3
At first sight the methods by which Napoleon and Hitler obtained power may seem very different. One did so by a straightforward coup d’état, the other by constitutional means. However, a closer examination reveals considerable resemblances. The aim was exactly the same – to secure total control of the State. Napoleon was supported by an army with (in theory), revolutionary principles, which was in practice inspired by personal loyalty and careerism; Hitler by an army of storm-troopers similarly motivated by personal loyalty and careerism. Both leaders duped numerous formidable politicians who had thought that they could make use of them. The period which it took them to impose their respective forms of tyranny was approximately the same.
The future Emperor never ceased to be sensitive about accusations of illegality. ‘There has been much heated discussion and there will be much more of it for years to come as to whether we did or did not break the law and whether we acted like criminals,’ he recalled on St Helena. ‘The fact is that the country would have been lost without us and we saved it.’ ‘It was a civil and not a military coup,’ he told Bertrand a few months before his death in 1821. ‘In reality it was Sieyès and the civilians who were acting. I was little more than their agent.’ In his opinion any criticisms were idealistic claptrap. He also claimed, most untruthfully, that no operation could have gone more smoothly.
It has to be admitted that in some respects the Führer’s real Brumaire had been the Munich putsch of 1923. Ten years later he had had quite enough of coups d’état. In 1942, after dinner one evening, he explained that to his guests. ‘I considered it of the highest importance that I should legitimately take over the Chancellorship with the blessing of the Old Gentleman [‘Der alte Herr’ – President Hindenburg], he told them. ‘For it was only as constitutionally elected Chancellor … that I could overcome the opposition of all the other political parties, and finding myself in constant conflict with the Wehrmacht.’ He feared that if he took power illegally the Wehrmacht – the armed forces – might launch a coup of their own. By acting constitutionally he was in a position to restrain the activities of the Wehrmacht to its legal and strictly limited function, until he had introduced conscription. He knew that he would then be able to swamp it with Nazi recruits, enabling him to ‘overcome all opposition among the armed forces, and in particular in the corps of officers’.
By the summer of 1799 the Directory was beginning to collapse. It was showing unmistakable signs of terminal decay, and was unpopular with all save those who had vested interests. Napoleon’s Italian conquests of 1796-7 had been lost, Holland and Belgium were threatened, and General Jourdan had been heavily defeated by Archduke Karl, being driven back across the Rhine; France lived in justified fear of invasion by the armies of Austria and Russia. The treasury was empty, and there was galloping inflation, Frenchassignats or banknotes being practically worthless. (The gold franc was worth more than 80,000 paper francs, compared with 75 in 1794). There were countless bankruptcies and chronic unemployment – including over 80 per cent of artisans in Paris. Taxation soared; a forced loan of 100 million francs was imposed in August 1799. Manufacture, trade, finance, agriculture – every aspect of French economic life was in decline. Not only was brigandage rife but the Vendée had risen once more for the Bourbons and the Catholic Church, under some extremely formidable guerrilla commanders. The Council of Ancients (or upper house) was dominated by ‘moderates’, many of whom were royalists; on the other hand, the Council of Five Hundred (or lower house) was controlled by Jacobins. Most of the Directors were personally contemptible, in particular Barras. He had grown more corrupt and dissolute than ever, selling government posts to pay for his gambling and his mistresses; he was plotting to sell the entire country back to the Bourbons for 12 million francs. His principal opponent was the ablest of the Directors, Sieyès, who believed that a new Constitution with a stronger executive was needed to save the Republic.
In fact, the régime had reached the point of dissolution for which General Bonaparte had been waiting in Egypt. Two years before, he had told Talleyrand that the Directory could not survive. On 23 August 1799 he embarked on the six-week voyage back to France, although the Mediterranean was controlled by Nelson’s fleet in overwhelming strength, making this a gamble of the utmost audacity. His little ship and her three companion vessels slipped past the blockade, passing at midnight through the British. News of his latest victory, over the Turks at Aboukir in July, had preceded him when he landed at Fréjus on 9 October. He had feared he would be quarantined; instead the crowds shouted, ‘We prefer plague to Austrians!’ When he reached Paris he was distracted by a terrible quarrel with Josephine over her infidelities, but it ended in reconciliation. Understandably nervous, the Directors gave a public banquet in his honour – at which he gave the ominous toast, ‘Union of all the parties.’ He was offered any command he chose, but preferred to keep a low profile. He wore civilian clothes and behaved as he had in 1797, attending scientific lectures; however, it was noticed that he made himself especially amiable to anyone who had served with the Army of Italy. He explored the possibility of becoming a Director, but was told he had not yet reached the statutory age of forty.
The Director Sieyès decided to make use of the little general. Now in his fifties, a former priest and once vicar-general of Chartres, he had voted for the execution of Louis XVI but was more a survivor than a revolutionary (‘J’ai vécu’). A small, thin, dry man with a grave smile and a courteous manner, he thought of himself as a political scientist, a framer of Constitutions. One of the ablest politicians in France, if excessively self-confident, he had contemplated using General Bernadotte, a former Minister for War, despite his Jacobin sympathies, but decided he was an ambitious lightweight – ‘While he looks like an eagle in reality he is a goose.’ Again, in his own words, ‘I must have a sword but who will wield it? Hoche and Joubert are dead. That leaves Bonaparte, who may be less trustworthy and less honest but is more brilliant.’ His allies, Talleyrand and Fouché, agreed that Bonaparte was the right man for their purpose.
Napoleon was already building a power base of his own. Lucien Bonaparte had contrived to be elected President of the Five Hundred; he and their brother Joseph sought feverishly for allies and useful contacts. So did Josephine among her smart friends.
Lucien arranged for Sieyès to meet Napoleon at his house in the Rue Verte. The Abbé at once took a dislike to ‘that insolent little man’, an aversion which was mutual. Nevertheless, they managed to reach an agreement. Joseph tried to enlist Bernadotte – they were brothers-in-law – since he had more influence than any general in Paris after Bonaparte. But Bernadotte had ambitions of his own; he had already advised the Directors to arrest Napoleon for abandoning his command in Egypt without permission – which was a capital offence.
Sieyès had brought another Director, the colourless Roger Ducos, into the plot, aimed at the remaining three. The plan was to force them to resign and then to persuade the Councils to nominate a committee of three who would prepare a new Constitution. A chance to assemble troops had been provided by three regiments petitioning Bonaparte to review them, while countless officers had called on him to pay their respects after his return; it is reasonable to suppose that they guessed something was in the wind. The parade was to take place on the Champs-Élysées on 18 Brumaire (9 September).
At first the coup went well enough. At Josephine’s house in the Rue Chantereine (or ‘Rue de la Victoire’) Napoleon rose very early on the morning of 18 Brumaire, put on an olive green civilian coat and placed a brace of pistols in his pockets. A stream of officers began to arrive. He took each one separately into the little study and asked if he would ‘join in a journey’ to save the Republic. Most agreed, including General Lefèbvre (military governor of Paris) who promised to ‘chuck those legal buggers into the river’. The exception was Bernadotte, who refused to take part in ‘this rebellion’; Joseph Bonaparte took him off to lunch in the country outside Paris under the impression that nothing would happen.
Meanwhile Sieyès left the Luxembourg (the Directory’s official residence) on horseback, his clumsy horsemanship entertaining vastly another Director not in the secret. He had already persuaded the Council of Ancients to meet early by announcing that a Jacobin plot had been discovered. They agreed to transfer both Councils to Saint-Cloud and to entrust General Bonaparte with the armed forces. Napoleon changed into full dress, and accompanied by twenty officers, rode to the Tuileries at 7.30 a.m. to take an oath of loyalty. Within an hour a decree had been voted by the Ancients giving him command of all troops in and around Paris, including the National Guard.
He then set up his headquarters at the Tuileries. Barras sent his secretary, one Bottot, to find out what was happening. Napoleon lectured Bottot as though he were Barras himself. ‘What have you done’, he demanded dramatically, ‘with that fair France I left so prosperous in your hands? In place of peace I find war. I left you victories, I find defeats! I left you the riches of Italy, and I find nothing but grinding taxation and misery. What have you done with the hundred thousand brave Frenchmen I once knew, my comrades in glory? They are dead.’ The three hostile directors – Barras, Gohier and Moulins – were arrested. Barras signed a gracefully phrased resignation forced on him by Talleyrand in return for a promise of half a million francs (which Talleyrand seems to have pocketed), while the other two also gave way.
So far Sieyès could argue that what happened was technically legal, simply a parliamentary manoeuvre. The next problem was to persuade the Councils to appoint three consuls to reform the Constitution. He advised Bonaparte to arrest their hard-line Jacobin members but the general refused. It was the first sign that Sieyès was losing control of his coup.
After the Ancients had assembled on the following afternoon Bonaparte suddenly burst in and gave a long-winded speech during which he denied rumours that he was ‘a Cromwell, a Caesar’. He assured them: ‘Had I wanted power I have had plenty of opportunities before. I swear that France holds no more loyal patriot. There is danger all around. We must not risk losing the benefits we have bought so dearly – liberty and equality.’ He accused Jacobins of wanting to bring back the Terror. He had revealed that he had in mind more than a mere revision of the Constitution. However, there was neither applause nor booing, and his secretary hustled him out of the chamber. When he entered the hall in which the Five Hundred were sitting pandemonium ensued. There were shouts of ‘The Constitution or death!’ ‘Down with the Dictator!’ ‘Down with the tyrant!’ ‘Outlaw him!’ Someone hit him, another member attacked him with a dagger. He had one of his nervous fits and, half fainting, was dragged out by some soldiers who had followed him in. The Five Hundred at once began to move that he be outlawed – the tactic which had brought down Robespierre. Lucien saved the day by rushing out, leaving the Council without a president, and telling the troops that assassins inside were menacing the Five Hundred with stilettos and that they must clear the chamber. Generals Leclerc and Murat then led in three hundred grenadiers to the roll of drums, with fixed bayonets, and the deputies bolted through the windows. That evening thirty of them were dragged in from the local restaurants and cafés, and forced to vote the acceptance of the Directors’ resignations, the appointment of three provisional consuls and the drawing up of a new Constitution.
A hostile observer, William Pitt, gives a résumé of Napoleon’s civil as opposed to his military career, which casts a mercilessly accurate light on his political morality. ‘When the Constitution of the third year [of Revolution, 1795] was established under Barras, that Constitution was imposed by the arms of Buonaparte.’ Similarly, the Prime Minister told the House of Commons, the coup of Fructidor in 1797 had succeeded only because of ‘Buonaparte’s support for the Directory’. He continued:
Immediately before this event, in the midst of the desolation and bloodshed of Italy, he had received the sacred present of new banners from the Directory; he delivered them to his army with this exhortation: ‘Let us swear, fellow soldiers, by the manes of the patriots who have died by our side, eternal hatred to the enemies of the Constitution of the third year.’ That very Constitution which he soon after enabled the Directory to violate, and which, at the head of his grenadiers, he has now finally destroyed.
For some time Sieyès remained under the delusion that it was he who really controlled the new régime in Paris. He himself was one of the three provisional Consuls, his friend Roger Ducos was another, while his old allies Fouché, Talleyrand, Cambacérès and Goudin were the ministers responsible for police, foreign affairs, justice and finance. Admittedly he received a jolt at the very first discussions, when Bonaparte showed an unexpected grasp of financial and foreign affairs; afterwards he told Talleyrand and some other ministers, ‘Messieurs, I perceive you have acquired a master.’ Yet Sieyès still thought he could handle the General. He dominated the two commissions charged with framing the new Constitution, and was confident of having his way. Despite the coup and despite the General, the new government was political, not military; it was dominated by men who had been in political life for a decade, who had supported the coup against Robespierre. Indeed, Bonaparte attended the meetings at the Luxembourg wearing civilian clothes. Sieyès proposed that ultimate power should be in the hands of a Senate recruited from the wealthy who would appoint the executive and the legislature; the former were to consist of two Consuls – one for home affairs, one for foreign – and a Grand Elector at Versailles with a salary of 6 million francs, whose function would be advisory and ceremonial. To his consternation Napoleon refused to be Grand Elector. ‘Who is going to accept an office whose sole duties are to grow fat like a pig on millions a year?’ he asked, adding that a government of this sort would be the shadow of a state – ‘France would be knee-deep in blood!’ Sieyès, ‘man of systems’, was outraged. Ten days of wrangling ensued, in theory about the Constitution, in practice over political power, during which Bonaparte tried to isolate his opponent. Sieyès retaliated by accusing him of planning to make himself king of France, a dangerous charge which the General defused by pointing out that he had declined to be Grand Elector for life. There were eleven such meetings at the Luxembourg in which Sievès argued passionately in defence of his belief in rule by assemblies instead of by ministers, let alone individuals.
The new Constitution of the French Republic was published on 24 December 1799. There were three Consuls, appointed for ten years, Bonaparte being First Consul with the power of appointing ministers. The three were to be elected by a Senate who also chose the members of two of the legislative assemblies; the third legislative assembly, the Council of State, was to be appointed by the First Consul. He graciously allowed Sieyès to select the men for the Senate. Nevertheless, the public were astounded to learn that Sieyès was not among the Consuls. Shortly after, he retired to a château deep in the country to enjoy the fortune he had acquired during the last decade. Bonaparte’s shadowy colleagues were the elderly Charles-François Lebrun, a treasury mandarin from the days before 1789, and Jean-Jacques Cambacérès, a gifted jurist – useful assistants whose powers were purely advisory.
The choice of ministers reflected the First Consul’s total control. His brother Lucien (the former President of the Five Hundred who had saved the day on 19 Brumaire) was Minister of the Interior, keeping an eye on Fouché, who was Minister of Police. The latter’s political ally Talleyrand – they detested each other – was Minister of Foreign Affairs. Napoleon did not entirely trust Lucien’s obedience or his judgment, so he hobbled him by imposing two director-generals on his department. Other ministers were similarly restricted by assistant ministers or director-generals. He deliberately divided their powers in order to rule them. France had been deprived not only of parliamentary government but of ministerial government as well. There was no mention in the new Constitution of liberty, equality or fraternity.
On 17 February 1800 a plebiscite confirmed France’s approval of the new régime – from an electorate of 9 million Frenchmen over 3 million voted in favour, as opposed to a mere 1,562 against. (Lucien Bonaparte had helped to organize this gratifying result; only a million and a half actually voted.) On the day the votes were announced the First Consul moved his official residence from the Luxembourg to the Tuileries, from the residence of the Directors to the palace of the kings of France. He commented, ‘It isn’t everything to be in the Tuileries – the great thing is to stay here.’ It was precisely a hundred days since 18 Brumaire.
The way in which Bonaparte had outmanoeuvred Sieyès is highly significant, since the latter was the first really formidable politician whom he faced as an equal. Hitherto his previous relationship with politicians was that between client and patrons. And Sieyès had been a power in the land since 1789, deeply respected. (Stendhal lists him with Mirabeau, Danton and Napoleon as a founder of modern France.) He, not Bonaparte, had been the originator and planner of 18 Brumaire. Yet he had been outwitted by a series of moves in which his ‘ally’ used bullying and bribery to isolate him. Bonaparte had demonstrated that he was as gifted a politician as he was a soldier.
The reason before all others why Napoleon’s rule was accepted by a majority of Frenchmen was a yearning for peace. They wanted a strong man. Sieyès and the Directory’s ousted establishment plotted against him in their country retreats, while the royalists were still very strong indeed, still very hopeful. The Jacobins, meanwhile, looked to Bernadotte and Lazare Carnot. The First Consul knew from Fouché that Paris seethed with plots, that he had plausible rivals – that he was far from secure. If he could reconquer Lombardy, where he had been so triumphant, it would be an unpopular campaign but he would assert his dominance in a ‘last war’.
In May 1800 he crossed the St Bernard Pass to invade Lombardy. Carefully orchestrated propaganda made the most of this mountain journey; bulletins described the First Consul leaping crevasses, jumping from precipices and sliding down the snow – there were frequent comparisons with Hannibal. On 14 June, by a crass miscalculation, he found himself facing General Melas and 40,000 Austrians with only 20,000 men and almost no cavalry. His 70-year-old antagonist drove the French off the battlefield, so certain of victory that he went to bed. In the nick of time General Desaix arrived with the French reserves. He told Bonaparte, ‘I think we’ve lost this battle’, receiving the reply ‘I think we’ve won it.’ By the end of the day the Austrians were routed. Desaix had been killed leading an infantry charge, so the First Consul took all the credit for the victory which gave him northern Italy. It gave him more, the dictatorship of France.
On hearing the news Pitt’s ally, William Windham MP, commented ‘Shocking business.’ For Marengo had fastened Bonaparte’s rule over the French still more firmly. The way lay open for him to make himself Consul for life, and then Emperor.
The Wall Street crash of October 1929 transformed the political situation in Germany. Since at least a third of German manufactured goods was exported and every country began to cut imports, and since German industry was largely financed by short-term loans which were now called in, the consequences were catastrophic. By 1931 German industrial production had dropped by over 30 per cent, throwing over 6 million out of work and exhausting the unemployment fund. Even before the slump food prices had been falling; many farmers found themselves in debt and facing eviction. Banks began to crash, capital flowed out of the country. Yet Germany had to continue paying reparations to the victors of 1918. Everyone sought scapegoats; Prussian junkers who bullied the State into keeping their unviable farms afloat, the banking community and Jews – whether of the capitalist or anti-capitalist sort.
Hitler knew exactly how to exploit the situation. A hundred speakers were trained at a special Party school and then roamed the country delivering inflammatory harangues; storm-troopers contacted old war comrades throughout Germany, trying to enlist them; the party’s newspapers were slanted to maximum effect (pillorying the Jews); and the Führer went on whistle-stop tours making speeches of diabolical cunning. He recruited the young unemployed as storm-troopers, giving them food, shelter and a purpose.
The communists played into his hands. On orders from Moscow they refused to consider a Popular Front with the Social Democrats; while their own storm-troopers in leather uniforms rivalled the Nazis’ SA (or Sturmabteilung) in pugnacious street fighting, filling the middle classes with dread.
The success of Hitler’s tactics was demonstrated in the elections of September 1930, in which the Nazis secured 6.4 million votes and 107 seats in the Reichstag, to become the second largest party after the Social Democrats (compared with less than a million votes and only 12 seats in 1928).
The new Chancellor was Heinrich Brüning of the Catholic Zentrum party, who formed a right-of-centre coalition. Without a majority in the Reichstag, he governed by Presidential decree, Hindenburg using the emergency powers given to him by the Weimar constitution. Austerity measures, such as cutting unemployment benefits and civil servants’ salaries, merely succeeded in throwing more people out of work. Yet Brüning had a scheme which might have altered the course of history: he planned that after Hindenburg had been re-elected President in 1932 the Reichstag should proclaim the restoration of the monarchy with the old Field Marshal as Regent for life, to be succeeded by a Hohenzollern emperor. The Reichstag’s support was to be secured by revising the terms of Versailles and ending reparations – and, where the Left was concerned, by emphasizing the threat of Nazi takeover. It would split the Right in two, since all Nationalists and many Nazis would approve; Hitler would be put in an awkward position since he had often pretended he meant to bring back the monarchy. The army would be totally in favour. Brüning’s scheme received grudging approval from a few far-sighted Social Democrats who realized it might be the one chance of derailing the Nazi juggernaut. Unfortunately, he was not given time.
In 1931 the Nationalists decided mat Brüning was a left-winger. In October all their groups paraded together with the Nazis at Bad Harzburg in a mass rally (the ‘Harzburg Front’) which demanded the Chancellor’s resignation. The Nationalist Party, the Stahlhelm (ex-servicemen), the business magnates and all men of the conservative Right were by now convinced that Herr Hitler and his movement could be harnessed for their own purposes. Although they welcomed his attacks on Bolshevism and democracy, they still did not take him seriously – what they wanted was his movement’s votes in the Reichstag, not his wild ideas of ‘revolution’.
Meanwhile the Führer suffered an emotional collapse over a woman, for the only time in his life. From the very beginning of his political career there had been speculation about his sexuality, which remains a mystery even today. We know that during his rise to power, and still more after he achieved it, women found him irresistible despite his lack of good looks, but that – far from being a pouncer like Napoleon – he resisted every feminine wile. However, he developed an incestuous passion for his niece Geli Raubal(daughter of his half-sister Angela Hitler), a lively and attractive girl who hoped to become a musician. He seems to have fallen obsessively in love with her in 1929 when she was twenty, installing her in his Munich flat on the Prinz-Regentenstrasse and paying for singing lessons by the most fashionable Wagnerian teachers. Happy enough at first, she began to look increasingly miserable; there were noisy quarrels in public. He was shattered when in September 1931, while he was campaigning, news reached him that Geli had shot herself in their Munich flat. For two months he was a broken man, threatening to abandon politics. There is no need to doubt his sincerity. No one has ever explained convincingly why she committed suicide, though it was after an especially bitter row with her uncle. Many reasons have been suggested, most of them sexual, ranging from suspicions that Hitler was unable to satisfy her in bed to discovering her having an affair with his chauffeur Emil Maurice. The wife of Adolf’s friend Hanfstängl was certain he was impotent, while Hanfstängl claimed to have seen pornographic drawings of Geli by the Führer. Apart from the incestuous aspect and the possibility that he was slightly undersexed, the relationship may have been much more normal, or nearer normalcy, than is generally supposed. (Hitler may have given a clue why she killed herself during his fury at Field Marshal Paulus’s failure to commit ritual suicide after the fall of Stalingrad in 1943; he spoke of ‘a really beautiful woman’ who felt insulted by ‘her husband’ over some triviality and threatened to leave, ‘I can go? I’m not wanted?’ – and who on being told ‘Get out then’ wrote a farewell note and shot herself.) He never forgot her, keeping her room just as it was and hanging her photograph in his bedroom.
It is not impossible that the Führer was syphilitic. The symptoms of the undiagnosed malady from which he suffered at the end of the war were not dissimilar from those of tertiary syphilis. Putzi Hanfstängl says that he was rumoured to have been infected with the disease during his early days in Vienna. But Hanfstängl was a gossip who invented what he did not know for the sake of effect. He speculates that Hitler’s ‘abounding nervous energy which found no normal release sought compensation first in the subjection of his entourage, then of his country, then of Europe’. Yet the Emperor took many mistresses without weakening his drive as a conqueror. On the other hand, it is not inconceivable that Adolf Hitler’s sexuality was sublimated in his lust for power.
The key to the political situation was the ‘ersatz Kaiser’, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, President since 1925, he gave Germans a reassuring impression of dignity and solidity. Born in 1847, he was the archetypal Prussian officer; he had ridden into Paris in 1871, had presided over the annihilation of the Russians at Tannenberg in 1914, had been the symbol of the War Effort and had emerged untarnished from the débâcle of 1918. Unfortunately, not only was his mind failing but he was vain and obstinate; by 1932 he was all but senile, under the influence of his shallow and venal son Oskar. When he stood for President again that year he was incapable of reading a newspaper, let alone of writing a speech. Hitler took out German nationality to stand against him. In the first ballot the Field Marshal only just missed an overall majority, with 18 million votes compared to Hitler’s 11 million, the communist Thälmann’s 5 million and the Nationalists’ 3 million. In the second Hindenburg won over 19 million, securing his majority, though Hitler increased his vote to over 13 million.
The President dismissed Brüning, insisting on a cabinet whom he found congenial. The result was the ‘Cabinet of Barons’, so called because seven of its ten members were noblemen. The new Chancellor was a Westphalian aristocrat, Franz von Papen, who at best was a cunning intriguer. Like Brüning, he had to govern by Presidential decree since he did not have a majority in the Reichstag. On the pretext that it could not cope with violent communist riots, he dissolved the Prussian parliament and appointed himself State Commissioner for Prussia – over a third of Germany.
At the general election of July 1932 the NSDAP secured 230 seats in the Reichstag, more than any party had ever won during the Weimar Republic, with 37 per cent of the vote. The parties of the Right outnumbered those of the Left but would not have a majority in the Reichstag unless the Nazis joined in a coalition. Papen tried desperately to persuade Hitler to join his cabinet as Vice-Chancellor, in vain. That autumn Papen again dissolved the Reichstag, to continue ruling by decree. In the ensuing election in November the NSDAP lost 34 seats; it looked as though their bubble had burst. Hitler contemplated suicide, writing to Cosima Wagner shortly after Christmas ‘I have given up all hope’, while Goebbels confided to his diary on 24 December, ‘All possibilities and hopes have disappeared.’ But in December Papen was ousted as Chancellor by General von Schleicher, who tried and failed to detach Gregor Strasser and sixty ‘Socialist’ Nazis from their allegiance. Hitler reacted swiftly, forcing Strasser to resign from the NSDAP.
Papen’s attempts to form a government were shadowed by the threat of civil war. During a brief second term as Chancellor, Schleicher after failing to form a viable government had tried to persuade the President to declare an emergency. The army would no doubt have obeyed Hindenburg, but the Nazis and the Left would have been at each other’s throats almost at once. The President reminded Schleicher that he himself had only recently informed him that such a move would lead to civil war, and that the army and police were simply not strong enough to handle the situation. Schleicher resigned to make way for Papen on 28 January 1933; the mood throughout Germany was growing more nervous by the hour, street fighting becoming even more widespread and vicious. Papen and all the leaders of the Right, together with the industrialists, had been in close touch with Hitler and Goering since the beginning of the month. The situation was still very confused when Papen persuaded the old Field Marshal that the ‘Bohemian Corporal’ was more effective than appearances might suggest. (When he had first met him in 1931, Hindenburg had commented that the man was better suited to be Minister of Posts than a national leader.) Papen’s solution was that he should form a government of ‘National Concentration’, with Adolf Hitler as Chancellor while he himself as Vice-Chancellor would be the real power.
Herr Hitler modestly agreed that his party should have only two other members in the cabinet: Wilhelm Frick, a former Bavarian policeman, was to be Minister of the Interior (though with no police powers), while Major Hermann Goering, President of the Reichstag, was to be a Minister without Portfolio and Prussian Minister of the Interior for Papen (in the latter’s capacity as State Commissioner). Several of Papen’s old allies from the ‘Cabinet of Barons’ returned: Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, Baron von Neurath and Dr Franz Guertner held the portfolios of Finance, Foreign Affairs and Justice. Alfred Hugenberg, leader of the Nationalists, was Minister of Economics, Food and Agriculture, Seldte – head of the Stahlhelm – was Minister of Labour, and General Werner von Blomberg was Minister for Defence. It was a coalition which represented almost the entire German Right rather than a Nazi government. At noon on 30 January Hitler, his eyes filled with tears, emerged from the Kaiserhof Hotel. At an audience President Hindenburg had just appointed him Chancellor. That evening he was heard to whisper to himself, ‘No power on earth shall ever get me out of here alive.’
Schwerin von Krosigk recalled in his diary how the new Chancellor, despite awkward manners, gained the respect of the cabinet in 1933. Everyone admired his infallible memory and ‘the clarity with which he could reduce the most intricate question to a simple – sometimes too simple – formula … and his cleverness in approaching a well known and long discussed problem from a new angle’. He asked them to give him advice as experienced politicians. Papen says that at first Hitler was ‘invariably polite, even modest’. At a dinner given for him by the head of the Reichswehr he explained to the assembled generals and admirals that while he intended to take control of all policy at home and abroad, he was going to allow the army and navy freedom to rearm and train. This quiet behaviour contrasted with that of the brutally overbearing Goering. Konstantin von Neurath told the British Ambassador that Goering, not Hitler, was the Nazi Party’s real fascist.
For the Chancellor was not yet in full control. Indeed, some observers thought he was unlikely to survive. He lacked experience of government, while his followers were disunited; if many thought in terms of nationalism and anti-Semitism, others were genuine socialists. Moreover, the Social Democrats had 133 seats in the Reichstag and controlled the militant trade unions; the communists had 89, besides a formidable force of Red storm-troopers. Not only did Hitler lack a majority in both the Reichstag and the cabinet but the President was known to dislike him – and the army was loyal to Hindenburg.
The President had appointed Hitler Chancellor on the understanding that he would seek a majority in the Reichstag. Hitler used this as an excuse for demanding fresh elections, now that he could manipulate the machinery of government to influence voters. He pretended to the cabinet that they were necessary because the leader of the Catholic parties, Monsignor Kaas, had made ‘insuperable objections’ to entering a coalition. Hindenburg then agreed to dissolve the Reichstag.
In Prussia Goering, all-powerful as Minister for the Interior, made his own preparations for the elections. Within days of his appointment he had removed 22 out of 32 police chiefs; in February hundreds of inspectors and thousands of sergeants were dismissed,storm-troopers or Stahlhelm members taking their place. He ruled Prussia by decree, ignoring Papen. At the end of February he added 50,000 ‘special constables’, also recruited from storm-troopers and the Stahlhelm, to the Prussian police force. All were ordered to be merciless to ‘enemies of the State’ – Marxists.
At this time Major Goering was Chancellor Hitler’s right-hand man. He was essentially an adventurer, an amoral killer, if gifted with undeniable charm. (It was strong enough to suborn an American serviceman into giving him a poison capsule at Nuremberg.) Although dominated by Hitler, as Goebbels said, he had ‘as much to do with the Party [ideology] as a cow with radiology’. Nevertheless, ‘Fat Hermann’ was genuinely popular with the German masses. He saved several people, including Jews, but from amiability rather than any sense of justice or mercy; he would have sent them to their deaths just as cheerfully, had it been in his interest. Soon he was going to succumb to pathological self-indulgence, However, in 1933 and 1934 he was savagely effective.7
The elections would take place on 5 March. Dr Goebbels confided to his diary on 3 February: ‘We are able to employ all the means of the State. Radio and Press are at our disposal. We shall achieve a masterpiece of propaganda. Even money is not lacking this time.’ Goering extracted millions of marks from industrialists, promising them ‘the elections will certainly be the last for the next ten years, probably even for the next hundred’. (Meanwhile Hitler was assuring the electorate they could pass judgment on him after four.) The campaign was exceptionally savage, opposition newspapers being suppressed, candidates beaten up – not just communists but Catholics and Social Democrats as well. Fifty-one people were killed, and hundreds wounded.
On the night of 27 February the Reichstag’s debating chamber was burnt out. The arsonist was most probably a young Dutchman called Marinus van der Lubbe (who was later beheaded). Three prominent communists were also accused; nevertheless, in after years Goering bragged that it was he who had arranged the fire. Whoever did it, the Nazis knew just how to exploit the incident. The Chancellor persuaded the President to sign an emergency decree suspending civil liberties; ten thousand communists were then arrested, including Ernst Thälmann.
Despite these advantages, the NSDAP failed to secure a majority. Although it increased its vote by over 5 million, with 288 seats it had to rely on 52 Nationalists. But Goebbels boasted, ‘What do figures signify any longer? We are the masters of the Reich and of Prussia…’
Bavaria attempted to secede, its Prime Minister planning to appoint the popular Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht state commissioner. However, General von Epp and Heinrich Himmler – now police chief for all Bavaria – staged a swift coup with the local storm-troopers, Epp himself becoming state commissioner for Bavaria. State commissioners were appointed in four other states, while all state parliaments were dissolved by decree at the end of March. By then the Reichstag in Berlin had dissolved itself.
On 21 March Chancellor Hitler and President von Hindenburg met at Potsdam for the formal summoning of the Reichstag. Hitler addressed the deputies in the garrison church where Frederick the Great was buried; behind an empty throne for the Kaiser sat Crown Prince Wilhelm in pre-1914 uniform. The Chancellor’s speech was so cunningly phrased, the spectacle so regal, that every Nationalist deputy anticipated the imminent restoration of the Hohenzollern monarchy. Two days later the Reichstag met in the Kroll Opera House, where the NSDAP and the Nationalists – supported by the Catholics to whom the Chancellor promised new privilieges for their Church – voted an Enabling Bill which gave the government power to enact laws without the authority of the Reichstag. A law was also passed giving legal status to State Commissioners appointed by the Chancellor. It had taken Hitler just over fifty days to implement his Gleichschaltung, or political co-ordination, and to become absolute master of Germany.
The French who applauded Bonaparte’s assumption of power were those who had done well out of the Revolution, having acquired lands confiscated from the émigrés or the Church. (Perhaps surprisingly, at least 10 per cent were former nobles.) All feared they might lose their property – some their lives – under a restored monarchy or a fresh Jacobin Terror. They were joined by those who supported him because they were tired of revolution, of chronic instability at home and abroad, of inflation and threats of invasion. Many of this second group, probably most, believed that he would turn out to be a Monk – the general who restored Charles II – rather than a Cromwell. There was a third group, the army, who relished the prospect of war, of loot and promotion, and who welcomed being ruled by a soldier. No one envisaged the creation of a new type of monarchy.
In 1933 Germans supported the NSDAP for very similar reasons. The established political parties had shown themselves to be hopelessly ineffectual, while Hitler was undeniably convincing in his promises of no more inflation and no more unemployment. Those who wanted a Hohenzollern restoration – and there were many of them – believed that he would bring back the monarchy. As for the military, on the whole they were inclined to prefer so aggressive a patriot to any professional politician. Above all Ernst Thälmann’s communist street-fighters had been only too eloquent in threatening Bolshevik Terror. Even in the Nazi party, few anticipated the dreadful reality of the Führer State.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar’s laurel crown.
William Blake
Men felt certain in his company that they would get what they wanted. Which is why they followed him, just as men will follow anyone who inspires that sort of certainly. Don’t actors grow fond of managers from whom they expect a good part?
Wolfgang von Goethe on Napoleon