The Times Great Lives. Anna Temkin

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СКАЧАТЬ he fell after dealing Hitler two shrewd blows – the dissolution of the Brown Army and the re-election of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg as Reichspräsident in face of the fully mobilized Nazi vote in support of Hitler’s own candidature. Hitler regarded himself as heir to the Chancellorship. But he had still 10 months to wait, 10 months of crisis during which he was thwarted, not by the now impotent Liberal and Socialist vote, not even by the vociferous Communists, who by their threats to the bourgeoisie were indirectly a help, but by the veiled resistance of the Right Wing of the old regime, with its backing of Junkers, trade magnates, Monarchists, and the entourage of the now senile Reichspräsident.

      The appointment of the shifty von Papen as Chancellor to succeed Brüning was followed by the rescinding of the latter’s ban on the Brown Army as a bait to catch the Nazi support, and by a general election. At the polls Hitler more than doubled his vote, being returned with 230 followers, the largest party in the Reichstag. He demanded the Chancellorship, but Papen manoeuvred him into an interview with the Field Marshal, where Hitler, who was nervous and showed to little advantage, received a pre-arranged rebuff. His prestige suffered considerably thereby, but worse was to follow. After three months of hopeless struggle in a hostile Reichstag Papen held another election. The Nazis lost 2,000,000 votes. A feeling of defeat spread throughout the party. Some of the leaders were in despair. In Germany and abroad it was thought that Hitler had passed his zenith.

      In the meantime the affairs of Germany prospered little better than those of the Bavarian ex-corporal. Papen had to resign in November, 1932, and was followed by General Kurt von Schleicher, the last Chancellor of the old regime, a clever man, who came near to destroying Hitler and paid the forfeit on June 30, 1934. Schleicher had the confidence of the Army, and, as far as anyone could, that of President von Hindenburg, but he had no Parliamentary support, and was threatened by Papen, who regarded him as the cause of his own fall from power. Schleicher in December made a bid for independence. He thought to propitiate the Nazi strength by attracting to himself in a semi-Socialist administration Gregor Strasser.

      Chancellor at Last

      Reichstag Fire

      It was a critical moment. Hitler, who had borne the recent setbacks with surprising calm, now lost heart. ‘If the party breaks up,’ he confided to Goebbels, ‘I’ll end matters with my pistol in three minutes.’ Schism indeed seemed imminent. But Strasser himself spoilt the scheme. He dallied and hesitated. The discussions were deferred, and before they could be resumed Schleicher had fallen. The tables had been suddenly turned by von Papen, who in January made an alliance with Hitler in order to overthrow Schleicher. The Nazi leader, whom he regarded as humbled by recent ill-fortune, was to be Chancellor and he himself Vice-Chancellor, with a majority of non-Nazi colleagues, the good will of the President, and, he confidently hoped, the real power. The plan took shape, and on January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was formally invested with the seals of office as Reichskanzler.

      The new Government was a minority one, and decided to dissolve the Reichstag and hold another election, the third in nine months. In an unparalleled propaganda campaign, in which the opposition parties had to remain passive observers, voters were belaboured with the Communist menace. Yet the voting gave an absolute majority only to the combined Nazi and Nationalist Parties, and the uneasy alliance between Hitler and Hugenberg, the Nationalist leader, would perhaps have continued but for an event of the first importance, the Reichstag fire. Whoever lit the match, it was the Nazis who arranged and profited by this act of incendiarism. Interpreted by them as a Communist act of terrorism, it was made the pretext for the suspension of all constitutional liberties and the setting up of the Nazi dictatorship under Hitler.

      The seizure of power by the Nazis in March, 1933, brought to an end the hollow alliance with the Nationalists under Hugenberg, who was forced to resign shortly afterwards. At the same time the German Press was muzzled and put under the control of Goebbels. Unhampered by Parliamentary restrictions or Press criticism, Hitler and his lieutenants pushed on with the Nazi revolution. Force and unity were the guiding ideals, and every element within or outside Germany which withstood the overriding claims of German nationalism was marked down for destruction.

      The long struggle for power was now ended. The National-Socialist Party was faced with the task of consolidation, and this was set about with more zeal than unity of conception or purpose. The position of Röhm’s Brown Army in the State and its relation to the Reichswehr and the position of the Stahlhelm, the armed organization of the Nationalists, were among the most thorny problems and involved much bitterness and heart-burning.

      The ‘Blood Bath’; Shooting of Röhm

      On July 1, 1934, the civilized world learnt with horror of the killings that had taken place the day before and have since been known as the purge or the ‘blood bath’. How many people lost their lives will never be known. The outstanding victims were Röhm, Schleicher, and Strasser. On the night of June 29 Hitler flew from the Rhineland to Munich and on to the place where Röhm was staying. Röhm was taken from his bed to Munich and shot. All over Germany similar scenes were being enacted. Leading officials of the party and comparative nonentities alike lost their lives. Many an act of private revenge was carried out that night. Hitler, in his statement to the Reichstag, said he had saved Germany from a plot of reactionaries, dissolute members of the Brown Army and the agents of a foreign Power. The reason for the massacre of June 30 may never be exactly known, but apart from private rancours and rivalries it is generally believed that Röhm aimed at having the Reichswehr embodied in his sa organization – which Hitler had the sense to refuse.

      The ‘blood bath’ was officially approved by Field Marshal von Hindenburg, who probably understood nothing of it. A month later, on August 2, the old man died, and within an hour Adolf Hitler was declared his successor. He abjured the title of Reichspräsident and elected to be known as Führer and Kanzler. The poor man of Vienna was now the master of Germany, absolute lord of 60,000,000 Europeans.

      Armaments

      Hitler’s advent heralded a series of increasingly grave breaches of treaty obligations and challenges to European opinion. Dr Brüning had already claimed equality in armaments. This claim was vigorously repeated by Hitler, and it was on the pretext that it had been too tardily admitted by the Powers that he abruptly left the League of Nations in October, 1933. Franco-British discussions in London in February, 1935, for a general settlement were brusquely forestalled by Hitler’s announcement of conscription for an army of half a million and the creation of an Air Force. The British Government joined the French and Italian Governments in condemning the unilateral repudiation of treaty obligations, but a few weeks later, in June, 1935, it concluded a naval agreement with Hitler granting him 35 per cent of the naval strength of Great Britain and equality in submarines. To ‘his people’, as he now called the Germans, it looked as though their Führer’s tactics paid, while Europe could no longer ignore the fact that Germany was again a great Power.

      In March, 1936, Adolf Hitler, taking advantage of the embroilment of Great Britain and France with Italy over Abyssinia, suddenly occupied the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland, at the same time denouncing the Treaty of Locarno, which he claimed had already been abrogated by the formation of the Franco-Russian Alliance. The military occupation of the Rhineland was the most serious as well as the most spectacular breach made so far in the facade of the Versailles Treaty. In conjunction with the introduction of conscription it transformed the military situation. It deprived the Western Powers in one moment of the strongest weapon in their armoury, one that had been used in early post-war years, the freedom of entry into German territory. Henceforward Hitler could hope to hold off an attack on his western front with one hand, while the other was free elsewhere.

      The occupation of the Rhineland was accompanied by a series of proposals addressed by Hitler to the world at large, and for the special attention of the French and British peoples. He offered a 25-year non-aggression pact, an aid pact for Western Europe, non-aggression pacts with his eastern neighbours, and he even announced СКАЧАТЬ