B006OAL1QM EBOK (15 page)

When they married on 12th December 1931 Hitler was present and acted as best man. He very much approved of Magda's social position and wealth. It was the beginning of a close personal friendship, and there are those who claim that Magda had really wanted to marry Hitler himself.
²⁰
She was to remain for the rest of her life a member of the intimate circle of women friends who gave Hitler the platonic relaxation for which his particular form of masculinity craved. To her he was
‘mein Führer’;
she was the
‘gnädige Frau’
whose hand was always kissed. She was utterly devoted to the Führer and through him to the power politics of the Nazis; she came to identify herself completely with the regime. Hitler was charmed by her elegance, her femininity, her wit and good humour, and he respected her proud devotion as a mother.

She was an excellent hostess and she delighted in her capacity to draw Hitler to her hearth. He was to be alternately her guest and her host until in the years of tribulation he gradually isolated himself and became a recluse. But in 1932 these sterner years were far ahead and never anticipated. Goebbels' happy bride opened her luxurious flat to her husband's friends. It was situated on the Reichskanzlerplatz which was only too soon to become the Adolf Hitler Platz. With the Kaiserhof it became for a while the chief centre for the intrigues that led to the victory of 1933.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Fight for Power

S
ECOND
in the series of Goebbels' published diaries—and the last, in fact, that he was to edit for publication himself—comes
Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei,
which first appeared in 1934 from Hitler's own publishing house, the Eher Verlag. This diary covers the critical period in the history of National Socialism, from 1st January 1932 to 1st May 1933. when Hitler agreed to Goebbels' idea that the great day of Communist celebration should also become the day set aside for public rejoicing at the advent of the Third Reich.

This period was to be one of the hardest in Goebbels' life of service to his master. It could be reasonably debated that Hitler might never have gained the position to manœuvre himself and the Party to power without the outstanding ability, tireless energy and political acumen of his campaign manager. There is no doubt that during this time, with its strange atmosphere of mingled success and frustration, Hitler leaned heavily on the man dedicated to help him. He spent endless time in the Goebbels' flat on the Reichskanzlerplatz. Within twelve months the Nazis fought five major election campaigns. Those for the Presidency involved two successive ballots on 13th March and 10th April 1932; in the first Hindenburg failed to get the absolute majority he needed; in the second Hitler was finally defeated, obtaining 36.8 per cent as against Hindenburg's 53 per cent of the votes. Then the Nazis fought three hard campaigns to increase their representation in the State administrations and the Reichstag. In these further contests their fortunes varied. In the State elections of 23rd April 1932 they became the strongest party in the Prussian Diet, but fell short of a majority in Würtemberg, Bavaria and Hamburg. In the General Election for the Reichstag on 31st July, the Nazis won 230 seats, making them the most powerful single party in the Government, but without an absolute majority. This majority was still held by the other parties, and in particular by the Social Democrats. Göring became Speaker and attempted on 12th September to out-manœuvre Chancellor von Papen's determination to dissolve the Reichstag for failing to give him its vote of confidence, by preventing him from speaking. However, the President supported the dissolution, and a further General Election took place in November 1932. In this election the Nazis lost ground, their representation falling to 196—they dropped in all two million votes. It is significant that the crisis in unemployment had reached its peak by the middle of 1932, when the Nazi vote was high; now that unemployment was reduced the Nazi vote declined. Nevertheless, they remained the largest single party in the Reich Government. On 17th November, von Papen resigned as Chancellor, and there then followed the final struggle for power between Hitler (who laid his terms for an authoritarian government before Hindenburg on 23rd November) and von Schleicher, who in fact became Chancellor for a few weeks on 2nd December, only to be forced to resign on 28th January 1933. On 30th January Hitler himself was appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg, and there began the long reign of terror which was to end only in the rubble of Berlin twelve years later.

Behind this list of cold facts with their neat succession of dates lay one of the most bitter struggles of our time. Excitement, intrigue, the traditional calculation of the old-style diplomats pitted against the determination of Hitler to out-manœuvre them, shaped what was happening immediately beneath the surface. The vast, aged father-figure of Hindenburg presided over this political melting-pot from which the future of Germany was to be cast. In the foreground were the statesmen and militarists opposed to the upstart Hitler though prepared to use him, as they hoped, for their own purposes, men such as Chancellors von Papen and von Schleicher; in the background were the various pressures exerted by the bankers, the industrialists and the trade unions. The political problems round which the struggle for ascendancy turned included the payment of reparations, the unbalanced budget at home and the cost of unemployment, and Germany's anxiety at what she regarded as a dangerous and undignified state of disarmament. As far as German militarism was concerned, von Papen hoped that out of the disagreements of the Disarmament Conference at Geneva (which opened on 2nd February 1932 and dragged on for months) Germany might gain a recognised right to the rearmament that the
Reichswehr
had in fact already achieved more or less in secret. Meanwhile, the private armies of Hitler, the S.A. and the S.S., were themselves the subject of much internal dispute. The Reich President directed by an Emergency Decree dated 13th April 1932 that these semi-military organisations were in future to be prohibited. Two days later he further prohibited the Red Front organisation that had been set up by the Social Democrats, the Republican
Reichsbanner
formations and the trade unions to oppose Hitler should he drop his mask of legality and resort to force in order to gain the ultimate power. Later, no 14th June, the ban on the S.A. was revoked by von Papen, who had just assumed the Chancellorship and desired to make what terms he could with the National Socialists. As the German Government drew further to the right, Hitler became increasingly in their eyes a man to win over to their own particular authoritarian camp. Indeed, they were eager to avail themselves of the nationalistic mass movement which Hitler had managed to build up, and which they hoped to exploit for their own ends. However, it was to become clear in the long run that only one thing interested the Nazi leader—absolute power for himself. He played the game of diplomatic intrigue with von Papen because it suited him to gain the final ascendancy by overtly legal rather than by overtly illegal methods. Like a magnet, Hitler gradually drew power towards himself, negotiating at this crucial time with an intuitive skill. In the summer of 1932, when Hitler's voting strength was at its peak, there were seven million men on the dole; half the nation could be said to be living near starvation level and many were ready to turn to a leader who offered them some revolutionary form of change in their status.

Behind all this intrigue, the active little figure of Goebbels ceaselessly planned and worked for Hitler. If the Kaiserhof Hotel was the Party's administrative headquarters, Magda Goebbels' comfortable flat in the Reichskanzlerplatz became Hitler's centre for relaxation, conversation and discussion of future ideas and tactics. Goebbels gave end- less advice and counsel, and once a decision was reached that affected him sprang into action day or night. He was chiefly concerned with the election campaigns, the planning of propaganda, the writing of articles and the ceaseless travel that his arduous speaking tours involved. He was for the most part in a buoyant mood, as well he might be. Barely eight years before he had been a penniless and rejected author. Now he had already been a member of the Reichstag for four years, and he was the devoted confidant of his leader at the time when the Party was within sight of gaining supreme power. To add to all this, he had recently married a wealthy and attractive woman. The lonely life in rooms was over. He could write down 1st January 1932 in his diary with happiness and confidence.

It was, he claims, he himself who urged Hitler to test his personal standing with the German people by running for President.
¹
One can well imagine him leaning forward pressing his case. “I strongly urge him to come forward as candidate himself,” he writes on 19th January. Hitler remained silent, only giving his decision to stand at the end of the month. This turned out, however, to be provisional; Hitler was still hesitating even by 12th February. There is no doubt that this hesitancy was largely strategic. Hindenburg himself did not announce his candidacy until 15th February. Hitler finally decided he would do the same on 22nd February. “The chief thing is now to break silence,” writes Goebbels. “The Leader gives me permission to do so at the Sportpalast tonight. Thank God!” The long interval of indecision had been a propagandist's nightmare—"this everlasting waiting is almost demoralising”, he laments. Now he could go to town at last:

Sportpalast packed. General meeting of the members of the northern, eastern and western districts. Immense ovations at the very outset. When after about an hour's preparation I publicly proclaim that the Leader will come forward as candidate for the Presidency, a storm of deafening applause rages for nearly ten minutes. Wild ovation for the Leader. The audience rises with shouts of joy. They nearly raise the roof. An overwhelming spectacle!
²

Thus Goebbels lived closely to the events themselves and played his daily part in shaping them. He was never to be so close to Hitler again until the last tragic days drove them underground together, seeking what little comfort they could from Carlyle's story of the miraculous delivery of Frederick the Great from the shadows of defeat.

Goebbels' adoration of Hitler reached its height at this time, as well it might. His own ambition fed on Hitler's; he played the prophet to Hitler's God, before whom his personal vanity turned into that of the devoted servant aware of his genius for service. His attitude to Hitler is rather like that of a head prefect who is specially favoured by the headmaster. He basks in the sunshine of favour which is all the sweeter because Hitler spends his evenings in Goebbels' own home, or the home with which his new wife had presented him. He delights in the confidences which Hitler gave to him, and to him alone:

Return to Munich with the Leader. It is delightful to be alone with him, when he can speak freely and naturally. He is the best storyteller I know.

He is splendid to work with, and belongs to those few who, once having given their confidence, leave one to carry on freely by oneself, untrammelled…. The hostile press depicts him quite falsely and gives rise to a very erroneous idea of him. There is nobody in the world less qualified for the rôle of tyrant than Hitler.

Not only has he the gift of rapid and correct decision, but personally he has an indescribable aura about him of kindness and hearty good fellowship, and so captivates everybody who approaches him.
³

Magda in her turn mothered Hitler, encouraging him to spend his nights at her home in endless talk. She even prepared meals for him herself and took them to the Kaiserhof when in 1932 he feared there was a plot to poison him.
⁴

The picture of Hitler that Goebbels builds up for the public is that of a hero, a mythological figure. And yet the figure is, of course, deeply human—talking at night to his friends, visiting Magda in hospital during her illness, when her husband has to be away on duty, responding to children who “stretch up their tiny hands to him”, clasping the hand of a dying man of the S.A., and, moreover, the sensitive, artistic man who delights to hear music with a little circle of his friends at night. This particular form of heroism acts as a cushion against which Hitler the politician and Hitler the knight-at-arms can rest in the imagination of his public. For Goebbels also observes, on 4th February 1932, virtually a year before the Chancellorship, “how surely and unerringly the Leader adjusts himself to coming power. He has not the slightest doubt about it, but speaks, acts, and feels as if it were already ours.” When Hitler loses the Presidential election, Goebbels telephones him knowing how composed his Leader will be. Hitler merely tells him the fight must go on. “That gives us all new courage,” writes Goebbels. “If the Leader does not weaken neither will the Organisation. He is masterly at a crisis.”
⁵

And so the legend is built up. Hitler, the crack shot, at private pistol practice; Hitler, the mountain-lover of Berchtesgaden, making momentous decisions away from the crowds in the cities; Hitler, the great orator, descending from the clouds in his aircraft as part of Goebbels' scheme for establishing his omnipotence.

It is with pride that Goebbels notes that, while other passengers inhaled oxygen, Hitler remained serene and unperturbed at the height of six thousand metres. Shared with Hitler, the heights were “radiant and luminous”.

For the activities of the other leaders among the Nazis—all except Gregor Strasser—Goebbels has little space; Göring is allowed a passing tribute as a “valuable help” to Hitler. But it is characteristic that the diary form of record so beloved by Goebbels permits his own personal share in these momentous events to take precedence over everything else. To Strasser alone, his former employer, the man who had brought him into the Party, he constantly returns in order to revile him for his defeatism. He is accused of disloyalty, of becoming the centre of the clique anxious to give up the fight, of ineffective speaking in the Reichstag, of popularity with the enemy, of attempting to disintegrate the Party, of being sunk in pessimism. He is, says Goebbels, “the chameleon of National Socialism”.
⁶
On 8th December 1932 he resigned all his posts in the Party, opposing Hitler's policy of ‘useless opposition’ and advocating compromise with the Government. Behind For hours the Leader paces up and down the room in the hotel. It is obvious that he is thinking very hard. He is embittered and deeply wounded by this unfaithfulness. Suddenly he stops and says: “If the Party once falls to pieces, I shall shoot myself without more ado.” A dreadful threat, and most depressing.
⁷

In the final downfall of Strasser, Goebbels without doubt played a significant part. After the setback to the Nazis in the November election, there was a real opportunity to get rid of Hitler and secret discussions were going on to bring about a relatively left-wing coalition between Schleicher, the Chancellor, Leipart, representing the trade unions, and Strasser, representing the wing of the National Socialists prepared to bring into a coalition Government all that could be called rational in the Party. This would have meant the end of Hitler's all-or-nothing attitude, and the passing of the leadership of the Party over to the more moderate Strasser, who regarded National Socialism as a revolutionary movement for the good of Germany and not, like Hitler, as a channel through which to gain a personal dictatorship for himself. Goebbels was determined at all costs to smash what he regarded as a conspiracy within the Party, all the more when, on 3rd December, a local election in Thuringia showed a drop of about 40 per cent in the Nazi vote.