen und Gestalten, 34. Brüning, “Sachlicher Ernst. Rundfunkrede vom 8. Dezember 1931,” in Brüning, Zwei Jahre, 47–50. [Adolf Hitler], Offener Brief Adolf Hitlers an den Reichskanzler, Kampfschrift, Broschürenreihe der Reichspropaganda-Leitung der NSDAP, no. 5 (Munich, 1932). Levetzow to Donnersmarck-Henckel, 20 Nov. 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 83/ 159–63.

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mid-December 1931 was another question. For Schleicher, who had not abandoned his goal of bringing the National Socialists into the government, it meant that a strategic reappraisal of his situation was necessary. It was with this in mind that Schleicher arranged a meeting between Hindenburg and the NSDAP’s Hermann Göring on 11 December 1931. In September 1930 Hitler had appointed Göring as his “political deputy [politischer Beauftragter],” and it was his task to mediate between the Nazi party leadership and the different sectors of Germany’s conservative elites. Göring had already proven instrumental in introducing Hitler and members of his entourage not only to the high aristocracy and royalty but also to representatives of Germany’s industrial and financial elites.82 Winning the tolerance, if not the support, of Germany’s conservative elites was an important component of Hitler’s political strategy ever since he had pledged to pursue the conquest of power by legal means and legal means only at the Leipzig trial of three junior Reichswehr officers for high treason in the fall of 1930.83 In his meeting with Hindenburg Göring immediately reassured the Reich president that his party was unequivocally committed to the principle of legality in its pursuit of power and that it would faithfully abide by the constitution in the event that it was asked to assume power. In response to Hindenburg’s query as to why the National Socialists had thus far refused to support Brüning in the Reichstag, Göring replied that he and his colleagues had high praise for the chancellor’s character and love of the nation but would remain political opponents as long as Brüning could not sever his ties to the Social Democrats. After further assurances about Hitler’s aversion to violence and commitment to the principle of legality, Göring volunteered that his party would welcome Hindenburg’s reelection to the Reich presidency or a long extension of his term in office, though interestingly enough without attaching conditions to its support of his candidacy. The meeting then ended on an amiable note that could only have reassured the Reich president about the sincerity of Hitler’s pledge and the prospects of closer cooperation in the future.84 82

83 84

For further details, see Albrecht Tyrell, “Der Wegbereiter – Hermann Göring als politischer Beauftragter Hitlers in Berlin 1930–1932/33,” in Demokratie und Diktatur. Geist und Gestalt politischer Herrschaft in Deutschland und Europa. Festschrift für Karl Dietrich Bracher, ed. Manfred Funke, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Hans-Helmuth Knütter, and Hans-Peter Schwarz (Düsseldorf, 1987), 178–97. Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (New York and London, 1998), 337–38. Meissner’s memorandum of the conversation between Hindenburg and Göring, 11 Dec. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/275–77.

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The moderate and circumspect tone that Göring adopted in his meeting with the Reich president confirmed Schleicher’s contention that the Nazi party leader was indeed sincere in his pledge to use constitutional means in his party’s quest for power. The meeting – and particularly Göring’s statement that the Nazis would welcome Hindenburg’s retention in office – also removed one of the most important obstacles that had thus far kept the Reich president from giving his consent to a parliamentary initiative on his behalf. Hindenburg met with Brüning shortly before Christmas to discuss the feasibility of having his term of office extended by the Reichstag and agreed to weigh the implications of such a move over the Christmas recess. The two next met on the morning of 5 January 1932, at which time Hindenburg gave Brüning his official blessing to proceed with the project.85 For Brüning the presidential campaign would either make or break his chancellorship. Brüning had pinned the success or failure of his chancellorship on Hindenburg’s personal support, and there was no way he could continue under a different president, particularly under one who had been elected under the auspices of the radical Right. Schleicher, on the other hand, was determined to avoid a situation where the president would owe his ability to remain in office to the support of the Social Democrats, the Center, and the various middle parties that had opposed his election in 1925. At the same time, Schleicher sought to use Hindenburg’s candidacy to pressure the chancellor into accepting the forces of the national opposition in his governmental coalition.86 The five days beginning on 6 January 1932 witnessed a flurry of activity as the Brüning government made a determined effort to secure the consent of Hitler and his party for the extension of Hindenburg’s term of office by a special vote in the Reichstag. The support of the Nazis was essential not just for political reasons but because the proposal to extend the president’s term of office by parliamentary initiative entailed the suspension of Article 41 of the Weimar Constitution and therefore required a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag before it could take effect. Acting on behalf of the government, Defense Minister Wilhelm Groener sent a telegram to Hitler in Munich inviting him to a meeting in Berlin that took place in the defense minister’s residence late in the afternoon of 7 January. Groener came away from the meeting with a favorable impression of the Nazi party leader and commended him for his high ideals and intentions despite lingering reservations about his movement’s propensity 85 86

Memorandum by Pünder, 5 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 680/1–3. Lersner, draft of a letter to Bosch, 4 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 9/14–17.

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for violence and its disrespect for law and order.87 While Hitler reassured Groener of the high regard in which he held the Reich president and reaffirmed his commitment to the pursuit of power by legal means, he refused to commit himself and his party with respect to the proposed extension of Hindenburg’s term of office by a special vote in the Reichstag.88 Throughout all of this, Brüning remained skeptical that an agreement could be reached with either Hitler or Hugenberg, although like Schleicher he believed that of the two the Nazi party leader was more amenable to an accommodation with the government than either Hugenberg or the more irascible elements in Hitler’s own movement.89 Over the next several days, Hitler not only conferred with Schleicher and other government officials90 but also met with Hugenberg and the leaders of the national opposition in an attempt to establish a common ground upon which all could agree.91 In his negotiations with the government, Hitler agreed to drop his demand that Hindenburg dismiss Brüning 87

88

89

90

91

For Groener’s impressions of Hitler following his meeting on 9 January, see his remarks recorded in the minutes of the meeting of the Reichswehr command, 11 Jan. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Curt Liebmann, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau (hereafter cited as BA-MA Freiburg, NL Liebmann, 2/8–12, reprinted in Thilo Vogelsang, “Neue Dokumente zur Geschichte der Reichswehr 1930–1933,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 2 (1954): 397–436, here 414–15. That Groener would quickly revise his opinion of Hitler in light of the Nazi party leader’s subsequent behavior is apparent from his two letters to retired Major General Gerold von Gleich, 24 and 26 Jan. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Groener, 36/38–42. For further information on Groener’s contacts with Hitler in January 1932, see Johannes Hürter, Wilhelm Groener. Reichsminister am Ende der Weimarer Republik (1928–1932) (Munich, 1993), 322–24. Memorandum by Pünder, 8 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 583/222–23. For Hitler’s account of these developments, see the report by DVP party chairman Eduard Dingeldey on his contacts with the Nazi party chairman, 9–10 Jan. 1932, in Dingeldey’s deposition from 15 Dec. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 37/11–14, as well as the circular no. 1 from the DVP Reichsgeschäftsstelle, 15 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 225/79–80. Comments by Brüning as recorded in the diary of Hans Schäffer, 9 Jan. 1932, in Schäffer’s unpublished Nachlaß, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Bestand ED 93 (hereafter cited as IfZ Munich, NL Schäffer), 19/58–59. Much of the documentation cited here and below has been reprinted in Politik und Wirtschaft in der Krise. Quellen zur Ära Brüning, ed. Ilse Maurer and Udo Wengst, and with an introduction by Gerhard Schulz, 2 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1980), 2: 1208–20, 1233–39, and Akten der Reichskanzlei: Kabinette Brüning, ed. Koops, 3: 2139–40, 2152–5, 2159–67. For the best secondary accounts, see Pyta, Hindenburg, 645–69, and the older, though still useful biography by Andreas Dorpalen, Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic (Princeton, N.J., 1964), 262–64. Hitler met with Hugenberg on 9 January 1932 to coordinate their respective responses to the proposal for a parliamentary extension of Hindenburg’s term of office. See Reinhold Quaatz, “Betrifft: Wahl des Reichs-präsidenten durch den Reichstag,” n.d. [Jan. 1932], BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17.

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as chancellor but insisted that the government officially recognize the legality of his party and end the restrictions on its members and activities throughout the country. Further, Hitler demanded that the Prussian Landtag elections that were set for later that spring take place on schedule and without a postponement that would allow the coalition of Social Democrats and Center to remain in power. And lastly, the Nazi party leader called for the immediate dissolution of the Reichstag so that a newly elected and presumably more representative parliament could approve the extension of Hindenburg’s term as Reich president.92 While neither of the first two of these conditions posed a serious problem for the government, Hindenburg remained adamantly opposed to any conditions that the Nazis or anyone else might attach to their support for an extension to his term of office. Subsequent efforts first by Groener and then by Schleicher to soften Hitler’s opposition to a parliamentary extension of Hindenburg’s presidency proved to no avail.93 While there were, no doubt, differences between Hitler and Hugenberg as to how they should respond to the government’s efforts to secure an extension of Hindenburg’s term of office without subjecting the Reich president to the rigors of a full-scale presidential campaign, the government’s hopes that it might still be possible to drive a wedge between Hitler and his more conservative allies rested upon a fundamental misreading of Hitler’s intentions and negotiating tactics. In point of fact, Hitler was simply playing for time and had no intention of supporting the proposed legislation in the Reichstag. As an entry in Goebbels’ diary for 8 January 1932 aptly put it: Everything is moving again. Yesterday morning with Hitler. Groener tried to persuade him to support an extension of Hindenburg’s term of office. He [Hitler] sent him on his way. But gracefully. Ostensibly to think it [Groener’s proposal] over. Used constitutional reservations as a pretext. Brüning wants a great triumph. But he will miss the mark [danebenschießen]. I strengthened Hitler in his refusal to compromise. We will remain firm.

As Goebbels continued, the disdain in which he and the Nazi party leaders held their opponents became even clearer: The chief [Hitler] was with Brüning. He grovels for his life. We draw everything out. The press is down on its knees. The old man [Hindenburg] as an object of 92

93

Memorandum by Pünder, 8 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 583/222–23. See also the entry in Pünder’s diary, 7 Jan. 1932, in Hermann Pünder, Politik in der Reichskanzlei. Aufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1929 bis 1932, ed. Thilo Vogelsang (Stuttgart, 1964), 110–11. Undated addendum from 13 Jan. 1932 to Pünder’s memorandum of 8 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 583/222–28.

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barter [Schacherobjekt]. He is furious with the Wilhelmstraße [the Reich chancery], which got him in this mess [ihm das eingebrockt hat]. That’s good.94

Goebbels’ comments suggest that Hitler had no intention of reaching an agreement with the government and that he was simply using reservations about the questionable constitutionality of the proposal to extend Hindenburg’s term of office by parliamentary initiative to undercut Brüning’s position as chancellor. In a meeting the following day Hitler and Hugenberg agreed that they would both reject the proposed extension of Hindenburg’s term of office by a special vote in the Reichstag on the grounds that such a maneuver represented a violation of Article 41 of the Weimar Constitution and therefore could not be condoned.95 Government circles, however, continued to operate on the assumption that the Nazi party leader was more amendable to a compromise on the proposed legislation than his more conservative allies and hoped that it still might be possible to drive a wedge between Hitler and Hugenberg.96 In what was at best a long shot to secure the cooperation of the national opposition, Brüning met separately first with Hitler and then with Hugenberg on the morning of 10 January. The meeting with Hitler, attended also by the NSDAP’s Wilhelm Frick and Brüning’s close associate G. R. Treviranus, produced nothing new. Although Hitler proved more obliging than Brüning had expected, the Nazi party leader still refused to commit himself or his party to the proposed extension of Hindenburg’s term of office, something the chancellor’s entourage attributed to dissension among the ranks of Hitler’s own followers.97 In the meantime, Brüning and Meissner had opened up lines of communication with the DNVP party leadership through Reinhold Quaatz, a member of Hugenberg’s inner circle of advisors.98 But these efforts too proved to no avail. Indignant that the government had initiated negotiations with Hitler and not with him as

94 95 96 97 98

Entry in Goebbels’ diary, 8 Jan. 1932, Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 190–91. Quaatz, “Betrifft: Wahl des Reichspräsidenten durch den Reichstag,” n.d. [Jan. 1932], BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. For example, see Westarp to Hiller von Gaertringen, 26 Jan. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, II/51. Memorandum by Pünder, 8 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 583/222–23. For Brüning’s account of the meeting, see his Memoiren, 504–06. Quaatz’s role in the negotiations to extend Hindenburg’s term of office is outlined in great detail in Quaatz, “Betrifft: Wahl des Reichspräsidenten durch den Reichstag,” n.d. [Jan. 1932], BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. See also the undated addendum from 13 Jan. 1932 to Pünder’s memorandum of 8 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 583/223–28, as well as the entry for 7 Jan. 1932 in Pünder, Politik in der Reichskanzlei, 111.

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the presumptive head of the national opposition,99 Hugenberg unleashed a full-scale attack against Brüning’s performance as chancellor in his meeting with the chancellor and demanded, among other things, a clear timetable for the resignation of the current government. But unlike the Nazis, Hugenberg showed little interest in the idea of new elections before the transfer of power to a new government.100 At the same time that Brüning was meeting with Hugenberg, Hitler summoned Otto Meissner, the state secretary in the Bureau of the Reich President, to meet with him and several of his closest associates in what served as his Berlin headquarters, the Hotel Kaiserhof. Here Hitler announced that the NSDAP, DNVP, and Stahlhelm were willing to support Hindenburg as a unity candidate of the national opposition but only if the Reich president would agree to three conditions. Hindenburg would have to remove Brüning as chancellor, appoint a new national government that would presumably include the forces of the extreme Right, and authorize new elections not just in the Reich but also in Prussia. The newly elected Reichstag would then extend Hindenburg’s term of office by the two-thirds majority that such an action would require. When Meissner responded that the Reich president had no intention of making his retention in office contingent upon the acceptance of these or any other conditions from any party or faction, the meeting ended on a decidedly strained note as Hitler threatened to run for the presidency himself should Hindenburg become a candidate of the Left.101 The government’s efforts to secure the support of the national opposition for a parliamentary maneuver that would spare the aging Reich president the rigors of a national campaign had ended in failure. Hindenburg was noticeably piqued by Brüning’s failure to avoid a national presidential election but showed little interest in giving in to the radical Right’s demands for Brüning’s dismissal.102 Whether or not Hindenburg would still stand for reelection remained uncertain.

99

100

101 102

Comments by Quaatz and Heinrich Doehle from the Reich president’s personal staff to Groener, n.d. (ca. 10 Jan. 1932), as reported in the addendum to Pünder’s memorandum of 8 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 583/223–28. Undated addendum from 13 Jan. 1932 to Pünder’s memorandum of 8 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 583/223–28. See also the memorandum on Hugenberg’s meeting with Brüning, 10 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 192/10–12. Otto Meissner, Staatssekretär under Ebert, Hindenburg, Hitler. Der Schicksalsweg des deutschen Volkes von 1918–1945, wie ich ihn erlebte (Hamburg, 1950), 216. Meissner’s comments to Quaatz, 11 Jan. 1932, as recorded in Quaatz, “Betrifft: Wahl des Reichspräsidenten durch den Reichstag,” BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17.

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

Hitler and Hugenberg met in the latter’s Berlin offices on the afternoon of 11 January, at which time the two party leaders agreed not only to reject the parliamentary extension of Hindenburg’s term of office but also to communicate this to the Reich chancellor in separate letters that were to be dispatched simultaneously.103 Up until now the two party leaders seemed to have been working in close concert with each other. But signs of a possible rift in relations between the two leaders came when a chance encounter between Hugenberg and an obviously agitated Hermann Göring later that evening produced the revelation that Hitler planned to meet with Hindenburg separately in order to persuade the Reich president to send Brüning a public statement affirming that he shared the national opposition’s reservations about the constitutional improprieties of the chancellor’s proposal to extend his term of office by a special vote in the Reichstag. This would have amounted to a public disavowal of the chancellor by the Reich president and would have made his retention in office extremely awkward, if not impossible. From the perspective of Hugenberg and his entourage, Hitler’s plans for a separate meeting with Hindenburg were little more than a disingenuous ploy by the Nazi party leader to outflank his allies in the national opposition by initiating an action that, if successful, would have allowed the Nazis to claim credit for having driven Brüning from office.104 Despite his pique at Hitler, Hugenberg agreed to postpone the release of the letter to Brüning in which he announced his rejection of a parliamentary extension of Hindenburg’s term of office until late the following afternoon.105 As it was, Hugenberg’s letter left little to imagination. In sharp and uncompromising language Hugenberg not only rejected the proposal to extend Hindenburg’s term as Reich president on the grounds that this would only prop up governments in the Reich and Prussia that no longer enjoyed the confidence of a majority. Such a maneuver, he insisted, was inconsistent with the principles of constitutional government. The practical effect of Hindenburg’s election by the Reichstag, Hugenberg argued, would be to provide a vote of confidence not for the person of the Reich president but for the existing national government.106 103 104 105 106

Quaatz, “Betrifft: Wahl des Reichspräsidenten durch den Reichstag,” n.d. [Jan. 1932], BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. Brosuius to Hugenberg, 16 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 192/7–9. See also the entry in Quaatz’s diary, 12–14 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. Quaatz, “Betrifft: Wahl des Reichspräsidenten durch den Reichstag,” n.d. [Jan. 1932], BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. Hugenberg to Brüning, 11 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/266–67, also in BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 36/37–38, reprinted in Unsere Partei 10, no. 2 (15 Jan. 1932): 9.

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In contrast, Hitler’s letter from the following day was much more respectful in tone and simply addressed the constitutional issues that led his party to reject the proposal to extend Hindenburg’s term of office by parliamentary initiative.107 Brüning’s associates were immediately struck by the differences in tone between the two letters: one acerbic and polemical, the other detached and factual.108 But Brüning and his circle of advisors were mistaken in assuming from this that the Nazi party leader was somehow more favorably disposed to the proposed extension of Hindenburg’s term of office than his Nationalist counterpart. In point of fact, Hitler and his entourage had never had any intention of supporting Brüning’s proposal in the Reichstag. As Goebbels confided to his diary on 12 January, it was always the timing and how to extract maximum propaganda advantage from their rejection, but never the rejection itself, that were in question.109 What this suggests is that the Nazis were using the issue not simply to discredit the Reich chancellor but, more importantly, to assert their claim to leadership over the forces of the national opposition. The rivalry between Hitler and Hugenberg was never more intense than it was in the spring of 1932 as the two jockeyed for advantage in the struggle for leadership of the national movement.110 As Goebbels noted in his diary after Hitler’s meeting with the DNVP party chairman earlier in the day, “He [Hugenberg] is the odd man out [spielt das fünfte Rad am Wagen]. Worn out. The reaction must be smashed to pieces.”111 Without so much as consulting his allies in the national opposition, Hitler thus went ahead with his plans to send Hindenburg a short position paper, or Denkschrift, outlining his party’s constitutional objections to the proposed extension of his term of office in the hope that the Reich president would give its contents his public imprimatur and thus seal the fate of the Brüning cabinet.112 When the presidential palace notified Hitler on 13 January that the Reich president would not attach his signature to Hitler’s Denkschrift,113 Goebbels dutifully recorded

107 108 109 110 111 112 113

Hitler to Brüning, 12 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 87/265. Undated addendum from 13 Jan. 1932 to Pünder’s memorandum of 8 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 583/223–28. Entry for 11 Jan. 1932, Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 193–94. This is particularly apparent in the entry in Quaatz’s diary, 14 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. Entry for 11 Jan. 1932, Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 193–94. Entry for 12 Jan. 1932, ibid, 194–95. Communiqué from the office of the Reich presidency, 12 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/264.

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

this as a defeat for the movement and a victory, though perhaps the last, for the “Jesuit” in the Reich chancery.114 Two days later Hitler gave vent to the frustration and anger he felt over this turn of events in an open letter to the Reich chancellor in which he not only spelled out all of the constitutional objections to a parliamentary extension of Hindenburg’s term of office but also attacked Brüning personally for having subscribed to a policy of illusions that only propped up a political system that had led to ruin at home and weakness abroad.115 Hitler’s broadside and the acrimony that followed torpedoed the last hopes of a compromise between the government and the national opposition in the search for a parliamentary extension of Hindenburg’s term of office. Tortured as they were, the negotiations over whether or not Hindenburg’s term of office should be extended by a special vote in the Reichstag not only exposed the cracks that existed within the ranks of the national opposition but further strained relations between Hindenburg and his chancellor. At eighty-four, Hindenburg had no desire to subject himself to the rigors of a full-scale election campaign and had hoped that he would be able to avoid running for office through a parliamentary maneuver that would make an election unnecessary. In this respect Hindenburg had trusted the counsel of his chancellor, and now he blamed Brüning for his failure to deliver on what the Reich president had assumed was a foregone conclusion. The spectacle of discord on the radical Right not only frustrated the hopes of those who sought to bring the forces of the national opposition into the national government, but it also allowed Brüning to escape one more crisis in December 1931 when his government almost collapsed as it put the finishing touches on the Fourth Emergency Decree.116 Had there been more to the Harzburg Front than the empty façade of right-wing unity, Brüning would have found it far more difficult to resist pressure from Schleicher and the presidential palace for a reorganization of his cabinet that offered not just the appearance but the substance of meaningful political change.

114 115

116

Entry for 13 Jan. 1932, Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 195. See the correspondence between Hitler and Brüning, 15–25 Jan. 1932, in [Adolf Hitler], Hitlers Auseinandersetzung mit Brüning, Kampfschrift, Broschürenreihe der Reichspropaganda-Leitung der NSDAP (Munich, 1932), 73–94. For further details, see Patch, Brüning, 211–13.

5 Agonies of the Paramilitary Right

Brüning’s failure to secure the support of the DNVP and NSDAP for an extension of Hindenburg’s term of office by a special vote in the Reichstag left a whole host of problems in its wake. Hindenburg, who had hoped to avoid the rigors of a full-scale presidential campaign, was embarrassed by Brüning’s failure to negotiate an arrangement that would make it unnecessary for him to stand for reelection.1 Brüning, on the other hand, was anxious to regain Hindenburg’s favor and would have to overcome whatever reservations the Reich president might have about running for the high office he had held since 1925. In a meeting with the chancellor on 5 January 1932 Hindenburg had indicated that he was fully prepared to stand for reelection but made his decision contingent upon the fulfillment of six conditions. The most important of these was the stipulation that he would not become a candidate for reelection without the support of the German Right. Hindenburg further stipulated that he would not take part in any negotiations regarding his candidacy and that, if he were to be reelected, he would not serve as a placeholder for a party or a combination

1

Westarp to Hiller von Gaertringen, 14 Jan. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, II/51. See also the report of Quaatz’s conversation with Meissner, 11 Jan. 1932, in Quaatz, “Betrifft: Wahl des Reichspräsidenten durch den Reichstag,” n.d. [Jan. 1932], BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. For further information on the negotiations surrounding Hindenburg’s nomination for reelection, see Andreas Dorpalen, Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic (Princeton, NJ, 1964), 254–301; Walter Hubatsch, Hindenburg und der Staat. Aus den Papieren des Generalfeldmarschalls und Reichspräsidenten von 1878 bis 1934 (Göttingen, 1966), 120–25; and Wolfram Pyta, Hindenburg. Herrschaft zwischen Hohenzollern und Hitler (Berlin, 2007), 645–83.

149

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

of parties, including the current governmental coalition.2 Given the importance that Hindenburg attached to the support of the Right, Brüning and his entourage were still hopeful that the leaders of the national opposition could be persuaded to support his candidacy in a popular election despite their rejection of the proposal to extend his term of office by parliamentary initiative. Both Hugenberg and Hitler had tried to soften the effect of their rejection of this proposal by reassuring government officials that they would have no reservations about supporting Hindenburg’s reelection by popular vote.3 The next four weeks would witness a flurry of activity as Brüning, with the backing of Schleicher and Groener, would try to win over the support of the German Right to a Hindenburg candidacy. The chances that he would be able to overcome the obstinacy of Hugenberg and Hitler, particularly after the latter’s invective of 15 January,4 were slim at best. But the national opposition was far from united, and Schleicher felt reasonably confident that he could at least persuade the Stahlhelm to come out in support of Hindenburg’s candidacy.5 Not only had the Stahlhelm made Hindenburg an honorary member in the spring of 1924,6 but relations between the Stahlhelm and Hitler had also been severely strained ever since the Nazi party leader disappeared from the review podium at Harzburg at the precise moment that detachments from the Stahlhelm were marching by.7 Seldte and Duesterberg had met with Hitler on 17 October in an attempt to reduce the tensions that had developed in relations between their respective organizations,8 but any

2

3 4

5 6 7 8

Memorandum by Pünder, 5 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 680/1–3. These conditions were subsequently reaffirmed by Meissner in a conversation with Brüning and Pünder on 10 Jan. 1932. See the undated addendum to Pünder’s memorandum of 8 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 583/223–28. See also Quaatz, “Betrifft: Wahl des Reichspräsidenten durch den Reichstag,” n.d. [Jan. 1932], BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. Notes by Pünder on a conversation with Brüning and Meissner, 10 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 44/142. Hitler to Brüning, 15 Jan. 1932, in [Adolf Hitler], Hitlers Auseinandersetzung mit Brüning, Kampfschrift, Broschürenreihe der Reichspropaganda-Leitung der NSDAP (Munich, 1932), 73–82. Memorandum by Schleicher, n.d. [Feb.–Mar. 1932], BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 42/ 62–68. Volker R. Berghahn, Der Stahlhelm – Bund der Frontsoldaten 1918–1935 (Düsseldorf, 1966), 122. Seldte and Duesterberg to Hitler, 11 Dec. 1931, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 2683/321–31. In this respect, see Wagner to the leaders of the Stahlhelm district organizations, 19 Oct. 1931, BHStA Munich, Abt. IV, Stahlhelm, 78/I, and Wagner to Heine, 22 Oct. 1931, StA Mönchen-Gladbach, NL Brauweiler, 109.

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improvement proved short lived, so that by the end of December the Stahlhelm and NSDAP found themselves engaged in a full-fledged feud as a result of derogatory remarks that SA leader Ernst Röhm had made about the Stahlhelm’s membership in the so-called patriotic camp.9 Although the Stahlhelm leadership remained as strongly committed as ever to strengthening the sense of national unity that had inspired the Harzburg rally,10 it now sought, as the Stahlhelm’s chancellor Siegfried Wagner explained to Eldor Borck from the DNVP delegation to the Prussian Landtag in late November 1931, a clarification of its relationship to the NSDAP and “a consolidation of the moderate Right and the Right [eine Verschmezlung der sogenannten Halbrechts mit Rechts]” in the hope that this would strengthen the DNVP to the point where it could function as a useful counterweight to the NSDAP. And if that should happen, Wagner continued, the Stahlhelm would then have to decide whether it would continue to maintain a policy of bipartisan neutrality with respect to the two large right-wing parties or whether instead to throw its full support behind the DNVP.11 The situation within the DNVP was hardly any better. To be sure, Hugenberg and the DNVP party leadership were no less distressed by Hitler’s behavior at Harzburg than were the leaders of the Stahlhelm.12 But Hugenberg remained adamantly opposed to Hindenburg’s reelection if it would strengthen Brüning’s domestic political situation and showed little interest in an accommodation with the presidential palace or Reich chancery as long as Brüning remained in power.13 At the same time, Hugenberg continued to harbor the illusion that the Harzburg rally contained the seeds of a viable political alliance and publicly exhorted 9

10 11 12 13

See the lengthy correspondence between the Stahlhelm and Nazi party leadership, 13 Oct.–11 Dec. 1931, in the Stahlhelm Führerbriefe, 31 Dec. 1931, BHStA Munich, Abt. IV, Stahlhelm, 78/I, reprinted in Theodor Duesterberg, Der Stahlhelm und Hitler (Wolfenbüttel, 1949), 13–33. Stahlhelm, Führer-Briefe. Politik – Wirtschaft – Technik, 1, no. 7 (12 Dec. 1931), in BHStA Munich, Abt. IV, Stahlhelm, 137. Wagner to Borck, 28 Nov. 1931, BA Berlin, R 72, 281/88. Entry in Quaatz’s diary, 18 Oct. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. Hugenberg to Arnim-Boitzenburg, 4 Feb. 1932, BHLA Potsdam, NL Arnim-Boitzenburg, 4434/11, reprinted in Kurt Goßweiler and Alfred Schlicht, “Junker und NSDAP 1931/32,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 15 (1967): 644–62, esp. 660. On Hugenberg’s strategy and tactics in the 1932 presidential elections, see John A. Leopold, Alfred Hugenberg: The Radical Nationalist Campaign against the Weimar Republic (New Haven, CT, and London, 1977), 109–11, and the more recent study by Maximilian Terhalle, Deutschnational in Weimar. Die politische Biographie des Reichstagsabgeordneten Otto Schmidt (-Hannover) 1888–1971 (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2009), 293–302.

152

Hitler versus Hindenburg

the Nazis to remain true to the spirit of Harzburg.14 The fact that Hugenberg had been able to work with Hitler in sabotaging Brüning’s efforts to secure parliamentary approval for an extension of Hindenburg’s term of office only vindicated his faith in Harzburg and set the stage for what he hoped would continue to be a fruitful relationship between their respective parties.15 The strong stand that Hugenberg had taken against Brüning’s proposal to extend the president’s term of office by a vote in the Reichstag had also done much to strengthen his position in the party.16 The morale of the party was also bolstered by the fact that in early February 1932 three members of the Saxon Business Party – Hugo Weber, Hermann Kaiser, and Wilhelm Füssel – announced their defection to the DNVP in protest against their party’s continued support of the Brüning cabinet.17 But as negotiations with Hitler and his entourage dragged on into the last week of January, Hugenberg encountered increasing frustration with the slow pace of his efforts and was having a hard time holding his party in line. Particularly outspoken in this regard was the influential Ruhr industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who strongly supported the creation of a united national front in which both the DNVP and NSDAP were represented and alleged that Hugenberg had tried to sabotage relations with the Nazis by attaching conditions to his party’s cooperation with the NSDAP that Hitler and his confederates would find impossible to accept.18 The wild card in all of this was the NSDAP. In the deliberations that had led to the collapse of Brüning’s plans for an extension of Hindenburg’s term of office by a special vote in the Reichstag, it had been Hitler and not Hugenberg who appeared to be the more pliant of the two in dealing with the Reich chancery and the ministry of defense.19 Hitler and his entourage had hoped that Hitler’s Denkschrift of 13 January outlining how the chancellor’s plans violated essential provisions of the Weimar Constitution would prompt the Reich president to drop both Brüning and 14 15 16

17 18 19

For example, see the report of Hugenberg’s speech, “Der Sinn von Harzburg,” Darmstadt, 8 Nov. 1931, in Unsere Partei 9, no. 23 (1 Dec. 1931): 275–76. For example, see Hugenberg to Hitler, 28 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Wegner, 73/146. In this respect, see Spahn to Hugenberg, 12 Jan. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Martin Spahn, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Spahn), 86, and Bang to Hugenberg, 21 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 36/11–12. Unsere Partei, 10, no. 4 (13 Feb. 1932): 31–32. See also Brosius to Hugenberg, 14 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 191/14–15. Thyssen to Hugenberg, 28 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 39/15. For example, see Westarp to Hiller von Gaertringen, 26 Jan. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, II/51.

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Defense Minister Wilhelm Groener and appoint a new cabinet.20 When Hindenburg, however, rejected Hitler’s Denkschrift because its implementation would have required breaches of the constitution that the Reich president found unacceptable,21 this only reinforced the Nazis in their determination to get rid of Hindenburg as the greatest single obstacle to their conquest of power. At the same time, Hitler continued to equivocate over whether or not he should become a candidate for the Reich presidency and, much to the frustration of those like Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels who were pressing the Nazi party leader to declare his candidacy, kept putting off a final decision.22 It was not until the first week of February that Hitler finally declared his intention to run for the Reich presidency to Goebbels and other high-ranking members of the Nazi hierarchy. But this decision, Hitler insisted, would not be made public until after Hindenburg had declared his candidacy and the Social Democrats had come out in support of his reelection. This, Hitler and his closest advisors were confident, would then assure the Nazi party leader of victory, if not in the first round of voting, then certainly in the runoff election that would follow.23 It was against the background of these developments that the Nazis agreed, though without divulging the possibility of a Hitler candidacy, to honor Hugenberg’s request for a meeting to coordinate the strategy of the national opposition and, if possible, to unite behind a single candidate in the upcoming presidential election.24 The meeting, according to Goebbels’ diary, did not take place until the first week of February,25 by which time the pro-Hindenburg forces had begun to mobilize their resources in a fullscale effort to persuade the Reich president to stand for reelection. On 13 January Artur Mahraun, the mercurial leader of the Young German Order, responded to the collapse of negotiations for a parliamentary extension of Hindenburg’s term of office by proposing that the matter now be submitted to the judgment of the German people in the form of a 20 21

22 23 24

25

Entries for 11–12 Jan. 1932, in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, Teil 1, Bd. 2/II (Munich, 2004), 193–95. For Hindenburg’s dismissive reaction to the Hitler Denkschrift, see Pünder’s memorandum dated 8 Feb. 1932 but obviously completed several days later, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 583/222–28. Entry for 20 Jan. 1932, in the Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 199–200. Entry for 3 Feb. 1932, ibid, 2/II, 209–10. In this respect, see Hugenberg to Hitler, 28 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Wegner, 73/146, as well as the correspondence between Frick and Schmidt-Hannover, 28–30 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/108–09. Entry for 3 Feb. 1932, in the Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 209–10.

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

national referendum similar to the one that had just been staged for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag.26 In an unrelated move, Count Kuno von Westarp, the parliamentary leader of the miniscule People’s Conservative faction and one of Brüning’s most trusted supporters in the Reichstag, invited representatives from the parties of the middle and moderate Right – with the exception of the Center and Bavarian People’s Party – to a meeting on 12 January for the purpose of determining whether or not they would be willing to come together in a joint display of public support for a Hindenburg candidacy. For Westarp and the People’s Conservatives, the initiative on behalf of Hindenburg’s candidacy afforded them an opportunity to return themselves to the center of the political limelight. But Westarp encountered resistance from the DVP’s Eduard Dingeldey and Wilhelm Simpfendörfer from the Christian-Social People’s Service, both of whom expressed reservations about the wisdom of labeling Hindenburg’s candidacy a candidacy of the middle. Dingeldey and the CNBLP’s Wolfgang Hauenschild-Tscheidt also indicated that they were engaged in ongoing negotiations with the National Socialists and did not want to see the progress they had made jeopardized by a premature move by the other political parties. As a result, Westarp’s initiative came to naught.27 In the meantime, another constellation of Hindenburg supporters had surfaced around the person of Heinrich Sahm, the politically unaffiliated lord mayor of Berlin. On the afternoon of 15 January Sahm approached Otto Meissner, the secretary of state in the office of the Reich presidency, with an offer to organize an appeal from a broad spectrum of “independent personalities” for the purpose of persuading the Reich president to stand for reelection.28 Sahm’s initiative was truly bipartisan and embraced not only representatives from the moderate Right but also politicians such as Gertrud Bäumer, Hermann Fischer, and Ernst Lemmer from the

26

27 28

Mahraun to Hindenburg, 13 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 372/29–31. See also Mahraun to Bredt, 13 Jan. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Johann Victor Bredt, Stadtarchiv Wuppertal, Bestand NDS 263 (hereafter cited as StA Wuppertal, NL Bredt), vol. 19, as well as the letter from Otto Bornemann, chancellor of the Young German Order, to Brüning, 14 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 585/11–13. Westarp to Hiller von Gaertringen, 14 Jan. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, II/51. Memorandum by Pünder, n.d. [27 Jan. 1932], BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/198–209. For further information on the origins and reception of Sahm’s offer, see his unpublished memoirs for the period from 15 Jan.–28 Apr. 1932, in the Nachlaß of Heinrich Sahm, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Sahm), 9/57–80, 58–59, reprinted in Thilo Vogelsang, Reichswehr, Staat und NSDAP. Beiträge zur Deutschen Geschichte 1930–1932 (Stuttgart, 1962), 431–40. See also Heinrich Sprenger, Heinrich Sahm. Kommunalpolitiker und Staatsmann (Cologne and Berlin, 1969), 236–42.

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left-liberal German State Party who identified themselves unequivocally with Germany’s besieged republican system.29 Sahm also reached out to the leaders of Germany’s two most influential right-wing veterans’ organizations, the Stahlhelm and the German Reich Warriors’ Kyffhäuser League,30 but the Stahlhelm leadership, enticed by Hugenberg’s blandishments about the possibility of closer cooperation under the auspices of the national opposition,31 informed Sahm by telephone on 1 February that it would not be affiliating itself with his committee.32 Given the importance that Hindenburg attached to the support of the two veterans’ organizations now that neither the DNVP nor the NSDAP could be expected to support his candidacy, Meissner prevailed upon Sahm to postpone announcing his action until after Schleicher had had an opportunity to determine if the two organizations could still be persuaded to support a Hindenburg candidacy.33 Anxious to keep Hindenburg’s candidacy from being too closely identified with the Social Democrats and the various parties to the left of the DNVP,34 Schleicher had already been in contact with the leaders of the two veterans’ organizations and had urged the Kyffhäuser League’s president Rudolf von Horn to maintain a respectful distance with regard to the Sahm committee so as not to compromise his efforts to reach an understanding with the leaders of the national opposition.35 Schleicher’s goal in all of this was to unite the moderate and radical Right behind a Hindenburg candidacy so that, once reelected, the Reich president could proceed to reorganize the national government with an eye toward opening it up to the forces of the national opposition.36

29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36

See the list of names appended to Sahm’s draft circular of 28 Jan. 1932, WA Bayer Leverkusen, NL Duisberg, 76/9. For example, see Sahm to Seldte, 28 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/113. Hugenberg to the leaders of the Stahlhelm, 29 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 281/171–18. Seldte, handwritten memo of a telephone conversation with Sahm, 1 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/110. Sahm’s memoirs, entries for 19–20 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Sahm, 9/60–62. Lersner, draft of a letter to Schmitz and Bosch, 4 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 9/ 14–17. Horn, “Aufzeichnung zum Auftakt der Reichspräsidentenwahl 1932,” n.d. [Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, NS 26, 930. For a more detailed discussion of Schleicher’s intervention on Hindenburg’s behalf, see Vogelsang, Reichswehr, Staat und NSDAP, 149–54. In this respect, see Schleicher’s remarks at a conference of the German high command, 11–12 Jan. 1932, NL Liebmann, 2/8–12, reprinted in Thilo Vogelsang, “Neue Dokumente zur Geschichte der Reichswehr 1930–1933,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 2 (1954): 397–436, here 414–15.

156

Hitler versus Hindenburg

In the meantime, the pressure on Hindenburg to declare himself a candidate continued to build. Between 12 January and 14 February Hindenburg received appeals from over a dozen political parties and organizations of one sort or another expressing support for his reelection and calling upon him to declare himself a candidate. Hindenburg received solicitations not only from the leadership of the German People’s Party, the Christian-National Farmers’ Party, and the Christian-Social People’s Service but also from the leaders of the Christian labor movement and Friedrich von Berg-Markienen from the German Nobles’ Society (Deutsche Adelsgenossenschaft or DAG).37 It was against the background of this apparent groundswell of public support for his candidacy that Hindenburg met with Brüning on 27 January to give him the green light to put Sahm’s plan into action.38 On the following day, however, the Reich president stunned Brüning with a brief note that restated his willingness “to accept the office of the Reich presidency” but only if he was convinced that this was “a patriotic necessity” and as long as his candidacy “did not meet with the united opposition of the entire Right.” Until this had been clarified, Hindenburg stipulated, he would reserve his decision about declaring himself as a candidate for reelection.39 Given the fact that neither the DNVP nor the NSDAP was likely to endorse Hindenburg’s candidacy, Hindenburg’s willingness to run for reelection now depended upon whether or not his supporters could secure the cooperation of the Stahlhelm and Kyffhäuser League. All of this placed Brüning in an extremely awkward situation, and on two occasions – first on 27 January and then again on 6 February – he offered to resign as chancellor if this would provide the Reich president with the right-wing support he needed in order to announce his candidacy.40 37

38 39 40

For a list of the organizations that came out in support of a Hindenburg candidacy by the middle of February 1932, see the attachment to Hindenburg to Mackensen, 15 Feb. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Mackensen, 272/51–54. Memorandum by Pünder, n.d. [27 Jan. 1932], BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/198–209. Hindenburg to Brüning, 28 Jan. 1932, reprinted in Brüning, Memoiren, 518–19. See also Pyta, Hindenburg, 657. Brüning, Memoiren, 325–26. See also Lersner, draft of a letter to Schmitz and Bosch, 4 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 9/14–17, as well as Hindenburg’s own account, “Persönliche Darlegung des Herrn Reichspräsidenten über die Vorgänge und Vorgeschichte seiner Wiederkandidatur,” n.d. [25 Feb. 1932], BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 30/34–41, also in the unpublished Nachlaß of Bernhard Schwertfeger, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Schwertfeger), 422, and reprinted in Politik und Wirtschaft in der Krise 1930–1932. Quellen zur Ära Brüning, with an introduction by Gerhard Schulz and edited by Ilse Maurer and Udo Wengst, 2 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1980), 2: 1306–10.

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But the Reich president regarded Brüning as indispensable from the perspective of German foreign policy and categorically refused to purchase the support of the radical Right by forcing his resignation as chancellor.41 Hindenburg’s refusal to do so, in turn, made the support of organizations like the Stahlhelm and Kyffhäuser League every bit as problematic as it had been in the case of the DNVP and NSDAP. Although both organizations had always claimed the Reich president as one of their own, their ties to Hindenburg had become increasingly problematic with the growing strength and activism of the radical Right in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This was particularly true in the case of the Stahlhelm, which at the height of the campaign against the Young Plan had taken the unusual step of exempting the Reich president from paragraph four of the so-called Freedom Law that called for the imprisonment of those government officials who were responsible for signing and ratifying the Young Plan.42 With the approach of the upcoming presidential elections, the Stahlhelm was obliged to walk a thin line between its loyalty to the Reich president and the demands of the national opposition.43 As late as 26 January Franz Seldte, one of the two men who shared the Stahlhelm’s national leadership, had not only reassured the chancellor of his support for Hindenburg’s reelection to the Reich presidency but also offered to intercede with the DNVP’s Hugenberg in an attempt to secure his party's support for a Hindenburg candidacy.44 But Hindenburg’s performance as Reich president and, in particular, his continued support 41

42 43

44

Memoranda by Pünder, n.d. [27 Jan. 1932], BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/198–209, and 6 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 583/238–40. See also Groener to Gleich, 24 Jan. 1932, BAMA Freiburg, NL Groener, 36/38–40. For further information on Groener’s role, see Johannes Hürter, Wilhelm Groener. Reichswehrminister am Ende der Weimarer Republik (1928–1932) (Munich, 1993), 325–26. For Hindenburg’s motives, see Pyta, Hindenburg, 657. Seldte and Duesterberg to Hindenburg, 24 Sept. 1929, BA Berlin, R 72, 275/24–25. For a revealing assessment of the strategic situation in which the Stahlhelm found itself after the collapse of efforts to extend Hindenburg’s term of office by parliamentary initiative, see [Wagner], “Beurteilung der Lage zur Reichspräsidentenwahl,” n.d. [Jan. 1932], BA Berlin, R 72, 295/35–40. Memorandum by Pünder, n.d. [27 Jan. 1932], BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/198–209. See also Lersner, draft of a letter to Schmitz and Bosch, 4 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 9/14–17. The following account is deeply indebted to the excellent article by Volker R. Berghahn, “Die Harzburger Front und die Kandidatur Hindenburgs für die Reichspräsidentenwahlen 1932,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 13 (1965): 64–82. For further information on the dilemma in which the Stahlhelm found itself, see Berghahn, Stahlhelm, 1966), 195–205, and Alois Klotzbücher, “Der politische Weg des Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, in der Weimarer Republik. Ein Beitrag zur

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for the Brüning cabinet had provoked a strong animus toward the Reich president among many of the leaders of the Stahlhelm’s state and provincial organizations,45 with the result that Seldte found it impossible to honor his promise to Brüning. Instead, the Stahlhelm’s national leadership began to waver in its support of Hindenburg’s candidacy, and on 28 January it issued a set of internal guidelines that highlighted the importance of preserving the unity of the national front and urged patience on the part of the Stahlhelm’s rank and file until all of the issues related to the upcoming presidential elections had been resolved.46 In the meantime, negotiations with retired general Rudolf von Horn of the Kyffhäuser League proved somewhat more promising than those with the Stahlhelm, but here too the presidential entourage encountered considerable resistance from within the organization that kept Horn from endorsing Hindenburg’s candidacy.47 On 25 January Schleicher informed Sahm that his efforts to win the support of the paramilitary right for Hindenburg’s candidacy had failed and that neither of the two organizations with which he had been negotiating had been able to reach a decision to support the Reich president.48 Frustrated by the indecisiveness of the Stahlhelm and Kyffhäuser League, Schleicher and Pünder gave Sahm the green light to proceed with his plans for the establishment of a nonpartisan Hindenburg committee in a private meeting on the evening of 27 January.49 In the meantime, Sahm and his associates had come under heavy pressure from Hindenburg’s supporters in Bavaria, where the former state police chief Hermann von Seisser had taken the first steps toward the formation of a campaign committee on Hindenburg’s behalf with an exploratory meeting on the evening of 26 January.50 The key figure in this enterprise was forestry official Georg Escherich, renowned for his role in the creation of the Bavarian civil

45 46 47 48 49 50

Geschichte der ‘Nationalen Opposition’ 1918–1933” (PhD Diss., Universität ErlangenNürnberg, 1964), 245–54. Manuscript of Duesterberg’s unpublished memoirs, BA Koblenz, NL Duesterberg, 47/ 171. In this respect, see Stahlhelm, Landesverband Westmark, Führerbrief 36, 28 Jan. 1932, VWA Münster, NL Lüninck, 781. For further details, see Horn, “Kyffhäuserbund und Stahlhelm in der ReichspräsidentenFrage,” n.d. [Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, NS 26, 930. Sahm’s memoirs, entry for 26 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Sahm, 9/66–67. Ibid, 9/67. See also the memorandum by Pünder, n.d. [27 Jan. 1932], BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/198–209. Seisser to Sahm, 23 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/215–16. See also Sahm’s memoirs, entry for 20 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Sahm, 9/61–62.

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defense leagues and the suppression of communism in the immediate postwar period. Escherich had since moved more and more to the middle of the Bavarian political spectrum and enjoyed close ties to the leadership of the Bavarian People’s Party and other moderate conservative organizations. In many respects, Escherich epitomized the virtues of nonpartisanship, or Überparteilichkeit, that lay at the heart of the Hindenburg mythos.51 In a similar development, representatives of the non-Catholic bourgeois parties to the left of the DNVP came together in Leipzig to form a committee that circulated a petition in support of Hindenburg’s reelection that even attracted the signatures of several DNVP members.52 Then, in two parallel yet independent initiatives, fifty professors from the Philipps University in Marburg and another twenty-six members of the teaching faculty from the Carolo-Wilhelmina Technical Institute in Brunswick signed petitions affirming their support for Hindenburg and urging him to declare himself a candidate for reelection.53 The net effect of this was to create a sense of momentum in support of a Hindenburg candidacy that underscored the need for action on the part of Sahm and his associates. After a last-minute gesture on the part of Brüning to the leaders of the Stahlhelm failed to produce any change in their attitude,54 Sahm officially launched his committee at a reception in Berlin’s fashionable Hotel Continental on 1 February.55 In preparation for this event, Sahm met with Fritz Klein from the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and Kurt Neven DuMont from the Kölnische Zeitung to draft an appeal on behalf of a Hindenburg candidacy and to coordinate a national press campaign calling for Hindenburg to stand for reelection.56 Following its official founding, the Sahm committee published an appeal that invoked the

51

52 53

54 55 56

Escherich’s involvement in the Hindenburg campaign is documented in volume 63 of his unpublished Nachlaß, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Munich (hereafter cited as BHStA Munich, NL Escherich). Unfortunately Escherich was either sick or away from Munich for much of the campaign, so his actual involvement in the campaign was limited. In this respect, see the three letters from the Leipzig Attorney Hermann Martin to Hindenburg, 5, 9, and 11 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 373/109, 113, 115. Thiel (rector of the Philipps University in Marburg) to Hindenburg, 4 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 373/12–13, and Schmitz (rector of the Technische Hochschule CaroloWilhelmina in Brunswick) to Hindenburg, 12 Feb. 1932, ibid, 373/15–16. See the exchange of letters between Brüning and Duesterberg, 29 Jan.–3 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 265/175–76. Sahm, invitation from 28 Jan. 1932, WA Bayer Leverkusen, NL Duisberg, 76/9. Sahm’s memoirs, BA Koblenz, NL Sahm, 9/67. See also the letter from Sahm, 30 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 58/63.

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mythic stature of Hindenburg as the hero of Tannenberg and the living symbol of a national unity that transcended the partisan bickering of German political life. Among the forty-five public figures who lent their names and reputations to the appeal were left-wing liberals like Gertrud Bäumer and Ernst Lemmer, right-wing liberals like Otto Gessler and Karl Jarres, conservatives like von Seisser and Baron Engelbert von LandsbergSteinfurt, trade unionists like Hans Bechly and Bernhard Otte, and academics like Hermann Oncken and Max Planck as well as industrialist Carl Duisberg, Bavarian peasant leader Georg Heim, Mahraun from the Young German Order, the Hansa-Bund’s Hermann Fischer, and Georg Escherich from the civil defense movement of the early 1920s.57 The signatories of the Sahm appeal represented a veritable crosssection of Germany’s state-supporting bourgeois elites with at least one Social Democrat, former defense minister Gustav Noske, thrown in for good measure. Within fourteen days Sahm and his associates had collected a total of 3.63 million signatures, far surpassing the 20,000 that were necessary to nominate an independent candidate who did not enjoy the endorsement of a political party.58 Hindenburg was duly impressed by the breadth and depth of public support that the Sahm initiative had demonstrated for his candidacy, and it weighed heavily on his mind as he deliberated as to whether or not he would stand for reelection. But for Hindenburg it all came down to whether or not he could get the support of the German Right, and he instructed Schleicher to resume his negotiations with Hugenberg, Hitler, and the leaders of the two veterans’ organizations. Schleicher met with Hugenberg first on 3 February and then three days later after the DNVP party chairman had conferred with Hitler. In the first meeting Schleicher floated the idea of a new right-wing government headed by the current Defense Minister Wilhelm Groener in which Hugenberg, with special responsibilities for the economy, would serve as vice chancellor and Brüning as foreign minister. When Hugenberg relayed Schleicher’s proposal to Hitler, the Nazi party leader categorically rejected Brüning and Groener as members of the cabinet and demanded that his party receive either the chancellorship or the defense ministry in addition to several other cabinet posts in order to assure the new government of the broad base of mass support it needed to accomplish its tasks. Although Hindenburg was more than willing to go 57 58

For the text of the appeal and the names of those who signed it, see “Volkskandidatur für die Reichspräsidentenwahl,” Kölnische Zeitung, 2 Feb. 1932, no. 64. Pyta, Hindenburg, 1020, n. 67.

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along with a reorganization of the national government under the auspices of the antirepublican Right, the Reich president remained unalterably opposed to Hitler’s demand that the chancellorship or ministry of defense be entrusted to a member of his party.59 Hugenberg, on the other hand, was concerned that the leaders of the Stahlhelm would only become more receptive to a Hindenburg candidacy once they learned of Schleicher’s proposal just as he was vetting it with the Nazis. But when Hugenberg asked for time to consult with the other members of the national opposition and then failed to get back in touch with Schleicher over the course of the next two days,60 Schleicher concluded that the DNVP party chairman was not interested in pursuing the matter any further and began to explore other options. The sticking point in all of this remained the role of the Reich chancellor in any future government. Both Hugenberg and Hitler were determined to force Brüning out of office and were unlikely to soften their position against Hindenburg’s reelection without a far-reaching reorganization of the national government. For his own part, Brüning had no desire to stand in the way of right-wing support for Hindenburg’s candidacy and had indicated to the president as recently as 27 January that he was prepared to resign as Reich chancellor if someone in a position of authority on the German Right would clearly and unequivocally state to him in person that his continuation in office constituted an obstacle to Hindenburg’s reelection.61 But, as the Reich president’s state secretary Otto Meissner explained to the ever affable information peddler and political confidant Baron Kurt von Lersner on the evening of 3 February, Hindenburg was reluctant to accept Brüning’s offer of resignation in the absence of some sort of direct pressure from the German Right.62 By this

59

60 61 62

Memorandum by Schleicher on his negotiations with the DNVP, n.d. [Feb.–Mar. 1932], BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 91/73–79. On the composition of this document, see the correspondence between Schleicher and Schmidt-Hannover from March 1932, ibid, 30/ 39–44. It is difficult to determine from Schleicher’s memorandum precisely when these meetings took place or what was discussed at which meeting, particularly since Schleicher seems to conflate the two meetings that took place on 3 and 6 February into a single meeting. Particularly useful in this regard is the report that Wagner filed with Seldte and Duesterberg, 14 Apr. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/182. For the most detailed reconstruction of these negotiations, see Berghahn, “Harzburger Front,” 70–71. Horn, “Aufzeichnung zum Auftakt der Reichspräsidentenwahl,” n.d. [Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, NS 26, 930. Brüning, Memoiren, 517. Lersner, draft of a letter to Schmitz and Bosch, 4 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 9/ 14–17.

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time Schleicher had also begun to turn against Brüning in large part because he had convinced himself that the chancellor sought to have Hindenburg reelected by the Left and middle without the involvement of the Right, a solution he found totally unacceptable.63 It was against the background of these developments that Lersner concocted a scheme – apparently with the unofficial imprimatur of both Schleicher and Meissner – whereby Hugenberg, Hitler, Duesterberg, and Seldte from the Stahlhelm, Count Kalckreuth from the National Rural League, and Baron Rüdiger von der Goltz from the United Patriotic Leagues would all sign a statement to the effect that Chancellor Brüning constituted an“insurmountable obstacle [unüberwindliches Hindernis] for the election of General Field Marshall Hindenburg as Reich president.” Should Brüning fail to honor his pledge to resign within forty-eight hours of receiving this declaration, the statement would be released to the press.64 But once again, the stumbling block to Lersner’s stratagem proved to be Hugenberg, who now began to entertain ideas of his own about running for the Reich presidency and delayed responding to Lersner’s proposal until late February when he finally stated that he “could not support such a declaration without having a better idea of what might happen as a consequence.”65 In the meantime, Hindenburg’s supporters were becoming increasingly impatient with the Reich president’s procrastination and feared that this only worked to the advantage of his potential rivals on the radical Right.66 Schleicher hoped to get the negotiations back on track by meeting with Hugenberg for a second time on 6 February. Once again Schleicher tried to win the DNVP’s support for Hindenburg’s candidacy by proposing the formation of a new national cabinet under Brüning’s leadership in which Hugenberg would receive both the vice chancellorship and the ministry of finance. Moreover, the new cabinet would be entrusted with the authority to dissolve the Reichstag and call for new elections.67 Although Hugenberg was doubtlessly pleased about the way Schleicher’s proposal had given the Nationalists and not the Nazis the decisive voice in the formation of the new government, he was skeptical that a right-wing government could last for long without Nazi 63 65 66 67

64 Ibid. Lersner, diary entry for 10–11 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 9/21–22. Lersner, draft of a letter to Bosch and Schmitz, 27 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 9/ 50–51. For example, see the letter from Winterfeld to Schwertfeger, 9 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Schwertfeger, 579/7. Entry in Quaatz’s diary, 8 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17.

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participation and scornfully dismissed a cabinet that included Brüning and Groener as simply another “cabinet of the system” incapable of bringing about the fundamental changes in the existing political system that Germany so desperately needed.68 Rebuffed by Hugenberg, Schleicher now shifted his attention from the DNVP to the Stahlhelm and Kyffhäuser League and resumed his negotiations with the two veterans’ organizations on 9 February to assess their willingness to endorse a Hindenburg candidacy even if neither of the two right-wing parties was prepared to do so. Of the two organizations, the Kyffhäuser League was less political, probably felt a stronger bond of personal loyalty to the Reich president, and appeared more favorably disposed to a Hindenburg candidacy. Established in 1900 as an umbrella organization of veterans’ and reservists’ organizations in the late Second Empire,69 the Kyffhäuser League had gravitated more and more to the right during the Weimar Republic only to find itself eclipsed by the larger and more militantly antirepublican Stahlhelm.70 In a private meeting with the Reich president’s son Oskar von Hindenburg at the beginning of February, the leaders of the Kyffhäuser League had reiterated their support for a Hindenburg candidacy but also indicated that they were reluctant to act on their own and would have to await the decision of the Stahlhelm.71 Spurred on by the younger Hindenburg’s sense of urgency, the Kyffhäuser League’s president, retired artillery general Rudolf von Horn, met separately with Schleicher and Hugenberg on 9 February in an attempt to get the negotiations that had 68

69

70

71

Memorandum by Schleicher on this negotiations with the DNVP, n.d. [Feb.–Mar. 1932], BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 91/73–79. For Schmidt-Hannover’s tortured defense of the DNVP’s position, see DNVP central headquarters, circular no. 2, 18 Feb. 1932, in the corporate records of Blohm & Voss, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Handakten Gottfried Gok, Bestand 621-1/72 (hereafter cited as StA Hamburg, Blohm & Voss, Handakten Gok), 1223. Karl Saul, “Der ‘Deutsche Kriegerbund.’ Zur innenpolitischen Funktion eines nationalen Verbandes im kaiserlichen Deutschland,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 2 (1969): 95–159. For further details, see C. J. Elliott, “The Kriegervereine and the Weimar Republic,” Journal of Contemporary History 10 (1975): 109–29. On the Kyffhäuser League in the last years of the Weimar Republic, see the thoroughly researched article by Karl Führer, “Der Deutsche Reichskriegerbund Kyffhäuser 1930–1934. Politik, Ideologie und Funktion eines ‘unpolitischen’ Verbandes,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 36 (1984): 57–76. See the account of the meeting between the Reich president’s son and the leadership of the Kyffhäuser League, 3 Feb. 1932, in the detailed account of these negotiations prepared by the Kyffhäuser League’s Rudolf von Horn and Erich Karwiese, “Kyffhäuserbund und Stahlhelm in der Reichspräsidentenwahlen-Frage,” n.d. [Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, NS 26, 930.

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been derailed by the latter’s apparent intransigence back on track. But Horn found the DNVP party leader’s reluctance to undertake any action without first consulting Hitler and the other members of the national opposition a source of great frustration and was unable to bring the two sides any closer together.72 On the morning of 10 February the Reich president met with the Stahlhelm’s Seldte and Duesterberg, neither of whom had any advance knowledge of the proposal Schleicher had presented to Hugenberg for a reorganization of the national government until first Horn and then Schleicher apprised them of this just prior to their meeting with Hindenburg.73 This time Schleicher revised his original proposal by suggesting that the chancellorship be placed in the hands of Baron Hermann von Lüninck, a prominent Catholic conservative with a record of unmitigated hostility toward the existing political system who enjoyed the strong support of the Stahlhelm leadership.74 Under this arrangement, Hugenberg would receive the vice chancellorship and his party two additional seats in the new cabinet, while Brüning and Groener would stay on at the foreign office and defense ministry respectively.75 Hindenburg, who had also been kept in the dark about Schleicher’s proposal to Hugenberg, angrily distanced himself from the concessions that Schleicher had made to the national opposition in an attempt to secure its support for his

72

73

74

75

For the most detailed account of these negotiations, see the report by Horn cited in n. 29. See also the detailed report “Die Wahl Hindenburg’s. Vorgänge und Betrachtungen” prepared by Horn’s second-in-command Gerhart von Enckevort, 18 Apr. 1932, in Enckevort’s unpublished Nachlaß, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau (hereafter cited as BA-MA Freiburg, NL Enckevort), 1/9–11. The record as to who first informed Seldte and Duesterberg about Schleicher’s proposal becomes confused at this point. For two versions, see the entry for 10 Feb. 1932 in Enckenvort, “Die Wahl Hindenburg’s,” 18 Apr. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Enckevort, 1/9–11, and Nagel’s memorandum for Hugenberg quoted verbatim in Wagner to Seldte and Duesterberg, 14 Apr. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/182. In this respect, see [Wagner], “Beurteilung der Lage zur Reichspräsidentenwahl,” n.d. [10 Jan. 1932], BA Berlin, R 72, 295/35–40. For Lüninck’s political views, see his remarks in Protokoll der außerordentlichen General-Versammlung des Rheinisch-Westfälischen Vereins kath. Edelleute am 4. August 1932 in Münster i.W. (Münster, 1932), 19–21. On the Catholic-conservative milieu in which Lüninck lived and functioned, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Catholic Conservatives in the Weimar Republic: The Politics of the Rhenisch-Westphalian Aristocracy, 1918–1933,” German History 18 (2000): 60–83, as well as the more recent study by Christoph Hübner, Die Rechtskatholiken, die Zentrumspartei und die katholische Kirche in Deutschland bis zum Reichskonkordat von 1933. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Scheiterns der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 2014). Nagel’s memorandum for Hugenberg quoted verbatim in Wagner to Seldte and Duesterberg, 14 Apr. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/182.

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candidacy as a tactic that impugned his sense of personal honor. As a result, the two Stahlhelm leaders were received by a Reich president who was furious at the way in which the radical Right had used its support of his candidacy as a bargaining chip in its efforts to force a change in the composition of the national government. As it was, Hindenburg never got around to the reason for which they had requested an audience with the Reich president in the first place, namely, to suggest that he refrain from declaring himself a candidate for the Reich presidency in the first round of voting and hold himself in reserve for the run-off election that would be triggered by the almost certain failure of any single candidate to receive an absolute majority in the first ballot.76 Although Hindenburg dissociated himself from the negotiations that Schleicher had conducted with the leaders of the national opposition, both Seldte and Duesterberg came away from their meeting with the Reich president convinced that Hindenburg was committed to a reorganization of the national cabinet and that the conditions they had attached to their support of his candidacy had been satisfied. At this point they returned with Horn to the Stahlhelm’s Berlin offices with every intention of endorsing the Reich president’s bid for reelection. But here they were immediately confronted by Siegfried Wagner, the third most important person in the Stahlhelm’s chain of command and Hugenberg’s most passionate supporter at the upper echelons of the Stahlhelm leadership. Wagner expressed alarm at how a declaration of support for Hindenburg would damage the Stahlhelm’s ties to the national opposition and voiced little confidence in the sincerity of the government’s commitment to extending the base of the governmental coalition to the parties and organizations of the radical Right.77 The three Stahlhelm leaders were then joined by Otto Schmidt-Hannover, a Hugenberg confidant who had served as the DNVP’s principal liaison to the paramilitary Right since the beginning of 1929,78 and then after some delay by the DNVP party chairman himself. Visibly distressed by the Stahlhelm’s apparent eagerness to support Hindenburg, Schmidt-Hannover reminded Duesterberg of the Stahlhelm’s common front with the other parties and organizations of the national opposition and asked him to reconsider what he was about to do. Duesterberg responded – and in this respect he had Seldte’s full support – that the Stahlhelm was satisfied with the assurances it had 76 77

Entry for 10 Feb. 1932, in the report by Enckevort, “Die Wahl Hindenburg’s,” 18 Apr. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Enckevort, 1/9–11. 78 Ibid. Terhalle, Deutschnational in Weimar, 262–93.

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received from the Reich president and that whatever the parties might want to do was not his concern. Under no circumstances, Duesterberg continued, would the Stahlhelm take a public stand against Field Marshall Hindenburg or “fall between two stools.” If necessary, he concluded, the Stahlhelm would march alone.79 The deliberations continued throughout the afternoon as the leaders of the two veterans’ organizations found themselves under increasingly heavy pressure from Hugenberg and the DNVP party leadership to tie their support of Hindenburg’s candidacy to a thorough and immediate overhaul of the existing governmental system. The exchange between the DNVP party chairman and the leaders of the Stahlhelm was quite heated and reached its high point when Duesterberg, frustrated by Hugenberg’s continued insistence upon far-reaching and immediate changes in the existing political system, exclaimed to Hugenberg: “I do not understand, Herr Geheimrat, how you cannot be satisfied with [Schleicher’s concessions]. You simply cannot demand a hundred percent change in the political system. A complete change in the political system cannot occur all at once but only gradually – and then only after new elections.” And then, as the negotiations remained stuck on this point, Duesterberg declared as he rose to depart for his home in Halle: “The Stahlhelm will never stand up against Hindenburg. It would be unbearable for the Stahlhelm if the Field Marshall made good on his threat to resign his honorary presidency in the Stahlhelm.”80 Duesterberg’s remarks revealed the deep frustration he felt not only with Hugenberg’s intransigence but also with the difficult personal situation in which he, as a right-wing activist with a deep and abiding personal attachment to Hindenburg, found himself. Writing to Hindenburg the following day from Halle, Duesterberg tried to extricate himself and the Stahlhelm from the dilemma in which they found themselves by taking the highly unusual step of suggesting that the Reich president refrain from declaring his candidacy in the first round of voting. Duesterberg’s reasoning was that both the DNVP and NSDAP were in the process of nominating candidates of their own and that this would almost certainly produce a deadlock in which none of the contestants for the Reich

79 80

Entry for 10 Feb. 1932, in the report by Enckevort, “Die Wahl Hindenburg’s,” 18 Apr. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Enckevort, 1/9–11. Entry for 10 Feb. 1932 in Horn/Karwiese, “Kyffhäuserbund und Stahlhelm in der Reichspräsidenten-Frage,” n.d. [Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, NS 26, 930. See also the entry in Quaatz’s diary, 12 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17.

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presidency would prevail. Hindenburg could then present himself as a candidate of national unity in the run-off election that would ultimately decide the presidential race. Such a maneuver, Duesterberg argued, would free the Reich president from the odium of being reelected at the hands of the Social Democrats and parties of the middle so that once he had been reinstalled in office, he could appoint a new national government under the auspices of the national opposition.81 It is difficult to know if Duesterberg actually expected Hindenburg to accept his suggestion or whether he could have possibly anticipated the rage with which the Reich president received the proposal. In any event, Hindenburg emphatically rejected the proposal that he abstain as a candidate in the first round of voting so as to hold himself in reserve for an eventual run-off election on the grounds that such a tactic was incompatible with the responsibilities of the high office to which he had been elected.82 Meanwhile, in a parallel action, a small clique of disgruntled retired generals who had served with the Reich president during World War I tied their promises of support for his candidacy to Brüning’s dismissal as chancellor and the appointment of a new government based upon the forces of the national opposition. The initial impulse here came from the octogenarian Karl von Einem, who had served as the Prussian minister of war from 1903 to 1909 and as commander of the German Third Army during World War I. A bitter and uncompromising opponent of the Weimar Republic, Einem believed that the “man of the hour” was the DNVP party chairman Alfred Hugenberg and sought to enlist Meissner’s support in persuading the Reich president to appoint Hugenberg as Brüning’s successor.83 In a similar vein, retired field marshal August von Mackensen, at eighty-two the only other general in Hindenburg’s cohort to have achieved the rank of field marshal, expressed dismay at the fact that the Reich president was apparently willing to accept the support of the Social Democrats and Center, the very parties that had opposed his 81 82

83

Duesterberg to Hindenburg, 11 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 372/58–61, also in R 72, 296/119–22. Hindenburg to Duesterberg, 12 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 372/62. For Hindenburg’s emotional reaction to Duesterberg’s proposal at a meeting with the Stahlhelm leadership, 10 Feb. 1932, see Horn, “Aufzeichnung zum Auftakt zu der Reichspräsidentenwahl,” n. d. [Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, NS 26, 930. Horn’s own sense of exactly when Duesterberg presented this option to Hindenburg seems confused. Einem to Meissner, 20 Jan. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Karl von Einem, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau, Bestand N 324 (hereafter cited as BA-MA Freiburg, NL Einem), 29/13–15. See also Einem to Hugenberg, 10 Feb. 1932, ibid, 29/24–25.

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election in 1925, in his bid for reelection and urged him not to enter the contest except as the candidate of a united German Right.84 The third figure in this cabal was retired infantry general August von Cramon, who at the age of eighty-one still enjoyed close ties to the royal household in Doorn.85 Having been instrumental in persuading Hindenburg to stand for election in 1925,86 Cramon was appalled by the fact that those who had supported Hindenburg’s candidacy seven years earlier had abandoned his bid for reelection and that his strongest support was now coming from the Center, the Social Democrats, and the parties that stood to the left of the DNVP. The only way this could be rectified, Cramon insisted in a plea to Mackensen for his support in persuading Hindenburg to reverse his political course, would be for the Reich president to drop Brüning as chancellor and appoint as his successor someone from the ranks of the national opposition.87 Hindenburg, however, would have none of this. Writing to Mackensen on 9 February, the Reich president complained bitterly about being misunderstood by his erstwhile comrades and friends on the German Right and denied the accusation that his candidacy had somehow been hijacked by the very elements that had opposed his election in 1925. At the same time, Hindenburg declared himself “hale and hearty” for the upcoming campaign and fully prepared to make whatever sacrifices might be necessary to fulfill his sacred responsibilities to the German fatherland.88 Under pressure from those who had served with him in the German high command, Hindenburg refused to either align himself with the forces of the national opposition or step aside for one who might be more acceptable to its leadership. Hindenburg continued to insist that his decision to stand for reelection would ultimately depend upon the position of the two veterans’ organizations whose support he had sought all

84

85

86 87 88

Mackensen to Hindenburg, 5 and 13 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 375/5, 8, also in BAMA Freiburg, NL Mackensen, 272. See also Mackensen to Einem, 25 Jan. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Einem, 29/18–19. For further details, see Theo Schwarzmüller, Zwischen Kaiser und “Führer.” Generalfeldmarschall August von Mackensen. Eine politische Biographie (Paderborn, 1996), 244–45. For example, see the entries for 22 Aug. 1924 and 12 Feb. 1928, in Sigurd von Ilsemann, Der Kaiser in Holland. Aufzeichnungen des letzten Flügeladjutants Kaiser Wilhelms II, ed. Harald von Koenigswald, 2 vols. (Munich, 1967–68), II: 13–14, 85–87. For an indication of the high regard in which Hindenburg held Cramon, see his letter to Cramon, 27 Mar. 1925, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Cramon, 24/14–15. Cramon to Mackensen, 1 Feb. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Mackensen, 272/70. Hindenburg to Mackensen, 9 Feb. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Mackensen, 272/65–66.

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along, the Stahlhelm and the Kyffhäuser League.89 That being the case, Schleicher made one last attempt to entice Hugenberg into supporting Hindenburg by making an important new concession on top of those he had made a week earlier in his meeting with Hugenberg. In a series of hastily arranged meetings first with the leaders of the Stahlhelm and then with the DNVP party chairman on the morning of 13 February, Schleicher offered to postpone the presidential elections until after the Prussian Landtag elections had taken place later that spring if that would secure their support for a Hindenburg candidacy. Further than this, however, Schleicher was not prepared to go.90 Once again the leaders of the Stahlhelm – and particularly Duesterberg, who remained deeply committed to Hindenburg – were satisfied with Schleicher’s most recent concession and felt that it removed the last obstacle that kept the Stahlhelm from providing the Reich president with the public assurance of support he needed to declare himself a candidate for reelection.91 But neither Hugenberg nor Hitler was as eager to accept the terms of Schleicher’s offer as the leaders of the Stahlhelm. The DNVP party chairman had adopted a wait-and-see attitude after his meeting with Schleicher on 6 February and was cautiously optimistic that the negotiations were going well for the national opposition.92 To be sure, the Nationalists were frustrated with the Stahlhelm and feared that its eagerness to support Hindenburg would sabotage their efforts to leverage the upcoming presidential elections into a full-scale reorganization of the national government.93 But the real problem facing Hugenberg and his associates was Hitler and the uncertainty as to what the Nazis were going 89 90

91 92 93

Sahm’s report of a conversation with Meissner, 14 Feb. 1932, in his memoirs, BA Koblenz, NL Sahm, 9/70–71. Wagner’s handwritten notes on his meeting with Schleicher, 13 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/135a. It was subsequently asserted by the Stahlhelm that on the evening of 12 Feb. 1932 Schleicher even floated the idea of a Seldte chancellorship with Hugenberg as his vice chancellor and that Hugenberg agreed to this proposal when it was presented to him on the following day before being roundly rejected by the NSDAP. The accuracy of this assertion was challenged by one of Hugenberg’s closest confederates, Baron Axel von Freytagh-Loringhoven, and could not be independently confirmed. In this respect, see the circular from Marlowski of the Silesian Stahlhelm, 22 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 297/ 57, and Marlowski’s request for clarification in his letter to Seldte and Duesterberg, 26 Mar. 1932, ibid, 297/56. Entry for 10 Feb. 1932 in Horn/Karwiese, “Kyffhäuserbund und Stahlhelm in der Reichspräsidenten-Frage,” n.d. [Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, NS 26, 930. Gok to Mühlberger, 10 Feb. 1932, in the records of Blohm & Voß GmbH, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Handakten Gok, 241/7. Entry in Quaatz’s diary, 12 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17.

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to do. As Hugenberg wrote in a postscript to a letter to his close friend and confidant Leo Wegener: As far as future developments are concerned, things do not look so good. I cannot get anywhere with the Nazis, and the other negotiations you know about are at a dead point. I now believe that Hitler cannot do anything without the left [wing of his own party] bolting. At this point the Nazis are not going to go along. Groener at defense and Brüning as foreign minister [in the proposed government] would be such a handicap that in competition with the Nazis we could not hold out. I therefore had to decline [the offer to be part of a new government]. And to boot, with a blank tablet [unbeschriebenes Blatt] for chancellor [i.e. Lüninck]....94

Hugenberg’s exasperation with Hitler and the Nazi party leadership was understandable. Throughout the deliberations, the Nazis had floated the names of a number of individuals whom they would be willing to support as a unity candidate of the national opposition, including Franz von Epp, a decorated veteran of the Great War who had served the NSDAP in a number of different capacities both before and after joining the party in 1928.95 But this was little more than a disingenuous ploy to disguise their real intentions, the nomination of Adolf Hitler. From the beginning Goebbels’ strategy had always been to wait for Hindenburg to announce his candidacy and for the Social Democrats and Center, as the parties most closely identified with the hated Weimar system, to declare their support for his candidacy so that then Hitler could present himself as the candidate around whom all of those who had been victimized by the corruption, ineffectiveness, and mismanagement of the existing governmental system could unite.96 But the real purpose of the campaign, as far as the Nazis were concerned, was not to elect Hitler but to do everything they could to destabilize the existing political system. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the entry that Goebbels made in his diary on 3 February after Hitler had outlined his strategic objectives at a conference of party attorneys, or Anwälte: He explained the entire situation. With fabulous logic. Everything comes together. Brüning must be checkmated. The severity of the situation is clear to us. It is a matter of our future and that of the nation. Hindenburg must be beaten down [niedergeboxt werden]. He must get rid of Brüning and then Groener. Then he will get the boot. The DNVP and Stahlhelm will be held at bay. Our candidate will

94 95 96

Hugenberg to Wegener, 12 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Wegener, 66/81. [Wagner], “Beurteilung der Lage zur Reichspräsidentenwahl,” n.d. [Jan. 1932], BA Berlin, R 72, 295/25–40. Entry for 3 Feb. 1932, in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 209–10.

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come out only at the last moment. In the case of danger Hitler in the first round of voting. Otherwise only in the second. Complete unanimity....97

None of this augured well for the unity of the national opposition when its leaders resumed their deliberations on the afternoon of 13 February to discuss the proposal that Schleicher had proffered earlier that morning. It was an ominous sign at the very outset when Hitler failed to appear but sent Göring in his place. Göring proceeded to dismiss the idea that the Stahlhelm’s Franz Seldte might run for the presidency – an idea that had surfaced in the discussions earlier that morning – as “absurd.” Göring then declared in his capacity as Hitler’s official representative first that the National Socialists were prepared to go along with Hindenburg as Reich president only if they received the chancellorship, the defense ministry, and the foreign ministry in a new government. Göring further asked if the other participants were willing to support Hitler as a candidate of the national front in return for a series of unspecified special considerations, or Gegenleistungen. This was the first time that in these circles Hitler had been mentioned as a potential candidate, and the reaction to Göring’s feeler was what the DNVP’s Reinhold Quaatz described as an “eloquent silence [beredtes Schweigen].” Without being specific, Göring then assured Quaatz’s party colleague Otto Schmidt-Hannover that the special considerations he had in mind would be considerable. But if Quaatz came away from all of this with the feeling that the Harzburg Front was now more strongly united than it had been before, he also expressed concern that the anti-Hitler animus of the DNVP’s rank-and-file was only slightly less than that against Hindenburg.98 The fact of the matter, however, was that Hugenberg himself felt little enthusiasm for a Hitler candidacy and reacted to Göring’s feeler on Hitler’s behalf by declaring that he might enter the pool of candidates himself if the Nazi party leader decided to run for the Reich presidency.99 Given all the uncertainty that all of this had created within the ranks of the national opposition, a final decision as to what was to be done was postponed until the following day.

97 98

99

Ibid. Entry in Quaatz’s diary, 13 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. See also Wagner’s handwritten notes, 13 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/134–35a, as well as his account of the meeting in Stahlhelm, Rundschreiben no. 44, 24 Feb. 1932, BHStA Munich, Abt. IV, Stahlehlm, 78/III. “DNVP und nationale Organisationen,” n.d., appended to Schmidt-Hannover’s circular to the DNVP state party chairmen, June 1932, BA Berlin, R 8048, 219/124–54, here 143, also in BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 72a.

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Göring’s revelation that Hitler himself might become a candidate for the Reich presidency caught Hugenberg and the leaders of the Stahlhelm off-guard and left them in a real quandary as to what they should do now. Neither was comfortable with the idea of supporting Hitler for the Reich presidency, and both resented the way in which they had been blindsided by Göring’s overture on Hitler’s behalf at the meeting of the leadership of the national opposition on the afternoon of 13 February. Any chance, however, that the Stahlhelm might still support Hindenburg in the first round of voting rested in the hands of the organization’s state leaders, or Landesführer, who met in the late morning and early afternoon of 14 February to plot the Stahlhelm’s political strategy. The meeting was particularly heated with much of the fury directed against Hitler and the arrogance of the demands that had been made by Göring the day before.100 Yet while Hindenburg still enjoyed the personal sympathy of many of those at the meeting, they categorically rejected supporting his reelection bid without specific preconditions regarding the course and composition of the national government.101 In the event that the Reich president refused to accept the conditions the Stahlhelm sought to attach to its support of his candidacy, the Stahlhelm’s state leaders insisted that one of the organization’s two national leaders must become a candidate and proceeded to nominate Duesterberg for the Reich presidency.102 Later that evening Hindenburg received a delegation from the Stahlhelm only to reject in the most categorical of terms the conditions it still sought to attach to its support of his candidacy.103 The last chance that it might support Hindenburg in the first round of voting had evaporated, and on the morning of 15 February – the day that Hindenburg had set as a deadline for making his decision public – the Stahlhelm’s Siegfried Wagner notified Meissner that despite the affection and high esteem in which the Stahlhelm held for the person and reputation of the Reich 100

101

102 103

Wagner’s handwritten notes, 14 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/127–30. For an indication of the way in which the leaders of the Stahlhelm’s state and provincial organizations reacted to the negotiations in Berlin, see Lenz (Bavaria) to Wagner, 11 Feb. 1932, ibid, 296/298–99, and Eulenburg-Wicken (East Prussia) to Seldte, 11 Feb. 1932, ibid, 296/303, as well as the minutes of the meeting of the Stahlhelm district organization in Mecklenburg, 19 Feb. 1932, ibid, 84/32–34. Wagner’s handwritten notes, 14 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/127–30. See also Horn, “Kyffhäuserbund und Stahlhelm in der Reichspräsidenten-Frage,” n.d. [Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, NS 26, 930. Duesterberg’s unpublished memoirs, BA Koblenz, NL Duesterberg, 47/171. Horn/Karwiese, “Kyffhäuserbund und Stahlhelm in der Reichspräsidenten-Frage,” n.d. [Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, NS 26, 930.

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president, it would not support his bid for reelection in the absence of tangible reassurances about a change of course in the conduct of national policy.104 Fully anticipating the Reich president’s refusal to accept their demands, the leaders of the Stahlhelm had already initiated exploratory negotiations with the DNVP party leadership to determine if it might be willing to forego nominating a candidate of its own and support Duesterberg in the upcoming presidential election. The Nationalists were no less infuriated with Hitler’s tactics than the leaders of the Stahlhelm and quickly agreed to an arrangement with the DNVP whereby they would support Duesterberg’s candidacy in return for the Stahlhelm’s support in the upcoming state elections that were scheduled to take place in Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, and other parts of the country in the last week of April.105 In the meantime, attention now shifted to the Kyffhäuserbund, whose leaders had been pointedly excluded from the deliberations of the national opposition.106 Although the chairman of the Kyffhäuser League’s state and provincial organizations failed to produce a clear consensus when they met in Berlin on 14 February,107 this gave Horn the authorization he needed to break ranks with the Stahlhelm and declare his organization’s support of Hindenburg’s candidacy in a private audience with the Reich president the following morning.108 Hindenburg was infuriated by the Stahlhelm’s failure to support his bid for reelection,109 but the endorsement his candidacy received from Horn and the Kyffhäuser League satisfied, if only minimally, the most important of the conditions that he had attached to his willingness to stand for reelection. After receiving Horn’s endorsement, Meissner informed Sahm that Hindenburg would receive the members of his committee the following morning to formally accept their nomination for the Reich presidency.110

104

105 106 107 108 109 110

Memorandum by Meissner with the text of a statement delivered by Wagner, 15 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 372/63. See also Wagner’s handwritten notes on the meeting with Meissner, 15 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/126, as well as his circular to the leaders of the Stahlhelm’s regional organizations, 15 Feb. 1932, ibid, 296/125. Hugenberg to Wagner, 16 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/137. Horn/Karwiese, “Kyffhäuserbund und Stahlhelm in der Reichspräsidenten-Frage,” n.d. [Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, NS 26, 930. Führer, “Reichskriegerbund Kyffhäuser 1930–1934,” 63. Horn/Karwiese, “Kyffhäuserbund und Stahlhelm in der Reichspräsidenten-Frage,” n.d. [Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, NS 26, 930. Memorandum by Pünder, 15 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/119. Sahm’s memoirs, entry for 15 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Sahm, 9/71–74. See also Hindenburg’s statement to the public on his acceptance of the nomination to run for reelection, 15 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 372/82, and the official press release of

174

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Hindenburg’s decision to stand for reelection followed negotiations that were both tedious and replete with more than their share of high drama. For the Reich president, as he explained in letters to his old friend and neighbor Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau, it had been a difficult and painful decision, made all the more so by the failure of his old comrades in the Stahlhelm to endorse his bid for the presidency. Hindenburg took particular offence at the way in which the national opposition had portrayed his candidacy as a candidacy of the Left and demanded that Oldenburg intercede with Hugenberg to put an end to this defamation of his candidacy in the press that stood under his control.111 Hindenburg emphatically rejected the assertion that Brüning was responsible for Germany’s economic misery and praised the chancellor for preventing the crisis from becoming even worse after the banking failures of the previous summer. At the same time, Hindenburg alluded to the “fiction of the Harzburg Front” and blamed Hugenberg for the disunity of the national opposition and for the failure of the DNVP and Stahlhelm to unite behind his candidacy in a move that would have paved the way for the inclusion of the German Right in a government capable of finding a parliamentary majority in the Reichstag.112 Hindenburg would reprise this theme even more elaborately in letters to Mackensen, Einem, Count Dietlof von Arnim-Boitzenburg, and Friedrich von Berg-Markienen, who had risked and then lost his position as marshal of German Nobles’ Society by endorsing Hindenburg’s candidacy.113 Not only did Hindenburg reiterate his indignation over allegations that support for his candidacy was limited to parties of the middle and moderate Left and cited the numerous declarations of support he had received from individual conservatives and conservative organizations as proof to the contrary, but he also took aim once again at the disunity of the German Right. After alluding briefly to the tedious and ultimately unsuccessful negotiations that had taken place between representatives of the government and the three

111

112 113

Hindenburg’s audience with Sahm and other members of his committee, 16 Feb. 1932, ibid, 372/96–98. Hindenburg to Oldenburg-Januschau, 17 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 375/209–10. In a similar vein, see Hindenburg to Mackensen, 15 Feb. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Mackensen, 272/51–52. Hindenburg to Oldenburg-Januschau, 22 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 375/213–16. For further details, see George H. Kleine, “Adelsgenossenschaft und Nationalsozialismus,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 26 (1978): 100–43, here 115.

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organizations that made up the Harzburg Front in the matter of his own candidacy, Hindenburg wrote: It became clear that the Harzburg Front was only a fiction – or more to the point that it never existed. To be sure, the groups that belonged to it were united in their rejection of the Brüning government, but because of their own disunity they were incapable of forming a government themselves. They weren’t even capable of settling upon a single candidate for the Reich presidential elections. I hope you can see from all of this that the assertion that it was I who resisted a government of the Right is absolutely false. It was not I – nor the Reich chancellor Brüning – who stood in the way of such a development but solely the disunity of the Right, its inability to come together even in the major points. It is deeply regrettable that the Right – as fragmented as it is – is led to the loss of influence and self-destruction by leaders driven by one-sided partisan ambitions.114

114

In this respect, see Hindenburg to Mackensen, 25 Feb. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Mackensen, 273/1–9; Hindenburg to Einem, 25 Feb. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Einem, 29/41–49; Hindenburg to Arnim-Boitzenberg, 25 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 375/78–91; and Hindenburg to Berg, 25 Feb. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Friedrich von Berg, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, NL Berg, 3/1–9, reprinted in Erich Matthias, “Hindenburg zwischen den Fronten. Zur Vorgeschichte des Reichspräsidentenwahlen von 1932,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 8 (1960): 75–84, here 78–82. All of this closely followed Hindenburg’s confidential account, “Persönliche Darlegung des Herrn Reichspräsidenten über die Vorgänge seiner Wiederkandidatur,” n.d. [25 Feb. 1932], BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 30/34–41.

6 The Demise of Harzburg

Hindenburg’s announcement on 15 February 1932 that he had accepted the nomination of the Sahm committee to stand for reelection to the high office he had held since 1925 set off a flurry of activity on several different fronts. Among the president’s circle of advisors, there was an immediate push to reorganize the leadership of his campaign and make it more broadly representative and to win the support of voters who might not have been represented by the parties that belonged to the Sahm committee. At the same time, the various parties that stood to the left of the DNVP began to position themselves with respect to the upcoming presidential election and, with the exception of the Communists, to mobilize their supporters on Hindenburg’s behalf. Lastly, the leaders of the national opposition continued their search for someone who could unite the German Right despite rumblings within the NSDAP, DNVP, and Stahlhelm that each might run their own candidate and expose the Harzburg Front for the sham that it was. In little more than a week after Hindenburg’s declaration of candidacy, the battle lines for the upcoming presidential elections had been drawn. For the forces around Hindenburg, the immediate task was to reorganize their campaign and to replace the Sahm committee, which had completed its task with Hindenburg’s nomination, with a new body that was not so closely identified with the parties of the middle and moderate Left and that stood a better chance of reaching out to those who had supported Hindenburg’s bid for the Reich presidency seven years earlier. Here the initial push came from the president’s son Oskar, who approached Franz Kempner, a high-ranking official in the Reich chancery, on the evening of 16 February with the recommendation that 176

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the Sahm committee withdraw from the political stage in favor of a new curatorium that would oversee the campaign for his father’s reelection.1 The main problem with the Sahm committee was that supposedly at the beginning of its activity it had allowed itself to become too closely identified with the ultra-liberal Mosse-Ullstein publishing house in Berlin and therefore lacked the appropriate profile to appeal to more conservative voters outside of the major metropolitan areas.2 On the following morning Sahm, who as the mayor of Germany’s largest city had reservations of his own about remaining at the helm of the Hindenburg campaign, met with Meissner to discuss his options and drafted a statement in which he announced that his committee had accomplished its task and would therefore end its activities, that it would be superseded by a new curatorium entrusted with responsibility for the conduct of the campaign, and that he would not be serving as chairman of the new campaign committee.3 In the meantime, Kempner had developed the general outlines of a proposal for the creation of a campaign organization calling itself the United Hindenburg Committees (Vereinigte Hindenburg-Ausschüsse) and consisting of representatives of the various state, provincial, and local Hindenburg committees that had sprung up throughout the country. This organization would be headed by a select group of political, business, and civic leaders who stood politically to the right of the Center and Social Democrats. Among those whom Kempner had in mind were Georg Escherich from the civilian defense leagues of the early postwar period, former Defense Minister Otto Gessler, Duisburg Mayor Karl Jarres, industrialist Paul Reusch, World War I hero Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, and the former Württemberg Minister President Wilhelm Bazille. Individual Social Democrats like Otto Braun and Theodor Leipart would be approached but only with the understanding that they would not accept the invitation to become part of the committee. Kempner and his associates

1

2 3

Entry for 16 Feb. 1932, in Sahm’s memoirs, BA Koblenz, NL Sahm, 9/74. Much of what follows has been adapted from Larry Eugene Jones, “Hindenburg and the Conservative Dilemma in the 1932 Presidential Elections,” German Studies Review 20 (1997): 235–59. Kempner to Meissner, 16 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin: R 601, 373/126–27. Entry for 17 Feb. 1932, in Sahm’s memoirs, BA Koblenz, NL Sahm, 9/74–76. See also Sahm to Meissner, 16 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 373/128–29. For an examination of the role that Meissner and the Bureau of the Reich Presidency played in organizing the presidential campaign, see Klaus-Dieter Weber, Das Büro des Reichspräsidenten 1919–1934. Eine politisch-administrative Institution in Kontinuität und Wandel (Frankfurt a.M., 2001), 439–55.

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believed that it made more sense for the Social Democrats to conduct their campaign separately from that of the United Hindenburg Committees.4 By the end of the week, the curatorium of the United Hindenburg Committees was in place and held its first meeting on the evening of 22 February. The curatorium was primarily responsible for financing the campaign and for formulating the general guidelines by which it was to be conducted. It numbered sixteen members, of whom only two – Sahm and the highly respected jurist Walter Simons – had belonged to its predecessor. With the exception of Sahm and Simons, there was no one on the curatorium who could be closely identified with the much maligned “Weimar system.” Most, like Westarp, Franz Behrens from the National Association of Farm Workers (Reichsverband ländlicher Arbeitnehmer), and Günther Gereke from the German Chamber of Rural Municipalities (Deutscher Landgemeindetag), were affiliated with the anti-Hugenberg Right, while three – Carl Duisberg, Robert Bosch, and Baron Tilo von Wilmowsky – were influential members of the German industrial establishment.5 To underscore its ostensibly nonpartisan character, the new organization proceeded to elect Duisberg to serve as chairman of the curatorium. A political moderate who had served as president of the National Federation of German Industry from 1925 to 1931, the seventy-year-old Duisberg felt a natural affinity for those who had broken away from the DNVP in 1929–30 and strongly supported efforts to consolidate a badly fragmented German bourgeoisie into a united political force.6 While the choice of Duisberg as chairman of the curatorium provided the United Hindenburg Committees with a well-known and highly respected public face, responsibility for the day-to-day conduct of the campaign for Hindenburg’s reelection rested in the hands of a four-person steering committee, or Arbeitsausschuß, chaired by Gereke and consisting of Westarp, retired Major General Detlof von Winterfeld, and Kempner as a special liaison

4 5 6

Kempner to Meissner, 16 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 373/126–27. Minutes of the curatorium of the United Hindenburg Committees, 22 Feb. 1932, WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, 76/9. In this respect, see Duisberg’s correspondence with Werner von Alvensleben, 28–29 Nov. 1929, WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, Autographen-Sammlung. On Duisberg’s political views, see Peter G. Hayes, Interest and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era (Cambridge and New York, 1987), 56–62, and Gottfried Plumpe, Die I. G. Farbenindustrie AG. Wirtschaft, Technik und Politik 1904–1945 (Berlin, 1990), 491–545.

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between the working committee, the Reich chancery, and the Hindenburg campaign headquarters in Berlin.7 The United Hindenburg Committees was much more an instrument of the moderate Right than its predecessor had been, and its creation represented an attempt not only to mobilize the support of Germany’s conservative establishment on behalf of Hindenburg’s reelection but also to define the Hindenburg campaign in terms consistent with the political agenda of the moderate Right. Both Gereke and Westarp were high-profile conservatives whose presence on the working committee effectively defined the character of the campaign the United Hindenburg Committees planned to wage. In the early 1920s Gereke had played a central role in the creation of the German Chamber of Rural Municipalities as an umbrella organization that provided small and middle-sized towns throughout the country with the effective representation that larger cities already enjoyed. As a member of the DNVP, Gereke had worked closely with functionaries of the National Rural League to advance the interests of German agriculture and was elected to the Reichstag in 1924, where he served for four years before losing his seat in the Nationalist electoral debacle of May 1928.8 With Hugenberg’s election to the DNVP party chairmanship in October 1928, Gereke found himself at odds with the direction in which the party was headed. In the summer of 1929 Gereke left the DNVP and joined the Christian-National Peasant and Farmers’ Party, where he distinguished himself as a moderate who enjoyed close ties to the German industrial establishment and helped funnel campaign funds from Ruhr heavy industry to the CNBLP in the September 1930 Reichstag elections.9 Gereke was 7

8

9

Minutes of the curatorium of the United Hindenburg Committees, 22 Feb. 1932, BayerArchiv, Leverkusen, NL Duisberg, 76/9. On the organization of the committee, see the memorandum by Wienstein for Pünder, 18 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 34 I, 585/106–12. On Winterfeld’s involvement in the United Hindenburg Committees, see his correspondence with the retired general and military historian Bernhard von Schwertfeger, 9–25 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Schwertfeger, 579/7–10. Gereke, “Lebenslauf,” n.d. [1933], 6–10, in the records of the Generalstaatsanwalt, Prozeßakten Gereke, Landesarchiv Berlin, Reportorium A, 358-01, 76 (hereafter cited as LA Berlin, Prozeßakten Gereke, Rep. A, 358-01, 76), 14. For this period of Gereke’s life the resume he prepared for his trial in 1933 is more detailed and contains less in the way of dramatic embellishment than his memoir, Ich war königlich-preußischer Landrat (Berlin, 1970). On Gereke’s resignation from the DNVP, see his correspondence with Westarp, 28–29 June 1929, NL Westarp, II/35. On his ties to Ruhr heavy industry, see the report by Blank for Reusch, 28 July 1930, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 4001012024/7. For Gereke’s own account of his political activities in the 1920s, see Gereke, “Lebenslauf,” 13–19, LA Berlin, Prozeßakten Gereke, Rep. A, 358-01, 76/14, as well as the somewhat less reliable account in Gereke, Ich war königlich-preußischer Landrat, 113–18, 148–53.

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unable, however, to prevent the CNBLP’s drift to the right in late 1930 and early 1931 and remained a staunch supporter of the Brüning government at a time when many, if not most, of his colleagues in the CNBLP party leadership were distancing themselves as best they could from the chancellor and his policies.10 Westarp, at sixty-seven almost thirty years older than Gereke, had been a fixture of German political life ever since the last years of the Second Empire. Having risen up through the ranks of the Prussian civil service, Westarp was elected to the Reichstag in December 1908, where he served as parliamentary leader of the right-wing German Conservative Party (Deutschkonservative Partei) from 1913 until the party’s demise in the fall of 1918. Westarp subsequently cast his lot with the newly founded DNVP and worked tirelessly with his former conservative colleagues to ensure their acceptance of the new party and to infuse the DNVP’s political profile with the ideas and values of Prussian conservatism.11 In January 1925 Westarp was elected to the chairmanship of the DNVP Reichstag delegation and then in March 1926 to the party’s national chairmanship. As the party’s national leader Westarp struggled in vain to find a formula that would enable the DNVP to represent the interests that were vital to its own political future within the framework of a governmental system to which it remained irreconcilably opposed.12 The dilemma in which the DNVP found itself was only resolved by a vicious struggle for control of the party that ended with the election of Alfred Hugenberg to the DNVP party chairmanship in October 1928 and the subsequent purge of those moderate conservatives who were prepared to strike some sort of compromise with the existing political system. In the inner-party crises that accompanied the formation of the Brüning cabinet,

10

11

12

On Gereke and his situation within the CNBLP, see Markus Müller, Die ChristlichNationale Bauern- und Landvolkpartei 1928–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2001), esp. 101–08, 124–32, 158–65, 210–15. For further details on this period of Westarp’s life, see his own account in Kuno von Westarp, Konservative Politik im Übergang vom Kaiserreich zur Weimarer Republik, ed. Friedrich Freiherr Hiller von Gaertringen with assistance from Karl J. Mayer and Reinhold Weber (Düsseldorf, 2001), 17–65. For Westarp’s own analysis of this dilemma, see his article “Der Konservativ im heutigen Staat,” Der Ring 3, no. 7 (16 Feb. 1930): 123–25. For an overview of Westarp’s political career during the Weimar Republic, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Kuno Graf von Westarp und die Krise des deutschen Konservatismus in der Weimarer Republik,” in “Ich bin der letzte Preuße”: Der politische Lebensweg des konservativen Politikers Kuno Graf von Westarp (1864–1945), eds. Larry Eugene Jones and Wolfram Pyta (Cologne, 2006): 109–46.

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Westarp threw his support behind the new chancellor in his struggle with the radical Right and remained one of Brüning’s staunchest supporters through the entire period of his chancellorship. Westarp openly defied Hugenberg’s efforts to torpedo Brüning’s reform of German fiscal and economic life and left the DNVP in July 1930 to take part in the founding of the ill-fated Conservative People’s Party.13 In the campaign for the September 1930 Reichstag elections, Westarp worked closely with Gereke to repair the damage that Hugenberg’s policies as DNVP party chairman had done to the historic relationship between organized agriculture and German conservatism. Now, by coming together once again under the auspices of the United Hindenburg Committees, Gereke and Westarp hoped to rejuvenate the moderate Right and – no doubt with an eye to the upcoming state elections that were scheduled to take place in Prussia, Bavaria, and Württemberg in late April – to lay the foundation for its reunification behind the banner of the Reich president.14 On 16 February Westarp, who had declined a seat on the Sahm committee so that he could concentrate his efforts on winning the support of conservatives like himself,15 sent a letter to 750 representatives of Germany’s conservative elite in the hope of securing their signatures for a petition calling upon those who had supported Hindenburg in 1925 to commit themselves publicly to his reelection as Reich president.16 The purpose of this initiative, as Westarp explained in a letter to arguably Germany’s most prominent industrialist Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, was “to dispel the impression that the [Hindenburg] election came from the black-red parties.”17 In a matter of four days Westarp collected the signatures of more than 500 prominent conservatives from the ranks of German cultural and intellectual life, the Lutheran church, big business and large-landed agriculture, and those who had served with Hindenburg in World War I for an appeal that was released to the press

13

14 15 16

17

For further details, see Larry Eugene Jones, “German Conservatism at the Crossroads: Count Kuno von Westarp and the Struggle for Control of the DNVP, 1928–30,” Contemporary European History 18 (2009): 147–77. Westarp to Richthofen, 23 Feb. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 111. Westarp to Sahm, 12 Feb. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 18. Westarp to Mackensen, 16 Feb. 1932, with the text of the proposed appeal, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Mackensen, 273/43–46. On the background of this appeal, see the brief note that Westarp composed in response to a request from the Archiv-Dienst – Institut für Quellenforschung, 11 Apr. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 3. Westarp to Krupp, 20 Feb. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 4.

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on the evening of 22 February and that hailed the Reich president as the embodiment of German unity and the personification of all those values in which Germany’s national greatness were rooted.18 No doubt the response to Westarp’s initiative helped reassure the Reich president that those who had supported him in 1925 were prepared to do so again. But it also represented an attempt to put a particular stamp on the Hindenburg candidacy that ignored the fact that his bid for reelection enjoyed a broad base of support outside the conservative milieu to which Westarp’s appeal had been addressed. While the People’s Conservatives, the CNBLP, and even the Christian-Socials were perfectly happy to campaign under the banner of the United Hindenburg Committees, this was not necessarily the case with those parties and organizations in the Hindenburg campaign that did not define themselves as conservative and did not identify with a conservative political agenda. Not only was it understood from the outset that the Social Democrats would campaign independently of the United Hindenburg Committees,19 but the Center Party planned to affiliate itself with the local Hindenburg committees only in small towns and the countryside but not in large urban areas where it could rely upon its own party organization.20 Even then, there were persistent tensions at the local and state levels of the campaign between the conservatives who tried to monopolize control of the campaign and representatives of the other parties from the middle and moderate Left who resented the way in which they were being pushed to the sidelines.21 As one might expect, the most enthusiastic support for Hindenburg’s reelection bid came from the parties and organizations on the moderate Right. No faction in German political life was more passionately committed to Hindenburg’s candidacy than the People’s Conservatives, if for no other reason than the fact that it afforded them an opportunity to return to the political limelight from the limbo in which the disastrous showing of the People’s Conservative Party in the 1930 Reichstag elections had left

18

19 20

21

Westarp to Hindenburg, 22 Feb. 1932, with the text of the appeal and the names of those who had endorsed it, BA Berlin, R 601, 375/53–57. See also “Hindenburg – des deutschen Volkes Einigkeit!,” Kölnische Zeitung, 23 Feb. 1932, no. 107. Minutes of the curatorium of the United Hindenburg Committees, 22 Feb. 1932, BayerArchiv, Leverkusen, NL Duisberg, 76/9. Circular from Kaas to Center party secretaries and committee members, 23 Feb. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Max Heereman von Zuydtwyck, Vereinigte Westfälische Adelsarchive, Münster, 403. For example, see the situation in Dresden as described in Philipp to Westarp, 3 Feb. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 2.

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them.22 At the same time, the People’s Conservatives were among Brüning’s most loyal supporters in the Reichstag and despite reservations within their own ranks had consistently supported him through the bitter conflicts of the preceding two years.23 Not only had Westarp tried to mobilize conservative support for Hindenburg’s candidacy even before the Reich president had announced that he was standing for reelection, but the People’s Conservatives, who used the Hindenburg campaign to validate their continued existence as a factor in German political life, had taken the lead in organizing the various Hindenburg committees in Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Württemberg, and other parts of the country.24 Although the Christian-Social People’s Service was generally cautious about becoming too closely entangled with other political groups,25 its leaders had been no less loyal than the People’s Conservatives in their support of the Brüning cabinet and immediately stepped forward to play an active role in the formation of the Hindenburg committees in Berlin and those parts of the country where they already possessed a strong local organization.26 The situation within the Christian-National Peasants and Farmers’ Party, on the other hand, was far more complicated. Although CNBLP moderates like Günther Gereke and Tilo von Wilmowsky had been involved in the United Hindenburg Committees from the very outset,27 CNBLP party chairman Wolfgang von Hauenschild-Tscheidt found himself under heavy pressure from the leaders of the National Rural League and the anti-Brüning elements within his own party to withhold his party’s support of the Reich president until he had agreed to reorganize the national government in accord with the demands of the 22

23 24 25 26

27

Particularly revealing in this respect is the letter from Mundt (Pomerania) to Westarp, 14 Jan. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 10. See also Erasmus Jonas, Die Volkskonservativen 1928–1933. Entwicklung, Struktur, Standort und staatspolitische Zielsetzung (Düsseldorf, 1965), 110–13. In this respect, see Treviranus, “Bilanz der Regierungsarbeit,” Volkskonservative Führerbriefe, no. 15, 22 Jan. 1931 (sic 1932), NL Hiller von Gaertringen, Gärtringen. In this respect see the Volkskonservative Führerbriefe, no. 18, 23 Feb. 1932, NL Hiller von Gaertringen, Gärtringen. For example, see Westarp to Hiller von Gaertringen, 14 Jan. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, II/51. Lambach to Mumm, 1 Mar. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Reinhard Mumm, Bundesarchiv Berlin (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, NL Mumm), 258/30–31. For a further indication of the CSVD’s strong support of Hindenburg, see the report of Simpfendörfer’s speech, “Die nationale und staatspolitische Einstellung des Volksdienstes,” 24 Feb. 1932, in the Tägliche Rundschau, 1 Mar. 1932, no. 51. Minutes of the curatorium of the United Hindenburg Committees, 22 Feb. 1932, BayerArchiv, Leverkusen, NL Duisberg, 76/9.

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national opposition.28 In the final analysis, however, Hauenschild and the CNBLP party leadership refused to knuckle under to the pressure from the RLB and threw the full weight of their organization, as beleaguered as it might have been, behind Hindenburg’s campaign for reelection.29 The predicament in which the CNBLP found itself was not all that dissimilar from that faced by Eduard Dingeldey and the leaders of the German People’s Party. Although the DVP had campaigned as a member of the so-called Hindenburg Front in the 1930 national elections and supported proposals to strengthen the powers of the Reich president at the expense of the Reichstag,30 it had broken with the Brüning cabinet in the showdown with the German Right of October 1931 and was moving steadily in the direction of closer ties with the forces of the national opposition.31 To be sure, there was an inherent contradiction between the party’s reliance upon the Hindenburg nimbus to validate its political existence and its increasingly vitriolic attacks against the cabinet the Reich president still supported in the most emphatic of terms. Such a policy made sense only in the light of Dingeldey’s conviction that Hindenburg, once he had jettisoned Brüning, would oversee the reorganization of the national government and open it up to the national opposition.32 Dingeldey had even met with Hitler in January 1932 in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade the Nazi party leader to support an extension of

28

29 30

31

32

Kalckreuth to Hauenschild-Tscheidt, 12 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 196/104–05. See also Kalckreuth’s reference to this letter before the RLB executive committee, 31 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 146/16–17. On the dilemma in which the CNBLP party leadership found itself, see Müller, Christlich-nationale Bauern- und Landvolkpartei, 266–77. The CNBLP’s efforts on behalf of Hindenburg can be followed in detail in the almost daily run of the Landvolknachrichten, 25 Feb. –7 Apr. 1932, NL Westarp, II/70. “Vorschläge der Deutschen Volkspartei zu einer Verfassungsreform,” June 1931, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 363/101–11, esp. 109. See also Eduard Dingeldey, Kampf und Politik der Deutschen Volkspartei. Rede in der Sitzung des Zentralvorstandes der Deutschen Volkspartei am 19. April 1931 (Berlin, 1931), 42–44. For an overview of the DVP’s development in the last years of the Weimar Republic, see Ludwig Richter, “National-Liberalismus, Nationalsozialismus und die Krise der Weimarer Republik. Zur innerparteilichen Diskussion in der Deutschen Volkspartei 1929–1933,” Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 11 (1999): 107–33. For further details, see Larry Eugene Jones, German Liberalism and the Dissolution of the Weimar Party System, 1918–1933 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1988), 416–31, 448–58, and Ludwig Richter, Die Deutsche Volkspartei 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2002), 713–38. In this respect, see Dingeldey’s remarks before the DVP Reichstag delegation, 13 Dec. 1931, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 367/354–55, as well as his letter to Kalle, 5 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 75/63–65. For an incisive analysis of the situation in which the DVP found itself in the spring of 1932, see Richter, Deutsche Volkspartei, 751–59.

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Hindenburg’s term of office by a special vote in the Reichstag.33 When this project failed as a result of opposition from the DNVP and NSDAP, Dingeldey momentarily contemplated joining the People’s Conservatives, the German State Party, and the Business Party in a public demonstration calling upon Hindenburg to stand for reelection but was dissuaded from doing so by Meissner’s objection that this would only draw the Reich president ever deeper into the sordid world of party bickering and further strain his relations with the German Right.34 This, however, did not prevent the DVP from working behind the scenes to encourage the Reich president to stand for reelection or from issuing a ringing endorsement of his bid for reelection once his candidacy had been announced.35 Just how convincing all of this would be to the DVP electorate, already under siege by the DNVP and NSDAP, remained to be seen. Of the other parties and political factions that stood between the Center and DNVP, only the People’s National Reich Association that had broken away from the German State Party in the aftermath of the latter’s disappointing performance in the 1930 Reichstag elections was unequivocal in its support of Hindenburg’s candidacy.36 Artur Mahraun, the VNR’s spiritual mentor and the driving force behind its founding in the spring of 1930, was among the first to champion Hindenburg’s retention in office by proposing a public referendum that would have made it possible for him to avoid the rigors of full-fledged reelection campaign.37 In contrast, the German State Party gave Hindenburg its strong and unequivocal endorsement, but only because there seemed to be no other suitable candidate who stood a chance of withstanding the 33

34

35

36 37

On Dingeldey’s meeting with Hitler, 9 Jan. 1932, see his deposition, 15 Dec. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 37/11–14. On the DVP party chairman’s support for a parliamentary extension of Hindenburg’s term of office, see the report of his meeting with the chancellor on 9 Jan. 1932, in the memorandum by Pünder, dated 8 Jan. 1932 but obviously completed somewhat later, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 583/222–28, here 224. DVP Reichsgeschäftsstelle, Vertrauliche Mitteilungen an den Wahlkreisvorsitzenden, no. 1, 15 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 225/79–81. See also Westarp to Hiller von Gaertringen, 14 Jan. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, II/51. “Parole: Hindenburg,” Nationalliberale Correspondenz. Pressedienst der Deutschen Volkspartei, 16 Feb. 1932, no. 32. See also DVP Reichsgeschäftsstelle, Vertrauliches Rundschreiben, no. 2, 18 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 225/78, as well as Dingeldey’s statement at the meeting of the DVP national committee, 28 Feb. 1932, in Nationalliberalismus in der Weimarer Republik. Die Führungsgremien der Deutschen Volkspartei 1918–1933, eds. Eberhard Kolb and Ludwig Richter, 2 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1999), 2: 1206–07. On the VNR’s secession from the State Party, see Jones, German Liberalism, 387–91. Mahraun to Hindenburg, 13 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 372/29–31.

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rising storm on the German Right. Given the prominent place that DStP national party chairman Hermann Dietrich held in the Brüning cabinet as vice chancellor and minister of finance, it was a foregone conclusion that the State Party would support Hindenburg’s candidacy despite whatever misgivings there may have been throughout the party organization about Brüning’s political course.38 The same was true of the Reich Party of the German Middle Class, which was still reeling from a bitter internal crisis that had resulted in the defection of its entire Saxon state organization, along with several of the party’s more prominent leaders, to the DNVP in January 1932.39 In October 1931 and then again in December, the WP Reichstag delegation had rescued the Brüning cabinet from almost-certain defeat despite what many party members perceived as a pro-labor and anti-middle-class bias on the part of the chancellor and his allies in the Christian and socialist labor movements.40 The leaders of the WP were desperate to regain the confidence of their middle-class supporters and threw their full support behind Hindenburg’s bid for reelection in the hope that this would help insulate their own party against the rising tide of rightwing radicalism within the ranks of Germany’s middle-class voters.41 It also came as no surprise that the two Catholic parties would quickly close ranks behind Hindenburg. In 1925 the Bavarian People’s Party had tipped the scale in Hindenburg’s favor in his first run for the presidency. But seven years later the BVP leadership was surprisingly cool to the idea of a Hindenburg candidacy, in part because of the Reich president’s advanced age but also because of concerns the BVP party leadership had about the cover he had provided for Brüning’s semi-dictatorial style of government. In a meeting with his counterpart Ludwig Kaas from the 38

39 40

41

This can be easily inferred from the brief discussion of the Hindenburg candidacy at meetings of the DStP managing committee, 12 Jan. and 3 Feb. 1932, and the DStP executive committee, 21 Feb. 1932, in Linksliberalismus in der Weimarer Republik. Die Führungsgremien der Deutschen Demokratischen Partei und der Deutschen Staatspartei 1918–1933, eds. Lothar Albertin and Konstanze Wegner (Düsseldorf, 1980), 678–80, 685–86, 688–97. For an indication of the uneasiness within the party organization, see Krängel’s remarks before the DStP executive committee, 21 Feb. 1932, ibid, 693. See also the text of the resolution endorsing Hindenburg adopted by the DStP executive committee, 21 Feb. 1932, ibid, 690, n. 7. Unsere Partei 10, no. 4 (15 Feb. 1932): 31–32. See also Weber, “Warum der Mittelstand für Hugenberg,” Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, 22 Apr. 1932, no. 191. For example, see Martin Schumacher, Mittelstandsfront und Republik. Die Wirtschaftspartei – Reichspartei des deutschen Mittelstandes 1919–1933 (Düsseldorf, 1972), 177–82. See also the letter from Bredt to Drewitz, 15 Dec. 1931, StA Wuppertal, NL Bredt, 105. Ibid, 182.

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German Center Party in early January 1932 the BVP party chairman Fritz Schäffer had voiced strong reservations about a new Hindenburg candidacy and suggested that Brüning himself run for the presidency.42 But once Hindenburg had announced his candidacy, Schäffer quickly set his reservations aside and threw the full weight of his party behind the Reich president’s bid for reelection.43 Within the Center, on the other hand, Brüning’s dependence upon the Reich president’s support for the success of his own chancellorship left his party with very little room for maneuver. To be sure, there were those within the party like Heinrich Imbusch from the Union of Christian Mine Workers (Gewerkverein Christlicher Bergarbeiter) who were bitterly opposed to the hardships that Brüning’s fiscal and economic policies had inflicted upon the German working class,44 while even Labor Minister Adam Stegerwald had reservations about the long-term effects of Brüning’s reliance upon the president’s emergency powers to implement his fiscal and economic policies and even favored the cultivation of closer political ties with the Social Democrats.45 But in the eyes of Stegerwald and other party leaders, the danger of Nazism and the threat of the radical Right were so imminent that the Center Party greeted Hindenburg’s announcement on 16 February that he would stand for reelection with a ringing endorsement of his candidacy.46 Hindenburg’s candidacy also enjoyed strong support within the ranks of the Christian labor movement. On 11 February the executive committee of the United Federation of Christian Trade Unions (Gesamtverband der christlichen Gewerkschaften Deutschlands or GCG) adopted a resolution urging Hindenburg to stand for reelection.47 On 22 February a 42

43 44 45

46 47

Schäffer, “Erinnerungen an die Verhältnisse in Bayern in den Jahren 1932/33,” n.d., in the unpublished Nachlaß of Fritz Schäffer, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Schäffer), 1/102–15, here 105. See also Otto Altendorfer, Fritz Schäffer als Politiker der Bayerischen Volkspartei 1888–1945, 2 vols. (Munich, 1993), 2: 594, as well as Karl Schwend, Bayern zwischen Monarchie und Diktatur. Beiträge zur bayerischen Frage in der Zeit von 1918 bis 1933 (Munich, 1954), 417–20. Klaus Schönhoven, Die Bayerische Volkspartei 1924–1932 (Düsseldorf, 1972), 269–72. Michael Schäfer, Heinrich Imbusch. Christlicher Gewerkschaftsführer und Widerstandskämpfer (Munich, 1990), 223–41. On Stegerwald’s shift to the left in late 1931 and early 1932, see Bernhard Forster, Adam Stegerwald (1874–1945). Christlich-nationaler Gewerkschafter – Zentrumspolitiker – Mitbegründer der Unionsparteien (Düsseldorf, 2003), 555–57. “Aufruf der Deutschen Zentrumspartei. Zur Volkswahl Hindenburgs,” 16 Feb. 1932, in Das Zentrum. Mitteilungsblatt der Deutschen Zentrumspartei 3, no. 3 (1 Mar. 1932): 89–90. Minutes of the meeting of the GCG executive committee, 11 Feb. 1932, in the unpublished records of the der christlichen Gewerkschaften Deutschlands, Bundesarchiv BerlinLichterfelde, Bestand 9360 (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, R 9360), 7/10.

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delegation of Christian labor leaders headed by Fritz Baltrusch, Franz Behrens from the Reich Association of Farm Workers, and Hans Bechly from the German National Union of Commercial Employees – none of whom, incidentally, belonged to the Center and who, for the most part, were assigned to the right wing of the Christian labor movement – met with the Reich president to assure him of their full and unqualified support in the upcoming presidential campaign.48 In endorsing Hindenburg, GCG chairman Bernhard Otte drew a distinction between political and party political neutrality and insisted that its support of Hindenburg, directed as it was against the radical tendencies in German political life, did not violate the principle of non-partisanship, or Überparteilichkeit, that lay at the heart of the Christian labor movement’s political identity.49 It was, however, a different situation with the leaders of the socialist labor movement. Although no one in the leadership of either the Social Democratic Party or the General German Trade-Union Federation seriously considered running a candidate of their own, they held the Reich president ultimately responsible for the drastic cuts that had taken place in Germany’s social welfare system under the Brüning government and did not necessarily welcome his return to the presidential palace. The situation in which the Social Democrats found themselves was further complicated by the fact that the Communists, who had already made strong inroads into the socialist electorate, were expected to nominate their own candidate and would almost certainly portray the SPD’s endorsement of Hindenburg’s candidacy as another sign of its betrayal of the German working class.50 48

49 50

Press report of Hindenburg’s audience with the leaders of the Christian-national labor movement, 22 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 372/102–03. See also Baltrusch’s memoir of this meeting, 22 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Baltrusch, 11, as well as Behrens, “Wählt Hindenburg,” Der Deutsche, 5 Mar. 1932, no. 55. Otte to Beck, 10 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 26, 827. On the predicament of the socialist labor movement in early 1932, see Heinrich August Winkler, Der Weg in der Katastrophe. Arbeiter und Abeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1930 bis 1933 (Berlin and Bonn, 1987), 506–32, as well as the more specialized studies by Wolfram Pyta, Gegen Hitler und für die Republik. Die Auseinandersetzungen der deutschen Sozialdemokratie mit der NSDAP in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1989); 203–21; Rainer Schaefer, SPD in der Ära Brüning: Tolerierung oder Mobilisierung?Handlungsspielräume und Strategien sozialdemokratischer Politik 1930–1932 (Frankfurt a.M. and New York, 1990), 167–200; and Donna Harsch, German Social Democracy and the Rise of Nazism (Chapel Hill, NC, and London, 1993), 168–87. For the perspective of the SPD leadership, see the detailed study by Hagen Schulze, Otto Braun oder Preußens demokratische Sendung. Eine Biographie (Berlin, 1977), 708–24. On the specific problems facing the socialist labor unions, see Heinrich Potthoff, Freie

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In February Theodor Leipart, the ADGB’s national chairman, had been invited to join the Sahm committee but declined on the pretext that he had received the invitation too late to clear it with the union leadership.51 Rather than resign themselves to a Hindenburg candidacy that would only confirm the current political course, a handful of socialists around the Prussian Minister of Interior Carl Severing and his ministerial director for legal and constitutional affairs Hermann Badt had toyed with the idea of promoting the famed Zeppelin pilot and entrepreneur Hugo Eckener as a candidate against Hitler.52 But this idea was dropped as soon as it was clear that Hindenburg would declare his own candidacy. Subscribing to what historian Heinrich August Winkler has aptly called the “logic of the lesser evil,”53 the Social Democrats reluctantly concluded that supporting the Reich president in his bid for reelection was the only way that the threat of German fascism could be countered. On 19 February – three days after Hindenburg had made his decision to stand for reelection public – an exhausted and beleaguered Otto Braun outlined his case for Hindenburg’s candidacy in a long letter to the doyen of German Social Democracy, Karl Kautsky. Having served almost continually as head of the Prussian government since the spring of 1920, Braun was indisputably the most influential Social Democratic statesman of the Weimar Republic. As the Social Democratic candidate for the Reich presidency seven years earlier, Braun recognized the irony of his support for Hindenburg in 1932. But, as he explained to Kautsky: The next months will bring the decision. It must seem strange to you that I, as I indicated above, am supporting the candidacy of Hindenburg. . . . The presidential election, which is a crucial prelude to the Prussian elections, will decide whether Germany’s future development will continue along the peaceful pathways of republican state life or if the German people will have to wade through a fascist valley of misery [faschistisches Jammertal]. With six million unemployed and

51

52 53

Gewerkschaften 1918–1933. Der Allgemeine Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1987), 230–37. Leipart’s statement at a meeting of the ADGB executive committee, 3 Feb. 1932, in Die Gewerkschaften in der Endphase der Republik 1930–1933, ed. Peter Jahn (Cologne, 1988), 479. On Eckener’s short-lived candidacy, see Yehiel Ilsar, Im Streit für die Republik. Stationen im Leben des Hermann Badt (Berlin, 1992), 237–57. Heinrich August Winkler, “Choosing the Lesser Evil: The German Social Democrats and the Fall of the Weimar Republic,” Journal of Contemporary History 25 (1990): 205–27. See also Eberhard Kolb, “Rettung der Republik: Die Politik der SPD in den Jahren 1930 bis 1933,” in Weimar im Widerstreit. Deutungen der ersten deutschen Republik im geteilten Deutschland, ed. Heinrich August Winkler (Munich, 2002), 85–104.

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countless more suffering and doubting in the future, this struggle for the Republic will take place under the worst conceivable conditions, all the more so since the proletariat has been torn asunder into mass armies engaged in a fight to the finish in the truest sense of the word. . . .Realizing that the political decisions of the next few weeks in Germany and Prussia will be decisive not just for the destiny of the German people but also for the future course of political developments in Europe, we are committed to salvaging for the Republic all we possibly can in light of the confusion that exists in the minds of all.54

To all but those who stood on the extreme left wing of the SPD, Braun’s logic was irrefutable, and on 21 February the SPD party committee (Parteiausschuß) voted unanimously to authorize the SPD party executive committee (Parteivorstand) to issue a public statement endorsing Hindenburg’s candidacy but at a moment of its own choosing.55 The precise timing would depend on the course of the debate in the Reichstag, which had been called back into session for the last week of February to deal with the state of German finances. The postponement in announcing its decision to support Hindenburg would serve two purposes. In the first place, it would not allow the national opposition to announce its candidate – presuming, of course, that it could agree upon a single candidate – as a reaction to the Social Democratic endorsement of Hindenburg. Second, it would minimize, if only briefly, the SPD’s exposure to Communist charges that its endorsement of Hindenburg only confirmed its betrayal of the German working class and its role as a lackey of the capitalist bourgeoisie. The leaders of the German Communist Party (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands or KPD) had been relentless in their agitation against the SPD, and they clearly intended to use the presidential campaign to exploit tensions within the German working class over the SPD’s toleration of the Brüning cabinet.56 On 12 January – the day after Brüning’s efforts to negotiate a parliamentary extension of Hindenburg’s term of office had collapsed – the central committee of the German Communist Party adopted a resolution approving the candidacy of KPD 54

55 56

Braun to Kautsky, 19 Feb. 1932, in Erich Matthias, “Hindenburg zwischen den Fronten. Zur Vorgeschichte der Reichspräsidentenwahlen von 1932,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 8 (1960): 75–84, here 82–84. See also Schulze, Braun, 718–19. Winkler, Weg in die Katastrophe, 512. KPD Central Committee, “Rundschreiben Nr. 1 zu den Präsidenten-und Preussenwahlen,” n.d. [Jan. 1932], in the unpublished records of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, Bestand RY 1/I, 2/2/51/64–72. In the same vein, see Ernst Thälmann, Der revolutionäre Ausweg und die KPD. Rede auf der Plenartagung des Zentralkomittees der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands am 19. Februar 1932 (Berlin, n.d. [1932]), esp. 18–26, 36–39.

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party chairman Ernst Thälmann as the “red candidate of the German working classes.” The KPD leadership clearly recognized that Thälmann stood no chance of being elected but conceived of his candidacy as a way of mobilizing the proletarian masses for the struggle against capitalism and fascism.57 While Thälmann’s entry into the presidential campaign would no doubt complicate the SPD’s efforts to mobilize Germany’s working-class electorate on behalf of the Reich president, it did not shake the resolve of Braun and the SPD leadership to use all the resources at their disposal to secure Hindenburg’s reelection.58 As the various parties that stood between the Communists and the national opposition began to line up behind Hindenburg’s candidacy, the only remaining question was whether or not the parties of the Harzburg Front would be able to agree on a single candidate. While certainly not unexpected, Hindenburg’s candidacy had raised a host of questions about the unity of the radical Right and its ability to pursue a concerted course of action with respect to the ever-deepening economic crisis and the continued paralysis of Weimar democracy. Hugenberg and Hitler were locked in a bitter struggle for the leadership of the national opposition with the Stahlhelm doing everything in its power to avoid being forced into an open break with Hindenburg. Hugenberg and his associates were determined to force a change in the composition and direction of the national government but had lost all hope that this could be accomplished with Hindenburg as president.59 Though still committed to the principle of right-wing unity that had manifested itself in the Harzburg rally of October 1931,60 Hugenberg was not about to see his party take a back seat to the NSDAP and continued to hope that the Nazis could be dissuaded from nominating their own candidate for the presidency.61 But as it became increasingly clear in the deliberations that accompanied

57 58 59 60 61

Günter Hortschansky and Käthe Haferkorn, Ernst Thälmann. Eine Biographie (Frankfurt a.M., 1980), 551. Schulze, Braun, 719–22. Remarks by Claß before the ADV managing committee, 20–21 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8048, 169/31–33. Hugenberg to Hilter, 28 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Wegener, 73/146. Gilsa to Reusch, 22 Feb. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/4b. See also Hugenberg to Arnim-Boitzenburg, 4 Feb. 1932, BLHA Brandenburg, NL ArnimBoitzenburg, 4434/11, reprinted in Kurt Goßweiler and Alfred Schlicht, “Junker und NSDAP 1931/32,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 15 (1967): 644–62, here 660. On Hugenberg’s strategy and tactics in the 1932 presidential elections, see John A. Leopold, Alfred Hugenberg: The Radical Nationalist Campaign against the Weimar Republic (New Haven, CT, and London, 1977), 109–11.

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Hindenburg’s declaration of candidacy that the Nazis were set on nominating a candidate of their own, the state leaders of the Stahlhelm met on 14 February 1932 to nominate Duesterberg for the presidency in the event that the Nazis could not be persuaded to abandon their plans to field their own candidate.62 The day after Hindenburg made it public that he would be a candidate for reelection to the Reich presidency, the leaders of the national opposition met to determine if it still might be possible to unite behind a single candidate. Again the Nazis were represented by Göring, not Hitler, but he was not any more accommodating than in his last meeting with the nonNazi members of the national opposition four days earlier. As Hugenberg and the leaders of the Stahlhelm pressed their case for a single candidate behind whom the entire national opposition could unite, Göring responded that the NSDAP reserved the right to nominate its own candidate and even suggested that it might be best if each of the three pillars of the national opposition – the DNVP, Stahlhelm, and NSDAP – fielded its own candidate. Not only would this produce a much larger vote against Hindenburg than a single candidate, but it would also give the three pillars of the national opposition an opportunity to assess their strength vis-à-vis each other.63 At this point, the leaders of the Stahlhelm realized that there was no way that the NSDAP could be dissuaded from nominating Hitler or someone else from within the party and met separately with Hugenberg and the DNVP party leadership to put the finishing touches on the compact to which they had agreed after Hindenburg had made his candidacy official.64 According to the terms of this agreement, the DNVP stipulated that it would not regard the Stahlhelm’s decision to nominate its own candidate for the first round of the presidential elections as a sign that it was about to reconstitute itself as a rival political party. The DNVP further agreed to commit all the resources at its disposal to the election of the person the Stahlhelm chose to nominate. Lastly, the agreement stipulated that the DNVP would nominate prominent Stahlhelm leaders to secure candidacies in the Prussian Landtag elections that were 62

63

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Duesterberg’s unpublished memoirs, BA Koblenz, NL Duesterberg, 47/171. See also Wagner’s handwritten notes, 14 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/127–30, as well as Horn, “Kyffhäuserbund und Stahlhelm in der Reichspräsidenten-Frage,” n.d. [Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, NS 26, 930. Stahlhelm, Führer-Briefe. Politik – Wirtschaft – Technik, 2, no. 7 (19 Feb. 1932), BHStA Munich, Abt. IV, Stahlhelm, 137. See also Gilsa to Reusch, 22 Feb. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/4b. In this respect, see Hugenberg to Wagner, 16 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/137.

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scheduled to take place later that spring. What the DNVP expected in return was the Stahlhelm’s full and unconditional support in the electoral battles that lay ahead. Although the Stahlhelm’s Franz Seldte had reservations about Hugenberg’s political acumen and leadership skills that did not augur well for the long-term future of the agreement,65 the pact was finally consummated on 18 February and established the general outlines of a political alliance between the Stahlhelm and DNVP that was unprecedented in the history of the two organizations.66 The short-term advantages of this arrangement were two-fold. Not only would it spare the Stahlhelm and DNVP the embarrassment of having to support Hitler or whomever the Nazis might nominate as their own candidate, but it also increased the likelihood that Hindenburg might not receive the absolute majority he needed to be elected on the first ballot. This would then set the stage for a second round of negotiations in which the leaders of the two organizations might be more successful in using their offers of support to force a change in the composition and direction of the national government.67 Hugenberg, who had been toying with the idea of making a run for the presidency himself, was easily persuaded to step aside in favor of the Stahlhelm’s Duesterberg as the candidate of the non-Nazi radical Right.68 Armed with his party’s agreement with the Stahlhelm, Hugenberg would make one last attempt to salvage the unity of the national opposition in a head-to-head meeting with the Nazi party leader on 20 February. Opening the meeting with a declaration from the Stahlhelm’s Duesterberg that under no conditions should the unity of the German Right founder on his person, Hugenberg proposed first Count Rüdiger von der Goltz from the United Patriotic Leagues and then the outspoken Catholic conservative Baron Hermann von Lüninck from the Rhenish Peasants’ League (Rheinischer Bauernverein) as potential candidates behind whom the national opposition, including the NSDAP, might unite. But Hitler remained adamant that the NSDAP would nominate a candidate of its own for the upcoming presidential election and that its support for a unity candidate of the national opposition was out of the question, with the result that Hugenberg and 65 66

67 68

In this respect, see Seldte to Wagner, 19 Feb. 1932, StA Mönchen-Gladbach, NL Brauweiler, 109. Agreement bearing the signatures of Hugenberg, Seldte, Duesterberg, 18 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 29. On the negotiations, see the entry in Quaatz’s diary, 18 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. Gilsa to Reusch, 22 Feb. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/4b. Hugenberg to Einem, 11 Mar. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Einem, 29/83–84.

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figure 6: Campaign placard depicting Stahlhelm leader Theodor Duesterberg, February 1932. Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Plakat 002-016-076.

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the leaders of the Stahlhelm were left with no alternative but to proceed with the nomination of Duesterberg.69 Hitler’s rebuff came as no surprise to Hugenberg, who felt betrayed by the Nazi party leader and what he perceived as his deliberate sabotage of the Harzburg spirit.70 By no means did Duesterberg’s nomination meet with the undivided of support of the Stahlhelm leadership, in part because in the minds of some it involved a special arrangement with the DNVP that compromised the organization’s political neutrality.71 In point of fact, Duesterberg’s candidacy was an expedient that allowed the DNVP and Stahlhelm to avoid the embarrassment of having to support whomever the NSDAP might choose as its own candidate. For Hitler and the Nazi party leadership, on the other hand, two questions were of paramount importance. First, would they be able to leverage promises of support for Hindenburg into a decisive hand in the formation of a new a government, a government in which they would hold absolute power? And second, how would they respond to efforts by Hugenberg to restore the unity of the Harzburg Front by nominating a single candidate to oppose Hindenburg’s bid for reelection if negotiations with the government remained deadlocked? In light of the fact that Hindenburg, Brüning, and Schleicher were unlikely to grant the concessions that would have made it possible for the Nazis to support the Reich president’s bid for reelection, it had always been Hitler’s strategy to wait and announce his candidacy only after the Reich president had declared himself a candidate and after the Social Democrats and Center, the two parties most closely identified with the hated Weimar system, had declared their support for Hindenburg. Then Hitler could present himself as the candidate around which all those who had been victimized by the corruption, ineffectiveness, and mismanagement of the

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Wagner, circular no. 44, 24 Feb. 1932, BHStA Munich, Abt. IV, Stahlhelm, 78/II. See also Seldte and Duesterberg to Hugenberg, 24 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 26/167, and Wagner to Wächter, 24 Feb. 1932, ibid, 295/108–09, as well as the circular from Schmidt-Hannover to the leaders of the DNVP’s parliamentary delegations and regional organizations, 24 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Weilnböck, 38b. For the Nazi perspective, see the entry in Goebbels’ diary, 22 Feb. 1932, in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, Teil 1, Bd. 2/II (Munich, 2004), 224. For an indication of the bitterness that Hugenberg felt toward Hitler, see his letter to the Nazi party leader, 20 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 37/38–47, published in Eiserne Blätter 14, no. 21 (22 May 1932): 241–46. For example, see Hauffe to Seldte, 16 Feb. 1932, as well as well as the two letters of resignation that Brauweiler drafted but did not send to Seldte and Stephani, 23 Feb. 1932, all in StA Mönchen-Gladbach, NL Brauweiler, 109.

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existing governmental system could unite.72 To keep from having to commit themselves prematurely, the Nazis floated the names of men like Franz von Epp, a proven veteran of the NSDAP who had served the party in a number of different capacities both before and after joining the party in 1928, and Wilhelm Frick, a long-time member of the NSDAP who had served as the Thuringian minister of interior in 1930–31.73 But this was little more than a disingenuous ploy to make it seem as if Hitler and the Nazi party leadership were actually interested in cooperating with the other members of the Harzburg Front in finding a candidate behind whom they could all unite while waiting for the appropriate moment to declare Hitler’s candidacy. But Hitler – at least according to Goebbels’ diary – was uneasy at the prospect of taking on the venerated hero of Tannenberg in a head-to-head contest for the Reich presidency and drove his party’s propaganda chief to the brink of apoplexy with his refusal to commit himself about making a run for the Reich presidency.74 It was against the background of these developments that Hitler accepted an invitation to speak before the Düsseldorf Industry Club (Düsseldorfer Industrie-Club). In foreswearing the path of violence that had led to the debacle of November 1923 and in committing himself to the pursuit of power by legal means only, Hitler had realized that he and his party would never gain power in the face of strong and resolute opposition on the part of Germany’s conservative elites in the military, business, and agriculture. The success of Hitler’s struggle to gain power by legal means necessarily presupposed the cooptation or, at the very least, the neutralization of Germany’s conservative elites.75 Hitler had already experienced some success in attracting the support of landed aristocrats like Prince Friedrich Wend zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld,76 72 73 74

75

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Entry for 3 Feb. 1932, in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 209–10. [Brauweiler], “Beurteilung der Lage zur Reichspräsidentenwahl,” n.d. [Jan–Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, R 72, 295/25–40. Entries in Goebbels’ diary, 21–22 Feb. 1932, in Goebbels Tagebücher, 2/II, 223–24. On Goebbels’ role in persuading Hitler to become a candidate for the Reich presidency, see the recent biography by Peter Longerich, Joseph Goebbels: Biographie (Berlin, 2010), 178–79. For the classic statement of this argument, see Hans Mommsen, “Zur Verschränkung traditioneller und faschistischer Führungsgruppen in Deutschland beim Übergang von der Bewegungs- zur Systemphase,” in Faschismus als soziale Bewegung. Deutschland und Italien im Vergleich, ed. Wolfgang Schieder (Hamburg, 1976), 157–81. Memorandum by Eulenburg-Hertefeld on his conversation with Hitler, 24 Feb. 1931, BLHA Potsdam, NL Arnim-Boitzenburg, 4434/38–40, reprinted in Kurt Gossweiler and Alfred Schlicht, “Junker und NSDAP 1931/32,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 15 (1967): 644–62, here 653–55. For a mure nuanced analysis of these overtures, see Rainer Pomp, “Brandenburgischer Landadel und die Weimarer Republik. Konflikte um

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but his overtures toward Germany’s industrial leadership had met with a decidedly cooler response.77 One notable exception was Emil Kirdorf, the one-time managing director of the Gelsenkirchen Mining Corporation (Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG) and a long-time member and benefactor of the Pan-German League who in 1927 made arrangements for the publication and circulation of a pamphlet by Hitler entitled Der Weg zum Wiederaufstieg in which the Nazi party leader had tried to assuage the misgivings of a skeptical industrial elite by stressing his implacable opposition to Marxism as the cancer from which all of Germany’s problems ultimately stemmed and by carefully avoiding the social radicalism and attacks upon bourgeois society for which his party had become notorious.78 Kirdorf then proceeded to set up a meeting in his house outside of Essen on 26 October 1927 between Hitler and

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Oppositionsstrageien und Elitekonzepte,” in Adel und Staatsverwaltung in Brandenburg im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, eds. Kurt Adamy and Kristina Hübner (Berlin, 1996), 185– 218, esp. 207–09. On the symbiosis between the German aristocracy and National Socialism, see Stefan Malinowski, Vom König zum Führer. Sozialer Niedergang und politische Radikalisierung im deutschen Adel zwischen Kaiserreich und NS-Staat (Berlin, 2003), 476–503, as well as the more recent essay by Eckart Conze, “‘Only a dictator can help us now’: Aristocracy and the Radical Right in Germany,” in European Aristocracies and the Radical Right, 1918–1939, ed. Karina Urbach (Oxford, 2007), 129–47. For a valuable regional perspective, see Shelley Baranowski, “Convergence on the Right: Agrarian Elite Radicalism and Nazi Populism in Pomerania, 1928–33,” in Between Reform, Reaction, and Resistance: Studies in the History of German Conservatism from 1789 to 1945, eds. Larry Eugene Jones and James Retallack (Providence, RI, and Oxford), 407–32. Relations between Germany’s industrial elite and the NSDAP have been the subject of sharp and sometimes acrimonious controversy. For the most authoritative treatment of the subject, see Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (New York and Oxford, 1985). For the most important contributions to this debate, see Dirk Stegmann, “Zum Verhältnis von Großindustrie und Nationalsozialismus 1930–1933. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der sog. Machtergreifung,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 13 (1973): 399–482, and Henry A. Turner, Jr., “Großunternehmertum und Nationalsozialismus 1930–1933. Kritisches und Ergänzendes zu zwei neuen Forschungsbeiträgen,” Historische Zeitschrift 221 (1975): 18–68, as well as Stegmann’s rejoinder, “Antiquierte Personalisierung oder sozialökonomische Faschismus-Analyse? Eine Antwort auf H. A. Turners Kritik an meinen Thesen zum Verhältnis von Nationalsozialismus und Großindustrie vor 1933,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 17 (1977): 275–96. Turner returned to the attack in the course of a bitter polemic with David Abraham, author of the theoretically intriguing but empirically flawed The Collapse of the Weimar Republic: Political Economy and Crisis, 2nd edn. (New York, 1986). For Abraham’s critique of Turner’s work, see his essay “Big Business, Nazis and German Politics at the End of Weimar,” European History Quarterly 17 (1987): 235–45. For a final statement on the Abraham-Turner conflict, see Peter Hayes, “History in an Off Key: David Abraham’s Second Collapse,” Business History Review 61 (1987): 452–72. Adolf Hitler, Der Weg zum Wiederaufstieg (Munich, 1927), esp. 13–14, 17–19. For an English translation of this pamphlet, see Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., “Hitler’s Secret Pamphlet for Industrialists, 1927,” Journal of Modern History 40 (1968): 348–74.

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a group of fourteen Ruhr industrialists who were interested in learning more about the views of the Nazi party leader. Notwithstanding the unabashed enthusiasm with which those in attendance reportedly greeted Hitler’s appearance,79 the vast majority of their colleagues in the German industrial elite remained cool, if not opposed, to Hitler and the appeal of Nazism. This, however, would all begin to change with the onset of the world economic crisis and the dramatic Nazi breakthrough in the 1930 Reichstag elections. As in the case of large-landed agriculture, Hitler would intensify his courtship of Germany’s industrial leadership in the aftermath of his party’s victory at the polls. The person to whom Hitler entrusted this task was Hermann Göring, who as his “political deputy” was responsible for developing contacts between the Nazi party leadership and the different sectors of Germany’s conservative elites.80 Of the industrialists whom Göring courted, none was more prominent than Fritz Thyssen, a member of the influential “Ruhrlade” who had gravitated more and more into the orbit of the radical Right ever since the struggle against the Young Plan in the summer of 1929.81 Thyssen believed that the key to Germany’s national salvation lay in the creation of a comprehensive national front uniting all of those – but most importantly the DNVP and NSDAP – who were opposed to the existing political order.82 It was with this in mind that he brought Hitler together with a small group of politically interested Ruhr industrialists at Kirdorf’s home near Essen in late November 1930 in still another attempt to allay the latter’s fears about the alleged radicalism of the Nazi movement.83 As in the past, however, the Ruhr industrial elite

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81

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Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., “Emil Kirdorf and the Nazi Party,” Central European History 1 (1968): 324–44, here 329–34. For further details, see Albrecht Tyrell, “Der Wegbereiter – Hermann Göring als politischer Beauftragter Hitlers in Berlin 1930–1932/33,” in Demokratie und Diktatur. Geist und Gestalt politischer Herrschaft in Deutschland und Europa. Festschrift für Karl Dietrich Bracher, eds. Manfred Funke, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Hans-Helmuth Knütter, and Hans-Peter Schwarz (Düsseldorf, 1987), 178–97. On Thyssen’s politics and his attraction to National Socialism, see Carl-Freidrich Baumann, “Fritz Thyssen und der Nationalsozialismus,” Zeitschrift des Geschichtsvereins Mühlheim a.d. Ruhr 70 (1988): 139–54, as well as the more recent study by Hans Otto Eglau, Fritz Thyssen. Hitlers Gönner und Geisel (Berlin, 2003), 107–27. On the “Ruhrlade,” see Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., “The Ruhrlade: Secret Cabinet of Heavy Industry in the Weimar Republic,” Central European History 3 (1970): 195–228. Memorandum signed by Thyssen, 25 Dec. 1930, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 74. Velten-Brief, 29 Nov. 1930, in the unpublished records of the Deutsche Bank, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, Bestand R 8119F, 6870/28. The details of this meeting are unclear. See also the letter from Reichert to Schlenker, 4 Dec. 1930, in the unpublished records of the Verein deutscher Eisen-und Stahlindustrieller/Wirtschaftsgruppe

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remained suspicious of the NSDAP’s social and economic program and hoped to temper its radicalism by securing its integration into a greater German Right that also included the Stahlhelm and DNVP.84 It was most likely through Thyssen’s good offices that Hitler received his invitation to speak before the Düsseldorf Industry Club on 26 January 1932. According to Thyssen’s own account, he had originally sought to secure the services of Nazi organization leader Gregor Strasser for a speech that would have complemented a recent lecture by the moderate socialist Max Cohen-Reuss but was obliged to accept Hitler in his place after a chance encounter with the Nazi party leader in the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin.85 Hitler’s goal, on the other hand, was to dispel concerns about the alleged radicalism of his movement’s social and economic policies and to reassure Germany’s industrial leadership that he, as the leader of the Nazi movement, represented the nation’s best bulwark against the rising tide of international Bolshevism at home and abroad. At no point in the two-and-a-half-hour speech to an estimated 650 club members did Hitler use the word Jew or make so much as a tangential reference to the socalled Jewish question. Instead Hitler tried to present himself and the goals of his party in a moderate and reasonable light. Only after an extended discourse on his party, its history, and its goals for the future did Hitler turn to the deepening economic crisis that had descended on Germany in the last three years. Here the Nazi party leader was careful to stress not only that the problems facing the German economy were not so much economic as political but, more importantly, that they required a political rather than an economic solution. The key to Germany’s economic recovery, Hitler insisted, lay in the unification of the German people into a true national community that transcended all of the social, economic, regional, and confessional divisions that had become so deeply embedded in the fabric of Germany’s national life. This was all that much more critical, Hitler continued, in light of the danger that Marxism, with its doctrine of class conflict and its ultimate goal of establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat over the rest of society, posed not just to the

84 85

Eisenschaffende Industrie, Bundesarchiv Berlin, Bestand R 13 I (hereafter cited as BA Berlin, R 13 I), 602/228–32, as well as the postwar memoir by Ernst Poensgen, “Hitler und die Ruhrindustriellen. Ein Rückblick,” United States National Archives, Washington, DC, Record Group 238, Case 10, Dokumentenbuch Bülow I. See also the discussion of this meeting in Turner, German Big Business, 131–32. In this respect, see the undated memorandum from Heinrichsbauer from Dec. 1930, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101293/11. Eglau, Thyssen, 130–31. See also Turner, German Big Business, 205.

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individualistic foundations of German economic life but to the very survival of the German nation. Only the NSDAP, Hitler concluded, was capable of uniting the German nation into a powerful force that would enable it to eradicate the threat of Marxism, restore economic sanity at home, and return Germany to great power status abroad.86 As one might expect, the reviews of Hitler’s speech were mixed. Although Hitler had been effective in portraying himself as a staunch defender of the free enterprise system and an advocate of leadership principle in the economic as well as the political arena, this did not provide him with the easy access to industry’s financial coffers for which Fritz Thyssen, his principal sponsor in the Ruhr, had been hoping. Most of Germany’s industrial magnates remained deeply suspicious of the NSDAP’s social and economic philosophy and, with the exception of Thyssen, limited their contributions to small amounts that served as little more than insurance policies in the event that the Nazis came to power.87 Industrial support, however, was not as important for the NSDAP as it was for the other bourgeois parties, in large part because the Nazis had developed a wide range of alternative methods of financing their propaganda, organization, and related political activities that left them much less dependent upon the largesse of Germany’s industrial and financial elites.88 For Hitler, therefore, the principal benefit of his Düsseldorf speech was not so much financial as the boost it, along with the warmth 86

87

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Adolf Hitler, Vortrag Adolf Hitlers vor westdeutschen Wirtschaftlern im Industrie-Klub zu Düsseldorf am 27. Januar 1932 (Munich, 1932), esp. 12–13, 15–16, 18–20, 23–27, 31–32. On Hitler’s social and economic views, see Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., “Hitlers Einstellung zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft vor 1933,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 2 (1976): 89–117. On the speech itself, see the excellent overview by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., “Hitlers Rede vor dem Industrie-Club und ihre Nachwirkungen,” in Hitlers Rede vor dem Düsseldorfer Industrie-Club am 26. Januar 1932: Legende und Wirklichkeit, ed. Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. (Düsseldorf, 2001), 7–35. For a contemporary assessment of Hitler’s speech, see the remarks of Gustav Brecht, chairman of the board of directors of Rhein Brown Coal (Rheinische Braunkohle) in a conversation with Hans Schäffer as recorded in Schäffer’s diary, 4 Feb. 1932, IfZ Munich, NL Schäffer, 19/171–12. See also the memorandum by the man who introduced him, Düsseldorf mayor Robert Lehr, 26 Feb. 1955, in Walter Först, Robert Lehr als Oberbürgermeister. Ein Kapitel deutscher Kommunalpolitik (Düsseldorf and Vienna, 1962), 235–36. For further information, see Turner, German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, 211–18. Horst Matzerath and Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., “Die Selbstfinanzierung der NSDAP 1930–1932,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 3 (1977): 59–92. For a balanced assessment of the controversy over the extent to which the Nazi Party received support from German big business, see Thomas Trupp, “Zur Finanzierung der NSDAP durch die deutsche Großindustrie. Versuch einer Bilanz,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 32 (1981): 223–41.

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with which individual aristocrats had greeted his overtures, had provided his self-esteem. Had Hitler had any reservations about challenging a man of Hindenburg’s iconic stature, they began to melt away in the light of the ease with which he had been able to ingratiate himself with Germany’s agricultural and industrial elites, and on the evening of 21 February he finally gave Goebbels the go-ahead to announce his candidacy at a rally that was scheduled to take place the following evening in Berlin’s spacious Sportpalast.89 Goebbels used the occasion not only to present a blistering indictment of the last thirteen years of German martyrdom but also to remind his audience that the Hindenburg who had signed the Young Plan was not the Hindenburg of Tannenberg and that the Hindenburg who now governed in league with Brüning and the Social Democrats was not the Hindenburg for whom they had voted in 1925. The Nazi strategy, therefore, was not to run against Hindenburg but against the system that his iconic stature was being used to prop up. At the same time, Goebbels used unabashedly messianic tones to portray Hitler as the candidate who had risen from the anonymity of the trenches of World War I to assume leadership of the greatest people’s movement in the history of the German nation in its struggle for freedom and dignity.90 Goebbels carried his assault against the hated Weimar system over into the parliamentary deliberations of the following day in what proved to be the opening salvo of the presidential campaign. Brüning had reconvened the Reichstag to set the date for the presidential elections. Speaking before the Reichstag on 23 February, Goebbels showed no scruple about drawing the president’s name into the debate and lashed out against Hindenburg for having betrayed the very voters who had put him in office in 1925 by accepting the support of the Social Democrats and those who defended the existing political system. Then, with particular vehemence, Goebbels challenged Hindenburg with words that stung the aging Reich president to the very core: “We National Socialists have a saying which has never failed to prove true. Tell me who praises you, and I tell you who you are! Praised by the asphalt press, praised by the party of the deserters. . .” – at which point Paul Löbe, the presiding officer, tried to stop Goebbels from

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Entry in Goebbels’ diary, 23 Feb. 1932, in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 224–25. Joseph Goebbels, Schluß jetzt! Das Deutsche Volk wählte Hitler. Rede im Berliner Sportpalast am 22. Februar 1932, Kampfschrift, Broschürenreihe der Reichspropaganda-Leitung der NSDAP, no. 8 (Munich, 1932), 19–21, 24–26.

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continuing. Unfazed by Löbe’s admonitions and Social Democratic demands for a retraction, Goebbels continued: “Today the Jews of the Berlin asphalt press have made the Field Marshall their leader. These are the very same Jews and Social Democrats who in 1925 covered the General Field Marshall with buckets of mockery and scorn [den Generalfeldmarschall mit Spott und Horn übergossen].”91 When Goebbels refused to retract his attacks on the Reich president, he was banned from parliament and excluded from the debate for the remainder of the day. Goebbels’ words were a deep affront to Hindenburg’s supporters, who leapt to his defense with a series of speeches that evoked the memory of Hindenburg’s heroism at Tannenberg and his importance as a symbol of Germany’s national unity. First Westarp, then Fritz Baltrusch from the People’s National Reich Association and Wilhelm Simpfendörfer from the Christian-Social People’s Service, and finally the CNBLP’s Friedrich Döbrich all took the podium to denounce the slander of the Reich president and to reaffirm their commitment to the man in whom they had placed their hopes for Germany’s recovery and national renewal.92 The debate continued the next day with two fiery attacks against Hitler and the radicalism of his Nazi movement by the SPD’s Rudolf Breitscheid and the State Party’s August Weber as spokesmen of two parties who supported Hindenburg not out of any great love for the Reich president but because he represented the most reliable bulwark against the rising tide of Nazi radicalism.93 In a similar vein, the Center’s Eugen Bolz rose to defend Hindenburg’s election as the nation’s best guarantee against Hitler’s dictatorial aspirations and the hypocrisy of the radical Right.94

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92

93 94

The full text of Goebbels’ speech can be found in Joseph Goebbels, Goebbels-Reden, ed. Helmut Heiber, 2 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1971–72), 1: 4–21. See also Dorpalen, Hindenburg, 278, and Longerich, Goebbels, 179. For reconstructions of this debate, see Dorpalen, Hindenburg, 277–81, and Wilhelm Ribhegge, Preußen im Westen. Kampf um den Parlamentarismus in Rheinland und Westfalen 1789–1947 (Münster, 2008), 505–09. The text of Baltrusch’s speech, 23 Feb. 1932, has been preserved in BA Koblenz, NL Baltrusch, 6. See also the detailed analysis of the rhetorical strategies employed by the major protagonists in the debate by Michael Schmolke, “Reden und Redner vor den Reichspräsidentschaftswahlen im Jahre 1932,” Publizistik 3 (1958): 97–117. Rudolf Breitscheid and August Weber, Wider den Nationalsozialismus. Zwei mütige Reden, Republikanische Bibliothek, no. 2 (Berlin, 1932). On Bolz, see the excellent biography by Joachim Sailer, Eugen Bolz und die Krise des politischen Katholizismus in der Weimarer Republik (Tübingen, 1994), 112–14.

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All of this only set the stage for Brüning, who took the podium on the final day of the debate to settle his accounts with the German Right in a speech that had been carefully vetted by Schleicher and the presidential palace.95 After defending his government’s record on foreign policy, the currency, and reparations, Brüning took up a defense of the Reich president against charges from the radical Right that he was nothing but a lackey of the existing political system. Brüning lashed out against the DNVP and NSDAP by defiantly stating that it was not he who had prevented the German Right from supporting Hindenburg’s candidacy but the “profound disunity among the different groups that made up the national opposition and the demands of one of those groups to have the entire state apparatus delivered into its hands.” If the national opposition had been able to resolve the differences within its own ranks, he was fully prepared to step down as chancellor so as not to stand in the way of a reorganization of the national government that would have allowed the forces of the national opposition to support Hindenburg’s candidacy. In contrast to the divisiveness and empty rhetoric of the national opposition, Brüning defended the Reich president as a person whose reelection to the office he had held for the past seven years would prove to the world “that true reverence, a sense of history and tradition, and the ability to acknowledge human greatness [were] still alive in Germany.”96 The lines for the election had been drawn. All that remained was the question of Hitler’s nationality, and this was taken care of when on 26 February 1932 Hitler was officially sworn in as councilor, or Regierungsrat, in the Office for Regional Culture and Surveying (Landeskultur-und Vermessungsamt) in the small German state of Brunswick. Since this appointment came with the automatic conferral of Brunswick citizenship, the last obstacle standing in the way of Hitler’s candidacy for the Reich presidency had been removed.97 Hindenburg 95 96

97

In this respect, see Meissner to Pünder, 22 Feb. 1932, with enclosure, BA Berlin, R 601, 378/105–12. For an abbreviated text of Brüning’s speech, see Das Zentrum. Mitteilungsblatt der Deutschen Zentrumspartei 3, no. 3 (Mar. 1932): 98–104, also excerpted in “Auseinandersetzung mit der Rechten im Reichstag am 25. Februar 1932,” in Heinrich Brüning, Zwei Jahre am Steuer des Reichs. Reden aus Brünings Kanzlerzeit (Cologne, 1932), 52– 55. See Brüning’s own account of his speech in Brüning, Memoiren, 528–29. For further details, see Rudolf Morsey, “Hitler als Braunschweiger Regierungsrat,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 8 (1960): 419–48. But such a step was unnecessary since Hitler, as a more recent study has pointed out, had already received German citizenship in July 1930, when he had been appointed commissar of the Hildburghausen

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and Hitler would now stand off against each other in a dramatic confrontation that would test the foundations of the Weimar Republic and pave the way to its eventual destruction at the hands of the radical Right. gendarme by Wilhelm Frick, the Thuringian Minister for the Interior and a member of Hitler’s inner circle of advisors. See Manfred Overesch, “Die Einbürgerung Hitlers 1930,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 40 (1992): 543–66.

7 The Hindenburg Offensive

As the battle lines were being drawn for the presidential election on 13 March 1932, each of the protagonists entered the campaign with a different set of strategic objectives. For Hindenburg it was first and foremost a matter of being reelected, though with the support of the German Right so that after the election he could reorganize the national government and extend its base to the right to include the forces of the national opposition. For Brüning it was a matter of securing Hindenburg’s reelection with a broad base of support extending from the Social Democrats to the moderate Right so that he could remain in office and continue his reform of German finances and his struggle for the liquidation of Germany’s reparations obligations. For Schleicher, on the other hand, it was a matter of securing Hindenburg’s reelection so that the Reich president, once reelected, could reorganize the national government and at long last put his strategy of “taming the Nazis” by saddling them with the burden of governmental responsibility into effect. For the forces of the middle and moderate Right that had come together in the United Hindenburg Committees, the goal was to use the Hindenburg campaign to reestablish themselves as legitimate players in German political life, while the Social Democrats embraced Hindenburg’s candidacy for the simple reason that his reelection was essential to defend Germany’s republican system of government against the onslaught of Hitler and the radical Right. For the Communists, on the other hand, the presidential campaign would afford them an opportunity to expose the Social Democrats as enemies of the German working class and to unite, at Social Democratic expense, all of those who opposed Hitler, Hindenburg, and Duesterberg into a broad and comprehensive anti-fascist front. For 205

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

Hugenberg and the leaders of the Stahlhelm, embittered over the collapse of the Harzburg Front, the goal of the campaign was to steer as many votes as possible away from Hindenburg and Hitler so that neither would receive an absolute majority in the first round of voting in the hope that they could leverage their support in the runoff election into a decisive role for the non-Nazi elements of the national opposition in any post-election governmental coalition. And for the Nazis, the goal was if not the outright election of Hitler himself, then certainly the destruction of the DNVP as a rival to the NSDAP on the radical Right, the mobilization of the Stahlhelm’s rank-and-file membership against the organization’s national leadership, and the pulverization of the various forces in the middle and on the moderate Right that stood between the NSDAP and the Marxist Left. Given the cacophony of voices that sought to define the terms of the election, it is not surprising that its outcome would be, if anything, ambiguous. Having played an active role in the deliberations that led to his nomination as a candidate for the Reich presidency, Hindenburg played a conspicuously subdued role in the campaign itself. Aside from receiving the occasional delegation of students or artisans and performing the ceremonial functions of his office,1 he chose to leave the details of the campaign to Brüning and his staff in the Reich chancery, Meissner and the Office of the Reich President, and the United Hindenburg Committees. Having been stunned and hurt by the demagogy of Hugenberg and the DNVP party apparatus portraying him as a stooge of the Center and Social Democrats who had forfeited his right to the support of the national opposition,2 Hindenburg refrained from becoming publicly involved in the campaign for his reelection. Only once did Hindenburg break his silence, and then in a radio address just three days before the voters went to the polls to refute the allegations of the radical Right that he was a candidate of the Left and middle and to assert, as he had done in his letters to retired generals Karl von Einem and August von Mackensen,3 that the disunity of the German Right had made it his patriotic duty to stand for reelection so that he might continue serving the German nation in its hour of need.4 The real brunt of the campaign, however, 1 2 3 4

For example, see the press release on Hindenburg’s audience with a delegation of students supporting his reelection, 9 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 372/141. Hindenburg to Oldenburg-Januschau, 17 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 375/209–10. In this respect, see Hindenburg to Einem, 25 Feb. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Einem, 29/ 41–49, and to Mackensen, 25 Feb. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Mackensen, 273/1–9. Hindenburg. Briefe – Reden – Berichte, ed. Fritz Endres (Ebenhausen, 1934), 175–79.

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was borne by Brüning. Opening the campaign with a speech in Essen on 7 March, Brüning not only denounced Hugenberg and the forces of the national opposition for having allowed the divisions within their own ranks to prevent an extension of the national government to the right but also availed himself of the vocabulary of the radical Right in a particularly bitter attack against the Nazis. “If there has ever been a stab-in-the-back,” Brüning charged, “then it was in the deliberations for a parliamentary solution to the election of the Reich president when, by stabbing the government in the back, [the national opposition] undercut its negotiating legitimacy at a time of the most difficult conflict abroad.“5 The disloyalty and irresponsibility of the German Right would become a familiar refrain in Brüning’s campaign speeches as he traveled throughout the country before finally wrapping up the campaign with a gala demonstration organized under the auspices of the United Hindenburg Committees in Berlin’s Sportpalast on 12 March. With detachments of the Young German Order providing security for the estimated 15,000 people who attended the rally, Brüning was joined on the podium by a host of notables including Berlin’s Lord Mayor Heinrich Sahm, Reich Defense and Interior Minister Wilhelm Groener, Reich Minister for Eastern Relief Hans Schlange-Schöningen as well as Hermann Pünder and Walter Zechlin from the Reich chancery and a host of officials from the Prussian and Berlin governments. Both Günther Gereke and Count Kuno von Westarp from the working committee of the United Hindenburg Committees were there to greet the assembled throng with testimonials to the nonpartisan character of Hindenburg’s campaign and the extent to which the Reich president served as the pole around which a badly divided German nation could unite. But the featured speaker was Brüning, who proceeded to defend the Reich president against attacks from the national opposition for his support of the government’s emergency legislation by asking whether those who opposed the government’s efforts to stabilize the currency were willing to accept a return to inflation as the price of their obstructionist tactics. After invoking the fear of inflation and linking the danger of a new inflation to the tactics of the German Right, Brüning then moved to the offensive by attacking the National Socialists for the emptiness of their rhetoric against “the system.” By denouncing 5

For the passage quoted above, see “Der Dolchstoß der Opposition in Essen am 7. März 1932,” in Heinrich Brüning, Zwei Jahre am Steuer des Reichs. Reden aus Brünings Kanzlerzeit (Cologne, 1932), 55. For a fuller account of the speech, see Germania, Mar. 9, 1932, no. 69.

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Hindenburg as a candidate whose reelection was designed to stabilize a hopelessly corrupt and decrepit system of government, the Nazis, Brüning argued, were disingenuous in trying to conceal that they too had a system, a system that could be reduced to a single objective, namely, “to claim and conquer exclusive and sole power for their own party.” The only effective antidote to the dictatorial aspirations of Hitler and his entourage, Brüning continued, was for the German people to unite behind the banner of a man who “is recognized throughout the world as a symbol of German strength and German unity.” Imploring all of those who heeded his appeal to make certain that the outcome on 13 March would provide the Reich president with the victory Germany so desperately needed, Brüning closed with the slogan: “Hindenburg has to win because Germany has to live!”6 The demonstration in the Sportpalast was conducted under the auspices of the United Hindenburg Committees and was carefully orchestrated to underscore the nonpartisan character of Hindenburg’s candidacy. Most of Brüning’s campaign appearances, however, were organized by local and district chapters of his own Center Party. Between his speeches in Essen and Berlin Brüning addressed his party’s faithful at major demonstrations in Düsseldorf, Dortmund, and Königsberg. At every opportunity, Brüning invoked Hindenburg as an icon whose heroic leadership in the Great War personified the very virtues that would now lead the German nation out of the great misery in which it currently found itself. In defending Hindenburg against charges that he had turned his back upon Germany’s eastern provinces and had failed to provide them with the help they so desperately needed, Brüning exclaimed in his speech in Dortmund’s Westfalenhalle: I cannot imagine how one could seriously believe that the victor of Tannenberg and of so many battles on the East Prussian border that rank among the greatest in the history of the world, the same man who in the last few years has directed millions [of marks] to the economic salvation of East Prussian, that this man has abandoned East Prussia.

The candidates of the national opposition, on the other hand, were dismissed as “men who have yet to accomplish anything, who have no idea of what they can [or cannot] do in the political arena, and who in the case of some have not even done so much as to produce a program of their

6

For a detailed report of the demonstration and Brüning’s speech, see “Brüning im Sportpalast,” Germania, 13 Mar. 1932, no. 73.

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own.“7 While demagogy like this was certainly easy, the national opposition, as Brüning stressed in Düsseldorf, offered little more than empty promises as a solution to Germany’s economic misery and a foreign policy that entailed disaster for the entire German nation.8 As Brüning, Stegerwald, and Center party chairman Ludwig Kaas all threw the full weight of their prestige behind Hindenburg’s candidacy, whatever reservations the leaders of the Center’s left wing might have had about Hindenburg’s conservative pedigree were quickly papered over.9 At the same time, Hindenburg received strong support from the leaders of the Christian labor movement, who deplored the increasing polarization of German political life and appealed for greater solidarity in the struggle against the forces of political radicalism on the Left and the Right.10 On 1 March the executive committee of the United Federation of Christian Trade Unions published an appeal endorsing Hindenburg as “the man who . . . rejected all party political bondage [parteipolitische Gebundenheit] to serve the cause of [Germany’s] national salvation in somber fidelity [in schlichter Treue] to his last gasp for breath.”11 Acting on the initiative of the GCG’s Jakob Kaiser, the leaders of the Christian labor movement held a series of demonstrations up and down the Rhine and in the Ruhr basin on 6 March not just to affirm their support of Hindenburg’s candidacy but also to announce the creation of a “ChristianNational People’s Front [Christlich-nationale Volksfront]” for protecting the existing constitutional order against the radical forces that sought its destruction on both the Left and the Right. Speaking in Cologne, Kaiser pointed to the outlandish fact “that reaction and revolution had allied themselves with each other in order to erect a dictatorship over the nation” and hailed Hindenburg as “the great and venerable leader around whose miraculous figure the German people see themselves uniting in its hour of need.” The Nazi attacks against Hindenburg, Kaiser concluded, were to be expected in light of the fact that he and he alone was there to 7

8 9 10 11

For the report of Brüning’s Dortmund speech, see Germania, 11 Mar. 1932, no. 71. For the most detailed accounts of Brüning’s involvement in the Hindenburg campaign, see William L. Patch, Jr., Heinrich Brüning and the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic (Cambridge, 1998), 231–47, and Herbert Hömig, Brüning. Kanzler in der Krise. Eine Weimarer Biographie (Paderborn, 2000), 513–18. Germania, 10 Mar. 1932, no. 70. Rudolf Morsey, “Die Deutsche Zentrumspartei,” in Das Ende der Parteien 1933, eds. Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey (Düsseldorf, 1960), 279–453, esp. 302–04. “An die christliche Arbeiterschaft!” Zentralblatt der christlichen Gewerkschaften Deutschlands 32, no. 5 (1 Mar. 1932): 65–66. “Volk und Reichspräsident,” ibid, 67–68.

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protect the principles of freedom, law, and justice against the dictatorial aspirations of Hitler and his ilk.12 In general, German Catholics displayed greater solidarity in the 1932 presidential campaign than they had seven years earlier when Hindenburg’s chief rival for the Reich presidency had been the Center Party leader and sitting chancellor Wilhelm Marx. In 1925 many Catholics, but particularly in Bavaria where the BVP had effectively secured Hindenburg’s victory by throwing its support behind his candidacy,13 strongly opposed the Center’s collaboration with the Social Democrats in the socalled People’s Bloc and cast their votes for Hindenburg to signal their dissatisfaction with the Center’s drift to the left.14 But with the sudden rise of National Socialism in the late 1920s and the obvious threat this posed to Catholic institutions throughout the country, the constellation of political forces that existed in 1932 was dramatically different from that of 1925. Germany’s Catholic episcopacy had always been wary of the German Right, and in the spring of 1924 Cardinal Adolf Bertram, the bishop of Breslau and chairman of the Fulda Bishops’ Conference (Fuldaer Bischofskonferenz), had even gone so far as to prohibit Catholics from joining interconfessional paramilitary organizations like the Stahlhelm and Young German Order.15 Then, in the fall of 1931, Bishop Franz Rudolf Bornewasser of Trier dispatched a note through the Benedictine abbot of Maria Laach, Ildefons Herwegen, that reprimanded the Catholic aristocracy in the Rhineland and Westphalia for its infatuation with National Socialism and called for steps aimed at healing the rift between the church, the nation, and the Catholic nobility.16 It was in the light of these 12

13

14 15

16

“Volksfront gegen Diktatur und Reaktion,” ibid, 32, no. 6 (15 Mar. 1932): 94–96. On Kaiser’s initiative, see Erich Kosthorst, Jakob Kaiser. Der Arbeiterführer (Stuttgart, 1970), 148–51. For further details, see John K. Zeender, “The German Catholics and the Presidential Election of 1925,” Journal of Modern History 35 (1963): 266–81. See also Johannes Horstman, “Katholiken, Reichspräsidentenwahlen und Volksentscheide. Ausgewählte Aspekte zum Wahlverhalten der Katholiken in der Weimarer Republik mit statistischem Material,” Jahrbuch für christliche Sozialwissenschaften 17 (1986): 61–93, esp. 62–69. For further details, see Ulrich von Hehl, Wilhelm Marx 1863–1946. Eine politische Biographie (Mainz, 1987), 347–51. Sascha Hinkel, Adolf Kardinal Bertram. Kirchenpolitik in Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik (Paderborn, 2010), 243–45. See also Wieland Vogel, Katholische Kirche und nationale Kampfverbände in der Weimarer Republik (Mainz, 1989), 34–55. The text of this statement is to be found in the unpublished Nachlaß of Count Franz von Galen, Vereinigte Westfälische Adelsarchive, Münster, 42. Further correspondence on this episode can be found in the microfilmed records of the Vatican Archives in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, RG 76.001, reel 11, pos. 612,

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developments that Cardinal Bertram broke with precedent to sign Sahm’s appeal calling upon Hindenburg to stand for reelection after Germany’s other two cardinals, Michael Faulhaber from Munich and Karl Joseph Schulte from Cologne, had declined to sign the petition in deference to the church’s political neutrality. In explaining his decision, Bertram wrote: In doing this, I have put aside the reservations that have always kept me from supporting a particular person in an election campaign. All the same, the case of Hindenburg can be seen as so exceptional that such a concern is less pressing.17

With Bertram’s endorsement, the whole array of Catholic associational life from the Association for Catholic Germany (Verein für das katholische Deutschland) and the Catholic Workers’ Associations (Katholische Arbeitervereine) to the Association of Christian Peasant Unions (Vereinigung der christlichen Bauernvereine) lined up in support of Hindenburg’s candidacy.18 This was to prove of enormous significance in rallying a skeptical Catholic population behind the candidacy of a man whom most Catholics instinctively identified with Lutheran orthodox and Prussian authoritarianism. In the meantime, an even more important bloc of voters began to find its way to Hindenburg as the Social Democrats, true to the “logic of the lesser evil,” came out in support of Hindenburg’s candidacy. On 26 February the SPD executive committee issued an appeal under the title “Schlägt Hitler!” that appeared the following morning in the Social Democratic organ Vorwärts. For the Social Democrats, the question the election that would ultimately decide was whether Hindenburg would

17 18

fasc. 129, Bl. 31–40, and fasc. 130, Bl. 2–3, 5. For the details of this episode, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Catholic Conservatives in the Weimar Republic: The Politics of the Rhenish-Westphalian Aristocracy, 1918–1933,” German History 18 (2000): 60–85, and Christoph Hübner, Die Rechtskatholiken, die Zentrumspartei und die katholische Kirche in Deutschland bis zum Reichskonkordat von 1933. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Scheiterns der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 2014), 643–58. Faulhaber to Sahm, 8 Feb. 1932, quoted in Sascha Hinkel, Adolf Kardinal Bertram. Kirchenpolitik in Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik (Paderborn, 2010), 249. For example, see [Volksverein für das Katholische Deutschland], Unserem Hindenburg (Mönchen-Gladbach, 1932). See also Detlef Grothmann, “Der ‘Volksverein für das Katholische Deutschland’ und die nationalsozialistische Herausforderung in der Weimarer Zeit,” Historisches Jahrbuch 121 (2001): 286–303, esp. 298–99, and Jürgen Aretz, Katholische Arbeiterbewegung und Nationalsozialismus. Der Verband katholischer Arbieter- und Knappenvereine Westdeutschlands 1923–1945 (Mainz, 1978), 59–61. For the position of the Christian peasant unions, see the appeal of the Silesian Peasant Union (Schlesischer Bauernverein) in the Schlesische Volkszeitung, 12 Feb. 1932, no. 70, in the Restakten des Vereins der deutschen Bauernvereine, Landesarchiv NordrheinWestfalen, Abteilung Westfalen, Münster, Schorlemer Archiv (Bestand C113), Bestand D, folder 354.

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remain as Reich president or would be replaced by Hitler. Faced with that choice, the answer was clear and unequivocal: Hitler instead of Hindenburg means chaos and panic in Germany and all of Europe, a bitter intensification of the economic crisis and the desperation of the unemployed, the acute danger of bloody altercations within our own people and with foreign powers. Hitler instead of Hindenburg means the victory of the most reactionary elements of the bourgeoisie over the progressive elements in the bourgeoisie and working class, the destruction of all civil freedoms, the [suppression of] the press and the political, labor, and cultural organizations [or the German worker], intensified exploitation and wage slavery.

Given the enormity of the decision that lay before the German worker, the appeal concluded that “any vote that was not cast for Hindenburg was a vote for Hitler; any vote that could be snatched from Thälmann for Hindenburg was a blow against Hitler.”19 No Social Democrat was more active and outspoken in the struggle for Hindenburg’s reelection than the Prussian Minister President Otto Braun. Braun, whose relations to Brüning were severely strained by the sad state of Prussian finances and who over the years had suffered more than his share of setbacks at the hand of the Reich president and his entourage, swallowed his pride to publish an appeal on Hindenburg’s behalf in Vorwärts just three days before the first round of voting on 13 March. But unlike the endorsement the SPD executive committee had issued at the end of February, Braun couched his argument not in terms of the need to defeat Hitler but in praise of Hindenburg’s person and reputation. Conceding that “a deep gulf separated him from the worldview and political mind-set” from the Reich president, Braun stressed that the personal ties the two men had forged over the years “had built a bridge over this gulf.” At the same time, Braun praised Hindenburg “as a man whose word is his bond, as a person with a pure will and clear judgment.” Braun concluded his appeal by calling upon “the millions of voters who had supported him seven years earlier and beyond that to all of those who had demonstrated confidence in him and his politics to vote as he, to defeat Hitler and elect Hindenburg.”20

19

20

“Schlägt Hitler!” Vorwärts, 27 Feb. 1932, no. 97, quoted at length inHeinrich August Winkler, Der Weg in die Katastrophe. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1930 bis 1933 (Berlin and Bonn, 1987), 512–13. Braun, “Schlägt Hitler, Wählt Hindenburg!” Vorwärts, 10 Mar. 1932, no. 117, quoted in Hagen Schulze, Otto Braun oder Preußens demokratische Sendung. Eine Biographie (Berlin, 1977), 719.

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As in the case of the Center and the Christian labor movement, the leaders of the socialist trade unions lined up behind the Social Democrats in their support of Hindenburg’s candidacy. The executive committee of the General German Trade-Union Federation, however, delayed its endorsement of Hindenburg until just before the election so as to minimize its exposure to attacks from the Communists for supporting the man whom many held ultimately responsible for the antisocial character of the government’s fiscal and economic policies.21 Given the ADGB’s reticence to become too prominently involved in the Hindenburg campaign, the brunt of Social Democratic efforts to mobilize the German worker fell to the Iron Front (Eiserne Front), an organization that had been founded in late 1931 in response to both the Harzburg Front and the KPD’s appeal for the creation of an anti-fascist front.22 The initiative for the founding of the Iron Front had come from Karl Höltermann and the leaders of the Reich Banner Black-Red-Gold (Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold), which had been founded in February 1924 by members of the SPD, Center, and German Democratic Party along with representatives from the free or socialist labor movement in reaction to the abortive beer hall putsch the previous November.23 With a paramilitary structure similar to that of the Stahlhelm and the Nazi storm troopers, the Reich Banner had become ever more closely identified with the SPD in the second half of the 1920s until by the end of the decade it was widely seen as little more than its militant arm. Höltermann and the leaders of the Reich Banner were alarmed by the dramatic growth of the Nazi movement in the wake of the great depression and sought to mobilize all of those in the working and middle classes who still supported the republican system of government against the radical movements on the Left and Right.24 In this

21

22

23 24

See the minutes of the ADGB executive committee, 24 Feb. 1932, and the committee’s appeal of 5 Mar. 1932, both in Die Gewerkschaften in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik 1930–1933, ed. Peter Jahn, Quellen zur Geschichte der deutschen Gewerkschaftsbewegung im 20. Jahrhundert, vol. 4 (Cologne, 1988), 516, 523–24. On the founding and history of the Iron Front, see Donna Harsch, “The Iron Front: Weimar Social Democracy between Tradition and Modernity,” in Between Reform and Revolution: German Socialism and Communism from 1840 to 1990, eds. David E. Barclay and Eric D. Weitz (New York and Oxford, 1992), 251–74. On the founding of the Reich Banner, see Roger Chickering, “The Reichsbanner and the Weimar Republic, 1924–26,” Journal of Modern History 40 (1968): 524–34. On the Reich Banner’s role in launching the Iron Front, see the definitive study of the Reich Banner by Karl Rohe, Das Reichsbanner Schwarz Rot Gold. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Struktur der politischen Kampfverbände zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf), 1966), 392–403.

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respect, Höltermann was joined by the SPD’s Otto Wels, the ADGB’s Peter Grassmann, and Fritz Wildung from the Central Commission of Sports and Physical Hygiene (Zentralkommission für Sport und Körperpflege), all of whom took part in the official founding of the Iron Front on 16 December 1931.25 The first true test of the Iron Front’s ability to mobilize the working masses and the progressive elements of the German bourgeoisie in the fight against what Wels described as the “front of capitalistic social reactionaries and fascists”26 would come in the presidential elections of 1932. The SPD’s endorsement of Hindenburg’s candidacy was a logical consequence of its toleration of Brüning’s policies as Reich chancellor and left it exposed to attacks from the Communists for having betrayed the German worker with its pursuit of “the lesser evil” and its embrace of Hindenburg on the pretense that he represented the last line of defense against the rising fascist tide.27 In the meantime, the leaders of the German State Party were hard at work trying to mobilize the remnants of Germany’s liberal bourgeoisie in support of Hindenburg’s candidacy. For DStP national chairman Hermann Dietrich, who doubled as Brüning’s minister of finance, the critical factor was to use the Hindenburg campaign to reinvigorate Germany’s liberal bourgeoisie with an eye toward the upcoming state elections in Prussia, Bavaria, and elsewhere and to reunite it behind the banner of the beleaguered German republic.28 Not only did Dietrich and the leaders of the DStP announce their support for Hindenburg’s reelection almost immediately after the Reich president had declared his candidacy, but they also urged the party faithful throughout the country to become actively involved in the campaign activities of the United Hindenburg Committees.29 For those who had remained loyal to Germany’s republican system of government, as the

25 26 27

28

29

Otto Wels, Peter Graßmann, Karl Höltermann, and Fritz Wildung, Eiserne Front. Vier Aufrüfe (Berlin, 1932). Wels, “Die Fronten sind formiert!,” ibid, 1. For example, see [Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands], Hindenburg oder Thälmann? Ein Appell an die Arbeiter in der S.P.D., in den Gewerkschaften und im Reichsbanner (Berlin, n.d. [1932]), 6–8. In this respect, see Dietrich’s speech before the DStP executive committee, 21 Feb. 1932, in Linksliberallismus in der Weimarer Republik. Die Führungsgremien der Deutschen Demokratischen Partei und der Deutschen Staatspartei 1918–1933, with an introduction by Lothar Albertin and edited by Konstanze Wegner (Düsseldorf, 1980), 688–90. DStP, Reichsgeschäftsstelle, Rundschreiben no. 10, 25 Feb. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Hermann Dietrich, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Dietrich), 250/99–105.

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DStP’s Gertrud Bäumer argued in an article for her party’s official organ, Hindenburg’s candidacy offered a unique opportunity to reclaim the national concept from the abuse it had suffered at the hands of Hugenberg and leaders of the radical Right.30 If the Center, Social Democrats, and State Party sought to mobilize those elements of the German public that were committed to the defense of the existing political system, the various groups that had come together in the United Hindenburg Committees felt little love for the Weimar Republic and supported Hindenburg on the assumption that he would continue on the authoritarian course he had charted for himself with Brüning’s appointment as chancellor and the turn from parliamentary to presidential government. What this revealed was a cleavage within the ranks of Hindenburg’s supporters that could be papered over only with the greatest of difficulty. The disunity of the Hindenburg camp was further compounded by the fact that the United Hindenburg Committees embraced both those who supported the Brüning government and those who opposed it. All of this was a constant source of tension within the ranks of Hindenburg’s followers that severely affected the effectiveness of their campaign on the Reich president’s behalf and left them vulnerable to attacks from both the Left and the Right. The primary goal of the United Hindenburg Committees was to rally those elements on the German Right that had been left politically homeless by Hugenberg’s takeover of the DNVP and to mobilize their support for Hindenburg’s reelection.31 Given the importance that Hindenburg himself attached to the support of elements from the German Right, the work of the United Hindenburg Committees was critical in assuaging the annoyance the Reich president felt over the fact that the bulk of his support appeared to be coming from those parties that had opposed his election in 1925. With approximately 270 local committees and another 500 strongholds or Stützpünkte organized under the auspices of regional committees or Dachausschüsse in every state and province of the country, the United Hindenburg Committees distributed over 21 million copies of six leaflets for the general public as well as another 5 million copies of leaflets directed toward specific sectors of the German electorate such as women, farmers, veterans, and those living in the Rhine basin. The United 30 31

Bäumer, “Zur Kandidatur Hindenburgs,” Blätter der Staatspartei. Organ der Deutschen Staatspartei 2, no. 2 (Mar. 1932): 51–53. “Bericht über den Wahlfeldzug in Ostpreußen,” n.d., appended to Wilhelmini to Westarp, 17 Mar. 1932, NL Gärtringen, VN 18.

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Hindenburg Committees also printed 50,000 copies of two other leaflets – one by Westarp and the other entitled “Hindenburg und die Nation” by Horst Micheal, a young assistant in the historical seminar at the University of Berlin who would go on to play an important role in organizing the support of the Protestant church32 – that were used for mailings to landowners in the east and the 16,000 members of the German Noble Society.33 In addition to the tried and proven techniques of political mobilization such as placards, pamphlets, and public rallies, the architects of the Hindenburg campaign also availed themselves of the most modern developments in political campaigning such as film and radio. Not only did the radio carry Hindenburg’s address to the nation on 10 March, but also Brüning’s fiery attack on the national opposition in his Reichstag speech of 25 February – in the eyes of many, the chancellor’s finest moment as a speaker – was broadcast to the nation at large in the last week of the campaign.34 All of this was part of a conscious attempt to invoke Hindenburg’s mythic stature as a way of countering the divisions that had become so deeply embedded in the fabric of Germany’s national life.35 Throughout all of this, the national leaders of the Hindenburg committees were intent upon ensuring the ideological purity of their campaign by eschewing ties to pro-Hindenburg groups of a different ideological persuasion and by making certain that those who assumed the leadership of the local and regional Hindenburg committees were men of impeccable conservative credentials.36 Although the local leaders of the United Hindenburg Committees could draw upon the resources of a number of smaller right-wing parties and organizations ranging from the CNBLP and DVP to the Young German Order and Christian labor unions,37 the 32

33 34 35

36 37

Micheal, typewritten draft of “Hindenburg und die Nation,” 29 Feb. 1932, appended to Michael to Hindenburg, 29 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 376/121–27. The author is greatly indebted to Professor Wolfram Pyta of the University of Stuttgart for his help in identifying Michael and his connections to the Protestant Church and for sharing the results of his research on Michael with him. “Organisationstätigkeit,” n.d., BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 98/117–20. For an announcement of the radio broadcast of Brüning’s Reichstag speech, see Germania 11 Mar. 1932, no. 71. For the most insightful analysis of the role the Hindenburg mythos played in the 1932 presidential elections, see Anna von der Goltz, Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis (Oxford, 2009), 144–66, esp. 157–65. For example, see the memoirs of the CNBLP’s Wilhelm Brese, Erlebnisse und Erkenntnisse vor der Kaiserzeit bis heute (Marwede, 1976), 39. “Bericht über den Wahlfeldzug in Ostpreußen,” n.d., appended to Wilhelmini to the Hindenburg Committee in Berlin, 17 Mar. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 18.

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fact that they chose to conduct their campaign independently of the Center, the Social Democrats, and those middle parties that identified themselves with the existing political system only exacerbated the sense of disunity and fragmentation that already plagued the Hindenburg campaign. Partisan bickering within the ranks of Hindenburg’s supporters was, in fact, so strong that at times it became difficult to conduct a coherent campaign. In Leipzig, for example, the DVP and several smaller, more conservative parties threatened to resign from the local Hindenburg committee if it went ahead with plans to invite Hermann Dietrich, Brüning’s minister of finance and the national leader of the prorepublican German State Party, to open the campaign with a public speech on Hindenburg’s behalf.38 At the same time, the conservative voters to whom the United Hindenburg Committees had addressed their appeal could only, as the coordinator of the Hindenburg campaign in East Prussia observed in a letter to Westarp, have been confounded by the fact that those who were their allies in the Hindenburg campaign would soon become their opponents in the state and provincial elections that were scheduled to take place in the last week of April.39 From the outset, Westarp and his associates in the United Hindenburg Committees committed a large part of their resources to the task of winning the support of the German agricultural community. As Gereke wrote to the mayor of Düneberg a week before the election, the outcome of the vote on 13 March would depend “on whether [the Hindenburg campaign] would succeed in snatching a million or so rural votes from the agitation of the National Socialists.”40 Their task, however, was complicated not only by the radicalizing effect the world economic crisis had had upon Germany’s rural population41 but also by the fact that the leaders of Germany’s largest and most influential agricultural interest organization, the National Rural League, had broken with the Brüning cabinet in the winter of 1930–31 to join the forces of the national opposition.42 The 38 39 40 41

42

Martin to Dietrich, 5 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dietrich, 226/137. Wilhelmini to Westarp, 13 Mar. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 18. Gereke to Zimmer, 9 Mar. 1932, LA Berlin, Prozeßakten Gereke, Rep. A, 358–01, 76/16/ 8. On the problems that moderate conservatives faced in stemming the rising tide of rightwing radicalism in the German countryside, see Batocki to Hindenburg, 17 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin R 601, 373/40, and Flemming to Meissner, 23 Feb. 1932, appended to Flemming to Westarp, 29 Feb. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 18. For further details on the RLB’s drift to the right in 1930–32, see Stephanie Merkenich, Grüne Front gegen Weimar. Reichs-Landbund und agrarischer Lobbyismus 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf, 1998), 319–52.

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leaders of the RLB – and in particular Count Eberhard von Kalckreuth, the presidial member of the RLB executive committee – had fought the chancellor’s efforts to secure an extension of Hindenburg’s term of office by parliamentary initiative and remained vehemently opposed to Hindenburg’s reelection on the grounds that he had become a hostage of those parties that were committed to the preservation of the existing parliamentary system.43 To counter this sentiment, Westarp and his associates made use of the National Political Alliance (Nationalpolitische Arbeitsgemeinschaft), an agency that had been established with government support in the early summer of 1931 for combating the spread of political radicalism east of the Elbe River.44 The composition of the ten-man committee that oversaw the Alliance’s activities intersected to a considerable extent with that of the Hindenburg committees at both the national and regional levels.45 With monthly government subsidies that grew from 1,700 marks in July 1931 to 3,000 marks in April 1932, the National Political Alliance distributed a biweekly newsletter under the title of Briefe nach Ostdeutschland to an estimated 8,500 individuals, government agencies, and agricultural interest organizations throughout eastern Germany. In the spring of 1932 the National Political Alliance received additional subsidies totaling 10,550 marks from the Hindenburg campaign so that it could expand the size of its newsletter and increase its circulation to 20,000 for the duration of the campaign.46 In their efforts to capture the support of Germany’s rural population, the editors of the Briefe nach Ostdeutschland highlighted not only the endorsements that Hindenburg’s candidacy had received from conservative organizations throughout the country but also the disunity of the Harzburg Front and its failure to unite behind a single candidate for the

43

44 45

46

In this respect, see Kalckreuth letters to Hugenberg, 11 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 146/1–2; Hauenschild-Tscheidt, 12 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/104–05; and Goldacker, 26 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 14/39–42. See also “Reichs-Landbund und Präsidentenwahl,” Reichs-Landbund. Agrarpolitische Wochenschrift 12, no. 8 (20 Feb. 1932): 121–22. On the goals and history of this organization, see Westarp to Braun, 17 July 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 1. On the composition of the National Political Alliance, see the memorandum from Dryander, 31 Mar. 1933, and Dryander’s circular on the Alliance’s meeting in the Hotel Fürstenhof, Berlin, 21 Oct. 1933, both in NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 21. On the Alliance’s finances and information on the publication of its newsletter, see Westarp to Braun, 17 July 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 1, as well as Meinecke’s audit of its finances, 22 Sept. 1933, appended to Dryander to Westarp and Reichert, 26 Sept. 1933, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 21.

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Reich presidency.47 At the same time, Hindenburg’s conservative supporters went to great lengths to stress the depth of the Reich president’s commitment to the spiritual and material welfare of the German farmer and hailed his record of accomplishment on behalf of German agriculture since assuming office seven years earlier. As Gereke wrote in an article for Der Landbürger, the official organ of the German Chamber of Rural Municipalities, it was Hindenburg who in the spring of 1930 had given Brüning the clear and unequivocal mandate to use all the resources at his disposal to save German agriculture from collapse. How different the outcome might have been, Gereke asked, had not Hindenburg been at the helm?48 But whatever hopes Gereke and his associates in the Hindenburg campaign might have had of winning the undivided loyalty of the German farmer were quickly dashed when on 1 March Kalckreuth and the leaders of the RLB refused to support Hindenburg’s candidacy and urged their followers to vote for either Duesterberg or Hitler in the upcoming presidential elections. In the eyes of the RLB, Hindenburg had so ingratiated himself with the Brüning system that only a vote for Duesterberg or Hitler offered any genuine hope of national renewal.49 As the RLB’s strong stand against Hindenburg’s reelection clearly indicated, the greatest obstacle that the Reich president’s conservative supporters faced was not just the discord within the Hindenburg campaign but also the deep-seated hostility that many conservatives felt toward the Brüning cabinet and their resentment toward the Reich president for having provided the chancellor with the political cover he needed to stay in office. The dilemma in which this placed Hindenburg’s conservative supporters was clearly reflected in the defensive posture they found themselves taking in the campaign literature that was circulated under the auspices of the United Hindenburg Committees. In a brochure aimed at those who had voted for the Reich president in 1925, Westarp not only stressed the nonpartisan, or überparteilich, character of Hindenburg’s candidacy but also reminded those who were now vilifying Hindenburg

47 48 49

Briefe nach Ostdeutschland, ed. Nationalpolitische Arbeitsgemeinschaft, 4 Mar. 1932, no. 18. Gereke, “Wir alten Hindenburgwähler. Hindenburg und das Landvolk,” Der Landbürger 7, no. 6 (16 Mar. 1932): 115–16. See Kalckreuth’s remarks as well as the resolution adopted at a joint meeting of the RLB executive committee and the RLB’s regional secretaries, 1 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8034, 146/24–27, 38. See also the report in the Sächsiche Bauern-Zeitung. Amtliches Organ des Sächsischen Landbundes e.V. 39, no. 11 (13 Mar. 1932): 101–2, as well as the lead article in the Reichs-Landbund 12, no. 9 (27 Feb. 1932): 129–30.

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as the candidate of the “system parties” that they had earlier tried to correct the abuses of “party absolutism” by demanding more power for the Reich president. The true irony of the situation, Westarp insisted, stemmed from the way in which the forces of the so-called national opposition were using the presidential campaign to promote their own partisan interests under the guise of nonpartisanship. In point of fact, however, only Hindenburg’s candidacy enjoyed truly bipartisan support that cut across the social, regional, and ideological divisions that had become so deeply entrenched in Germany’s national life. To denounce Hindenburg for having attached his signature to the Young Plan in the spring of 1930 or for not having rejected the offer of support he received from the Social Democrats was to ignore not only the attributes of courage and steadfastness in the face of fire that had served the former field marshal so well at Tannenberg but also the truly nonpartisan character of his candidacy. Those like himself who were truly committed to the struggle against the existing political system, Westarp concluded, had no choice but to rally around Hindenburg as the only candidate who offered a genuine alternative to the excesses of party rule and the fragmentation of Germany’s national will.50 Nowhere was conservative antipathy toward Hindenburg more apparent than in the written responses of some of those to whom Westarp had turned in his solicitation of signatures for the appeal that was published to coincide with Hindenburg’s declaration of candidacy on 22 February. On 16 February Westarp, who had declined an invitation to join the Sahm committee so that he could concentrate his efforts on conservatives like himself,51 had sent a letter to 750 representatives of Germany’s conservative elite in an attempt to secure their signatures for a petition calling upon those who had supported Hindenburg in 1925 to commit themselves publicly to his reelection as Reich president.52 In just four days, Westarp had succeeded in collecting the signatures of more than 500 prominent conservatives for an appeal that was released to the press on the evening of 22 February – the day on which Duesterberg and Hitler declared their candidacies – and that hailed the Reich president as the embodiment of German unity and the personification of all those values in which 50 51 52

Kuno von Westarp, Hindenburg und seine Wähler von 1925 (N.p., n.d. [1932]), 5–15. Westarp to Sahm, 12 Feb. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 18. Westarp to Mackensen, 16 Feb. 1932, with the text of the proposed appeal, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Mackensen,273/43–46. On the background of this appeal, see the brief note that Westarp composed in response to a request from the Archiv-Dienst – Institut für Quellenforschung, 11 Apr. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 3.

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Germany’s national greatness were rooted.53 But whatever satisfaction Westarp and his associates were able to derive from the success of their undertaking was undercut by the fact that a number of those to whom they had turned – including Hindenburg’s old comrade-in-arms August von Mackensen,54 Leipzig major and chancellor candidate Carl Goerdeler,55 industrialists Paul Reusch and Fritz Springorum,56 and Walter Bernhard from the directorship of the Darmstadt and National Bank (Darmstadter-und Nationalbank)57 – declined to sign the petition for one reason or another. No doubt the refusal of Mackensen and other high-ranking officers with whom he had served during the war to embrace his candidacy proved particularly painful to the Reich president. Although in many cases those who declined to sign the petition failed to disclose reasons for their reticence, in almost every case it stemmed from Hindenburg’s close identification with the Brüning cabinet and his failure to initiate a radical break with the system of government they held responsible for Germany’s political malaise. As Ernst Brandi from the United Steel Works (Vereinigte Stahlwerke A.G.) explained in a letter to Westarp: All of us are united in our personal respect for the General Field Marshall. But in my broad circle of friends we are also in agreement that Hindenburg’s reelection would immediately mean the maintenance, if not the immortalization [Verewigung] of the black-red bloc of Brüning and Braun. On the other hand, with a government of the Right we would readily welcome the Field Marshall as Reich president despite certain reservations about his advanced age, reservations which in my opinion are fully justified in light of how he has exercised the duties of his office.58 53

54

55 56 57 58

“Hindenburg – des deutschen Volkes Einigkeit!,” Kölnische Zeitung, 23 Feb. 1932, no. 107. See also Westarp to Hindenburg, 22 Feb. 1932, with the text of the appeal and the names of those who had endorsed it, BA Berlin, R 601, 375/53–57. For further information, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Hindenburg and the Conservative Dilemma in the 1932 Presidential Elections,” German Studies Review 20 (1997): 235–59, here 241. Mackensen to Westarp, 18 Feb. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 11. For further insight into Mackensen’s stance on Hindenburg’s reelection, see Theo Schwarzmüller, Zwischen Kaiser und “Führer”. Generalfeldmarschall August von Mackensen. Eine politische Biographie (Paderborn, 1995), 243–53. Goerdeler to Westarp, 22 Feb. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 11. Reusch to Westarp, 20 Feb 1932, and Springorum to Westarp, 22 Feb. 1932, both in NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 11. Bernhard to Westarp, 18 Feb. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 11. Brandi to Westarp, 18 Feb. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 11. For further information on Brandi’s political position in the last years of the Weimar Republic, see Werner Abelshauser, Ruhrkohle und Politik. Ernst Brandi 1875–1937. Eine Biographie (Essen, 2009), 65–78.

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Brandi’s refusal to support Hindenburg’s bid for reelection reflected sentiments about the future of the Brüning cabinet that extended deep into the ranks of the Reich president’s own supporters. Nowhere was this more evident than in the case of the German People’s Party.59 In October 1931 the DVP had officially terminated its support of the Brüning cabinet, thus putting the final touches on a move to the right that DVP party chairman Eduard Dingeldey had set in motion after his election to the party’s national chairmanship in November 1930.60 Dingeldey’s hard stand against the Brüning cabinet received strong support from its industrial backers on the party’s right wing61 but encountered bitter resistance from the leaders of the DVP’s left wing and, in particular, from those with close ties to the German National Union of Commercial Employees, the largest of Germany’s white-collar unions.62 Much of their concern stemmed from the conviction that Dingeldey had capitulated to pressure from Ruhr heavy industry, which had not only become increasingly disaffected from the Brüning cabinet but was pushing the DVP party leadership to realign itself with the DNVP and the forces of the national opposition.63 Whereas Brandi, Reusch, and Springorum all opposed Hindenburg’s reelection on the grounds that this would only perpetuate Brüning’s tenure as chancellor and thus postpone the reorganization of the national government for which they were hoping,64 Dingeldey and the DVP leadership eagerly embraced Hindenburg’s candidacy as an opportunity to present the DVP as a party of political responsibility whose opposition to Brüning was rooted in concrete policy differences and not

59 60

61

62

63 64

In this respect see the somewhat labored defense of Brüning’s chancellorship in Dryander to Dingeldey, 23 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 36/8–14. For a defense of the DVP’s break with the Brüning cabinet, see Dingeldey’s speech before the DVP central executive committee, 6 Dec. 1931, in “Der Kurs der Deutschen Volkspartei,” n.d. [Dec. 1931], BA Berlin, R 45 II, 363/121–24, as well as Dingeldey’s letter to Kalle, 9 Dec. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 74/48–53. For further details, see Larry Eugene Jones, German Liberalism and the Dissolution of the Weimar Party System, 1918–1933 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1988), 429–31, 436–39, and Ludwig Richter, Die Deutsche Volkspartei 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2002), 727–38. In this regard see Gilsa to Dingeldey, 3 and 14 Nov. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 69/67–71, and Gilsa to Reusch, 22 Oct. and 3 Nov. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101293/4. For example, see the letters from DHV national director Hans Bechly to Dingeldey, 12 and 30, Nov. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 35/26–30, 83–85. For further details, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Between the Fronts: The German National Union of Commercial Employees from 1928–1933,” Journal of Modern History 48 (1976): 462–82. Gilsa to Dingeldey, 14 Nov. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 69/71. For example, see Brandi to Westarp, 18 Feb. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 11.

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in the anti-system hysteria of the DNVP and NSDAP. As a result, the DVP party leadership threw its full support behind the Hindenburg campaign and worked closely with the United Hindenburg Committees in support of his bid for reelection.65 But the DVP’s slogan of “Für Hindenburg – gegen Brüning” only highlighted the contradiction that lay at the heart of Dingeldey’s strategic concept and left his party exposed to the agitation of the radical Right. To try to square the circle, as Dingeldey tried to do, by criticizing Brüning for his mismanagement of the Hindenburg campaign and claiming that a vote for Hindenburg was not a vote for the Brüning system66 did little to clarify the fundamental ambiguities that continued to hound the DVP’s efforts to articulate a clear and unequivocal campaign message. The gravity of the situation in which the DVP found itself in the late winter and early spring of 1932 could be seen in two separate yet, by no means, unrelated events. On 26 February six members of the DVP’s left wing – including Otto Thiel and Frank Glatzel from the German National Union of Commercial Employees as well as highly regarded party stalwarts such as Siegfried von Kardorff and Wilhelm Ferdinand Kalle – rebelled against Dingeldey’s leadership of the party by refusing to vote against Brüning in the chancellor’s most recent test of strength with the forces of the radical Right.67 When Kardorff and Brüning’s former Foreign Minister Julius Curtius defied Dingeldey and his supporters in the DVP Reichstag delegation by absenting themselves from the decisive vote on a DVP-sponsored no-confidence motion in the Brüning government, both were summarily expelled from the party.68 Less than two weeks later, Dingeldey and the prestige of his party suffered an even more devastating blow when the party’s district organization in South Düsseldorf formally seceded from the national party in protest against

65

66 67

68

DVP Reichsgeschäftsstelle, Rundschreiben no. 2, 18 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 224/ 78. See also the resolution of the DVP national committee, 28 Feb. 1932, in Nationalliberalismus in der Weimarer Republik. Die Führungsgremien der Deutschen Volkspartei 1918–1933, eds. Eberhard Kolb and Ludwig Richter, 2 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1999), 2: 1206–09. Dingeldey, “Die Politik der Deutschen Volkspartei,” Erneuerung. Wochenblatt der Deutschen Volkspartei, 5 Mar. 1932, no. 10. Minutes of the DVP Reichstag delegation, 25 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 367/367–70. For further information, see Jones, German Liberalism, 440–41, and Richter, Deutsche Volkspartei, 746–50. Dingeldey to Kardorff, 27 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 61/126, and to Curtius, 27 Feb. 1932, ibid., 53/27. See also the minutes of the DVP Reichstag delegation, 26 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 367/370.

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Dingeldey’s refusal to align himself with the DNVP and the forces of the national opposition. This was in large part the work of Erich von Gilsa, a member of the DVP Reichstag delegation who functioned as a liaison between the DVP party leadership, Ruhr heavy industry, and the Stahlhelm.69 Acting more or less on his own initiative but with strong encouragement not only from the Stahlhelm’s regional leadership70 but also from Brandi and his associates in the Ruhr industrial establishment,71 Gilsa hoped to pressure Dingeldey into negotiations with the DNVP’s Hugenberg that would culminate in a merger of the two parties.72 But when Dingeldey succeeded in blunting this initiative at a heated meeting with the leaders of the six DVP district organizations from the RhineRuhr basin on 28 January,73 the party organization in South Düsseldorf voted at a convention in Dortmund on 26 February to secede from the national party and to go over intact to the DNVP.74 When efforts at mediation failed, the defection of one of the DVP’s largest and most influential district organizations to the rival DNVP became official in the first week of March 1932.75 69

70 71 72

73 74

75

On Gilsa, see his letter to Köngeter, 21 Dec. 1931, RWWA Cologne, NL Reusch, 400101293/4, as well as his article, “Was nun?,” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 Dec. 1931, nos. 577–78, and his eight-page memorandum, “Was fordert die innenpolitische Lage von uns,” 19 Dec. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Jarres, 42. For further information, see Peter Langer, “‘v. Gilsa an Reusch (Oberhausen)’: Wirtschaftsinteressen und Politik am Vorabend der Großen Krise,” in Abenteuer Industriestadt. Oberhausen 1874–1999. Beiträge zur Stadtgeschichte, ed. Stadt Oberhausen, 2 vols. (Oberhausen, 1999–2001), 2: 103–24. Mahnken to the West German district organizations of the DVP, 14 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 40/43. Brandi to Jarres, 7 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Jarres, 44. In this respect, see Heinrichbauer to Kellermann, 2 Jan. 1932, as well as Gilsa’s report from 5 Jan. 1932, both in the unpublished Nachlaß of Heinrich Kellermann in the archives of the Gutehoffnungshütte, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, Cologne, Abt. 130, 400101208/9, as well Gilsa to Reusch, 8 and 15 Jan. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101293/4. Kuhbier to Jarres, 2 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Jarres, 42. See also Kuhbier to Mahnken, 29 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 40/45–46. In this respect, see Hugo’s memorandum of a telephone conversation with Eberlein, 27 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 74/46–48, and the correspondence between Dingeldey and the DVP defector Hermann Klingspor, 27 Feb. –14 Mar. 1932, in Klingspor’s unpublished Nachlaß, Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hauptstaatsarchiv Düsseldorf, Bestand RWN 216, 6. For more detailed accounts of these developments, see Jones, German Liberalism, 439–41, and Richter, Deutsche Volkspartei, 739–45, as well as the excellent regional study by Horst Romeyk, “Die Deutsche Volkspartei in Rheinland und Westfalen 1918–1933,” Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 39 (1975): 189–236, here 231–32. Brandi to Jarres, 7 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Jarres, 44.

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The turmoil in the DVP and the rebelliousness of Ruhr heavy industry did not augur well for efforts of those in the Hindenburg campaign who were assigned responsibility for raising the money to fund the campaign. In its initial projections as to the cost of the campaign, the Reich chancery estimated that it would have to raise approximately 800,000 marks to cover the material costs of the campaign propaganda in addition to whatever might be needed to cover organizational expenses.76 But these estimates proved overly conservative, particularly in light of Meissner’s revelation that a deficit of five million marks still remained from Hindenburg’s 1925 campaign and that none of the printers to whom this was owed would fulfill printing orders for the current campaign until this debt had been erased.77 This set in motion a concerted effort to raise the required funds from a combination of private, corporate, and government sources. The task of raising this money fell first and foremost to Günter Gereke, who at his 1933 trial for the misuse and embezzlement of campaign funds placed the amount of money raised for the Hindenburg campaign in both the first round of voting on 13 March and in the runoff election four weeks later at seven million marks.78 Gereke further testified that for reasons of confidentiality no precise record of where the money had come from or how it had been distributed was kept.79 All of this obviously makes it virtually impossible to reconstruct exactly how the Hindenburg campaign was financed, particularly since the use of state finances was a closely guarded secret from the very outset. What is nevertheless clear on the basis of surviving documentation is that private and corporate donations would not have been adequate to cover the costs of the campaign. As chair of the steering committee of the United Hindenburg Committees, Gereke was the person ultimately responsible for raising the campaign funds that were necessary to run the Hindenburg campaign. The task of soliciting contributions from the German business community, 76

77 78

79

In this respect, see the confidential attachment “Wahlpropaganda” to the memorandum prepared by the Reich chancery’s Weinstein, 18 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 585/ 106–12. Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, Das Ende von Weimar. Heinrich Brüning und seine Zeit (Düsseldorf, 1968), 296. Trial testimony by Gereke, 28 June 1933, LA Berlin, Prozeßakten Gereke, Rep. A, 358–01, 76/15. The figure of twelve million marks that Treviranus recalls Hindenburg’s supporters having collected for the campaign in his memoirs seems too high and unsubstantiated by any of the surviving documentation. See Treviranus, Ende von Weimar, 297. Deposition by Gereke, 4 Apr. 1933, LA Berlin, Prozeßakten Gereke, Rep. A, 358–01/76/ 15. See also the deposition by Westarp, 6 June 1933, ibid.

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however, fell to Carl Duisberg, a prominent industrialist and former president of the National Federation of German Industry, in the hope that his connections to Germany’s industrial elite would help the Hindenburg campaign offset the advantage the Nazis presumably enjoyed in the area of finances.80 Disbursement of the funds that Gereke and Duisberg raised, in turn, lay in the hands of Franz Kempner, a high-ranking official in the Reich chancery who had been assigned to the United Hindenburg Committees for the duration of the campaign and who, like Gereke, was a member of the four-person steering committee responsible for the organization and conduct of the Hindenburg campaign.81 From the outset, however, efforts to raise the funds for the Hindenburg campaign were complicated by the fact that the various parties that supported Reich president’s bid for reelection were at the end of their own financial resources and were carefully husbanding what little they had left for use in the upcoming state elections that were scheduled for the end of April.82 By the same token, the Hindenburg campaign would in many cases be approaching the very same donors to whom the various nonsocialist parties would be turning in their quest for campaign funding. This, however, did not deter Duisberg from sending out direct solicitations in an effort to raise as much as three quarters of a million marks to his colleagues in the German business community, including such stalwarts as Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, his successor as president of the National Federation of German Industry, and Carl Friedrich von Siemens, a one-time member of the DDP Reichstag delegation and a leader in the German electrical industry.83 In his overtures to German big business, Duisberg warned against the socialistic tenor of Nazi economic policy and stressed that the danger that 80 81 82

83

Kempner to Dusiberg, 26 Feb. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Carl Duisberg, Werksarchiv Bayer, Leverkusen (hereafter cited as WA Bayer, NL Duisberg), 76/9. Deposition by Duisberg, 11 Apr. 1933, ibid, 358–01, 76/2. Günther Gereke, Ich war königlich-preußischer Landrat (Berlin, 1970), 177. See alsoGereke, “Lebenslauf,” n.d., LA Berlin, Prozeßakten Gereke, A Rep. 358–01, 76/14. For an indication of the financial difficulties in which the parties that cooperated with the United Hindenburg Committees found themselves, see the letters from Dingeldey to Reusch, 26 Jan. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101293/12, and Krupp, 26 Jan. 1932, HA Krupp Essen, FAH 23/793/59–62. For example, see Duisberg to Krupp, 25 Feb. 1932, HA Krupp Essen, FAH 23/793/ 72–73, and Duisberg to Siemens, 25 Feb. 1932, SAA Munich, NL Siemens, 4/Lf 670. Carbon copies of both letters are also to be found in WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, Autographen-Sammlung. For a detailed analysis of Duisberg’s role in the Hindenburg campaign, see Helmuth Tammen, Die I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft (1925–1933). Ein Chemiekonzern in der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 1978), 177–82.

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Hitler’s election to the Reich presidency posed to Germany’s prospects of economic recovery.84 But the fact that the national opposition had nominated not one but two candidates for the Reich presidency meant that many an industrialist who might have supported Hindenburg for fear of Hitler and what his election might mean for the German economy could now opt for Duesterberg as an alternative to the Reich president. Whereas both Krupp and Siemens responded to Duisberg’s solicitation with donations of 10,000 and 40,000 marks, respectively,85 other prominent industrialists such as Paul Reusch, Fritz Springorum, and Albert Vögler all declined to support Hindenburg’s bid for reelection. While Reusch cited “strong reservations against Hindenburg’s reelection” as the grounds for his negative response,86 Springorum alluded to the difficult situation in which the iron and coal industry found itself as the reason for its decision not to support any candidate in the first round of voting.87 For Vögler, on the other hand, it was not just the economic difficulties of Ruhr heavy industry but also that the German bourgeois was once again divided into two hostile camps that made it difficult for him and many of his colleagues to contribute to any of the principal candidates.88 Although not all of those solicited took the time to outline the reasons for their refusal to support Hindenburg’s candidacy, the underlying factor was almost invariably their concern over Germany’s deteriorating economic situation and their conviction that Hindenburg had become so deeply enmeshed in the so-called Brüning system that his reelection would only mean more of the same.89 Duisberg’s solicitations revealed that Germany’s industrial leadership was every bit as badly divided as the rest of the German Right over whom it should support in the upcoming presidential elections. As a result, Duisberg was able to raise only 269,100 marks for Hindenburg’s campaign by the second week of March with 100,000 marks of that sum coming from his own firm, the giant chemical conglomerate known as I.G. Farben. Other major contributors, 84 85

86 87 88 89

Duisberg, “Hindenburg – und die anderen,” n.d., WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, 76/9. In this respect, see Krupp to Duisberg, 29 Feb. 1932, HA Krupp Essen, FAH 23/793/79, and Siemens to Duisberg, 1 Mar. 1932, SAA Munich, 4/Lf 670. Both letters are also to be found in WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, Autographen-Sammlung. Reusch to Duisberg, 29 Feb. 1932, WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, 76/9. Springorum to Duisberg, 29 Feb. 1932, WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, 76/9. Vögler to Duisberg, 2 Mar. 1932, WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, 76/9. For an indication of such sentiment, see Brandi to Westarp, 18 Feb. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 11. For further details on the split within Germany’s industrial elite, see Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., “The Ruhrlade, Secret Cabinet of Heavy Industry in the Weimar Republic,” Central European History 3 (1970): 195–228, here 214–17.

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in addition to Krupp and Siemens, were the cigarette manufacturer Philip Reetsma and Johannes Vielmetter from the Knorr Braking Corporation (Knorr Bremse AG) with 25,000 marks each and Wilhelm Meinhardt of Osram Electrical Works with a contribution of another 20,000 marks.90 It was also common for bankers like Franz von Mendelssohn to bypass Duisberg altogether and make their donations directly to the government officials who were organizing Hindenburg’s reelection.91 This was also true of the opportunistic steel magnate Friedrich Flick, who donated between 450,000 and 950,000 marks to the Hindenburg campaign in the first and second rounds of voting, presumably in return for government assistance in rescuing the Gelsenkirchen Mining Works (Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG) and with it the United Steel Works from fiscal collapse.92 While the full extent of Flick’s support remains unclear,93 there can be little doubt that even with his apparent largesse contributions from German big business still lagged far behind what was needed to cover the costs of Hindenburg’s campaign, with the result that its 90

91 92 93

List of donors and their contributions, 9 Mar. 1932, WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, 76/9, reprinted in Tammen, I. G. Farben, 178. See also Vielmetter to Dietrich, 3 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dietrich, 226/93. For example, see Kempner to Dietrich, 4 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dietrich, 226/96. Flick to Duisberg, 14 Mar. 1932, WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, 76/9. In his deposition at Nuremberg Flick claimed that after meeting with Hitler in February 1932 he donated 450,000 marks to the Hindenburg campaign. See Flick’s deposition from 29 Nov. 1946 in the Trial of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, October 1946-April 1949, National Archives, Washington, DC (hereafter cited as NARA Washington, RG 238, Case 5, Verteidigungs-Dokumentenbuch I. In a subsequent deposition Flick claimed to have contributed an additional 500,000 marks to the Hindenburg campaign (see “Zahlungen und Spenden für politische Zwecke,” 6 June 1947, ibid) as well as another 20,000 marks to Schleicher on 23 Feb. 1932 (see receipt from 23 Feb. 1932, NARA Washington, ibid, doc. Fl-2). Flick’s motives in making these contributions can be inferred from his letter to Hugenberg, 19 July 1932, ibid. Flick’s claims were corroborated by the testimony of his onetime associate Otto Steinbrinck in his deposition at Nuremberg, 23 Jan. 1947, ibid, Verteidigungs-Dokumentenbuch I, vol. 10a, 3197. For further details, see the unpublished dissertation by Lisa M. Stallbaumer, “Strictly Business? The Flick Concern and ‘Aryanizations’: Corporate Expansion in the Nazi Era” (PhD Diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1995), 103–10. The author would like to thank Professor Stallbaumer for having shared the results of her research and the documentation upon which it was based. There is, as Stallbaumer suggests, good reason to suspect that Flick’s contributions were motivated by the desire to secure government assistance to rescue his business empire from fiscal collapse. In this respect, see Alfred Reckendrees and Kim Priemel, “Politik als productive Kraft? Die ‘Gelsenberg-Affäre’ und die Krise des FlickKonzerns (1931/32),” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 46/2 (2006): 63–93. On its political implications, see Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (Oxford, 1985), 254–57.

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managers had no alternative but to rely upon state finances if they had any hope of competing with Hitler and the NSDAP. On the morning of 1 March 1932 a small group of high-ranking government officials – Brüning, Groener, Schleicher, Pünder, Kempner, Reich Finance Minister Hermann Dietrich, and the Social Democratic Minister of the Interior for Prussia Carl Severing – met in the Reich chancery to discuss the upcoming presidential election and the task of organizing an effective propaganda campaign for Hindenburg. Of those present, none was more outspoken in his opposition to National Socialism than Severing. Only two days earlier Severing had outlined the danger that National Socialism – and particularly the SA – posed to the authority of the state at a meeting of high-level officials from the Prussian state government and stressed the importance of the upcoming presidential election for holding the Nazis in check.94 After some initial hesitation, the discussion came around to the question of how the campaign was to be financed and whether it would be appropriate to use state finances in support of Hindenburg’s candidacy. Those present were all in agreement that a decisive victory for Hindenburg and a campaign free from violent disturbances would greatly expedite Germany’s economic improvement and domestic political consolidation. Dietrich set the tone of the meeting when he stated with noticeable passion “that a governmental system that could not find the courage for its own self-preservation was not worth a shot of powder.”95 Although the meeting ended without any decision or commitment on the part of the national government, Dietrich assured Severing in a private conversation afterward that the necessary money would be forthcoming in the next few days. True to his word, Dietrich authorized the transfer of 1.8 million marks to Severing on 4 March with the understanding that the money was to be distributed among the various parties and organizations in Prussia that supported Hindenburg’s candidacy.96 By funneling the money to the Prussian government where it 94

95 96

Severing’s remarks at a meeting of Prussian government officials in the Prussian Ministry of Interior, 27 Feb. 1932, in Staat und NSDAP 1930–1932. Quellen zur Ära Brüning, eds. Ilse Maurer and Udo Wengst and with an introduction by Gerhard Schulz (Düsseldorf, 1977), 282–85. See also Thomas Alexander, Carl Severing – ein Demokrat und Sozialist in Weimar, 2 vols. (Frankfurt a.M., 1996), 988–1001. Carl Severing, Mein Lebensweg, 2 vols. (Cologne, 1950), 2: 324. Ibid. It is difficult to reconstruct government financing of the Hindenburg campaign. What seems clear from documents from the ministry of defense is that during the campaign 2.5 million marks were made available to Dietrich from funds that had been accumulated from savings in the budget. Of this amount 1.2 million marks were placed in a special account for the Reichswehr. Groener was not party to this arrangement and had

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would be deposited in a special fund for the defense of the republic, Dietrich could get around the strict accounting procedures that were in place at the national level and thus avoid close scrutiny as to how the money was being used. Among the organizations that benefitted from this stratagem were the Reich Banner Black-Red-Gold, the Prussian state organization of the German State Party, the socialist labor unions, and a loose alliance of small, pro-republican farmers’ unions known as the German Peasantry (Deutsche Bauernschaft).97 In this way, Dietrich and the Reich government were able to support organizations that would have been excluded from whatever Duisberg was able to raise for the United Hindenburg Committees. Next to finances the most important problem facing the Hindenburg campaign was lining up the support of the German press. Of all the factors that played a role in the 1932 presidential elections, none was more influential in shaping public opinion, as a recent study has argued, than the German press.98 In the very early stages of the campaign Fritz Klein from the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and Kurt Neven du Mont from the Kölnische Zeitung – two of Germany’s most influential

97

98

no knowledge of the transfer. See the copy of the letter from Schleicher apparently from September 1932 and an undated memorandum from Friedrich Fromm (Defense Ministry), both attached to Fromm to Groener, 28 Mar. 1933, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Groener, 145/68–71. According to another undated memo apparently from the time of Schleicher’s tenure as defense minister, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 22/125–28, 1.2 million marks of this money were placed at the disposal of the Prussian police in a special account entitled “Zur Bekämpfung des Verbrechertums” that was used to support the SPD, the Center, and the State Party against the NSDAP. Although the Severing Nachlaß in the Archiv der sozialen Demokratie at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in Bonn-Bad Godesberg contains nothing on the actual transactions with Dietrich and the Reich Finance Ministry, vol. 267 contains a number of documents from 1933 that shed light on the distribution of these funds. For example, see confirmations of money received from Oswald Riedel of the German State Party in Prussia, 6 Apr. 1933; Heinrich Lübke of the German Peasantry, 7 Apr. 1933; and Peter Grassmann from the ADGB, 7 Apr. 1933; as well as the record of Severing’s interrogation in connection with the investigation of the distribution of state funds for campaign purposes, 16 June 1933, and the correspondence between Severing and Lübke, 17–30 Jan. 1933. The author would like to express his gratitude to Sabine Kneib of the Archiv der sozialen Demokratie for having brought this material to his attention and provided him with copies of the relevant documentation. For a systematic review and analysis of the press coverage of the 1925 and 1932 presidential campaigns, see Jürgen Wilke and Christian Sprott, “‘Hindenburg wählen, Hitler schlagen!’: Wahlkampfkommunikation bei den Reichspräsidentenwahlen in der Weimarer Republik,” in Politik – Wissenschaft – Medien. Festschrift für Jürgen W. Falter zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Hanna Kaspar, Harald Schoen, Siegfried Schumann, and Jürgen R. Winkler (Wiesbaden, 2010), 276–306.

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newspapers – met with Sahm in an effort to mobilize the German press in support of Hindenburg’s candidacy.99 By enlisting the cooperation of much of the moderate bourgeois and liberal press throughout the country, they played a critical role in generating more than three million signatures for an appeal urging the aging Reich president to stand for reelection.100 But their efforts to organize a press campaign in support of Hindenburg’s reelection met with a series of major problems. In the first place, much of Germany’s provincial press was part of Hugenberg’s press empire, and once it became clear that the DNVP party chairman was not going to support Hindenburg’s bid for reelection, cooperation from this particular quarter was out of the question.101 Second, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung was experiencing serious financial difficulties of its own, and it was no longer clear whether Klein, as editor of the newspaper and a strong supporter of Hindenburg’s candidacy, could maintain his newspaper’s independence vis-à-vis the financial and economic interests that were struggling to gain control over it.102 Although Hugenberg’s efforts to add the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung to his own press empire were ultimately foiled by the vigorous opposition of Krupp and Ruhr heavy industry,103 the uncertainty over the paper’s future and the fact that Ruhr heavy industry still controlled 70 percent of the paper’s stock severely limited what Klein could do in support of Hindenburg’s candidacy and often obliged him to reject articles the Reich president’s supporters would like to have published on his behalf.104

99

100 101

102

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Sahm’s memoirs, entry for 23 and 27 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Sahm, 9/63–64, 67. See also Manfred Pohl, M. DuMont Schauberg. Der Kampf um die Unabhängigkeit des Zeitungsverlags unter der NS-Diktatur (Frankfurt and New York, 2009), 140. On the role of the press in the 1932 presidential elections, see Bernhard Fulda, Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic (Oxford, 2009), 190–94. There is no satisfactory study of the Hugenberg press in the Weimar Republic or its role in the 1932 presidential elections. For a useful, though problematic, introduction to the subject, see Klaus Wernecke and Peter Heller, Der vergessene Führer Alfred Hugenberg. Pressemacht und Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg, 1982), on the presidential elections, 173–74. On the struggle for control of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, see Humann to Hugo Stinnes, Jr., 11 Jan. and 24 Feb. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Hugo Stinnes, Sr., Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Politik, Sankt Augustin, Bestand I-220, A1467. For further information, see Wolfgang Ruge, “Die ‘Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung’ und die Brüning-Regierung. Zur Rolle des Großbourgeoisie bei der Vorbereitung des Faschismus,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 16 (1968): 19–53, esp. 44–50. For example, see Klein to Westarp, 7 Mar. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 4. In the same respect, see Michael to Klein, 29 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 376/238.

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A third factor complicating the relations between the Hindenburg campaign and the German press was the fact that two of the influential newspapers in Bavaria – the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten and the Fränkischer Kurier – were under the control of Paul Reusch, arguably the most politically active member of the Ruhr industrial elite and someone who felt little enthusiasm at the prospect of Hindenburg’s reelection.105 The Bavarian Hindenburg Committee operated independently of the leadership of the United Hindenburg Committees in Berlin, in large part because non-Nazi elements of the national opposition were weaker in Bavaria than in most other parts of the country.106 The Bavarian Middle Party, which functioned as the DNVP’s state affiliate, had virtually disappeared from the political landscape by the end of 1930,107 and the Bavarian Stahlhelm had been a negligible factor in Bavarian state politics until February 1930 when it absorbed the remnants of the League Bavaria and Reich (Bund Bayern und Reich).108 The Bavarian People’s Party, which had supported Hindenburg’s bid for the presidency in 1925, was the dominant force in Bavarian political life, contested only by the dynamism of the Nazi movement, and its leaders strongly supported the Reich president’s bid for reelection in the hope that a Hindenburg victory 105 106

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On Reusch’s involvement in the German press, see Kurt Koszyk, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945 (Berlin, 1972), 183–216. On the Bavarian political landscape in the early 1930s, see Wolfgang Zorn, Bayerns Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert. Von der Monarchie zum Bundesland (Munich, 1986), 329–40. The initial steps in the creation of the Bavarian Hindenburg Committee had been taken by the young conservative publicist Edgar Julius Jung, but Jung was subsequently pushed aside at the encouragement of Treviranus and the Berlin leadership of the Hindenburg campaign by a coterie headed by the former Munich police colonel Hans von Seisser. Jung subsequently resigned from the Bavarian Hindenburg Committee, in large part because of his insistence on the inclusion of the non-Nazi elements of the national opposition in the Hindenburg campaign. For further details, see Jung to Pechel, 15 Feb. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Rudolf Pechel, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Pechel), 78, as well as his letters to the members of the Hindenburg Committee and supporters of the Konservative Combat Association (Konservative Kampfgemeinschaft), 16 Feb. 1932, and Jung to Pechel, 29 Jan. and 24 Feb. 1932, all in the unpublished Nachlaß of Fritz Klein in the Akademiearchiv of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin. In this respect, see Elina Kiiskinen, Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei in Bayern (Bayerische Mittelpartei) in der Regierungspolitik des Freistaats während der Weimarer Republik (Munich, 2005), 354–94. On the unification of Bavaria’s paramilitary Right under the auspisces of the Stahlhelm, see the confidential report of the Bavarian state leadership of the Stahlhelm, 13 Apr. 1929, BA Berlin, R 72, 67/112–14, and Xylander (Bund Bayern und Reich) to the Stahlhelm, 7 May 1929, ibid. 158–60. See also James M. Diehl, Paramilitary Politics in the Weimar Republic (Bloomington, IN, 1977), 232–33.

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would somehow contain the spread of the Nazi bacillus in both Bavaria and the Reich at large.109 As Bavaria’s most influential independent newspaper, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten played an active role in the early stages of the Hindenburg campaign and collected more signatures than any other newspaper in the country for the appeal calling upon Hindenburg to stand for reelection.110 But this did not sit at all well with the Gutehoffnungshütte’s Paul Reusch, who sat on the advisory board, or Beirat, of the publishing house that owned the newspaper and who responded to problems with the newspaper’s Berlin office by imposing a set of political guidelines upon its board of editors in the face of stubborn resistance from senior staff members like Fritz Büchner, Anton Betz, Paul Nicholas Cossmann, and Baron Erwein von Aretin.111 There is even some evidence to suggest that Reusch may have even met with Hitler in his Berlin offices on 21 February, presumably in an attempt to assess Hitler himself and possibly to negotiate a truce, or Burgfrieden, between the Nazis and the newspaper whereby the latter would exercise greater restraint in its treatment of the Nazi party leader and would observe greater neutrality in its coverage of the presidential campaign. On this point, however, the record is far from conclusive.112 Clearly, pressure from German industry – and particularly pressure from the Ruhr industrial elite – inhibited influential German newspapers 109

110 111

112

The full extent of the BVP’s involvement in Hindenburg’s campaign for reelection remains a topic for further investigation. In the meantime, see Klaus Schönhoven, Die Bayerische Volkspartei 1924–1932 (Düsseldorf, 1972), 269–72, and Otto Altendorder, Fritz Schäffer als Politiker der Bayerischen Volkspartei 1888–1945, 2 vols. (Munich, 1993), 2: 593–98. Anton Betz, “Die Tragödie der ‘Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten’ 1932/33,” Journalismus 2 (1961): 22–46, esp. 28. Ibid, 28–29. See also Reusch to Cossmann, 5 Feb. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 4001012007/4, reprinted in Kurt Koszyk, “Paul Reusch und die ‘Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten.’Zum Problem Industrie und Presse in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 19 (1971): 75–103, esp. 87–88. For further details, see Peter Henkel, Anton Betz. Ein Verleger zwischen Weimar und Bonn (Düsseldorf, 2011), 147–58. On Reusch’s February meeting with Hitler, see Volker Hentschel, Weimars letzte Monate. Hitler und der Untergang der Republik (Düsseldorf, 1979), 122, n. 15, and Gustav Luntowski, Hitler und die Herren an der Ruhr. Wirtschaftsmacht und Staatsmacht im Dritten Reich (Frankfurt a.M., 2000), 262, n. 154. But this rests upon Reusch’s postwar testimony, which placed both this meeting and a later meeting that Reusch had with Hitler in March 1932 in the second half of 1932. There is no corraboration of such a meeting in Reusch’s personal papers, and both Turner, German Big Business, 429, n. 16, and Reusch’s biographer Peter Langer, e-mail to the author, 4 June 2012, are skeptical that the meeting in February ever took place.

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like the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten from supporting Hindenburg’s candidacy as vigorously as their editors and staff would have liked. Other nominally independent newspapers like the Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung that stood under the influence of Brandi and Ruhr heavy industry routinely refused to have anything to do with the Hindenburg campaign as long as the right-wing opposition was not also involved.113 The architects of the Hindenburg campaign experienced similar problems with respect to the Lutheran Church hierarchy. In the week prior to the first round of voting on 13 March Horst Michael, an aspiring young historian at the University of Berlin who functioned as a self-appointed liaison between the Berlin leadership of the United Hindenburg Committees and the Lutheran Church, approached Hermann Kapler and the Lutheran Supreme Church Council (Evangelischer Oberkirchenrat) in an attempt to mobilize German Protestants in support of Hindenburg’s candidacy. But Kapler, who had signed the original appeal urging Hindenburg to stand for reelection, complained that he had received so many hostile attacks from the leaders of the state churches, or Landeskirchen, as well as from pastors with National Socialist and German Nationalist sympathies that he could do no more than he had already done and referred the question to Georg Burghart, the vice president of the Supreme Church Council.114 Although Burghart had also signed the appeal urging Hindenburg to become a candidate for reelection, he now proceeded to draft a statement in which he categorically rejected church involvement in the presidential elections and refused to recognize Hindenburg or the office he held as a legitimate authority, or Obrigkeit, to whom the Lutheran faithful owed unqualified obedience.115 In their efforts to mobilize the support of German Protestants, the architects of the Hindenburg campaign relied heavily upon the resources of the Christian-Social People’s Service. Founded in December 1929 through the fusion of the Christian People’s Service (Christlicher Volksdienst), the Christian-Social Reich Association (Christlich-soziale

113 114 115

In this respect, see the letter from the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Eugen Mündler to Jung, 1 Feb. 1932, BHStA Munich, Abt. V, NL Jung, 29. Michael to Meissner, 9 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 376/139–40. For the text of Michael’s proposed appeal to German Protestants, see Michael, “Hindenburg, der Herr,” n.d. [Mar. 1932], ibid, 137–38. See also Jonathan Wright, ‘Above Parties’: The Political Attitudes of the German Protestant Church Leadership, 1918–1933 (Oxford, 1974), 105–06.

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Reichsvereinigung), and several smaller Christian-Social organizations,116 the CSVD conceived of itself as the Protestant counterpart to the Catholic Center Party and sought to infuse all aspects of German public life – and in particular the political – with the spirit of the Evangelium.117 The leaders of the CSVD, many of whom had left the DNVP in the two secessions of 1929 and 1930, rejected the all-or-nothing tactics of the national opposition and strongly supported the Brüning government in its efforts to reform German finances and to put an end to Germany’s reparations burden through direct negotiations with the allies.118 Wilhelm Simpfendörfer and the leaders of the CSVD also felt a strong attachment to Hindenburg and were among the first to call upon the Reich president to stand for reelection.119 For Simpfendörfer and his colleagues, Hindenburg had already achieved what the forces of the Harzburg Front had been demanding, namely, an end to the party mismanagement of Germany’s national affairs and the creation of a more authoritarian leadership style in which the abuses of parliamentary power had been effectively curtailed.120 CSVD leaders were quick to become actively involved in the campaign preparations of the United Hindenburg Committees,121 and once the campaign was under way, they worked tirelessly for the Reich president’s reelection. For example, in the county, or Grafschaft, of Bentheim and Emsland, two small districts in Lower Saxony where the CSVD had scored remarkable gains at the expense of the DNVP in the 1930 Reichstag elections, local party leaders braved harassment by Nazi agitators to establish a number of new precinct organizations and schedule a series 116

117

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On the founding of the CSVD, see Um die neue Front. Die Vereinigung der Stöckerschen Christlich-Sozialen mit dem Christlichen Volksdienst. Ein Rückblick auf die Berliner Verhandlungen vom 27./28. Dezember 1929, Schriften des Christlichen Volksdienstes, no. 5 (Korntal-Stuttgart, n.d. [1930]), particularly the speeches by Mumm, Veidt, and Simpfendörfer, 26–36, as well as the standard study on the CSVD by Günter Opitz, Der Christlich-soziale Volksdienst. Versuch einer protestantischen Partei in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1969), 150–55. For an elaborate statement of the CSVD’s ideological objectives, see Paul Bausch, Die politischen Gegenwartsaufgaben des Christlich-sozialen Volksdienstes. Vortrag, gehalten auf der Reichsvertretertagung des Christl.-sozialen Volksdienstes in Kassel zu Ostern 1930, Schriften des Christlich-sozialen Volksdienstes, no. 8 (Korntal-Stuttgart, n.d. [1930]), esp. 22–26. Simpfendörfer, “Die nationale und staatspolitische Einstellung des Volksdienstes. Rede am 24. Februar 1932,” Tägliche Rundschau, 1 Mar. 1932, no. 51. Simpfendörfer’s introductory statement at the meeting of the CSVD national leadership, 2 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, NL Mumm, 330/347–50. Simpfendörfer, “Die Harzburger Front gegen Hindenburg!” Der Volksdienst. Organ des Christlich-sozialen Volksdienstes für Bayern, 20 Feb. 1932, no. 8. For example, see Lambach to Mumm, 1 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, NL Mumm, 258/30–31.

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of public rallies that featured Walther Lambach and Else Ulbrich from the CSVD delegations to the Reichstag and Prussian Landtag respectively as the main speakers.122 Although the CSVD had suffered substantial losses to the NSDAP over the course of the previous two years, Simpfendörfer and the Christian-Socials brought a sense of passion and commitment to the Hindenburg campaign that none of the other parties were able to match. In a parallel effort, the United Hindenburg Committees also sought to mobilize the support of Germany’s young conservative intelligentsia in support of Hindenburg’s candidacy. Of the various young conservative journals in the late Weimar Republic, none enjoyed the unique stature of Der Ring, the official organ of the German Lords’ Club and one of Germany’s most highly regarded conservative journals. Heinrich von Gleichen, the journal’s editor in chief, and Bodo von Alvensleben, president of the German Lords’ Club, had championed Hindenburg’s election to the Reich presidency in 1925 as the first step toward the dismemberment of Weimar parliamentarism and its replacement by a more authoritarian system of government in which the exercise of executive authority was no longer subject to the vicissitudes of constantly shifting party configurations in the Reichstag. Unlike those on the radical Right, the leaders of the Lords’ Club did not disparage Hindenburg for his performance as Reich president but, their sharp criticism of Brüning’s political course notwithstanding, praised the Reich president for the leadership he had demonstrated in appointing Brüning as the first chancellor to govern independently of parliament.123 Both Gleichen and Alvensleben were quick to declare their support for Hindenburg’s candidacy at the same time that they publicly castigated Hugenberg for the failure of the German Right to unite behind the Reich president’s bid for reelection.124 Throughout all of this, the leaders of the Lords’ Club continued to hope that the Stahlhelm could be persuaded to drop its

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123

124

In this respect, see the detailed regional study of the CSVD in the two districts by Helmut Lensing, “Der Christlich-Soziale Volksdienst in der Grafschaft Bentheim und im Emsland. Die regionale Geschichte einer streng protestantischen Partei in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik,” Emslandische Geschichte 9 (2001): 63–132, esp. 89–94. “Hindenburg,” Der Ring 5, no. 1 (1 Jan. 1932): 3. For further information, see Yuji Ishida, Jungkonservative in der Weimarer Republik. Der Ring-Kreis 1928–1933 (Frankfurt a.M., 1988), 171–85, and Berthold Petzinna, Erziehung zum deutschen Lebensstil. Ursprung und Entwicklung des jungkonservativen “Ring”-Kreises 1918–1933 (Berlin, 2000), 252–54. Alvensleben, “Bahn frei für die Entscheidung,” Der Ring, 5, no. 6 (5 Feb. 1932): 87.

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opposition to Hindenburg’s candidacy and that the differences separating Hindenburg and the national opposition could be overcome.125 But when this failed to materialize, Der Ring continued to support Hindenburg – even to the point of opening its columns for several of Michael’s appeals to German Protestants and other sectors of Germany’s conservative intelligentsia126 – in the expectation that, once reelected, he would initiate the reorganization of the national government and the far-reaching realignment of forces on the German Right for which they had been hoping.127 Perhaps the most successful of the various efforts to line up Germany’s conservative intelligentsia in support of Hindenburg’s candidacy was the appeal that seventy-four established members of the German historical profession published just days before the first round of voting. At the top of the list of signatories stood the names of two men from the history faculty at Berlin’s Humboldt University, Erich Marcks and Friedrich Meinecke, the first a politically unaffiliated conservative who epitomized the national tradition in German historical writing and the second a member of the German State Party who continued to identify himself with the basic values and aspirations of the German liberal movement.128 Not only was the choice of Marcks and Meinecke designed to underscore the nonpartisan character of Hindenburg’s support, but the appeal also stressed the extent to which Hindenburg had risen from the best of the Prussian tradition “to represent and engage the state and nation in their entirety, transcending all parties, all classes, and all divisions.” Not even Germany’s finest historians, trained to the highest standards of historical scholarship, were adverse to invoking Hindenburg’s mythic stature or his value as a symbol of German unity at a time when the nation appeared fragmented beyond repair. “We, the undersigned German historians,”

125 126 127

128

Gleichen to Schleicher, 2 Mar. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 7/76. For example, see “Hindenburg und die Nation,” Der Ring 5, no. 10 (4 Mar. 1932): 160; and “Reichspräsident und Reichswehr,” ibid, no. 11 (11 Mar. 1932): 171. “Um den Sinn der Reichspräsidentenwahl,” Der Ring 5, no. 9 (26 Feb. 1932): 137–38. See also Gleichen to Pünder, 3 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/148, as well as Gleichen to Luther, 12 Mar. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Hans Luther, Bundesarchiv, Koblenz, 341. Given Meinecke’s status as Germany’s most influential historian of the first half of the twentieth century, it is surprising that little has been written on his politics during the Weimar Republic. The only serious study remains Robert A. Pois, Friedrich Meinecke and German Politics in the Twentieth Century (Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, and London, 1972), 86–130. See also the excellent study of Marcks by Jens Nordalm, Historismus und moderne Welt. Erich Marcks (1861–1938) in der deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft (Berlin, 2003), esp. 358–64.

238

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concluded the appeal, “pledge ourselves to [Hindenburg’s] support and appeal for the consolidation [Sammlung] of Germany around his trusted and powerful personality.”129 The historians’ appeal of 11 March 1932 was but one more example of the way in which Hindenburg’s campaign had been organized around the Hindenburg mythos. From Braun and the Social Democrats on the Left, to Brüning and Hermann Dietrich in the mddle, to the United Hindenburg Committees on the Right, Hindenburg’s supporters structured a campaign that sought first and foremost to energize the charismatic appeal of a public myth that had been set in place long before Hindenburg’s election to the Reich presidency in 1925.130 Hindenburg was routinely portrayed as a man whose basic values had been shaped by the PrussianGerman tradition of the Second Empire but who now, free from the pettiness of German party politics, served as a symbol around which the entire German nation could unite in its quest for the spiritual and political rebirth that would heal the divisions at home and return it to great power status abroad.131 One of the virtues of this myth was that it conveniently papered over the divisions that existed within the ranks of the Hindenburg campaign. In the final analysis, it was impossible to reconcile the objectives of those who supported Hindenburg on the assumption that his reelection would shield Germany’s beleaguered republican order against the storm of the radical Right with the aspirations of those who, on the other hand, believed that his reelection would not only confirm the authoritarian course that Hindenburg charted with the appointment of the Brüning cabinet in the spring of 1930 but that, once reelected, he would reach an understanding with the forces of the national opposition that would pave the way to their entry into the government. To be sure, 129

130

131

“74 deutsche Historiker für Hindenburg,” Germania, 12 Mar. 1932, no. 72. See also Marcks to Hindenburg, 5 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 375/152–53. The episode is mentioned briefly in Karen Schönwälder, Historiker und Politik. Geschichtswissenschaft im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt a.M and New York, 1992), 24–25. On the charismatic foundations of Hindenburg’s mythic stature, see the essay by Wolfram Pyta, “Paul von Hindenburg als charismatischer Führer der deutschen Nation,” in Charismatische Führer der deutschen Nation, ed. Frank Möller (Munich, 2004), 109–47, as well as the parallel study by Jesko von Hoegen, Der Held von Tannenberg. Genese und Funktion des Hindenburg-Mythos (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2007). For an elaboration of these motifs, see Erich Marcks, “Hindenburg,” in Wo stehen wir? Deutsche Historiker über Deutschland 1918 bis 1932, special issue of the Süddeutsche Rundschau 29, no. 6 (Mar. 1932): 451–55. In a similar vein, see the pamphlet by another signatory Ernst Reisinger, Hindenburg und das deutsche Volk. Rede gehalten zur Reichspräsidentenwahl am 13. März 1932 (Munich, n.d. [1932]), esp. 4–8, 14–16.

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this would provide Hindenburg’s opponents with fissures they could easily exploit in their efforts to defeat him at the polls. The only problem, however, was that Hindenburg’s opponents were even more deeply divided than those who supported him. The extent to which the charisma of his chief rival for the Reich presidency, Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler, would succeed in overcoming these divisions remained to be seen.

8 Disarray on the Radical Right

The impressive array of forces that had united behind Hindenburg’s candidacy presented the leaders of the national opposition with a formidable challenge. The fact that both the Social Democrats and Germany’s two Catholic parties, the Center and the Bavarian People’s Party, had aligned themselves with the Hindenburg campaign provided the Reich president with the support of two large electoral blocs that commanded between 30 and 40 percent of the German electorate. This meant that the outcome of the election would hinge upon the extent to which the leaders of the United Hindenburg Committees would be able to mobilize the support of those elements in the middle and moderate Right that were not affiliated with either of these two blocs but were represented by political parties like the German State Party, the German People’s Party, the Business Party, the Christian-National Peasants and Farmer’s Party, and the Christian-Social People’s Service. This would then become the battleground on which the outcome of the election on 13 March 1932 would be ultimately decided. For the forces of the national opposition, on the other hand, it was imperative that they not only mobilize their own supporters but also secure a breakthrough into the ranks of those elements that stood between themselves and the two large electoral blocs to their left if they had any hope of preventing Hindenburg’s election in the first round of voting. In this regard, Duesterberg’s candidacy would prove crucial. If Duesterberg succeeded in capturing the votes of a sufficiently large number of conservative nationalists who would not have voted for Hitler to prevent Hindenburg from achieving a first-round victory, then it would have been a success in the eyes of both the Stahlhelm and Hugenberg. For Hitler and the leaders of the Nazi party, on the other hand, the 240

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struggle was not just between Hitler and Hindenburg for the Reich presidency but also between Hitler and the leaders of the non-Nazi Right over the leadership of the national movement. The Nazis were supremely confident of their chances both of winning the election and of establishing their primacy within the national opposition. Hugenberg and the leaders of the Stahlhelm were embittered by the way in which Hitler had sabotaged the unity of the national opposition by declaring his own candidacy for the Reich presidency. Convinced that neither Hindenburg nor Hitler could win an absolute majority in the first round of voting,1 the leaders of the DNVP and Stahlhelm came together to form the Combat Bloc Black-White-Red (Kampfblock Schwarz-WeißRot) as a nonpartisan platform on which all of those who stood between the two candidates could unite.2 But Duesterberg’s campaign was hampered from the outset by a variety of factors, not the least of which was the fact that he lacked the personal charisma of either Hindenburg or Hitler. In dealing with Hindenburg the leaders of the Stahlhelm were uncertain as to how they should tackle the iconic stature of the man upon whom they had conferred an honorary presidency in 1924. Duesterberg in particular felt a deep sense of loyalty to the aging Reich president and had even vowed as efforts to block his nomination for reelection were reaching a climax that “the Stahlhelm would never go against Hindenburg.”3 But there was little fondness for Hindenburg among the leaders of the Stahlhelm’s state and provincial organizations where disappointment over his performance as Reich president severely limited Duesterberg’s freedom of movement.4 Although the Stahlhelm leadership instructed their subordinates to refrain from directly attacking either the Reich president or Hitler,5 this did not keep them from drawing attention to what they saw as a tragic contradiction between Hindenburg’s record of undisputed heroism during the Great War and his betrayal of the national cause in his seven years as Reich president. Hindenburg’s failure to

1 2 3 4

5

Gilsa to Reusch, 22 Feb. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 1930, NL Reusch, 400101290/4b. DNVP, Mitteilung der Parteizentrale, no. 5, 7 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL SchmidtHannover, 29. Entry for 10 Feb. 1932, in the report by Enckevort, “Die Wahl Hindenburgs,” 18 Apr. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Enckevort, 1/9–11. In this respect, see Eulenberg’s report of 1 Mar. 1932 on the meeting of the leaders of the Stahlhelm’s state and provincial organizations on 14 Feb. 1932, appended to his letter to Lenz, 12 Mar. 1932, BHStA Munich, Abt. V, Stahlhelm, 42/II. Bayerischer Stahlhelm, “Richtlinien für die Reichspräsidentenwahl,” 24 Feb. 1932, BHStA Munich, Abt. IV, Stahlhelm, 137/II.

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remove Brüning as chancellor was only the most recent example of his inability to break with the “system parties” and to realign himself with the forces of Germany’s national renewal.6 Duesterberg, on the other hand, was portrayed as a professional soldier who had been schooled in the best of the Prussian tradition and who, after the humiliation of 1918, had entered the political arena to crush the forces of social and political revolution in central Germany and to launch the great freedom movement of the German nation with the founding of the DNVP and Stahlhelm. Embodying the unity of the national front in word and deed, Duesterberg was hailed as a German Volksführer who transcended the various cleavages within the national opposition and was thus preeminently positioned to lead the nation in the final and decisive stage of its struggle for the restoration of its political and military sovereignty.7 Efforts to portray Duesterberg as a Volksführer, as a leader of the people, paled miserably in comparison to the charismatic appeal of Hindenburg and Hitler. Moreover, Duesterberg’s supporters lacked the financial resources that were at the disposal of his two major rivals. Although the Stahlhelm immediately transferred 100,000 marks from a special reserve fund to the Duesterberg campaign,8 its candidate never had access to the resources of those who were bankrolling the Hindenburg campaign or an organization like the one the NSDAP used to finance the Hitler campaign.9 At the same time, the DNVP was at the end of its financial reserves and was in no shape whatsoever to bear the costs of the campaign.10 Still, Hugenberg and the leaders of the DNVP were elated over the alliance with the Stahlhelm. Not only had Duesterberg’s candidacy relieved Hugenberg of the odious task of having to stand for election 6

7

8 9

10

H[übotter], “Warum wählen wir den Kameraden Duesterberg? Die Reichspräsidentenwahl,” n.d., appended to the circular from Hans Hübotter of the Stahlhelm’s propaganda department, “Merkblatt zur ‘Duesterberg-Wahl.’ Wie werbe ich für Duesterberg?,” 25 Feb. 1932, BHStA Munich, Abt. V, NL Dziembowksi, 23. “Warum Duesterberg?,” n.d. [Feb–Mar. 1932], Stahlhelm-Flugblatt, no. 2, BA Koblenz, NL Weilnböck, 38b. See also Seldte, “Parole Duesterberg!,” Der Stahlhelm, 28 Feb. 1932, no. 8. Duesterberg’s unpublished memoirs, BA Koblenz, NL Duesterberg, 47/171. On the financing of the Hindenburg campaign, see the previous chapter. The finances of the Nazi party have been discussed in so far as existing documentation permits by Horst Matzerath and Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., “Die Selbstfinanzierung der NSDAP 19301932,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 3 (1977): 59–92. On the state of the DNVP’s finances, see the report by Scheibe, “Niederschrift über den Finanzbericht in der Parteivorstandssitzung in Stettin am 18. September 1931,” NSStA Osnabrück, C1, 23/298–309, as well as the report from Blank to Reusch, 27 Nov. 1931, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 4001012024/9.

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himself,11 but Duesterberg also belonged to the DNVP and agreed to have a member of the party speak alongside him at all his public engagements.12 The Nationalists were also relieved to know that they could now count upon the Stahlhelm’s undivided support in the state elections that were scheduled to take place in Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, and several smaller states toward the end of April.13 Speaking at a Duesterberg rally in Halle on 28 February, the DNVP’s Otto Schmidt-Hannover left no doubt about what his party expected from its alliance with the Stahlhelm: The alliance with the Stahlhelm has been concluded not just for the presidential elections but for the coming parliamentary elections as well. The German National People’s Party will deploy its entire propaganda apparatus for the election of the German Nationalist Stahlhelm leader Duesterberg. The Stahlhelm will support the German Nationalist ticket in the coming parliamentary elections. The conduct of the political negotiations throughout the presidential campaign will lie in the hands of Dr. Hugenberg. . . .14

But Schmidt-Hannover’s claims about the extent to which the Stahlhelm was prepared to cooperate with the DNVP provoked an immediate reaction from those within the Stahlhelm who regarded the alliance with the DNVP as a violation of its statutes and were unequivocally opposed to any agreement that would bind their organization too tightly to the DNVP beyond the tenure of Duesterberg’s candidacy.15 Even Seldte who had been party to the agreement with the DNVP expressed grave concerns about placing responsibility for the political leadership of the Combat Bloc in Hugenberg’s hands,16 while one senior Stahlhlem leader, Heinz Brauweiler, was so discouraged by news of the alliance with the DNVP that he drafted letters of resignation to Seldte and Stephani finally without, however, ever sending them.17

11 12 13 14 15

16 17

Hugenberg to Einem, 11 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 72a, also in BA-MA Freiburg, NL Einem, 29/83–84. Circular from Schmidt-Hannover to the DNVP’s parliamentary delegations and regional organizations, 24 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Weilnböck, 38b. For the details of this alliance, see DNVP, Mitteilung der Parteizentrale, no. 2, Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 28. The text of Schmidt-Hannover’s comments is reproduced in DNVP, Mitteilung der Parteizentrale, no. 2, Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 28. Particularly outspoken in this regard was Heinrich Mahnken, leader of the Stahlhelm in the Rhineland. For example, see his letter to Seldte, Duesterberg, and Wagner, 16 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 295/149–50. Seldte to Wagner, 19 Feb. 1932, StA Mönchen-Gladbach, NL Brauweiler, 109. Brauweiler to Seldte, 23 Feb. 1932, and to Stephani, 23 Feb. 1932, both in StA MönchenGladbach, NL Brauweiler, 109.

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

The Stahlhelm’s relations with Hitler and the NSDAP were no less problematic than they were in the case of the DNVP. Relations between the leaders of the Stahlhelm and the NSDAP had soured considerably since Harzburg, and Duesterberg in particularl was deeply resentful of the way in which Hitler had consistently slighted the Stahlhelm both before and during the negotiations that had led to the collapse of the Harzburg Front in February 1932.18 To be sure, Duesterberg and the leaders of the Stahlhelm did their best to preserve the appearance of good relations with the NSDAP for the sake of cooperation once the elections were over. For example, the Stahlhelm went to great lengths to deny a report in the Social Democratic press about the strong anti-Nazi statements that Franz von Stephani, the leader of the Berlin Stahlhelm, had allegedly made at a major Duesterberg rally in the Berlin Sportpalast on 4 March 1932.19 But the Nazis saw no advantage in preserving good relations with the DNVP, Stahlhelm, and other organizations on the non-Nazi Right. With little hope of securing a major breakthrough into the ranks of either the Social Democrats or Communists, the Nazis concentrated their efforts on eliminating Duesterberg as a rival for the votes of the disaffected middle classes so that the final confrontation between Hindenburg and Hitler for leadership of the anti-Marxist Right could take place. Duesterberg was thus dismissed as “the candidate of the national splinterers” who stood no chance of being elected and whose neutralization constituted an essential perquisite for a Hitler victory.20 Building upon the high drama that had accompanied Goebbels’ carefully orchestrated announcement of Hitler’s candidacy on 23 February, the Nazi party leadership entered the campaign full of confidence.21 Direction of the campaign lay in the hands of Goebbels and the NSDAP

18

19 20 21

On the strain in relations between the Stahlhelm and NSDAP, see the correspondence between Seldte, Duesterberg, and Hitler, 23 Nov.–1 Dec. 1931, BA Berlin, R 72, 271/ 27–32, as well as Herbert von Sydow, Nationalsozialist oder Stahlhelmmann? Seldte oder Hitler? Eine Stimme aus der vordersten Front der nationalen Bewegung (Hirschberg, n.d. [1932]), and Hugo von Lamezan-Schönmoor, Stahlhelm u. NSDAP. Soldatentum oder Parlamentarismus. Minderheit oder Masse. Vortrag, gehalten auf der Führertagung des Stahlhelms, Landesverband Nordmark, am 28. Februar 1932 in Itzehoe (Itzehoe, n.d. [1932]). DNVP, Mitteilungen der Parteizentrale, no. 2, Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL SchmidtHannover, 28. Goebbels, “Rundschreiben der Reichspropaganda-Leitung der NSDAP an alle Gau-und Gaupropaganda-Leitungen,” 25 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 26, 287. For example, see the entry for 23 Feb. 1932, in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, Teil 1, Bd. 2/II (Munich, 2004), 224–25.

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Reich Propaganda Leadership (Reichspropaganda-Leitung or RPL) and was closely coordinated with Hitler at all stages. Since assuming command of the Reich Propaganda Leadership at the beginning of 1930, Goebbels had succeeded in creating an elaborate vertical structure that effectively subordinated the party’s local and regional organizations to the directives of the RPL. The Nazis were thus able to wage a thoroughly modern and highly centralized campaign that relied upon the most sophisticated political organization in all of Germany to carry their message to all corners of the country. The strategy of the Nazi party leadership was communicated to the NSDAP’s district and regional offices through a series of directives that emanated from the Reich Propaganda Leadership.22 For the most part, however, the Nazis wasted little time on the Social Democrats and the Communists. To be sure, the Marxist Left with all its alleged links to the forces of international Jewry served as a convenient foil the Nazis used to mobilize the frustration and anger that those who had been hurt by the great depression felt toward the existing political system.23 But it was what Goebbels called “the national Germany,” that is those forces between the Marxist Left and Hitler, that served as the primary focus for the Nazi campaign. When Goebbels first formulated the general outlines of the NSDAP’s strategy for the presidential campaign in February 1932, there was only a vague allusion to the possibility of a Hitler candidacy.24 Instead, Goebbels’ strategy was predicated upon the assumption that the Social Democrats and more moderate bourgeois parties would unite behind a single candidate to oppose whomever the forces of the national opposition might choose to nominate as their candidate. But who that might be was not clear. At this point the NSDAP’s objective was not necessarily 22

23

24

On the national coordination of the Hitler campaign with particular emphasis on the role of the NSDAP Reich Propaganda Leadership, see Detlef Mühlberger, “Central Control versus Regional Autonomy: A Case Study of Nazi Propaganda in Westphalia, 1925– 1932,” in The Formation of the Nazi Constituency, 1919–1933, ed. Thomas Childers (Totowa, NJ, 1986), 64–103, esp. 86–91, as well as two older studies by Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, 1919–1933 (Pittsburgh, PA, 1969), 204–06, 248–49, and Wolfgang Horn, Führerideologie und Parteiorganisation in der NSDAP (Düsseldorf, 1972), 340–53. The extraordinary efficiency of the Nazi campaign has been underscored in the regional study by Jeremy Noakes, The Nazi Party in Lower Saxony, 1921–1933 (Oxford, 1971), 210–15. For example, see the text of Hitler’s speech in Hamburg, 1 Mar. 1932, reprinted in Adolf Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen. Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933, ed. Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 5 vols. in 12 parts (Munich, London, New York, and Paris, 1992-98), IV/ 3, 153–64, esp. 158–59. Entry for 3 Feb. 1932 in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 209–10.

246

Hitler versus Hindenburg

to elect Hitler or any other Nazi to the Reich presidency but to drive a wedge between Hindenburg and Brüning and, failing that, to force Hindenburg from the Reich presidency. In the meantime, the Nazis were perfectly content to wait for the proper moment to announce whom they would support, whether that person might be Hitler or someone else.25 But as things unfolded in the second week of February and as it became clear that Hindenburg would stand for reelection, Goebbels became more and more confident that Hitler might very well win the election and worked vigorously behind the scenes to assuage whatever reservations the Nazi party leader might have had about challenging the venerable hero of Tannenberg for the Reich presidency.26 Had it not been for Goebbels’ constant urging, it is not altogether certain that Hitler would have found the resolve to stand for election.27 By the time that Hitler decided to challenge Hindenburg for the presidency, the NSDAP Reich Propaganda Leadership was already gearing up for the campaign.28 The duel between Goebbels and Brüning in the Reichstag on 22–23 February was the prelude to Goebbels’ declaration of Hitler’s candidacy and had been carefully worked out with the Nazi party leader in advance.29 The general tone of the NSDAP’s campaign against Hindenburg was set by Hitler in an open letter to the Reich president on 28 February 1932 in which he took issue with the allegedly unfair charges that the Social Democrats had leveled against the Nazi party leader a day earlier in their declaration of support for Hindenburg’s candidacy.30 Hitler’s letter was a clear attempt to embarrass the Reich president and his more conservative supporters for having accepted the support of the Social Democrats, one of the parties that had opposed his election in 1925 but that now embraced his candidacy as the last reliable

25 26 27

28 29 30

Ibid. Nowhere is the frustration that Goebbels felt over Hitler’s indecision than in the entry in his diary for 22 Feb. 1932, ibid, 2/II, 224. For the best discussion of the role that Goebbels played in persuading Hitler to become a candidate for the Reich presidency, see Peter Longerich, Joseph Goebbels: Biographie (Berlin, 2011), 178–80. Also useful for this phase in Goebbels’ career is the recent study by Simone Richter, Joseph Goebbels – der Journalist. Darstellung sines publizistischen Werdegangs 1923 bis 1933 (Stuttgart, 2010), esp. 380–91. In this respect, see Goebbels, “Denkschrift der R.P.L. zur Reichspräsidentenwahl 1. Wahlgang 13. März 1932,” n.d. [4 Feb. 1932], BA Berlin, NS 26, 565. In this respect, see the entries in Goebbels’ diary, 21–23 Feb. 1932, in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 223–25. Hitler to Hindenburg, 28 Feb. 1932, reprinted in Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, IV/3, 145–50.

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bulwark against the rising tide of German fascism.31 Not only did Hitler ridicule the Social Democrats for supporting a man whom seven years earlier they had rejected as “too old,” but the Social Democratic embrace of Hindenburg’s candidacy as “the lesser of two evils” was singled out as symptomatic of the moral bankruptcy that went to the core of the existing political system. This was a bankruptcy in which Hindenburg himself was complicit by virtue of his willingness to let his name and reputation be used by the Center and Social Democrats to prop up the last vestiges of a system to which they and the November criminals of 1918 had given birth.32 This would become a recurrent theme in the ensuing campaign as the Nazis tried to transform the antipathy of those who had voted for Hindenburg in 1925 toward the Social Democrats into support for Hitler. Claiming that he would never have run for the presidency had not Hindenburg become a candidate,33 Hitler was nevertheless circumspect in his references to Hindenburg or in challenging the historic stature of one who had served Germany so nobly during the Great War. Repeatedly evoking his own pedigree as one who had been transformed by his baptism of fire in the trenches of World War I and who had built out of seven men the greatest mass movement in the history of the German people,34 Hitler asked who was better suited to rescue the German nation from the thirteen years of misery and humiliation it had suffered at the hands of the existing political system: he who had allowed his name and reputation to be used to prop up the existing political system or he who personified the spirit of Germany’s rebirth.35 It was, as Hitler reminded his audience in a speech in Hamburg at the beginning of the campaign, not simply a question of giving the German people a new Reich president but making certain that this Reich president “becomes the trailblazer [Wegbereiter] of the new Germany. . . .” Then, on the question of Hindenburg, Hitler clarified his position with the following statement: “The

31

32 33 34

35

“Schlagt Hitler!” Vorwärts, 27 Feb. 1932, no. 97, quoted at length in Heinrich August Winkler, Der Weg in die Katastrophe. Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1930 bis 1933 (Berlin and Bonn, 1987), 512–13. Text of Hitler’s speech at a Nazi party rally in Hamburg, 1 Mar. 1932, reprinted in Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, IV/3, 153–64, here 160–61. Ibid, 160. This was a recurrent theme in many of Hitler’s campaign speeches in both the first and second rounds of voting. For example, see the text of Hitler’s speeches in Bad Blankenburg, 5 Mar. 1932, and Nuremberg, 7 Mar. 1932, ibid, 183, 192. For example, see the text of Hitler’s speech in Breslau, 3 Mar. 1932, ibid, 169–70.

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general field marshal of the World War I revere; the Reich President von Hindenburg I do not judge; the candidate for the future I reject.”36 Aside from Goebbels’ tirade against Hindenburg’s Jewish supporters in his Reichstag speech of 23 February,37 antisemitism did not play a particularly prominent role in the Hitler campaign. Both Hitler and Goebbels exercised remarkable restraint in their public statements and carefully avoided direct references to the so-called Jewish question. No doubt Hitler and his entourage were well aware of the limited effectiveness of antisemitism as a technique of mass mobilization and were fearful of alienating potential supporters if they moved the “Jewish question” to the forefront of the campaign.38 This did not, however, prevent the Nazis from deploying the social and cultural codes of antisemitic discourse in their efforts to discredit Hindenburg as a candidate of what Goebbels called “the national Germany.”39 A case in point was a handbill circulated by the NSDAP Reich Propaganda Leadership that depicted a man who obviously fit the Nazi stereotype of the Jew spitting on a Hitler attired in the uniform of a front soldier of the Great War and bearing signs of the wounds he had suffered in service to his nation. Another depicted four men whose physiognomy clearly fit the Nazi image of the Jew sitting in arm chairs reading different versions of what Goebbels called the “Berlin asphalt press" with the caption: “Herr Reich president, you will have to get used to this company! We, however, are voting for the worker and front soldier Adolf Hitler!” A third bearing the caption “Hindenburg Voters” portrayed Wilhelm Dittmann, Arthur Crispien, and Alfred Grzesinski – the first two actively involved in the revolutionary events of 1918–19 and the last the Social Democratic chief of the Prussian police since November 1930 – much in the same way that Jews had been portrayed in other Nazi campaign graphics, and finally one with the likeness of a man with who wore the sidelocks, beard, hat, and dress of an orthodox Jew carrying the caption: “Still another Hindenburg voter.”40 36 37 38 39

40

Text of Hitler’s speech at a Nazi party rally in Hamburg, 1 Mar. 1932, reprinted in Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, IV/3, 153–64, the quote from 161. Joseph Goebbels, Goebbels-Reden, ed. Helmut Heiber, 2 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1971-72), 1: 4–21. For an elaboration of this argument, see Sarah Gordon, Hitler, Germans and the “Jewish Question” (Princeton, NJ., 1984), 67–71. On antisemitism as a cultural code, see Shulamit Volkov, “Antisemitism as a Cultural Code: Reflections on the History and Historiography of Antisemitism in Imperial Germany,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 23 (1978): 25–46. All of these handbills are to be found along with other materials on the 1932 presidential elections in BA Berlin, NS 26, 563.

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For his own part, Hitler exercised remarkable restraint in his public comments about Hindenburg. Attacks on Hindenburg’s reputation and in particular on his performance as Reich president were left to other members of his entourage. No one caused the Reich president more embarrassment in this regard than Karl Litzmann, the retired infantry general who had served under Hindenburg on the eastern front and who had earned for himself the title of the “Lion of Brzeziny” for his victory in the Battle of Lodz. Sharing the podium with Hitler at a rally before 20,000 spectators in the Berlin Sportpalast, Litzmann exclaimed: Seventeen years ago I commanded Hindenburg’s right wing. We were good comrades. It goes without saying that seven years ago I passionately endorsed his campaign for the Reich presidency. But then Hindenburg’s failure as Reich president to fulfill all the hopes that had been placed in him was the bitterest disappointment of my life. Before the conclusion of the Locarno pact I had been convinced that Hindenburg would use his enormous popularity to go before the German nation with the words: I can and will not sign. But Locarno was accepted. This disappointment was followed by many others, most recently by the Reich president’s public affirmation of his confidence in the Brüning cabinet. That we can longer vote for the once so highly revered general field marshal, now the Reich president, is self-evident.41

Coming from one who had served under his command in World War I, Litzmann’s remarks could only have stung the aging Reich president very deeply. But the Nazi to whom the task of demolishing the Hindenburg myth ultimately fell was the NSDAP’s Reich propaganda leader Joseph Goebbels. Of all the Nazis, none had a greater emotional investment in the creation and nurture of the Hitler myth than Goebbels. Ever since Goebbels had attached himself to Hitler’s political star in 1925–26, the Hitler myth had sustained him emotionally and psychologically to the point where it became difficult for him to discern where myth left off and reality began.42 Anything that threatened the sanctity of that myth or his faith in it threatened his own sense of self and purpose in life. And from 41 42

Quoted in Spectator Germaniae, Hindenburg im Wahlkampf 1925–1932 (Diessen, n.d. [1932]), 44. Goebbels’ psychological dependence upon Hitler and his uncritical embrace of the Hitler myth as a way of compensating for his own sense of personal inadequacy have been recurrent themes in virtually all of the Goebbels biographies. In this respect, see what is generally regarded as the definitive Goebbels biography by Longerich, Goebbels, 68–75, as well as the still useful studies by Ralf Georg Reuth, Goebbels, translated by Krishna Winston (New York, San Diego, and London, 1993), 54–77; Russell Lemmons, Goebbels and Der Angriff (Lexington, KY, 1994), 43–64, and most recently Toby Thacker, Joseph Goebbels: Life and Death (Hampshire, 2009), 56–77.

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Goebbels’ perspective, nothing constituted a more formidable threat to Hitler’s own mythic stature or the charismatic aura that surrounded his person than the mythic stature of Hindenburg. Goebbels’ animosity toward Hindenburg was not simply a product of the 1932 presidential campaign but dated back to the second half of the 1920s when Hindenburg’s election to the Reich presidency invested the Hindenburg myth with a political content that was inimical to Hitler and the Nazi party.43 Now that the Nazi party leader and Hindenburg were locked in a battle that, in Hitler’s own words, would shape the destiny of the German nation,44 it was incumbent upon Goebbels and the NSDAP Reich Propaganda Leadership to demolish what still remained of Hindenburg’s iconic stature and to give renewed life and substance to the mythical aura that had attached itself to the person of Adolf Hitler. The sheer volume of propaganda generated by the NSDAP Reich Propaganda Leadership during the 1932 presidential campaign exceeds comprehension. In the campaign that preceded the first ballot on 13 March the Nazis held over 34,000 public rallies and distributed an estimated 8,000,000 pamphlets and special editions of their party’s newspapers.45 The party’s line on Hindenburg was set in a brochure entitled Warum Hindenburg? by the RPL’s second-in-command Heinz Franke. Here Franke recited the litany of complaints as to why Hindenburg did not deserve reelection, the most serious of which was the oftrepeated accusation that he had betrayed those who had voted for him in 1925, most recently by attaching his signature to the shameful Young Plan in March 1930. To this Franke added the charge that the remarkable reversal of fronts that had taken place since 1925 and the endorsements that his candidacy had received from the Social Democrats and Center – the very parties that had opposed his election seven years earlier – now made Hindenburg a hostage of the very parties that were most closely linked to the existing political system and were therefore most responsible for the disastrous situation in which Germany currently found itself. Dismissing the sense of national unity to which Hindenburg had appealed in his campaign declaration of 15 February as an illusion that could never be realized as long as the Marxists continued to sow the 43 44 45

On Goebbels’ animosity toward Hindenburg, see Anna von der Goltz, Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis (Oxford, 2009), 140–43. Entry for 3 Feb. 1932, in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 209–10. Z. A. B. Zeman, Nazi Propaganda (London, 1964), 34.

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seeds of class conflict, Franke evoked the specter of a Bolshevik threat that could only be met with the election of a National Socialist Reich president.46 The Reich Propaganda Leadership published two other pamphlets, in this case to embellish Hitler’s own image and to legitimate his claim to the leadership of the German people. The first, entitled Tatsachen und Lügen um Hitler, was a point-by-point refutation of all of the lies, imagined or real, that had been circulated about the Nazi party leader, in particular the lies that Hitler was an enemy of the Catholic Church, that his election would result in a new inflation, or that he would abandon the South Tyrol to Italy. At the same time, the pamphlet tried to put a human face on the Nazi party leader with a brief testimonial by Joseph Berchtold, a party propagandist and SA activist from the early 1920s.47 The second, published by Dagobert Dürr under the title Adolf Hitler, der deutsche Arbeiter und Frontsoldat, sought to counter the obvious advantage Hindenburg enjoyed by virtue of his distinguished military record by highlighting the four years of sacrifice that Hitler had endured as an ordinary German front soldier in the trenches of World War I and the love of Germany that had inspired this sacrifice.48 As important as the written word was in terms of defining the broad outlines of the NSDAP’s campaign in the 1932 presidential elections, its impact paled in comparison to that of the visual imagery that Goebbels and his associates employed with such devastating effect. The graphic art of German political life was highly sophisticated and in many cases reminiscent of expressionist woodcuts from the prewar period and early 1920s. Although placards, posters, and handbills had been a staple of Weimar electoral politics since the upheavals of 1918–19, never had visual imagery been deployed on such a scale as in the 1932 presidential elections. Thousands of posters adorned the public spaces of every city, town, and village throughout the country. To be sure, the Nazis had no monopoly on the use of visual images. The United Hindenburg Committees, the Communists, and even the Combat Bloc Black-White-Red also relied heavily upon the use of campaign posters to get their message 46 47 48

Heinz Franke, Warum Hindenburg?, Kampfschrift, Broschürenreihe der Reichspropaganda-Leitung der N.S.D.A.P., no. 7 (Munich, n.d. [1932]), esp. 20–32. Tatsachen und Lügen um Hitler, Kampfschrift, Broschürenreihe der ReichspropagandaLeitung der N.S.D.A.P., no. 9 (Munich, n.d. [1932]), esp. 8–11, 16–18, 30–32. Dagobert Dürr, Adolf Hitler, der deutsche Arbeiter und Frontsoldat, Kampfschrift, Broschürenreihe der Reichspropaganda-Leitung der N.S.D.A.P., no. 9 (Munich, 1932), esp. 10–12.

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across.49 But the Nazi posters – and particularly the work produced under the pseudonym of Mjölnir by a Nazi graphic artist born under the name of Hans Herbert Schweitzer – were in a class by themselves in terms of the sheer power of their visual imagery and emotional affect.50 Among the most effective of Schweitzer’s posters was one that depicted three SA men with faces full of resolve and one bearing the scars of a recent battle posed against the background of a red Nazi flag and swastika with the simple slogan “National Socialism – the Organized Will of the Nation.”51 Another Schweitzer poster depicting a bare-chested, muscular man with a swastika on his belt buckle who was breaking the chains of bondage to the caption “Enough! Elect Hitler!” was no less powerful in its portrayal of the Nazi will to victory.52 And still another, this time by Otto Flechtner, depicted the heroism of the front soldier in the Great War and implored all of those who had served at the front to cast their ballots for their comrade-in-arms, Adolf Hitler.53 The iconography of the campaign propaganda in the 1932 presidential elections offers an interesting study in contrasts that sheds light on the strategy and tactics of the competing candidates. The posters of the Hindenburg campaign almost invariably depicted the Reich president as a pillar of strength and trust in the midst of all the tribulations that had befallen the German people. One poster by Franz Paul Glass portrayed a Hindenburg dressed in a loin cloth upon whose shoulders rested a bronze globe with the imperial eagle emblazoned upon it and at whose feet stood a diminutive Hitler exclaiming: “I am still much stronger.”54 Another poster by an unknown designer displayed a statue of Hindenburg in presidential attire standing tall behind an anchor and surrounded at his feet by swarming hordes of Nazis and other malcontents chipping away at

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In its initial projection of campaign expenses, the Hindenburg campaign planned to print 80,000 middle-sized and large placards to be distributed throughout the country. See “Wahlpropaganda,” appended to the memorandum by Weinstein on financing the presidential campaign, 18 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 585/106–12. On Schweitzer’s career as a graphic artist and propagandist, see Bernhard Fulda, “Die vielen Gesichten des Hans Schweitzer. Politische Karikaturen als historische Quellen,” in Visual History. Ein Studienbuch, ed. Gerhard Paul (Göttingen, 2006), 206–24. Zeman, Nazi Propaganda, opposite page 50. Schweitzer/Mjölnir, “Schluss jetzt! Wählt Hitler,” Mar. 1932, Bundesarchiv Bildarchiv, Plaketensammlung (hereafter cited as BA Bildarchiv), Plakat 002-016-049. Flecthner, “Ein Frontsoldat wählt Adolf Hitler,”Mar-Apr. 1932, BA Bildarchiv, Plakat 002-016-053. Class, “Wählt Hindenburg! Heldenlast erfordert Helden,” Mar.–Apr. 1932, BA Bildarchiv, Plakat 002-016-008, T1 & T2.

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figure 7: NSDAP campaign placard by Hans Schweitzer/Mjölner, 1932 presidential elections. Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Plakat 002-016-049.

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figure 8: NSDAP campaign placard by Otto Flechtner from the 1932 presidential elections. Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Plakat 002-016-053.

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the foundation of his power and authority. And surrounding his visage were six panels depicting different fiascos in the history of the Hitler movement.55 For the most part, however, the mass suffering of German society did not figure prominently in the visual imagery of the Hindenburg campaign and, if so, then only in reference to the threat that radicalism on the Right and Left posed to the authority of the state. The Nazis and Communists, on the other, went to great lengths to depict the hardships of the ordinary person, though in the case of the latter this was as much to discredit the Social Democrats for their support of the Brüning cabinet as it was to win the votes of those who had been dispossessed by the great depression.56 The Nazis, by comparison, were far more persistent in their pursuit of those who had been victimized by the government’s fiscal and economic policies. One Nazi poster by Felix Albrecht carried the subcaption “Save the German family” and portrayed a family of four whose concern was etched in the faces of the parents and could be easily explained by the phrase “Millions of Men without Work – Millions of Children without a Future.”57 Placards depicting the haggard looks of cold and unemployed workers with the suffering of countless millions etched in their faces were carefully crafted to exploit the hopelessness of the German people and their despair in the political system the Nazis held responsible for their misery. For those caught in this web of suffering, Hitler was their last hope.58 The Nazis were careful to augment their generalized portrayals of German suffering and their invocation of Hitler as the “last hope of the German people” with appeals designed to mobilize the support of specific sectors of German society like the peasantry and the independent middle class.59 Although the Nazis publicly scorned the interest politics of the more established bourgeois parties, this tactic nevertheless constituted an 55 56 57 58 59

Unknown designer, “Wählt Hindenburg,” Mar. 1932, BA Bildarchiv, Plakat 002-016001. For example, see the KPD placard with the headline “Severing greift ein: für Hindenburg,” Feb. 1932, BA Bildarchiv, Plakat 002-016-086. “Männer! Frauen! Wählt Adolf Hitler!,” Mar. 1932, BA Bildarchiv, Plakat 002-016-048. Schweitzer, “Unsere letzte Hoffnung: Hitler,” Mar. 1932, BA Bildarchiv, Plakat 002-016047. For example, see the directive from the Reichspropagandaleitung der N.S.D.A.P., Abteilung: Rednerinformation, Rednerinformation 1932, Nr. 3/4 (Munich, 1932), 4–12. See also the appeals to the handicraft and business, sector, the farmer, and women in the Völkischer Beobachter, 11–14 Mar. 1932, nos. 71–73/74, reprinted in English translation in Detlef Mühlberger, Hitler’s Voice: The Völkischer Beobachter, 1920–1933, 2 vols. (Oxford et al, 2004), 2: 215, 301, 350–52.

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figure 9: Pro-Hindenburg campaign placard by Franz Paul Glass from the 1932 presidential elections. Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Plakat 002-016-008, T1 and T2.

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figure 10: Pro-Hindenburg campaign placard by an unknown graphic designer, March 1932. Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Plakat 002-016-047.

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figure 11: NSDAP campaign placard by Hans Schweitzer/Mjölner, 1932 presidential elections. Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Plakat 002-016-047.

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essential ingredient of Nazi electoral success in the last years of the Weimar Republic. It was a tactic that had served the NSDAP well in its great electoral victory of 1930 as well as in various state and municipal elections throughout 1931, and it would be no different in the 1932 presidential elections.60 Not only had the NSDAP proven particularly effective in winning the votes of Germany’s Protestant peasantry in the 1930 Reichstag elections, but in the aftermath of the elections Hitler had also met with members of the Prussian aristocracy to dispel fears of Nazi radicalism and to reassure his audience that he and his party had no intention of nationalizing the land of those who had come by it legitimately or who had enriched it through their own labor and investment.61 At the same time, R. Walter Darré as head of the NSDAP’s Agrarian Political Apparatus (Agrarpolitischer Apparat der NSDAP) intensified his efforts to consolidate his party’s gains in the countryside and to exploit the difficulties in which the DNVP and the Christian-National Peasants and Farmers’ Party both found themselves.62 The NSDAP moved quickly to reprise this strategy in the 1932 presidential elections in both print and visual appeals. Nowhere was the party’s message more explicit than in a poster designed by Felix Albrecht carrying the caption “Rural People in Despair” and featuring an elderly farmer and his wife with the apparition of the grim reaper hovering over their family farm. “Who helps?” the poster asked. The answer: Adolf Hitler.63 60

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For a more detailed analysis of this aspect of the NSDAP’s electoral appeal, see Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919–1933 (Chapel Hill, NC, and London, 1983), esp. 262–69. For example, see Arnim-Boitzenburg to Eulenburg-Hertefeld, 26 Feb. 1931, BLHA Potsdam, NL Arnim-Boitzenburg, 4434/41–43, reprinted in Kurt Gossweiler and Alfred Schlicht, “Junker und NSDAP 1931/32,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 15 (1967): 644–62, here 655–57. On the symbiosis between the German aristocracy and National Socialism, see Stefan Malinowski, Vom König zum Führer. Sozialer Niedergang und politische Radikalisierung im deutschen Adel zwischen Kaiserreich und NS-Staat (Berlin, 2003), 476–503, as well as the more recent essay by Eckart Conze, “‘Only a dictator can help us now’: Aristocracy and the Radical Right in Germany,” in European Aristocracies and the Radical Right, 1918–1939, ed. Karina Urbach, (Oxford, 2007), 129–47. For a valuable regional perspective, see Shelley Baranowski, “Convergence on the Right: Agrarian Elite Radicalism and Nazi Populism in Pomerania, 1928–33. In Between Reform, Reaction, and Resistance: Studies in the History of German Conservatism from 1789 to 1945, eds. Larry Eugene Jones and James Retallack (Providence, RI, and Oxford), 407–32. For example, see the letter from Darré to Hitler, 24 July 1931, BA Berlin, NS 22, 442, reprinted in Joachim Petzold, “Großgrundbesitzer – Bauern – NSDAP. Zu ideologischen Auseinandersetzungen um die Agrarpolitik der faschistischen Partei 1932,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 29 (1981): 1128–39, here 1133–36. “Landvolk in Not,” Mar. 1932, BA Bildarchiv, Plakat 002-016-060.

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figure 12: NSDAP campaign placard by Felix Albrecht, 1932 presidential elections. Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Plakat 002-016-060.

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Having already established a major foothold in the German countryside, Nazi propagandists now began to focus more and more of their attention on the independent middle class, particularly in light of the fact that the most important middle-class party, the Reich Party of the German Middle Class, had been caught in the grip of a demoralizing internal crisis ever since the fall of 1930.64 The Nazis had intensified their efforts to win the support of the independent middle class with the creation in January 1931 of the Department for Economic Policy (Wirtschaftspolitische Abteilung or WPA) within the NSDAP under the leadership of Otto Wagener. The purpose of the WPA was to provide the NSDAP with a comprehensive economic program that in the short run would serve as an instrument of political mobilization but in the long run would provide the general outlines of the economic policies the party would put in place once it had achieved power.65 Among other things, Wagener and the WPA recognized the necessity of devising a strategy for the economic rehabilitation of the German middle classes as a way of mobilizing their support for the NSDAP. As Wagener expressed it in a directive from 14 January 1932, the coming year was “to be devoted to the conquest of the middle class.”66 Although Wagener’s efforts to formulate a comprehensive social and economic program for the NSDAP was far from complete by the time of the presidential elections and had in fact encountered strong resistance from certain sectors of the party,67 the party nevertheless made a 64

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On the crisis in the WP, see two contemporary publications from within the ranks of the party by Hans Klett, Der Untergang des Mittelstandes. Der Zerfall der Wirtschaftspartei (Berlin 1931), and Ernst Horneffer, Die Krise der Wirtschaftspartei, Schriftenfolge der Reichspartei des deutschen Mittelstandes (Wirtschaftspartei) im Wahlkreis Leipzig, no. 2 (Leipzig, n.d. [1931]). On the creation and goals of the WPA, see Avraham Barkai, Nazi Economics: Ideology, Theory, and Policy, trans. by Ruth Hadass-Vashitz (New Haven, CT, and London, 1990), 28–40. For a statement of Wagener’s economic philosophy, see his article “Der Zusammenbruch des liberalen Wirtschaftssystems,” July 1931, BA Berlin, NS 22/10/ 12–16. See also the recent article by Claus-Christian Szeinmann, “Nazi Economic Thought and Rhetoric during the Weimar Republic: Capitalism and Its Discontents,” Politics, Religion, and Ideology 14 (2013): 355–76. Wirtschaftspolitische Abteilung der NSDAP, directive no. 6, 14 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 22, 10. For a fuller statement of the WPA’s strategic role in the Nazi conquest of power, see Wagener to the NSDAP Organisationsabteilung II, 14 Jan. 1932, ibid, 448. For example, see the report on the meeting of the NSDAP’s National Economic Council (Reichswirtschaftsrat), 27 Apr. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 22, 11/110–15, as well as the Wirtschaftspolitische Abteilung der NSDAP, directive no. 9, 29 Apr. 1932, ibid, 20/107–10. For the larger significance of this meeting, see Joachim Petzold, “Monopole – Mittelstand – NSDAP. Zu ideologischen Auseinandersetzungen zwischen den Interessenvertretern

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concerted effort to rally Germany’s beleaguered middle class behind Hitler’s candidacy. One placard entitled “Hitler or Brüning” blamed the misery in which the independent middle class found itself on the emergency decrees of the Brüning cabinet and offered the dire prognosis that in two years the middle class would no longer exist. Claiming that a vote for Hindenburg was a vote for Brüning and his system of emergency decrees, the placard concluded by exhorting the middle class to unite behind the candidacy of the one man who could save it from ruin, Adolf Hitler.68 The virtuosity and reach of Nazi campaign propaganda in the 1932 presidential elections placed patriotic associations like the PanGerman League and the United Patriotic Leagues and economic interest organizations like the National Rural League, the German National Union of Commercial Employees, and the National Federation of the German Artisanry (Reichsverband des Deutschen Handwerks) under enormous pressure. Here the Nazi strategy, as a police report from Harburg-Wilhelmsburg in East Hanover underscored, was not so much to attack the organization itself as to mobilize its rank-and-file membership against the organization’s leaders either to force it into supporting Hitler or to discredit it in the eyes of its members.69 In the case of the Pan-German League, this strategy offered only limited opportunities for success. For although the Pan-Germans sympathized with the broader goals of the Nazi movement and strongly supported its call for the racial purification of the German nation,70 its leadership cadre around ADV chairman Heinrich Claß had become increasingly disenchanted with Hitler’s political course after the Harzburg rally in the fall

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des Mittelstandes und des Monopolkapitals in der faschistischen Partei 1932,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtwissenschaft 28 (1980): 862–75. “Hitler oder Brüning? Warum ist der Deutsche Mittelstand in Not?,” n.d. [Mar. 1932], BA Bildarchiv, Plakat 002-016-058. For example, see the report of the police president in Harburg-Wilhemsburg, 14 Mar. 1932, reprinted in Dirk Stegmann, Politische Radikalisierung in der Provinz. Lageberichte und Stärkemeldungen der Politischen Polizei und des Regierungspräsidenten für Osthannover 1922–1933 (Hanover, 1999), 274. On the ideological affinities between the Nazis and the Pan-Germans, see the recent studies on the ADV by Rainer Hering, Die konstruierte Nation. Der Alldeutsche Verband 1890 bis 1939 (Hamburg, 2003), 479–91; Björn Hofmeister, “Between Monarchy and Dictatorship: Radical Nationalism and Social Mobilization of the Pan-German League, 1914–1939” (PhD Diss., Georgetown University, 2011), 341–461; and most recently Barry A. Jackisch, The Pan-German League and Radical Nationalist Politics in Interwar Germany, 1918–39 (Farnham, 2012), 173–76.

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of 1931 and vigorously disputed his claim to leadership of the national movement.71 Claß, who had officially broken with Hindenburg after the Reich president signed the Young Plan in March 1930,72 petitioned Hindenburg on behalf of the non-Nazi elements of the national opposition in late August 1931 to drop Brüning and undertake a reorganization of the national government that would bring the forces of the German Right to power.73 Although the ADV’s Prince Otto zu Salm-Horstmar made one last attempt at the beginning of 1932 to persuade the Reich president to reverse his political course,74 the only real hope of bringing about a fundamental change in the composition and direction of the national government lay in the election of a new Reich president who was more sympathetic to their goals than Hindenburg. But despite his close ties to DNVP party chairman Alfred Hugenberg, Claß did not believe that Duesterberg stood a realistic chance of being elected and did not in the least feel bound by the terms of the alliance that the DNVP and Stahlhelm had concluded prior to the declaration of Duesterberg’s candidacy. By the same token, Claß showed little enthusiasm for Hitler’s candidacy and still believed that the best results for the national opposition could be achieved if the NSDAP, DNVP, and Stahlhelm each nominated its own candidate for the Reich presidency.75 As it was, Hugenberg’s decision not to stand for election but to support Duesterberg instead left the Pan-Germans in a quandary as to which of the two equally undesirable candidates from the national opposition they should support. Only one thing was

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For example, see Salm-Horstmar to Claß, 26 Oct. 1931, BA Berlin, R 8048, 454/62, and Claß to Salm-Horstmar, 30 Oct. 1931, ibid, 454/71. Claß, “Abschied von Hindenburg,” Deutsche Zeitung, 14 Mar. 1930, no. 61. For further insight into Claß’s antipathy toward Hindenburg, see the recent Claß biography by Johannes Leicht, Heinrich Claß 1868-1953. Die politische Biographie eines Alldeutschen (Paderborn, 2012), 346–48, 360–62. In this respect, see the draft of Claß’s letter to Hindenburg, 27 Aug. 1931, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 80/120–21. Salm-Horstmar to Hindenburg, 5 Jan. and 6 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8048, 454/80–83, 93–94. Remarks by Claß at the meeting of the ADV managing committee, 20–21 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8048, 169/31–35. For the best discussions of the ADV’s position on the 1932 presidential elections, see Leicht, Claß, 379–82, and the recent contribution by Barry A Jackisch, “Continuity and Change on the German Right: The Pan-German League and Nazism, 1918–1939,” in The German Right in the Weimar Republic: Studies in the History of German Conservatism, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, ed. Larry Eugene Jones (New York and Oxford, 2014), 166–93, esp. 181–82.

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absolutely clear: Under no circumstances would they support Hindenburg.76 The situation within the ADV was not fundamentally dissimilar from that in the United Patriotic Leagues. As an umbrella organization for the various patriotic and paramilitary associations on the German Right such as the Pan-German League and Stahlhelm,77 the VVVD was a particularly vocal member of the national opposition and had taken part in both the referendum against the Young Plan and the rally at Harzburg.78 Originally the leaders of the VVVD had supported former chancellor Wilhelm Cuno as a prospective candidate for the Reich presidency, but Cuno’s candidacy failed to gain traction with the more radical elements on the German Right and was eventually abandoned in the summer or early fall of 1931.79 Like the PanGermans, Goltz and the leaders of the VVVD looked upon the presidential elections as an opportunity to wrest control of the state from the Social Democrats and Center and to establish a more authoritarian system of government based upon the forces of the national opposition.80 All of this, however, presupposed a united national front in the upcoming presidential elections. Consequently, when it became apparent in the first week of February 1932 that in all likelihood the Nazis would nominate Hitler as their candidate, Goltz and the leaders of the VVVD feared that this would split the national movement just as it was poised for victory and exhorted its leaders to close ranks for the

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Claß to Levetzow, 8 Mar. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 80/147–48. See also Ryneck, “Warum können wir Hindenburg nicht wählen?,” Deutschlands Erneuerung 10, no. 3 (Mar. 1932): 129–34. Rüdiger von der Goltz, “Die vaterländischen Verbände,” in Volk und Reich der Deutschen. Vorlesungen gehalten in der Deutschen Vereinigung für Staatswissenschaftliche Fortbildung, ed. Bernhard Harms, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1929), 2: 155–77. For further information on the VVVD, see James Diehl, “Von der ‘Vaterlandspartei’ zur ‘nationalen Revolution’: Die ‘Vereinigten Vaterländischen Verbände Deutschlands (VVVD)’ 1922–1932,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 33 (1985): 617–39. For example, see Goltz’s report at a meeting of the VVVD executive committee, 9 Oct. 1931, in VVVD Reichsgeschäftsstelle, Mitteilung no. 5, 26 Oct. 1931, BA Koblenz, ZSg 1-E87. On Cuno’s abortive candidacy, see Gerhard Granier, Magnus von Levetzow. Seeoffizier, Monarchist und Wegbereiter Hitlers. Lebensweg und ausgewählte Dokumente (Boppard am Rhein, 1982), 145–59, 158–63, 167–70. Goltz to Hitler and Hugenberg, 14 Jan. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 111/2–3. In a similar vein, see the manuscript of Goltz’s article, “Römische Staatskunst,” 26 Feb. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Count Rüdiger von der Goltz, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau (hereafter cited as BA-MA Freiburg, NL Goltz), 13.

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sake of defeating Hindenburg.81 In the negotiations that followed the announcement of Hindenburg’s candidacy, Goltz had supported efforts to nominate a unity candidate of the Harzburg Front but was prepared to encourage both the DNVP and Stahlhelm to have their members vote for Hitler if that proved impossible. Upon being informed that this would not work, Goltz then recommended that the non-Nazi members of the national opposition nominate Hugenberg on the grounds that his economic program would attract the greatest support from German business circles. When Hugenberg deferred in favor of Duesterberg, the VVVD followed the example of the Pan-Germans and encouraged its supporters to vote for either Hitler or Duesterberg in the first ballot on 13 March.82 For his own person, however, Goltz resented the way in which the Stahlhelm sought to mobilize the “Prussian and Protestant instincts of the north against National Socialism” and openly supported Hitler’s candidacy.83 Of Germany’s conservative economic interest organizations, none had identified themselves more closely with the objectives and rhetoric of the national opposition than the National Rural League. With an estimated million members, the RLB and its affiliates throughout the country constituted the largest but not necessarily most influential economic interest organization in Germany. Count Eberhard von Kalckreuth, who had been elected as RLB president in the fall of 1930, was quick to align the RLB with the forces of the national opposition and took part in the Harzburg rally in the fall of 1931.84 Over the course of the previous year the Nazis had made substantial inroads into the RLB’s rank-and-file membership, and in December 1931 the NSDAP’s Werner Willikens was added to the RLB presidium as a way of reaffirming the

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83 84

In this respect, see the correspondence between Friedrichs and Levetzow, 8–10 Feb. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 56/27–30. See also Goltz, article manuscript entitled “Klare Fronten – klare Begriffe,” 17 Feb. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Goltz, 13. Goltz to Klingspor, 11 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, ZSg 1-E87. For further insight into the dilemma in which the leaders of the VVVD found themselves, see Friedrichs to Levetzow, 9 Mar. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 56/55–56. Goltz to Grimm, 17 Mar. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Hans Grimm, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach (hereafter cited as DLA Marbach, NL Grimm), A28/1. In this respect, see Kalckreuth’s remarks and the general debate at the meeting of the RLB executive committee, 6 Oct. 1931, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 145/51–56. For further details on the RLB’s drift to the right in 1930–32, see Stephanie Merkenich, Grüne Front gegen Weimar. Reichs-Landbund und agrarischer Lobbyismus 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf, 1998), 319–52.

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organization’s bipartisan neutrality in the face of Nazism’s growing popularity in the countryside.85 Kalckreuth regarded Hindenburg as a hostage of the existing political system, was a sharp critic of Brüning’s farm policies, and remained adamantly opposed to any extension of the Reich president’s term in office by either parliamentary vote or popular election.86 As Kalckreuth explained to Hans von Goldacker in a letter from 23 February: The matter of the presidential election has not gone well. I would like to think that in the first round of voting neither Hitler nor Duesterberg will achieve the success they imagine themselves having. It would be sufficient if between them they receive enough votes that in the second round of voting there would be new candidate against Hindenburg with better prospects [of winning]. I do not think that that is at all out of the question, especially if Hitler’s advantage is not so great as to prevent a new candidate with better prospects [from coming forward] in the second ballot. Should Hitler, however, make a lot of noise and Duesterberg, as I fear, very little, then it is unlikely that Hitler would be willing to step down in favor of a new candidate in the second round of voting. In any event, we in the National Rural League will preserve absolute neutrality between Hitler and Duesterberg. The isolation of all of those like Berg and Horn who have embraced him [Hindenburg] with such great excitement should be a lesson to the old man [dem alten Herrn doch sehr nahe gehen]. The Farmers’ Party may finally have dug its own grave with its support for Hindenburg.87

Kalckreuth displayed little enthusiasm for either Hitler or Duesterberg and hoped that in the event of a second round of voting a more suitable candidate with a better chance of defeating Hindenburg could be found. But at a meeting of the RLB executive committee on 1 March 1932 Kalckreuth’s resolution endorsing Hitler and Duesterberg as the candidates of the national opposition ran into sharp criticism from the leaders of those RLB’s affiliates that still enjoyed close ties with the Christian-

85

86

87

On Werner’s addition to the RLB presidium, see the minutes of the RLB executive committee, 18 Dec. 1931, BA R 8034 I, 148/1d–1i. for further details, see Darré to Kriegsheim, 6 Nov. 1931, BA Berlin, NS 22, 1212. On the Nazi subversion of the RLB, see Darré’s circular to the NSDAP’s district agricultural consultants (Landwirtschaftlicher Gaufachbereiter), 22 and 23 Sept. and 9 Nov. 1931, all in the unpublished Nachlaß of R. Walter Darré, Stadtarchiv Goslar, 142. For further information, see the excellent study by Horst Gies, “NSDAP und landwirtschaftliche Organisationen in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 13 (1967): 341–76, esp. 359–68. See Kalckreuth’s remarks at a meeting of the RLB executive committee, 31 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 146/16–17, as well as his letters to Hugenberg 11 Jan. 1932, ibid, 146/ 1–2, and Hauenschild-Tscheidt, 12 Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 196/104–05. Kalckreuth to Goldacker, 23 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 14/39–42.

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National Peasants and Farmers’ Party or that otherwise rejected Kalckreuth’s increasingly close ties to the radical Right. While Kalckreuth enjoyed strong support from the RLB’s affiliates located east of the Elbe, his resolution came under heavy fire from spokesmen for the RLB’s regional affiliates in Hanover, Hesse, Hesse-Nassau, Thuringia, and the Upper Rhine, all of whom supported an endorsement for the candidates of the German Right but insisted that Hindenburg should be included among those who were to be endorsed. But after a heated debate the RLB’s more moderate elements from the central and western parts of Germany were outvoted by a substantial majority that shared Kalckreuth’s hostility toward Hindenburg and supported a somewhat toned-down version of the original resolution that nevertheless excluded the Reich president from the endorsements bestowed upon Hitler and Duesterberg.88 The RLB’s refusal to include Hindenburg among those who were to receive its endorsement for the Reich presidency was the final episode in the rupture of its relations with the Christian-National Peasants and Farmers’ Party. Relations between the RLB and CNBLP had deteriorated steadily ever since Reich Agricultural Minister Martin Schiele had been forced to resign as RLB president in a coup engineered by Hans-Joachim von Rohr of the RLB’s Pomeranian affiliate.89 The CNBLP party leadership strongly supported Hindenburg’s reelection ever before he announced his candidacy,90 but it was Gereke’s visibility in the United Hindenburg Committees that indelibly indentified the CNBLP with the Hindenburg campaign. Throughout the campaign Gereke funneled funds that had been raised for Hindenburg’s reelection to the CNBLP’s regional and local organizations in an attempt to combat the massive propaganda campaign that the Nazis had unleashed on the German countryside. Not only did Gereke’s support help finance the activities of the proHindenburg forces in central and, to a lesser extent, western Germany, but it also made it possible for a number of the CNBLP’s district organiza-

88 89

90

Minutes of the RLB executive committee, 1 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 146/124–31. In this respect, see the letter from the executive committee of the Pomeranian Rural League (Pommerscher Landbund) to the RLB presidium, 6 Sept. 1930, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 60/145–47, and Rohr-Demmin to Duesterberg and Darré, 25 Oct. 1930, BA Berlin, R 72, 40/109, as well as the report from Wilmowsky to Krupp, 28 Oct. 1930, HA Krupp Essen, FAH 23/504. For further details, see Markus Müller, Die ChristlichNationale Bauern- und Landvolkpartei 1928-1933 (Düsseldorf, 2001), 198–217. Hauenschild to Hindenburg, 12 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/260.

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tions to keep their heads above water during a time of dwindling financial resources.91 Although this did little to dislodge the large landed interests from east of the Elbe from their dominant position in the RLB, it represented part of a more generalized pattern of disgruntlement on the part of the RLB’s regional affiliates in central and western Germany with the way in which large-landed agriculture had taken control of the RLB and was now setting its political agenda. Nowhere was frustration with Kalckreuth’s leadership of the RLB greater than in the case of Theodor Körner alt, the long-time leader and patriarch of the Württemberg Peasants and Wine Growers’ League (Württembergischer Bauern-und Weingärtnerbund or WBWB).92 Although the WBWB had relaxed its ties to the CNBLP during the course of 1931 and continued to pride itself on its impeccable conservative credentials,93 Körner was staunchly anti-Nazi and would never have countenanced a declaration that privileged Hitler at the expense of Hindenburg.94 Over the strong opposition of an anti-Hindenburg faction within the WBWB led by Baron Claus Schenck von Stauffenberg and Heinrich Haag, Körner proceeded to sign the appeal that Count Westarp had organized on Hindenburg’s behalf in an attempt to reassure the Reich president that he still enjoyed the support of those who had voted for him in 1925.95 Körner’s endorsement of Hindenburg’s candidacy triggered a bitter party fight within the WBWB that ended with the publication of a resolution that left it up to those who belonged to the WBWB to decide whether they would vote for Hindenburg or Duesterberg but not Hitler in what was a clear rebuke of the position taken by the RLB.96 But the WBWB remained deeply divided, a situation that was only complicated by the fact that those who supported Hindenburg’s reelection often had to

91 92 93

94

95

96

For example, see Winkler to Gereke, 27 Feb. 1932, LA Berlin, Prozeßakten Gereke, Rep. A, 358-01, 76/16/26g. In this respect, see the letters from Kalckreuth to Körner, 26 Apr. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 54/68–70, and 7 May 1932, ibid, 146/80–82. For example, see the WBWB’s characterization of itself in Das grüne Buch der Bauernpolitik. Ein politisches Handbuch für Wähler in Stadt und Land, ed. Theodor Körner alt (Stuttgart, 1931), 3–20. For Körner’s views on Nazism, see Theodor Körner, Was hat das Landvolk von der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei zu erwarten? Fragen und Antworten zur nationalen Bewegung (Stuttgart, n.d. [1931–32]). On the conflict within the WBWB, see Dingler to Hiller, 10 Mar. 1932, NL Hiller, Gärtringen. For Stauffenberg’s position, see his undated circular from the spring of 1931 to the members of the WBWB executive committee, NL Hiller, Gärtringen. Der schwäbische Landmann, 5 Mar. 1932, no. 10.

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campaign alongside Duesterberg supporters who pilloried the Reich president for his continued support of the Brüning cabinet.97 The situation in the WBWB was not at all that dissimilar from that in the Thuringian Rural League (Thüringer Landbund or TLB). Although the TLB had remained more or less loyal to the CNBLP through the trials and tribulations of 1931, it too had grown weary of Brüning’s farm policies, and many of its supporters had lost faith in Hindenburg’s mastery of the political situation. But, as the TLB’s Reichardt stated at the meeting of the RLB executive committee on 1 March, his organization could not ignore the sentiments of those within it who continued to support Hindenburg and would not endorse a resolution that excluded him from the list of approved candidates.98 Consequently, the resolution the TLB executive committee published on 2 March urged its followers to support either Hindenburg or Duesterberg in the upcoming presidential election.99 Again, the TLB had defied Kalckreuth and the National Rural League by not including Hitler in its endorsement. The same aversion to Hitler could also be seen in the case of the RLB’s Bavarian affiliate, the Bavarian Rural League (Bayerischer Landbund or BLB). Like its counterparts from Württemberg and Thuringia, the BLB had sided with the Christian-National Peasants and Farmers’ Party in the 1930 Reichstag elections but had begun to distance itself from the CNBLP leadership long before the presidential campaign had gotten under way.100 In fact, many of the BLB’s regional and local leaders had come to regard their organization’s break with the DNVP in the 1930 Reichstag elections as a mistake and were hoping to restore ties to the party with which it had once been affiliated.101 But anti-Hitler sentiment remained strong at all levels of the BLB’s organizational structure. Consequently, its leaders balked at 97

98 99

100 101

For further information on the situation in which the WBWB found itself, see Thomas Schnabel, Württemberg zwischen Weimar und Bonn 1928-1945/46 (Stuttgart, 1986), 105–06, as well as the more detailed study by Müller, Christlich-Nationale Bauern- und Landvolkpartei, 464–66. Minutes of the meeting of the RLB executive committee, 1 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 146/30. “Warum Duesterberg?!,” Thüringer Landbund, 5 Mar. 1932, no. 18. For further details on the TLB, see Müller, Christich-Nationale Bauern- und Landvolkpartei, 486-99, as well as the more specialized study by Guido Dressel, Der Thüringer Landbund. Agrarischer Berufsverband als politische Partei in Thüringen 1919–1933 (Weimar, 1998), 95–96. For example, see Bachmann’s remarks at the meeting of the RLB executive committee, 1 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 146/27–28. For example, see Gürtner’s remarks on his negotiations with the BLB’s Brügel in the excerpts from the minutes of the meeting of the executive committee of the Bavarian DNVP, 27 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Weilnböck, 38b, as well as the remarks by Brügel

270

Hitler versus Hindenburg

following the RLB’s lead in endorsing both Hitler and Duesterberg as the candidates of the national opposition and issued instead a resolution that, on the one hand, expressed disappointment in Hindenburg’s failure to fulfill the hopes that the German farmer had placed in his 1925 election to the Reich presidency and, on the other, called for Duesterberg’s election as the best way to free the office of the Reich presidency from the influences of those to whom Hindenburg had fallen hostage.102 As volatile as things were within the RLB, they were even more explosive in those organizations on the German Right that had endorsed Hindenburg’s bid for reelection. Among the first to endorse Hindenburg was Friedrich von Berg-Markienen, marshal of German Nobles’ Society.103 Berg, who issued his declaration of support on his own authority as the marshal of the DAG, immediately came under such heavy fire from those within the DAG who had fallen under the spell of the national opposition that he was forced to step down from his post in favor of Prince Albert zu Bentheim-Treklenburg-Rheda. The change in DAG leadership clearly signaled the triumph of the organization’s more militantly antirepublican elements over the more moderate brand of politics practiced by Berg.104 In a similar development, the declaration of support that Rudolf von Horn had issued in his capacity as president of the German Reich Warriors’ Kyffhäuser League as part of the effort to persuade Hindenburg to stand for reelection had provoked not only a sharply worded denunciation from the leaders of the so-called national opposition but also a storm of protest from among the rank-and-file membership of his own organization. One member of the Kyffhäuser League was so infuriated by Horn’s support for Hindenburg that he accused the retired artillery general of having stabbed the national front in the back.105 For many of those who belonged to the Kyffhäuser League, however, their sense of loyalty to the victor of Tannenberg was

102

103 104

105

in the minutes of the BLB executive committee, 8 Mar and 25 Oct. 1931, IfZ München, BLB-Akte, 147–52, 185–88. “Der Bayer. Landbund zur Reichspräsidentenwahl,” Bayerischer Landbund 34, no. 10 (6 Mar. 1932): 1. See also Müller, Christnationale Bauern- und Landvolkpartei, 460–63, as well as the perceptive analysis by Manfred Kittel, “Weimar” im evangelischen Bayern. Politische Mentalität und Parteiwesen 1918–1933 (Munich, 2001), 176–91. Deutsches Adelsblatt 50, no. 6 (6 Feb. 1932), in BA Berlin, R 601, 372/47. For insight into the circumstances surrounding the change in the DAG leadership, see Bogen to Lüninck, 2 Apr. 1932, VWA Münster, NL Lüninck, 828. For further details, see George H. Kleine, “Adelsgenossenschaft und Nationalsozialismus,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 26 (1978): 100–43, here 115–16. Zoepke to Horn, 23 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 26, 930.

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so strong that in the final analysis it overrode whatever exasperation they might have felt over Hindenburg’s performance as Reich president. One Hindenburg supporter even went so far as to accuse the Stahlhelm of having stabbed Hindenburg in the back.106 As a result, Horn was able to ride out the crisis with strong support from Gerhard von Enckevort, the DRKB’s second-in-command and the secretary of its influential and numerically strong Prussian chapter.107 It would not be until the beginning of May, however, that the crisis within the Kyffhäuser League would be finally put to rest with the adoption of a resolution by the DRKB’s Prussian chapter that rejected Horn’s offer to resign as the organization’s national leader on the grounds that he had acted out of the highest patriotic motives at the same time that it reaffirmed the principle of nonpartisanship, or Überparteilichkeit, that had served the League so well throughout its long history.108 The turmoil that afflicted the organizations on Germany’s paramilitary Right was no less intense in those conservative economic interest organizations that had declared their support for Hindenburg. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the case of the German National Union of Commercial Employees, the largest of Germany’s white-collar employee unions. Ever since its break with Hugenberg’s DNVP at the end of 1929, the DHV found itself caught between two fronts. On the one hand, its leadership strongly supported the Brüning cabinet and its efforts to initiate a reform of the German state system along the lines of the young conservative movement. Max Habermann, the DHV’s principal political strategist, belonged to Brüning’s inner council and had strongly encouraged him to accept the chancellorship after he had been offered it in the spring of 1930.109 The DHV’s rank-and-file membership, on the other 106 107

108

109

Tiburtius to Neukranz, 19 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 26, 931. Enckevort, “Die Wahl Hindenburgs. Vorgänge und Betrachtungen,” 18 Apr. 1932, BAMA Freiburg, NL Enckevort, 1/9–11. See also Enckevort to Oskar von Hindenburg, 23 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 375/60–61. For the best discussion of this crisis, see von der Goltz, Hindenburg, 149–51. Circular from the Prussian State Warriors‘ League, 2 May 1932, BA Berlin, NS 26, 931. See also Karl Führer, “Der Deutsche Reichskriegerbund Kyffhäuser 1930-1934. Politik, Ideologie und Funktion eines ‘unpolitischen’ Verbandes,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 36 (1984): 57–76, here 64. Max Habermann, “Der Deutschnationale Handlungsgehilfen-Verband im Kampf um das Reich 1918-1933. Ein Zeugnis seines Wollens und Wirkens,” unpublished memoir from 1934, DHV-Archiv Hamburg, 70–71. For further information on the predicament in which the DHV found itself in the last years of the Weimar Republic, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Between the Fronts: The German National Union of Commercial Employees from 1928 to 1933.” Journal of Modern History 48 (1976): 462–82, esp. 476–78.

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hand, had been radicalized by the onset of the great depression and had fallen more and more under the spell of Nazism. Habermann himself estimated that approximately half of the 400,000 members had voted for the NSDAP in the 1930 Reichstag elections.110 But Hans Bechly, the DHV chairman (Vorsteher) since 1911 and a political moderate who up until late 1931 had belonged to the German People’s Party,111 was among the first to publicly urge Hindenburg to stand for reelection and had signed the appeal of the Sahm committee in early February 1932.112 Bechly’s endorsement of Hindenburg’s candidacy provoked a storm of protest orchestrated by those DHV members with ties to the NSDAP in what was a clear attempt to discredit Bechly, Habermann, and the union’s national leadership in the eyes of its rank-and-file membership and, if possible, to unseat Bechly as the DHV’s national chairman.113 Habermann and the DHV’s national leadership quickly closed ranks behind Bechly,114 who staunchly defended his endorsement of Hindenburg in a lead article for the Deutsche Handels-Wacht.115 This, however, did little to quell the turmoil within the DHV, and the Nazi attacks continued to build until finally the union’s leadership responded to a particularly disgraceful attack against the Reich president by Albert Forster, a mid-level DHV official who also served the Nazi party leader in the free city of Danzig, by expelling him from the DHV a week before the election.116 The break between the DHV and NSDAP had become irreparable. The turmoil within organizations as diverse as the DHV, RLB, Kyffhäuser League, and Stahlhelm – not to mention the chaos within

110

111 112 113

114

115 116

Habermann, “Der DHV im Kampf um das Reich,” 77. On the DHV’s relationship to the Nazi movement, see the recent contribution by Peter Rütters, “Der Deutschnationale Handlungsgehilfen-Verband (DHV) und der Nationalsozialismus,” Historisch-politische Mitteilungen 16 (2009): 81–108. On Bechly’s break with the DVP, see his correspondence with DVP chairman Eduard Dingeldey, 17–30 Nov. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 35/80–85. “Volkskandidatur für die Reichspräsidentenwahl,” Kölnische Zeitung, 2 Feb. 1932, no. 64. Gloy, “Der Widerhall auf der Bechly’schen Unterschrift zur Hindenburg Wahl,” 9 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 26, 836. For the reaction of the NSDAP, see the entry in Krebs’s diary, 3 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Krebs, 1/215, as well as the letter from the NSDAP branch office in Blankensee to Bechly, 27 Feb. 1932, ibid, 10/50–52. In this respect, see Habermann and Miltzow to DHV activists, 22 Feb. 1932, as well as the detailed memorandum from the DHV leadership to the union’s local chapters, 28 Feb. 1932, both in DHV-Archiv Hamburg, DHV-Restakten. Bechly, “Reichspräsidentenwahl,” Deutsche Handels-Wacht. Zeitschrift des Deutschnationalen Handlungsgehilfen-Verbandes 39, no. 2 (20 Feb. 1932): 25–27. Ziegler and Stadler to Forster, 5 Mar. 1932, DHV-Archiv Hamburg, DHV-Restakten.

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the various political parties that stood between the Center and NSDAP – was symptomatic of the profound crisis of confidence that gripped German political life on the eve of the first presidential ballot on 13 March 1932. The Nazis very shrewdly used the campaign to destabilize existing political organizations and to nurture the seeds of discontent that had already been planted by a decade of relentless agitation by the German Right against the Weimar state. The cleavages that ran so deeply through the political, economic, and patriotic organizations on the German Right afforded the Nazis opportunities for penetration, subversion, and schism that they exploited with consummate effect. For Hitler and his associates, it was not just a matter of winning the election – on this point the Nazis themselves were divided – but of establishing the primacy of the Nazi movement over the so-called national opposition. The fact that the nonNazi forces of the national opposition were so divided both internally and in terms of their relations with the other components of the German Right did not augur well for their ability to withstand the Nazi assault. Nowhere would the impotence of the non-Nazi elements in the national opposition become more apparent than in the first ballot for the Reich presidency on 13 March 1932.

9 Not One, But Two Elections

The first round of voting in the 1932 German presidential elections produced an outcome with which absolutely no one was satisfied. Not only had Hitler failed to receive an absolute majority, but the 11.34 million votes he received for 30.2 percent of the popular vote placed him far behind the 18.65 million votes that were cast for Hindenburg for a 49.6 percent share of the popular vote. Although Hindenburg had far outdistanced Hitler in the presidential voting, the fact that he had fallen short of an absolute majority by a mere 170,000 votes and would therefore have to endure the stress of a runoff election came as a bitter disappointment to the aging Reich president and his circle of intimate advisors. Duesterberg, on the other hand, received approximately 2.56 million votes – or 6.8 percent of the total popular vote – but had failed to establish himself as a viable alternative to Hitler for those on the German Right who rejected Hindenburg. And while Ernst Thälmann, the candidate of the German Communist Party, received 4.98 million votes for a 13.2 percent share of the popular vote, his final tally was nearly 400,000 less than the KPD had received in the 1930 Reichstag elections. The only conclusion that Thälmann and his party comrades could draw from this was that they had failed miserably in their efforts to secure a breakthrough into the ranks of the Social Democrats.1 But for the leaders of the various political parties between the Communists and the Nazis, the 1

Alfred Milatz, “Das Ende der Parteien im Spiegel der Wahlen 1930 bis 1933,” in Das Ende der Parteien 1933, eds. Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey (Düsseldorf, 1960), 741–93, 761–66. For a government assessment of the election outcome, see the memorandum by Pünder, 14 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/62–69.

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runoff election for the Reich presidency was already overshadowed by the fact that state elections in Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, and several smaller states were scheduled for two weeks after the second round of voting on 10 April. With their resources already stretched to the limits, none were enthusiastic about the prospect of a runoff election for the Reich presidency, particularly when Hindenburg’s performance in the first ballot left no doubt about the ultimate outcome of the election. The outcome of the vote on 13 March left as many questions unanswered as it answered. The first and most pressing question of these was how Hugenberg and the leaders of the Stahlhelm would react to Duesterberg’s disappointing performance in the first round of voting. Duesterberg’s 2.56 million votes scarcely exceeded the 2.46 million votes the DNVP had received in the 1930 Reichstag elections, a statistic that confirmed just how narrow the Stahlhelm leader’s appeal and constituency had been. The leaders of the Stahlhelm were quick to blame Duesterberg’s poor performance on the lassitude and ineptitude of the DNVP party organization. For example, they could point to the fact that in traditional Nationalist strongholds like Frankfurt an der Oder, East Prussia, and Potsdam II where in 1930 the DNVP had polled 24.3, 19.6, and 18.8 percent of the popular vote respectively Duesterberg consistently trailed the DNVP’s 1930 share of the popular vote by eight to ten percentage points with just 12.9, 11.5, and 10.6 percent of all votes cast. Particularly revealing were the results in Mecklenburg-Strelitz, where in state parliamentary elections on the same day as the presidential elections the DNVP tallied nearly twice as many of votes as Duesterberg received in his bid for the Reich presidency. And in those districts like Thuringia, East Hanover, Franconia, and Württemberg where Duesterberg ran anywhere from two to eight percentage points better than the DNVP had fared in 1930, his success stemmed in large part from the endorsements he had received from the regional affiliates of the National Rural League that refused to endorse Hitler. Duesterberg also performed well in Magdeburg, Merseburg, Koblenz-Trier, and Weser-Ems with 9.6, 11.9, 7.7, and 9.2 percent of the popular vote respectively, in all cases two to four percentage points ahead of what the DNVP had received two years earlier. But these gains were inadequate to compensate for the DNVP’s failure to mobilize its voters on Duesterberg’s behalf in many of those areas – but nowhere more so than east of the Elbe – where it had been traditionally strong.2 2

The foregoing analysis is based upon statistical material in Jürgen Falter, Thomas Lindenberger, and Siegfried Schumann, Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik.

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

Although Hindenburg had fallen short of an absolute majority by less than half a percentage point, his reelection was a foregone conclusion. Still, the campaign for the runoff election on 10 April 1932 would prove every bit as spirited as the campaign for the first round of voting four weeks earlier. Both Hindenburg’s supporters and the Nazis would concentrate their efforts on winning the support of the 2.56 million voters who had cast their ballots for Duesterberg in the first round of voting. For Hindenburg’s conservative supporters, the runoff election would afford them an opportunity to redeem themselves in light of the fact that those who had supported Hindenburg in 1925 had demonstrated only lukewarm support for his reelection bid seven years later. If the runoff election was to have any meaning for conservatives like Kuno von Westarp and Günther Gereke, it was incumbent upon them to win the support of those conservatives who had opted for Duesterberg in the first round of voting. This was essential to offset the psychological and political effects of the disturbing reversal of fronts that had characterized the voting in the first election on 13 March. As even contemporaries were quick to observe, the Reich president had received the overwhelming bulk of his support from constituencies that had opposed his election in 1925, while approximately half of the 14.7 million Germans who had voted for him in 1925 voted for Hitler in 1932. Even if all of the two-and-a-half million voters who had cast their ballots for Duesterberg had supported Hindenburg in 1925, this still meant that the Reich president had retained the support of less than a third of those who had voted for him seven years earlier.3 Outside of Bavaria where Hindenburg had received endorsements from the locally influential Bavarian People’s Party both in 1925 and 1932, this figure plummeted to less than 30 percent even if most of the 600,000 Bavarian loyalists who had supported Hindenburg in 1925 did so again in 1932.4 Given the fact that the Social Democrats, the two Catholic parties, and the German State Party had polled slightly more than 15 million votes in the 1930 Reichstag elections, at least 3.5 million of Hindenburg’s 18.7 million votes must have come from those who were either voting for the first time or who had voted for the German People’s Party, the Business Party,

3 4

Materialien zum Wahlverhalten 1919–1933 (Munich, 1986), 46, 72, 78. On the results in Mecklenburg-Strelitz, see “Der Stahlhelm zur Präsidentenwahl,” Neue Preußische (Kreuz-)Zeitung, 14 Mar. 1932, no. 75. Jürgen W. Falter, “The Two Hindenburg Elections of 1925 and 1932: A Total Reversal of Voter Coalitions,” Central European History 23 (1990): 225–41, 236. For further details, see Klaus Schönhoven, Die Bayerische Volkspartei 1924–1932 (Düsseldorf, 1972), 125–26, 270.

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or one of the other parties on the moderate Right in 1930. At the same time, the fact that the parties of the middle and moderate Right that were affiliated with the United Hindenburg Committees in the 1932 presidential elections had polled nearly 5.5 million votes in the 1930 Reichstag elections suggests that Hindenburg’s conservative supporters had been only partly successful in their efforts to mobilize the anti-Hugenberg Right and that at least half of those to whom they had addressed their appeal ended up for voting for one of the candidates of the national opposition.5 As easy as it might have been for the Stahlhelm to blame Duesterberg’s disappointing performance on the lackluster support his candidacy had received from the DNVP party organization,6 a factor every bit as important but less apparent from the election results themselves was the failure of the Stahlhelm’s own members to heed the instructions of the organization’s national leaders to cast their votes for Duesterberg. As reports from the Stahlhelm’s regional and district leaders clearly indicated, the Stahlhelm’s rank-and-file members frequently acted on their own discretion and voted for the candidate of their choice without regard for the instructions coming from Berlin and Magedburg. While some voted for Hindenburg, even more, it would seem, preferred Hitler. Karl Bruch, a local Stahlhelm leader from Cologne, estimated that perhaps as much as 40 percent of the membership in his precinct had voted for Hitler, an egregious breach of Stahlhelm discipline that he saw both as a mutiny against the organization’s national leadership and as an act of “spiritual disorientation [das innere Gleichgewicht verloren]” on the part of its rank-and-file membership. Bruch continued that what he had witnessed in Cologne had replicated itself in adjoining districts such as MönchenGladbach, Gelsenkirchen, Aachen, and Siegburg. From Bruch’s perspective, this constituted nothing less than a mutiny by the Stahlhelm’s popular base against instructions from above, a mutiny that could only be contained by an immediate correction in the Stahlhelm’s political course.7 The disunity and restlessness at the base of the Stahlhelm organization only fueled the ire of those who had opposed their organization’s increasing involvement in the partisan political warfare of the late Weimar Republic and therefore rejected the alliance that the Stahlhelm leadership 5 6 7

Milatz, “Ende der Parteien im Spiegel der Wahlen,” 761–64. For example, see Egan-Krieger to Wagner, 18 Mar. 1932, StA Mönchen-Gladbach, NL Brauweiler, 109. Bruch to Friese, 27 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 2319. See also the report filed by the chief of the Stahlhelm intelligence service with Duesterberg and Seldte, 17 Mar. 1932, StA Mönchen-Gladbach, NL Brauweiler, 109.

278

Hitler versus Hindenburg

had concluded with the DNVP prior to the declaration of Duesterberg’s candidacy. Duesterberg, who had entered the campaign in the hope of gaining leverage that would enable the Stahlhelm to pressure the Reich president into changing his political course, realized that whatever leverage the Stahlhelm had hoped to gain with his candidacy had been completely nullified by the fact that Hindenburg had come within a percentage point of being reelected on the first ballot. With Hindenburg assured of victory in the second round of voting, neither Duesterberg nor the Stahlhelm had any stomach for continuing a candidacy that stood no chance of accomplishing even the modest goals that had been set for it.8 At the same time, the outcome of the first presidential ballot had had a demoralizing effect upon the Stahlhelm’s membership base and prompted calls for a return to the nonpartisanship that lay at the heart of its political identity.9 All of this was accompanied by a flurry of activity in the Stahlhelm as the leaders of its state and regional organizations searched for a way out of the political impasse into which the Stahlhelm’s national leadership had maneuvered itself. An emergency meeting of the Stahlhelm’s executive committee was hastily convened for the weekend of 19–20 March in the hope that that these and related issues could be resolved.10 In the meantime, the DNVP’s Alfred Hugenberg had undertaken an initiative of his own. Hopeful that the Nazis had reached their high point with Hitler’s vote in the first presidential ballot and that the voters would now begin to return to the Nationalist fold, the Nationalists were privately relieved that Hitler had not done better for fear that otherwise “the megalomania of the Nazis would have become unbearable.”11 Given the fact that there was no longer any possibility of defeating Hindenburg and that many party members had apparently voted for the Reich president,12 Hugenberg proposed to Hitler on the day after the first round of voting that the runoff election be cancelled and that Hindenburg be confirmed in office by a special vote in a newly elected Reichstag.13 To be sure, such a

8 9 10 11 12 13

Duesterberg’s unpublished memoirs, BA Koblenz, NL Duesterberg, 47/171–72. For example, see Hauffe to Wagner, 25 Mar. 1932, StA Mönchen-Gladbach, NL Brauweiler, 109. For an indication of the crisis in which the Stahlhelm found itself, see H. [?], “Expose,” 18 Mar. 1932, StA Mönchen-Gladbach, NL Brauweiler, 109. Büro Hugenberg to Wegener, 15 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Wegener, 50/254. Entry in Quaatz’s diary, 13 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. Neue Preußische (Kreuz-)Zeitung, 14 Mar. 1932, no. 74. On the origins of this proposal, see the entry in Quaatz’s diary, 14 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17.

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ploy would have spared the non-Nazi elements of the national opposition the difficult and potentially disastrous choice between Hitler and Hindenburg at a time when Hugenberg was already beginning to focus his party’s attention on the upcoming state elections in Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, and several smaller German states.14 But, as Hugenberg explained in a particularly revealing letter to the renown right-wing publicist Hans Grimm, his proposal had less to do with the welfare of his own party than with his concern for the future of the national movement and in particular for that of the NSDAP. Noting that he was greatly depressed by the developments on the nationalist Right since the fall of 1931, Hugenberg continued: After careful and thorough consideration I decided to use this opportunity to conduct an experiment in “corrective education” with respect to the National Socialists. If they continue to conduct politics the way they have done since last fall after Harzburg and are now doing in the discussions on the presidential elections, all hope is lost. Every opportunity that comes along for a movement on the Right to take power is being wasted. Eventually the National Socialists will succumb to the devilry of the Center. Their ambition and ego would sooner let them be trapped by the Center than to follow our well-intentioned advice. The more they insist that they are “Prussia” and we are “Anhalt” and that “Anhalt” must defer to “Prussia,” the greater the impossibility of a healthy development.15

The possibility of cancelling the second round of voting had also been broached within the United Hindenburg Committees, though in this case to spare those who had supported Hindenburg’s bid for reelection the costs and rigors of a second campaign.16 But the idea was rejected by none other than Otto Meissner, the state secretary in the Bureau of the Reich President, on the grounds that this would require a temporary suspension of those provisions of the Weimar Constitution that pertained to the popular election of the Reich president by a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag, something that would have been possible only with the assent of the NSDAP.17 Given the constitutional objections that Hitler had raised at the beginning of the year to block an extension of Hindenburg’s term of office by a special vote in the Reichstag, it was also unlikely

14 15 16 17

For example, see Hugenberg’s circular to the chairmen of the DNVP state organizations, 23 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 39. Hugenberg to Grimm, 30 Mar. 1932, DLA Marburg, NL Grimm, A34. Batocki to Meissner, 14 Mar. 1932, appended to Wilhemini to Westarp, 14 Mar. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 18. Klaus-Dieter Weber, Das Büro des Reichspräsidenten 1919–1934. Eine politischadministrative Institution in Kontinuität und Wandel (Frankfurt a.M., 2001), 452.

280

Hitler versus Hindenburg

that the Nazi party leader would assent to such a maneuver. Although Hitler and his entourage had entered the presidential campaign with every expectation of winning and were euphoric about Hitler’s prospects of victory right up until the final returns from the first ballot on 13 March had been reported,18 they recovered from the shock of defeat quickly and began planning for the next round of voting almost immediately.19 To be sure, no one in the Nazi camp held out any hope of defeating Hindenburg. For the Nazis the runoff election was simply the prelude to the far more important state elections that were to take place two weeks later,20and they were not about to give their political opponents the respite they so desperately needed by agreeing to the cancellation of the runoff election. From Hitler’s perspective, Hugenberg’s proposal was little more than the desperate ploy of someone who could not keep pace, and he dismissed it out of hand.21 Hugenberg was disappointed but certainly not surprised by Hitler’s rejection of his proposal to cancel the second round of voting. To confidantes like Grimm and DNVP Reichstag deputy Martin Spahn, Hindenburg insisted that he had made the proposal in order to afford the Nazis a way out of the predicament in which they found themselves.22 But when Hitler ignored his counsel and decided to continue his candidacy despite its utter futility, Hugenberg decided to discipline the Nazis with what he called an “educational slap on the wrist [Erziehungsmaßregel]” in the form of a long and sharply worded letter that he dispatched to the Nazi party leader on the evening of 20 March. Hugenberg began his letter by flatly stating that the DNVP would not take part in the second round of voting for the Reich presidency. He then proceeded to fire a general broadside against the Nazi party leader in which he charged Hitler with responsibility for the collapse of the Harzburg Front and the inability of the national movement to unite behind a single candidate for the Reich presidency. Hugenberg’s indictment of Hitler for his failure as the presumptive leader of the national movement could

18 19 20

21 22

Entry for 13 Mar. 1932 in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Else Fröhlich Teil 1, Bd. 2/II (Munich, 2004), 2/II, 240–41. Entries for 14–16 Mar. 1932, ibid, 241–43. On the connection between the two elections in the strategic thinking of the Nazi elite, see Alfred Rosenberg, “Die Entscheidung vom 10. und 24. April. Reichspräsidentenwahl und Landespolitik,” Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte 3, no. 25 (Apr. 1932): 146–61. For Hitler’s rejection of Hugenberg’s proposal, see the entry for 18 Mar. 1932 in Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 244. For example, see Hugenberg to Spahn, 21 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Spahn, 86.

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not have been more explicit. Not only did Hugenberg criticize the Nazi party leader for his failure to live up to the promises he had made over the course of the previous six months, but he blamed the collapse of a united national front on his refusal to treat the non-Nazi members of the national opposition as equal partners in the struggle against the existing political system. As a result, opportunities to install a new right-wing government based on the forces of the national opposition had been missed time and time again. “If the decisive political questions that are so critical in this time had been handled differently,” Hugenberg asserted, “the national opposition could be in shared possession of power [im gemeinsamen Besitz der Macht] today.” But nowhere, Hugenberg continued, had the difficulties that plagued the unity of the national front become more painfully apparent than in the recent efforts to find a single candidate around whom the disparate elements of the national opposition could unite. Here Hugenberg cited in detail the various ways in which the Nazis had sabotaged the unity of the national front and frustrated the search for a unity candidate of the national opposition. Once again Hugenberg reiterated his reasons for refusing to support Hitler, not the least of which was his concern that Hitler’s election as Reich president “would lead to a party dictatorship” as a substitute for the domination of political parties in the existing political system. All of this, Hugenberg concluded, had left him with no alternative but to abstain from the forthcoming presidential ballot as long as the basic principles of the Harzburg Front had not been fulfilled.23 Hugenberg’s letter, to which Hitler never responded but which nevertheless found its way into the public domain later that spring,24 raised the hostilities between the DNVP and NSDAP to a new level and set the tone that would govern relations between the two parties for the rest of the year. At the same time, the DNVP’s relations with the Stahlhelm had also entered a critical phase. On 18 February 1932 the DNVP and Stahlhelm had concluded an agreement to cooperate not only in support of Duesterberg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency but also in the upcoming state elections that were scheduled to take place in the last week of April in Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, and several smaller states.25 With sentiments against the Stahlhelm’s alliance with the DNVP running high 23 24 25

Hugenberg to Hitler, 20 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 37/38–47. Eisnerne Blätter 14, no. 21 (22 May 1932): 241–46. For the terms of the alliance, see the agreement signed by Hugenberg, Seldte, and Duesterberg, 18 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 29.

282

Hitler versus Hindenburg

among the leaders of the Stahlhelm’s regional and district organizations,26 Hugenberg met with a delegation headed by Duesterberg, Seldte, and Wagner on 16 March in hopes of preventing the Stahlhelm from endorsing Hindenburg’s candidacy now that Duesterberg had dropped out of the race.27 But the Nationalists were frustrated by the confusion that seemed to exist at all levels of the Stahlhelm organization and came away from the meeting feeling that the negotiations had been a waste of time.28 Nationalist concerns about where the Stahlhelm was headed seemed fully justified when the Stahlhelm executive committee adopted a resolution at the close of its meeting on 19–20 March that instructed Seldte and Duesterberg to reopen negotiations with Hugenberg for the purpose of terminating the Stahlhelm’s alliance with the DNVP.29 The Stahlhelm further resolved that it would not be taking part in the second round of voting and that it would abstain from any further role in the presidential elections.30 This last announcement came as a bitter disappointment to Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, who had been hoping that with the support of the Stahlhelm, the DNVP, and the NSDAP he might emerge as the candidate around whom the entire national opposition, including those who supported Hindenburg, could unite.31 The actions of the Stahlhelm executive committee on 19–20 March were only the first salvo in a bitter internal conflict to decide the future course of Germany’s largest and most politically active veterans’ organization.32 In the short term, however, what was at stake were the precise terms of its relationship with the DNVP. In response to a communiqué

26

27 28 29 30

31

32

For example, see Morozowicz to Hugenberg, 23 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 38/298–300. For further information on the situation in the Stahlhelm, see Lersner, draft of a letter for Bosch, 21 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 9/112–18. Entry in Quaatz’s diary, 16 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. Schmidt-Hannover to Spahn, 18 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Spahn, 174. Wagner to Auer, 31 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 281/165. For the terms of this alliance, see BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 29. Wagner, “Erklärung des Bundesvorstandes des Stahlhelm, B.d.F., vom 19 März 1932, zum 2. Wahlgang der Reichspräsidentenwahl und zu der Preußenwahl,” 22 Mar. 1932, BHStA Munich, Abt. IV, Stahlhelm, 137. See also Seldte and Duesterberg to Duke Carl Eduard of Saxe-Coburg, 1 Apr. 1932, ibid, 58. In this respect, see the letters from Crown Prince Wilhelm to Hugenberg, 23 Mar. 1932, and Seldte, 23 Mar. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 83/273–74. For further information on Wilhelm’s abortive candidacy, see 289–91. For the general outlines of this conflict, see the correspondence between EulenburgWicken and Wagner, 11–18 Apr. 1932, BHStA Munich, Abt. IV, Stahlhelm, 85. For further details, see Volker R. Berghahn, Der Stahlhelm. Bund der Frontsoldaten 1918–1935 (Düsseldorf, 1966), 214–16.

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from Seldte and Duesterberg requesting immediate talks to renegotiate the terms of the Stahlhelm’s alliance with the DNVP,33 Hugenberg met with the two Stahlhelm leaders on 22 March and, after a three-and-a-half hour meeting reluctantly agreed that despite the fact that the two organizations were committed to working with each other in the pursuit of their common goals, the terms of the alliance from February were no longer in effect.34 Deeply resentful of the way in which the Stahlhelm had held them responsible for Duesterberg’s lackluster performance at the polls, the Nationalists felt betrayed by the Stahlhelm’s insistence upon the abrogation of its alliance with the DNVP.35 Throughout all of this, Hugenberg continued to insist that the DNVP would take no part whatsoever in the upcoming runoff elections and, since Hitler had refused to step aside in favor of a unity candidate of the national opposition, instructed his followers to abstain from the second round of voting on 10 April. Supporting Hitler in his futile run for the presidency, as Hugenberg explained in a circular to the leaders of the DNVP’s district organizations, would only divert resources the DNVP needed for its campaign in the upcoming Prussian elections and would not shield it from almost certain attacks from the NSDAP when Hitler’s bid for the Reich presidency ultimately failed.36 Hugenberg’s strategy for the runoff election on 10 April 1932 encountered strong criticism both within and outside the DNVP, but most of all from those who, in light of his hostility toward Hitler, could not understand his refusal to support Hindenburg.37 Hugenberg’s position became even more problematic when Duesterberg defied the position the Stahlhelm’s executive committee had taken at its meeting on 19–20 March and announced his support for Hindenburg’s candidacy.38 In the meantime, 33

34

35 36 37 38

Seldte and Duesterberg to Hugenberg, 20 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL SchmidtHannover, 29. For a detailed reconstruction of the negotiations that followed, see the lengthy memorandum by Schmidt-Hannover, “DNVP und nationale Organisationen,” June 1932, BA Berlin, R 8048, 219/124–54. Memorandum on the negotiations between the Stahlhelm and DNVP, 22 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/169–70. See also the entry in Quaatz’s diary, 22 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. Schmidt-Hannover, “DNVP und nationale Organisationen,” June 1932, BA Berlin, R 8048, 219/124–54. Hugenberg’s circular to the chairmen of the DNVP state organizations, 23 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 39. Lersner, draft of a letter for Bosch, 21 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 9/112–18. See Duesterberg’s statement, 16 Mar. 1932, in the Neue Preußische (Kreuz-)Zeitung, 17 Mar. 1932, no. 77. See also the confused account of his endorsement in Duesterberg’s unpublished memoirs, BA Koblenz, NL Duesterberg, 47/173–74.

284

Hitler versus Hindenburg

the various organizations that had been affiliated with the DNVP under the umbrella of the national opposition broke ranks with Hugenberg and the Stahlhelm in a series of declarations supporting not Hindenburg, but Hitler. The first of these was the United Patriotic Leagues, whose chairman Count Rüdiger von der Goltz drafted a public appeal endorsing Hitler on 19 March – that is, before Hugenberg and the Stahlhelm had made their positions known – that urged the various forces on the radical Right to unite behind his candidacy as the first step toward restoring the unity of the Harzburg Front.39 But Goltz’s attempt to preempt the other organizations on the non-Nazi Right with his endorsement of Hitler’s candidacy met with a cool response from the highly revered World War I hero field marshal August von Mackensen, who expressed reservations about Hitler’s leadership qualities and chose to honor Hugenberg’s call to abstain rather than sign the appeal that Goltz was preparing to release on Hitler’s behalf.40 Duesterberg, on the other hand, was already so embittered by the lackluster support he had received from the VVVD and the German Officers’ League that he resigned from both organizations and defiantly rejected the VVVD’s endorsement of Hitler’s candidacy.41 But neither Mackensen’s demur nor Duesterberg’s embrace of Hindenburg was sufficient to deter Goltz from publicly endorsing Hitler’s candidacy in the name of a united German Right.42 A similar situation presented itself in the Pan-German League. Although ADV chairman Heinrich Claß was one of Hugenberg’s closest political confidantes, relations between the two were already strained as a result of the ADV’s decision in the first round of voting to endorse Hitler as well as Duesterberg as the best way to mobilize the forces of the German Right against Hindenburg and the system with which he had become so closely identified.43 Like Hugenberg and the leaders of the

39

40 41

42

43

In this respect, see the manuscript of Goltz’s essay, “Schließt die Reihen!,” 19 Mar. 1932, as well as the resolution adopted by the VVVD, 19 Mar. 1932, both appended to Goltz to Mackensen, 19 Mar. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Mackensen, 272/9–12. Mackensen to Goltz, 20 Mar. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Mackensen, 272/13–14. See the letters from Duesterberg to Goltz, 17 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 296/155, and Wächter, 17 Mar. 1932, ibid, 296/154. For further information on the strain between Duesterberg and the VVVD, see Friedrichs to Levetzow, 5 Apr. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 56/85–86. Neue Preußische (Kreuz-)Zeitung, 20 Mar. 1932, no. 80. See also the manuscript of Goltz’s essay, “Einigkeit,” 23 Mar. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Goltz, 13. For a fuller explanation of Goltz’s motives in supporting Hitler, see his letter to Mackensen, 30 Mar. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Mackensen, 272/3. Claß to Levetzow, 8 Mar. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 80/147–48.

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Stahlhelm, Claß would have welcomed Hitler’s withdrawal from the presidential race in favor of a candidate around whom the NSDAP, DNVP, and Stahlhelm could all unite.44 But when Hitler decided to remain in the race, Claß had the leaders of the ADV felt that they had no alternative but to support Hitler. Abstention would have been tantamount to voting for Hindenburg and the preservation of the existing system of government, and that was simply not an option.45 But Hugenberg and his immediate entourage were infuriated by the ADV’s endorsement of Hitler, an act they regarded as a clear and unmitigated act of betrayal. Nowhere was the bitterness that Hugenberg felt over Claß’s endorsement of Hitler more obvious than in his use of the term “stab in the back” to describe how grievously this had wounded the DNVP.46 The fractures in the United Patriotic Leagues and Pan-German League were relatively minor compared to those in the National Rural League. In the first vote on 13 March the RLB had issued an appeal calling upon its three million or so members to cast their ballots for either of the two candidates of the national opposition, Duesterberg or Hitler.47 But the RLB’s regional affiliates in Bavaria, Hanover, Hesse, Thuringia, and Württemberg had bolted at the idea of endorsing Hitler and, in several cases, had insisted upon including Hindenburg among those they endorsed.48 Privately, the RLB president Count Eberhard von Kalckreuth continued to have serious reservations about entrusting Hitler with the Reich presidency.49 But at the same time, as he explained in a letter to agricultural expert Robert Keyserlingk, he could not follow the logic behind Hugenberg’s decision to abstain and continued to believe that 44

45

46

47 48 49

Claß to Bongartz, 14 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8048, 300/241. For further information on the dilemma in which the ADV found itself, see Barry A. Jackisch, The Pan-German League and Radical Nationalist Politics in Interwar Germany, 1918–39 (Farnham, 2012), 174–77. Claß to Bongartz, 14 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8048, 300/241. See also Claß to Hugenberg, 16 and 20 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 36/88–91, and Claß’s remarks before the ADV managing committee, 7 May 1932, BA Berlin, R 8048, 170/21–23, as well as J. F. Lehmann, “Warum wählt das nationale Deutschland im zweiten Wahlgang Adolf Hitler?,” Deutschlands Erneuerung 10, no. 4 (Apr. 1932): 193–96. Entry in Quaatz’s diary, 23 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. For a further indication of Hugenberg’s bitterness toward Claß, see his letter to Bang, 28 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Wegener, 73/159–60. See also Johannes Leicht, Heinrich Claß 1868–1953. Die politische Biographie eines Alldeutschen (Paderborn, 2012), 380–81. Minutes of the RLB executive committee, 1 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 146/24–31. Memorandum from Kriegsheim to the members of the RLB executive committee, “Landbünde und Reichspräsidentenwahl,” 9 Apr. 1932, BA Koblenz, R 8034 I, 146/68–71. Kalckreuth to Goldacker, 23 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 14/39–42.

286

Hitler versus Hindenburg

the most certain way to force a change in the national government was to give Hitler the largest possible vote in the second round of the presidential elections.50 On 22 March the RLB executive committee met in Berlin to reassess its options in light of the vote on 13 March and Duesterberg’s subsequent withdrawal as a candidate for the Reich presidency. With strong support from the RLB’s affiliates from east of the Elbe, Kalckreuth secured the passage of an awkwardly worded resolution that used the RLB’s decision to support only candidates of the national opposition in the first round of voting to justify an endorsement of Hitler as the only remaining candidate committed to freeing the German farmer from the system of government that had taken shelter behind the person of Hindenburg.51 In endorsing Hitler, Kalckreuth and the RLB leadership were well aware of the effect this would have on the unity of their organization. Over the next two weeks, no less than six of the RLB’s affiliates in central and western Germany took exception to the RLB’s endorsement of Hitler and proceeded to adopt resolutions of their own that broke with the position of the RLB’s national leadership. The executive committee of the Thuringian Rural League, for example, denounced Hitler as a socialist whose creed spelled disaster for the independent peasant proprietor, conceded Hindenburg’s election, and left it to the discretion of those who belonged to TLB to vote for the candidate of thier choice.52 The Bavarian Rural League, on the other hand, remained unconditionally opposed to any accommodation with the NSDAP and, once it became clear that Kalckreuth and the RLB could not be dissuaded from endorsing Hitler, adopted the position of the Stahlhelm and recommended abstention for all its members.53 Of the RLB’s regional affiliates that balked at following the lead of Kalckreuth and the RLB’s Berlin leadership, none was more outspoken in its condemnation of Hitler than the Württemberg Peasants and Wine Growers’ League. Like its Bavarian counterpart, the WBWB was as much a political party as an agricultural interest organization, and as such it needed to stake out a position for the upcoming state elections that set it apart as clearly as possible from the NSDAP. In a fourpage handout entitled “Hindenburg oder Hitler?” the WBWB’s patriarch 50 51 52 53

Kalckreuth to Keyserlingk, 31 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 27/5–6. Minutes of the RLB executive committee, 22 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8034 I, 146/43–53. “Kein sozialistischer Reichspräsident,” Thüringer Landbund, 2 Apr. 1932, no. 26. Minutes of the BLB executive committee, 20 and 29 Mar. 1932, IfZ-Munich, BLB-Akten, 159–71. See also the BLB’s statement in Bayerischer Landbund 34, no. 14 (3 Apr. 1932): 1

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and long-time leader Theodor Körner alt argued that Hitler’s remarkable success had less to do with his supposedly unique qualifications as a political leader than with the effects of the lost war. After dissecting Hitler’s position on a variety of domestic and foreign policy questions, Körner concluded that once one looked past the flamboyance of Hitler’s rhetoric, it became increasingly clear that even if Hitler had been in power, he could have done little that Hindenburg himself had not already done. Comparing Germany’s current situation with that in which it had found itself at the time of Bismarck’s appointment as chancellor, Körner continued: “Just as everything fifty years ago began to go wrong with the dismissal of Bismarck, so would that happen today if we do not immediately come to our senses and on Sunday, 10 April, vote for Hindenburg. . .. I remain true to Hindenburg!”54 The RLB’s endorsement of Hitler constituted a severe embarrassment for Hugenberg and the DNVP party leadership and set the stage for a new challenge to his leadership of the party. In the week that followed the first presidential vote, first Quaatz and then Hugenberg met with Kalckreuth in an unsuccessful effort to dissuade the RLB from endorsing Hitler’s candidacy in the runoff election.55 Hugenberg also hoped that the PanGermans could be dissuaded from endorsing Hitler’s bid for the presidency but was bitterly disappointed when ADV chairman Heinrich Claß betrayed a friendship of more than thirty years by sanctioning his organization’s support of Hitler’s candidacy.56 The net effect of this was to undermine Hugenberg’s authority as DNVP party chairman, though not as much in the eyes of those party members who sympathized with Hitler as among those who failed to understand why the DNVP had taken such a hard and uncompromising stand against Hindenburg’s reelection.57 Hugenberg’s loss of authority and his increasing isolation on the German Right encouraged Paul Reusch and the anti-Hugenberg faction in Ruhr heavy industry to undertake still another effort to force his resignation from the DNVP party chairmanship. If successful, this would make it

54

55 56 57

Theodor Körner alt, “Hindenburg oder Hitler? Nüchterne Betrachtungen zur 2. Reichspräsidentenwahl am 10. April 1932,” NL Hiller von Gaertringen, Gärtringen. See also Reinhold Weber, Bürgerpartei und Bauernbund in Württemberg. Konservative Parteien im Kaiserreich und in Weimar (1895–1933) (Düsseldorf, 2004), 421–23. Entry in Quaatz’s diary, 16 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. Entry in Quaatz’s diary, 23 Mar. 1932, ibid. Wilmowsky to Reusch, 22 Mar. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/39. On the mood within the DNVP, see Lersner’s draft of a letter to Bosch, 21 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 9/112–18.

288

Hitler versus Hindenburg

possible for the DNVP to establish itself as the crystallization point for the creation of a bourgeois Sammelpartei capable of uniting the various forces that stood between the Center and NSDAP.58 Though bitterly disappointed by the recent turn of events and in particular by Hitler’s antics as Nazi party leader, Hugenberg was adverse to considering a change in his party’s leadership until after the Prussian elections and turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of DNVP Reichstag deputy Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau and other party loyalists who were convinced that a change in the party leadership was necessary to create a strong conservative bulwark against the rising tide of Nazi radicalism.59 Then, in an attempt to deflect criticism that he was indifferent to the imperative of bourgeois concentration, Hugenberg publicly offered to accept candidates from the parties that stood to the right of the Center on the DNVP slate for the Prussian state elections. In return, all Reststimmen – or votes that these parties could not count toward the election of their own candidates – would go to the DNVP. By the same token, all deputies who were elected through this arrangement would subsequently affiliate themselves as guests, or Hospitanten, with the DNVP Landtag delegation.60 But the conditions that Hugenberg attached to his offer of cooperation with the parties less radical than his own were tantamount to capitulation to the DNVP and met with emphatic and unequivocal rejection.61 Although nothing ever came of the efforts to force Hugenberg’s removal as DNVP party chairman in the spring of 1932, they nevertheless 58

59

60 61

For the broader objectives of this endeavor, see Wilmowsky’s letters to Reusch, 18 Mar. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/39, and Siemens, 18 Mar. 1932, SAA Munich, 4/Lf 670. For further information on Wilmowsky’s initiative, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Sammlung oder Zersplitterung? Die Bestrebungen zur Bildung einer neuen Mittelpartei in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik 1930–1933,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25 (1977): 265–304, esp. 279–81, as well as Peter Langer, Macht und Verantwortung. Der Ruhrbaron Paul Reusch (Essen, 2012), 504–07, and Christian Marx, Paul Reusch und die Gutehoffnungshütte. Leitung eines Großunternehmens (Göttingen, 2012), 316–22. For further details, see Wilmowsky to Krupp, 24 Mar. 1932, HA Krupp, Essen, FAH 23/ 506, and Wilmowsky to Reusch, 25 Mar. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/39. For Oldenburg-Januschau’s views on Hindenburg, see his letter to Hugenberg, 26 Jan. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 38/142–44. Hugenberg, “Der Rumtopf? Nein, nationaler Wiedergeburt,” BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 191/418–19, published in Der Tag, 30 Mar. 1932, no. 77. In this respect, see the open letter from the DVP’s Eduard Dingeldey to Hugenberg, 4 Apr. 1932, in Erneuerung. Wochenblatt der Deutschen Volkspartei, 9 Apr. 1932, no. 14, as well as Wilmowsky to Krupp, 1 Apr. 1932, HA Krupp Essen, FAH 23/506. See also the skeptical reaction of Reusch in his letter to Hugenberg, 29 Mar. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/86.

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revealed just how brittle and uncertain the situation on the German Right had become. All of this played neatly into the hands of the Nazis, who themselves were struggling to overcome the effects of Hitler’s defeat and the mood of depression that it had left in certain quarters of the party.62 Hitler and his entourage, however, were quick to recover from the disappointment of Hitler’s defeat and moved decisively to prepare for the runoff election that had been set for the second Sunday in April.63 The Nazis realized that there was no way they could prevent Hindenburg’s reelection but were determined to use the campaign for the second round of voting on 10 April as the springboard for the state and regional elections that were scheduled to take place throughout much of Germany a scant two weeks later. Given the short time that remained before the second ballot, the Nazis saw little chance of winning many votes from either the Social Democrats or the Center but concentrated instead on securing a major breakthrough into the ranks of the bourgeois wing of the Hindenburg front.64 Even if they could not defeat Hindenburg, the Nazis could still score a decisive victory on 24 April that would take their bid for control of the national government to a new level and that could potentially catapult them into power. Not even the last-minute candidacy of Crown Prince Wilhelm, the Hohenzollern heir to the Prussian throne, could deter the Nazis from their pursuit of power. As the oldest of the exiled Kaiser’s four sons, Wilhelm had gone to great lengths to ingratiate himself with the DNVP, Stahlhelm, and other right-wing organizations ever since his return to Germany from his self-imposed exile in 1923. Wilhelm’s mission, as he saw it, was to lay the foundations for a restoration of the monarchy by having himself elected Reich president as a unity candidate of the German Right so that he could then use the powers of his office to reintroduce the monarchical system of government to Germany.65 Hitler, on the other 62 63 64

65

For an outsider’s view of the situation within the NSDAP, see Lersner’s draft of a letter to Bosch, 21 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 9/112–18. Entries for 14–16 Mar. 1932 in the Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 241–43. For the general outlines of the Nazi strategy in the second round of voting, see the circular from Franke and Goebbels to the leadership of the NSDAP district organizations, 23 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 26, 288. For further information on the Nazi campaign in the second presidential election, see Dietrich Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party: 1919–1933 (Pittsburgh, PA, 1969), 250–52, and Wolfgang Horn, Führerideologie und Parteiororganisation in der NSDAP (Düsseldorf, 1972), 349–51. For a detailed study of Wilhelm’s abortive candidacy, see Wolfgang Stribrny, “Der Versuch einer Kandidatur der Kronprinzen Wilhelm bei der Reichspräsidentenwahl 1932,” in Geschichte in der Gegenwart. Festschrift für Kurt Kluxen zu seinem 60.

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hand, had little genuine interest in the restoration of the monarchy but was interested in using the possibility of restoring the monarchy as a way of leveraging Hindenburg out of the race for the Reich presidency. For the Nazis, the key objective had always been Hindenburg’s removal from office, and toward this end the Nazi party leader intimated that he was prepared to withdraw from the campaign and support the Crown Prince as a candidate around which all elements of the German Right could unite in the expectation that, once elected, Wilhelm would then entrust Hitler with the chancellorship.66 All of this was obviously premised upon the assumption that Hindenburg would be unwilling to run against the Hohenzollern claimant to the throne and would withdraw from the presidential race should such an eventuality materialize. Although the Crown Prince enjoyed strong support among certain elements of the so-called national opposition, his negotiations with the Nazis before the first ballot on March 13 produced little in the way of positive results. It was, in fact, only after the results of the first round of voting made Hindenburg’s reelection a virtual certainty that Hitler took an active interest in Wilhelm’s candidacy as a way of forcing Hindenburg out of the race.67 Although the decisions by the Stahlhelm and DNVP to abstain from the second round of voting dealt the prospects of Wilhelm’s candidacy a serious setback,68 there was a flurry of activity in the last days of March right up until the moment when the exiled Kaiser threatened to disinherit his son with the admonition that it was “impossible for the Hohenzollerns to return to power via the red republican presidential seat of an Ebert.”69 Having been left with no choice but to abandon his efforts to insinuate himself into the presidential race, the Crown Prince publically endorsed Hitler’s bid for the Reich presidency on April 1, ironically the

66 67 68 69

Geburtstag, eds. Ernst Heinen and Hans Julius Schoeps (Paderborn, 1972), 199–210. See also Klaus W. Jonas, Der Kronprinz Wilhelm (Frankfurt a.M., 1962), 220–22. Stribrny, “Versuch einer Kandidatur der Kronprinzen Wilhelm,” 205–07. Jonas, Kronprinz Wilhelm, 224 For example, see Crown Prince Wilhelm to Hugenberg, 23 Mar. 1932, and Seldte, 23 Mar. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Levetzow, 83/273–74. For a detailed account of these negotiations, see the memorandum composed by Günther von Einem, 1 Apr. 1932, NA-MA Freiburg, NL Einem, 29/123–31, as well as the reconstruction of these events in Jonas, Kronprinz Wilhelm, 225–29. See also the detailed account in Pyta, Hindenburg, 673–78. Pyta’s account is based upon evidence to which neither Jonas nor Stribrny, “Versuch einer Kandidatur der Kronprinzen Wilhelm,” had access. For the text of the ex-Kaiser’s directive to his son, see John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900–1941 (Cambridge, 2014), 1247–48.

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same day that an appeal in support of his own candidacy appeared in Der Fridericus.70 The fact that Hindenburg’s reelection was a foregone conclusion did not deter the Nazis from staging a campaign that was without precedent in the annals of German electoral history. One of the major adjustments the Nazis made in their strategy for the runoff campaign was to make their attacks on Hindenburg much more personal, so much so that at least one Nazi strategist expressed concern that all of this ran the risk of alienating potential Hitler supporters among the non-Nazi elements of the radical Right.71 In one pamphlet by Nazi propagandist Hans Franke, Hindenburg was vilified for having betrayed his mandate from 1925 by becoming a pawn of those Catholic, Marxist, and Jewish interests that had so vigorously opposed his election seven years earlier.72 At the same time, the Nazis alleged that these interests, united by their fierce and unremitting hatred of Adolf Hitler, were now doing their best to arouse totally unwarranted fears of what the Nazi party leader might do if he were indeed elected to the high office to which he aspired.73 In his own campaign pronouncements, however, Hitler kept his references to Hindenburg to a minimum and concentrated his fury instead on the system of government he held responsible for the misery in which the German people found themselves. In his campaign declaration of 2 April, for example, Hindenburg’s name appeared only once and then as part of a diatribe against the parties and individuals who now sought shelter behind the very man they had pilloried and rejected so disgracefully seven years before.74 Or, as Hitler said in one of his few direct references to the Reich president in a speech later that week in Würzburg: “I do not fight against Hindenburg but against the parties that hide behind him.”75 Another subtle modification in the Nazi campaign was the attempt to make Hitler himself more personable. Beginning on 29 March all Nazi 70 71 72 73

74

75

For Wilhelm’s endorsement of Hitler, see Jonas, Kronprinz Wilhelm, 230–31. Willikens to the NSDAP national leadership, 1 Apr. 1932, in Sammlung Schumacher, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, Bestand R 187, 319. Heinz Franke, Warum Hindenburg?, Kampfschrift, Broschürenreihe der Reichspropaganda-Leitung der NSDAP, no. 7 (Munich, n.d. [1932]). For example, see Kurt Fiehler, Wenn Hindenburg wiedergewählt wird, dann,. . . ja, was dann?, Kampfschrift, Broschürenreihe der Reichspropaganda-Leitung der NSDAP, no. 10 (Munich, n.d. [1932]). Hitler, “Mein Program,” 2 Apr. 1932, in Adolf Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen. Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933, ed. Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 5 vols. in 12 parts (Munich, London, New York, and Paris, 1992–98), V/1, 14. Report of Hitler’s speech in Würzburg, 6 Apr. 1932, ibid, 33–34.

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papers would initiate a coordinated campaign displaying unified themes for the next four days. On that day, for example, the theme would be “Hitler as a man.” On the following day, the theme would be “Hitler as a comrade” to be followed by “Hitler as political fighter” and finally “Hitler as statesman” as the themes for the next two days. All of this was part of a concerted attempt to embellish the personality cult that had surrounded the Nazi party leader since his entry into politics after the end of World War I and to present Hitler as the unchallenged candidate of national unity around which all of those who rejected the existing political system, including the Stahlhelm and DNVP, could coalesce.76 This was complemented by an increased emphasis on winning the votes of German women. To be sure, the Nazis had issued appeals in the first round of voting that were specifically addressed to women.77 In light of the fact that only an estimated 26.5 percent of the women who had voted on 13 March had cast their ballots for Hitler,78 the Nazis viewed women as a substantial pool of potential voters that remained largely untapped.79 As a movement that was fundamentally opposed to all the emancipatory impulses at work in modern society, Nazism had always had a difficult time addressing the woman’s question. In their campaign iconography the Nazis projected an image of women that reaffirmed traditional social roles and values. The Nazi view of the woman was based upon a clear distinction between the separate spheres in which men and women fulfilled their obligations to the national community. The sphere to which biology had assigned women was the family, and it was by depicting the family as an institution threatened by economic uncertainty and the ubiquitous menace of Marxism that the Nazis sought to mobilize the electoral support of German women.80 Nowhere was the crisis of 76

77

78 79 80

Circular from the press office of the NSDAP national leadership, 23 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 26, 289. See also the text of Goebbel’s articles in Der Angriff from 31 Mar.–4 Apr. 1932, reprinted in Joseph Goebbels, Wetterleuchten. Auffsätze aus der Kampfzeit (2. Band “Der Angriff”), ed. Georg-Wilhelm Müller (Munich, 1939), 269–76. For further information, see Russell Lemmons, Goebbels and Der Angriff (Lexington, KY, 1994), 61–62. For example, see the appeal to women in the Völkischer Beobachter, 11 Mar. 1932, nos. 71, reprinted in English translation in Detlef Mühlberger, Hitler’s Voice: The Völkischer Beobachter, 1920–1933, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2004), 2: 350. Heinrich Zirkuhlen, “Die Reichspräsidentenwahl und die Frauen,” Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik 138 (1933): 95–100, here 97. Circular from Franke and Goebbels to the leadership of the NSDAP district organizations, 23 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 26, 288. The literature on the Nazi concept of women is quite extensive. For a brief introduction, see Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Germany (Harlow, 2001), 3–20. See also Julie

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the German family depicted more poignantly than in a placard by Hans Schweitzer with the caption “Against Hunger and Despair” and portraying a family of three left homeless by the economic misery of the times and forced to fend for themselves in a world that offered little hope or solace.81 The solution, at least according to a poster by Felix Albrecht depicting the anguish of parents no longer able to provide for their children, was clear and simple: “Save the German family. Elect Adolf Hitler!”82 The highpoint of Hitler’s campaign was his much celebrated Deutschlandflug across the country with the slogan “Hitler over Germany.” Speaking an average of three to four times a day, Hitler crisscrossed Germany in what would become one of the most celebrated campaigns in the annals of electoral politics. The flight began on 2 April, the day the Easter moratorium on public campaigning was lifted, on the heels of an intensive four-day campaign in the Nazi press to embellish Hitler’s image as a man whose preeminent personal qualities justified his claim to the leadership of the German nation. Over the next eight days Hitler would speak to an estimated million people at no less than twenty separate venues.83 Moreover, every appearance was carefully coordinated with a flurry of activity on the ground by local party officials designed to maximize the excitement and emotional effect of Hitler’s visit.84 To be sure, nothing Hitler had to say was particularly new. For the most part, all Hitler did was to repeat the shibboleths of the preceding campaign with an occasional local touch here and there. The target of his attack was always the hated Weimar system and the parties that propped it up behind Hindenburg’s protective shield. Hitler consistently presented himself as the only candidate who could bring about the fundamental change in Germany’s political system that Germany so desperately needed in order to recover from the last thirteen years of economic mismanagement and political incompetence.85 But what was most important was not so

81 82 83 84 85

Sneeringer, Winning Women’s Votes: Propaganda and Politics in Weimar Germany (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), 231–37. Schweitzer/Mjölnir, “Gegen Hunger und Verzweiflung!,” Apr. 1932, BA Bildarchiv, Plakat 002–016-050. Albrecht, “Männer! Frauen! Rettet die deutsche Familie,” n.d. [1932], BA Bildarchiv, Plakat 002–016-048. Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (New York and London, 1998), 363. Circular from the press office of the NSDAP national leadership, 23 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 26, 289. For example, see the reports of Hitler’s speeches in Essen, 8 Apr. 1932, and Schwenningen, 9 Apr. 1932, in Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, V/1, 40–48.

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figure 13: NSDAP campaign placard by Felix Albrecht, 1932 presidential elections. Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Plakat 002-016-048.

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much what Hitler had to say or even the fact that he was able to address more than a million Germans who otherwise would not have had an opportunity to see him speak as the visual image of energy and dynamism that highlighted the promise of his leadership more powerfully than words themselves could ever have done. By this very act Hitler imprinted himself in the minds of literally millions of Germans as the leader of the German future. The sheer dynamism of the Nazi campaign and its ability to reach into every corner of Germany’s national life had the architects of Hindenburg’s campaign on the defensive from the very outset. But the leaders of the Hindenburg campaign were anything but passive in the face of the Nazi juggernaut. Not only had the number of local Hindenburg committees increased from 430 to 1800 from March to April, but the campaign managers had more time to organize for this election than they had for the first.86 This was particularly true when it came to the distribution of campaign propaganda. Originally Brüning and his associates had hoped to enlist the services of Hugo Eckener, captain of the “Graf Zeppelin” airship and a staunch Hindenburg supporter, for a flight across Germany in the last days of the campaign that would have rivaled Hitler’s sensational Deutschland-Flug in its appeal to Germany’s popular imagination.87 But Eckener had already committed the “Graf Zeppelin” for a flight to South America for the very days that Hindenburg’s campaign managers had been hoping to use it and therefore was obliged to decline with assurances of his continued support for the Reich president.88 Under these circumstances, the leaders of the Hindenburg campaign had to settle for the next best option by leasing from twenty-five to thirty airplanes from Luft Hansa Airlines that would depart from approximately twenty airports to bombard the local population with twenty million proHindenburg leaflets.89 The campaign also arranged for several short documentaries on Hindenburg’s life and career prepared for distribution to movie theaters throughout the country.90 The Hindenburg campaign conceded little to the Nazis in imagination and intensity when it came to getting its message across to the voting public. 86 87 88 89 90

See the report on the organization of the Hindenburg campaign, 7 Apr. 1932, appended to Kempner to Wienstein, 7 Apr. 1932, BA Berlin, R 586/159. Brüning to Eckener, 16 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 586/24–28. Eckener to Brüning, 18 Mar. 1932, ibid, 586/56–58. See the attachment on the flight division (Flugabteilung) of the Hindenburg campaign, 3 Apr. 1932, appended to Kempner to Wienstein, 7 Apr. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 586/160. “Bericht der Werbe-Abteilung,” 7 Apr. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 389/293–96.

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For the leaders of those political parties that had supported Hindenburg in the first round of voting, this came as little consolation. Hindenburg’s failure to win the election outright had come as a bitter shock and disappointment to his supporters both inside and outside the conservative camp.91 No one – and certainly not the leaders of the parties that had supported Hindenburg’s bid for reelection – relished the prospect of a runoff election with state elections in Prussia, Bavaria, and other parts of the country so close at hand.92 Of all the parties that opposed Hitler, none was more resolute in its determination to defeat the Nazi party leader nor was more fearful of what might happen if he were to win than the Social Democrats. As bitter a pill as it may have been for the Social Democrats to swallow, they remained convinced that only a Hindenburg victory could keep the Nazi party leader from seizing control of the state, an outcome that would have almost certainly meant the destruction of German democracy and the organized labor movement.93 Social Democratic fears of what a Hitler victory might mean were confirmed when a police search of all Nazi and SA offices throughout the state ordered by the Prussian Minister of the Interior Carl Severing turned up evidence that the Nazi party headquarters in Munich had ordered that on election day SA units throughout the state be placed in a state of alarm so that in the event of an anticipated Hitler victory, they would immediately undertake a coup d’etat that included, among other things, the seizure of military installations and weaponry. Although the precise details of the alleged coup were never made public, the mere threat of such a coup provided Severing and the Social Democrats with all they needed to reenergize their party’s membership base in support of Hindenburg’s campaign against Hitler.94 But outside of Bavaria, where state officials moved quickly to secure military installations to prevent them from falling into SA hands, the more conservative elements of the Hindenburg front as well as the Reichswehr itself did not share Severing’s sense of alarm over the SA’s supposed plans for a coup and preferred to let developments within the SA run their course.95

91 92 93

94 95

For example, see Held to Brüning, 15 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 680/25–26. Wilhelmi to Westarp, 13 Mar. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 18. Eberhard Kolb, “Rettung der Republik: Die Politik der SPD in den Jahren 1930 bis 1933,” in Weimar im Widerstreit. Deutungen der ersten deutschen Republik im geteilten Deutschland, ed. Heinrich August Winkler (Munich, 2002), 85–104. For Severing’s account of these developments, see Carl Severing, Mein Lebensweg, 2 vols. (Cologne, 1950), II: 328–29. For further information, see Thilo Vogelsang, Reichswehr, Staat und NSDAP. Beiträge zur Deutschen Geschichte 1930–1932 (Stuttgart, 1962), 162–65.

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The Social Democrats still had one last trick up their sleeve. Before the first round of voting in March Wilhelm Abegg from the Prussian ministry of the interior and two of his subordinates, Rudolf Diels and Hans Hirschfeld, approached Helmuth Klotz, a Social Democratic publicist who had formerly belonged to the NSDAP, and informed him about three letters that the SA chief of staff Ernst Röhm had written to a Berlin nerve specialist H. G. Heimsoth from his self-imposed exile in Bolivia. The letters had been confiscated by the Prussian state police in a search of Heimsoth’s office and were in the possession of the Prussian ministry of the interior. The letters were less interesting for their political content than for the fact that they included Röhm’s frank discussion of his homosexuality and could have exposed the SA chief of staff to legal action.96 Klotz had already published an anti-Nazi pamphlet entitled Ehren-Rangliste consisting of short biographical sketches of various Nazi chieftains, of what he called the “piteous ruins of the lowest class of humanity [jämmerliche Trümmer niedrigsten Menschentums].”97 At the urging of Abegg, Diels, Hirschfeld, and the Reichsbanner’s Karl Höltermann, Klotz agreed to publish Röhm’s letters in facsimile and transcription in time for their use in the runoff election for the Reich presidency. Appearing under the title Der Fall Röhm with a brief foreword by Klotz,98 the 17-page pamphlet went through a printing of 300,000 copies in a matter of weeks and was quickly distributed to all corners of the Reich.99 It is difficult, however, to assess precisely what impact the publication of Röhm’s letters had upon the outcome of the April vote. Röhm had never made a secret of his homosexuality, and Hitler had never taken offense at Röhm’s sexual proclivities. But both Röhm and Hitler were embarrassed by Klotz’s disclosures, so much so that Hitler quickly came to Röhm’s defense by issuing a public statement on 6 April that confirmed his position as SA chief of staff.100 At the very least, the revelations about Röhm were an unwelcome distraction from the campaign for Hitler and his campaign 96

97 98 99 100

For further details, see the excellent study by Herbert Linder, Von der NSDAP zur SPD. Der politische Lebensweg des Dr. Helmuth Klotz (1894–1943) (Konstanz, 1998), 168–69. The Social Democratic minister president Otto Braun had brought these letters to the attention of the Reich chancery in early March 1932. See Braun to Brüning, 4 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 2683/423–27, reprinted in Akten der Reichskanzlei: Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II. 30. März 1930 bis 10. Oktober 1931. 10. Oktober 1931 bis 1. Juni 1932, ed. Tilman Koops, 3 vols. (Boppard am Rhein, 1985 and 1989), 3: 2353–55. [Helmuth Klotz], Ehren-Rangliste (Berlin-Tempelhof, n.d. [1932]), 2. [Helmuth Klotz], Der Fall Röhm, 2nd printing (Berlin-Tempelhof, n.d. [1932]), 3–4. Linder, Von der NSDAP zur SPD, 171. Eleanor Hancock, Ernst Röhm. Hitler’s SA Chief of Staff (New York, 2008), 115.

298

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managers, at worst a damaging blow to the Hitler’s credibility as a worthy claimant to the high office of Reich president. Social Democratic machinations notwithstanding, the burden of the campaign fell heavily on the shoulders of Brüning. The fact that he had fallen short of reelection by a scant 170,000 votes in the first round of voting had come as an embarrassment to the aging Reich president, and the chancellor was understandably anxious to repair his relations with Hindenburg. In the week between the end of the Easter moratorium and the election on 10 April Brüning spoke on at least nine different occasions, beginning in Dresden and then concluding on the eve of the election with a speech in Königsberg that was recorded and immediately broadcast to the rest of the nation.101 But even Brüning’s admirers noted a sharpness in the tone of his speeches that they had not detected in the first campaign and felt that not even his Königsberg speech carried the same focused passion of his earlier rhetorical efforts.102 To be sure, some of this may have been due to the fact that the Nazis had tried to disrupt his speech by releasing packs of white mice throughout the lecture hall.103 But an even greater source of irritation may have been the fact that Adolf von Batocki and the leaders of the local Hindenburg committee refused to sponsor Brüning’s appearance in Königsberg for fear of the effect that this might have on prospective voters and that it was the Königsberg Center Party and not the local chapter of the United Hindenburg Committees that hosted his visit.104 The collaboration between the three pillars of the Hindenburg campaign – the Social Democrats, the Center and Bavarian People’s Party, and the United Hindenburg Committees – was not functioning as well in reality as it had looked on paper. This would become only more acute as state elections in Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, and several smaller states drew near.105

101

102 103 104

105

In the week before the election Brüning spoke in Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Erfurt, Weimar, twice in Hamburg, and finally in Stettin. For a record of his campaign activity, see Germania, 6–10 Apr. 1932, nos. 96–100. See also Herbert Hömig, Brüning. Kanzler in der Krise der Republik. Eine Weimarer Biographie (Paderborn, 2000), 522–23. For example, see Schulze-Gaevenitz to Pünder, 16 Apr. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 165/48–50. Heinrich Brüning, Memoiren 1918–1934 (Stuttgart, 1970), 537. For further details, see Batocki to Brüning, 24 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 586/73–74, and Ziebell to Brüning, 26 Mar. 1932, ibid, 586/90, as well as the response from of the chairman of the Königsberg Center Party, Max Hoffmann, to Brüning, 26 Mar. 1932, ibid, 586/91. In this respect, see Otto and Seisser from the Bavarian Hindenburg Committee to Schleicher, 13 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 586/55, and Wilhelmi to Westarp, 13 Mar. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 18.

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The real problem with the second Hindenburg campaign was not Brüning’s supposed lack of focus or passion but the fact that Hindenburg’s supporters frequently lacked the resources to match the organization, energy, and flair of the Nazis crusade for Hitler. This was particularly true in the countryside and small towns where the United Hindenburg Committees were not as well better organized as they were in the larger and middle-sized cities.106 To be sure, the local Hindenburg committees and the parties that supported the Hindenburg campaign tried to keep up with the Nazis in the circulation of leaflets and published materials, but they failed to compete effectively for control of the public spaces with only occasional rallies. In Harburg-Wilhelmsburg, for example, the Nazis reserved space for rallies every day in both the city center and the suburbs and saturated the public spaces with placards in support of their party leader.107 In East Prussia, the chairman of the local Hindenburg Committee complained bitterly about how the children throughout the province were running around with small Nazi banners they had received from the local party organization while nothing similar was available for those who supported Hindenburg.108 And Bernhard Schwertfeger, a former army general who had turned military historian after the war, observed on returning from a lecture tour in north central Germany just how little resonance his speeches found with the rural electorate in contrast to his experiences in cities like Lübeck, Gelsenkirchen, and Lüdenscheid.109 All of this underscored the shortcomings of the Hindenburg campaign as it tried to match the resources and dynamism of the Hitler campaign. To be sure, the various non-socialist parties that had supported Hindenburg in the first round of voting – the Center, Bavarian People’s Party, German People’s Party, Business Party of the German Middle Class, Christian-Social People’s Service, Christian-National Peasants and Farmers’ Party, and People’s Conservatives – all proclaimed their renewed 106

107

108 109

Winterfeld to Schwertfeger, 23 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Schwertfeger, 659/9. Precisely how the campaign played out at the local level is graphically described in William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power. The Experience of a Single German Town 1922–1945, Rev. edn. (New York, 1984), 92–101. Report of the police president in Harburg-Wilhemsburg, 12 Apr. 1932, reprinted in Dirk Stegmann, Politische Radikalisierung in der Provinz. Lageberichte und Stärkemeldungen der Politischen Polizei und des Regierungspräsidenten für Osthannover 1922–1933 (Hanover, 1999), 279. Wilhelmi to Westarp, 13 Mar. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 18. Schwertfeger to Brüning, 21 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Schwertfeger, 423, also in BA Berlin, R 43 I, 586/64–65.

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support for Hindenburg’s reelection. And the miniscule People’s Justice Party (Reichspartei für Volksrecht und Aufwertung), which had instructed its members to abstain from voting in the first ballot because none of the candidates was committed to a full and equitable revaluation of those paper mark assets that had been rendered worthless by the runaway inflation of the early 1920s, now threw its support behind Hindenburg after the Reich president had received a delegation from the reevaluation movement and expressed his appreciation for its efforts on behalf of the small private saver.110 But with Hindenburg assured of victory, the various political parties from the Center and BVP to the DVP, WP, and CNBLP were far more interested in husbanding their resources for the upcoming state elections that had been set to take place a scant two weeks after the second presidential ballot.111 From their perspective, the outcomes of the battles in Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, and several smaller venues would have a far greater impact on determining the future course of Germany’s political development than an election whose outcome was for all intents and purposes already decided.112 The leaders of the United Hindenburg Committees had every reason to believe that Duesterberg’s former supporters might now switch their loyalties to Hindenburg. Similarly, the conservatives around Westarp and Gereke hoped to take advantage of Hugenberg’s bitterness toward Hitler and his refusal to support the Nazi party leader in the second round of voting. Here Hindenburg’s more conservative supporters took a page out of Brüning’s own book and intensified their attacks against Hitler in the hope that this would stem the defection of the more moderate elements on the radical Right to the Nazi party leader.113 In the campaign that had preceded the first round of voting on 13 March, Westarp and the

110 111

112

113

In this respect, see the copy of the letter from VRP chairman Adolf Bauser to Sahm and Simons, n.d., in Kempner to Pünder, n.d. [27 Mar. 1932], BA Berlin, R 43 I, 586/85. For example, see Wilhelmi, “Bericht über den Wahlfeldzug in Ostpreußen,” n.d., appended to Wilhelmi to Hindenburg Committee in Berlin, 17 Mar. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 18. For an indication of just how severely strapped the financial resources of these parties were as they prepared for the state elections in April 1932, see the correspondence between the DVP’s Paul Moldenhauer and Alfred Zapf, 23–26 Mar. 1932, in Zapf’s unpublished Nachlaß, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, 4. On the significance of the Prussian elections from the perspective of the moderate Right, see Dänhardt, “Die Preußen-Wahlen,” Volkskonservative Stimmen, 24 Mar. 1932, no. 12. For example, see the report of Westarp’s speech at a rally of the Mannheim Hindenburg Front, 7 Apr. 1932, in the Neue Badische Zeitung, 8 Apr. 1932, no. 178, located in NL Westarp, Gärtringen, II/53.

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leaders of the United Hindenburg Committees had shown considerable restraint in their treatment of Hitler and never disputed – at least in public – his selfless idealism or the sincerity of his love for Germany.114 But whatever positive statements Hindenburg’s conservative supporters might have made about Hitler’s person were almost invariably tempered by sharp attacks against his party and all it purportedly stood for.115 In the campaign for the runoff elections on 10 April, however, Westarp and his associates in the United Hindenburg Committees threw caution to the wind and went to great lengths to portray Hitler as a party candidate whose anti-system rhetoric was a disingenuous ploy designed to disguise the fact that the NSDAP was every bit as much a “system party” as those it was attacking.116 At the same time, they highlighted the ideological differences that separated the two candidates by contrasting Hindenburg’s deep and abiding Christian faith to the indifference, if not hostility, that Hitler and many of those in his entourage had manifested toward organized religion and its claims upon the spiritual dimension of human life.117 This, in turn, was complemented by an equally sharp attack against the NSDAP’s social and economic program. Here the Nazis were portrayed as crypto-socialists whose crusade against Marxism was little more than a cynical ploy to disguise their antipathy toward the free enterprise system and the capitalist foundations of German economic life. As long as the NSDAP remained hostage to demands for a revolutionary reorganization of the German economic life, it could never, Hindenburg’s supporters argued, assume its proper place in the struggle for Germany’s national regeneration.118 By far the most remarkable piece of anti-Hitler literature in the campaign for the runoff election in April 1932 was an eight-page flyer by Paul

114

115 116

117

118

For example, see Ernst Reisinger, Hindenburg und das deutsche Volk. Rede gehalten zur Reichspräsidentenwahl am 13. März 1932 (Munich, n.d. [1932]), 8–9. This and much of what follows have been taken from Larry Eugene Jones, “Hindenburg and the Conservative Dilemma in the 1932 Presidential Elections,” German Studies Review 20 (1997): 235–59, esp. 247. Reisinger, Hindenburg und das deutsche Volk, 10–11. Westarp, “Staatsoberhaupt,” in Kuno von Westarp, Gottfried von Dryander, and Walther Rademacher, Hindenburg und seine Wähler von 1925. Zum zweiten Wahlgang (N.p., n.d. [1932]), 9–12. Dryander, “Die Reichspräsidentenwahl im Kampf der Weltanschauungen,” ibid, 13–17. In a similar vein, see Müller (Hauptgeschäftsstelle der Hindenburg-Ausschüsse) to Mumm, 22 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, NL Mumm, 258/68. Rademacher, “Die wirtschaftliche Lehre des Nationalsozialismus,” in Westarp, Dryander, and Rademacher, Hindenburg, 18–22.

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

Bausch from the Christian-Social People’s Service entitled “Was ist Wahrheit?” Committed to infusing German political life with the spirit of the Evangelium and inspired by a deep sense of commitment to the social gospel of German Protestantism, the leaders of the CVSD were extremely critical of the way in which parliamentary government in Germany had degenerated into petty bickering that endangered the welfare of the nation as a whole.119 After Hitler’s surprisingly strong performance in the first round of voting, the CSVD’s national chairman Wilhelm Simpfendörfer and his deputy Gustav Hülser met with the Nazi party leader on 22 March to secure answers to a series of questions that would conceivably shape future relations between their respective organizations. The meeting with Hitler only confirmed the reservations the CSVD leadership had about Hitler’s ultimate intentions – and particularly in the area of church-state relations – and reinforced their fears about what his acquisition of power might mean for the future of the German people.120 Originally written for the first campaign for distribution in Württemberg, Bausch’s flyer was now reprinted in millions by the United Hindenburg Committees for use in the runoff election.121 “Was ist Wahrheit?” began by posing the rhetorical question: Who was the real Hitler, he who embraced “positive Christianity” or he who called the books of the Bible a Bible of Satan, the Brunswick civil servant who had sworn an oath of allegiance to the Weimar Constitution or the revolutionary who wants to kill tens of thousands, the genial statesman or the political agitator who mesmerizes the people, the friend of large industry or the radical socialist? The flyer then proceeded to examine the relationship between Christianity and National Socialism by quoting chapter and verse what Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg, and other Nazi ideologues had said or written about the Christian faith, even to the point of identifying Nietzsche as the prophet of National Socialism. All of this added up to a scathing, yet meticulously documented, attack upon Hitler and his movement that ended with the following appeal: “German Protestants: Do not let yourselves be seduced! 119 120

121

In this respect, see Gustav Hülser, Der Christlich-soziale Volksdienst und die Parteien, Schriften des Christlich-sozialen Volksdienstes, no. 15 (Berlin, n.d. [1931]). Simpfendörfer’s and Hülser’s summaries of their meeting with Hitler were subsequently circulated to select members of the CSVD leadership, 31 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, NL Mumm, 330/386–88, and have been published in William L. Patch, “Adolf Hilter und der Christlich-Soziale Volksdienst. Ein Gespräch aus dem Frühjahr 1932,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 39 (1989): 145–55. Paul Bausch, Lebenserinnerungen und Erkenntnisse eines schwäbischen Abgeordneten (Korntal, n.d. [1969], 103.

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Protest against the new movement! Not a single vote for Hitler and his party!”122 Despite the energetic engagement of the Christian-Socials, the Protestant vote remained a source of major concern for Hindenburg’s campaign managers.123 In the March campaign the leaders of the Lutheran Church – and most notably Hermann Kapler, the head of the Lutheran Supreme Church Council – had supported Hindenburg’s decision to stand for reelection but declined to take a public stand in support of his candidacy out of deference to the anti-Hindenburg sentiments of a large part of the Lutheran pastorate and the leaders of the state churches.124 Now that Duesterberg had dropped out of the race, the leaders of the Hindenburg campaign approached Kapler and Walter Simons, the president of the German Federal Court (Reichsgericht) in Leipzig and a prominent Lutheran leader, in the hope that they might be willing to use their influence to dampen the pro-Hitler sentiments of many church members and help rally German Protestants behind Hindenburg’s candidacy as the Catholic Church had done with its congregants.125 But Simons, who had supported Hindenburg from the outset, feared that the sympathies that many Lutherans manifested for the Hitler candidacy were simply too strong to overcome.126 And Kapler, citing all of those prominent Lutherans who had already come out in support of Hindenburg, refused to infringe upon the freedom of those who belonged to the church to vote and express their political views as they wished. For him as for other prominent Lutherans, it was not consistent with the very nature of the church to take a position in the presidential election.127 To the United Hindenburg Committees, on the other hand, such a stand was tantamount to the church’s abdication of its responsibilities to God and man. No one was more outspoken in his criticism of Kapler’s position than Horst Michael, the principal liaison between the Hindenburg campaign and the Lutheran Church. A devout Lutheran who subscribed to Luther’s

122

123 124 125 126 127

P. B. [Paul Bausch], “Was ist Wahrheit? Eine Untersuchung des weltanschaulichen Wahrheitsgehalts und des politischen Tatsacheninhalts der Hitlerbewegung vom christlichen, nationalen und sozialen Standpunkt aus betrachtet,” insert in the Christlicher Volksdienst. Evangelisch-soziales Wochenblatt Süddeutschlands, Apr. 9, 1932, no. 15. Kempner to Doehle, 19 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 389/331–32. See also Müller to Mumm, 22 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, NL Mumm, 258/68. Michael to Meissner, 9 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 376/139–42. Doehle to Kapler, 21 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 389/202–03. Simons to Kempner, 23 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 389/206. Kapler to Doehle, 5 Apr. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 389/207–08.

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teachings on the Christian duty to obey duly constituted political authority, Michael insisted that Hindenburg’s authority was indeed derived from the majesty of God and that it was therefore incumbent upon all Lutherans to support the Reich president in his bid for reelection.128 From the outset, the campaign for the second round of voting was overshadowed by the state and regional elections that were scheduled to take place two weeks later after the second presidential ballot. Ideally Gereke, Westarp, and their associates in the United Hindenburg Committees would like to have used the Hindenburg campaign as the springboard for forging closer ties, including a possible electoral alliance in the upcoming elections, among the various groups on the moderate Right that supported Hindenburg’s candidacy. But these hopes were frustrated by the fact that the split between those who supported and those who opposed the Brüning cabinet ran right down the middle of Hindenburg’s conservative supporters.129 Not only did this severely compromise the general effectiveness of the campaign the United Hindenburg Committees sought to run on the Reich president’s behalf, but with new elections just around the corner, it was no longer possible to paper over the divisions within their own ranks. At the same time, the close identification of Westarp, Gereke, and many of those in the Hindenburg campaign with the Brüning cabinet made it difficult for them to attract the support of those who had voted for Duesterberg on 13 March or to capitalize upon Hugenberg’s inability to settle upon a firm and decisive course of action following Duesterberg’s withdrawal from the race. The strategic difficulties that Hindenburg’s conservative supporters faced in the second round of voting on 10 April were compounded by inadequate financial resources. Not only were the various parties that supported Hindenburg’s reelection concerned first and foremost with husbanding their meager resources for the upcoming state and regional elections, but the fact that Hindenburg’s reelection was a virtual certainty made the industrial benefactors to whom Carl Duisberg, national chairman of the United Hindenburg Committees and himself one of Germany’s 128

129

In this respect, see the open letter from Michael to Burghart, 6 Apr. 1932, Der Ring 5, no. 15 (8 Apr. 1932), appended to Michael to Meissner, 9 Apr. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 376/141–43. For the two sides of this debate, see the exchange of letters between Michael and Burghart, 6 Apr.–19 May 1932, in Horst Michael and Karl Lohmann, Der Reichspräsident ist Obrigkeit! Ein Mahnruf an die evangelische Kirche (Hamburg, n.d. [1932]), 17–25. See Westarp to Richthofen, 22 Mar. 1932, NL Gärtringen, VN 20, and Westarp to Arendt, 22 Mar. 1932, ibid, VN 12.

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most influential industrialists, had turned at the beginning of the campaign less rather than more likely to match their earlier contributions.130 For example, when Duisberg approached Carl Friedrich von Siemens, a Berlin industrialist who had contributed 40,000 marks to the Hindenburg campaign in the first round of voting, about the possibility of making another donation, Siemens responded that the desperate state of the German economy made it impossible for him to make a further contribution to Hindenburg’s reelection.131 Particularly telling was the refusal of the Gutehoffnunghütte’s Paul Reusch, Fritz Springorum from the Hoesch Steel Works, or any of the industrialists who had supported Duesterberg in the first round of voting to switch their support to Hindenburg now that the Stahlhelm leader had departed the scene,132 while Krupp, who had contributed to the Hindenburg campaign in the first round of voting, declined to do so this time around.133 Reusch’s own antipathy toward Brüning was in fact so great that after meeting secretly with Hitler on 19 March, he instructed the editorial staff of the Frankischer Kurier, a newspaper over which he exercised financial control, to refrain from personal attacks against the Nazi party leader for the balance of the campaign and to observe a posture of complete neutrality in the runoff election between Hitler and Hindenburg.134 Whatever Reusch’s intentions might have been, this arrangement was symptomatic of the difficulties the United Hindenburg Committees faced in their efforts to mobilize Germany’s conservative electorate in support of Hindenburg’s bid for reelection. In the final analysis, Duisberg was able to raise only 118,200 marks – or less than half of what he had raised for the first election – for the runoff election on 10 April. Of this sum, no less than 50,000 marks 130 131

132 133 134

Duisberg to Kempner, 29 Mar. and 1 Apr. 1932, WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, 76/9. See also Herle to Duisberg, 24 Mar. 1932, ibid. See the correspondence between Duisberg and Siemens, 24 Mar.–5 Apr. 1932, WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, Autographensammlung, also in SAA München, NL Siemens, 4/ Lf 670. For example, see Reusch to Duisberg, 20 Mar. 1932, and Springorum to Duisberg, 14 Apr. 1932, both in WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, 76/9. Krupp to Duisberg, 29 Mar. 1932, WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, 76/9. In this respect, see the correspondence between the Bavarian Hindenburg Committee (Hindenburg-Ausschuß Bayern) and Reusch, 23–24 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 586/ 263–64, also in BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 30/47–48. On Reusch’s meeting with Hitler, see his letter to Schacht, 20 Mar. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/33. See also Reusch to Blank, 17 Apr. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 4001012024/10. For further details on Reusch and the Frankischer Kurier in the early 1930s, see Kurt Koszyk, Deutsche Presse 1914–1945 (Berlin, 1972), 211–14, and Langer, Macht und Verantwortung, 498–504, 507–10.

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came from Duisberg’s own I. G. Farben, while another 25,000 marks came from Philipp Reemstsma of the cigarette and tobacco company that bore his family name.135 With the United Hindenburg Committees running short of money, Westarp and Gereke found it increasingly difficult to finance an effective campaign that aspired to win the support of the two-and-a-half million voters who had voted for Duesterberg in the first ballot. Support, however, suddenly materialized from an unexpected source when one morning Gereke arrived at the Berlin headquarters of the United Hindenburg Committees in the Hotel Prinz Albrecht with a satchel containing a million marks in cash under a strict seal of secrecy regarding its origins. It was only after the end of the war that Gereke revealed that the money had been provided by Schleicher from the Reichswehr’s secret funds.136 The German military had stayed completely out of the first election campaign despite the fact that the sympathies of the Reichswehr leadership clearly lay with Hindenburg.137 At the heart of this posture lay not merely the fact that Schleicher had pinned his hopes of a conservative realignment of the existing national government on Hindenburg’s continued presence in the presidential palace but also a deep and abiding distrust of Hitler. Ever since the fall of 1931 Schleicher had been laying the foundation for a reorganization of the national government that would, among other things, give the Nazis a share of power and responsibility. Schleicher’s confidential meetings with Hitler before and after the Harzburg rally had convinced him that Hitler was indeed sincere in his commitment to the principle of legality as the appropriate way to achieve power and that the Nazi party leader was amenable to a reconciliation with Brüning that would pave the way for his party’s entry into the national government.138 But Hitler’s behavior in the negotiations that preceded his declaration of candidacy in late February 1932 had had a sobering effect on Schleicher and had cost the Nazi party leader the 135

136

137

138

See the list of the donors and the amounts of their donations under the title “Zweiter Wahlgang,” n.d., WA Bayer, NL Duisberg, 76/9. See also Reemtsma to Duisberg, 29 Mar. 1932, ibid. Günther Gereke, Ich war königlich-preußischer Landrat (Berlin, n.d. [1970]), 183–85. Although Gereke’s account of this episode cannot be independently verified, it is certainly consistent with Schleicher’s modus operandi and his desire to conceal his tracks as meticulously as possible. In this respect, see Hammerstein’s remarks at a conference of group and district commanders in the Reich Defense Ministry, 27 Feb. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Liebmann, 1/24–26. For example, see Lersner’s notes, 24 Nov. 1931, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 8/148–51.

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confidence of Germany’s military leadership. As Schleicher wrote to the Baroness von Rigal only days after Hitler had declared his candidacy: Hindenburg is the only candidate who is in a position to defeat Hitler. Since I am convinced that Hitler is as suited for the presidency as the hedgehog for a face towel and because I fear that his presidency would lead to civil war and ultimately to Bolshevism, the decision about [the candidate] for whom I will vote is in this case not difficult. . ..139

Even with Schleicher’s help, however, the Hindenburg campaign was flat and lacking in imagination. The posters that the United Hindenburg Committees plastered on the advertising columns, or Litfaßsäule, throughout the country consisted almost exclusively of various images of the iconic Reich president as if somehow this would reassure the German people that its fate rested in trusted and competent hands.140 A particularly reassuring poster by Walter Riemer calling upon the Germans not to forget to vote in this election portrayed Hindenburg’s immense shadow as it fell across a crowd of Germans looking up to its source with faces full of hope and confidence.141 But rarely did the visual imagery of the Hindenburg campaign capture the sheer emotion of the election, and only occasionally did it directly address the threat that Hitler posed to peace and order in German society. Two notable exceptions to this were posters bearing the captions “Put an End to the German SelfMutilation” and “Against Hitler’s Incitement of Popular Hatred,” the first graphics designer Theo Ivtatejko’s depiction of a fight between two men highlighting the inflamed passions and violence that had become so characteristic of German political life142 and the second of unknown provenance with a heroic young man sweeping the Nazi and Communist hoodlums away with a dust broom and a look of fierce determination on his face.143 Somewhat more explicit was a poster by Eric Goldmann that 139

140

141 142 143

Schleicher to Rigal, 27 Feb. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 30/11–12. For an even more devastating assessment of Hitler’s political qualifications, see Schleicher’s comments in a conversation with Hans Schäffer as recorded in the entry in Schäffer’s diary, 29 Jan. 1932, IfZ Munich, NL Schäffer, 19/137–46. See in particular the posters with the captions “Du mußt am 10. April wieder wählen,” Apr. 1932, BA Bildarchiv, Plakat 002–016-014; “Einen Besseren findst du nicht,” Apr. 1932, ibid, Plakat 002–016-026; and “Wählt Hindenburg,” Apr. 1932, ibid, Plakat 002–016-036. Riemer, “Keiner fehlt, jeder wählt am 10. April Hindenburg,” Apr. 1932, ibid, Plakat 002–016-012. Ivlatejko, “Haltet ein mit der deutschen Selbstzerfleischung!” Apr. 1932, ibid, Plakat 002–016-020. “Schluss jetzt mit Hitlers Volksverhetzung!” n.d., ibid, Plakat 002–016-007.

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depicted a mallet with 18.6 million – the number of votes Hindenburg had received in the first election – poised against a reassuring blue background to strike a caricature of Hitler in the lower left-hand corner to the caption “The second blow! Vote for Hindenburg on 10 April!”144 But perhaps the best was another poster of unknown provenance that consisted of five panels displaying Hitler’s promises to save the farmer, the youth, the worker, the middle class, and then everyone all arranged around the burning question of the day “. . .and who saves us from Hitler? Only Hindenburg.”145 As the campaign for the second round of voting on 10 April 1932 drew to a close, both the Hindenburg campaign and the Nazis concentrated their efforts on winning the support of the 2.65 million voters who had cast their ballots for Duesterberg in the first round of voting. When the votes were finally counted, it soon became clear that the principal beneficiary of the confusion that reigned in the DNVP and Stahlhelm was not Hindenburg but Hitler. Although Hindenburg had been reelected by a wide margin and, with 700,000 more votes than he had received in the first ballot, received just short of 18.4 million votes for a 53.1 percent share of the popular vote, he fell considerably short of the 20 million votes that his supporters had set as their goal in the second round of voting.146 Hitler, on the other hand, received nearly 2.1 million more votes than he had polled in March and saw his share of the popular vote swell from 30.2 to 36.7 percent.147 The fact that the third candidate, Communist Ernst Thälmann, finished a distant third with 10.1 percent of the popular vote and attracted approximately 1.2 million fewer votes than he had received in March fueled immediate speculation that Hitler may have benefitted from large-scale Communist defections. There is, however, little historical or statistical evidence to support such a conclusion. While individual Communists no doubt voted for Hitler as an expression of their hostility toward the existing political system, this was not sufficient to account fully for Hitler’s dramatic surge in the second round of voting. Jürgen Falter’s detailed statistical analysis of the two presidential campaigns 144 145 146 147

Goldmann, “Der zweite Schlag,” Apr. 1932, ibid, Plakat 002–016-017. “. . . und wer rettet uns vor Hitler? Nur Hindenburg!” Apr. 1932, ibid, Plakat 002–016030. On the goal of twenty million, see Pünder to Held, 29 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 680/21–25. For the statistical evidence upon which this is based, see Falter, Lindenberger, and Schumann, Wahlen und Abstimmungen, 78–79. See also Milatz, “Das Ende der Parteien im Spiegel der Wahlen,” 762–66.

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figure 14: Pro-Hindenburg campaign placard by Theo Ivlatejko, April 1932. Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Plakat 002-016-020.

310

Hitler versus Hindenburg

figure 15: Pro-Hindenburg campaign placard by an unknown graphic designer from the 1932 presidential elections. Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Plakat 002-016-007.

suggests that approximately 13 percent of Thälmann’s 10.1 million voters defected to Hitler in April, while another 20 percent of Thälmann’s voters in March apparently seem to have abstained from the second round of voting. This, in turn, would have accounted for almost 30 percent of Hitler’s new voters.148 Given the fact that voter participation in the two elections declined from 86.2 to 83.5 percent, the fact that Hitler received 2.1 million more votes in the second ballot than in the first is all the more remarkable, particularly since it is unlikely that Hitler’s gains resulted from either the mobilization of new voters or large-scale defections from the Communists. Where, then, did Hitler find his new voters in the April runoff campaign? In their strategic planning for the April election, the Nazis

148

Falter, “Two Hindenburg Elections,” 239–41.

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figure 16: Pro-Hindenburg campaign placard by an unknown graphic designer from the 1932 presidential elections. Reproduced with permission of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Plakat 002-016-030.

focused on two groups in hopes of increasing their yield at the polls: women and the Duesterberg voters.149 While there was a modest increase in the number of women who voted for Hitler in the second campaign, this was not disproportionate to the overall increase in the number of voters who now voted for the Nazi party leader. In point of fact, the ratio of women to men in the Nazi electorate actually declined slightly from 94 per 100 in the first election to 93.7 per 100 in the second.150 The Duesterberg voters, on the other hand, proved a far more fertile source of new voters for the Hitler campaign. Falter, for example, concludes that approximately 60 percent of those who voted for Duesterberg in the first round of voting switched their allegiance to Hitler in the runoff

149 150

Circular from Franke and Goebbels to the leadership of the NSDAP district organizations, 23 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 26, 288. Zirkuhlen, “Reichspräsidentenwahl und die Frauen,” 100.

312

Hitler versus Hindenburg

election.151 Another study by Richard Hamilton demonstrates that in selected urban areas the Hitler vote in the April election virtually equaled the combined vote that Hitler and Duesterberg had received in the first round of voting.152 Hindenburg, on the other hand, continued to receive the overwhelming bulk of his support from the parties that had opposed his election in 1925, while by Falter’s estimate no less than 60 percent of those who had voted for Hindenburg in 1925 now supported Hitler. What this reflected was a fundamental realignment of the German electorate whereby the vast majority of those who had supported Hindenburg in 1925 now supported Hitler while those who had opposed Hindenburg in 1925 – namely, the Social Democrats, Centrists, and what remained of the left-liberal electorate – were voting for him in 1932.153 At the very least, Westarp’s claim that between five and six million conservatives cast their ballots for Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential elections had little basis in fact and greatly overstated the conservative contribution to Hindenburg’s reelection.154 Even if one assumes that the vast majority of the 708,000 new Hindenburg voters in the April election came from the ranks of those who had formerly supported Duesterberg, the fact remained that a substantial majority of Duesterberg’s former voters in the March election switched their support to Hitler in April. The fact that Hindenburg owed his reelection not to those with whom he felt the closest natural affinity but to those who had opposed his election in 1925 was a source of great personal anguish to the aging Reich president and severely strained his relations with Brüning and the conservatives who had orchestrated his reelection campaign.155 At the same time, no one was more elated over the outcome of the April election than the Nazis. Although they had failed to prevent Hindenburg’s reelection, they had achieved a major breakthrough into what Goebbels called “the national Germany,” namely, those who had catapulted Hindenburg to victory in 1925 and who now stood poised to join the Nazis in the

151 152

153 154 155

Falter, “Two Hindenburg Elections,” 241. For a similar conclusion, see Pünder’s memorandum on the outcome of the election, 10 Apr. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/38–40. Richard Hamilton, Who Voted for Hitler? (Princeton, NJ, 1982), 77–80, 113–14. Falter’s computations, on the other hand, would suggest that at the national level the switch from Duesterberg to Hitler may not have been as pronounced as it was in the cities analyzed by Hamilton. See Falter, “Two Hindenburg Elections,” 239–41. Falter, “Two Hindenburg Elections,” 235–36. For claims to this effect, see Westarp, “Rechtswähler Hindenburgs gegen Braun,” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 Apr. 1932, nos. 177–78. In this respect, see Hömig, Brüning, 524–25, and Pyta, Hindenburg, 681–83.

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struggle for Germany’s national regeneration. Nowhere was the sense of elation that the Nazis felt over their prospects more apparent than in the following entry in Goebbels’ diary on the day after the election: Soon it all becomes clear: We have increased mightily. To be sure, not enough to drive Hindenburg from the field, but the final result: Hitler 13.4 and Hindenburg 19.3 million, Thälmann 3.7. For us an enormous victory. Over two million votes more. In Berlin alone from 200,000 to over 800,000 votes. Fantastic numbers. Hitler is completely happy. Now we have the springboard for the Prussian elections.156

156

Entry for 11 Apr. 1932 in the Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 259.

10 End of the Brüning Era

The second presidential election on 10 April 1932 was overshadowed from the outset by the fact that state elections in Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, Hamburg, and Anhalt were just around the corner. As important as Hindenburg’s reelection had been, the outcome of these elections – and particularly the election in Prussia – would be every bit as important in determining the fate of the Weimar Republic. The big prize in all of this was Prussia, where the parties of the Weimar Coalition had ruled without interruption since the collapse of the Second Empire. This state of affairs was particularly embarrassing to the German Right, most of which looked to Prussia as the key to Germany’s national rebirth. Above all else, the forces of the German Right sought to smash the black-red coalition in Prussia and break the hold that the Center and Social Democrats had exercised over Prussian political life for nearly a decade and a half. Should they succeed, this would almost certainly mean the end of Brüning’s chancellorship and pave the way for a wholesale reorganization of the national government and, if all went well, the installation of a new government based upon the forces of the national opposition. The stakes were indeed high. Not only would a victory by the forces of the national opposition nullify the effects of Hindenburg’s recent victory at the polls, but it would also free the Reich president from the grip of Brüning and his Social Democratic allies so that he could at long last initiate the fundamental changes in the German political system for which the German Right had been hoping.1 1

Dietrich Orlow, Weimar Prussia, 1925–1933: The Illusion of Strength (Pittsburgh, PA, 1992), 197–218. On the party landscape in Prussia, see Horst Moeller, Parlamentarismus in Preußen 1918–1932 (Düsseldorf, 1985), esp. 249–310.

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315

In light of the far-ranging strategic considerations that informed the campaign in Prussia, the elections in Bavaria and Württemberg were side affairs, interesting in themselves but of little consequence for the national political stage. What made Bavaria and Württemberg so different from Prussia – aside from the obvious fact that Prussia was so much larger than either in terms of area, population, and economic potential – was the fact that in neither state had the Social Democrats been an active player in governmental or cabinet politics since the earliest years of the Weimar Republic. This meant that the crusade the radical Right waged against the black-red coalition in Prussia could never resonate the way it did in Prussia in states like Bavaria and Württemberg, where bourgeois conservatives – in Bavaria this would have been the Bavarian People’s Party, in Württemberg the Württemberg Burgher Party (Württembergische Bürgerpartei or WBP) and the Württemberg Peasants and WineGrowers’ League along with the Center – had held the balance of power for the better part of a decade. If the forces of the national opposition were to storm the bastions of power here as they hoped to do in Prussia, they would have to contend with well-established governmental conservatives who were firmly entrenched in power and were fully prepared to use the resources at their disposal in defense of their position.2 In Hamburg, on the other hand, the national opposition confronted a coalition of Social Democrats and bourgeois moderates that was much stronger by virtue of the city’s peculiar social configuration than their enemies on the Right, a fact that would continue to frustrate its bid for power.3 Only in the small state of Anhalt with its 400,000 inhabitants did the absence of the Center and the virtual disappearance of the more

2

3

On the situation in Bavaria and Württemberg, respectively, see Wolfgang Zorn, Bayerns Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert. Von der Monarchie zum Bundesland (Munich, 1986), 338–40, and Thomas Schnabel, Württemberg zwischen Weimar und Bonn 1928–1945/46 (Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne, and Mainz, 1986), 105–10. See Reinhold Weber, Bürgerpartei und Bauernbund in Württemberg. Konservative Parteien im Kaiserreich und in Weimar (1985–1933) (Düsseldorf, 2004), 497–504. On the political stalemate in Hamburg, see Ursula Büttner, “Das Ende der Weimarer Republik und der Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus in Hamburg,” in Hamburg auf dem Weg ins Dritte Reich. Entwicklungsjahre 1931–1933, eds. Ursula Büttner and Werner Jochmann, (Hamburg, 1983), 7–37, esp. 24–29, as well as the more recent study by Joachim Paschen, Hamburg zwischen Hindenburg und Hitler. Die nationalsozialistische Machteroberung in einer roten Festung (Bremen, 2013), 154–73.

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moderate bourgeois parties permit a clear and unmitigated confrontation between Left and Right.4 Of all of Germany’s political parties, none greeted the prospect of a new round of elections more eagerly than the NSDAP. For the Nazis, the key to their strategy for gaining power was Prussia.5 Not only was Prussia by far the largest German state by virtue of its size and population, but it was also a bastion of republican power in Weimar Germany. The parties of the Weimar Coalition had dominated Prussian politics since the end of World War I, and the Social Democrats with Otto Braun as Prussian minister president and Carl Severing as the Prussian minister of interior were entrenched in Prussia as in no other state in Germany with the exception of the independent city states of Hamburg and Bremen. State elections had not been held in Prussia since the spring of 1928, and the Nazis were confident that Hitler’s strong showing in the second round of voting in the presidential elections foreshadowed, if not outright victory, then at least the defeat of the Braun-Severing coalition.6 But before the Nazis could even begin their campaign, they received a rude shock when on 13 April Wilhelm Groener, acting in his capacity as Reich minister of the interior, enacted a presidential decree that placed a ban on the SA, the SS (Schutzstaffel der NSDAP), and all other Nazi paramilitary organizations.7 The ban had been in the works ever since a search the Prussian

4

5

6 7

On the political situation and the rise of National Socialism in Anhalt, see Bernd G. Ulbrich, Nationalsozialismus und Antisemitismus in Anhalt. Skizzen aus den Jahren 1932 bis 1942 (Dessau, 2005), 5–17. On the significance the Nazis attached to the conquest of Prussia, see Joseph Goebbels, Preußen muß wieder preußisch werden! (Munich, 1932), 26. For the best study of the place that Prussia occupied in the Nazi strategy for the conquest of political power, see Sabine Höner, Der nationalsozialistische Zugriff auf Preußen. Preußischer Staat und nationalsozialistische Machteroberungsstrategie 1928–1934 (Bochum, 1984), esp. 196–245. Entry for 15 Apr. 1932, in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, Teil 1, Bd. 2/II (Munich, 2004), 261–62. For the text of the decree, see “Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zur Sicherung der Staatsautorität,” 13 Apr. 1932, in Staat und NSDAP 1930–1932. Quellen zur Ära Brüning, ed. Gerhard Schulz with the collaboration of Ilse Maurer and Udo Wengst (Düsseldorf, 1977), 316–17. For a detailed reconstruction of the deliberations that led to the implementation of the ban, see Pünder’s memorandum from 30 May 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Groener, 152/49–55. The historical literature on the SA ban is quite extensive. On the role of Groener, see Gordon A. Craig, “Reichswehr and National Socialism: The Policy of Wilhelm Groener, 1928–1932,” Political Science Quarterly 63 (1948): 194– 229; Francis L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford, 1966), 338–50; Thilo Vogelsang, Reichswehr, Staat und NSDAP. Beiträge zur Deutschen Geschichte 1930–1932 (Stuttgart, 1962), 161–76; Johannes Hürter, Wilhelm Groener.

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police had conducted of SA offices on 17 March revealed that the SA had indeed been placed in a state of alarm on the day of the first presidential election and that in the event of a Hitler victory would have carried out a series of actions in support of a Nazi seizure of power.8 Under persistent pressure from Severing and the government leaders of the four states south of the Main,9 Groener reluctantly agreed to the dissolution of the Nazi paramilitary units despite the fact that he himself did not regard the evidence that the Prussian police had collected from the raids on SA headquarters as sufficient to warrant such a high-profile action.10 Wary of the impact that this might have on the presidential election, Groener stipulated that the ban would not be announced until after the second round of voting had been concluded.11 The government’s move against the SA came as no surprise to the Nazi party leadership.12 Nor did it have an appreciable effect upon the campaign other than to provide Hitler and the Nazi party leadership with what they portrayed as but another example of the arbitrary and illegal tactics the defenders of the existing political system had used to suppress

Reichswehrminister am Ende der Weimarer Republik (1928–1932) (Munich, 1993), 332–45; and most recently Klaus Hornung, Alternativen zu Hitler: Wilhelm Groener. Soldat und Politiker in der Weimarer Republik (Graz, 2008), 177–89. For Brüning’s role, see William L. Patch, Jr., Heinrich Brüning and the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic (Cambridge, 1999), 247–66. The episode is also discussed in great detail from the perspective of the SPD in Wolfram Pyta, Gegen Hitler und für die Republik. Die Auseinandersetzungen der deutschen Sozialdemokratie mit der NSDAP in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1989), 366–81. 8 In this respect, see Carl Severing, Mein Lebensweg, 2 vols. (Cologne, 1950), 2: 328–29. See also Groener to Severing, 8 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 97/60–61. For a fuller statement of Groener’s rationale, see his letter to Brüning, 10 Apr. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Groener, 152/44–48. On Severing, see Thomas Alexander, Carl Severing – ein Demokrat und Sozialist in Weimar, 2 vols. (Frankfurt a.M., 1996), 993–1001, and Hans-Peter Ehni, Bollwerk Preußen! Preußen-Regierung, Reich-Länder Problem und Sozialdemokratie 1928–1932 (Bonn-Bad Godesberg, 1975), 239–45. On the SA and the escalation of violence in 1932, see Dirk Schumann, Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918–1933: Fight for the Streets and Fear of Civil War (New York and Oxford, 2009), 261–67. 9 Groener to Schleicher, 23 Mar. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 77/111–12, reprinted in Staat und NSDAP 1930–1932. Quellen zur Ära Brüning, ed. Schulz, 300–01. See also Held to Brüning, 15 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 680/25–26, as well as the report on the conference of the state interior ministers from throughout the Reich, 5 Apr. 1932, in Staat und NSDAP, ed. Schulz, 304–09. 10 For example, see Groener to Gleich, 6–7 Apr. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Groener, 36/ 45. 11 Pünder to Brüning, 6 Apr. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 154/41–42. 12 Entry for 12 Apr. 1932, in the Die Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 260.

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the Nazi movement from the moment of its inception in the early 1920s.13 Speaking in Augsburg only days after the SA ban took effect, Hitler insisted that nothing would shake the faith of those millions who formed the backbone of the greatest political movement Germany had ever known and would not deter them from the mission they had set for themselves, victory over all of Germany: It is not the destiny of individual states that will be decided on the 24th of April but the destiny of Germany. So as the National Socialist Party has risen to its present greatness, so will it continue to take up the fight in every election, in constant preparedness for conflict, never hesitating, always willing, until the hour when its banner will be raised high over all of Germany has struck.14

Hitler returned to this theme two days later in a speech before 150,000 enthusiastic supports at the Friedrichsplatz in Görlitz. Alluding to his performance in the last round of the presidential election, Hitler exclaimed: We know that this 24th of April is an election day unlike thousands of other election days, that we are not fighting over a couple of seats or ministerial posts . . . We also know that on this 24th of April that what is to be decided is the fate of the state that will at long last lead Germany from deepest discord to a great community that for centuries has been an unimaginable model of cleanliness, order, and discipline in which the concepts of honor and value have had a home. This time it is not about the Prussia of a Braun or Severing but about the Prussia of Frederick, the Great, about the Prussia that in Germany has carried forward the banner of freedom and unity for a century long.15

In Prussia the chief targets of the Nazi campaign were the Social Democrats and Center, the two parties that served as previously unassailable pillars of Prussian democracy.16 In targeting the SPD, the Nazis cited the mass unemployment that currently gripped the German working class as a colossal failure of the party and system in which it had placed its faith. Only a total change in that system, the Nazi propaganda machine insisted

13

14

15 16

For example, see the report of the police president in Harburg-Wilhemsburg, 12 May 1932, reprinted in Dirk Stegmann, Politische Radikalisierung in der Provinz. Lageberichte und Stärkemeldungen der Politischen Polizei und des Regierungspräsidenten für Osthannover 1922–1933 (Hanover, 1999), 283. Report of Hitler’s speech in Augsburg, 16 Apr. 1932, in Adolf Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen. Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933, ed. Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 5 vols. in 12 parts (Munich, London, New York, and Paris, 1992–98), V/1, 59–61. Report of Hitler’s speech in Görlitz, 18 Apr. 1932, ibid, V/1, 69–75. Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP, Rednerinformation 1932: Nr. 5, 15 Apr. 1932, als Manuskript gedruckt (Munich, n.d. [1932]), 3.

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over and over again, could restore the German economic productivity to the point where all workers could share in the prosperity this would bring.17 In this respect, Nazi rhetoric was not all that dissimilar from that of the Communists, who also branded Braun, Severing, and their Social Democratic colleagues as traitors to the German working class.18 The NSDAP’s attack against the Center, on the other hand, required even greater subtlety, or what a Nazi directive called Fingerspitzengefühl. Goebbels and the architects of the Nazi campaign were anxious to avoid attacks on the Catholic Church for fear that this might alienate prospective voters of the Catholic faith. Not only did Hitler go to great lengths to reaffirm his commitment to the Christian character of Germany’s national life,19 but Nazi propagandists were also instructed to make it clear that their problem was not with the Catholic Church as such but with the Center Party as the self-appointed political representative of German Catholicism.20 The Nazis employed similar discretion with respect to the DNVP and Stahlhelm. For while the NSDAP waged a full-scale war against the DNVP as the instrument of social and political reaction and sought nothing less than its destruction as a viable political force, party activists were instructed to spare the Stahlhelm the attacks to which the DNVP was being subjected. The reason here was quite simply the fact that the Stahlhelm was not a party and that Nazi strategists felt that their best chance of weaning the Stahlhelm rank and file from the DNVP was by treating the veterans’ organization with a measure of deference to which the DNVP was not entitled.21 As in previous elections, the NSDAP’s assault against the hated Weimar system and the parties that supported it was underpinned with a series of direct appeals to specific social and economic groups. Although the Nazis made the obligatory token appeal for the support of the German worker,22 the two groups that received the greatest attention in the spring 1932 state elections were the German peasantry and the

17 18 19 20 21 22

Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP, Rednerinformation 1932: Nr. 3/4, 1 Apr. 1932, als Manuskript gedruckt (Munich, n.d. [1932]), 4–5. For example, see Willi Kasper, ed., Tatsachen über die Präsidentenwahl (Berlin, n.d. [1932]), 3–4, 15–19. See the text of Hitler’s speech in Frankfurt an der Oder, 22 Apr. 1932, in Hitler, Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, V/1, 88–91. Reichswahlleitung der NSDAP, “An alle preußische Gauleitungen,” 2 Apr. 1932, NS 26, 286. Ibid. See also Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP, Rednerinformation Nr. 5, 3. Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP, Rednerinformation Nr. 3/4, 4–5.

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professional civil service. Winning the support of the German farmer was an essential component of the Nazi strategy to eliminate the DNVP as a rival for the leadership of the national movement,23 and Nazi propagandists wasted no time in trying to cement their party’s position as the dominant force in the German countryside with campaign literature that not only attacked the Brüning-Schiele government for the repeated failure of its farm policy but also reassured the German agricultural community that they had no intention of overturning existing property relationships in the countryside.24 The NSDAP’s strategy with respect to the civil service, on the other hand, was more subtle and two dimensional. On the one hand, the Nazis sought to capitalize upon the widespread hardship that salary cuts and layoffs had produced within the ranks of the professional civil service and attacked the Brüning government for the restrictive fiscal policies that were the source of this hardship. At the same time, however, they also tried to take advantage of the more general popular animus against the civil bureaucracy by calling for the removal of those Parteibuchbeamten who owed their jobs not to their professional qualifications but to their membership in one of the government parties. What the Nazis ultimately sought – or so they claimed – was a reform of the civil service in Prussia and elsewhere that included the dismissal of those civil servants who placed loyalty to their party ahead of their loyalty to the state and the creation of a new civil service ethos based on the famous motto of Frederick, the Great: “I am the first servant of the state.”25 Germany’s other totalitarian party, the German Communist Party, faced an entirely different set of circumstances. Communist campaign strategy in the spring of 1932 was based upon the premise that the collapse of the capitalist system was imminent and that the struggle between fascism and those who championed the cause of the proletariat was entering its final and decisive phase. For the KPD, therefore, the most important task was to unify the German working class into a strong phalanx that could carry the struggle with the forces of fascism, social 23 24 25

Reichswahlleitung der NSDAP, “An alle preußische Gauleitungen,” 2 Apr. 1932, NS 26, 286. See also Darré to Strasser, 14 Apr. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 22, 450. Landvolk in Not. Wer hilft? – Adolf Hitler (n.p. [Munich], n.d. [1932]), 3. This brochure was published in preparation for the campaign in Bavaria. See Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP, Rednerinformation Nr. 3/4, 5–9, and Rednerinformation Nr. 5, 5–11. For the most elaborate statement of the NSDAP’s policy toward the German civil service, see Josef Reusch, Quo vadis, Deutsches Berufsbeamtentum (Frankfurt a.M., 1932).

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reaction, and militarism to a successful conclusion.26 From this perspective, the two campaigns that KPD chairman Ernst Thälmann had run for the Reich presidency had served no useful purpose but to energize his party’s crusade against the Social Democrats as traitors to the German working class. Thälmann, who had won Moscow’s confidence with the Stalinization of the KPD in the second half of the 1920s,27 continued to follow the Comintern’s lead in setting his party’s strategy in the 1932 presidential elections. In the campaign for the first round of voting in March the Communists did their best to discredit the Social Democrats not just for the “theory of the lesser evil” they used to justify their support of Hindenburg’s candidacy28 but also for their toleration of the Brüning government and their complicity in the suffering the government’s fiscal and economic policies had inflicted upon Germany’s working classes.29 Refusing to recognize the differences between Hindenburg and Hitler, Thälmann and his party colleagues tried to frighten the electorate into voting for the KPD leader with the slogan “Whoever votes for Hindenburg, votes for Hitler; whoever votes for Hitler, votes for war,” thus lumping the Social Democrats together with those whom the Communists denounced as class enemies of the German worker.30 This bit of political casuistry provided the Communists with all the justification they needed to continue and intensify their attacks against the Social Democrats for having allegedly betrayed the German worker with their support of the Brüning-Hindenburg dictatorship and its reactionary fiscal and economic policies.31 Nowhere was the acrimony with which the Communists waged their offensive against the Social Democrats more apparent than in the set of materials the KPD delegation to the Prussian Landtag compiled for use in 26

27 28 29 30

31

In this respect, see the speech by Fritz Selbmann, “Die politische Lage und die Aufgaben der Partei,” in [Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands], Protokoll vom 2. Bezirksparteitag der KPD Bezirk Sachsen vom 25.-27. März 1932 (Leipzig, n.d. [1932]), 9–30. On Thälmann and the Stalinization of the KPD, see the recent biography by Armin Führer, Ernst Thälmann. Soldat des Proletariats (Munich, 2011), 151–200. Ernst Schneller, ed., Hindenburg oder Thälmann? Ein Appell an die Arbeiter in der S.P.D., in den Gewerkschaften und im Reichsbanner (Berlin, n.d. [1932]), 6–11. In this respect, see Kasper, ed., Tatsachen, 12–19. For example, see the cartoon in Willi Kasper, ed., Wichtiges zur Präsidentenwahl (Berlin, n.d. [1932]), 12–13. On Thälmann’s run at the Reich presidency, see the informative, though ideologically colored, study by Erika Kücklich, Ernst Thälmann und die Reichspräsidentenwahl 1932 (Berlin, 1986), 10ff. For a more critical account of Thälmann’s run for the presidency, see Führer, Thälmann, 236–44. Ernst Thälmann, Die Aufgaben der Partei in der Präsidentschafts-und Preußen-Wahlkampagne. Die Lehre des ersten Wahlganges (Berlin, n.d. [1932]), 18–23.

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the campaign for the state elections on 24 April. Here the KPD assailed the Braun-Severing government for having worked hand in hand with the Center to transform Prussia into “a sanctuary of the darkest reaction [Hort der finstersten Reaktion]” with the aim of enslaving the German worker to the forces of large capital through the use of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The role of the Prussian government, the Communists insisted, was not merely to buttress the Brüning dictatorship in the implementation of its fascist policies but “to place the police, judicial, and cultural resources at its disposal in the service of the fascist policies of German large capital.”32 Not even Groener’s ban on the SA and SS could assuage Communist hostility toward Hindenburg and the Brüning government. This was, as Thälmann claimed in a campaign pamphlet for the Prussian Landtag elections, both a foreign policy maneuver of the German bourgeoisie with respect to the upcoming reparations negotiations and a domestic political stratagem that allowed the Social Democrats to boast of their victory over the Nazis at the same time that it made it possible for the NSDAP to portray itself as a persecuted party.33 The ultimate goal of the upcoming elections in Prussia and elsewhere, Thälmann insisted, was to mobilize the entire German working class for the struggle against capitalism and to awaken the German masses to the fact that Hitler’s party and Social Democracy were nothing but two facets of the strategy deployed by the German bourgeoisie in its struggle to maintain its social and political dominance over the worker. In point of fact, Thälmann argued, the two were working hand in hand in deceiving the working masses about the true nature of the struggle in which they found themselves engaged.34 In preparing his party both for the second presidential vote on April 10 and the state elections two weeks later, Thälmann struggled to overcome the lassitude and resignation that had taken grip of the KPD after his disappointing performance in the first presidential ballot, when his 13.2 percentage share of the popular vote meant that virtually seven out of every eight German voters had supported one of the three fascist candidates in their bid for the Reich presidency. In fact, Thälmann had received only 400,000 more votes in the first presidential election than the KPD had received in the September 1930 Reichstag

32 33

Die Wahrheit über Preußen! Material der kommunistischen Landtagsfraktion zum Preußenwahl 1932, ed. Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Berlin, n.d. [1932]), iii–vii. 34 Ernst Thälmann, Roter Sturm über Preußen (Berlin, 1932), 1. Ibid, 9–11.

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elections,35 a fact that could only have meant that the German masses were far from ready for the revolutionary assault against capitalism for which he and his party’s leadership had been preparing.36 The situation in which the KPD found itself became even more desperate when in the second presidential ballot in April 1932 Thälmann failed to match, let alone exceed, the number of votes he had received only four weeks earlier. In the April ballot Thälmann lost more than a fourth of the nearly five million votes he had received in March and saw his share of the popular vote fall to 10.1 percent. Many of those who had supported Thälmann in the first round of voting had become frustrated by the prospect of voting for a candidate who stood no chance of winning and simply stayed at home, while a much smaller fraction of the Thälmann electorate seems to have defected directly to the NSDAP.37 In any event, the outcome of the runoff vote in the 1932 presidential elections constituted a defeat of near catastrophic proportions and did not augur well for the KPD’s performance in the state elections that were scheduled to take place throughout much of Germany later that month. Of all the parties that stood between the Communists and the National Socialists, only the Social Democrats and the two Catholic parties – the Center and the Bavarian People’s Party – presided over a relatively stable membership base. Of the three, the Social Democrats were clearly the most vulnerable and found themselves engaged in a two-front war against the Nazi assault on Prussia’s democratically elected government and Communist attempts at subverting the SPD’s rank-and-file membership.38 35

36

37

38

Alfred Milatz, “Das Ende der Parteien im Spiegel der Wahlen 1930 bis 1933,” in Das Ende der Parteien 1933, ed. Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey (Düsseldorf, 1960), 743–93, esp. 761–62. On the tactical situation in which the KPD found itself in the last years of the Weimar Republic, see the insightful analysis by Hermann Weber, Hauptfeind Sozialdemokratie. Strategie und Taktik der KPD 1929–1933 (Düsseldorf, 1982), 44–49, as well as the excellent essay by Andreas Wirsching, “‘Hauptfeind Sozialdemokratie’ oder ‘Antifaschistische Aktion’? Die Politik von KPD und Komintern in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik,” in Weimar im Widerstreit. Deutungen der ersten deutschen Republik im geteilten Deutschland, ed. Heinrich August Winkler (Munich, 2002), 105–30. Alfred Milatz, “Das Ende der Parteiein im Spiegel der Wahlen 1930 bis 1933,” in Das Ende der Parteien 1933, ed. Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey (Düsseldorf, 1960), 743–93, here 761–64. See also Weber, Hauptfeind Sozialdemokratie, 48. For example, see Braun to Brüning, 4 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 2683/423–27, reprinted in Akten der Reichskanzlei: Die Kabinette Brüning I u. II. 30. März 1930 bis 10. Oktober 1931. 10. Oktober 1931 bis 1. Juni 1932, ed. Tilman Koops, 3 vols. (Boppard am Rhein, 1985 and 1989), 3: 2353–5.

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The more immediate of these two threats was clearly the Communists, with the result that the Social Democrats were obliged to structure their campaign as much around the bread-and-butter issues that directly affected the living conditions of the German worker as around the theme of republican defense. The SPD remained unequivocally committed to the defense of the German republic against its enemies on both the Left and the Right and continued to reiterate this at every opportunity with an increasingly exhausted Prussian minister president Otto Braun often taking the lead.39 But after nearly two years of severe and unremitting economic hardship, the Social Democrats were hard pressed to square their toleration of the Brüning cabinet with the suffering its fiscal and economic policies had inflicted upon the German working class. What emerged from this was a curious division of labor whereby Braun, Severing, and those party leaders with a national profile spearheaded the SPD’s defense of Germany’s republican system while the leaders of the SPD delegation to the Prussian Landtag focused their attention on issues related to the social and economic welfare of the German worker and other sectors of the consuming public.40 Party strategists offered a vigorous defense of all the Prussian government had accomplished on behalf of the worker, the consumer, and the small farmer, even going so far in the last instance to embrace a program of rural resettlement that would have broken up the large-landed estates and redistributed the land among small farmers, rural farm laborers, and unemployed workers to create a new class of independent peasant proprietors loyal to the republican system of government.41 At the same time, Theodor Leipart and the leaders of the socialist labor unions tried to shore up the support of their rank and file by holding an extraordinary crisis conference of the General German Trade-Union Federation in Berlin on 13 April 1932, at which none other than Reich Labor Minister Adam Stegerwald, a member of the German Center Party, was the featured speaker. Although Stegerwald defended the government’s deflationary fiscal policies as a necessary expedient to protect the German mark against another round of inflation,

39 40

41

On Braun’s extensive role in the campaign, see Hagen Schulz, Otto Braun, oder Preußens demokratische Sendung. Eine Biographie (Berlin, 1977), 723–24. Preußenwahl 1932. Eine Materialsammlung der sozialdemokratischen Landtagsfraktion, ed. Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (N.p., n.d. [1932]), 54, 77–78, 80–93. For a discussion of the SPD’s broader strategic goals, see Pyta, Gegen Hitler, 391–453. Rededisposition zur Preußenwahl am 24. April 1932. An die Bauern und Landarbeiter!, ed. Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Berlin, n.d. [1932]).

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he also used the congress to announce the general outlines of a job creation program that the Brüning cabinet had agreed upon only the night before as the first step to overcoming the mass unemployment that had descended upon Germany with the outbreak of the world economic crisis.42 The Social Democratic campaign for the 1932 Prussian Landtag elections clearly reflected the defensive situation in which the SPD found itself in the last years of the Weimar Republic and demonstrated none of the aggressiveness that characterized both the Nazi and Communist campaigns. The same was true, though to a considerably lesser extent, of the German Center Party. With sixty-seven seats, the Center was the second largest party in the Prussian Landtag. But unlike the Social Democrats, the Center enjoyed the undivided support of its own working-class constituents and did not face a strong challenge on its left from the KPD or any other viable political force. Moreover, the close cooperation between the Center and the SPD in the recent presidential campaigns as well as the death of the Prussian Center Party leader Joseph Hess in January had paved the way for an improvement in relations between the leaders of the Prussian party and the Center’s national leadership.43 To be sure, the Center still faced formidable challenges from organizations on the radical Right like the DNVP’s Reich Catholic Committee (Reichsausschuß der Katholiken in der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei) and the Coalition of Catholic Germans (Arbeitsgemeinschaft katholischer Deutscher or AKD). The AKD had been founded by the Edgar Schmidt42

43

For Stegerwald’s remarks, see Protokoll der Verhandlungen des Außerordentlichen (15.) Kongresses der Gewerkschaften Deutschlands (5. Bundestag des Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes). Abgehalten im Plenarsaal des Reichstags in Berlin am 13. April 1932 (Berlin, 1932), 44–54. See also Bernhard Forster, Adam Stegerwald (1874–1945). Christlich-nationaler Gewerkschafter, Zentrumspolitiker, Mitbegründer der Unionsparteien (Düsseldorf, 2003), 554–55. The congress was originally scheduled for 23 March 1932 but was postponed until mid-April because of the Easter moratorium on political campaigning announced by Hindenburg for the period from 20 March to 2 April 1932. For further information on the organization of the congress, see Leipart’s report to the ADGB executive committee, 22 Mar. 1932, in Die Gewerkschaften in der Endphase der Republik 1930–1933, ed. Peter Jahn, Quellen zur Geschichte der deutschen Gewerkschaftsbewegung im 20. Jahrhundert, vol. 4 (Cologne, 1988), 531. For the best analysis of the tactical situation in which the Prussian Center Party found itself on the eve of the 1932 Prussian Landtag elections, see Herbert Hömig, Das preussische Zentrum in der Weimarer Republik (Mainz, 1979), 253–57. On Hess’s role in the Prussian Center Party and the strain that his leadership produced in relations with the national party, see the insightful article by Douglas Kohler, “The Successful German Center Left: Joseph Hess and the Prussian Center Party, 1908–1932,” Central European History 23 (1990): 313–48.

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Pauli from the Stahlhelm, Count Wilhelm von Schorlemer from the NSDAP, and Georg Lossau from the Catholic Association for National Politics (Katholische Vereinigung für nationale Politik) in January 1932 and, much to the displeasure of DNVP party chairman Alfred Hugenberg, had supported Hitler in the second of the two presidential ballots later that spring.44 In the campaign for the April 1932 Prussian Landtag elections the Center moved quickly to counter the agitation of right-wing Catholics with a vigorous reaffirmation of the cultural and religious values that lay at the heart of its political Weltanschauung. In doing this, the Center not only drew a clear line of demarcation with respect to the right-wing Catholic organizations that were contesting its claim to the loyalties of German Catholics but also highlighted precisely those confessional values that had played such a crucial role in insulating it against the disintegrative forces that were at work in Germany’s more established non-socialist parties. Among other things, the Center contrasted its support for the 1929 concordat between Prussia and the Vatican to the DNVP’s opposition to a separate accommodation with the Catholic Church as clear evidence of the different ways the two parties honored their commitment to the values of the Catholic faith.45 The Center also sought to exploit the divisions that had developed within the ranks of the national opposition by citing the bitter exchanges between the NSDAP and the more conservative members of the national front. All of this, the leaders of the Prussian Center Party insisted, only confirmed the unreliability of the national opposition in its myriad manifestations when it came to matters of domestic and national policy.46 The strategic situation in which the DNVP found itself as the elections of 44

45

46

On the founding of the AKD, see the appeal by Schorlemer, Schmidt-Pauli, and Lossau, “An alle katholischen Deutschen!,” Deutsches Volkswacht. Kampfblatt der rechtsgerichtete Katholiken, Jan. 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 307/70. On Hugenberg’s annoyance over these developments, see his letter to Wagner, 19 Jan. 1932, ibid, 307/74. On the Nationalist reaction, see Doms to Hugenberg, 9 Apr. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 29, and Spahn to Doms, 21 Apr. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Spahn, 174. In this respect, see “Zur Kulturpolitik in Preußen,” Das Zentrum. Mitteilungsblatt der Deutschen Zentrumspartei 3, no. 4 (Apr. 1932): 123–34. For a more elaborate formulation of this argument, see Karsten Ruppert, “Die weltanschaulich bedingte Politik der Deutschen Zentrumspartei in ihrer Weimarer Epoche,” Historische Zeitschrift 285 (2007): 49–97. On the conflict over the 1929 Prussian concordat and its impact upon the DNVP Catholics, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Catholics on the Right: The Reich Catholic Committee of the German National People’s Party, 1920–33,” Historisches Jahrbuch 126 (2006): 222–67, esp. 245–52. For further information, see Wahlmaterial 1932, ed. Zentrumsfraktion des Preußischen Landtags (Frankfurt a.M., n.d. [1932]), 31–88.

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24 April 1932 drew near, on the other hand, could not have been more desperate. Not only was there widespread disgruntlement on the part of the more moderate elements within the DNVP over Hugenberg’s failure to support Hindenburg in the runoff election against Hitler on 10 April,47 but Hugenberg felt betrayed by the endorsement that his close ally Heinrich Claß and the leaders of the Pan-German League had given to Hitler in the second round of voting.48 Hugenberg was also frustrated by the Stahlhelm’s failure to honor the terms of the agreement it had struck with the DNVP at the time of Duesterberg’s declaration of candidacy and by the vigorous reaffirmation of its nonpartisan or überparteilich character that followed Duesterberg’s withdrawal as a candidate for the Reich presidency.49 Not even the DNVP’s nomination of a number of prominent Stahlhelm leaders to secure candidacies in various Prussian districts could overcome the outspoken opposition of many of its local organizations to an alliance with the DNVP.50 To compound the situation even further, the DNVP had exhausted its financial resources in its efforts on Duesterberg’s behalf in the first presidential ballot, with the result that Hugenberg had to dip into his own reserves in order to finance the Prussian campaign.51 By the same token, Hugenberg’s overtures to the Gutehoffnungshütte’s Paul Reusch in late March 1932 had done little to overcome the Ruhr industrial baron’s deep-seated animosity toward the DNVP party leader or to blunt the efforts of Reusch and other members of the Ruhr industrial elite to replace Hugenberg as DNVP party

47 48 49

50

51

For example, see Wilmowsky to Goerdeler, 1 Apr. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/39. Hugenberg to Bang, 28 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Wegener, 73/159–60. For example, see Hugenberg to Wille, 5 Apr. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 29. For a reaffirmation of the Stahlhelm’s nonpartisanship, see “Stahlhelm und Preußenwahl,” Neue (Preußische (Kreuz-) Zeitung, 21 Mar. 1932, no. 81. For the most detailed treatment of the strain between the DNVP and the Stahlhelm in the spring of 1932, see Maximilian Terhalle, Deutschnational in Weimar. Die politische Biographie des Reichstagsabgeordneten Otto Schmidt(-Hannover) 1888–1971 (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2009), 296–305. In this respect, see “Deutschnationale Volkspartei und Stahlhelm,” n.d. [Apr. 1932], BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 29. On the opposition of local Stahlhelm leaders to the alliance with the DNVP, see the report of the meeting in the Kriegervereinshaus Berlin on the morning of 4 Apr. 1932, ibid. The history of the DNVP’s troubled relationship with the Stahlhelm is also the subject of a lengthy memorandum, “DNVP und nationale Organisationen,” n.d., appended to Schmidt-Hannover’s circular to the DNVP state party chairmen, June 1932, BA Berlin, R 8048, 219/124–54, also in BA Koblenz, NL Schmidt-Hannover, 72a. Hugenberg to Bang, 28 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Wegener, 73/159–60.

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chairman with someone more to their own liking such as the Reich Price Commissar Carl Goerdeler.52 By far the most serious challenge that the DNVP faced in the campaign for the April 1932 state elections was the collapse of its relationship with the NSDAP. Hugenberg’s disenchantment with Hitler was in fact so great that in the second presidential ballot he had voted for Hindenburg because he viewed him as the lesser of two evils.53 Yet despite his bitterness over the way in which Hitler and the NSDAP had sabotaged the unity of the Harzburg Front, Hugenberg continued to extol the virtues of Harzburg in hopes that the Nazis might somehow come to their senses and repair their relations with the more conservative elements of the national opposition.54 But as it became increasingly clear at the beginning of the second presidential campaign that Hitler and the Nazi party leadership had no intention whatsoever of healing the divisions that had developed within the ranks of the national opposition, Hugenberg drew the bitter conclusion that “there was nothing left to do but to declare that three days after Harzburg, Harzburg had ceased to exist for the National Socialists.”55 Hugenberg then proceeded to air his views on the Nazis in a talk before a group of business leaders from Frankfurt on 7 April. Stressing that the outcome of the second presidential vote was immaterial and that everything depended on what happened in Prussia two weeks down the road, Hugenberg drew a distinction between “the two souls that beat in the breast of the National Socialists: nationalism and social-communism.” Of the two, only one would prevail, and it was for that reason, Hugenberg explained, that the DNVP had extended its hand to the Nazis. “I accepted the risk of going with Hitler in the expectation that the German Nationalists would be the decisive factor. But if things continue

52

53

54 55

On Hugenberg’s overtures to Reusch, see their correspondence from 27–29 Mar. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 30019390/17. For Reusch’s reaction, see his letters to Schlenker, 23 Mar. 1932, ibid, 400101221/11b; to Springorum, 23 Mar. 1932, ibid, 30019390/36b; and to Wilmowsky, 23 Mar. 1932, ibid, 400101290/39. On efforts to unseat Hugenberg as the DNVP party chairman, see the correspondence between Reusch, Springorum, and Wilmowsky, 22–25 Mar. 1932, ibid, 400101290/39, as well as Wilmowsky to Krupp, 24 Mar. 1932, HS Krupp, FAH 23/506. See also Peter Langer, Macht und Verantwortung. Der Ruhrbaron Paul Reusch (Essen, 2012), 505–06. Untitled memorandum by Hugenberg possibly from 1949, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 712. See also Alfred Hugenberg, Der Wille der Deutschnationalen (Berlin, n.d. [1932]), 18–23. Hugenberg, “Das neue Harzburg,” Unsere Partei 10, no. 6 (1 Apr. 1932), 62–63. Hugenberg to Einem, 29 Mar. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Einem, 29/111–12.

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as they are today, our decline is absolutely certain.” Hugenberg then outlined his party’s goals in the upcoming Prussian election: The outcome of the first [presidential] election has shown that fear of the Hitler regiment is so great that for that reason alone a majority for Hindenburg could be found. It is critical that the four to five million [Germans] who voted for Hindenburg because they did not want Hitler do not remain with the Left in the Prussian elections. Should that happen, we are lost. The point on which everything therefore hangs is [for us] to pull the Hindenburg voters out of the passion of the presidential campaign and place them before the sober truth of the Prussian elections. The Hindenburg voters form the pool out of which the counterweight to the dangers with which Hitler threatens us will be formed. The German Nationalist party is the only [party] that can help us here.56

Pursuant to this goal, Hugenberg and the DNVP adopted a two-pronged strategy in the campaign for the Prussian elections. First of all, the Nationalists sought to separate themselves from the Nazis as sharply as possible. Speaking in Hanover on the day after Hindenburg’s reelection, Hugenberg went on the offensive with a blistering attack against Hitler and his party for all they had done to sabotage the unity of the national front and how they continued to obstruct efforts at reconciliation on the German Right.57 This was followed by a full-scale attack against the Nazis on a whole host of issues ranging from their lack of clarity with respect to the sanctity of private property, the Marxist character of the Nazi farm program, their hostility toward the Christian religion, and their refusal to recognize the status of women as full and equal citizens of the German nation. All of this underscored the putative radicalism of the Nazi movement and its unreliability as an ally in the struggle for power.58 Second, Hugenberg extended an olive branch to the smaller parties in the middle and on the moderate Right in the form of an offer to accept candidates from the various bourgeois parties to the right of the Center on the DNVP ticket for the Prussian elections on the twofold condition that all Reststimmen – or votes that these parties did not use for the election of their own candidates – go to the DNVP and that the deputies 56 57 58

Typewritten summary of Hugenberg’s remarks before a group of Frankfurt business leaders, 7 Apr. 1932, BA Berlin, R 8048, 396/130–32. See the text of Hugenberg’s speech in Hanover, “Das alte Harzburg,” 11 Apr. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 125/286–92. For example, see “Zur Abwehr: Die ‘Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei’,” Unsere Partei 10, no. 7 (5 Apr. 1932): 74–78. See also the three pamphlets published by the DNVP in March 1932, Nationalsozial – Nationalsozialistisch (Berlin, 1932); Landwirtschaft und Nationalsozialismus (Berlin, 1932); and Die Stellung des Nationalsozialismus zu Kulturfragen und seine Stellung zu Frau und Familie (Berlin, 1932).

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who were elected through this arrangement would subsequently affiliate themselves as guests, or Hospitanten, with the DNVP delegation to the Prussian Landtag.59 This offer, as the DNVP’s Otto Schmidt-Hannover explained in a letter to the skeptical DVP party chairman Eduard Dingeldey, was not a tactical gesture but a sincere and genuine effort to overcome the splintering that had become so deeply entrenched among the parties between the Center and the DNVP and that had resulted in their political impotence.60 Schmidt-Hannover’s disclaimer to the contrary, Hugenberg’s offer was carefully calculated to establish the DNVP chairman’s credentials as a champion of bourgeois unity and to placate potential benefactors in the German business community who criticized his lack of political vision.61 This, however, was only one aspect of a more general strategy by the DNVP to move Hugenberg to the forefront of the campaign and to portray him in the same sort of charismatic patina that one normally associated with the personalities of Hindenburg and Hitler. In an effort to embellish Hugenberg’s public persona, the DNVP published a vigorous defense of the Nationalist party chairman against charges from detractors on the Left and the Right, charges that he was a free mason, that he had been a war and inflation profiteer, that he was a social reactionary dependent upon heavy industry, that as a representative of industry he understood nothing about agriculture, and that he was anti-Catholic and therefore longed for a return of the Kulturkampf of the nineteenth century.62 But the most important piece of campaign literature in this regard was a compilation of excerpts from Hugenberg’s speeches from 1928 to 1932 that appeared under the title Der Wille der Deutschnationalen. This format afforded Hugenberg an opportunity to present a coherent overview of his political Weltanschauung with particular emphasis on his struggle against the Young Plan, his critique of Brüning’s domestic and foreign policies, the program for the restoration of German freedom at home and abroad he had outlined at the DNVP’s Stettin party congress, and his commitment to the unity of the German Right in the face of Nazi disloyalty and betrayal.63 The way in which the Nationalists crafted their 59 60 61 62 63

Hugenberg, “Rumtopf? Nein, nationaler Wiedergeburt,” Der Tag, 30 Mar. 1932, no. 77. Schmidt-Hannover to Dingeldey, 4 Apr. 1932, BA Kolbenz, NL Dingeldey, 38/4–6. In this respect, see Hugenberg to Reusch, 27 Mar. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 30019390/17. [Deutschnationale Volkspartei], Angriff und Abwehr, Deutschnationales Rüstzeug no. 7 (Berlin, 1932), 2–6, 11–15. Hugenberg, Wille der Deutschnationalen, 2–16, 18–23.

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campaign around the person of Hugenberg was clearly an attempt to invest the DNVP party leader with the charismatic stature of a Hindenburg, a Hitler, or even a Brüning. To the parties in the middle and on the moderate Right, Hugenberg’s offer of an electoral alliance for the Prussian Landtag elections seemed a pathetic and self-serving response to the desperate situation in which they found themselves. The DVP’s Eduard Dingeldey was particularly caustic in rejecting Hugenberg’s proposal as a cynical ploy that was tantamount to nothing less than total capitulation to the DNVP.64 In the meantime, the People’s Conservatives and the elements around Count Kuno von Westarp had hoped that the sense of solidarity that had united the parties of the middle and moderate Right in the campaign for Hindenburg would carry over into the campaign for the Prussian state elections.65 In this respect, they received strong but not necessarily welcome support from the leaders of the Ruhr industrial establishment who threatened to withhold funding from the splinter parties between the Center and the DNVP if they did not resolve their differences and come together in a common front for the Prussian state elections. This initiative originated with Baron Tilo von Wilmowsky, the brother-in-law of RDI president and Ruhr industrial magnate Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. On 18 March Wilmowsky wrote to the Gutehoffnungshütte’s Paul Reusch, Fritz Springorum from the Hoesch Steel Works in Dortmund, Carl Friedrich von Siemens of the electrical corporation bearing his family’s name, and several other prominent industrialists in a last-ditch effort to mobilize their help in unifying the various splinter parties in the middle and on the moderate Right into a cohesive political force by threatening to withhold funding for the upcoming state elections if they did not resolve their differences and come together in a bourgeois unity ticket for the Prussian elections.66 But it soon became apparent that the leaders of the German industrial establishment were themselves so divided that the initiative 64 65 66

Dingeldey to Hugenberg, open letter, 4 Apr. 1932, in Erneuerung. Wochenblatt der Deutschen Volkspartei, 9 Apr. 1932, no. 14. Westarp to Richthofen, 23 Mar. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 20. Wilmowsky to Reusch, 18 Mar. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/39, and to Siemens, 18 Mar. 1932, SAA Munich, NL Siemens, 4/Lf 690. The letter was also sent to Albert Vögler, Fritz Springorum, and Paul Silverberg. See Wilmowsky to Krupp, 18 Mar. 1932, HA Krupp Essen, FAH 23/506. On Wilmowsky, see Wolfgang Zollitsch, “Das Scheitern der ‘gouvernementalen’ Rechten. Tilo von Wilmowsky und die organisierten Interessen in der Staatskrise von Weimar,” in Demokratie in Deutschland. Chancen und Gefährdungen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Wolther von Kieseritzky und Klaus-Peter Sick (Munich, 1999), 228–53.

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stood little chance of success.67 Whereas Reusch remained adamant that the success of such a venture necessarily presupposed Hugenberg’s removal from the DNVP party chairmanship so that under new leadership the DNVP could serve as the crystallization point around which a badly fragmented German bourgeois could unite,68 Springorum remained loyal to the DNVP party chairman and argued that his person should not be used as an excuse for the failure of efforts at bourgeois unity.69 In the meantime, efforts to pressure Hugenberg into stepping down as DNVP party chairman continued to gather support – even enlisting the cooperation of Hugenberg confidant and DNVP stalwart Elard von OldenburgJanuschau – but foundered on Hugenberg’s determination to remain in office at least until after the elections had taken place.70 Wilmowsky’s initiative cut across a more modest attempt at bourgeois consolidation that had been initiated by the leaders of the smaller parties themselves. Talks between the leaders of the DVP, German State Party, Christian-National Peasants and Farmers’ Party, Business Party, and the miniscule People’s Conservative faction had been going on since the end of the previous year but had always foundered on the failure of the participating parties to agree upon a common course of action with respect to the Brüning cabinet.71 Negotiations resumed after the positive experience of cooperating with each other in the Hindenburg campaign and with a new round of elections just around the corner. But whatever momentum that might have been developing in the direction of a Prussian electoral alliance came to an abrupt end when Dingeldey announced at a meeting of representatives from the different middle parties on 16 March that the DVP would be part of such a project only if the DNVP also agreed to participate.72 At the same time, the Christian-Social People’s

67 68

69 70 71

72

Wilmowsky to Reusch, 7 Apr. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/39. Reusch’s animus toward Hugenberg is well documented. For example, see Reusch to Springorum, 23 Mar. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/36b, and Schlenker, 23 Mar. 1932, ibid, 400101221/11b. Springorum to Wilmowsky, 22 Mar. 1932, RWWA Cologne, Abt. 130, NL Reusch, 400101290/36b. Wilmowsky to Krupp, 24 Mar. 1932, HA Krupp Essen, FAH 23/506. For further details, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Sammlung oder Zersplitterung? Die Bestrebungen zur Bildung einer neuen Mittelpartei in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik 1930–1933,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25 (1977): 265–304, esp. 278–79. Westarp to Herrmann, 18 Mar. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 13. For the DVP’s position, see the statement of the DVP party executive committee attached to Herrmann to Westarp, 22 Mar. 1932, ibid.

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Service declined to take part in a bourgeois unity bloc for the Prussian elections, in part because its leaders believed that the CSVD stood a better chance at the polls by remaining independent but also because the very concept of bourgeois unity collided with its own commitment to the spiritual and material welfare of the Protestant worker.73 Unfazed by the defections of the DVP and CSVD, representatives from the other three groups continued to meet under the leadership of the CNBLP’s Günther Gereke until finally in late March they announced the formation of a single ticket for the Prussian state elections known as the “National Front of German Estates (Nationale Front der Deutschen Stände)” headed by the venerable Count Westarp.74 But as a response to the increasing pressure from industry and other sectors of German society for a greater degree of political cohesiveness on the part of those parties that lay between the Center and NSDAP, the creation of the “National Front of German Estates” was woefully inadequate. The failure of efforts to forge some sort of viable electoral alliance among the parties of the middle and moderate Right for the April 1932 Prussian Landtag elections placed those parties at a severe disadvantage in the ensuing campaign. All of these parties had supported Hindenburg in the recent presidential elections but now found themselves facing each other in nasty polemics that only exhausted what still remained of their meager resources at a time when their very survival was at stake. Nowhere was the acrimony more vicious than in the fratricidal conflict between the two liberal parties, the German State Party and the German People’s Party. As a member of the governing coalitions in both the Reich and Prussia, the State Party undertook a vigorous defense of its collaboration with the Social Democrats in the Prussian government and staunchly defended its accomplishments as a member of the Prussian

73

74

For the CSVD’s response to the negotiations for a united bourgeois front, see Hülser’s report as well as the comments by Simpfendörfer at the meeting of the CSVD national leadership, 29 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, NL Mumm, 330/382–83. On the course of the negotiations from the perspective of the People’s Conservatives, see the letters from Westarp to Arendt, 22 Mar. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, VN 12, and Richthofen, 22 Mar. 1932, ibid, VN 20. On the negotiations that culminated in the formation of the “National Front of German Estates,” see Wilmowsky to Krupp, 24 Mar. 1932, HA Krupp Essen, FAH 23/506, as well as the report in the Kölnische Zeitung, 2 Apr. 1932, no. 180. See also the untitled appeal of the National Front of German Estates, 31 Mar. 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen, II/55. For further information, see Erasmus Jonas, Die Volkskonservativen 1928–1933. Entwicklung, Struktur, Standort und staatspolitische Zielsetzung (Düsseldorf, 1965), 113–15.

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cabinet.75 At the same time, the DStP sharply criticized the DVP for the way in which it continued to sabotage efforts to unify the German middle on the basis of a progressive and aggressively republican platform by tying its participation in such an endeavor to Brüning’s removal as chancellor.76 But the DStP was at the end of its resources and struggled mightily to run an effective campaign.77 The People’s Party, on the other hand, had bolted the Brüning government the previous October in a desperate attempt to placate the increasingly combative pro-business elements on its right wing and remained implacably opposed to the Prussian government of Braun and Severing.78 The party, however, was deeply divided and had recently expelled two prominent members of its left wing – former Foreign Minister Julius Curtius and Siegfried von Kardorff – from the DVP Reichstag delegation for their refusal to follow explicit instructions to vote against the Brüning cabinet earlier that February.79 At the same time, party leaders were still reeling from the defection of Otto Hembeck and the DVP district organization in South Düsseldorf to the rival DNVP. This episode not only revealed the disastrous influence that the short-sightedness of German heavy industry had had upon the DVP’s political fortunes but also served as a painful reminder of the risks involved in becoming too closely identified with

75

76

77

78

79

Reichspräsidentenwahl und Preußenwahl. Ein Wegweiser für die Reichspräsidentenwahl und die preußische Landtagswahl, ed. Preußische Landtagsfraktion der Deutschen Staatspartei (Berlin, 1932), 19–30, 32–34, 51–57. For example, see the speech by Walter Schreiber, “Der Kampf um Preußen,” at a meeting of the DStP executive committee, 5 Apr. 1932, in Linksliberalismus in der Weimarer Republik. Die Führungsgremien der Deutschen Demokratischen Partei und der Deutschen Staatspartei 1918–1933, ed. Lothar Albertin and Konstanze Wegner (Düsseldorf, 1980), 699–702, esp. 701. On the theme of bourgeois concentration, see also the DStP election appeal, “Die Stunde des Bürgertums,” Deutscher Aufstieg. Wochenschrift der Deutschen Staatspartei 2, no. 10 (6 Mar. 1932): 1. See also Joachim Stang, Die Deutsche Demokratische Partei in Preußen 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf, 1994), 92–94. On the financial and organizational difficulties the DStP faced in the spring of 1932, see Lemmer to Dietrich, 5 Mar. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dietrich, 251/555–56, and Fischer to Dietrich, 9 Apr. 1932, ibid, 254/79–83, as well as the report of the DStP organizational conference, 19 Mar. 1932, BA Berlin, R 45 III, 58/48–51. Ludwig Richter, Die Deutsche Volkspartei 1918–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2002), 727–38. For the DVP’s account of these events, see Deutsche Volkspartei, Reichsgeschäfsstelle, ed., Preußenwahl 1932 (N.p. [Berlin], n.d. [1932]), 68–75. In this respect, see Dingeldey to Curtius, 27 Feb. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 57/ 27, and to Kardorff, 27 Feb. 1932, ibid, 61/126, as well as the minutes of the DVP Reichstag delegation, 25 Feb. 1932, BA Berlin, R 45 II, 367/367–70. For further details, see Richter, Deutsche Volkspartei, 746–51.

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the forces of the national opposition.80 Dingeldey and the DVP party leadership tried to walk a fine line between their support of Hindenburg, their rejection of Brüning, and the blandishments of the national opposition while assiduously avoiding direct attacks against the NSDAP that might make an accommodation down the road awkward, if not impossible.81 It was a delicate balancing act that left the DVP exposed to attack from all directions. Of the remaining parties that stood between the Center and the DNVP, none was to play a particularly prominent role in the campaign for the 1932 Prussian elections. The Conservative People’s Party that had emerged from the ruins of the DNVP’s left wing at the beginning of 1930 had ceased to exist by the spring of 1932. Although the People’s Conservatives certainly recognized the importance of the elections in Prussia,82 the People’s Conservative Association remained aloof from the campaign itself and limited its activity in the Prussian campaign to endorsing individual candidates like Westarp or Karl Veidt and Gustav Hülser from the CSVD.83 Of the two other parties that belonged to the “National Front of German Estates,” both the WP and CNBLP found themselves in advanced states of internal disintegration. The Business Party was still reeling from the scandal surrounding the personal finances of its former party chairman Hermann Drewitz and the defection of its entire Saxon organization to the DNVP earlier that spring.84 With former 80

81

82 83 84

Richter, Deutsche Volkspartei, 739–45. See also Horst Romeyk, “Die Deutsche Volkspartei in Rheinland und Westfalen 1918–1933,” Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 39 (1975): 189–236, esp. 230–32. For example, see the two articles that Dingeldey published on the eve of the election, “Kampf und Ziel in Preußen,” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 23 Apr. 1932, nos. 187–88, and “Der Sinn der Preußenwahl,” Kölnische Zeitung, 23 Apr. 1932, no. 221. For the most elaborate statement of the DVP’s objectives in the Prussian campaign, see Fecht, “Die Bedeutung der Preußenwahl für Reich und Preußen,” in Deutsche Volkspartei, Reichsgeschäftsstelle, ed., Der Kampf um Preußen (Berlin, n.d. [1932]), in BA Koblenz, ZSg 1–42/4 (18). Heinz Dähnhardt, “Die Preußen-Wahlen,” Volkskonservative Stimmen, 24 Mar. 1932, no. 12. Circular by Lejeune-Jung of the VKV headquarters in Berlin, n.d. [29 Mar. 1932], NL Westarp, Gärtringen. The collapse of the Business Party is well documented in two contemporary publications by former WP publicists Hans Klett, Der Untergang des Mittelstandes. Der Zerfall der Wirtschaftspartei (Berlin, 1931), and Ernst Horneffer, Die Krise der Wirtschaftspartei, Schriftenfolge der Reichspartei des deutschen Mittelstandes (Wirtschaftspartei) im Wahlkreise Leipzig, no. 2 (Leipzig, n.d. [1931]). On developments in Saxony, see Weber, “Warum der Mittelstand für Hugenberg,” Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, 22 Apr. 1932, no. 191.

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Reich Justice Minister Johann Victor Bredt now at the helm of the party, the WP fought a losing battle to square its continued loyalty to the Brüning government with the increasingly desperate situation in which the more traditional elements of the German middle class found themselves.85 The CNBLP leaders, on the other hand, had hoped that their participation first in the Hindenburg campaign and then in the formation of the “National Front of German Estates” would slow down, if not reverse, the spate of defections that had plagued their party since the preceding fall.86 But party finances were in such desperate shape that only modest subsidies from German industry and funds that Gereke had allegedly diverted from the Hindenburg campaign kept the CNBLP afloat through the spring of 1932.87 The CNBLP’s predicament was further complicated by its ambiguous relationship to the forces of the national opposition. Although the leaders of the CNBLP had clearly aligned themselves with the forces that sought to bring an end to the “black-red coalition” in Prussia, they also drew a sharp distinction between the “constructive opposition” of their own party and the all-or-nothing tactics of the radical Right. It was only through a policy of “constructive opposition” that the CNBLP could represent the vital interests of the German agricultural community in all of its myriad complexity. By the same token, the CNBLP categorically rejected the dictatorial aspirations of the NSDAP and its allies on the radical Right and advocated instead a conservative reform of the existing political system that would free German political life from the tyranny of political parties.88 Hopes that the parties between the Center and the DNVP might be able to translate Hindenburg’s victory in the recent presidential elections campaign into victory in the state elections that took place in Prussia and elsewhere a scant two weeks later failed to materialize. The three groups that had come together to form the “National Front of German 85

86

87

88

In this respect, see Bredt, “Bürgertum und Länderwahlen,” Kölnische Zeitung, 18 Apr. 1932, no. 212, and Klamt, “Der Sinn der Preußenwahl,” Kölner Nachrichten, 23 Apr. 1932, no. 16. Speech by Gereke in Cottbus, 14 Apr. 1932, reported in Der Landbürger 7, no. 8 (16 Apr. 1932): 150. See also Markus Müller, Die Christlich-Nationale Bauern- und Landvolkpartei 1928–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2001), 277–85. On the CNBLP’s financial difficulties, see the letter from Hauenschild to Gereke, 7 Apr. 1932, LA Berlin, Prozeßakten Gereke, Rep. A, 358–01, 76/16/17. On Gereke’s role in the CNBLP’s campaign finances, see his letters to Nohls, Falkenberg, and Brese, 15 Apr. 1932, ibid, 76/16/18–20. Julius Burg, Das Landvolk im Kampf um Preußen, ed. Deutsches Landvolk/Christl. Nationale Bauern-u. Landvolkpartei (Berlin, n.d. [1932], 3–9, 62–81.

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Estates” received less than a mere 1.64 percent of the popular vote, failed to elect so much as a single deputy, and went down to a devastating defeat from which they never recovered. Of the other parties in question, the DVP polled 1.50 percent of the popular vote but, thanks to an alliance with the Reich Party for People’s Justice and Revaluation, managed to elect seven deputies to the Prussian Landtag. The State Party, on the other hand, actually polled more votes than the DVP with 1.51 percent of the popular vote but was able to elect only two deputies to the new Landtag, the same number that the Christian-Social People’s Service received for its 1.16 percent of the popular vote. While the picture of those parties that stood in the middle and on the moderate Right was one of utter devastation, the DNVP lost more than half of the votes it had received in the last state elections of May 1928 and saw its share of the popular vote fall from 17.38 percent to 6.98 percent four years later. The principal beneficiary of the devastation in the middle and bourgeois Right was of course the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which received over eight million votes for 36.7 percent of the total vote cast as compared to a mere 347,000 votes and 1.84 percent of the popular vote in 1928. The Prussian Center Party also recorded significant gains of its own with more than 3.3 million votes and 15.3 percent of the popular vote as compared to 2.7 million votes and a 14.5 percent share of the popular vote in 1928. The combined vote of the two working-class parties remained fairly constant at approximately 7.5 million votes, although here there was a clearly discernible shift from the Social Democrats, who lost almost 800,000 of the 4.7 million votes they had received in 1928, to the Communists, who improved upon their performance in the 1928 state elections by more than 600,000 votes and saw their share of the popular vote swell from 11.87 percent in 1928 to 12.78 percent in 1932.89 89

The foregoing analysis is based on data from Jürgen W. Falter, Thomas Lindenberger, and Siegfried Schumann, Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik. Materialien zum Wahlverhalten 1919–1933 (Munich, 1986), 101. For more detailed analyses of the Prussian elections from a variety of different perspectives, see Alfred Milatz, “Das Ende der Parteiein im Spiegel der Wahlen 1930 bis 1933,” in Das Ende der Parteien 1933, ed. Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey (Düsseldorf, 1960), 743–93, esp. 766–70, and Jürgen W. Falter, “Die Wahlen des Jahres 1932/33 und der Aufstieg totalitärer Parteien,” in Die Weimarer Republik, ed. Everhard Holtmann, Gotthard Jasper, and Theo Stammen, 3 vols. (Munich, 1995), vol. 3: Das Ende der Demokratie 1929–33, 271–314, as well as the more general surveys in Orlow, Weimar Prussia, 131–62, and Wilhelm Ribhegge, Preußen im Westen. Kampf um den Parlamentarismus in Rheinland und Westfalen 1789–1947 (Münster, 2008), 511–12.

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The outcome of the Prussian elections bore dramatic testimony to the collapse of the non-Catholic middle parties and the increasing polarization of the German party system. But, as the DStP’s Werner Stephan astutely observed, the Nazis encountered clear ecological limits to their continued growth by virtue of their inability to secure a decisive breakthrough into the ranks of either the Catholic or the working-class voting blocs.90 This pattern would then replicate itself, though with significant variations, in the elections that were being held simultaneously in other parts of the country. In Bavaria, for example, the NSDAP received 32.5 percent of the popular vote but failed to overtake the Bavarian People’s Party as the largest party in the Bavarian parliament by a mere thousand votes. Virtually all of the parties in the middle and moderate Right disappeared from the Landtag with the exception of the DVP and a regional peasants’ party known as the Bavarian Peasants and MiddleClass League (Bayerischer Bauern- und Mittelstandsbund or BBMB), which polled 6.5 percent of the popular vote and elected nine deputies to the state parliament. The two workers’ parties, on the other hand, lost approximately 65,000 votes as compared to the last previous Landtag election in 1928, although here, as in Prussia, there was a shift of approximately 125,000 voters from the SPD to the KPD.91 In Württemberg, on the other hand, the National Socialist share of the popular vote amounted to only 26.4 percent, while the Center and Social Democrats polled 20.5 and 16.6 percent of the popular vote, respectively. The most important anomaly in the Württemberg election was the strong showing of the Württemberg Peasants and Wine Growers’ League, a conservative regional agrarian party that received one out of every ten votes cast in a development that effectively prevented the Württemberg NSDAP from matching the more sensational successes of its counterparts in Prussia and Bavaria.92 Lastly, in Hamburg the NSDAP received 32.1 percent of the popular vote in what was a slight improvement over its performance in 90 91

92

Werner Stephan, “Die Parteien nach den großen Frühjahrswahlkämpfen. Eine Analyse der Wahlziffern des Jahres 1932,” Zeitschrift für Politik 22 (1932/33): 110–18. Falter et al, Wahlen und Abstimmungen, 91. On the campaign and election results in Bavaria, see Karl Schwend, Bayern zwischen Monarchie und Diktatur. Beiträge zur bayerischen Frage in der Zeit von 1918 bis 1933 (Munich, 1954), 421–25. On the BVP and the 1932 Bavarian state elections, see Klaus Schönhoven, Die Bayerische Volkspartei 1924–1932 (Düsseldorf, 1972), 272–73. On the BBMB, see Martin Hille, “Bauernbund und Nationalsozialismus in Ostniederbayern (1924–1933),” Verhandlungen des Historischen Vereins für Niederbayern 127–28 (2001–02): 211–30. Falter et al, Wahlen und Abstimmungen, 113. For further analysis, see Schnabel, Württemberg, 116–22. On the peculiar role of the WBWB, see Reinhold Weber, Bürgerpartei

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the September 1931 Senate election. This, however, surpassed the Social Democratic tally by only 7,500 votes, while the Communists managed to poll 16.0 percent of the popular vote despite the loss of nearly 50,000 votes since the last Senate election.93 To Brüning and his colleagues in the Reich chancery, the outcome of the elections in Prussia and particularly the dramatic surge of the NSDAP at the expense of Germany’s non-Catholic bourgeois parties came as a demoralizing setback that immediately set in motion the series of events that would culminate in the dismissal of the Brüning cabinet scarcely six weeks later.94 Schleicher, Hindenburg’s son Oskar, and Otto Meissner, the state secretary in the Office of the Reich Presidency, were already hard at work laying the foundation for a new national government stretching from the Center to the National Socialists and had already done much to undermine Brüning’s relationship with the Reich president.95 When Brüning met with Hindenburg to congratulate him on his reelection, the Reich president seized upon this as an opportunity to remind the chancellor of his intention to reorganize the national government and asked him to remain in office until a new government had been appointed. To Brüning Hindenburg’s sudden eagerness to move the fulcrum of power to the antiparliamentary Right constituted an affront to all of those who had supported his bid for reelection but most of all to the Social Democrats whose support had proven absolutely crucial to the Reich president’s victory over Hitler. Not only was Brüning adamant in his refusal to

93 94

95

und Bauernbund in Württemberg. Konservative Parteien im Kaiserreich und in Weimar (1985–1933) (Düsseldorf, 2004), 497–504. Falter et al, Wahlen und Abstimmungen, 94. On the results in Hamburg and the election’s implications for the conduct of Senate affairs, see Paschen, Hamburg, 169–70. For Brüning’s account of the events that led to his resignation, see Heinrich Brüning, Memoiren 1918–1934 (Stuttgart, 1970), 567–603. See also the memorandum prepared by Meissner with Schleicher’s participation for Hindenburg’s signature, “Niederschrift über die Krise und Demission des Kabinetts Brüning,” 10 June 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Dingeldey, 36/117–33. That Schleicher played a role in developing this document can be inferred from his correspondence with Meissner, 4–9 June 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 91/8–16. The secondary literature on Brüning’s demise as Reich chancellor is quite extensive. For the most important contributions to this body of literature, see Patch, Brüning, 251–71, and Hömig, Brüning, 537–75, as well as the detailed study by Gerhard Schulz, Zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur. Verfassungspolitik und Reichsreform in der Weimarer Republik, vol. 3: Von Brüning zu Hitler. Der Wandel des politischen Systems in Deutschland 1930–1933 (Berlin, 1992), 818–74. On Schleicher’s role in orchestrating Brüning’s fall, see the classic study by Vogelsang, Reichswehr, Staat und NSDAP, 156–80. For an indication of Brüning’s coolness toward Schleicher after his fall from power, see his correspondence with Schleicher, 18 June–1 July 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 22/35–36, 38.

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be part of Hindenburg’s plan, but he also spent more than an hour persuading the Reich president that his sense of timing was wrong and that protocol demanded a more respectful interval between his reelection and the transfer of power to the German Right.96 The government’s position became even more problematic when just five days after his reelection, Hindenburg acceded to pressure from the Reichswehr leadership – with army Commander in Chief Kurt von Hammerstein and not Schleicher taking the offensive – and dispatched a letter to Groener in which he insisted that the Reich Banner Black-Red-Gold, the paramilitary arm of the Social Democrats and the socialist labor unions, be included in the ban on the SA and Nazi paramilitary units on the grounds that it too was involved in conspiratorial activities aimed at destabilizing the existing political order.97 Hindenburg’s letter to Groener was only the opening salvo in a fullscale offensive that was calculated by Schleicher and his entourage to drive a wedge between Groener and the Reich president over the ban on the SA. The NSDAP’s strong showing in the state elections of 24 April could only have confirmed Schleicher in his conviction that the only way to keep Hitler from gaining absolute power was to bring the Nazis into the national and Prussian governments at the earliest possible opportunity on the assumption that the NSDAP, once saddled with the burden of government responsibility, would have no choice but to moderate the tenor of its radicalism and accommodate itself to the political leadership of Hindenburg and the Reichswehr. Though stunned by the outcome of the April elections, Brüning and his supporters were relieved that Groener’s audience with the Reich president two days later seemed to have restored a measure of good feeling between the two men and that the uproar that had been unleashed by Hindenburg’s broadside against the Reich Banner and the SA ban seemed to have died down.98 But Schleicher, who had originally supported the SA ban as late as 8 April only to reverse 96 97

98

See Brüning’s recollection of his meeting with Hindenburg as recorded in the diary of Hans Schäffer, 7 June 1932, IfZ Munich, NL Schäffer, ED 93, 22/564–71. Hindenburg to Groener, 15 Apr. 1932, reprinted in Politik und Wirtschaft in der Krise 1930–1932. Quellen zur Ära Brüning, ed, by Ilse Maurer and Udo Wengst with an introduction by Gerhard Schulz, 2 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1980), II: 1383. On Hammerstein’s motives, see his remarks on a tour of the army leadership, 27 Feb. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, MSg 1–1667/24–26, reprinted in Thilo Vogelsang, “Neue Dokumente zur Geschichte der Reichswehr 1930–1933,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 2 (1954): 397–436, esp. 423–25. On Hindenburg’s role, see Wolfram Pyta, Hindenburg. Herrschaft zwischen Hohenzollern und Hitler (Berlin, 2007), 685–89. Pünder to Brüning, 27 Apr. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Pünder, 680/40–44.

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his position the following day,99 looked upon the government’s action against the SA as the single greatest obstacle to an accommodation with the NSDAP and was relentless in his efforts to undercut Groener’s authority as Reich minister of defense.100 Caught off guard by the behavior of the man he regarded as “his protégé, friend, and adoptive son (Wahlsohn),”101 Groener became increasingly uncertain of himself in his relations with Hindenburg and the Reichswehr leadership when it came to executing the responsibilities of his office. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the painfully awkward defense of the SA ban that he offered in the Reichstag on 10 May, a performance that destroyed the last vestiges of the Reichswehr’s confidence in Groener’s ability to perform his duties as head of the defense ministry. On the following day Schleicher informed the Reich chancery’s Hermann Pünder that if Groener did not resign, he and other highranking generals in the Reich defense ministry would immediately submit their resignations. Deeply pained and embittered by what he saw as Schleicher’s betrayal of the trust and friendship that had once existed between them,102 Groener had already resigned himself to relinquishing his post as head of the defense ministry but refused to step down from his position at the ministry of the interior without a vote in the Reichstag, something that both Brüning and Schleicher hoped to avoid.103 For his own part, Brüning felt a deep sense of loyalty toward Groener and was 99

100

101 102 103

By far the most detailed account of these developments from the perspective of Groener remains his memorandum “Chronologische Darstellung der Vorkommnisse, die zu meinem Rücktritt als Reichswehr-und Reichsinnenminister geführt haben,” Oct. 1932, ibid, 145/93–112. See also Groener’s comments in a conversation with Schäffer as recorded in Schäffer’s diary, 17 June 1932, IfZ Munich, NL Schäffer, ED 93, 22/ 587–91, as well as his letter to Fritz Buchner, editor of the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, 5 Aug. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Groener, 152/122–26. For Groener’s reaction to these developments, see his letter to Gleich, 25 Apr. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, ibid, 36/ 49–51. For the best secondary treatments of the break between Groener and Schleicher, see Craig, “Reichswehr and National Socialism,” 220–23, as well as the more recent studies by Hürter, Groener, 328–44, and Hornung, Alternativen zu Hitler, 180–89. For a defense of Schleicher’s break with Groener, see the memoir by Hans-Henning von Holtzendorff, “Die Politik des Generals von Schleicher gegenüber der NSDAP 1930–1933. Ein Beitrag zur Wehrmacht und Partei,” 22 June 1946, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Holtzendorff, 5/8–15, here 8–9. Groener to Gleich, 22 Mai 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Groener, 46/52–54. See also Groener to Bahr, ibid, 152/111–15. For example, see Groener to Schleicher, 27 Nov. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 77/116. Entry for 11 May 1932 in Hermann Pünder, Politik in der Reichskanzlei. Aufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1929–1932, ed. Thilo Vogelsang (Stuttgart, 1961), 120–22.

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

fully prepared to resign the chancellorship if Groener was forced out of the cabinet. As Groener later wrote in a detailed account of the events that led to his resignation, he was unwilling to see Brüning risk his own chancellorship on his behalf and dissuaded the chancellor from visiting the Reich president to demand his retention in office in the hope that Brüning might weather the storm if he himself were no longer a member of his cabinet. Although Brüning supported Groener in his determination to stay on as head of the ministry of the interior, Groener tendered his resignation as Reich defense minister on the evening of 12 May.104 Groener’s resignation as minister of defense dealt a severe blow to the Brüning cabinet and its chances of surviving the deepening political crisis. Of those who belonged to Hindenburg’s inner circle of advisors, no one had supported Brüning with greater loyalty than Groener, and his departure from the defense ministry severely weakened the chancellor’s standing with the Reich president and left him fully exposed to the machinations of Schleicher and his entourage. Groener’s resignation also meant that Schleicher was free from external restraint to pursue his strategy of taming the Nazis without accountability to anyone but Hindenburg. Schleicher had already met behind Brüning’s back – and presumably behind that of the Reich president as well – with the Nazi party leader on two occasions in late April and early May to lay the foundation for a meeting between Hitler and Hindenburg that would presumably pave the way for the formation of a new national government in which the NSDAP would be represented as part of a larger agreement that also involved an end to the ban on the SA and new Reichstag elections.105 Sensing that Brüning had been fatally wounded by Groener’s departure from the defense ministry, the Nazis immediately stepped up their attacks against his government in an attempt to bring it down for once and for all.106 In the meantime, Brüning’s already weakened standing with the Reich president was further undermined when a group of East Elbian landowners led by Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau and Baron Wilhelm von Gayl joined forces with Count Eberhard von Kalckreuth from the National Rural League to demand an immediate end to government plans for the resettlement of unemployed workers on farms that were to be created through the partition of estates so heavily in debt that they could no longer be 104 105 106

Groener, “Chronologische Darstellung,” BA-MA Freiburg, NL Groener, 145/93–112. Entries for 29 Apr. and 9 May 1932, Die Goebbels Tagebücher, ed. Fröhlich, 2/II, 270–71, 276–77. Entry for 13 May 1932, ibid, 2/II, 280.

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rescued from foreclosure.107 This project was the brainchild of Brüning’s Reich Commissar for Eastern Relief Hans Schlange-Schöningen and enjoyed strong support from Reich Labor Secretary Adam Stegerwald as a possible solution to the mass unemployment that existed in the more heavily industrialized parts of the country.108 But the storm of protest and the charges of “agrarian Bolshevism” that these plans had unleashed among those for whom Hindenburg felt a natural affinity all but sealed Brüning’s fate and left him with no alternative but to tender his cabinet’s resignation after the Reich president refused in a private audience on the morning of 29 May to extend his government’s emergency powers or to approve any changes in the composition of the cabinet.109 Brüning’s resignation as chancellor marked the end of arguably the most tumultuous chancellorship in the history of the Weimar Republic to a close. For more than two years, Brüning had struggled valiantly to deal with the consequences of a world economic crisis that manifested itself most visibly in the steadily increasing numbers of unemployed workers. But Brüning’s fiscal conservatism severely limited his ability to formulate an effective strategy for coping with the deepening economic crisis, and it was not until the very end of his chancellorship that he and members of his cabinet began to look at programs for job creation as a response to

107

108

109

In this respect, see Oldenburg-Januschau to Gayl, 21 May 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Gayl, 30, and Gayl to Hindenburg, 24 May 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 616/258, both reprinted in Werner Conze, “Zum Sturz Brünings,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 1 (1953): 261–88, esp. 276–78, as well as Kalckreuth to Hindenburg, 24 May 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 616/249–50. For further details, see the informative East German study by Bruno Buchta, Die Junker und die Weimarer Republik. Character und Bedeutung der Osthilfe in den Jahren 1928–1933 (Berlin, 1959), 130–44. In this respect, see Schlange-Schöningen to Brüning, 15 May 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Hans Schlange-Schöningen, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, 20/32–35. On Schlange’s defeat and subsequent resignation, see Meissner to Schlange-Schöningen, 26 May 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 616/263–64, and Schlange-Schöningen to Hindenburg, 27 May 1932, ibid, 403/33–34. For further information, see Heinrich Muth, “Agrarpolitik und Parteipolitik im Frühjahr 1932,” in Staat, Wirtschaft und Politik in der Weimarer Republik. Festschrift fur Heinrich Brüning, eds. Ferdinand A. Hermens and Theodor Schieder (Berlin, 1967), 317–60, and Udo Wengst, “Schlange-Schöningen, Ostsiedlung und die Demission der Regierung Brüning,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 30 (1979): 538–51, as well as Schlange’s own account in Hans SchlangeSchöningen, Am Tage danach (Hamburg, 1946), 66–75. On the resignation of the Brüning cabinet, see Brüning’s report of his meeting with Hindenburg and the text of his letter of resignation to Hindenburg in the minutes of a ministerial conference, 30 May 1932, BA Berlin, R 43 I, 1456/273–76. See also the entries for 29–30 May 1932 in Pünder, Politik in der Reichskanzlei, 127–31.

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mass unemployment.110 In the meantime, Brüning and particularly his reliance upon Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to implement his deflationary fiscal and economic policies had done much to weaken the foundations of Weimar democracy. Whatever his original intentions might have been, Brüning found it necessary to rely upon the emergency powers that the Constitution had vested in the office of the Reich president to implement a program that became increasingly unpopular with each successive emergency decree and that had radicalized many of the groups upon which he and the parties that supported him depended for political and electoral support. But Brüning managed to walk a fine line between the toleration of the Social Democrats and persistent pressure from the presidential palace for a reshuffling of his cabinet that would align it more directly with the forces of the German Right. In the final analysis, however, it was precisely Brüning’s refusal to abandon the Social Democrats for the sake of the antirepublican German Right that resulted in the estrangement of Schleicher and the Reichswehr leadership. Signs that Schleicher and his entourage had begun to waver in their support of Brüning could be seen in the late summer and early fall of 1931. But Brüning’s international prestige and the fact that his support was crucial in persuading Hindenburg to stand for reelection and in securing his victory at the polls once he agreed to stand made it difficult for them to dispose of Brüning if he continued to stand in the way of Schleicher’s plans to tame the Nazis by bringing them into the government. Unlike Schleicher, Brüning remained unconvinced that the Nazis were sincere in their reassurances that they planned the pursuit of power by legal means only, and he continued to find one excuse after another – generally in the area of German foreign policy – to postpone undertaking the realignment of political forces that Schleicher and the Reichswehr leadership had in mind. It was only after Hindenburg’s reelection on 10 April 1932 that Brüning became truly expendable, and Schleicher moved quickly to take advantage of the uproar that Groener’s ban on the SA had created precisely among those who were seeking an accommodation with the Nazis. With Groener’s fall from power, Brüning found himself increasingly isolated from those in the presidential palace and the Reichswehr who were slowly but surely laying the foundations for a dramatic change in the future course of German political life. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the fiasco over rural resettlement in the

110

Patch, Brüning, 260–62.

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East and Schlange-Schöningen’s dismissal as Reich Commissar for Eastern Relief. Brüning made one last effort to salvage his chancellorship on his terms and not on those of Hindenburg or Schleicher with a passionate defense of his foreign policy before the Reichstag on 11 May.111 Possibly it was the very fear that Brüning might indeed score a great diplomatic triumph at Lausanne where German and Allied officials had met to discuss the reparations problem that lent a measure of urgency to the efforts of Schleicher and the presidential palace to force his resignation as chancellor. Brüning’s claims of an impending agreement on reparations had little effect upon those who were intent upon forcing him from power and may have in fact only accelerated their timetable. With the formal submission of his government’s resignation on the morning of 30 May, the Brüning era had come to an end.

111

For the salient excerpts from Brüning’s speech, see “Keine Reparationen mehr!,” 11 May 1932, in Heinrich Brüning, Am Steuer des Reichs. Reden aus Brünings Kanzlerschaft (Cologne, 1932), 58–60.

Epilogue From Papen to Hitler

The three elections in the spring of 1932 fundamentally transformed Germany’s political landscape and set the stage for the final chapter in the destruction of the Weimar Republic and the National Socialist seizure of power. Aside from the fact that the National Socialists had clearly established themselves as the dominant force on the German Right, the events of that spring not only greatly accelerated the demise of those forces that were still committed to the defense of Germany’s republican institutions but also intensified divisions within the ranks of the national opposition. What confronted the German people on the day after the election of 24 April was a scene of utter devastation particularly in the middle and the moderate Right but also among the non-Nazi elements of the so-called national opposition. To be sure, both the Center and the Bavarian People’s Party had managed to improve upon their performance in the last state elections in May 1928, the Center by more than 600,000 votes and the BVP by 225,000. But elsewhere the parties of the middle and moderate Right, including the Christian-National Farmers and Peasants’ Party and the Business Party, had all but disappeared from the electoral landscape, while the German People’s Party and the German State Party were able to survive, though only with a fraction of their earlier parliamentary representation.1 In the meantime, efforts to consolidate the non-Catholic bourgeois parties in the middle and moderate Right into a united political force had repeatedly failed since the summer

1

Jürgen Falter, Thomas Lindenberger, and Siegfried Schumann, Wahlen und Abstimmungen in der Weimarer Republik. Materialien zum Wahlverhalten (Munich, 1986), 101.

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of 1930 and offered little prospect of success in either the near or the distant future.2 Nor was the situation significantly better among the non-Nazi elements of the national opposition. Hugenberg’s inexplicably clumsy tactics during the 1932 presidential campaign and the heavy losses the DNVP had sustained as the putative leader of the national opposition in the four years since his election as DNVP national chairman had severely weakened his hold on the party. Hugenberg was in fact so despondent over the situation in which the DNVP found itself and particularly over the state of party finances that he might very well have resigned as DNVP party’s national chairman had it not been for impassioned pleas from long-time political associates like Leo Wegener and Reinhold Quaatz.3 At the same time, Germany’s industrial leadership intensified its search for a successor to the DNVP party chairmanship who could remold the party as the foundation upon which the remnants of the bourgeois splinter parties in the middle and moderate Right could unite. Such a party would presumably be able to negotiate with the Nazis from a position of strength and offset its influence in any future cabinet negotiations.4 A similar state of disorientation and uncertainty could also be seen in the organization of the paramilitary Right. The dismal failure of Duesterberg’s presidential candidacy and the subsequent squabble over the alliance the Stahlhelm had concluded with the DNVP for the Prussian state elections had brought tensions within Germany’s largest and most politically active paramilitary organization to the fore.5 For whatever reason, the 2

3

4

5

For further details, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Sammlung oder Zersplitterung? Die Bestrebungen zur Bildung einer neuen Mittelpartei in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik 1930–1933,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25 (1977): 265–304, esp. 279–81. For example, see Wegener to Hugenberg, 25 and 28 Apr.1932, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 39, 142–45, as well as the entry in Quaatz’s diary for 28 Apr. 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17. For a fuller discussion of Hugenberg’s dilemma and the situation within the DNVP, see John A. Leopold, Alfred Hugenberg: The Radical Nationalist Campaign against the Weimar Republic (New Haven, CT, and London, 1977), 111–15, and Maximilian Terhalle, Deutschnational in Weimar. Die politische Biographie des Reichstagsabgeordneten Otto Schmidt(-Hannover) 1888–1971 (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2009), 310–12. On these efforts, see Jones, “Sammlung oder Zersplitterung,” 281–83, and Wolfgang Zollitsch, “Das Scheitern der ‘gouvernementalen’ Rechten. Tilo von Wilmowsky und die organisierten Interessen in der Staatskrise von Weimar,” in Demokratie in Deutschland. Chancen und Gefährdungen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, eds. Wolther von Kieseritzky and Klaus-Peter Sick (Munich, 1999), 228–53, esp. 265–67. For an indication of the unrest and confusion within the Stahlhelm in the late spring and early summer of 1932, see Vierrege (Mecklenburg) to Stahlhelm headquarters (Bundesamt), 19 May 1932, BA Berlin, R 72, 298/41–44.

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

Stahlhelm’s venture into the terrain of Weimar party politics had been a dismal failure in the eyes of most Stahlhelm leaders, who moved quickly to return the Stahlhelm to the status of a nonpartisan combat league once the elections of 24 April were over.6 Within the Kyffhäuser League, on the other hand, the situation was different only because the leaders of its national and Prussian organizations had publicly endorsed Hindenburg’s bid for reelection in a move that encountered strong criticism from those of its members who denounced the endorsement as a violation of the league’s bipartisan neutrality.7 Perhaps the greatest impact of the 1932 spring elections was to be felt in the entourage around the Reich president. For although Hindenburg had been reelected by a comfortable margin of nearly six millions votes, he felt little loyalty to those who had made his election possible and began to press almost immediately for a reorganization of the national government and the inclusion of the forces on the radical Right. Hindenburg was particularly embittered first by the fact that he had had to stand for reelection in the first place and then even more so by the fact that an overwhelming majority of those who had voted for him in 1925 had defected to Hitler seven years later. In the meantime, the demise of first Groener as minister of defense and then of Brüning as chancellor had left the Reich president increasingly susceptible not only to Schleicher’s influence but also to that of his son Oskar and his state secretary in the Office of the Reich Presidency Otto Meissner, both of whom were pressing Hindenburg to align himself more closely with the forces of the national opposition.8 For his own part, Schleicher had become convinced after the strong Nazi showing in the state elections of 24 April 1932 that one could 6

7

8

See the speeches by Seldte and Hauffe in 2. Reichs-Stahlhelm-Führertagung 5. Mai 1932 zu Magdeburg. Reden, ed. Stahlhelm, Bundesamt-Propagandaabteilung (Berlin, n.d. [1932]), 3–7, 14–27. For further details, see Volker R. Berghahn, Der Stahlhelm – Bund der Frontsoldaten 1918–1935 (Düsseldorf, 1966), 218–29. The conflict that its endorsement of Hindenburg caused within the rank and file of the Kyffhäuser League is well documented in Karl Führer, “Der Deutsche Reichskriegerbund Kyffhäuser 1930–1934. Politik, Ideologie und Funktion eines ‘unpolitischen’ Verbandes,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 36 (1984): 57–76, esp. 61–65. On the increased influence that Oskar von Hindenburg and Meissner began to exercise on the aging Reich president, see the classic essay by Theodor Eschenburg, “The Role of Personality in the Crisis of the Weimar Republic: Hindenburg, Brüning, Groener, Schleicher,” in Republic to Reich: The Making of the Nazi Revolution, ed. Hajo Holborn (New York, 1972), 3–50, esp. 39–40. The role that Oskar von Hindenburg and Meissner played in the last days of the Weimar Republic has also been highlighted in Henry A. Turner, Jr., Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power: January 1933 (Reading, MA, 1996), 112–17, 153–55, 179–80.

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no longer avoid or postpone Nazis participation in the national and Prussian governments. From his perspective, both Groener and Brüning – but particularly the former in light of his role in the ban on the SA – were roadblocks to an accommodation with the Nazis and would have to be sacrificed in order to secure Hitler’s consent to a new government reaching from the Center and BVP to the NSDAP and the non-Nazi elements of the national opposition.9 Schleicher met with Hitler on two occasions in the weeks after the April 1932 elections and extracted from the Nazi party leader what he believed to be an agreement to tolerate, if not support, a new government of the Right in return for new elections and an end to ban on the SA.10 The irony in all of this was that just at the moment that Schleicher emerged as the driving figure in the government’s efforts to reach an accommodation with Hitler and the Nazi party leadership in the late spring and early summer of 1932, he was in fact politically much weaker than earlier in the year. For as much as Schleicher might not have liked to admit it, the resignation of Groener and Brüning had deprived him of two of his most reliable and respected allies outside his immediate circle of advisors in the military and had greatly reduced his freedom of maneuver. Groener had always served as an effective filter through which Schleicher’s ideas reached the Reich president, while Brüning had functioned for the most part as a trusted and loyal instrument of Schleicher’s strategic initiatives. Without Groener and Brüning, Schleicher would become increasingly dependent upon the Reich president and his immediate entourage. Nowhere would the way in which this affected Schleicher’s freedom of maneuver become more apparent than in his search for Brüning’s successor, particularly since his only real prospect of effectively “taming” the Nazis would require the participation of the Center and its collaboration with the NSDAP in a cabinet that commanded a parliamentary majority in

9 10

Thilo Vogelsang, Reichswehr, Staat und NSDAP. Beiträge zur Deutschen Geschichte 1930–1932 (Stuttgart, 1962), 184–202. On the negotiations between Schleicher and Hitler, see the entries for 28 Apr. and 9 May 1932 in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, Teil 1, Bd. 2/II (Munich, 2004), 270–71, 276–77. For the terms of this agreement, see the memorandum by Gayl on his experiences as a member of the Papen cabinet, n.d., BA Koblenz, NL Gayl, 53, as well as the memorandum by Ott and Bredow, “Aufzeichnung betreffs Treubruch der nationalsozialistischen Führung durch Angriffe gegen die Präsidialkabinett v. Papen,” 16 Sept. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 22/141–43.

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the Reichstag. And that, particularly after the cavalier way in which he had orchestrated Brüning’s dismissal as chancellor, was hardly likely.11 To most political observers, the logical choice as Brüning’s successor would have been Carl Goerdeler, lord mayor of Leipzig and Reich price commissioner since December 1931. Goerdeler was a tough-minded fiscal conservative who had belonged to the DNVP until his appointment to the cabinet but who steadfastly resisted being drawn into the intrigues against Hugenberg.12 But although Goerdeler supported the general outlines of Schleicher’s taming strategy,13 he effectively took himself out of consideration by insisting upon authorization for sweeping fiscal and economic reforms that Schleicher and his associates were unwilling to countenance.14 Nor was Count Westarp, the former DNVP party chairman who had played such a critical role in Hindenburg’s reelection campaign and who was Hindenburg’s personal preference, willing to serve in an interim capacity until the Nazis could be brought into the government, presumably under a different chancellor who might have been more to their liking. In a meeting with Hindenburg on 30 May Westarp declined the chancellorship and implored the Reich president not to dismiss Brüning for fear that this could weaken the German position in the reparations negotiations that were taking place in Lausanne. Westarp also cited the radicalization of the masses and the almost certain defeat that the German middle parties would suffer in the event of new elections as a further reason for his reluctance to accept the chancellorship on a purely interim basis. In Westarp’s account, the old man was reduced to tears by his 11

12 13 14

On Schleicher’s frustration over the Center’s reaction to the formation of the Papen cabinet, see the entry in Lernser’s diary, 7 June 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 8/ 47–55. See also Gotthard Jasper, Die gescheiterte Zähmung. Wege zur Machtergreifung Hitlers 1930–34 (Frankfurt a. M., 1986), 88–91. For example, see Goerdeler to Hugenberg, 10 July 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 36/270. For example, see Goerdeler’s letter to his son Ulrich, 5 June 1932, in Goerdeler’s unpublished Nachlaß, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter cited as BA Koblenz, NL Goerdeler), 91. For Goerdeler’s account of these developments, see the letter cited above as well as his more detailed account in his “Londoner Schrift,” 9 July 1937, BA Koblenz, NL Goerdeler, 80. For Goerdeler’s recommendations in the areas of fiscal and economic policy, see his lengthy memorandum to the Reich president, Apr. 1932, ibid, 80. Both of these documents have been published in Politische Schriften und Briefe Carl Friedrich Goerdelers, eds. Sabine Gillmann and Hans Mommsen, 2 vols. (Munich, 2003), 1: 240–70, 313–30. On Schleicher’s rejection of Goerdeler, see Heinrich Brüning, Memoiren 1918–1934 (Stuttgart, 1970), 609–10. See also Michael Matthiesen, “Ein Konservativer auf dem Weg in den Widerstand – Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (1884–1945),” in Konservative Politiker in Deutschland. Eine Auswahl biographischer Porträts aus zwei Jahrhunderten, ed. Hans-Christof Kraus (Berlin, 1995), 235–71, esp. 246–50.

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refusal to accept the chancellorship. But not even this could dissuade Westarp from his decision.15 Under heavy pressure from the presidential palace to appoint a successor to Brüning as soon as possible, Schleicher turned to a political neophyte in the person of Franz von Papen, a Catholic conservative who stood on the right wing of the Center Party and whose political experience had been limited to two stints as a back bencher in the Prussian Landtag. Schleicher, who had met with Papen earlier in the month, summoned him back to Berlin at the end of May to inform him of Brüning’s imminent demise and asked if he was prepared to assume the chancellorship as the head of a cabinet without formal commitments to the Reichstag or any of its constituent parties. According to his own account, Papen had profound reservations about accepting the chancellorship and had reassured Center party chairman Ludwig Kaas in a meeting on the afternoon of 30 May that he would decline the post. But after an impassioned plea from the Reich president in a meeting with Hindenburg later that afternoon, Papen suddenly reversed his position and agreed to accept the chancellorship, his earlier promise to Kaas notwithstanding.16 Contemporaries and historians alike have struggled to explain why Schleicher would choose a man with Papen’s undistinguished political profile as Brüning’s successor. It was a decision that not even Schleicher’s closest associates could understand,17 and it is uncertain whether or not Schleicher ever thought through the implications of his choice aside from 15

16

17

Westarp’s meeting with Hindenburg is described quite poignantly in a letter from Westarp’s wife Ada to their daughter Baroness Gertraude Hiller von Gaertringen, 31 May 1932, NL Westarp, Gärtringen. See also the memorandum by Westarp, “Zu Brünings Rücktritt,” dictated on 1 June 1932, ibid, II/61, reprinted in Werner Conze, “Zum Sturz Brünings,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 1 (1953): 261–88, esp. 282–88. Papen’s own memoirs, Der Wahrheit eine Gasse (Munich, 1952), 182–91, are notoriously unreliable, but in this case the general outlines of Papen‘s account of his appointment to the chancellorship have been confirmed by an entry in Lersner’s diary, 7 June 1932, BA Koblenz, NL Lersner, 10/47–55, and a letter from Eugen Ott to Theodor Eschenburg, 19 Jan. 1953, in Ott’s unpublished Nachlaß, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich (hereafter cited as IfZ Munich, NL Ott), Zs/A-32, 12. For further details, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Franz von Papen, the German Center Party, and the Failure of Catholic Conservatism in the Weimar Republic,” Central European History 38 (2009): 191–217, esp. 206–08; Joachim Petzold, Franz von Papen. Ein deutsches Verhängnis (Munich and Berlin, 1995), 58–66; Pyta, Hindenburg, 701–06; and most recently Christoph Hübner, Die Rechtskatholiken, die Zentrumspartei und die katholische Kirche in Deutschland bis zum Reichskonkordat von 1933. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Scheiterns der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 2014), 688–99, as well as Pyta, Hindenburg, 701–06. For example, see Ott to Eschenburg, 19 Jan. 1953, IfZ Munich, NL Ott, Zs A-32/12.

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

the fact that he knew Papen from their days in the Prussian military academy, that Papen enjoyed a warm relationship with the Reich president, that Papen stood a good chance of bringing the Center into line with the Schleicher strategy, and most likely that Papen could be expected to do Schleicher’s bidding. But Papen’s appointment as chancellor would turn out to be an unmitigated disaster not only for what remained of Germany’s democratic institutions but for Schleicher himself. As Brüning later lamented in a private conversation with the former Ministry of Finance State Secretary Hans Schäffer, with Papen’s appointment Schleicher had crossed the Rubicon that, once crossed, could not be crossed again.18 Brüning could not have been more prescient. Elevated to the rank of chancellor, Papen would become, like Hindenburg and Schleicher, one of those individuals whose actions were suddenly invested with much greater causal agency than would have been the case had it not been for the peculiar confluence of political and economic crises that defined the last years of the Weimar Republic.19 In the weeks that followed Papen not only destroyed the possibility of a rapprochement with the Center by publishing an attack on the accomplishments of his predecessor’s government that so infuriated Brüning’s supporters in the Center that they had no choice but to respond in kind,20 but also dissolved the Reichstag, lifted the ban on the SA, and forcibly deposed the state government in Prussia. All of this had the full backing of the Reich president and his immediate circle of advisors, including Schleicher.21 But on the crucial item of winning the support or at least the toleration of the

18 19

20

21

Remark by Brüning as recorded in the diary of Hans Schäffer, 28 July 1932, IfZ Munich, NL Schäffer, ED 93, 23/690. Of the numerous contemporary biographies of Papen, by far the most reliable is Heinrich Schnee, Franz von Papen. Ein Lebensbild (Paderborn and Würzburg, n.d. [1934]). On the aims of the Papen chancellorship, see the brochure by Walther Schotte, Das Kabinett Papen Schleicher Gayl (Leipzig, 1932), esp. 62–71. The declaration of the Papen government as well as the response of the Brüning cabinet and the Center Party are all reprinted in Georg Schreiber, Brüning – Hitler – Schleicher. Das Zentrum in der Opposition (Cologne, 1932), 17–24, 27–34. For further information on the reaction of the Center, see Wilhelm Boermann’s notes on the meeting of the Center Party executive committee, 8 June 1932, in Boermann’s unpublished Nachlaß, Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Politik, Sankt Augustin, Bestand I-352, 9, reprinted in Martin Schumacher, “Zwischen ‘Einschaltung’ und ‘Gleichschaltung.’ Zum Untergang der Deutschen Zentrumspartei 1932/33,” Historisches Jahrbuch 99 (1979): 268–303. Papen’s frustration and disappointment over the Center’s reaction to his installation as chancellor are reflected in a letter to Diego von Bergen, 6 June 1932, USHMM Washington, RG-76.001M, Reel 7, Pos. 627, Fasc. 144, Bl. 46–50. Pyta, Hindenburg, 708–15.

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NSDAP, Papen failed miserably. Not only did the Nazis renege on the agreement that Schleicher thought he had struck with Hitler before the dismissal of the Brüning cabinet,22 but in the campaign for the Reichstag elections of 31 July 1932 Goebbels and the Nazi propaganda machine launched a full-scale assault against Papen and his “cabinet of barons” as a way of highlighting the antisocial character of the new government.23 In the July 1932 Reichstag elections the NSDAP went on to score an electoral victory that was even more impressive than its performance in the state elections earlier that spring and that garnered it 37.36 percent of the popular vote and 230 seats in the Reichstag.24 But hopes that this might translate into Nazi control of the government were frustrated when at a critical meeting between the Reich president and the Nazi party leader on 13 August Hindenburg rejected Hitler’s demands that the chancellorship and other key cabinet posts be placed in the hands of the NSDAP in what would have amounted to the establishment of a virtual Nazi dictatorship.25 In the meantime, the Center and NSDAP had entered into negotiations with each other at both the national and Prussian levels to explore the possibility of a coalition government that would have satisfied the Reich president’s demand that any new national government have the support of a majority in the Reichstag. But neither these negotiations nor exploratory contacts between Brüning and the Nazi party leadership succeeded in establishing a common basis upon which the two parties 22

23

24

25

Memorandum by Ott and Bredow, “Aufzeichnung betreffs Treubruch der nationalsozialistischen Führung durch Angriffe gegen die Präsidialkabinett v. Papen,” 16 Sept. 1932, BA-MA Freiburg, NL Schleicher, 22/141–43. For the Nazi campaign strategy in the July 1932 Reichstag elections, see the directives from the NSDAP national headquarters, 24 June 1932, BA Berlin, NS 22, 2/1–3, and 19 July 1932, BA Berlin, NS 26, 289. For further information on the Nazi stance toward Papen, see Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP, Reichskanzler von Papen im Lichte seiner Politik, 12 Sept. 1932, als Manuskript gedruckt (Munich, n.d. [1932]). For further details, see “Das Ende der Parteiein im Spiegel der Wahlen 1930 bis 1933,” in Das Ende der Parteien 1933, eds. Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey (Düsseldorf, 1960), 743–93, here 771–81. Both the presidential palace and Hitler had different versions of what transpired at this meeting. For the most detailed account of the meeting between Hitler and Hindenburg, see Papen’s report in the minutes of a conversation with Jacob Goldschmidt, Fritz Springorum, Ernst Brandi, and Hans Humann in Neubabelsberg, 16 Aug. 1932, in the unpublished Nachlaß of Theodor Reismann-Crone, Stadtarchiv Essen, 15. For the perspective of the circle close to Hindenburg, see the unpublished memoirs of Hindenburg’s adjutant Wedige von der Schulenburg, BA-MA Freiburg, MSg 2/13421, 136–38. For Hitler’s version, see the text of the communiqué he released to the press in the attachment to his letter to Schleicher, Meissner, and Planck, 13 Aug. 1932, BA Berlin, NS 51, 222/ 104–08.

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could cooperate in the formation of a new government in either the Reich or Prussia.26 Not even a new round of negotiations after the Reichstag elections of 6 November 1932 had cost the Nazis over two million votes and thirty-six of their seats in the Reichstag could break the deadlock.27 Hindenburg, however, remained committed to Papen’s retention as Reich chancellor and was only dissuaded by Schleicher’s declaration on the morning of 2 December that the chancellor had lost the confidence of the Reichswehr and could no longer remain in office.28 Papen’s fate as Reich chancellor had been sealed, but at an enormous cost to Schleicher’s relations with the Reich president. Papen’s resignation as chancellor and Schleicher’s appointment as his successor did little to alleviate the uncertainty and apprehension that a vast majority of Germans felt about the future of their country.29 Schleicher was most effective in private conservations behind closed doors and lacked the public profile and personal charisma to compete with Hindenburg and Hitler for the attention of the German people.30 More importantly, Schleicher no longer enjoyed the unconditional confidence of the Reich president and became easy prey to the machinations of Papen, Meissner, and Hindenburg’s son Oskar once it became clear that the new chancellor’s overtures to the socialist labor unions and the left wing of the Nazi party were doomed to failure. By the middle of January 1933 the hopelessness of Schleicher’s situation had become apparent to all but

26

27

28 29 30

For the most detailed account of the contacts between the Center and the NSDAP in the summer of 1932, see Rudolf Morsey, Der Untergang des politischen Katholizismus. Die Zentrumspartei zwischen christlichem Selbstverständnis und ‘Nationaler Erhebung’ 1932/33 (Zurich, 1977), 56–64. On Brüning’s secret meetings with Hitler and Strasser, see Herbert Hömig, Brüning – Politiker ohne Auftrag. Zwischen Weimarer und Bonner Republik (Paderborn, 2005), 31–35. On the political deadlock of late November 1932, see the entries for 27 Nov.–4 Dec. 1932, in the diary of Reich Finance Minister Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, in Schwerin von Krosigk’s unpublished Nachlaß, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich (hereafter cited as IfZ Munich, NL Schwerin-Krosigk), Zs/A-20, 4/2–16. For further details, see Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (New York, 1998), 391–96, and Pyta, Hindenburg, 755–60. Memorandum by Meissner, 2 Dec. 1932, BA Berlin, R 601, 405/486–88. See also Vogelsang, Reichswehr, Staat und NSDAP, 331–32. On Schleicher’s appointment, see Vogelsang, Reichswehr, Staat und NSDAP, 335–36. On the negotiations with the Nazis, see the report by Joos before the executive committee of the Center Reichstag delegation, 12 Sept. 1932, in Protokolle der Reichstagsfraktion und des Fraktionsvorstandes der Deutschen Zentrumspartei 1926–1933, ed. Rudolf Morsey (Mainz, 1969), 585–87. For further details, see Morsey, Der Untergang des politischen Katholizismus, 56–64.

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the chancellor and his immediate entourage when the National Rural League and Hugenberg’s DNVP issued broadsides that all but sealed the fate of his government.31 In the meantime, Papen, who had been in touch with the Nazis ever since his infamous meeting with Hitler on 4 January in the home of Cologne banker Kurt von Schroeder,32 was hard at work brokering a deal between Hindenburg and the Nazi party leadership that would allow Hitler to assume the chancellorship of a cabinet in which conservative nationalists like Hugenberg and the Stahlhelm’s Franz Seldte as well as holdovers from the Papen cabinet such as Finance Minister Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk and Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath would presumably hold the balance of power. The essential outlines of this arrangement had been finalized by the time that Papen, Hitler, Göring, and several other members of Hitler’s entourage met with Oskar von Hindenburg and Meissner on 22 January in the Dahlem villa of Joachim von Ribbentrop in an attempt to persuade Hindenburg’s son and state secretary to use their influence to wear down the Reich president’s resistance to Hitler’s appointment as chancellor.33 By the time that Hindenburg received Schleicher on 28 January and summarily rejected his request for emergency powers that would have allowed him to dissolve the Reichstag and defer new elections beyond the term specified in the Weimar Constitution,34 the Reich president had already reconciled himself to Hitler’s appointment as the new chancellor. The formal installation of the Hitler cabinet two days later was premised upon the assumption that Papen and the non-Nazi members of the new 31

32

33

34

In this respect, see the minutes of the RLB executive committee, 11 Jan. 1933, BA Berlin, R 8034, 146/245–53, reprinted in Bernd Hoppe, “Von Schleicher zu Hitler. Dokumente zum Konflikt zwischen dem Reichslandbund und der Regierung Schleicher in den letzten Monaten der Weimarer Republik,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 45 (1997): 629–57, esp. 645–51, and the resolution of the DNVP Reichstag delegation, 21 Jan. 1933, BA Koblenz, NL Hugenberg, 261–63. On the DNVP’s involvement in the anti-Schleicher cabal, see Larry Eugene Jones, “‘The Greatest Stupidity of My Life’: Alfred Hugenberg and the Formation of the Hitler Cabinet, January 1933,” Journal of Contemporary History 27 (1992): 63–87. On Papen’s meeting with Hitler, see the detailed analysis by Heinrich Muth, “Das ‘Kölner Gespräch’ am 4. Januar 1933,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 37 (1986): 463–80, 529–41, as well as Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days, 37–47. For the most carefully constructed account of this meeting, see Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days, 111–16. See also Irene Strenge, “Der 22. Januar 1933. Eine Beweiswürdigung,” Journal der juristischen Zeitgeschichte 1 (2011): 57–66. Memorandum from the Office of the Reich President on Hindenburg’s audience with Schleicher, 28 Jan. 1933, BA Berlin, R 601, 405/573–74. See also the entry in the diary of Schwerin von Krosigk, 25–28, 1933, IfZ Munich, NL Schwerin-Krosigk, Zs/A-20, 4/ 12–14, as well as the account in Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days, 130–33.

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government would be able to contain Hitler and mitigate the radicalism of his supporters by obliging them to accept the burden of political responsibility that had suddenly been imposed upon them and to act accordingly. By this time, however, the divisions within the ranks of Germany’s conservative elites had become so pronounced that they were no longer capable of pursuing a unified and coherent course of action with respect to the National Socialists.35 Over the next six months, Hitler and his party completely outmaneuvered their conservative allies so that by the early summer of 1933 they had effectively reversed the terms of the compact upon which the formation of the Hitler cabinet had taken place. If a Hugenberg associate could claim in mid-January that “if Hitler sits in the saddle, Hugenberg holds the whip,”36 by the end of July 1933 Hugenberg had resigned from the cabinet and his party no longer existed. Conservative hopes of somehow containing Hitler and the dynamism of his movement lay in shambles.37 The divisions responsible for the paralysis of the non-Nazi German Right in the first months of 1933 had existed ever since the founding of the DNVP in the late fall of 1918 but did not become fully apparent until the fateful split in the DNVP Reichstag delegation in the vote on the Dawes Plan in August 1924 and in the struggle for control of the party that resulted in Hugenberg’s election to the DNVP party chairmanship in October 1928. The more moderate elements on the German Right – and particularly those who had attached their political star to the success or failure of Brüning’s experiment in government by presidential decree – continued to harbor hopes that it might be possible either to reconcile the divisions within the German Right or to force Hugenberg from the DNVP party leadership. Hugenberg, on the other hand, was relentless in his determination to destroy what still remained of the governmental system that had granted the Social Democrats access to the corridors of power and seized upon the increasingly desperate situation in which the Brüning

35

36

37

For a fuller elaboration of this argument, see Larry Eugene Jones, “Nazis, Conservatives, and the Establishment of the Third Reich, 1932–34,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 23 (1994): 41–64. Entry in the diary of Reinhold Quaatz, 17 Jan. 1933, BA Koblenz, NL Quaatz, 17, reprinted in Larry Eugene Jones, “Die Tage vor Hitlers Machtübernahme. Aus dem Tagebuch des deutschnationalen Reinhold Quaatz,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 37 (1989): 759–74, esp. 766. For further details, see the recent study by Hermann Beck, The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933. The Machtergreifung in a New Light (New York and Oxford, 2008, esp. 114–45, 219–52.

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cabinet found itself following the banking crisis in the summer of 1931 to intensify his assault against Weimar. With the formation of the Harzburg Front in October 1931 and the subsequent charade over the search for a unity candidate against Hindenburg in the spring 1932 presidential elections, Hugenberg and the DNVP found themselves waging a two-front war against Hindenburg and his supporters on the one hand and Hitler on the other. This proved a strategic impasse from which the DNVP would never extricate itself. As far as the two principal protagonists in the 1932 presidential elections were concerned, the results of the election were sufficiently ambiguous that both Hindenburg and Hitler could claim victory. Even though Hindenburg was miffed that he had failed to receive the support of the vast majority of those who had voted for him in 1925, he felt sufficiently emboldened by the outcome of the election to continue the experiment in presidential government, though in an admittedly more radical iteration with Franz von Papen as its steward. But in reality the election had left the Reich president severely weakened and had, as the results of the state elections in the spring of 1932 clearly revealed, all but decimated the ranks of those moderate conservatives upon whom the Brüning cabinet had been based. To be sure, Hindenburg still possessed the personal charisma to install a man as patently unpopular as Papen in office with little more than a casual disregard for how this might affect the constituencies that had just supported his bid for reelection. But none of this augured well for his continued effectiveness as Reich president and in particular for the success of his efforts to subordinate Hitler to the political will of Germany’s conservative elites, as divided as they might have been. The charisma that had catapulted Hindenburg to the Reich presidency in 1925 and that had sustained him through his first term in office would be severely tested in the months to come. In reality, Hindenburg’s days as the dominant figure in German political life were numbered. Despite the mixture of jubilation and relief with which Hindenburg’s supporters greeted his reelection to the Reich presidency, the real victor in the 1932 presidential election was the Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler. Even though Hitler had fallen considerably short of what he needed to be elected outright, his performance – and particularly his gains between the first and second rounds of voting – left him well positioned for the battles that lay ahead. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the entire episode was the emergence of Hitler as a leader of national format. In the fall and early winter of 1931, when Hitler first faced the prospect of new

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Hitler versus Hindenburg

presidential elections, the Nazi party leader seemed extremely tentative in his relations with the other groups on Germany’s antirepublican Right and was more focused on what he and his party could extract from Hindenburg in return for their support at the polls. As late as January 1932, Hitler was still prepared to support Hindenburg’s reelection but was dissuaded from doing so by Hugenberg and the more intractable elements within his own party. Or, at least, that is how Hitler wanted it to appear. Even after it became clear that Hindenburg would stand for reelection but would not make the concessions about the future of the Brüning cabinet that would have secured him the support of the national opposition, Hitler was still uneasy about facing a man of Hindenburg’s stature and procrastinated declaring his own candidacy to the point where Goebbels and other party leaders had become increasingly frustrated by his indecisiveness. Once Hitler decided to run, however, he demonstrated a single-mindedness and rigidity of purpose that stood in sharp contrast to his equivocation in the earlier stages of the campaign. Above all, Hitler had become more confident in his relations with the non-Nazi members of the national opposition. For Hitler the election had never been as much about winning the Reich presidency – though at times he and his associates had deluded themselves into thinking that this might be possible – as about establishing his movement’s primacy over the more traditional bourgeois components of the national opposition. Hitler had always been careful to keep a safe distance between his party and the more traditional elements of the German Right and was fearful that bourgeois efforts to “tame” the NSDAP under the umbrella of the national opposition would rob his movement of its revolutionary dynamism and compromise the charismatic foundation of his own claim to political authority. The fact that it was not Hitler but Hugenberg and the Stahlhelm that had taken the initiative in the formation of the Harzburg Front only confirmed the Nazi party leader’s fear of being co-opted into an accommodation with the non-Nazi elements of the national opposition that was detrimental to the interests of his own party and accounted in some degree for his bizarre behavior at the rally in Harzburg. In the negotiations that had preceded Hitler’s nomination as a candidate for the Reich presidency, the Nazis went to great lengths to assert their independence from the more conservative members of the national opposition and repeatedly sabotaged efforts by Hugenberg and the Stahlhelm to nominate a candidate behind whom the antirepublican German Right could unite. As it was, the nomination of the Stahlhelm’s Theodor Duesterberg as the candidate of the DNVP and Stahlhelm could not have

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worked out better for Hitler and the NSDAP. Not only would this afford Hitler a head-to-head confrontation with the non-Nazi members of the national opposition that would only confirm the latter’s ineptitude and lack of genuine appeal, but more importantly it would also deprive Hindenburg of the absolute majority he would almost certainly have received had it not been for Duesterberg’s candidacy. Hindenburg’s failure to achieve an absolute majority proved to be critical, because it allowed the Nazis to sustain their momentum from the first round of voting in March through the state elections in Prussia, Bavaria, and Württemberg in late April 1932. Had Hugenberg and the Stahlhelm not nominated Duesterberg as the putative candidate of the national opposition, then the entire course of events would have unfolded much differently – and with far less damaging consequences for the fate of the Weimar Republic. In a larger sense, however, the immediate effect of the 1932 presidential elections was to greatly accelerate the delegitimation of the Weimar Republic and set the stage for Hitler’s appointment as chancellor nine months later. The 1932 presidential elections were different from any previous election in the history of the Weimar Republic. Instead of articulating the goals of the campaign in the language of economic selfinterest as had been the case in virtually every election since 1919,38 the presidential campaign in the spring of 1932 featured two men who relied first and foremost upon their personal charisma to legitimate their claim to the leadership of the German nation. Similarly, both availed themselves of carefully constructed myths extolling their virtues and unique qualifications for the position to which they aspired. To be sure, there were subtle, if not profound, differences between the ways in which they each sought to portray themselves. Hindenburg, for example, identified himself with the virtues of the Prussian tradition that had been responsible for Germany’s rise to greatness in the second half of the nineteenth century, while Hitler cast himself as the prototypical front soldier whose baptism under fire had forged an indomitable will to unite a badly fragmented German nation and to free it from all of those he held responsible for Germany’s national humiliation. The underlying messages, however, were much the same. Both were to be seen as mythical figures endowed with almost supernatural powers to satisfy the increasing forceful popular 38

In this respect, see the path-breaking article by Thomas Childers, “The Social Language of Politics in Germany: The Sociology of Political Discourse in the Weimar Republic,” American Historical Review 95 (1990): 331–58.

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longing for a true Volksgemeinschaft that transcended the social, political, and confessional cleavages so deeply embedded in the fabric of Germany’s national life. That this could no longer be accomplished on the basis of the existing political system, based as it was on the representation of divergent social and economic interests within the framework of a popularly elected legislature, only intensified the longing for a leader who could mobilize the energies of the German nation in service of its rebirth and redemption.39 The 1932 presidential elections thus stood at the center of a subtle, yet profound, shift in Weimar political culture from patterns of legitimation based on tradition or the rational subordination of means to ends to an entirely new pattern defined by the charisma of men like Hindenburg and Hitler. By the middle of 1932 it had become abundantly clear that the combination of acute economic crisis and political paralysis had rendered the existing political system incapable of producing a viable consensus for the conduct of national policy. The contest between two mythic figures like Hindenburg and Hitler defined the style and purpose of leadership in terms that were radically different from those that had characterized the Weimar Republic as it had developed up to that point in time. To be sure, there were political figures like Friedrich Naumann, Stresemann, or even Brüning himself to whom charismatic attributes had been ascribed. But none of that matched the emotional power generated by the contest between the two titans who faced off against each other in the 1932 presidential elections. Suddenly, German political life and the expectations that increasingly large segments of German society attached to the very idea of leadership had been redefined. Politics was no longer what Max Weber had described at the end of his famous Munich lecture on “Politics as a Vocation” as the “slow and strong boring of hard boards.”40 Henceforth politics would be defined to an ever increasing extent by an irrational faith in the supernatural powers of leaders who claimed the heart and soul of the common man with passion, determination, and effect. 39

40

For a fuller elaboration of this argument, see Klaus Schreiner, “‘Wann kommt der Retter Deutschlands?’ Formen und Funktionen von politischem Messianismus in der Weimarer Republik,” Saeculum 49 (1998): 107–60, and Thomas Mergel, “Führer, Volksgemeinschaft und Maschine. Politische Erwartungsstrukturen in der Weimarer Republik und dem Nationalsozialismus 1918–1936,” in Politische Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit 1918–1939, ed. Wolfgang Hardtwig (Göttingen, 2005), 91–127. Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, eds. Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (London, 1948), 128.

Epilogue: From Papen to Hitler

361

That Hindenburg was every bit as capable of exciting the energies of those who adored him as it was for Hitler in his march to power is often easy to overlook. But in the context of 1932 Hindenburg was seen every bit as much as his Nazi rival as the savior of the German nation. Indeed, it was in precisely these terms that Hindenburg saw himself in the final days of the Weimar Republic. Like Hindenburg, Hitler placed charisma at the core of his political persona and steadfastly resisted attempts by allies and rivals alike to diminish its importance as the founding principle of the NSDAP. Not only did the 1932 presidential elections and the way in which they validated charisma as an authentic mode of political legitimation constitute a decisive moment in the transformation of Weimar political culture, but also in Hindenburg and Hitler they celebrated the two leaders who nine months later would join forces in establishing the Third Reich on the basis of their personal charisma. It was precisely the success with which the Nazis were able to accommodate Hindenburg’s charisma to that of their own leader that provided the Third Reich with the legitimacy it so desperately needed in the first months after Hitler’s accession to power.41

41

For an elaboration of this argument, see Wolfgang Pyta, “Geteiltes Charisma. Hindenburg, Hitler und die deutsche Gesellschaft im Jahre 1933,” in Das Jahr 1933. Die nationalsozialistische Machteroberung und die deutsche Gesellschaft, ed. Andreas Wirsching (Göttingen, 2009), 47–69.

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Index

Abegg, Wilhelm, 124, 297 Adolf Friedrich Duke of Mecklenburg, 121 Alvensleben, Bodo von, 81, 236 Anhalt 315 antisemitism, 42–43, 45–46, 48 redemptive antisemitism, 48 in the 1932 presidential elections, 248 judeo-Bolshevism, 47 Ostjude, 43 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 47 Aretin, Erwein von, 233 Arnim-Boitzenburg, Dietlof von, 174 Association of Christian Peasant Unions, 211 Badt, Hermann, 189 Baltrusch, Fritz, 188, 202 banking crisis 1931, 101 Bäumer, Gertrud, 154 Bausch, Paul “Was ist Wahrheit?”, 302–3 Bavaria and Hindenburg’s election to the Reich presidency 1925, 32 Bavarian Hindenburg Committee, 158, 232 civil defense leagues (Einwohnerwehren), 159 elections Landtag 1932, 9, 243, 275, 315, 359 Munich Soviet, 46, 48 paramilitary Right, 46, 232

Bavarian Middle Party, 232 Bavarian People’s Party (BVP), 24, 27, 36, 154, 159, 298, 315, 323, 338, 346, 349 and Brüning, 132, 186 and Hindenburg, 300 support for presidential candidacy 1925, 27, 30–31, 186, 210, 232, 276 elections Reichstag 1928, 72 Reichstag July 1932, 346 Bavarian Rural League (BLB), 269, 286 Bechly, Hans, 160, 188, 272 and Hindenburg, 272 and Hitler, 138 Behrens, Franz, 178, 188 Below, Otto von, 209 Bentheim-Treklenburg-Rheda, Albert zu election as marshal of DAG, 270 Berghahn, Volker, 3 Bernhard, Walter, 222 Bertram, Cardinal Adolf, Bishop of Breslau, 210–11 Betz, Anton, 233 Bolz, Eugen, 203 Borck, Eldor, 151 Bornewasser, Franz Rudolf, Bishop of Trier and the Catholic aristocracy, 210 Bose, Herbert von, 109 Brandi, Ernst, 224, 234 and Hindenburg, 221

395

396

Index

Braun, Otto, 25, 191, 238, 316, 319, 322, 324, 334 and Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency, 189–90, 212 and Sahm committee, 177 Brauweiler, Heinz, 103, 243 Bredt, Johann Victor, 134, 336 Breitscheid, Rudolf, 203 Briefe nach Ostdeutschland, 218 Bruch, Karl, 277 Brüning cabinet, 4, 8, 62, 64–66, 72–73, 78–79, 82, 86, 90, 94, 96, 101, 108, 116–17, 186, 217, 255, 269, 271, 332, 334, 339 and agricultural crisis, 67, 74–75 and banking crisis 1931, 75–76, 101 collapse of Adustrian Credit Institute, 75, 101 collapse of Danat-Bank, 76, 101 and national opposition, 132 Groener’s resignation as defense minister, 342 reorganization of cabinet October 1931, 121, 126–29, 134 second emergency decree June 1931, 101 Brüning, Heinrich, 2, 4, 6, 61, 66–67, 84, 164, 314, 349, 360 and 1930 Reichstag elections, 70 and 1932 presidential elections, 8–9, 205 and business community manifesto of September 1931, 123 and Center Party, 63, 138 and Christian labor movement, 62 and DNVP, 64, 68–69, 120, 131, 149, 203 and efforts to unite the parties of the middle and moderate Right 1930, 72 and German party system, 72, 124 and Groener, 150, 341 and Harzburg Front, 133 and Hindenburg, 122, 127, 149, 156, 161, 203, 342 campaign for reelection, 207–8, 298 parliamentary extension of Hindenburg’s term of office, 142, 144, 149 and Hitler, 73, 131, 138, 144, 147, 150, 208

and Hugenberg, 68, 73, 105, 120–21, 144, 150 meeting August 1931, 122 and industry, 76, 78, 120 and national opposition, 105–6, 120–21, 130, 134, 136, 144, 150, 203, 207–8 and NSDAP, 137, 149, 203, 207, 344 and Reichswehr, 344 and restoration of monarchy, 61 and Schleicher, 61, 64, 121, 150, 344, 352 and SPD, 77, 83–84, 97, 120, 344 and Westarp, 121 and young conservative movement, 63 as chancellor agrarian crisis, 74 appointment as chancellor, 69 dissolution of the Reichstag 1930, 70 fiscal conservatism, 343 fourth emergency decree, 148 government by emergency decree, 73 reform agenda, 8, 61, 68–69 reorganization of cabinet October 1931, 128–29 resignation, 9, 343 use of Article 48, 69, 344 foreign policy, 345 political assets, 62 Brunswick and Hitler’s citizenship, 203 feud between DNVP and NSDAP, 107 Büchner, Fritz, 233 Bullock, Alan, 4 Burghart, Georg, 234 Business Party (WP), 36, 71, 92, 117–18, 132–34, 185–86, 240, 300, 332, 335 and Brüning, 73, 133–34, 186 and Hindenburg, 186, 299 defections to DNVP, 152, 186 elections Reichstag 1928, 72 Reichstag 1930, 277 Reichstag July 1932, 346 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, 97–98, 100 Carolo-Wilhelmina Technical Institute, Brunswick, 159 Catholic Association for National Politics, 326

Index Catholic associational life, 211–12 Association for Catholic Germany, 211 Catholic Workers’ Associations, 211 Catholic conservatism, 102 Central Commission of Sports and Physical Hygiene, 214 Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, 46, 49 charisma, 9–10, 13, 30, 51, 54, 354, 359–61 and Hitler, 51 and the 1932 presidential elections, 360–61 as a political construct, 17 Christian labor movement, 62–63, 77, 137, 213, 216 and Hindenburg, 37, 187, 209 German Trade-Union Federation (DGB), 63 National Association of Farm Workers, 178, 188 Union of Christian Mine Workers, 187 United Federation of Christian Trade Unions (GCG), 187 Christian-National Peasants and Farmers’ Party (CNBLP), 71, 74, 92, 117, 124–26, 132–33, 154, 202, 240, 259, 267–69, 333, 335–36 and Brüning, 73, 133, 180 and Hindenburg, 71, 182–83, 300 and national opposition, 132–33 and United Hindenburg Committees, 216 elections Reichstag July 1932, 236 Reichstag 1928, 72 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, 98–100 secession from the Reichstag, 75, 96, 99 Christian-Social People’s Service (CSVD), 71, 125, 154, 202, 234–35, 240, 333, 335 and Brüning, 183, 235 and Christian People’s Service, 234 and Christian-Social Reich Association, 234 and Hindenburg, 71, 182, 235, 299, 302 and Hitler, 302 and United Hindenburg Committees, 183, 235 elections Reichstag 1928, 72 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, 100

397

Claß, Heinrich, 34, 106, 263, 327 and Harzburg rally, 116 speech, 114 and Hindenburg, 106, 263 and Hitler, 262, 285 and Hugenberg, 284 Coalition of Catholic Germans (AKD), 325 Combat Bloc Black-White-Red, 241, 251 Communist Party of Germany (KPD), 176, 190, 251, 274, 322–23, 337–39 and 1932 presidential elections, 190, 205 visual imagery, 255 runoff election defection of Thälmann voters to Hitler, 308, 323 voting abstention by Thälmann voters, 310 and SPD, 188, 190, 319, 321 elections Prussian Landtag 1932, 320 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, 101, 103 conservative elites, 7, 357 and Brüning, 129 and Hindenburg, 86 and National Socialism, 134 taming strategy, 86 Conservative People’s Party (KVP), 71, 81, 181, 335 and Hindenburg, 71 elections Reichstag 1930, 182 Cossmann, Paul Nicholas, 233 Cramon, August von, 168 Crispien, Arthur, 248 Cuno, Wilhelm, 123, 127, 264 Curtius, Julius, 122, 127, 223 Darmstadt and National Bank, 221 Darré, R. Walter, 259 Der Landbürger, 219 Der Ring, 236–37 Deutsche Handels-Wacht, 272 Diels, Rudolf, 297 Dietrich, Hermann, 128, 217, 229, 238 as DStP party chairman, 186, 214 Hindenburg campaign finances, 229–30 Dingeldey, Eduard, 98–99, 154, 184, 223, 330–32, 335

398

Index

Dingeldey, Eduard (cont.) and Brüning, 133 and Hindenburg, 184–85 as DVP party chairman, 224 Ditfurth, Wilhelm, 26–27 Dittmann, Wilhelm, 248 Döbrich, Friedrich, 133, 202 Dorpalen, Andreas, 3 Drewitz, Hermann, 335 Drexler, Anton, 48, 50 Drumont, Edmond, 46 Duesterberg, Theodor, 89–90, 107, 130, 162, 164–65, 195, 219, 241–42, 243–44, 263, 265, 267–68, 270, 275, 278, 286, 300, 303, 305–6, 308, 311, 327, 347 and 1932 presidential elections endorsement of Hindenburg, 283–84 results of first ballot, 274–75, 277 and Harzburg rally, 108 speech, 114 and Hindenburg, 166–67, 169, 241 and Hitler, 88, 95, 150 and Hugenberg, 166, 283 and NSDAP, 107–8 as a candidate for the Reich presidency, 172–73, 192–93, 195, 220, 240–42, 358 as a German Volksführer, 242 campaign financing, 242 lack of financial resources, 242 strategic objective, 278 withdrawal from the second presidential ballot, 304 resignation from the DOB, 284 resignation from the VVVD, 284 Duisberg, Carl, 7, 38, 160, 178, 304, 306 as president of the RDI, 79 Hindenburg campaign as chairman of the Hindenburg Curatorium, 178 finances, 230 solitation of contributions from German industry, 226–27 Eberhardt, Wilhelm Magnus von, 110 Ebert, Friedrich, 20–23 Eckener, Hugo, 295 Eckhart, Dietrich, 50 Einem, Karl von, 174, 206 and Hindenburg’s candidacy, 167 and Hugenberg, 167

elections 1932 presidential elections significance in the history of the Weimar Republic, 10 Reichstag 1928, 73 Reichstag 1930, 4, 70, 72, 235 state elections Bavarian Landtag 1932, 9 Prussian Landtag 1932, 9 Württemberg Landtag 1932, 9 Epp, Franz von, 170, 196 Escherich, Georg, 158, 160, 177 Esser, Hermann, 50 Eulenburg-Hertefeld, Prince Friedrich Wend zu, 197 Eyck, Erich, 4 Falkenhayn, Erich von, 16 Falter, Jürgen, 308, 311–12 Faulhaber, Michael, bishop of Munich, 211 Feldmann, Otto von, 29 Fischer, Hermann, 154 Flick, Friedrich, 228 Forster, Albert, 272 Franke, Hans, 291 Free Corps, 48 Freud, Sigmund, 11 Freudenthal, Berthold, 20 Frick, Wilhelm, 106, 144, 196 and Harzburg rally, 113 Friedländer, Saul, 48 Friedrich von Berg-Markienen, 174, 270 Friedrich Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, 58 Füssel, Wilhelm, 152 Gayl, Wilhelm, 22, 30, 342 and Hindenburg’s candidacy 1925, 29 Gereke, Günther, 99, 178, 181, 207, 217, 219, 267, 300, 304, 306, 333, 336 and Brüning government, 180 and CNBLP, 179 and DNVP, 179 and German Chamber of Rural Municipalities, 179 and Schleicher, 306 and United Hindenburg Committees, 178–79, 183, 226 Hindenburg campaign finances, 225

Index German Center Party, 24–25, 36, 60–61, 63–65, 67, 71–72, 87–88, 93, 97, 102–3, 105, 118, 126–28, 132, 137, 141, 154, 188, 213, 215, 217, 247, 264, 273, 298, 314–15, 319, 322–23, 331–33, 335, 337–39, 346, 349, 352 and Brüning, 70, 132, 298 and Catholic working class, 325 and Hindenburg, 187, 208–9, 299–300 and NSDAP, 353 and SPD, 325 and United Hindenburg Committees, 182 elections Prussian Landtag 1932, 325 and national opposition, 326 challenge from the Right, 325–26 Reichstag 1928, 72 Reichstag July 1932, 346 German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 123–24 German Chamber of Rural Municipalities, 178–79, 219 German Conservative Party, 180 German Democratic Party (DDP), 24, 70–72, 213 German Lords’ Club (DHK), 80–82, 236 and DNVP, 81 and Hindenburg, 236 and June Club, 80 German National People’s Party (DNVP), 20–22, 24, 26, 32–33, 35–37, 39–40, 60–61, 64, 67–69, 71– 74, 81, 84–85, 87, 89–92, 95, 100, 104–5, 109, 115, 130–31, 144, 151, 159, 166–67, 173, 178, 224, 241–43, 259, 263, 265, 269, 271, 275, 278, 319, 326, 330, 332, 334–35, 337, 347, 350, 356 and 1932 presidential elections results of first ballot, 278 comparison to results in the 1930 Reichstag elections East Prussia, 275 Frankfurt an der Oder, 275 Mecklenburg-Strelitz, 275 Potsdam II, 275 stab-in-the-back by ADV, 285 and Brüning, 69–70, 84, 122, 126, 132 and Dawes Plan, 21, 34

399

and Duesterberg as a candidate for the Reich presidency, 173, 195 and Harzburg rally, 109, 113, 117 and Hindenburg, 26, 28–29, 30–31, 34, 156, 166, 185, 193 and Hitler, 171, 173 and NSDAP, 93, 106, 109, 137, 281 and Schleicher, 355 and Stahlhelm, 95, 104, 169, 192, 281, 283, 347 Bavarian Middle Party, 232 elections Prussian Landtag 1932, 326, 329–30 alliance with Stahlhelm, 192, 243, 281, 327 and the NSDAP, 328 financial difficulties, 327 Reichstag 1928, 40, 72 Reichstag 1930, 91, 235 Reichstag July 1932, 347 Reichstag September 1930, 275 internal crises, 59, 69, 235 secession of party moderates 1929, 60, 64 party finances, 242 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, 93, 97, 100, 102 Reich Catholic Committee, 102, 325 secession from the Reichstag 1931, 75, 96 Stettin party congress 1931, 107–8, 126 German National Union of Commercial Employees (DHV), 137–38, 188, 223, 262, 271–72 German Nobles’ Society (DAG), 174, 216, 270 German Officers’ League (DOB), 34, 284 German People’s Party (DVP), 20, 23–24, 26, 36, 65, 71, 90, 92, 98, 117–18, 125, 128, 133–34, 154, 184, 217, 223–24, 240, 332–35, 337–38 and Brüning, 125, 184, 223 and Btüning, 134 and DNVP, 185 and heavy industry, 132 and Hindenburg, 28, 71, 185, 299 and national opposition, 125, 132, 184 and NSDAP, 185 and United Hindenburg Committees, 216

400

Index

German People’s Party (DVP) (cont.) elections Reichstag 1928, 72 Reichstag 1930, 276 Reichstag July 1932, 346 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, 97–98, 100 German Reich Warriors’ Kyffhäuser League (DRKB), 155, 157, 163, 173, 270, 272, 348 and Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency 1932, 158, 163, 169, 173 and Stahlhelm, 163 German Right, 5, 7, 21–23 elections Prussian Landtag 1932, 314 internal divisions, 2, 5, 10, 119 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, 103 strategic objectives, 97 German State Party (DStP), 71, 124–25, 155, 185, 215, 217, 230, 237, 240, 332–33, 337–38 and Brüning, 132 and Hindenburg, 71, 185–86, 214 elections Reichstag 1928, 72 Reichstag 1930, 276 Reichstag July 1932, 346 German Workers’ Party (DAP), 48, 50 Gessler, Otto, 24, 160, 177 Gilsa, Erich von, 117, 224 Glatzel, Frank, 223 Gleichen, Heinrich von, 80, 82, 236 Goebbels, Joseph, 52, 85, 138, 143, 147, 153, 170, 248–51, 312 and Brüning, 246 and Harzburg rally, 129 and Hindenburg, 201, 248, 250 and Hitler, 153, 201, 246, 249, 358 campaign for the Reich presidency, 248 campaign strategy, 170, 244–45 declaration of Hitler’s candidacy, 196, 201, 244, 246 Hitler myth, 249 and national opposition, 107 and secession from the Reichstag, 96 as NSDAP Reich propaganda leader, 245

campaign for the Reich presidency attack on Hindenburg’s Jewish supporters, 248 elections Prussian Landtag 1932 and the Catholic Church, 319 Goerdeler, Carl, 328, 350 and Hindenburg, 221 Goldschmidt, Jakob, 76 Goltz, Anna von der, 3 Goltz, Rüdiger von der, 162, 193, 264–65, 284 and Harzburg rally, 116 speech, 115 and Hitler, 284 Göring, Hermann, 146, 171–72, 192 and Hindenburg, 140–41 and Hitler, 140, 171–72 as Hitler’s political deputy, 140, 171, 198 Görlitz, Walter, 3 Graßmann, Peter, 214 Grimm, Hans, 279–80 Groener, Wilhelm, 6, 20, 64, 68, 74, 124, 128, 142, 153, 160, 164, 207, 229, 340–42, 348–49 and Brüning, 342 and Hindenburg, 340–41 and Hitler, 141, 143 and Reichswehr, 340 and Schleicher, 57 and Weimar Republic, 56 as defense minister, 66 and SA ban, 316–17, 322, 344 appointment, 57 resignation, 341–42, 344 Grzesinski, Alfred, 248 Guérard, Theodor von, 36 Habermann, Max, 137, 271–72 and Brüning, 137 and Hitler, 138 and Strasser, 138 Hamann, Brigitte, 42 Hamburg elections Senate 1932, 315 Hamilton, Richard, 312 Hamm, Eduard, 124 Hammerstein-Equord. Kurt von, 121, 340 meeting with Hitler, 110

Index Hansa-Bund for Commerce, Trade, and Industry manifesto of September 1931, 123 Harburg-Wilhelmsburg and campaign for the 1932 presidential elections, 299 Harrer, Karl, 48, 50 Harzburg Front, 3, 148, 174, 176, 196, 213, 244, 265, 328, 357–58 and 1932 presidential elections, 171, 191 and Brüning cabinet, 134 Harzburg rally, 4, 115, 117, 119, 123, 129, 191, 262 preparations, 106–7, 109–10 Hauenschild-Tscheidt, Wolfgang, 126, 154, 183 Heidigger, Martin, 11 Heim, Georg, 160 Heimsoth, H. G., 297 Held, Heinrich, 24, 27, 52 Hellpach, Willy Hugo, 24–25 Hepp, Karl, 74, 99 Hergt, Oskar, 20 Herwegen, Ildefons, abbot of Maria Laach, 210 Hess, Joseph, 325 Hess, Rudolf, 50, 98 Hesse, Hermann, 11 Hierl, Konstantin, 113 Hindenburg campaign and appeal to German Protestants, 303 and German press, 230, 232 conservative intelligensia historians’ appeal, 237–38 deployment of the Hindenburg myth, 238, 238 finances, 225, 228–29 inner discord, 217 runoff election strategic objectives, 276, 308 use of film and radio, 216 visual imagery, 307–8 Glass, Franz Paul, 252 Goldman, Eric:, 307 Ivtatejko, Theo, 307 Riemer, Walter, 307 Hindenburg myth, 9, 15–17, 20, 30, 32, 41, 70–71, 73, 90, 159, 238, 249–50, 359 as the “hero of Tannenberg”, 15–16, 19

401

Hindenburg, Oskar von, 7, 38, 106, 110, 163, 176, 339, 348, 354–55 Hindenburg, Paul von, 1–3, 13, 16, 19, 25, 30, 37, 105, 120, 352, 354 and “stab-in-the-back-legend”, 18–19, 45 and 1925 presidential elections, 25–27, 29 and 1932 presidential elections, 1, 3, 8, 121, 149, 162, 205–6, 220, 299, 348, 357 results of first ballot, 274, 276 results of runoff election, 308 three pillars of Hindenburg’s camaign, 298 and ADV, 41, 263 and Brüning, 65–67, 106, 127, 136, 148–49, 156–57, 161, 174 parliamentary extension of Reich president’s term of office, 141 reorganization of Brüning cabinet October 1931, 127 and charisma, 10, 15, 17, 30, 53, 86, 357, 361 and conservative elites, 86 and defeat of 1918, 16 and DHK, 236 and DNVP, 20, 60 and DRKB, 156–57, 168 and Duesterberg, 167 and German Right, 1–2, 21, 41, 56, 168 and Harzburg Front, 174–75 and Hitler, 41, 53, 104, 147, 153, 160, 353, 355 meeting with Hitler October 1931, 112 and Hugenberg, 61, 84, 104, 121, 174 and Kaiser Wilhem II, 16 and national opposition, 106, 121, 168, 174 and NSDAP, 143 and Papen, 351, 354 and paramilitary Right, 33, 157 and Prussian tradition, 15, 53, 56, 238, 359 and Reichswehr, 56, 340 and Sahm committee acceptance of nomination for the Reich presidency, 173, 176 and Schiele, 67 and Schleicher, 160, 164–65, 355 and Stahlhelm, 31, 156–57, 164–65, 168, 172–73, 241

402

Index

Hindenburg, Paul von (cont.) and Weimar Constitution, 33–34, 41 and Westarp, 60 and Wilhem II, 16 and World War I, 16 and Young Plan, 34, 64–65 as icon of republican stability, 34, 53 as Reich president dream of national unity, 121 formation of fourth Marx cabinet, 36 formation of the Brüning cabinet, 66 reorganization of national government, 121 celebration of 80th birthday, 37 parliamentary initiative to extend his term of office, 135 personal history ement from active political life, 20 military career, 16 noble pedigree, 15 retirement from active political life, 20 social pedigree, 41 victory at Tannenberg, 17 political credo, 18–19 Hintzmann, Ernst, 177 Hirschfeld, Hans, 297 Hitler myth, 9, 43, 50, 359 Hitler as the prototypical front soldier, 42 Hitler, Adolf, 1, 10, 13, 22, 52, 162, 192, 233, 245, 289 and 1932 presidential elections, 291 and Hindenburg, 291 Hitler as the candidate of national unity, 292 Hitler campaign propaganda, 291 results of first election, 274–76 runoff election defections from the KPD, 310 Duesterberg voters, 312 results, 308 and Brüning, 73, 131, 139, 144, 148, 152, 160–61, 306 and charisma, 10, 15, 17, 40, 50–52, 361 and conservative elites, 140, 196, 198, 357 and DAP, 50 and DNVP, 102, 107 and Goebbels, 138 and Groener, 142, 160 and Harzburg rally, 110, 113–14, 129–30, 135, 358 friction with Stahhelm, 113

preparations, 110 speech, 114 and Hindenburg, 15, 41, 53, 112, 139, 146, 150, 358 and parliamentary extension of Hindenburg’s term of office, 141–47 meeting with Hindenburg October 1931, 113 open letter to Hindenburg, 246 and Hugenberg, 88, 94, 104, 106–7, 130, 142–43, 146–47, 153, 193 and national opposition, 107, 171, 191 and non-Nazi Right, 2, 4, 308, 358 and Papen, 355 and Reichswehr, 50 meeting with Hammerstein-Equord, 110 and Ruhr heavy industry, 197 and Schleicher, 111, 142, 169, 306, 349 and “stab-in-the-back legend,” 45 and Stahlhelm, 92, 104, 244 and taming strategy, 356, 358 and Weimar Constitution, 152 and women voters, 311 antisemitism, 42–43, 45–46, 48–49, 52 Jewish-Bolshevik symbiosis, 46–47 racial theory of history, 46 the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 47 Vienna years, 42–43 appointment as chancellor, 1, 5, 9–10, 355 as leader of NSDAP, 50, 52–53, 85 Beer Hall putsch, 21, 51, 53 negotiating tactics, 143, 145, 170, 195 party’s refounding 1925, 52 rejection of putschism, 53 strategic goals 1931-32, 118 campaign for the Reich presidency, 3–4, 9, 153, 171, 357–58 and Hindenburg, 247–49 and SPD, 247 campaign objectives, 195 declaration as a candidate, 196 Deutschland-Flug, 293, 295 negotiating tactics, 138–39, 145 political strategy, 139, 153, 170 speeches, 318 strategic situation, 240 campaign for the Reich presidency 1932, 220

Index personal history, 42 Germany’s military defeat, 45–46 Landsberg prison, 51 military service, 15 political comeback, 53 postwar Munich, 45–46, 48–49 Vienna years, 43 World War I, 43, 45 pledge of legality, 52–53, 85, 140, 142, 196, 306, 344 publications Der Weg zum Wiederaufstieg, 197 Mein Kampf, 42, 45, 52 referendum against the Young Plan, 41, 88 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, 92–95, 98, 102 speech before the Düsseldorf Industry Club, 196, 199–200 world view, 45, 48, 52 Hoegen, Jesko von, 3 Hofmannstahl, Hugo von, 12 Höltermann, Karl, 14, 213, 297 Horn, Rudolf von, 158, 173, 270–71 and Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency, 173 and Hugenberg, 163 and Schleicher, 155, 163 and Stahlhelm, 164–65 Hubatsch, Walther, 3 Hugenberg, Alfred, 6, 41, 60–61, 64, 66, 69, 71, 73–74, 81, 84, 87, 89–90, 95, 102, 104–5, 107–10, 112, 114, 118–19, 130–31, 137, 142, 146, 155, 162, 167, 178, 191, 193, 236, 242–43, 263, 265, 271, 285, 300, 327, 330–32, 347, 350, 355–56, 358 1932 presidential elections instructions to abstain in the the second round of voting, 280, 284 strategic situation, 240 and Harzburg rally, 113 and 1932 presidential elections, 206 and Duesterberg, 275 implications for future political course, 278 instructions for the second round of voting, 280, 283–84 proposal to cancel the runoff election, 279–80 and ADV, 40, 285, 287, 327

403 and Brüning, 88, 104–5, 110, 135, 145, 151–52, 161, 163, 357 meeting with Brüning, 122 and Center, 97, 279 and Claß, 285, 287 and DNVP internal dissent over failure to support Hindenburg, 283 Stettin party congress 1931, 107 and Duesterberg, 107, 193 and Groener, 163 and Harzburg Front, 281, 328, 358 and Harzburg rally, 113–14, 130 and Hindenburg, 64, 105, 122 Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency, 150–51 parliamentary extension of Hindenburg’s term of office, 143, 146 and Hitler, 88, 102, 104–7, 130, 135, 143, 146–47, 151–53, 160, 164, 169–71, 193, 195, 241, 278, 280, 283, 328–29 letter of 20 March 1932, 280–81 and national opposition, 161, 164, 191 and NSDAP, 108, 110, 135, 145, 191, 279–80 and paramilitary Right, 166 and referendum against the Young Plan, 41 and Reusch, 327 and RLB, 287 and Ruhr heavy industry challenge for leadership of DNVP, 287–88 and Schleicher, 135, 162, 169 and spirit of Harzburg, 151 and spring 1932 elections, 279, 283 and Stahlhelm, 93, 95, 104, 108, 161, 166, 242, 282–83, 327 and the fight against Marxism, 114 as DNVP party chairman, 40, 59, 88, 126, 179, 181, 347, 356 election, 59, 180 as putative leader of the national opposition, 105 elections Prussian Landtag 1932, 329–30 and middle parties, 288, 329–30 and NSDAP, 328–29 press empire, 231

404

Index

Hugenberg, Alfred (cont.) referendum against the Young Plan, 41 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, 93–95 search for a unity candidate of the national opposition for the Reich presidency, 192 Hülser, Gustav, 302, 335 I. G. Farben, 304–5 Imbusch, Heinrich, 187, 389 industry and Brüning, 77, 120 and Harzburg rally, 116 and Hindenburg campaign, 227 and Hitler, 198 and the purchase of Neudeck for Hindenburg, 38 Gelsenkirchen Mining Corporation, 197, 228 HAPAG Shipping Lines, 123 I. G. Farben, 38 financial support for Hindenburg, 227 Osram Electrical Works, 228 Ruhr heavy industry and bourgeois consolidation, 71 Langnamverein, 78 Ruhr industrial elite press policy, 233 United Steel Works, 78, 221, 228 Iron Front, 213–14 James, Harold, 5 Jarres, Karl, 23–24, 30, 160, 177 as a candidate for the Reich presidency 1925, 25–28, 31 Jaspers, Karl, 11 June Club, 81 Jung, Carl Gustav, 11 Jung, Edgar Julius, 52 and Harzburg rally, 109 Kaas, Ludwig, 97, 105, 186, 351 and Hindenburg, 209 Kaiser, Hermann, 152 Kaiser, Jakob, 209 Kalckreuth, Eberhard von, 74, 162, 219, 265, 267–69, 286–87, 342 and 1932 presidential elections, 266 and Duesterberg, 266

and Harzburg rally speech, 114 and Hindenburg, 218, 266 and Hitler, 266–67, 285 Kapler, Hermann, 234, 303 Kapp, Wolfgang, 22 Kardorff, Siegfried von, 223, 334 Kastl, Ludwig, 79 Kautsky, Karl, 189 Kempner, Franz, 176–78, 226, 229 and United Hindenburg Committees, 177–78 Kershaw, Ian, 4, 10, 42 Keyserlingk, Robert, 285 Kirdorf, Emil, 197–98, 200 Klein, Fritz, Sr., 159, 230–31 Klotz, Helmuth, 297 Der Fall Röhm, 297 Ehren-Rangliste, 297 Körner alt, Theodor, 268, 287 Krosigk, Lutz Schwerin von, 355 Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Gustav, 79, 181, 226, 228, 231, 305, 331 financial support for Hindenburg, 227–28 Lambach, Walther, 236 Landsberg-Steinfurt, Engelbert von, 160 League Bavaria and Reich, 232 Leipart, Theodor, 324 and Sahm committee, 177, 189 Lemmer, Ernst, 154 Lersner, Kurt von, 161–62 Levetzow, Magnus von, 139 Liebenfels, Lanz von, 43 List, Guido, 43 Litzmann, Karl, 249 Loebell Committee, 25–26 Loebell, Friedrich von, 23, 25, 28, 30 and Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency 1925, 29 Lossau, Georg, 326 Ludendorff, Erich, 16 Lüninck, Ferdinand von, 102 and Harzburg rally, 117 Lüninck, Hermann von, 164, 193 and Harzburg rally, 117 Luther, Hans, 82, 116 Luther, Martin, 303 Lutheran Church, 234, 303 Lutheran Supreme Church Council, 234, 303

Index Mackensen, August von, 168, 174, 206 and Harzburg rally, 109 and Hindenburg, 167, 221 and Hitler, 284 and VVVD, 284 Mahnken, Heinrich von, 106 Mahraun, Artur, 160 and Hindenburg, 153, 185 Mann, Thomas, 11 Marcks, Erich, 237 Mariaux, Franz, 109 Marx, Wilhelm, 24, 32, 37, 40, 67 as a candidate for the Reich presidency 1925, 25–28, 31–32, 210 as chancellor, 36–37, 40 as Reich chancellor, 36 Mayr, Karl, 46 Meinecke, Friedrich, 237 Meinhardt, Wilhelm, 228 Meissner, Otto, 64, 112, 145, 154–55, 161– 62, 167, 172–73, 177, 185, 206, 225, 339, 348, 354–55 and DNVP, 144 and Hitler, 145 and proposal to cancel the runoff election, 279 Mendelssohn, Franz von financial support for Hindenburg, 228 Michael, Horst, 234, 237, 303 and Hindenburg as a chandidate for the Reich presidency, 216 Lutheran theology, 304 Mommsen, Hans., 4 Morocowicz, Elard von and “Fürstenwald Hate Declaration”, 90 Müller, Hermann, 40, 64–66 National Committee for the German Referendum and Hitler, 88 and struggle against Young Plan, 88 National Federation of German Industry (RDI), 8, 38, 77–78, 123, 178, 226 National Federation of the German Artisanry, 262 National Front of German Estates, 335 national opposition, 4, 9–10, 75, 88, 93, 95, 98–99, 104–6, 108–12, 117, 123, 127, 129–30, 134, 136, 141–42, 155, 171–72, 184, 217,

405

224, 237, 240–41, 263–65, 270, 277, 284, 314–16, 328, 335–36, 346–48, 358 and Harzburg rally, 130 National Political Alliance, 218 National Rural League (RLB), 8, 67, 74, 114, 162, 179, 218, 265–70, 272, 286, 342 and 1932 presidential elections conflict over endorsement of Hitler, 285 election appeal for the first round of voting, 285 endorsement of Hitler for the second ballot, 286–87 opposition to Hindenburg as a candidate for the Reich presidency, 183, 219 and CNBLP, 132 and Duesterberg, 219, 266 and Harzburg rally, 109, 265 and Hitler, 219, 266 and national opposition, 75 and NSDAP, 265 and Schleicher, 355 break with the Brüning cabinet, 217 leadership change 1930, 74 National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), 5, 9, 40, 49–50, 72–73, 75, 83, 85, 87–88, 92–93, 95, 99–100, 106, 108–9, 112, 130, 136–38, 141, 145, 150, 166, 170, 185, 192, 196, 236, 242, 244, 248–49, 253, 258, 260, 263–65, 267, 272–73, 294, 297, 306, 311–12, 326, 328, 333, 335–40, 342, 344, 346–47, 353, 355, 358–59, 361, 375–76, 391 Twenty-Five Point Program, 50, 52 Agrarian Political Apparatus, 259 and 1932 presidential elections, 170, 206, 241, 247 and KPD, 245 and SPD, 245 campaign against Hindenburg, 246 campaign strategy, 245 circulation of propaganda, 299 control of public space, 299 response to defeat in the first ballot, 289 runoff election, 291 strategic objectives, 280, 289, 291, 308 and Brüning, 111, 139, 146, 298, 342 and Center, 353

406

Index

National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) (cont.) and DHV, 272 and DNVP, 106, 109 and Duesterberg, 244 and Harzburg rally, 109–10, 113, 117, 129–30 and Hindenburg, 153 Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency, 156 parliamentary extension of Hindenburg’s term of office, 152 and National Committee for the German Referendum, 88 and national opposition, 88, 107, 147 and non-Nazi Right, 9, 88, 107, 244, 358 and search for a unity candidate for the Reich presidency, 192 and Stahlhelm, 92, 95, 104, 129 Department of Economic Policy (WPA), 261 elections Hessian Landtag 1931, 138 Prussian Landtag 1932, 316 and Center, 318–19 and DNVP, 319 and KPD, 319 and SPD, 318 and Stahlhelm, 319 appeal to the civil service, 320 appeal to the farmer, 320 appeal to the peasantry, 319 appeal to the worker, 319 campaign strategy, 318 Reichstag 1928, 53, 72 Reichstag 1930, 91 Reichstag November 1932, 354 state elections April 1932, 9, 348 Hitler campaign appeals to farmers, 259 appeals to urban middle class, 261–62 appeals to women, 292 campaign strategy, 243, 250, 276 visual imagery, 251–52, 255 Albrecht, Felix, 255, 259 Flechtner, Otto, 252 Hitler as the last hope of the German people, 255 Schweitzer, Hans Herbert/Mjölnir, 252 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, 92–93, 95, 97–98, 100, 102

Reich Propaganda Leadership (RPL), 245–46, 248, 250–51 and 1932 presidential elections campaign propaganda, 243, 250 conduct of Hitler’s campaign, 245 pamphlets Dagobert Dürr, Adolf Hitler, der deutsche Arbeiter und Frontsoldat, 251 Tatsachen und Lügen um Hitler, 251 secession from the Reichstag, 75, 96 SS (Schutzstaffel der NSDAP), 316–17 Storm Detachments (SA), 316–17 and Harzburg rally, 109 raid by Prussian state police, 317 Naumann, Friedrich, 360 Neurath, Konstantin von, 355 Neven DuMont, Kurt, 159, 230 newspapers Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 120, 159, 230–31, 234 Frankischer Kurier, 305 Fränkischer Kurier, 232 Kölnische Zeitung, 159, 230 Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, 232, 234 and Hindenburg’s candidacy, 233 Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung, 234 Vorwärts, 211 North German Wool Carding and Worsted Spinning Company and collapse of Danat-Bank 1931, 76 Noske, Gustav, 160 November Revolution, 2, 23, 32, 46–47, 56 NSDAP campaign Franke, Heinz Warum Hindenburg?, 250 Oldenburg-Januschau, Elard von, 37–38, 174, 288, 332, 342 and Hindenburg, 174 and Hugenberg, 97, 288 purchase of Neudeck for Hindenburg, 37–38 Oncken, Hermann, 160 Oskar, Prince of Prussia and Harzburg rally, 109 Otte, Bernhard, 188 Pan-German League (ADV), 34, 40, 106, 114, 262–63, 265, 284–86, 327 and 1932 presidential elections, 284

Index endorsement of Hitler in the runoff election, 285 and DNVP, 35 and Duesterberg, 284 and Harzburg rally, 109 and Hindenburg, 34–35, 41, 106 and Hitler, 284 and Locarno, 35 Papen, Franz von, 351–52, 354–55, 357 and Center Party, 351–52 and formation of the Hitler cabinet, 355 and Hindenburg, 351 and Hitler, 355 and NSDAP, 353 paramilitary Right, 7, 22, 24, 32, 88–89, 165, 271, 347 and Hindenburg, 35 People’s Bloc (Volksblock), 25, 210 People’s Conservative Association (VKV), 82, 100, 125, 154, 185 and Brüning, 132 and Hindenburg, 182, 299 and Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency, 183 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag, 100 People’s Justice Party, 300 and Hindenburg, 300 People’s National Reich Association (VNR), 202 and Brüning, 132 and Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency, 185 Philipps University, Marburg, 159 Planck, Erwin, 84 Planck, Max, 160 Pomeranian Rural League, 74 Prussia elections Landtag 1932, 9, 243, 275, 314–15, 359 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag 1931, 93–95, 100–3 Pünder, Hermann, 69, 158, 207, 229, 341 Pyta, Wolfram, 3 Quaatz, Reinhold, 144, 171, 347 Rees, Laurence, 10 Reetsma, Philipp financial support for Hindenburg, 228, 306

407

Reich Association of German Industry (RDI), 78–80 Reich Banner Black-Red-Gold, 213, 230, 340 and SPD, 213 Reich Bloc, 25–30 Reich Citizens’ Council, 23 and Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency 1925, 29 Reich School Bill, 40 Reichswehr, 6, 8, 25, 46, 57, 110, 306, 340, 344, 354 accommodation to the Republic, 56 and Brüning, 120 and Hitler, 50 and threat of a SA coup, 296 leadership aversion to modernity, 56 Leipzig trial of three junior officers, 140 Reichswehr leadership and Hindenburg, 306 reparations, 84, 127 Reusch, Paul, 79, 177, 305, 327, 331 and Bavarian conservative press, 232 and Brüning, 79 and Frankischer Kurier, 305 and Gilsa, 117 and Hindenburg, 221, 227, 232 and Hitler, 233, 305 and Hugenberg, 287 and Münchner Neuste Nachrichten, 233 and Schacht, 116 Rhenish Peasants’ League, 193 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 355 Ring Movement, 63 Röhm purge, 53 Röhm, Ernst, 85 homosexuality as a campaign issue, 297 Rohr-Demmin, Hansjoachim von, 74 Rosenberg, Alfred, 46, 50, 302 Ruge, Wolfgang, 3 Ruhr heavy industry, 77, 128, 225, 234 and Brüning, 79–80, 128 and Deutsche Allgemene Zeitung, 231 and Hugenberg, 287, 327 and NSDAP, 199 and RDI, 78–79 economic difficulties, 227 Langnamverein, 78 Ruhrlade, 79 taming strategy, 85

408

Index

Sachsenberg, Gotthard, 117 Sahm committee, 154–55, 176–77, 272 and the Hindenburg myth, 159 petition in support of Hindenburg as a candidate for the Reich presidency, 160 Sahm, Heinrich, 154, 158–60, 173, 178, 207, 231 and Sahm committee, 154, 158, 177 and Stahlhelm, 155 and the paramilitary Right, 155 Salm-Horstmar, Prince Otto zu, 123, 127, 263 Schacht, Hjalmar, 7 and Harzburg rally, 114–17 speech, 114–16 and Hitler, 115 and Reusch, 115–16 Schäffer, Fritz, 187 Schäffer, Hans, 352 Scheer, Reinhard, 121 Scheubner-Richter, Max Erwin von, 46, 50 Schiele, Martin, 8, 33, 66–67, 69, 75, 124, 128, 132, 267 and RLB, 74 as minister of agriculture, 74–75 Schlange-Schöningen, Hans, 207 and Hindenburg, 27 dismissal as Reich Commissar for Eastern Relief, 345 efforts to create a united bourgeois front (fall 1931), 124–25 rural resettlement, 343 Schleicher, Kurt von, 6, 8, 61, 64, 74, 80, 82, 84, 110, 121, 135, 138, 140–41, 148, 150, 162, 229, 339–42, 344, 348–52, 354 and 1932 presidential elections, 205 and Brüning, 61, 64, 83, 122–23, 136, 162, 203, 344–45 and DHK, 80 and DNVP, 59, 111 and DRKB, 163 and German Right, 59 and Gleichen, 83 and Groener, 57, 341, 344 and Hindenburg, 59, 111, 306–7, 355 Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency, 155 and Hitler, 111, 136, 138, 141–43, 195, 306, 349, 353

and Hugenberg, 61, 110, 136, 160–62, 164, 169 and meeting between Hindenburg and Hitler, 112 and national opposition, 136, 141 and NSDAP, 85, 354 SA ban, 340 taming strategy, 85, 139–40, 205, 340, 342, 344, 348–50 and Papen, 351, 354 and paramilitary Right, 58, 155, 163 and political strategy Brüning cabinet, 83–84 and rapprochement between Brüning and Hitler, 136 and Sahm, 158 and Sahm committee, 155 and socialist labor movement, 354 and SPD, 59 and Stahlhelm, 150, 163–64, 169 and Treviranus, 60 and young conservative movements, 80 government by presidential decree, 8 military career, 57 political strategy, 58, 60–61, 64, 67, 69, 306, 352 Schmidt-Hannover, Otto, 105, 165, 171, 330 and Harzburg rally preparations, 109 and Hindenburg, 27 and Stahlhelm, 165, 243 Schmidt-Pauli, Edgar, 326 Scholz, Ernst, 61, 65, 128 Schorlemer, Wilhelm von, 326 Schroeder, Kurt von, 355 Schulte, Karl, bishop of Cologne, 211 Schwertfeger, Bernhard, 299 Seeckt, Hans von 1931, 25, 117 Seisser, Hermann von, 158 Seldte, Franz, 88–90, 98, 130, 162, 164–65, 171, 243, 355 and Harzburg rally speech, 114 and Hindenburg, 157 and Hitler, 95, 150 and Hugenberg, 157, 193, 283 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag 1931, 91, 95 Severing, Carl, 84, 229, 296, 316–17, 319, 322, 324, 334 and Hugo Eckener, 189

Index and NSDAP, 229 exposure of alleged SA coup, 296 Hindenburg campaign finances, 229 Sieber, Karl Heinrich, 99 Siemens, Carl Friedrich von, 226, 305, 331 financial support for Hindenburg, 227–28 Simons, Walter, 178, 303 Simpfendörfer, Wilhelm, 154, 202, 235–36, 302 Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), 25, 32, 40, 47, 60, 64–67, 69– 71, 73, 77, 80, 83, 88, 91, 93, 97, 121, 140–41, 177, 191, 213, 215, 217, 238, 247, 255, 264, 296, 298, 314–16, 323, 333, 337–40, 356 and 1932 presidential elections, 84, 182, 188, 205 and Brüning, 73, 132, 321, 344 and fears of a Hitler victory, 296 and Hindenburg, 296, 321 Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency, 178, 190, 211–12, 214 and KPD, 188, 190, 214 and the Reichswehr, 36 elections Prussian Landtag 1932, 323, 325 appeals to small farmers, 324 defense of the republic, 324 Reichstag 1928, 40 Reichstag 1930, 276 logic of the lesser evil, 189, 211, 321 socialist labor movement, 230, 324 and Hindenburg as a candidate for the Reich presidency, 213 General German Trade-Union Federation (ADGB), 188, 213–14 and 1932 presidential elections, 188 crisis conference April 1932, 324 Spahn, Martin, 280 Spengler, Oswald, 11 Springorum, Fritz, 77–79, 305, 331–32 and Hindenburg, 221, 227 stab-in-the-back legend, 18–19, 45, 47 effect on political legitimacy of the Weimar Republic, 19 Stahlhelm, 96, 102–3, 106, 108–9, 151, 192, 236, 241–42, 272, 282, 319, 326, 347, 358

409 alliance with the DNVP 1932, 243 and “Fürstenwald Hate Declaration”, 90 and 1932 presidential elections, 206 failure to support Duesterberg, 277 instructions to abstain in the second round of voting, 282, 284 results of first ballot implications for future political course, 278 strategic situation, 240 and DNVP, 94, 151, 275, 282, 347 abrogation of alliance for the 1932 Prussian Landtag elections, 283 and Duesterberg’s nomination as a candidate for the Reich presidency, 192, 195 and DVP, 90 and Harzburg Front, 358 and Harzburg rally, 109, 113, 117, 129–30 and Hindenburg, 30, 33–35, 150, 157, 165, 172, 191, 241–42 celebration of Hindenburg’s 80th birthday, 38 critique of failure to remove Brüning as chancellor, 241 Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency, 158, 159, 165–66, 172 and Hindenburg’s candidacy 1932, 169 and Hitler, 91, 95, 108, 150, 172, 241 and Hugenberg, 90, 104, 108, 192 and NSDAP, 92, 94, 98, 107, 117, 151, 192, 244 and Sahm committee, 155 and Schleicher, 169 and Young German Order, 31 efforts to unite the German Right, 87–88, 91–93, 95–96, 103, 108 elections Prussian Landtag 1932 alliance with DNVP, 193, 281–82 in Bavaria, 232 political strategy Hinein in die Politik, 90 referendum against Young Plan, 157 referendum for the dissolution of the Prussian Landtag 1931, 91–100, 103 reform of Weimar Constitution, 92 strategic goal 1931-32, 117

410

Index

Stegerwald, Adam, 62–63, 67, 124, 128, 187, 209, 324, 343 Stephani, Franz von, 244 Strasser, Gregor, 52, 88–89, 106, 138, 199 and Harzburg rally, 113 Strasser, Otto, 52 Stresemann, Gustav, 20, 24, 26, 31, 34–35, 40, 55, 90, 360 and Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency 1925, 25, 28 Sybel, Heinrich von, 99, 117

and young conservative intelligentsia, 236 Bavarian Hindenburg Committee, 232 finances, 230, 304, 306 organization, 215 steering committee, 178 strategic objectives, 304, 305 United Patriotic Leagues (VVVD), 92, 115, 162, 193, 262, 264–65, 284–85 and Harzburg rally, 109 endorsement of Hitler in the runoff election, 284, 286

Thälmann, Ernst, 320 and 1932 presidential elections results of the first ballot, 274 runoff election results, 308 as candidate for the Reich presidency, 191, 321–23 attack on the SPD as an ally of the NSDAP, 322 Thiel, Otto, 223 Thule Society, 48 Thuringian Rural League (TLB), 269, 286 rejection of Hitler’s candidacy, 286 Thyssen, Fritz, 198 and Harzburg rally, 116 and Hitler, 198, 200 invitation to speak at the Düsseldorf Industry Club, 199 and Hugenberg, 152 and the creation of a united national front, 198 Treviranus, G. R., 60, 64, 68, 128, 144

Veidt, Karl, 335 Vielmetter, Johannes financial support for Hindenburg, 228 Vögler, Albert, 78 and Hindenburg, 227

Ulbrich, Else, 236 United Hindenburg Committees, 178–79, 181–82, 205–8, 214–16, 219, 225, 238, 240, 251, 267, 277, 279, 298, 300, 302, 304, 306–7 and German agricultural community, 217 and Hindenburg as a candidate for the Reich presidency, 215 and Hindenburg as a man of faith, 301 and Hitler, 301 and Hitler campaign, 299 and Lutheran Church, 234, 303 and NSDAP, 301 and propaganda, 215 and runoff campaign for the Reich presidency, 295

Wagener, Otto, 261 and the conquest of the middle class, 261 NSDAP social and economic plan, 261 Wagner, Siegfried, 59, 92, 136, 151, 172 and Hindenburg’s candidacy for the Reich presidency, 165 and Harzburg rally, 109 Warmbold, Hermann, 128 Weber, August, 124, 203 Weber, Hugo, 152 Weber, Max Politics as a Vocation, 360 on charisma, 13–14 switchmen of history, 6 typology of political legitimation, 14 Weber, Thomas, 43, 45 Wegener, Leo, 106, 170, 347 Weimar Constitution, 1, 31, 52, 61, 66, 70, 80, 87, 96, 136, 322, 344, 355 Article 41, 141, 144 Article 48, 61, 64, 66, 70, 72, 80, 322, 344 Weimar political culture conservative revolution, 12 feeling of anomie, 13 longing for spiritual regeneration, 12 longing for Volksgemeinschaft, 12 messianic impulse, 12–13 sense of cultural despair, 11 Weimar Republic economic crisis, 8 foreign policy collapse of the German-Austrian customs union project, 122

Index Dawes Plan, 21, 356 Lausanne conference 1932, 345, 350 Locarno, 34–35 Rhineland evacuation of Allied troops 1930, 55 Young Plan, 40, 60–61, 64–65, 88, 115, 157, 263–64, 330 paralysis of parliamentary institutions, 8 political deligitimation, 10 political paralysis, 56 reparations, 40 systemic breakdown, 6 Weitz, Eric, 4 Wels, Otto and Iron Front, 214 Wendhausen, Albrecht, 75, 99 and Harzburg rally, 117 Werdermann, Oskar, 109 Westarp, Kuno von, 32, 36, 125–26, 154, 178, 180–81, 207, 217, 300, 304, 306, 312, 331, 333, 335 and Brüning, 181 and DNVP, 41, 180–81 and Hindenburg, 154, 202, 350 Hindenburg campaign, 183, 216, 219, 221 meeting with Hindenburg January 1930, 60 petition for Hindenburg, 181–82, 220, 268 and Hitler, 301 and Hugenberg, 181 and KVP, 181 and National Polical Alliance, 218 and NSDAP, 100 and Prussian conservatism, 180 and Sahm committee, 181 and United Hindenburg Committees, 178–79, 217

411

referendum for the dissolution of Prussian Landtag, 100 taming strategy, 85 Wildung, Fritz and Iron Front, 214 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 16, 121 opposition to Crown Prince Wilhelm’s candidacy for the Reich presidency, 290 Wilhelm, Crown Prince of Prussia and Hitler, 290 and NSDAP, 290 and the German Right, 289–90 as a candidate for the Reich presidency, 282, 289 Willikens, Werner, 265 Willisen, Friedrich Wilhelm von, 64 Wilmowsky, Tilo von, 178, 183, 331–32 Winckler, Friedrich, 29, 32 Winkler, Heinrich August, 4, 189 Winterfeld, Detlof von and United Hindenburg Committees, 178 Wirth, Joseph, 62, 67–68 Württemberg elections Landtag 1932, 9, 243, 275, 315, 359 Württemberg Burgher Party (WP), 315 Württemberg Peasants and Wine-Growers’ League (WBWB), 268–69, 286, 315 Young German Order, 24, 31, 71, 153, 160, 207, 210 and Hindenburg, 32–33 celebration of Hindenburg’s eightieth birthday, 38 and United Hindenburg Committees, 216 Zechlin, Walter, 207