The Fuhrer
The break forced on him by
the failure of 9 November 1923 and his imprisonment at Landsberg helped Hitler
to find himself - to find faith in himself and his mission. . . . .
From now on he adopted the
consciously distant, icy front which no smile, no casual gesture, no
self-forgetful attitude ever breached. More and more he struck the rigid,
statuesque pose in which he found the style for his conception of greatness and
leadership. A striking repetition of the dark past - he was to rise once more
from anonymity by winning over the masses and gaining the favour of those in
power, before once again gambling everything on a single insane decision and
losing everything, as in 1923.
His first concern, after
his return from [imprisonment at] Landsberg on 20 December 1924, was the
removal of the ban on the party. The quick success of his negotiations was
partly due to the adroitness with which he worked his way back into the “front
of the parties standing for law and order,” employing, according to
circumstances, protestations of respect for legality, anti-Marxist,
pro-Catholic, or monarchist attitudes.
Against a background of
wild cheering from the crowd of four thousand, who jumped on to the tables and
embraced one another, a reconciliation took place between the warring members
of the party. . . . Hitler was henceforth invariably known as ‘der Fuhrer.’
This success lent force to his decision to purge the party, which was refounded
at this same meeting, of all the democratic relics of its early period and to give
it the tightly authoritarian character of a party with a single leader -
himself.
Once more he demonstrated
his gift for tactical maneuvering and the upshot was the elimination of his
only two serious rivals. While the activities of Gregor Strasser were diverted
to North Germany, the embittered Ernst Rohm found himself, without any explanation,
expelled.
He rapidly set up numerous
offices and institutions which, in addition to their potential for keeping
power within the party divided, also served to contest the competence and
legality of the state institutions in the name of the true representatives of
the supposedly unrepresented people. The departments of the shadow state came into
being in parallel with the structure of ministerial government; for example the
NSDAP had its own foreign, agricultural and defence offices. Provincial and
district leaders increasingly laid claim to the status of ministers and local
presidents; at public meetings the SA and SS took over police duties; and
Hitler had himself represented at international conferences by his own
‘observers.’ Similar aims lay behind the party symbols: the swastika provided
the shadow state's national emblem, the Horst Wessel Song its national anthem,
while the brown shirt, orders and badges created a sense of solidarity in
opposition to the existing state and rationalized the fondness for “decorations
that were a profession of faith.”
He arrived at them [his
methods] with an unwavering logic in which every detail was important and
nothing left to chance: the size of the gathering, the precisely calculated composition
of the crowd, the time of day, or the artificially delayed appearance of the
speaker while tension was worked up by theatrically arranged processions of banners,
military music, ecstatic shouts of ‘Heil!’ Suddenly, to the accompaniment of a
blaze of light, he would emerge before a crowd systematically whipped up in its
excitement to see him and primed for collective rapture. The “elimination of
thought,” the “suggestive paralysis,” the creation of a “receptive state of
fanatical devotion”: this culminating psychological state, the preparation of
which Hitler had expressly described as the purpose of a mass meeting, had here
become the aim of its stage-managing and the speech itself served no other
purpose - the style, the arguments, the calculated climaxes, the modulation of
the voice as well as the carefully practiced threatening or imploring gestures.
“The masses are like an animal that obeys instincts,” he declared. In accordance
with this principle, he prescribed the maximum primitiveness, simple
catchphrases, constant repetition, the practice of attacking only one opponent
at a time, as well as the dogmatic tone of the speeches, which deliberately
refused to give “reasons” or to “refute other opinions.” All this amounted, as
Hitler put it, to “a tactic based on the precise calculation of all human
weaknesses, the results of which must lead almost mathematically to success.”
On 30 January 1933
Hindenburg bestowed on him the Chancellorship, the key position for the acquisition
of that power which, once in his possession, as he had publicly stated, he
would never allow to be taken from him again, “so help me God.” “It all seems
like a fairy story,” noted Goebbels in his diary.
The Reich Chancellor
Hitler appeared on the
political scene on 30 January 1933 with all the triumphal ceremonial of the
historical victor. The grandiose setting with mass marches and torchlight
processions was out of all proportion to the constitutional significance of the
occasion, which technically speaking had merely brought a change of government.
However, the public duly noted that the nomination of Hitler as Reich
Chancellor was not like cabinet reshuffles in the past, but a new departure.
Hitler left no doubt that
this was his promised hour, the hour of his will and his power. Even the first
signs of terrorism could not mute the jubilation but rather added to it. The
brutal behaviour with which the regime celebrated its entry into office was widely
seen as merely the expression of an energy that was striving to manifest itself
as much on the governmental plane as in the street, and hence earned respect
and even trust; for public feeling, perverted by a mood of depression, valued
even brutal activity higher than the state's past inaction. Once again it was
proved that in revolutionary times public opinion is easily won over and
perfidy, calculation and fear carry the day.
The fast vanishing
minority of those who did not succumb to the urge to embrace the new, which was
spreading like an epidemic, found themselves isolated, hiding their bitterness,
their lonely disgust, in the face of a defeat manifestly inflicted upon them “by
history itself.” Violence for opponents, and for supporters the great
experience of a new sense of solidarity - these were the most striking features
of this phase.
Hitler’s path to absolute
power, which has since been variously imitated, remains in its several phases
the classic model for the totalitarian capture of democratic institutions from
within, that is to say with the assistance of, not in opposition to, the power
of the state. Briefly, the technique consisted in the tactic of so linking the processes
of revolutionary assault with legal actions that a screen of legality, dubious in
individual cases and yet convincing as a whole, hid the illegality of the system
from view.
The public was confused
not only by this brilliantly applied technique for concealing the facts but
also by the breakneck speed at which, one after the other, opponents’ positions
were captured, leaving them no time to gather and regroup their in any case small
and discouraged forces. Hitler later stated that it was his intention “to seize
power swiftly and at one blow.” From the decree `for the protection of the
German People' of his first week as Chancellor, the action against the Land of
Prussia taken a few days later, and the so-called Reichstag Fire Decree, which
established a permanent state of emergency, through the Enabling Law to the
unparalleled decree declaring the murders carried out in connection with the
Rohm affair to have been legal - which concluded the process of seizing power -
each step was a consequence of the one before, and created the factual,
technical preconditions for the next.
The state, over which he
held absolute power, quickly took the shape of his own personality in countless
respects: the naked dependence on power in relationships with people and
things, coupled with a growing deterioration in all fields not connected with
power; the boastful brutality of public manifestations of his will; the degradation
of law; the theatrical and grandeur-seeking coldness which characterized all
public announcements and all buildings representative of the state; the rigid constraint,
followed from time to time by sudden discharges of energy; and finally the lack
of relaxation and self-control. The special German form that all this took was
not so much the expression of characteristics inherent in totalitarian systems
as much as the faithful reflection of the mind of a psychopath in the
institutions of state and society.
He was determined to
“compel the German people, who are hesitating before their destiny, to walk the
road to greatness.” Peace, which in September 1938 had once more been preserved,
a year later had no chance left. For in the meantime the world felt itself
challenged to the limit by the so-called Crystal Night (on which windows of Jewish
shops were smashed throughout Germany) and the swallowing up of Czechoslovakia,
by the spectacle of Hitler’s tearing up the Munich Agreement before the ink was
dry. As though intoxicated, alternately pursuing his actions and being dragged
along by them, seeking refuge in rhetorical delirium before the masses and with
his judgement clouded by emotional exaltation, Hitler diligently arranged the preconditions
for the catastrophe. “Our opponents are little worms,” he scoffed. “I saw them
in Munich.” And he refused to believe they would take risks. When, at the end
of August 1939, Goring tried to halt his insane behaviour and asked him to abandon
his desperate gamble, Hitler replied excitedly that he had gambled desperately
all his life.
Years before he had said
in one of his bloody and misanthropic prophecies to Hermann Rauschning: "We
must be prepared for the hardest struggle that a nation has ever had to face.
Only through this test of endurance can we become ripe for the dominion to
which we are called. It will be my duty to carry on this war regardless of losses.
The sacrifice of lives will be immense. We all of us know what world war means.
As a people we shall be forged to the hardness of steel. All that is weakly
will fall away from us. But the forged central block will last forever. I have
no fear of annihilation. We shall have to abandon much that is dear to us and
today seems irreplaceable. Cities will become heaps of ruins; noble monuments
of architecture will disappear forever. This time our sacred soil will not be
spared. But I am not afraid of this." In these few sentences lies the
epitaph of almost fifty million people.
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