Khrushchev admitted to the state abuse in his cel-ebrated 1956 speech. By then more than 18 mil-lion had been herded into these camps and, 15million survived – 3 million, largely innocents, losttheir lives, families were destroyed, childrenorphaned. The brutal reality of Soviet rule wasdenied by armchair communists in the West andadmirers of Stalin, until the truth had to be facedwell after the end of the Second World War. Thematerial loss to Russia of skilled people was incal-culable. The grip of the secret police under thehated Beria was not loosened until after Stalin’sdeath. There were thousands willing to do Stalin’sbidding and commit all these crimes. He justifiedthem by claiming there were conspiracies with out-side Western powers, with Japan, Germany, Britainand France, to sabotage and attack the SovietUnion. Did he believe it? Stalin thought ittheoretically possible and that was enough.Stalin had little experience of foreign travel.Behind his notion of Russia’s correct foreign pol-icy two assumptions or principles can be discerned:Russia’s defence in a hostile capitalist world mustcome first at all costs; second, the behaviour ofother powers could be deduced by a Leninistanalysis. Not only were these powers motivated bya joint hostility to the only communist state, butthey were also locked in an imperial struggle forsupremacy among themselves. Thus Soviet theo-reticians, including Stalin in the 1920s, believed inthe likelihood of war between Britain and the US.Later, in the early 1930s, Stalin hoped that rivalryin eastern Asia would lead the US to checkJapanese expansion in China. But Soviet hopeswere disappointed by American non-interventionduring the Manchurian crisis of 1931–3.The Soviet view of the West was grotesquelydistorted. The Western social democrats were castin the role of ‘right deviationists’ or ‘social fas-cists’ from 1929 to 1934, more dangerous thanthe real fascists. The Nazis were seen as a short-lived right-wing excess against which the workerswould soon react. There was a lingering fear of Poland and its ally, capitalist France, and of‘hostile’ Britain. Thus, from the West as well as from Asia, the Soviet Union appeared to be in continuing and great danger.From 1934 to 1938 there was some readjust-ment of Soviet policy and a rapprochement withthe Western democracies. The Soviet Union wasrecognised finally by the US when Rooseveltagreed to establish diplomatic relations in 1933.In 1934 the Soviet Union joined the League ofNations, and the Commissar for Foreign Affairs,Maxim Litvinov, now preached the need for col-lective security against Hitler’s Germany andMussolini’s Italian expansionist policies. The gen-uine search for peace did not mean, however, thatthe Soviet Union was ready to go to war in alliancewith the Western democracies against Germany.Rather, the Russians wanted to avoid a war break-ing out altogether, and believed a firm standwould deter Hitler and Mussolini. If it did not, asit did not in September 1939, the Soviet leaderswere determined to avoid being involved in warthemselves. If there had to be a war – a situationfull of danger for Russia – then at least it should beconfined to a war between the Western powers. Aslong as Nazi Germany could be prevented fromturning first on Russia, then the Soviet Unionwould remain neutral and appease Germany toany extent necessary to preserve peace. But thenightmare of the Soviet leadership was a reverse ofthat situation, that France and Britain would standaside while Hitler conquered Lebensraum (livingspace) in the east. What is more, would theUkrainians and Georgians and other non-Russiannationalities fight for Russia, when the peoplewere suffering from such terrible communistrepression? While socialism was still in transition,Russia could not afford war without risking thevery survival of socialism.The Soviet Union attempted to create a‘barrier of peace’ by signing non-aggressiontreaties with its neighbours, of whom the mostimportant was Poland. Until the autumn of 1938Hitler employed no direct violence near Russia’sborders. In eastern Asia the threat of war was metby a combination of policies, in the first place byappeasing Japan: in 1935 Russia sold its interestin the Chinese Eastern Railway to the Japanesepuppet state of Manchukuo. It was lessened, fur-thermore, by encouraging Chiang Kai-shek’snationalist resistance to Japan in the hope thatJapan would then be too busy fighting China to1SOVIET RUSSIA 179
turn on Russia as well. When necessary, however,the Soviet Union did not hesitate to resist mili-tarily any direct Japanese attacks on Soviet spheresof influence, on the People’s Republic ofMongolia and along the Russo-Chinese frontier.There was full-scale fighting between Soviet andJapanese troops in 1938 and in the summer of1939. These were no mere ‘incidents’. MarshalZhukov in 1939 had the advantage of moderntanks and troops far better armed than theJapanese. The Japanese suffered a severe defeatand left behind 18,000 dead. Thereafter, theyavoided open conflict with Russia. The SovietUnion and Japan, in fact, remained at peace untilit suited Stalin, shortly before Japan’s surrender,to attack the Japanese in China in 1945.In the West, the Soviet Union did what it couldto persuade France and Britain to stand up toHitler and Mussolini. The menace they presentedto peace and so to the Soviet Union was belatedlyrecognised in 1934. The Soviet Union thensigned a treaty of mutual assistance with France inMay 1935 to strengthen the deterrent alignment.The Soviet Union also joined in the League’s inef-fectual sanctions to deter Mussolini from con-quering Abyssinia. In 1934 the new United Fronttactics were acquiesced in when France itselfseemed in danger of succumbing to fascism. Butat the same time the communist leadership wasalways conscious of, and never wished to repeat,the experiences of the First World War whenRussia was cast in the role of providing militaryrelief to the West and, in the effort, went down indefeat. Russian policy aimed to maintain a carefulbalance and to avoid war by encouraging the willof France and Britain to resist. In line with thisoverall strategy the Russian help afforded to theRepublican side during the Spanish Civil War wascarefully limited to exclude any possible risk ofwar. It was left to the Comintern to organise theInternational Brigades to fight as volunteers onthe Republican side. But Soviet technical advisers,tanks, aircraft and supplies played a role in the war.The year 1937 saw Stalin’s military purge at itsheight. Russia was more unready than ever to facemilitary attack from the West. The Soviet Unionalmost frantically attempted to construct a diplo-matic peace front in 1938. It failed. Britain andFrance went to Munich in September and con-sented to the partition of Czechoslovakia. TheRussians, meanwhile, had promised to supportthe Czechs only to the extent of their limitedtreaty obligations. Whatever Russian aid mighthave been forthcoming if the Czechs had fought,it appears certain that Stalin would not haverisked war with Germany. Simultaneously Sovietdiplomats sought to stiffen French and Britishresistance to Hitler by warning their governmentsthat Hitler meant to defeat them. Stalin’s faith in‘collective security’, probably never strong, didnot survive after the German occupation ofCzechoslovakia in March 1939. It was unlikelythat peace could be preserved much longerbetween Hitler and his neighbours, and Stalin’sprime objective remained to stop the SovietUnion from going to war. And so after simulta-neous and secret negotiations with France andBritain on the one hand and Germany on theother – a double insurance policy – Stalin, havingdelayed as long as he dared, concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany on 23 August1939. Stalin had calculated correctly and kept theSoviet Union at peace. The Germans extracted aprice in requiring supplies from the Soviet Union.The war that began in September 1939, Stalinbelieved, afforded the Soviet Union a longbreathing space during which communism wouldstrengthen the Soviet Union’s capacity to meetthe dangers still to come. It lasted barely twoyears.180 THE CONTINUING WORLD CRISIS, 1929–39
In retrospect there can be no minimising theimportance of one historical date – 30 January1933, when Adolf Hitler was appointed chan-cellor of Germany by President von Hindenburg.Within eight years of his coming to power,Germany had conquered continental Europe fromthe Channel coast to the gates of Moscow. It wasnot a conquest and occupation such as hadoccurred in the Great War. In German-occupiedEurope some 10 million people, including 2 mil-lion children, were deliberately murdered. Hitler’sReich was a reversion into barbarism. Racism assuch was nothing new, nor was it confined toGermany. These doctrines attracted groups of sup-porters in most of Europe, including France andBritain, in South America and in the US. But it wasin Germany that the resources of a modern indus-trial state enabled criminal leaders to murder andenslave millions. Until the concentration campsrevealed their victims the world was inclined tobelieve that a country once in the forefront ofWestern culture, the Germany of Goethe, couldnot so regress. This faith in civilisation was mis-placed. How was it possible? For just one of themore easily discernible parts of the explanation wemust turn to the politics of Weimar Germany,which failed to provide stable governments untilpolitical democracy ceased to function altogetherafter the onset of the economic crisis of 1929.From 1920 to 1930 no party was strongenough on its own to form a government andenjoy the necessary majority in parliament. Butuntil 1928 a majority in parliament eitherfavoured or at least tolerated the continuation ofthe parliamentary system of government. TheCommunist Party was too weak in its parliamen-tary representation to endanger the Republic dur-ing the middle years of Weimar prosperity from1924 to 1928; its strength was appreciably smallerthan that of the deputies of the moderate SocialistParty. Indeed, the Socialists steadily gained votesand deputies in the Reichstag. From 100 in May1924 their representation increased to 153 in1928. Significantly, the Communist Party fell inthe same period from 62 to 54 Reichstag deputies.On the extreme anti-democratic right the Nazisdid even worse in parliamentary elections; in May1924 there were 32 Nazis elected to the Reichstagand in 1928 only 12. Even the conservatives, theNationalist Party, who formed the opposition formost of the time from 1918 to 1930, declined innumber from 95 to 73.Weimar Germany appeared to gain in strength.This was not really so. The Nazis were winningadherents wherever there was distress. Even duringthe years of comparative prosperity, many of thefarmers did not share the benefits of industrialexpansion. Then governments were discredited bytheir short life-spans – on average only eightmonths. Parties appeared to be locked in purelyselfish battles of personal advantage. The SocialDemocratic Party must share in the blame for theinstability of the Weimar coalition governments. It preferred to stay in opposition and not to 1Chapter 17THE FAILURE OF PARLIAMENTARYDEMOCRACY IN GERMANY AND THE RISEOF HITLER, 1920–34
participate in the business of ruling the country.The difficulties of any party with socialist aspira-tions joining a coalition were genuinely great.Coalition meant compromise on policy. In anycoalition with the centre and moderate right theSocial Democrats could not hope to pass socialistmeasures and they were afraid that cooperationwith the ‘bourgeois’ parties would discredit themwith their electoral base, which consisted mainly ofurban workers and trade unionists. From an elec-toral party point of view these tactics appeared topay off as their increasing representation in theReichstag shows. But the price paid was the dis-crediting of parliamentary government, for theexclusion from government of both the Nationa-lists and the Communists and the absence of theSocialists meant that the coalitions of the centreand mainly moderate right were minority govern-ments at the mercy of the Socialists.In government there was thus a permanentsense of crisis, the coalition partners who formedthe governments, especially the smaller parties,becoming more concerned about how the unpop-ularity of a particular government policy mightaffect their own supporters than about the stabil-ity of government as a whole. This situationimperilled the standing of the whole parliamen-tary democratic system. After 1925 there seemedto be only one method by which the parties ofthe centre and moderate right, saddled with theresponsibility of government, could logicallyattain stability and a majority, and that was tomove further to the right. So its right wing cameto predominate the Centre Party, enabling theconservatives, the Nationalist Party, to join coali-tion cabinets with them. The coalition cabinetswere also very much cabinets of ‘personalities’relying on presidential backing and only loosely182 THE CONTINUING WORLD CRISIS, 1929–39Prussian honour allied to new barbarism at the opening of the Reichstag in the Garrison Church of Potsdam,21 March 1933. Hitler avoids wearing a uniform whenever appearing with Field Marshal Hindenburg. © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
connected with, and dependent on, the backingof the Reichstag parties.When in 1928 the Socialists at last joined abroad coalition excluding the more extreme rightthey seemed to be remedying their earlier mis-taken policy; but it was very late in the history ofthe parliamentary Republic. The coalition part-ners, especially the Centre Party, had alreadymoved so far to the right that they now felt ill atease working with the Socialists under a Socialistchancellor. This so-called grand coalition had theutmost difficulty holding together for the twoyears (1928–30) the government lasted, plungingfrom one internal crisis to the next. The influenceof the brilliantly successful foreign minister,Gustav Stresemann, just managed to keep theright wing of the coalition in government. Tocarry through his diplomacy of persuading theAllies to relax their grip on Germany, he neededa stable government behind him. But the coali-tion did not survive his death in October 1929.The three years from 1928 to 1930 werecritical in the decline of Weimar Germany.Economic distress was becoming severe amongthe small farmers. Then followed the Wall StreetCrash and its chain reaction in Europe. Industrialoutput contracted and unemployment soared.The Nazis were able to capitalise on the grievancesof the small farmers and then as the depressionwidened and deepened they exploited the resent-ments of the lower-middle classes, the shopkeep-ers and white-collar workers who were facinguncertainties and financial hardships and whofeared a Bolshevik revolution from the unem-ployed industrial workers. On the political scene,the conservative Nationalist Party was excludedfrom power by the ‘grand coalition’ which in1928 supported a broader-based government.The Nationalists in that year had fallen under theleadership of a wealthy industrialist and publisher,Alfred Hugenberg, who hated Weimar democracyand socialism equally. The Nationalists had notdone well in the elections of 1928. The effect of their setback was to encourage Hugenberg to look to the more extreme right for votes. In the wings, the small, violent and racialist NaziParty stood on the threshold of achieving masssupport.The first opportunity for the Nazis to make asignificant electoral impact in the Reichstag elec-tions came in 1930. The economic crisis had bro-ken up the Socialist-led grand coalition. Thepartners of that coalition could not agree whetheremployers or the workers should suffer from thegovernment’s only remedy to the crisis, the cuttingback of expenditure. Like the majority of theLabour Party in Britain, the Social Democratscould not remain in a government that reducedunemployment benefits. President von Hinden-burg now called on the leader of the Centre Party,Heinrich Brüning, to lead a new government.There were threats that the president would dis-pense with the Reichstag’s approval and resort toemergency decrees provided for in the constitutionif it rejected Brüning’s savage deflation. This hap-pened within a few weeks and Brüning now stakedhis future on dissolving the Reichstag and on a newelection. Its unexpected result and its political con-sequences ushered in the final phase of Weimardemocracy. The vote of the Nazis increased fromsome 810,000 in 1928 to nearly 6.5 million in theSeptember 1930 election. They increased theirrepresentation from 12 to 107, just behind theSocialists, who had 143, and nudged ahead of theCommunists, who had 77, to become the second-largest party. The conservative Nationalists losthalf their support.It would still, perhaps, have been just possibleto stabilise the political fortunes of Weimar, butBrüning’s financial ‘cures’ killed any chance of thishappening. Confidence throughout the country inthe ability of the politicians to solve the crisisebbed away. Economists of the Keynesian schoolof thought met with complete rejection in theBrüning era. (The Nazis lent them a more readyear.) There was an alternative policy of expansionand of credit and of state help to put the unem-ployed to work. Financially the country was slid-ing into a position where administrators felt thatsomething had to be done. In parliament, theSocial Democrats, under the great shock of theNational Socialist landslide, backed the minorityBrüning government from the benches of theopposition as far as they could. Brüning’s prefer-ence was for authoritarian, austere government,and with Hindenburg’s backing he governed byemergency presidential decrees.1THE FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY AND RISE OF HITLER, 1920–34 183
Hindenburg did not want Hitler to come topower. He felt a strong antipathy for the‘Bohemian corporal’ (he was actually a Bavariancorporal), a violent uncouth Austrian who sharednone of Hindenburg’s own Prussian Junker qual-ities. When Hindenburg was elected president in1925 by a narrow margin over the candidate ofthe Socialists and Centre, the spectacle of anavowed monarchist and legendary war hero, themost decorated and honoured of the kaiser’s field marshals, heading a republic seemed incon-gruous indeed. But the 77-year-old symbol ofpast glories did his job decently enough, evenraising the respectability of the Republic by con-senting to serve as its head. But all his life he hadbeen trained to believe in command and leader-ship, and the spectacle of parliamentary bickeringand the musical chairs the politicians were playingin and out of government appeared to him a trav-esty of what Germany needed.Nevertheless, the field marshal could be reliedon to honour his oath to the republican constitu-tion. This gave him the constitutional right to actin an emergency, and he believed, not without jus-tification, that the destructive behaviour of thepolitical parties during the economic crisis of 1929to 1930 had created a crisis of government. TheYoung Plan, which fixed the total amount of repa-rations at 121 thousand million marks to be paid in instalments over fifty-nine years, was assailed bythe Nazis and the right. In 1932, however, atLausanne, the amount was reduced to 3,000 mil-lion marks. Brüning’s attempt to court Nationalistopinion and aid the stricken economy by announc-ing an Austro-German customs union in 1931failed because the Allies declared that it broke theVersailles Treaty, which prohibited the union ofAustria and Germany. Thus, dissatisfied, Germannationalism was further increased. The army nowenjoyed great influence and the attention of histor-ians has been especially focused on the few men,including Hindenburg’s son, who increasinglygained the old gentleman’s confidence and influ-enced his decisions.Brüning governed with austere authority,integrity and disastrous results. Raising taxes andreducing salaries was naturally unpopular, all themore so as the economic crisis deepened.Unemployment rose from 2.25 million in 1930to over 6 million in 1932. Brüning in April 1932tried to curb street violence by banning all theprivate armies such as the SA, the SS and theStahlhelm. His intentions were good but thismeasure, too, was largely ineffectual as the organ-isations survived without openly wearing uni-forms. At the depth of the crisis in 1932 thepresidential term of office expired. Hindenburgwas deeply chagrined not to be re-elected unop-posed. Hitler chose to stand against him and lost,but more significant than his failure was the factthat more than 13 million had voted for him.Hindenburg had secured over 19 million votesbut was so old that he could not last much longer.Shortly after the presidential elections in May1932 Hindenburg dropped Brüning. Franz vonPapen became chancellor, enjoying no support inthe Reichstag or the country. Less than a year wasleft before Hitler assumed power over Germany.How had he, a complete unknown only elevenyears earlier, achieved this transformation?Fewer than three out of every hundredGermans voted for the Nazis at the national elec-tion of 1928 and that was after seven years ofunceasing Nazi propaganda. But the Nazis hadbuilt an organisational base and increased theparty’s membership significantly. Nazi ideologywas no consistent or logically developed theorysuch as Marxism claimed to be. There wasnothing original about any of its aspects. It incor-porated the arrogant nationalistic and race ideasof the nineteenth century, specifically the anti-Semitic doctrines and the belief in Germanuniqueness and Germany’s world mission,together with elements of fascism and socialism,for in its early days the National Socialist Workers’Party wooed the urban worker.The National Socialists, or Nazis for short, hadgrown out of one of the many small racialist andnationalist groups already flourishing in Germany– one organised in Munich by a man called AntonDrexler. His name would have remained insignif-icant but for Hitler’s association with the group.Under Hitler’s leadership from July 1921onwards, the party was opportunistic, seeking togrow strong on all the resentments felt by differ-184 THE CONTINUING WORLD CRISIS, 1929–39
ent sections of the German people: the smallfarmers, who suffered from the agriculturaldepression and, later, inflation; the middle class,whose status was threatened and whose savingshad been wiped out; unemployed workers; thoseindustrialists at the other end of the scale whowere the declared enemies of socialism even in itsmildest form; theologians, mainly Protestant, whosaw in Nazism a spiritual revival against Weimarmaterialism. The extreme nationalism of theNazis made a strong appeal.Few of those who were early supportersaccepted all the disparate objectives that Nazismpurported to stand for, but every group of sup-porters was prepared to discount, overlook oraccept as the ‘lesser evil’ those things it inwardlydisapproved of. They saw in Hitler and his move-ment what they wished to see. This same attitudealso accounts for the view that there was a ‘goodHitler’ who cured unemployment and unifiedGermany, and a ‘bad Hitler’ who persecuted theJews, made war and ignored justice when dealingwith individuals and minority groups. That atti-tude assumes that one does not have to judge the‘whole’ but can accept the evils for the sake ofthe benefits.Nazism exploited the backward-looking con-servatism that flourished in Germany after the dis-illusionment of defeat in 1918. ParadoxicallyHitler imposed a revolution of values and atti-tudes that plunged German society into acceler-ating change after 1933. But what some of thoseGermans who supported him saw in Hitler in the1920s was a return to an old virtuous Germany,a simpler Germany that had never existed. Hitler’semphasis on the need for a healthy people to live close to the land has a history dating back to well before 1914. It was erroneously arguedthat modern Germany lacked land and space fora ‘healthy’ expansion of the people. Hence theobsession with gaining Lebensraum, and Hitler’splans for satisfying these ‘needs’ in the east.Hitler, too, dwelt obsessively on the medievalimage of the Jew as an alien, a parasite, who pro-duced nothing but lived off the work of others.‘Work’ was ploughing the land, the sweat of thebrow, not sitting in banks and lending money.Yet, he also had sound instincts which led him toaccept some modern economic concepts as a wayout of the miseries of the last Weimar years. Thediscredited race doctrines of the nineteenthcentury were reinforced and amplified in thestudy of a new race biology. The ideology of racelent a spurious cohesion to Nazi policies.This was a turning back on the age of reason.Numerous organisations from the large veteranassociation, the Stahlhelm, to small so-calledvölkisch groups embraced strident nationalism anda mystical Teutonic secular faith. None saw inWeimar’s parliamentary democracy anything buta shameful subordination of the German nationto alien foreign domination. It was identified alsowith the Jews, who played a small but distin-guished role in its constitutional, administrative,economic and artistic life, although they formedonly 1 per cent of the nation’s population. Theywere besmirched by Nazi calumnies that theywere war profiteers and corrupters. More signifi-cant than the slanders themselves is the wide cre-dence that these lies won in Germany.The counterpart to this support for right-wingextremism in its various forms was the lack ofpositive support and understanding by the major-ity of Germans for the spirit of parliamentarydemocracy. In the 1920s anti-democratic ideaswere not only propagated by the communists andby the ignorant and ill-educated, but foundstrong support among the better-off, middle-classyouth, especially within the student unions anduniversities. Stresemann’s success in dismantlingthe punitive aspects of Versailles won no acclaimbecause his methods were peaceful and concilia-tory, as they had to be if they were to succeed inthe years immediately after the war. The notionthat a democracy tolerates different ideas and dif-ferent approaches to solving problems was,instead, condemned as disunity, as the strife andchaos of parties. The parties themselves – apartfrom the totalitarian-oriented Nazi and Com-munist Parties – rarely understood that they hadto place the well-being of the whole nation beforenarrow party interests, that even while theyattacked each other they had to acknowledge acommon framework and defend above all parlia-mentary democracy itself. Democracy wasregarded as representing the lowest common1THE FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY AND RISE OF HITLER, 1920–34 185
denominator of politics, the rule of the masses.Fascism and Nazism also appealed to the elitists,who saw themselves as leading the masses.The educated and better-off followers fearedabove everything ‘social revolution’; they pre-ferred the Nazi promise of ‘national revolution’which would, they thought, enhance their careeropportunities. What made the Nazis so successfulwas precisely the combination of physical force in the streets, which was welcomed by anti-communists, and the support of the ‘professionals’in the army, civil service, the churches and educa-tion. They, the supposedly educated elite, hadhelped to undermine Weimar democracy even in the years of prosperity, and made Nazismrespectable. In the absence of strong positive support, democracy – and with it the rule of law –is dangerously exposed. It could not survive theeconomic blizzard of 1929 to 1932, which wasnot the root cause of its downfall but more thefinal blow. Nevertheless, there were regions ofGermany that did not succumb to the tidal waveof Nazism even in 1933; this is true of the stronglyCatholic Rhineland and Bavaria. In the big indus-trial cities, too, such as Berlin and Hamburg, mostfactory workers in the beginning continued tosupport the Social Democrats and the Commu-nists. The rise of the Nazis to power was not theinevitable consequence of the lost war, of inflationand depression. It was not automatic, the result ofthe inexorable working out of the disadvantagesbesetting Germany after 1918. Hitler succeededbecause a sufficient mass of German people,including many in leading positions of society,chose to support what he stood for. While he didnot reveal all his aims, he did reveal enough to berejected by anyone believing in democracy andbasic human rights. Among mainly young Nazithugs there were many political and warped ideal-ists. Other supporters were opportunists joining abandwagon for reasons of personal gain. Manysaw in Hitler a saviour who would end Germany’s‘humiliation’ and the ‘injustices’ of Versailles.No preparation for power was stranger or moreunlikely than Adolf Hitler’s. He lived for fifty-sixyears, from his birth in the small Austrian townof Braunau on 20 April 1889 until his suicide on30 April 1945 in his bunker under the Reichchancellery in Berlin. During the last twelve yearsof his life he dominated first Germany and thenmost of continental Europe. His impact on thelives of millions was immense, responsible as hewas for immeasurable human misery. He believedmankind to be engaged in a colossal strugglebetween good and evil and he made this hysteri-cal fantasy come true more nearly than any singleman had done before. Yet nothing in the firstthirty years of his life pointed to the terribleimpact he would make on history.Mein Kampf, ‘My Struggle’, which Hitler wrote during his short spell of imprisonment in1924, glamorised his past. Hitler suffered no hard-ship other than the consequences of his own earlyrestless way of life. His father was a conscientiouscustoms official who died when he was fourteenyears old; his mother was devoted and did herbest for her son, whose attachment to her wasdeep. But Hitler could not accustom himself toregular work, even during his secondary schooldays. Supported financially by his mother, hedrifted into a lonely way of life, avoiding all regularwork, aspiring to be an artist. He attempted togain entrance to the Academy of Fine Arts inVienna but was rejected, as were the majority ofapplicants. Nevertheless, in his nineteenth year hemoved to the Habsburg capital. His mother hadrecently died from cancer; Hitler had cared for herduring the final traumatic phase, aided by a Jewishdoctor to whom he expressed his gratitude andpresented one of his watercolours.For the next two years the money left to himby his parents and an orphan’s pension providedhim with an adequate income. He could indulgehis fancies; he read a great deal and impracticallydesigned grandiose buildings in the backroom ofhis lodgings. He continued in this lonely andirregular lifestyle; soon all the money he hadinherited was spent.There is little reliable information about hisnext two years. He disappeared from view, living inpoverty without attempting regular work, relyingon charity and boarding in cheap hostels. It wouldseem probable that he still dreamt of becoming anarchitect and, more importantly, imbibed thecrude anti-Semitic and racialist ideas current in186 THE CONTINUING WORLD CRISIS, 1929–39
Vienna at that time. In May 1913, in his twenty-fourth year, he moved to Munich, Bavaria’s artisticcapital. He lived there by selling sketches andwatercolours, executed with care and photo-graphic accuracy, pleasing pictures of no greatartistic merit. He could, then, be fairly described asself-educated but without discipline, with sufficientartistic skill to have earned his living as an engraveror poster designer had he desired regular work. Hewas essentially a loner, who had established nodeep relationships, and he was already filled withresentments and hatreds which came to be centredmore and more on the Jews.He later regarded the outbreak of the GreatWar as the turning point in his life. He volun-teered for the Bavarian army with enthusiasm. Healready saw himself as a pan-German, and not aloyal subject of the multinational Habsburgs,whom he detested. During the war he waswounded and awarded the Iron Cross First Class;he served as a dispatch messenger, though in those days communications were passed mainly onfoot along the small distances from trench totrench or from one command post to another. Itis notable that he was never promoted beyond therank of corporal, despite the desperate need forNCOs, a reflection of his superior’s view thatCorporal Hitler was not a suitable leader of men.When he returned to Munich after the war at theage of twenty-nine, his lack of formal qualificationand education was typical of millions for whomthe future looked grim. But it is from this point onthat his hitherto insignificant and unsuccessful lifetook a fantastic new turn.For a start, his interest in politics and loyaltycommended him to the new Reichswehr. Thearmy retained him in a division for ‘military edu-cation’. One of his tasks was to investigate andinfiltrate dubious, possibly left-wing, politicalgroups. In this way he came to join Drexler’ssmall German Workers’ Party, more a beer halldebating society than a genuine party. The trans-formation of Hitler now began. As a political agi-tator and an orator who could move his audiencesto emotion and hysteria with the violence of hislanguage, Hitler discovered a new vocation. Hedid not of course see himself as the leader ofGermany at this stage, but rather as the propa-gandist who would help to power the extremenationalists – men like Ludendorff who wouldrescue Germany from ‘Bolshevism’ and the Jewsand who would break the shackles of Versailles.Hitler fulminated against the world Jewishconspiracy, Wall Street and ‘Bolshevism’, andagainst the injustices of Versailles, until out ofDrexler’s debating club a real party emerged with55,000 supporters by 1923. From 1921 Hitler led that party, renamed the National SocialistGerman Workers’ Party (or by its German initialsNSDAP). Hitler the rabid rabble-rousing politi-cian had arrived, a fact made possible only by thetotally chaotic political condition of Bavaria wherea disparate right had bloodily defeated an equallydisparate left. In November 1923 Hitler mis-judged the situation and sought to seize power forthe forces of the right in much the same way asLenin had seized control of Petrograd with a fewdevoted revolutionaries. His attempted MunichPutsch ended ignominiously, Hitler fleeing whenthe police opened fire. Ludendorff alone, withmore courage than good sense, marched throughthe cordon of police. Hitler had expected that he would seize power without bloodshed and that the police and army would rally to theLudendorff–Hitler alliance. Later he recognisedthat failure had saved him. Had he succeeded ingaining control and marched on ‘Red Berlin’ as heintended, the government would not have capitu-lated to a fanatic and extremist. Nor, as the armyhigh command knew, would the French, who hadentered the Ruhr, have tolerated for a moment acoup led by a man who so stridently denouncedthe Versailles Treaty; the French, moreover, stillpossessed the strength and determination to pre-vent such a coup. Hitler would then have been fin-ished for good.Hitler turned his trial for treason, conductedin Bavaria by judges who sympathised with hiscause, into a personal propaganda triumph.Sentenced to the minimum term of five years’imprisonment, he actually only served a fewmonths. While in prison he started writing MeinKampf and after his release he began to rebuildthe party that was to carry him to power. TheMunich Putsch had convinced him that theNationalist right could not be trusted and was too1THE FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY AND RISE OF HITLER, 1920–34 187
feeble. He would be the leader, not they. From1925 to 1928 there were two important devel-opments: a steady but slow growth of member-ship of the Nazi Party and continuing bitterinternal disputes among the leaders, notablyJoseph Goebbels, Julius Streicher and the Strasserbrothers, Gregor and Otto. Hitler was handi-capped by a ban on his making public speechesuntil May 1928, and he did not dare defy it forfear of being deported from Germany as anAustrian citizen. He nevertheless sought to createa tight, national Nazi organisation, insisting onabsolute obedience to himself. Right up to thefinal triumph of 30 January 1933, when hebecame chancellor, there was a real threat ofdefections from the Nazi Party he led.In 1925 Hitler judged that the establishedgovernment was too strong to be seized by force.He changed his tactics. He would follow thelegal, constitutional road by entering Reichstagelections to gain a majority, and only then estab-lish his dictatorship. He never showed anythingbut contempt for the Reichstag and, thoughleader of the party, would never himself take partin its proceedings. He advised his followers ‘tohold their nose’ when in the Reichstag. Duringthe period from 1925 to 1928 he built up hisparty as a virulent propaganda machine, insistedthat he alone should lead it, without requiring theadvice of leading party personalities, for it was anessential element of his plans to cultivate the cultof the Führer or Leader. The party membershipreached 97,000 in 1929. Was the economic crisisthen not the real cause of this sudden success?The economic crisis which overtook the world isusually dated from the time of the Wall StreetCrash in 1929. But this is misleading. By thewinter of 1927–8 distress was already felt inGermany among the small agricultural farmersand workers in north-west Germany and by arti-sans and small shopkeepers especially. The Naziparty made considerable headway in rural districtsin local and state elections in 1929 at the expenseof the traditional Conservative and NationalistParties.In that same year with the economic crisis deep-ening, the conservative Nationalist, Hugenberg,hoped to gain power by forming a broad alliance ofthe right and using Hitler to win the support ofthose masses which the conservatives had failed toattract. A vicious campaign was launched againstthe Young reparations plan of 1929. The repara-tions and the politicians of Weimar were blamedfor Germany’s economic ills. The economic andNationalist assault proved explosive. But theGerman electorate’s reaction in the Reichstag elec-tion of September 1930 was not what Hugenbergexpected: the Nationalists lost heavily and theNazis made their first breakthrough at the level ofnational elections, winning 107 seats to becomethe second-largest party after the Socialists. In a lit-tle more than two years their electoral support hadincreased from 810,000 to 6.5 million.The period from 1930 to the end of January1933 was in many ways the most testing forHitler. Industrialists, however, began to hedgetheir bets and substantial financial contributionsbegan flowing into Nazi funds. The propagandacampaign against Weimar became ever morevicious. Support among the industrial workers inthe big cities could not be won over; the Catholicsouth remained largely immune too. Althoughoriginating in Bavaria, the Nazis gained the great-est following in rural northern Germany. Thewhite-collar workers, the rural voters and ele-ments of what is rather unsatisfactorily labelledthe middle class, especially those threatened byBrüning’s financial measures with a drop in theirstandard of living, were the new Nazi voters. TheNazis and Nationalists did all in their power todiscredit Weimar democracy. Papen, the newchancellor in June 1932, hoped to gain Hitler’ssympathetic support by lifting the ban on the SA (Sturm Abteilung, or storm troopers) and, inJuly, by illegally ousting the socialist governmentof Prussia.Papen’s Cabinet of ‘Barons’, as it becameknown from the titled nonentities of which it wascomposed, enjoyed no support in the Reichstag.The effect of the two elections that Papen inducedHindenburg to call in July and November 1932 inan unsuccessful attempt to secure some support inthe country and parliament were the coffin nails ofdemocracy, for those parties that were determinedto destroy the Weimar Republic between them188 THE CONTINUING WORLD CRISIS, 1929–39
won a comfortable majority in the Reichstag. TheNazis in July won 230 seats and 37 per cent of thevote, becoming the largest single party; in theelection of November 1932 they held on to 33 percent of the electorate, saw their seats drop to 196,but remained the largest party; the Nationalistssecured almost 9 per cent, and the Communists17 per cent (100 seats) – nor did the three anti-democratic parties have any scruples about actingtogether. The Socialists slipped from 133 seats to121. Papen had gambled on making the Nazismore amenable by inflicting an electoral defeat onthem. The Nazis did indeed suffer a setback inNovember 1932. Papen was pleased, but Hitlerhad lost only a battle, not a war. On 17 NovemberPapen resigned. Hitler thought his moment hadcome. Summoned to Hindenburg, he was told bythe field marshal that he would be considered aschancellor only if he could show that a parliamen-tary majority backed him and that, unlike Papen,he could govern without special presidentialdecrees. Such conditions, Hindenburg and Hitlerperfectly well knew, could not be met. Theyamounted to a rejection of Hitler.Hindenburg wanted his favourite, Papen, back.Papen planned to prorogue the Reichstag andchange the constitution. However, General Kurtvon Schleicher, who represented the right of the army high command and who had played an influential political role behind the scenes, persuaded Hindenburg that Papen’s plans wouldlead to civil war and that the army had lost confi-dence in Papen’s ability to control the situation.With obvious reluctance Hindenburg appointedSchleicher on 2 December 1932 to head the lastpre-Hitler government. Schleicher’s own solutionwas to try to split the Nazi Party and to win thesupport of Gregor Strasser and his more left-wingsection of the party. Strasser, who was very influ-ential as the head of the party’s political organisa-tion, had become disillusioned with Hitler’stactics of demanding total power and his adamantrefusal to share power with coalition partners.Despite evidence of falling Nazi support in theNovember 1932 election, Hitler won. Strassermade the task easier for him by resigning from theparty in early December 1932 after bitterly quar-relling with Hitler, who accused him of treachery.Hindenburg’s opposition and internal disputesmade many Nazis feel that their chance of gainingpower was ebbing away. But Hitler was provedright only a few weeks later. Schleicher announcedhis government’s programme for relieving unem-ployment and distress; wages and benefits wereraised, but even so the divided Reichstag wasunited on one issue alone – to refuse Schleichertheir backing. Papen, meanwhile, ensured that theonly outcome of Schleicher’s failure would be anew coalition ostensibly led by Hitler but whichPapen expected to control.Hindenburg was cajoled into concluding thatthe parliamentary crisis could be ended only byoffering the chancellorship to Hitler, the leader ofthe largest party, even though Hitler had not setfoot in the Reichstag as a parliamentary leader. Theins and outs of the final intrigues that overcameHindenburg’s obvious reluctance are still debatedby historians. Papen and the conservative andnationalist right totally misjudged and under-estimated Hitler. They believed they could tamehim, that he would have to rely on their skills ofgovernment. Instead, Hitler ended the parliamen-tary crisis in short order by doing what he said hewould do, that is by crushing the spirit of theWeimar constitution and setting up a totalitarianstate. But Papen’s intrigues were merely the finalblow to the already undermined structure ofWeimar’s democracy; it cannot be overlooked thatHitler, whose party had openly proclaimed that itstood for the destruction of Weimar, had won one-third of the votes in November 1932; this meant ahigher proportion of electors supported the NaziParty than had supported any other single party atprevious post-1920 Reichstag elections. Given themultiplicity of parties and the system of propor-tional representation, a greater electoral victorythan the Nazis achieved is difficult to conceive. Itwas not backstairs diplomacy alone then thatbrought Hitler to power, but the votes of millionsof people which made his party the largest in theReichstag by far. In November 1932 the Nazis hadpolled 11,737,000 votes against 7,248,000 of thesecond-largest party, the Social Democrats.There is a strong contrast between the long waitfor power and the speed with which Hitler1THE FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY AND RISE OF HITLER, 1920–34 189
silenced and neutralised all opposition to estab-lish a totalitarian regime. The destruction ofWeimar democracy, and the civic rights that wereguaranteed to all German citizens was accom-plished behind a legal façade which stilled con-sciences of all those in the state who should haveresisted. The reasons for the lack of oppositionhad their roots in the past. The elites who led theGerman state – the majority of administrators,civil servants, the army, the churches too – hadfollowed a long tradition of defaming democracy;Hitler’s anti-Semitism and his attacks on minori-ties were nothing new in their thinking. All themore honour to the minority who refused toaccept the changes and actively resisted or left thecountry. Almost half the German electorate wasprepared to support Hitler in the hope of bettertimes, to be brought about by a ‘national revolu-tion’ and an end to Weimar and disunity.The Nazis occupied only three posts in thecoalition Cabinet. Hitler was chancellor; HermannGöring was placed in charge of Prussia as ministerwithout portfolio and Prussian minister of the interior under vice-chancellor Papen; and WilhelmFrick was minister of the interior. The governmentposts had been carefully arranged so that the armyand the Foreign Ministry, as well as other key min-istries, were not under Nazi control. Papen and theNationalists soon discovered that Hitler was notinhibited from exercising control by the constitu-tional niceties that had been devised to restrainhim. This was no Weimar coalition government!The easy, almost effortless path to total dicta-torial power makes melancholy reading. Thesetting alight of the Reichstag on 27 February1933, probably by the unbalanced Dutchman vander Lubbe alone – though there can be no cer-tainty – became the pretext for an emergencydecree signed by Hindenburg suspending per-sonal liberties and political rights.Hitler had insisted on new elections as a con-dition of accepting office, intending to gain anabsolute majority, and he meant to make sure ofit. Accordingly, despite Papen’s supposed senior-ity, Göring seized control of Prussia, which com-prised two-thirds of Germany, and under cover ofthe emergency decree terrorised the opponents ofthe Nazis. After an electoral campaign of unpar-alleled violence and intimidation, with JosephGoebbels manipulating press and radio to helpsecure a Nazi victory, the Nazis just failed to gain the expected overall majority. Their votesrose to over 17 million; the Socialists held on toover 7 million votes and the Communists, despitethe Nazi campaign, polled 4.8 million votes; theCentre Party secured nearly 4.5 million and theNationalists (DNVP) a disappointing 3.1 million.But, together with the Nationalists, the Naziscould muster a majority against all other parties,sufficient to govern with the support of theReichstag. This was obviously not Hitler’s aim.He sought dictatorial power and a change of theconstitution, but this required a two-thirdsmajority and shrewdly he wished to proceed in apseudo-legal way to assure himself of the supportof the country afterwards.Not a single communist deputy of the 81elected could take his seat. All were already in thehands of the Gestapo or being hunted down.More than twenty of the Socialists also wereunder arrest or prevented from attending. StillHitler needed the support of the Nationalists and so to reassure them and the army and thepresident, he staged an opening ceremony of the Reichstag in the shrine of monarchicalJunkerdom, the old garrison church of Potsdamwhere Frederick the Great lay buried. But evenwith the communists prevented from voting andthe Nationalists voting on his side, Hitler stilllacked the two-thirds majority he needed. It willalways be to the shame of the members of theonce great Centre Party that they tempered theirprinciples and threw in their lot with Hitler, andagreed to vote for his dictatorial law. They lostthe will to resist, and the leadership later came toan agreement to secure Catholic interests. It wasleft to the Socialist Party alone to vote againstHitler’s so-called Enabling Law, which acquiredits two-thirds majority on 23 March 1933 withthe storm troopers howling vengeance outsidethe Reichstag on anyone who dared to opposeHitler’s will.Now Hitler was able to put his aims into prac-tice with far less restraint. Under the sinister appli-cation of the term Gleischaltung (coordination or, literally, a switch used to bring one current in190 THE CONTINUING WORLD CRISIS, 1929–39
line with another), a vague all-embracing aim was set out forcibly to subordinate all the activitiesof German society – government, administration,the free press and trade unions – to Nazi bodies set up specially to supervise them. Thus while insome cases the old institutions remained, theywere subject to new Nazi controls. The wholeprocess was haphazard and new Nazi organisa-tions proliferated, frequently in rivalry with eachother as well. Hitler in the final resort woulddecide between conflicting authorities. Until hedid so there was the inevitable chaos and infight-ing. For a time he might decide it best not tointerfere too much in a particular administra-tive branch or, for example, leave the high command of the army intact. The completeprocess of Gleischaltung would be applied later tothe army also. Hitler insisted on his own final say,on maintaining some of the traditional structuresas long as he thought this tactically necessary toovercome misgivings among broad sections of theGerman people or powerful groups such as thearmy. His revolution would be complete but gradual. The Nazi state was thus no efficientmonolith. Within the overall framework of accep-tance of the Führer as leader, rivalries flourishedand independent policies were still pursued forshort periods. During the early years there wereeven islands of legality and normality to confuseopinion at home and abroad.Among the first steps that Hitler took was toabolish the independent powers of the federalstates in March 1933. In April a decree purgedthe civil service of Jews and those of Jewishdescent, and of anyone whom the Nazis deemedto oppose the regime’s aims. In Prussia a quarterof the higher civil service was dismissed, includ-ing judges who were supposed to be irremovable.The Supreme Court in Leipzig secretly debatedwhether they should make a protest at this uncon-stitutional act, and decided on discretion. Nowonder the German public was misled by theseeming legality of these new ‘laws’. During thecourse of the summer of 1933, the remainingindependent parties were disbanded. The com-munist leaders were already in the new concen-tration camps. The Vatican now decided toconclude a treaty – the Concordat – with Hitlerin a misguided effort to protect Catholic interests.The independent trade unions were quicklybrought to heel and suppressed, and the workersenrolled in the Nazi Labour Front. The press andbroadcasting were placed under Goebbels’ direc-tion. The universities did not put up any realresistance either. There were famous professorssuch as the philosopher Martin Heidegger who,at least for a short time, gave public support tothe Nazi movement. Some became ardent Nazisout of conviction; many, for the sake of theircareers.Academics participated in the famous burningof the books by Jewish and anti-Nazi authors.Many of Germany’s internationally known scien-tists, writers and artists joined the ‘national revo-lution’ of the Nazis. Nor were theologiansimmune from the Nazi corruption: Christ becamean Aryan. The dismissed Jews, such as AlbertEinstein, began to leave the country. So did a fewChristian Germans, including the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann. Germany’s otherliterary giant, who had also won the Nobel Prizefor literature, Gerhart Hauptmann, remained inNazi Germany, adorning the new regime.Hitler was sensitive to German public opinion.The German people, he understood, would needto be ‘educated’ to accept the harshness and finalbrutality in stages. So, when Jews were dismissedfrom the civil service, some were granted theirstate pensions provided they had completed atleast ten years of service. Those Jews who hadfought in the First World War or whose sons orfathers had died in the war were temporarily1THE FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY AND RISE OF HITLER, 1920–34 191Reichstag elections, 5 March 1933Seats Percentageof votesNational Socialists (NSDAP) 288 seats 43.9Nationalists (DNVP and allies) 52 seats 8.0Centre (Zentrum) 73 seats 11.2Socialists (SPD) 120 seats 18.3Communists (KPD) 81 seats 12.3Others 33 seats 6.3
exempted from dismissal at Hindenburg’srequest. Terror was exercised against specificopponents. Dachau was the first concentrationcamp, established near Munich in 1933 byHeinrich Himmler, head of the Bavarian PoliticalPolice. It became the model for others, and bythe summer of 1933 some 30,000 Germans wereheld in concentration camps. Himmler soonadvanced to become the Reichsführer of the SS(Schutzstaffel) and head of the police throughoutthe Reich. The courts and police also continuedto function.Germany was left as a mosaic where the normalprocess of law and administration continued tofunction fairly in some instances. In other areasthe Nazis or the terror arm of the SS weresupreme, and no appeal to the courts was possible.Jewish students were for a time permitted to con-tinue their university studies on a quota system.Until 1938, some Jewish businesses continued totrade, a few even later, though many went bank-rupt. ‘I always go as far as I dare and never farther’,Hitler told a meeting of party leaders in April1937. So Hitler, at the same time as he breachedthe vital principles of basic civic rights, gave theoutward appearance of acting mildly and reason-ably, and always in conformity with proper ‘laws’.And did not the person of President Hindenburgguarantee decency? The German people did notrealise how the president was losing power toHitler. But knowledge of the concentration campswas a deterrent to any thought of opposition fromall except the most courageous.Hitler was especially careful to appease thearmy. He assured it of an independent status andof its position as the sole armed force in the state.The army wished to draw on the young stormtroopers whom it would train as a large armedforce that could quickly augment the regular armyin time of crisis. This meant the subordination ofthe SA to the needs of the army. The head of thestorm troopers, Ernst Röhm, had entirely differ-ent ideas. The storm troopers were not only aseparate army in the state, but he saw them underhis command as the untainted force which wouldcarry through the complete Nazi revolution inopposition to Hitler, who appeared willing tocompromise with the old elements of power, thearmy and industrialists. Hitler reacted ruthlesslyand, with the help of the Reichswehr during whatbecame known as the Night of the Long Kniveson 30 June 1934, had Röhm and many seniorofficers of the SA murdered. The same opportu-nity was taken to murder General von Schleicher,Gregor Strasser and two of Papen’s close associ-ates, as a warning to Papen’s nationalist ‘allies’.Hitler, with the connivance of the army, had nowopenly set himself above the law.On 2 August 1934, Hindenburg, the one manmore revered than Hitler, died. He was buried atan impressive funeral ceremony and for the lasttime Hitler took a back seat. With Hindenburgwere laid to rest symbolically the last vestiges ofthe Prussian Junker and military traditions ofhonour and service. The moment Hindenburgdied Hitler took another important step towardssupreme power. A plebiscite merged the offices ofpresident and chancellor: Hitler, who nowbecame the Führer and Reich chancellor. TheReichswehr generals, believing that they wouldstill control all military decisions, did not opposeHitler’s demand that the army should swear a per-sonal oath of loyalty to him as head of state.Enormous power was now concentrated inHitler’s hands. But still he moved with caution,step by step, accepting that he would need timeto achieve his goals.The year 1934 also witnessed the belated smallbeginnings of protest against the implications ofNazi anti-Semitism though only as far as itaffected the Church’s own administration, andthe largely unsuccessful attempts by Hitler to sub-ordinate the Protestant Church. That Hitler didnot choose immediately to crush the oppositionof the Confessional Protestant Church movementand other protests, however, was due not to mod-eration, as people mistakenly thought, but to hiscaution, his wish to dominate only gradually allspheres of German life. He bided his time.Hitler had a clear view of priorities. At homethe most important issue was unemployment. Ifhe could get the out-of-work back into factoriesand construction, enable the small businesses tobecome sufficiently profitable again, and providesecurity and promotion opportunities for civil ser-vants and army officers, their support for him192 THE CONTINUING WORLD CRISIS, 1929–39
would be sure. If he failed on the economic front,he would be likely to fail all along the line. Thatis why Hitler was prepared to tolerate the con-tinuation of Jewish businesses, to allow Jewishsalesmen to remain prominent in the export tradeuntil 1938, and to make use of unorthodox finan-cial management to achieve a rapid reduction ofthe unemployed; real incomes would cease to fall.Between March 1933 and March 1934 unem-ployment fell by over 2 million in part but notwholly due to the ending of recession. Able menserved Hitler, including the brilliant financialexpert, Hjalmar Schacht, whom the Führerappointed president of the Reichsbank. Plansworked out in advance by Hitler’s economicadvisers were now put into action. With guaran-teed prices for their produce, farmers recoveredduring the first three years of the regime; smallbusinesses were helped with state spending; taxeswere reduced; grants were made to industry toinstall new machinery; work was created in slumclearance and housing and Autobahn construc-tion. The economy was stimulated out of reces-sion. Though wages did not rise in real terms,security of employment was a greater benefit forthe wage-earners. The pursuit of autarky or self-sufficiency helped the construction, chemical, coaland iron and steel industries. The industrialistswelcomed the opportunities for expansion andincreased profit and applauded the destruction offree trade unions. But industry lost its independ-ence as its barons became dependent on stateorders and state allocation of resources. The Firstand Second Four-Year Plans imposed state con-trols severely limiting the capitalist economy.Armament expenditure remained relatively lowfrom 1933 to 1935, but from then on was rapidlyincreased, putting Germany on a war footing andeliminating unemployment. Belts had to be tight-ened, – ‘guns before butter’ – but it was too latefor any opposition to loosen the Nazi hold onpower; there was in any case no opposition thatcould any longer command a mass following.By 1934 Hitler’s regime had established a suf-ficient base of power and secured enough willingcooperation of ‘experts’ in the administration,business and industry, as well as the army, for hisNazi state to function, though often with muchconfusion. The Nazi ideologues and fanatics hadformed an alliance with the educated and skilledwho served them. Without them the Nazis couldnot have ruled Germany. What German history ofthis period shows is that parliamentary democracyand the rule of law, once established, will notinevitably continue. If they are not defended, theycan be destroyed – not only by violent revolution,but more subtly by determined and ruthless menadopting pseudo-legal tactics.And what of the outside world – they, too, notonly gave Hitler the concessions he demanded orunilaterally took by breaking treaties but in 1936handed him the spectacular triumph of holdingthe Olympic Games, dedicated to freedom anddemocracy, in Berlin.1THE FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY AND RISE OF HITLER, 1920–34 193
