common action and were actually joined by the Communists. And although their united forces represented only 37 per cent of the votes, the impression lingered of a broad front of opponents ready and eager to overthrow the existing government.
The bitter clashes between the paramilitary formations, especially between Communists and Nazis, and between these squadrons and the police, were further symptoms of the shattered authority of the state. General chaos in the streets and a train of bloody outrages on weekends became almost the rule. On the Jewish New Year the Berlin SA under Count Helldorf (who was subsequently to become police chief of Berlin) organized a series of wild riots. At the universities there were sometimes physical assaults on professors whom the Nazis did not like. The court trials of party members became the occasions for unprecedented scenes. There was no actual civil war, but Hitler’s remark that some day heads would roll still rang in the nation’s ears, and a general impression arose that more was happening in the streets than occasional bloody brawls between rival parties struggling for the favor of the voters and seats in the legislature. Some time before, Hitler had declared:
The goal the bourgeois parties have in mind is not annihilation [of the opponent] but merely an electoral victory…. We recognize quite clearly that if Marxism wins, we will be annihilated. Nor would we expect anything else. But if we win, Marxism will be annihilated, and totally. We too know no tolerance. We shall not rest until the last newspaper is crushed, the last organization destroyed, the last educational institution eliminated and the last Marxist converted or exterminated. There is no middle course.23
The fighting in the streets amounted to the preliminary skirmishes of a civil war that had been interrupted rather than fought to a decision in 1919 and which would shortly, in the spring of 1933, be carried to its logical conclusion in the torture cellars and concentration camps of the SA.
In this highly charged atmosphere, the authorities were frightened of driving Hitler to extremes. At the end of November, 1931, ten days after the elections to the Landtag of Hesse in which the National Socialist Party won 38.5 per cent of the seats, thus becoming by far the strongest party in this provincial legislature, a Nazi renegade gave the police chief of Frankfurt the Nazi plan of action in case the Communists attempted an uprising. These “Boxheim Papers”—as they were known from the estate at which the Nazi leaders had held their secret meetings —outlined the manner in which the SA and kindred organizations would assume power. The Papers spoke of “ruthless measures” to achieve “sharpest discipline of the populace.” Any act of resistance or even of disobedience would incur the death penalty, in certain cases “on the spot without trial.” Private property and all interest payments were to be suspended, the population fed communally, and everyone would be required to work. Jews, however, would not be allowed to work or receive food.
The disclosure of the plan created a stir. Hitler, however, disclaimed any part in the affair, though he also took no disciplinary measures against the authors of the project. Again, he seemed not too displeased to have the public given a good scare. Although the plan deviated from his own conception in its details, and especially in its semisocialist elements, its basic assumption was the same as his: that the ideal starting point for the seizure of power would be an attempt at a Communist rising. This would evoke a cry for help on the part of the threatened government and bring him forward with his SA, so that he could take over in the name of justice and with an appearance of righteousness. That was the cry he had vainly tried to force Herr von Kahr to utter on the night of November 8–9, 1923. He had never wanted to be cast merely as one politician among many others. His idea was always to come on the scene as savior from the deadly embrace of Communism, surrounded by his rescuing hosts, and thus take power. This role coincided with both his dramatic and his eschatological temperament, his sense of being always engaged in a global struggle with the powers of darkness. Wagnerian motifs, the image of the White Knight, of Lohengrin, of the Grail and an endangered fair-haired woman vaguely and half-consciously entered into this picture. Later, when circumstances did not produce this constellation, when no Communist putsch seemed in the offing, he tried to create it.
Nothing happened to the authors of the Boxheim Papers. That in itself was indicative of the deterioration of concepts of legality throughout the governmental apparatus. The bureaucracy and the judiciary obviously delayed prosecuting a case of treason. The political authorities, too, dismissed the affair with a resigned shrug, instead of seizing the chance for a strong last-minute effort to save the republic. Hitler could have been arrested and brought to trial on the basis of the clear and damning evidence. Instead, the administration remained conciliatory. Alarmed by his threats, it tried even harder to placate him. Nor was it forgotten that he had been received by Schleicher and Hindenburg and accepted as an equal by influential politicians, businessmen, and notables. In short, he had moved once more “into the vicinity of the President.” By now, moreover, one might well ask whether the movement could be curbed by police or judicial measures, or whether any such measures might not produce a most undesirable swing in the Nazis’ favor. In any case, in December, 1931, Prussian Minister of the Interior Severing shelved a plan to have Hitler arrested and deported. And around the same time General von Schleicher, urged to take energetic measures against the Nazis, replied: “We are no longer strong enough. Should we try to, we would simply be swept away!”
Suddenly people were no longer so sure that the Hitler party was merely a collection of petty bourgeois vermin and demagogic windbags. A feeling of paralysis spread, rather similar to the apathy felt before a force of nature. “It is the
“Poor system!” Goebbels noted ironically in his diary.
At the Gates of Power
Vote, vote! Get at the people!
We are all very happy.
It was not only Hitler’s demagogic gifts, not only his tactical skill and radical verve that sped his fortunes; the force of irrationality itself seemed cunningly at work for him. Thus there were five major elections, held largely by chance in the course of 1932, in which Hitler could employ his special brand of agitation.
The term of the President of the Reich was to expire in the spring. In order to avoid the risks and radicalizing effects of an election campaign, Bruning had earlier proposed that Hindenburg be made President for life by an amendment to the Constitution. Bruning’s whole policy was aimed at gaining time. The winter had seen an almost inconceivable worsening of the Depression. In February, 1932, the number of unemployed rose to over 6 million. But with the rigidity of the technical expert who feels that his principles stand far above the base adaptability of the politician, Bruning kept firmly to his course. He was counting on eventual cancellation of reparations, on some success in the disarmament conference, on Germany’s being granted equal rights. In the shorter perspective, he was hoping that the spring would bring proof of the efficacy of his austerity policy, rigorous to the point of starvation.
But the common people shared neither his rigor nor his hopes. They were suffering from hunger, cold, and the humiliating side effects of misery. They hated the endless stream of emergency decrees with their stereotyped appeals to the spirit of sacrifice. The government was administering misery instead of relieving it, a bitter joke had it. Certainly Bruning’s policy of belt tightening was questionable from the economic point of view; but it proved to be far more questionable politically. For the Chancellor, with his matter-of-fact approach to the problem, did not know how to frame his plea for sacrifice in terms people could respond to. All that he seemed to promise was a program of further austerity stretching on into the dim future.
Bruning’s effort to gain time was totally dependent on the support from the President. But to his surprise
