No Straw Men

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazis, never garnered more than 37 percent of the popular vote in a fair election, the last of which came in November 1932. How then, as Elie Wiesel asks, did Hitler, an “Austrian without title or position[,] manage to get himself [appointed] head of a German nation renowned for its civilizing mission?”[1] As one scholar explains, “The Nazis came to power legally, but they never played politics by the rules of a liberal parliamentary democracy.” Indeed, Hitler became chancellor not by adhering to the principles of the Weimar Republic, which never really took root in a country with little experience or interest in democracy, but through a series of backroom deals, intrigues, and betrayals, all of which entailed massive blunders and naïve miscalculations; via a procession of musical-chair coalitions, sudden governmental collapses, and continual new elections, most of which entailed the invocation of emergency dictatorial powers; and on the heels of his paramilitary, which from its inception had only one goal: power by whatever means necessary.

The first indications of Nazi politicking came in 1921, when other national socialist and volkisch parties sought to join forces with the Nazis to form a united front. Rather than share any power, Hitler resigned in protest. For his return, by now indispensable, he demanded “dictatorial powers,” which he received with only one contrary vote, thus effectively making the Nazi movement the Hitler movement. (It was never a “party,” in that its aims—to restore the German soul—transcended politics.)

In the same year, Hitler began to organize his own army, drawing recruits largely from unemployed former Free Corps veterans. The result was the brownshirted Sturmabteilung (Storm Troopers), or the S.A. Trained to vent fury and sow terror, the Storm Troopers broke up meetings of opponents, administered beatings, provoked street fights, staged riots, mutilated bodies and kicked in skulls. Such tactics were so brutally effective that, by 1923, Hitler resolved to privilege arms over elections.

Thus, on November 8, 1923, the S.A. surrounded a Munich beer hall. Pushing forward to the platform, Hitler declared, “The National Revolution has begun!” At gunpoint, he forced the three officials of the Bavarian government into a backroom, where he tried, unsuccessfully, to have them join the putsch. Then, with the aid of General Erich Ludendorff, the new régime would win over the German army, proclaim a nationwide revolt and crush the democratic elements in Berlin. The plot, however, backfired, and ultimately Hitler found himself charged with high treason.

The trial, though it resulted in a sentence of five years, proved to be a turning point for the führer. With judges chosen because they sympathized with the Nazi program, the courtroom became Hitler’s bully pulpit. His jailers further accommodated him with a spacious private cell and a personal secretary, Rudolf Hess.

A few days before Christmas 1924, having served only nine months, Hitler re-emerged with new ideas about the means necessary for his old ends. The Nazis would now use the constitution to destroy the constitution, cloaking their shameless intimidation in legality. Thus, though banned from public speaking, Hitler feverishly reorganized his party. To remedy the failures of the ‘23 putsch, he formed in 1925, under Heinrich Himmler, a special elite corps to supplement the S.A., the Schutzstaffeln (Guard Squadrons), or S.S. Additionally, following the hierarchy of the Prussian military, he transformed the Nazis into a tightly controlled, highly disciplined shadow government, so that when their time came, this regime in waiting could slip into power.

It took five years, but on October 24, 1929, the New York stock market crashed and plunged the world into depression. Recalling the inflation of 1923, Germans were particularly desperate. In the face of mass indigence, the government appeared powerless. Parties in Reichstag splintered into uncompromising factions; so that to break the stalemate, President Hindenburg invoked Article 48 of the Constitution, thus giving himself emergency powers to rule by decree. When that failed, Hindenburg dissolved the Reichstag and called for new elections in September 1930. Hitler knew his opportunity had arrived, and the Nazis seized the moment, furiously and ambiguously adapting their master propaganda machine to local concerns.

Before the depression the Nazis had achieved only seven percent of the electorate, in 1924. Now, given the turmoil and despair that makes people vulnerable to radicalism, they captured 18 percent, making them Germany’s second largest party. Yet, knowing that it accrued to their advantage for conditions to worsen, the Nazis withheld their cooperation. While alleging to work within legal boundaries, they worked to undermine the parliamentary system and foment disorder. As obstructionists, Nazi delegates regularly disrupted proceedings with vulgar and rowdy behavior, if they didn’t boycott them. Then, although they instigated civil violence, the Nazis blamed the government for its inability to curb the lawlessness.[2] Meanwhile, they continued to campaign—uniquely, they had never stopped—so that in the run-off between Hitler and Hinderburg in April 1932, Hitler garnered 37 percent of the vote.

Thus a part of Germany’s largest party, the Storm Troopers, who now numbered 400,000 under Ernst Roehm, sprang into action—too much action as it happened for Chancellor Brüning, who banned the S.A. and S.S. shortly after the run-off. As it further happened, though, a scheming general, Kurt von Schleicher, offered to lift the ban if Hitler would support him in a new Reichstag coalition. Hitler agreed, and the Nazis went to work catcalling the “Hunger Chancellor,” who resigned on May 29. Schleicher then ushered in a puppet chancellor, Franz von Papen, who fulfilled Schleicher’s bargain with Hitler. But the two would only offer Hitler the vice chancellorship, which, echoing previous moves, he rebuffed in hope of the chancellorship.

Yet, as the loss of two million votes in the November elections affirmed, Nazi popularity was declining—though this didn’t stop groups of brown-shirts from stalking the streets, provoking violence and simply murdering rivals on an unprecedented scale. Indeed, the situation was so dire that Papen considered reverting to authoritarianism. When that failed, he resigned, and Hitler again demanded the chancellorship. Hinderburg instead appointed Schleicher.

To get even, Papen met sub rosa with Hitler to plot ousting Schleicher. They reached a pact whereby Hitler would become chancellor, Papen vice-chancellor. Conveniently, Schleicher resigned on January 23, though by this time, this Reichstag civil war had exhausted the 85-year-old Hinderburg, whose senility Hitler exploited to demand four additional cabinet posts. Hinderburg was unwilling, however, to appoint Hitler chancellor—until a rumor that in revenge Schleicher would attempt a coup and arrest Hinderburg so alarmed the president that he relented. Fhe former Field Marshall also thought he could control this “bohemian corporeal.”

Thus, on January 30, 1933, Hitler became chancellor of Germany. It was the result, observes the historian Alan Bullock, “not of any irresistible revolutionary or national movement . . . nor even of a popular victory, but as part of a shoddy political deal with the ‘Old Gang’ whom he had been attacking for months . . . Hitler did not seize power; he was jobbed into office by a backstairs intrigue.”[3]

Once in office, Hitler wasted no time. He dissolved parliament and called for new elections. To the Prussian Ministry of the Interior he appointed Hermann Goering, who forthwith conferred on the Storm Troopers the power of police, with impunity. Another Hitler confidant, Joseph Goebbels, assumed the state-run media, via which he broadcast Nazi propaganda across the nation. Yet despite—or perhaps because of—this reign of terror, the German people denied the Nazis a Reichstag majority. Of course, as Hitler had explained in 1930: “Parliament is for us not the goal, but the means to an end. We are not a parliamentary party out of conviction. . . . but out of compulsion and out of necessity.” Our goals “mean[s] the elimination of democracy.”[4]

And so, with ever-increasing aggression, blackmail and duplicitous promises, the Nazis began legally but undemocratically establishing the state apparatus of totalitarianism. Breaking with centuries of tradition, they ended the independence of local governments and centralized federal power. Armed S.A. and S.S. thugs cowed, replaced or killed the opposition. Finally, Hitler prevailed on the Reichstag to accept an act “for the removal of the distress of people and reich.” By sharing with Hitler the Reichstag’s prerogative to pass laws—especially laws that “deviate from the Constitution”—this so-called Enabling Act would render the parliament irrelevant. With its passage on March 23, 1933, German democracy effectively passed away. In its stead, Germans would swear loyalty to der Führer.

[1] Elie Wiesel, “Adolf Hitler,” in People of the Century: 100 Men and Women Who Shaped the Last 100 Years (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1999).

[2] Jackson J. Spielvogel, Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2001), p. 60.

[3] Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York: HarperCollins, 1962), p. 144.

[4] As quoted in Benjamin Sax and Dieter Kuntz, Inside Hitler’s Germany: A Documentary History of Life in the Third Reich (Lexington and Toronto: D.C. Heath: 1992), p. 104.