As might be expected, the camarilla saw to it that the public was immediately informed of Schleicher’s wish to dissolve the Reichstag and rule by decree. There was a general outcry. The Nazis made a great fuss over “Primo de Schleicheros’ ” would-be
Meanwhile, the tireless Papen was pushing matters forward. His thought was to make the planned cabinet more acceptable to Hindenburg by securing participation of the German Nationalists and of the Stahlhelm leaders, who were close to the President’s heart. While Duesterberg vigorously disagreed that there was anything like the so-called compelling necessity for a Hitler cabinet, Seldte and Hugenberg fell in with Papen’s plans. Having learned nothing from the experiences of recent years, Hugenberg declared with self-assurance “that nothing much would be able to happen”; Hindenburg would be remaining President and commander in chief of the armed forces, Papen would be Vice-Chancellor, he himself would be taking charge of the entire economy, and Seldte of the Ministry of Labor. “We’ll be boxing Hitler in.”
Hindenburg himself, tired, confused, and capable of grasping the situation only for brief spells, was at this time evidently still thinking of a Papen cabinet with Hitler as Vice-Chancellor. On the morning of January 26 General von Hammerstein, army commander in chief, called on him to express his concern about the way things were going. Hindenburg was “quick to suppress any attempt to influence him politically, but then said, apparently to reassure me, that he ‘had no intention at all of making the Austrian lance corporal Defense Minister or Chancellor.’ ” But next day Papen called on the President and reported that a Papen cabinet was impossible at the moment. Now Hindenburg stood alone in his resolve not to have Hitler form a government.
The factors that made him change his mind in the course of the following day are almost too complicated to list. Among them were the schemings of the camarilla, the blackmail of the NSDAP, the pressure of his friends from among the large landowner and nationalist groups. The effect of all this counsel was that the name of Schleicher ceased to represent an alternative either to Hindenburg or anyone else. Another significant factor was Papen’s promise to the President that the new government would be made up exclusively of members of the Right. For the thing Hindenburg was most set against was what was summed up in his exhausted mind as “rule of the union functionaries.” The prospect of a rightist government had been one of the decisive elements in his dismissal of Bruning; now the same promise was being dangled before him if he would get rid of Schleicher.
The party leaders, whom Hindenburg once more consulted, also turned against General Schleicher. But they were not in favor of another try with Papen. Rather, they indicated, the time had come at last to summon Hitler to power, with all appropriate guarantees; let him be exposed to that chastening by responsibility, which they had all undergone. The republic had truly reached the end of its rope.
On the morning of January 28 Schleicher made one last attempt to regain control. He let the public know, through the press, that he would ask Hindenburg for powers to dissolve the Reichstag or offer his resignation. Toward noon he went to the presidential palace. At this time he himself clearly knew nothing about the imminence of Hitler’s chancellorship—a measure of his loss of grip. On the contrary, he seems to have counted to the last on Hindenburg’s support. He had assumed office with the President pledged to give him the power of dissolution of the Reichstag at any time. But the President tersely turned down his request. Stung to the quick, Schleicher is reported to have said angrily: “I concede your right, Mr. President, to be dissatisfied with the way I have conducted my office, although you assured me of the contrary four weeks ago in writing. I concede your right to depose me. But I do not concede you the right to make alliances with someone else behind the back of the Chancellor you yourself summoned to office. That is a breach of faith.” Hindenburg thought for a moment, then answered. He stood with one foot in the grave, he said, and did not know whether or not he might regret his decision in heaven. Schleicher is supposed to have shot back: “After this breach of confidence, Your Excellency, I would not be too sure that you will go to heaven.”55
Schleicher had scarcely left when Papen, in conjunction with Oskar von Hindenburg and Meissner, began urging the President to appoint Hitler Chancellor. Still vacillating, Hindenburg made a last effort to evade responsibility for this decision. Contrary to custom, he did not personally request Hitler to form a new government, but appointed Papen his
That afternoon Papen was able to win Hugenberg by promising his party two seats in the cabinet. He then got in touch with Hitler. In the elaborate preliminary talks they had already agreed that Hitler’s people should have the Ministry of the Interior and a Ministry for Civil Air Transport, to be newly created especially for Goring. Now Hitler insisted on the posts of Reich Commissioner for Prussia and Prussian Minister of the Interior. These would assure him control of the Prussian police. In addition, he demanded new elections.
Once more everything teetered. On hearing of Hitler’s further demands, Hindenburg had a fresh siege of foreboding. He calmed down only after he had received Hitler’s assurance—in highly equivocal words—“that these would be the last elections.” Finally the President let things take their course. With the exception of the post of Reich Commissioner for Prussia—which was reserved for Papen himself—all of Hitler’s demands were met. The decision had been taken.
On the afternoon of January 29 a rumor arose that Schleicher, together with General Hammerstein, had put the Potsdam garrison on alert and was planning to seize the President, proclaim a state of emergency, and with the aid of the army take power. Days later, Oskar von Hindenburg’s wife was still exercised over the matter: the plan had called for the President’s being removed to Neudeck “in a sealed cattle car.” Hitler, who was in Goebbels’s apartment on Reichskanzlerplatz when he heard the rumor, reacted with an audacious gesture: he instantly placed the Berlin SA on alert and, in a flamboyant anticipation of the power he expected to receive, ordered six nonexistent police battalions to prepare to occupy the Wilhelmstrasse.
The author of this rumor has never been traced, but the person who profited by it is obvious. None other than Papen used the phantom of a threatening military dictatorship to push forward his plans. General von Blomberg had been summoned from Geneva, and on the morning of January 30 Papen was sworn in as Minister of Defense, before any other members of the cabinet. Evidently this was to prevent any last-minute desperate intervention by Schleicher, who on his own had been making contact with Hitler. Hugenberg, who had obstinately rejected Hitler’s demand for new elections, felt blackmailed by the new threat of a military take-over. To avert any possibility that the mysterious reports of an imminent putsch might be clarified, Papen summoned Hugenberg at seven o’clock in the morning on January 30 to beg him—“in greatest excitement”—to change his mind. “Unless a new government has been formed by eleven o’clock this morning,” he exclaimed, “the army will march!” But Hugenberg would not be stampeded. More keenly than Papen, he saw through Hitler’s scheme. The Nazis wanted to improve on the election results of November 6. With the power and unlimited funds of the state at their disposal, they could unquestonably do so. No new elections, Hugenberg said.
Once again his stubbornness seemed to be imperiling the whole agreement. At fifteen minutes before ten o’clock Papen led the members of the projected government through the snow-covered ministerial gardens to the presidential palace and into Meissner’s office. There he formally greeted Hitler as the new Chancellor. Even as he expressed his thanks, Hitler declared that “now the German people must confirm the completed formation of the cabinet.” Hugenberg resolutely spoke up against this. A vehement argument broke out. Hitler finally went up to his antagonist and gave him his “solemn word of honor” that the new elections would change nothing in regard to the persons composing the cabinet. He would, he said, “never part with any of those present here.” Anxiously, Papen followed this up: “Herr Geheimrat, would you want to undermine the agreement reached with such difficulty? Surely you cannot doubt the solemn word of honor of a German!”
The cheerful notion of boxing Hitler in and taming him thus came to grief at the first test. In purely arithmetic terms, it is true, the conservatives had managed to retain the advantage. There were three National Socialist as against eight conservative ministers, and virtually all the key positions in the government were in the hands of a group of men united on certain basic social and ideological principles. The trouble was that such men as Papen, Neurath, Seldte or Schwerin-Krosigk were not the right persons to box anyone in. For that they would have needed a sense of values and the energy to defend it. Instead they considered themselves summoned merely
