Hitler's Road to Power, Part Two

Factories closed one after another, and unemployment reached six million.

Both parties had paramilitary organizations with their own uniforms. The Communists and Nazis clashed violently at each parliamentary election.

This tactic worked. Calling Marxists the ‘Red plague’ and warning of their threat, Hitler won support from small business owners and tenant farmers.

＜October 1931＞ Hitler's momentum did not fade. Within just a year, he dominated Germany's far right. Veterans' organizations such as the five-hundred-thousand-strong Stahlhelm also came under his control.

〈Angela ‘Geli’ Raubal〉It was an event in his private life. Hitler had developed increasingly improperimproper feelings for his twenty-three-year-old niece Geli Raubal. She killed herself.

Geli shared his Munich apartment. She confided to a friend: 'My uncle is a monster. He demands things of me that people cannot imagine.'

Newspapers condemned him in unison: Hitler was a sexual deviant who had Geli killed. Deeply depressed, Hitler spoke of suicide, alarming his aides. His personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, introduced him to one of his assistants.

A woman who closely resembled Geli: Eva Braun. Although only nineteen, she was skilled in the ways of the world. She was captivated by the Nazi leader’s popularity. Hitler made her his new secret mistress. To win the support of women voters, he had declared himself married to Germany. Women in Germany already had the right to vote at that time.

[April 4, 1932] A week before the presidential election, 100,000 Berliners gathered to hear Hitler speak. People had lost hope in established parties unable to face the crisis. Twenty-year-old Jutta Rüdiger was one of them. 'Unemployment had left everyone indescribably depressed. We truly thought Hitler was the only one who could save us.'

Hitler resumed campaigning. He gave as many as five speeches a day, running his entourage ragged. Drawing strength from the crowds, he became intoxicated with his own poison.

Hitler’s speech: ‘Our enemies consider us, and me in particular, intolerant and insufferable. They criticize us for refusing to cooperate with other parties. They are right. We are intolerant, because my goal is the suppression of every party!’

In the 1932 election campaign, Hitler's first target was the Communist Party. The task was assigned to the SA, the storm troopers. With 400,000 members, it had begun raising its own funds for equipment.

To raise morale, propaganda chief Goebbels created an idol: Horst Wessel, a street thug who became an SA company commander. Killed by a Communist, Wessel was elevated into a Nazi Party martyr.

At the funeral, Goebbels gave a speech likening the man’s death to Christ’s Passion. A poem attributed to Wessel was set to music and became the Nazi Party anthem: the Horst Wessel Song, ‘An Oath of Violence.’

Meanwhile, here is the Communist Party's paramilitary Red Front. Its members wore workers' caps and Russian-style shirts. Everyone was driven by ideals.

They, too, had a song of struggle.

Let us plant dynamite
The fascist threat approaches, proletarians
Take up arms! Red Front, Red Front!”

〈November 1932: 196 seats〉The election result, however, disappointed Hitler. Compared with the previous election, his party lost two million votes and thirty-four seats. A French daily whose editor-in-chief was the prominent socialist Léon Blum ran the headline ‘The End of Hitler.’ But that was not how things turned out.

〈January 30, 1933: Hitler appointed chancellor〉After three months without managing to form a parliamentary majority, Hindenburg finally appointed Hitler chancellor. The writer Sebastian Haffner, then a student, wrote: ‘When I heard the news, I frozefroze with terror. For an instant I smelled blood and mud. I felt something dangerous rushing at my face, like the huge, dirty paw of a predatory animal.’

To achieve its aim, the wolf puts on sheep's clothing, disguisingkab(u) itself. Hitler reassured Hindenburg by requesting only two cabinet posts for the Nazis: Wilhelm Frick (pictured left), a senior Munich police official, as interior minister, and Hermann Göring (pictured right) as minister without portfolio. These two men were put in charge of the police organization.

Hitler maneuvered to make it appear that the most important cabinet posts had gone to conservatives. He made former Chancellor Franz von Papen (photo at left) vice-chancellor, and the prominent far-right politician Alfred Hugenberg (photo at right) minister of economics and agriculture. He sought to give the impression of a coalition government rather than a Nazi-dominated one. Meanwhile, the conservative ministers complacently assumedtook for granted that they could control Hitler.

On the night the cabinet was formed, torchlight marches by the veterans' organization Stahlhelm, the Nazi SS, and the SA took place in Berlin and other major cities. Goebbels announced that a million people had marched, but the British military attaché said there had been no more than 15,000, made to walk around the same place repeatedly.

Watching through a window, eighty-five-year-old President Hindenburg imagined himself in the midst of the Battle of Verdun in 1916. 'Our troops are marching splendidly, and look at all those prisoners.' Enthusiastic praise greeted Hitler as he stood in the chancellor's office. Berlin teacher Luise Solmitz recalled: 'Everyone seemed intoxicated without having had a drink. They were shouting, Death to the Jews! Jewish blood will spurt from the tips of our knives!'

Hitler: “I am convinced that the time is near when the millions who condemned us will join us and cheer with us what we have achieved: a new German Reich, proud and powerful.”

Joseph Goebbels: ‘If the Jewish press thinks it can threaten us, it had better beware. Patience has limits. One day we shall silence the Jews’ lying mouths. Nazi Party members and storm troopers need not worry. The end of the Red terror will come sooner than you think. Communists, prepare for a defeat unlike any you have experienced.’

An investigation by the police under Göring led to the arrest of a twenty-four-year-old Dutch Communist for arson. He was swiftly convicted and executed by guillotine. (Photo right: van der Lubbe)

Who benefited? The Nazis. Hitler and Göring fannedstoked fears of a planned Communist uprising. Göring ordered the arrest of 4,000 Communist Party members, including leaders. But at this stage the Communist Party was not outlawed. Hitler, seeking to consolidate his power base, wanted the election to remain formally legal.

Germans were weary of repeated election campaigns and turmoil. They began to see SA actions as protecting citizens from Communist attacks. The SA, now more than a million strong, was granted the status of armed auxiliary police. Its members were stationed outside left-wing party and trade-union headquarters across Germany.

[March 23, 1933] After the Reichstag burned down, Hitler convened parliament in an opera house surrounded by SA men and demanded full powers. Most Communist deputies had already been sent to concentration camps, while ninety-four Social Democratic deputies courageously voted against him. They were subsequently arrested or forced to flee abroad.

The storm troopers prepared firewoodfirewood for burning hundreds of thousands of books.

Goebbels's speech, broadcast by radio from Berlin's Opera Square, resembled an inquisition from the medieval Dark Ages.

Goebbels: "Dear students, people of Germany. The age of Jewish intellectualism is over. From now on, Germans will possess not only knowledge but a strong will."

＜May 10, 1933＞ Dorothea Günther, who took part in this Nazi ceremony, wrote: 'The SA men and students shouted out the titles of the books and the names of their authors.

If an author was Jewish, they denounced the writer as a pacifist, feminist, or modernist, repeatedly chanting, “We will bury you,” and threw the books into the fire. I was stunned and outraged to the depths of my heart. Many of the books being burned were ones we had discussed together.’

〈June 1933: Social Democratic Party outlawed〉Hitler destroyed the trade unions and outlawed the Social Democratic Party, the core of the Weimar system. In July 1933, Germany became a one-party dictatorship.

‘Hail the SA and SS! A glorious age opens before us. Germany has finally awakened. We have won power. Next, we must win the hearts of the German people.’

Meanwhile, half of Germany's Jews emigrated. Gerda Blachmann says: 'We were allowed aboard a ship on condition that we give up all our property.'

Poor Jews could not move. They were expelled to Jewish districts in Eastern Europe and later killed in concentration camps. Many opponents of the dictatorship fled to France.

But when Germany later occupied France during the Second World War, they were handed over to the Nazis. Those who failed to escape in time, or chose to remain and resist, died in concentration camps.

Most Germans came to accept totalitarianism. Some began each day by raising the swastika flag, now Germany's official emblem.

The boy joined the Nazi youth organization, the Hitler Youth, which stirred his fighting spirit.

At school, teachers taught pupils how to use guns.

Older girls joined the League of German Girls, an organization intended to make them good wives and mothers of many future soldiers.

These children would ultimately die at little more than ten years old, in the closing stages of World War II.

But in summer 1933, Germans could not imagine what lay ahead. Hitler was not yet an absolute leader. To become one, he needed to brainwash the population.

〈Propaganda film Victory of Faith, directed by Leni Riefenstahl, 1933〉Victory of Faith was a propaganda film depicting the first Party Congress after the Nazis, now the only political party, took power.

⟨August 30, 1933⟩ The director was Leni Riefenstahl. Hitler was captivated by her energy and beauty. With skillful visual techniques, Riefenstahl exalted Hitler as a god and glorified his inner circle.

[June 14, 1934] These events all began with Hitler's visit to Italy's dictator, Mussolini (pictured right: Benito Mussolini). Hitler regarded the older Mussolini as a model. He sought approval for his plan to annex Austria, but Mussolini refused. Mussolini disliked Hitler, calling him a talkative monk.

Taking Hitler sightseeing in Venice, Mussolini first showed off his naval fleet. Germany then had only a small navy. Returning to Berlin humiliated, Hitler keenly realized that his plans could not succeed without rebuilding the armed forces.

Hitler had promised the military to break the Treaty of Versailles and restore troop strength and armaments. Now its leaders wanted more: the elimination of Röhm and his storm troopers, whom they regarded as a threat.

Röhm was also criticized for tendencies toward megalomania. Industrialists were alarmed by his declaration that the National Socialist revolution was not yet complete. Goebbels said he was a Communist at heart.

For fifteen years, Röhm had been Hitler's accomplice. Now Hitler purged him on the grounds that he was plotting a coup. Hitler selected the men who would carry out the executions.

With Röhm gone, the SA lost its influence and was deployed only to maintain public order. Powerful figures in the military and industry were satisfied, and Sepp Dietrich was promoted to SS general.

〈Propaganda film Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl, 1934〉The film recording the 1934 Nazi Party Congress shows no storm troopers, only the black-uniformed SS led by Himmler.

[President Hindenburg dies, August 2, 1934] A month after the Night of the Long Knives, Hindenburg, the last president of the Weimar Republic, died at eighty-six. Democracy had long since been buried and replaced by totalitarianism.

Hitler became supreme commander of the armed forces, making his power absolute. Every officer and soldier had to swear loyalty to the German people's leader, Führer Adolf Hitler.

[July 1935, Bayreuth] Hitler visited Bayreuth to enjoy the music festival devoted to his favorite composer, Wagner.

Wagner's daughter-in-law Winifred, who had supported him in the earliest days of his political activity, welcomed Hitler. Hitler looked back over the long road he had traveled. He had fulfilled the dream of his youth.

Hitler appropriated the successes of the Weimar Republic as his own achievements. One was the famous Autobahn highway system.

They also enacted the Nuremberg racial laws in 1935 and began attacks on Jews. Synagogues, Jewish places of worship, were burned across the country, and Jewish shops were attacked. Kristallnacht. These events were the prelude to the Holocaust.

Violating the Treaty of Versailles, he reoccupied the area demilitarized in 1919.

〈March 1938: Germany annexes Austria〉As a result, Hitler succeeded in annexing Austria, moving a step closer to his vision of a Greater Germany uniting all German-speaking territories.

Hitler intervened in the bloody Spanish Civil War with bombers, indiscriminately killing civilians in Guernica in the Basque region. With such military support, Franco's far-right forces overthrew the Spanish Republican government. Hitler dreamed of a great continental army like Napoleon's, which he would lead against Moscow. Meanwhile, Hitler spoke of peace.

Hitler: ‘Everyone must prepare inwardly for the realization of a unified state. The people must follow us and achieve their goals themselves. I want everyone to be brave and, at the same time, to love peace. Without loving peace, one cannot be brave.’