At the Goal
As you see, the Republic, the Senate, dignity dwelt in none of us.
Obeying the rules of classical drama, the events of the autumn of 1932 took a turn which seemed to promise that the crisis might be overcome. The elements to which Nazism chiefly owed its rise began to be undermined. For one ironic moment the play seemed to reverse itself on every plane and to expose Hitler’s expectations of power as wildly exaggerated—before the scene suddenly collapsed.
Ever since August 13 Papen had obviously made up his mind to make no more concessions to Hitler. Why he took this hard line is something of a mystery, since his own explanations do not ring true. It may be that he belatedly caught on to the trickery of the Nazis, saw through their posture, which Goebbels later accurately described as “sham moderation,” and changed his attitude accordingly. He realized also that the National Socialist Party depended heavily on a constant series of successes. Its internal situation was so precarious that it could not long stand up to determined sternness. To be sure, the government had had to give in to Nazi pressure and commute the Potempa sentences. But in the end Hitler had been outmaneuvered; he had become nervous and betrayed himself by his telegram to the murderers. Shortly afterward he once more made a serious mistake.
Papen had convoked the Reichstag for its first working session on September 12. In his drive to take vengeance on Papen, Hitler lost sight of all other considerations. Goring had in the meantime been elected President of the Reichstag, and with his help Hitler dealt the Chancellor the severest defeat in German parliamentary history, a vote of no confidence carried by a vote of 512 to 42. Papen had already obtained an order of dissolution before the session; he carried it in the traditional red portfolio for everyone to see; but Goring deliberately ignored it until the no-confidence vote had been taken. Papen was thus given his comeuppance; but the result was that the newly elected legislature was dissolved after a session lasting approximately one hour. The new elections were set for November 6.
Unless all indications are wrong, Hitler originally wanted to avoid this turn of events, for it obviously ran counter to his interests. “Everyone is dumbfounded,” Goebbels noted. “Nobody thought it possible that we would have the courage to bring about this decision. We alone are rejoicing.” But this euphoric mood was soon over, giving way to a degree of depression the Nazi leaders had not known for years. Hitler himself was only too keenly aware that the impulse voters to whom the party owed its recent increments could not be depended on. He distinctly sensed that the debacle of August 13, the falling back into the opposition, the Potempa affair and the conflict with Hindenburg were spoiling the image of himself as the destined savior and unequaled leader. Once the trend to success was reversed, the party’s attraction was dispelled and it could plunge straight to the bottom.
Hitler had additional worries. After the expensive campaigns of the past year the movement’s funds were exhausted. Moreover, it seemed for the present to have reached the limits of its strength. “Our opponents,” Goebbels wrote in diary notes that grew increasingly gloomy, “are counting on our losing our nerve in this struggle and being worn out.” A month later he noted friction among the party’s followers, disputes over money and seats in the Reichstag, and observed that “the organization has of course become very nervous as a result of the many election campaigns. It is overworked like a company that has lain too long in the trenches.” He tried to look at the bright side: “Our chances are improving from day to day. Although the prospects are still fairly rotten, they at any rate cannot be compared with our hopeless prospects of a few weeks ago.”
Hitler alone seemed once again confident and free of moods, as always after he had made a decision. During the first half of October he set out on his fourth airplane campaign, and with his compulsion to magnify everything constantly, increased the number of his speeches and the miles flown. To Kurt Luedecke, who had accompanied him in the dramatic Mercedes motorcade, surrounded by heavily armed “men from Mars,” to the Reich Youth Day functions in Potsdam, he sketched ideas that were a curious mixture of hopes and reality—in which he appeared as Chancellor. Two days later, after an impressive propaganda show with 70,000 members of the Hitler Youth parading by for hours, Luedecke bade good-bye to Hitler at the railroad station. He found him sitting in the corner of his compartment exhausted, capable only of weary and feeble gestures.
Only the exaltation of struggle, the promise of power, the theater of public appearances, homages and collective deliriums kept him going. Three days later he appeared at a Munich meeting of Nazi leaders “in great form,” as Goebbels noted, and gave “a fabulous outline of the development and status of our struggle in the very long view. He is indeed the Great Man, above us all. He pulls the party to its feet again out of every despairing mood.” The difficulties the party was facing were in fact growing ever more hopeless. The shortage of money tended to paralyze all activity. With their attacks on Papen and his “Cabinet of Reaction,” the Nazis inevitably forfeited the sympathy of the wealthy members of the Nationalist opposition, whose contributions now flowed more sparsely than ever before. “Raising money is extraordinarily difficult. The gentlemen of ‘property and culture’ all stand with the government.”
The election campaign, too, was conducted chiefly against the “clique of the nobles,” the “bourgeois young bravos,” and the “corrupt Junker regime.” The party propaganda office issued a host of slogans to be spread by word of mouth and whose intent was to whip up “an outright mood of panic against Papen and his Cabinet.” Once again Gregor Strasser and his shrunken following had a period of great although deceptive hopes. “Against reaction!” was the official election slogan given out by Hitler. Nazi speakers passionately denounced the business- oriented economic policies of the administration. Nazi rowdies now took to breaking up nationalist meetings and organizing attacks on Stahlhelm leaders. To be sure, the NSDAP’s socialism remained without a program, as it had always been; it was formulated only in the figurative language of a prescientific mentality. Thus Nazi socialism was “the principle of achievement of the Prussian officer, of the incorruptible German civil servant, the walls, the town hall, the cathedral, the hospital of a Free City of the German Reich—all that.” It was also the “changeover from working class to labor”
A few days before the election, as the campaign was approaching its end—it had been conducted at obvious excess pressure and with failing strength—the party had an opportunity to demonstrate the seriousness of its leftist slogans. At the beginning of November a strike broke out in Berlin among the transportation workers. It had been instigated by the Communists over the vote of the unions, and contrary to all expectations the Nazis actually supported the strikers. Together, the SA and the Red Front paralyzed public transportation for five days. They tore up streetcar tracks, formed picket lines, beat up scabs, and forcibly stopped the sketchily organized auxiliary transport. This unity of action has always been cited as evidence for the fatal community of leftist and rightist radicalism. But in fact the Nazis at this moment had scarcely any other choice, even though it meant alienating many of their bourgeois voters and finding that their financial contributions dried up almost completely. “The entire press is denouncing us,” Goebbels noted. “It calls our action Bolshevism; and yet we really could not do anything else. If we had withdrawn our support for this strike, which involves the most basic rights of the streetcar workers, our firm position among the working people would have been shaken. This way, with the election coming, we can once again show the public that our antireactionary course comes from the heart and is genuine. A great opportunity.” And a few days later, on November 5: “Last onslaught. Desperate drive of the party against defeat. At the last minute we manage to scare up another 10,000 marks which we blow on propaganda Saturday afternoon. We have done whatever could be done. Now fate must decide.”
Fate decided, for the first time since 1930, emphatically against the National Socialists’ claims to power. They lost 2 million votes and thirty-four Reichstag seats. The Social Democratic Party also lost a few seats, while the German Nationalists emerged from the election with eleven additional seats and the Communists with an
