Conservative journalists offered foggy plans for a “new state” or a “constitutional dictatorship,” that would head off Hitler’s more radical alternative by a more moderate option.
Similar intentions inspired the ideas for an authoritarian constitution reestablishing the prerevolutionary state, which in view of the increasing weariness with democratic methods were discussed among the Reich President’s entourage. Among the principal advocates of such plans that tended to a gradual restoration of the monarchy were Chancellor Bruning himself; Minister of Defense Groener; Groener’s liaison man with the other departments of government, the chief of the newly created Ministerial Bureau, General Kurt von Schleicher, who, thanks to his intimacy with Hindenburg, had become a key figure, albeit a background one, of the political scene.
Schleicher had already made his presence felt in the appointment of Bruning as Chancellor; he had adroitly proceeded in extending his influence to the point that no Chancellor or cabinet minister could be appointed or dismissed without his consent. His preference for background activity and finespun nets of intrigue had earned him the reputation of being a “field-gray eminence.” He was cynical, as highly sensitive persons tend to be, impulsive, unprejudiced, and wary. He used the army intelligence service to spy even on friends and neighbors. His peculiar combination of frivolity, sense of responsibility, and bent for intrigue made him a distinctly difficult person to deal with.
Schleicher’s reasoning started from the thesis that a broad popular movement like Hitler’s could not be quelled by governmental instruments of power. The shock of the revolution, when the officers’ corps suddenly found itself pitted against the strange gray hordes of the masses, had convinced the more open-minded members of the Reichswehr leadership that the army must never again be turned against the people. Although Schleicher hardly took the Nazi party leader seriously, describing him as a “visionary and idol of stupidity,” he acknowledged and respected the factors that had obtained for Hitler so tremendous a following. Schleicher by no means overlooked the disturbing aspects of the movement, that blend of lawlessness, resentment, and fanaticism that one of Schleicher’s fellow officers had called the “Russian character” of the Nazi party. But this made him all the more intent on putting through his plan. As long as Hindenburg was still alive and the army seemed organically sound, Schleicher thought he could “domesticate” Hitler by taking him into the inner circle of political responsibility. The mass army of his following, meanwhile, as long as the curbs of the Versailles Treaty remained in effect, would be used to strengthen Germany’s “defense posture.” Cautiously, therefore, Schleicher began seeking contact with Hitler by way of Ernst Rohm and Gregor Strasser.
Other conservative leaders were likewise eager to have a hand in polishing the rough diamond who happened to be master of the stadia and meeting halls; among them was Alfred Hugenberg. In the summer of 1931 President Hindenburg complained to Hugenberg about Hitler’s “ruffians” and said he did not regard the NSDAP “as a reliable nationalist party.” Hugenberg replied that that was all the more reason to strike up an alliance; he believed he had already contributed to the political education of the Nazis, he said. In spite of all previous unpleasant experiences, he added, he, too, was seeking to re-establish the broken connection with Hitler.
These efforts at rapprochement from several sides corresponded to the advances that the vexed Fuhrer of the Nazi party was making at the same time. He was vexed because his success of September still profited him nothing. The outcome of the elections had indeed made him one of the chief actors on the political stage; but as long as his isolation continued he was condemned to play a mute part. “Hitler has lost many months,” Carl von Ossietzky wrote. “He has wasted his time in inactivity, and no eternity will ever restore that lost time to him. No power in the world will ever give him back the 15th of September with the defeated parties trembling and officialdom bewildered. At that time the hour for the German Duce had come; who would have asked whether he was acting legally or illegally? But this German Duce is a cowardly, effeminate slugabed, a petty bourgeois rebel who’s fast grown fat, who takes it easy and does not realize when fate lays him in a pickling solution along with his laurels. This drummer pounds his tomtom only in rear echelon…. Brutus sleeps.”
Given a following held together less by political convictions than by volatile emotions, Hitler was actually dependent, far more than the other party leaders, on a train of new, spectacular successes. True, the party continued its victorious march in 1931: at the beginning of May it won 26.9 per cent of the vote in the elections for the Landtag, the provincial legislature, in Schaumburg-Lippe; two weeks later it reached 37.2 per cent in Oldenburg, thus for the first time becoming the strongest party in a Landtag. But these successes were only repeating on the provincial scale what the party had already achieved on the plane of national politics in September. When the Nazis marched through squares or narrow streets roaring in unison, “Hitler at the gates!” it sounded more as though they were trying to get him to the gates, despite their boast that he was already there. Nor could the Nazi party accomplish anything in the legislatures, since it continued to pursue its policy of paralysis. Thus there remained only the stale boasts over the ever-increasing membership figures, the more and more record-breaking meetings, or—these always announced with sanctimonious hypocrisy—more and more martyrs. Dissatisfaction with this state of affairs manifested itself once again in the spring of 1931, when the Berlin SA under Walter Stennes revolted. But before the SA leader could organize this open defection from the party and draw the vacillating Goebbels over to his side, an order arrived from Hitler deposing Stennes. The other conspirators quickly returned to the fold amid renewed assurances on Hitler’s part and new vows of loyalty on their own.
Despite his boast that he would bring down the “system” in a succession of election campaigns, Hitler had exerted himself since the spring to gain the confidence and support of influential circles, realizing more keenly than ever before that he would never attain governmental power solely on the basis of his success among the masses. Article 48, which shifted effective power to the President and his immediate entourage, reduced both the power of the Reichstag and the importance of an electoral victory. Not the number of votes but the will of the President determined the holder of the chancellorship. In a sense, therefore, it was more important to commend himself to Hindenburg than to win a majority.
As always, Hitler advanced on several fronts at once. His oath of legality at Leipzig had already contained a hidden offer of good behavior and partnership. At the beginning of 1931 he received a hint from Schleicher: the ban on participation of Nazis in the Frontier Guard was lifted. In return, Hitler instructed the SA to refrain from street fighting. He even had an SA unit in Kassel dissolved because it had obtained weapons contrary to orders. To strengthen the point, Rohm was required to issue a memorandum implying that the storm troop detachments might be dissolved altogether; they “would be superfluous” if Hitler assumed the chancellorship. “Pretty-boy Adolf is dripping with loyalty,” General Groener wrote to a friend at this time. Hitler was no longer a problem for the Defense Ministry, he added.
When the Catholic bishops issued a sharp statement warning their flock against the Nazi party, Hitler instantly dispatched his most ingratiating associate, Hermann Goring, to Rome to negotiate. In an interview with the
He also wooed the financiers, who on the whole had remained rather reserved. Frau von Dircksen, who held court in the Kaiserhof and had many influential connections, came to his aid just at the right time—one more of those aging female friends to whose zeal he owed so much. Frau Bechstein also continued to promote his cause. Other contacts were made through Goring, who ran a lavish house, and through the financial journalist Walther Funk. Wilhelm Keppler, a small businessman ruined by the Depression, also brought sympathetic industrialists into the movement. He founded the “Economic Friendship Circle,” which was to become notorious through its later connection with Himmler. Otto Dietrich, who had extensive family connections with men in industry, noted: “In Munich in the summer of 1931 the Fuhrer suddenly made the decision to work systematically
