between the people and the government.”
Hitler had had to justify the establishment of the new ministry to the rest of the cabinet; he did so on the most innocent grounds, though with a good measure of irony. He made a great point, for example, of the need to prepare the people for what was going to be done about the oil and fats problem. And in fact his explanation was accepted without demur. It testifies to Hitler’s tact and magnetism that within a few weeks the conservatives had entirely forgotten their intention of “taming” him. Papen showed himself abjectly accommodating; Blomberg had succumbed all too readily when Hitler laid on the charm; Hugenberg muttered a bit under his breath, but that was all. The others scarcely counted. The task for which Goebbels was actually appointed, and into which he flung himself without delay, consisted in preparing the new government’s first public function, which was intended to pave the way psychologically for the planned Enabling Act. Of course, Hitler could have put across this law—which was meant as a “death blow” to the parliamentary system—by invoking the Reichstag fire decree and on the basis of
While the deputies of the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party were intimidated, and many of them arrested, Hitler courted the bourgeois parties in the most ostentatious fashion—though not without reminding them, too, of the powers given him by the Reichstag fire emergency decree of February 28. His pronounced nationalistic pose of that period, his evocations of Christian morality, his bows to tradition, and in general the civil, statesmanlike, controlled manner he adopted were a part of the sham. His courtship of the bourgeoisie reached its apogee on the day of Potsdam.
That day was also the first test for the new Propaganda Minister, and he passed it brilliantly. Just as he had declared election day, March 5, the “Day of the Awakening Nation,” he now declared March 21, when the first Reichstag session of the Third Reich was to be held, the “Day of the National Rising.” A solemn state function in the Potsdam Garrison Church, above the tomb of Frederick the Great, was to mark the opening of the Reichstag. Potsdam, the soberly graceful residence of the Prussian kings, was linked in many ways to the sense of national pride, and so was the date. March 21 was not only the first day of spring but also the day on which Bismarck in 1871 had opened the first German Reichstag, thus celebrating a turning point in history.
Goebbels had directed every phase of the ceremony, and Hitler approved every detail of the script. The scenes that later seemed so overwhelming or so moving—the precise order of the marching columns, the child with a bunch of flowers by the roadside, the guns firing salutes, the sight of white-bearded veterans of the wars of 1864, 1866, and 1871, the troops presenting arms, the organ music—all this compelling mixture of tight precision and loose sentimentality was the product of cool planning and a remarkable instinct for theater. Goebbels had gone to have a look at the site beforehand and had noted: “With such great state ceremonies, the smallest touches matter.”
Significantly, the festive day began with services in the Protestant Nikolaikirche. Shortly after ten o’clock the first columns of automobiles arrived from Berlin and made their way slowly through streets jammed with people. In the cars sat Hindenburg, Goring, Papen, Frick, Reichstag deputies, SA leaders, generals: the old and the new Germany. Along the facades of the buildings hung garlands and bright tapestries; everywhere flags were festooned, the black-white-red alternating with the swastika flags, in a striking symbol of the new order. Hindenburg in his old field marshal’s uniform—he now more and more preferred it to the civilian black tailcoat— entered the church. After the service he was driven around the city. The Center deputies attended the Catholic services at the church of St. Peter and Paul. Hitler and Goebbels stayed away “because of the hostile attitude of the Catholic episcopate.” But then, among the others absent from this “people’s festival of national unity” were the Communists and Social Democrats, some of whom—as Frick had boldly announced on March 14—were detained “by urgent and more useful work… in the concentration camps.”
Shortly before twelve o’clock Hindenburg and Hitler met on the steps of the Garrison Church and exchanged that handshake which was subsequently reproduced a millionfold on postcards and posters. It symbolized the longing of the nation for reconciliation. Without “the old gentleman’s blessing,” Hitler had said, he would not have wanted to take power. Now the blessing had been bestowed. The choir and gallery of the church were filled with generals of the imperial army and the present Reichswehr, with diplomats and dignitaries. Members of the government had taken their seats in the nave. Behind them, brown-shirted, were the Nazi deputies, flanked by the representatives of the Center parties. The Kaiser’s seat had been left empty, but behind it the Crown Prince sat in full-dress uniform. As Hindenburg moved slowly to his seat in the nave, he paused for a moment before the Kaiser’s box and raised his marshal’s baton in salute. Respectfully, in a black cutaway coat, wearing the parvenu’s air of embarrassment, Hitler followed the sorrowful-looking old man. Behind them a sea of uniforms. Then the organ sounded the choral that the entire victorious army of Frederick the Great had sung after the Battle of Leuthen, which regained Silesia for the Prussians;
Hindenburg’s address was brief. He pointed to the confidence that he and the people had come to feel in the new regime, so that a “constitutional basis for its work exists.” He appealed to the deputies to support the government in its difficult task, and invoked the “old spirit of this shrine” as a bulwark against “selfishness and party strife… and a blessing upon a free, proud Germany united within herself.” Hitler’s speech was pitched on the same note of moderate, deeply felt solemnity. He looked back upon the greatness and downfall of the nation and then declared his faith in the “eternal foundations” of its life, the traditions of its history and culture. After a stirring tribute to Hindenburg, whose “greathearted decision” had made possible this union “between the symbols of old greatness and youthful strength,” he asked Providence for “that courage and that perseverance which we feel around us in this room sacred to every German, as men struggling for our nation’s freedom and greatness at the feet of the bier of the country’s greatest king.”
Goebbels noted:
At the end everyone is profoundly moved. I am sitting close to Hindenburg and see tears filling his eyes. All rise from their seats and jubilantly pay homage to the gray-haired Field Marshal who is extending his hand to the young Chancellor. A historic moment. The shield of German honor is once again washed clean. The standards with our eagles rise high. Hindenburg places laurel wreaths on the tombs of the great Prussian kings. Outside, the cannon thunder. Now the trumpets sound; the President of the Reich stands upon a podium, Field Marshal’s baton in hand, and salutes the Reichswehr, the SA, SS and Stahlhelm, which march past him. He stands and salutes….
These scenes had an extraordinary effect upon all the participants, upon the deputies, the soldiers, the diplomats, the foreign observers, and the public. That day at Potsdam truly proved to be a turning point in history.
Some time before that Papen had boasted that within a few months he would have Hitler squeezed into such a corner “that he’ll squeak.” Things were clearly not turning out that way. Nevertheless, the “Potsdam emotional farce” seemed to demonstrate that the wild-eyed Nazi leader had after all fallen into the snares of nationalist conservatism. The picture was of a young, credulous and deferential Hitler bowing to the tradition embodied in the personality of Hindenburg and concentrated in the former capital of the Prussian kings. Only a minority of those present were not entirely duped. And many who had voted against Hitler as recently as March 5 now obviously began to waver in their judgments. To this day it is troubling to realize that many government officials, army officers, lawyers and judges, many members of the nationalistic bourgeoisie who had distrusted Hitler on rational grounds, abandoned their stand the moment the regime let them taste the joys of nationalistic feeling. “Like a tidal wave,” a newspaper of the bourgeois Right wrote, “nationalist enthusiasm swept over Germany yesterday and, let us hope, poured over the dikes that a good many of the parties had erected against it, and broke open doors which until now had been defiantly closed to it.”9 Long torchlight parades through the streets of Berlin and a gala performance of
Two days later the regime, and Hitler himself, showed itself in a different aspect. About two o’clock in the afternoon on March 23 the Reichstag met in the Kroll Opera House, its temporary quarters, for the session that had already had its ceremonial prelude in Potsdam. The very setting was unequivocably dominated by the colors
