Authors: Joachim C. Fest
    In the above-mentioned study H. A. Turner has demonstrated that the very passages historians have hitherto regarded as especially relevant are among those parts of the book that Fritz Thyssen, the putative author, never saw, a fact Reves himself has confirmed. It further reduces the book's value as a source that, for example, the passage in which Thyssen speaks of the “deep impression” Hitler's Düsseldorf speech made upon the industrialists present does not appear in the stenographic record of the interview; thus it is obviously a later addition; moreover, Thyssen explicitly objected to it after the war. The other so frequently cited passage, in which Thyssen gives a figure of 2 million marks as the size of the Nazi party's annual subsidy, was likewise more or less pulled out of a hat, as Turner convincingly demonstrates. Concerning the size of the actual payments, cf. Turner's conclusions: “After weighing all the facts we must recognize that the financial subsidies from industry were overwhelmingly directed
against
the Nazis” (p. 25). We are still justified in assuming that the greater part of the funds available to the NSDAP came from membership dues. According to a police report, these were so high that they kept a good many persons from joining the party; see F. J. Heyen,
NationalSozialismus im Alltag,
pp. 22 and 63.
19. Thus Eberhard Czichon,
Wer verhalf Hitler zur Macht?
as one example among many similar writers on the subject; see also the review by Eike Henning, “Industrie und Faschismus,” in:
Neue politische Literatur,
1970:4, pp. 432 ff., with many other citations and references. Czichon tends to prefer general references and unpublished documents, so that his sources in many cases can scarcely be checked. Frequently, too, he indulges in apparently deliberate deceptions, inaccuracies, and faulty references. Ernst Nolte has shown that Czichon reports a payment from IG Farben to the NSDAP in such a way that the reader would think the payment had been made before the seizure of power, whereas the document itself shows that the money was paid in 1944 (Ernst Nolte,
Der Nationalsozialismus,
p. 190). Czichon also asserts, referring to Bracher,
Auflösung,
p. 695, that after talking with Papen in Cologne on January 4, 1933, Hitler met with Kirdorf and Thyssen; but this passage is not to be found in Bracher. There is a similar misleading reference on Czichon's part to
Die Machtergreifung
by H. O. Meissner and H. Wilde. More examples are given by Eike Henning,
op. cit.,
p. 439.
20. The speech was given on January 26, not, as is usually stated, on January 27. Cf. Otto Dietrich,
Mit Hitler in die Macht,
pp. 44, 46. G. W. F. Hallgarten also stresses the differing attitudes among various branches of industry; see his
Hitler;
also his
Dämonen oder Retter,
pp. 215 f.; also Fetcher, “Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus: Zur Kritik des sowjet-marxistischen Faschismusbegriffs,”
Politische Vierteljahresschrift,
1962:1, p. 55.
21. R. Dahrendorf,
Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland,
p. 424. Dahrendorf arguesâand he is surely right about the motivesâthat the big businessmen supported Hitler in the same way that they granted financial aid to every right-wing party that had prospects of coming to power, not at all as part of a plot. Their attitude, that is, was largely defensive; they were thinking only of reinsurance or, to quote a famous remark by Hugo Stinnes in 1919, they were paying “a social-insurance premium against uprisings.” Hallgarten, too, concludes that although Hitler was vigorously supported by industry's funds, this by no means signified that he was “made” by industry; Hallgarten, cf.
Dämonen,
p. 113. We might say, then, that although “industry” did not put Hitler in power, he would scarcely have attained power against its declared will.
22. The full text of the speech is given in Domarus, pp. 68 If.
23. Speech to the Hamburg Nationalist Club in the ballroom of the Hotel Atlantic, February 28, 1926. The transcript notes at this point “tempestuous applause”; cf. Werner Jochmann,
Im Kampf um die Macht,
pp. 103, 114.
24. Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919â1939, 2nd series, vol. I, p. 512,
n.
2.
25. Arnold Brecht,
Vorspiel zum Schweigen,
p. 180, points out that the authors of the Constitution deliberately renounced taking over the provision in the American Constitution that only native-born citizens can become candidates for the highest office in the land. Ironically, they did so in order not to exclude their Austrian brothers. Incidentally, the efforts to obtain citizenship for Hitler began as early as the autumn of 1929. At that time Frick unsuccessfully attempted to have him naturalized in Munich. Six months later, by which time Frick had advanced to the position of a Minister in Thuringia, Frick tried to obtain German citizenship for Hitler by appointing him to a civil-service post. The post Frick had in mind was that of a police inspector in Hildburghausen, which happened to be vacant. But the situation seemed a bit ludicrous, and Hitler called off the effort. Next Klagges tried to have Hitler appointed to a teaching post at the technical college in Brunswick, but this too failed. A solution was finally found: Hitler was appointed Regierungsrat with the Berlin delegation from Brunswick.
26. Goebbels,
Kaiserhof,
pp. 22 ff.
27.
Ibid.,
pp. 120 f.
28. On this whole subject cf. Frank, pp. 90 f.; Hanfstaengl, pp. 231 ff. The reference to the unwritten law that no one must mention his niece's name in Hitler's presence is based on information from Albert Speer.
29. For the different versions cf. Hansfstaengl, pp. 231 ff.; Heiden,
Hitler
I, p. 371; Görlitz and Quint, pp. 32211: Frank, p. 90. The complaints by Gauleiter Munder of Württemberg that Hitler was being excessively diverted by the company of his niece from his political duties were certainly a significant factor in Munder's removal.
30. Cf. on this and what followed: Frank, p. 90. Ernst Hanfstaengl (p. 242) relates a story that he alleges was bandied about in the Hitler family, to the effect that Geli had been made pregnant by a Jewish drawing master from Linz. Hanfstaengl also reports that Geli's body was found with a broken nose, but he gives no supporting evidence. In response to an inquiry Hanfstaengl informed the author that this had been generally known at the time, but so far as I know the fact appears nowhere in the scholarly literature.
31.
The Dual State
is the title of a study by Ernst Fraenkel (London and New York, 1941).
32.
Mein Kampf,
pp. 474 ff.
33.
Ibid.,
pp. 478 f.
34. Krebs,
Tendenzen,
p. 154; also Preiss, pp. 45 f.
35.
Mein Kampf,
p. 473.
36. H. R. Knickerbocker,
The German Crisis,
p. 227.
37. Heinrich Brüning,
Memoiren 1918â1934,
p. 195.
38. Harry Graf Kessler,
In the Twenties,
p. 426; also Werner Jochmann,
Nationalsozialismus und Revolution,
p. 405; and Helmut Heiber,
Joseph Goebbels,
p. 65.
39. Preiss, p. 179 (speech of March 7, 1932).
40. Harold Nicolson,
Diaries and Letters 1930â1939,
English ed., entry for January 24, 1932.
41. Goebbels,
Kaiserhof,
p. 87. The make-up of the Nazi Reichstag faction after the July elections is quite interesting. There were 230 Nazi deputies altogether. Of these, fifty-five were blue-collar and white-collar workers, fifty peasants, forty-three independent representatives of commerce, the crafts and industry, twenty-nine functionaries, twenty civil servants, twelve teachers, and nine former army officers. Cf.
Reichstags-Handbuch,
6. Wahlperiode, Berlin 1932, p. 270.
42. For details cf. Bracher,
Auflösung,
pp. 522 ff.; also W. Conze, “Zum Sturz Brünings,” in VJHfZ 1952:3, pp. 261 ff.; also H. Brüning,
Memoiren,
pp. 273 and 597 ff. The importance of the information on the favorable turn in the disarmament negotiations has been challenged by historians; there are indications that Brüning overestimated it. For a characterization of the pressures on Hindenburg at Gut Neudeck cf. Theodor Eschenburg, “The Role of the Personality in the Crisis of the German Republic” in Holborn, ed.,
Republic to Reich,
pp. 43 f.
43. The statistics on the dead and wounded in the bloody weeks after the lifting of the ban on the SA differ greatly. Cf., for example, Wilhelm Hoegner,
Die verratene Republik,
pp. 312 f.; also Friedrich Stampfer,
Die vierzehn Jahre der ersten deutschen Republik,
p. 629, and Bullock, pp. 213 f., who refers to the account given by Albert Grzesinski. Reliable figures on the victims have not been drawn up to this day. The “Roll of Honor of Those Killed for the Movement,” which was later published by H. Volz, gives the following figures for the Nazis: 1929, eleven dead; 1930, seventeen; 1931, forty-three; 1932, eighty-seven.
44. Preiss, p. 194.
45.
Völkischer Beobachter,
August 21â22, 1932. Hitler's scornful reference to Hindenburg's age was made in the speech of September 4, 1932. In context it went: “When today the President of the Reich is presented to me as an opponent, it makes me laugh. I will endure the struggle longer than the President.” Preiss, p. 189.
46. Cf. the statistics in Bracher,
Auflösung,
pp. 645 ff.; also the evidence bearing chiefly on the social situation (unemployment) in H. Bennecke,
Wirtschaftliche Depression,
pp. 158 ff. Bennecke's statistics likewise bring to light the remarkable fact that there was no direct, at best an indirect connection between unemployment and voting for the NSDAP. The percentage of votes netted by Hitler's party was much greater in the rural areas, which did not suffer nearly so severely from the effects of the Depression, than in, say, the Ruhr district or even Berlin, where the Nazi percentage of the vote did not reach as much as 25 per centâapproximately half that of the NSDAP vote in Schleswig-Holstein.
47. According to Wheeler-Bennett,
The Nemesis of Power,
p. 256. For the provisions of the planned constitutional reform, cf. Bracher,
Auflösung,
pp. 537 ff. and 658 f.
48. Cited in Bernhard Schwertfeger,
Rätsel um Deutschland,
p. 173. Hitler's letter, mentioned in the next paragraph, was called a “masterpiece” by Goebbels and is in fact a good example of Hitler's tactics, psychology, and faculty for hair-splitting; it is printed in Domarus, pp. 154 if. According to Brüning,
Memoiren,
p. 634, however, the letter was ghosted in the Hotel Kaiserhof by Hjalmar Schacht.
49. Franz von Papen,
Der Wahrheit eine Gasse,
p. 250. Here, too, on page 249, are details about the war-games study as given by then Lieutenant Colonel Ott.
50. Rauschning,
Gespräche,
p. 254. The following remark of Hitler's may be found in the
Tischgespräche,
p. 364. On the resigned attitude of his antagonists, see also Eschenburg, in Holborn,
Republic to Reich,
pp. 47 ff.
51. Harold Laski, in the
Daily Herald,
November 21, 1931, as quoted in Viscount Templewood,
Nine Troubled Years,
p. 121.
52. Bullock, p. 243.
53. Bracher,
Auflösung,
p. 691. Hitler himself conceded that the Cologne meeting had been a turning point; at the time, he commented, he had “gathered the impression that his affairs stood very well.” Cf.
Tischgespräche,
p. 365.
    The version of the meeting presented here has, incidentally, not gone unchallenged. Papen, in particular, has vigorously denounced it (see his letter to
Das Parlament,
111:14, April 8, 1953). However, the account given in his self-justificatory
Memoirs
makes considerable demands upon the reader's credulity. Among other things, he tries to make the meeting appear quite accidental and casual; he repeatedly stresses that its sole purpose was to obtain information. This version contradicts Schroeder's declaration, in a sworn affidavit, that only a few weeks before Hitler had refused to negotiate with Papen. Even if Papen's later assertion is correct, that no offer was made, the fact remains that Hitler felt himself to have been directly addressed by Hindenburg through Papen. At the very least the offer existed in the person of Papen; as a diplomat he should have known this, and undoubtedly did know it. Furthermore, Papen alleges that he conducted the conversation in the interests of Schleicher, and for the sake of supporting Schleicher. Moreover, Papen further alleges, the plan for a duumvirate referred not to Hitler and himself, but to Hitler and Schleicher. If nothing else, then, the anxious secrecy surrounding the meeting reveals the absurdity of this version.
54. The estate, purchased principally with funds supplied by industry, was not given formally to Hindenburg, but to his son, in order to evade the inheritance tax. Hindenburg also worried a good deal about Papen's coup of July 20, 1932. Brüning has recorded: “Erwin Planck, who visited me in the hospital one evening four days before Schleicher's resignation from the chancellorship, told me about the difficulties the administration was encountering because of Hindenburg's fear of indictment, and I have been told that this was one reason for Hindenburg's finally consenting to appoint Hitler Chancellor.” Cf. H. Brüning, “Ein Brief,” in:
Deutsche Rundschau,
1947, p. 15. In the summer of 1935 Brüning added, in conversation with Count Kessler, that Oskar von Hindenburg “slithered into all sorts of murky stock exchange dealings and consequently found himself in a position where he was constantly afraid of ârevelations.' ” Count Kessler,
In the Twenties,
p. 469.
55. According to Brüning,
Memoiren,
p. 645, who had his information from Schleicher, Hindenburg allegedly said: “Thank you, Herr General, for everything you have done for the Fatherland. Now, with God's help, let us see how the cat jumps.”