‘As I walked with him in the gardens of the Villa Borghese,’ Hitler told his guests at a dinner party on 21 July 1941 while the Luftwaffe was bombing Moscow, ‘I could easily compare his profile with that of the Roman busts, and I realised he was one of the Ceasars.’ The Duce’s March on Rome, he explained, was a turning point in history. ‘The brownshirts would probably not have existed without the blackshirts.’1
Two decades earlier, the Nazi Party, still in its infancy with less than 10,000 members, had been galvanised by the March on Rome, hailing Adolf Hitler as ‘Germany’s Mussolini’ on 3 November 1922. Just as Mussolini presented himself to his people as the Duce, party members now began to refer to Hitler as the Führer, the German word for leader.2
Only three years earlier, when Hitler had given his first political speech at a beer hall in Munich, few could have predicted his rise to power. As a young man he had hoped to become an artist in Vienna, but was twice rejected by the Academy of Fine Arts. He enjoyed a bohemian lifestyle, reading widely and pursuing his passion for opera and architecture.
In 1914, having been deemed unfit for service in the Austro-Hungarian army, he managed to enlist in the Bavarian army instead. He took part in some of the bloodiest battles of the First World War and was temporarily blinded by a British gas shell in October 1918. In hospital, he learned of Germany’s military collapse and was overcome with despair, which turned into hatred overnight. Like many other nationalists, he believed that the army had been stabbed in the back, betrayed by civilian leaders who had overthrown the Hohenzollern dynasty to establish the Weimar Republic and sign an armistice in the November Revolution.
Hitler returned to Munich, where he had lived before the outbreak of war. He found a city draped in red flags, as the socialist premier Kurt Eisner had established a Free State of Bavaria following the abolition of the Wittelsbach monarchy in November 1918. Eisner’s assassination a few months later prompted an uprising among some of the workers, who rushed to proclaim a Bavarian Soviet Republic. It was a short-lived experiment, brutally crushed by government troops and paramilitary volunteers. In the wake of the failed revolution, Hitler was tasked with lecturing soldiers returning from the front against the perils of communism. He thrived, discovering that he had a talent: ‘What I had earlier always assumed to be true without knowing it now happened: I could “speak”.’3
His oratorical skills caught the attention of Anton Drexler, founder of the German Workers’ Party (DAP), a loosely organised group of conservatives who mixed nationalism with anti-capitalism in an effort to appeal to larger segments of the population. Hitler joined the party in September 1919, soon becoming their most influential speaker, as people flocked to listen to him. An early follower remembered being unimpressed by a man who looked like ‘a waiter in a railway-station restaurant’, with heavy boots, a leather waistcoat and an odd little moustache. But once Hitler began speaking, he electrified the audience. ‘In his early years he had a command of voice, phrase and effect which has never been equalled, and on this evening he was at his best.’ He would begin in a quiet, reserved manner, but gradually build up momentum, using simple language that ordinary people could understand. As he warmed to his subject, he began attacking Jews, chastising the Kaiser, thundering against war profiteers, speaking more and more rapidly with dramatic hand gestures, a finger occasionally stabbing the air. He knew how to tailor his message to his listeners, giving voice to their hatred and hope. ‘The audience responded with a final outburst of frenzied cheering and hand-clapping.’ By 1921 Hitler could fill as large a venue as the Circus Krone in Munich with more than 6,000 followers.4
In February 1920 the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP, or Nazi Party). Soon it acquired a heavily indebted newspaper called Völkischer Beobachter, originally published by the Thule Society, a secretive group of occultists who used the swastika as their symbol and believed in the coming of a German messiah to redeem the nation. Dietrich Eckart, the newspaper’s new editor, had pinned his hopes on a journalist called Wolfgang Kapp. In March 1920 Kapp and some 6,000 supporters attempted a putsch against the Weimar Republic in Berlin, but failed after the rank and file of the state administration went on strike. Now Eckhart turned towards Hitler, seeing him as the ‘saviour of the fatherland’. Twenty years his senior, Eckhart became his mentor, helping him build up his image, using the Völkischer Beobachter to portray Hitler as Germany’s next great man.5
In the summer of 1921 the party leadership welcomed the arrival of another ‘popular and powerful speaker’, the leader of a rival organisation called the German Working Association. They proposed a merger. Hitler saw this as a threat to his own position and gambled by tendering his resignation in a fit of anger. Everything hinged on Eckhart, who mediated. Fearful of losing their main attraction, the leadership relented. But Hitler now demanded to be ‘chairman with dictatorial powers’. A few months later Eckhart gushed in the pages of the Völkischer Beobachter that nobody was more selfless, upright and devoted than Hitler, who had intervened in the fate of the party with an ‘iron fist’.6
The moment Hitler captured power within the Nazi Party he established a paramilitary organisation called the SA (an abbreviation of Sturmabteilung, or Assault Division). Ernst Röhm, a loyal follower, made sure they thrashed dissenters who tried to shout Hitler down in public meetings. The SA also roamed the streets of Munich, beating up their enemies and disrupting events organised by the political opposition.
The Nazi Party was now the Führer’s party, and Hitler worked tirelessly at building it up. He designed the garish red flyers used to recruit new members, and he oversaw the parades, flags, pennants, marching bands and music that drew ever larger crowds. Hitler was a meticulous choreographer, attending to every detail. On 17 September 1921 instructions were published to prescribe the exact dimensions and colour scheme of the swastika armband. The brown shirts were introduced after Mussolini marched on Rome.7
Like Mussolini, Hitler also gave careful thought as to how best to present himself to the outside world. When an earlier follower suggested that he should either grow a full moustache or clip it, he was unmoved. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I am setting a fashion. As time goes on people will be pleased to copy it.’ The moustache was as much a trademark as the brown shirt. Hitler, again like Mussolini, was short-sighted, but made sure never to be seen in public wearing his spectacles. Wary of facilitating recognition by the police, Hitler – unlike his Italian counterpart – shunned photographers. As his reputation grew, speculation about his appearance added an aura of mystery. Only in the autumn of 1923 did Hitler consent to having his portrait taken by Heinrich Hoffmann, who would soon become the party’s official photographer. These first images projected sheer determination and fanatical willpower, showing a grim look, raised eyebrows, lips pressed together, arms resolutely folded. The photographs circulated widely in the press and were sold as postcards and portraits.8
As Adolf Hitler turned thirty-four on 20 April 1923 the cult of the leader was launched. A banner on the front page of the party’s mouthpiece hailed him as ‘Germany’s Führer’. Alfred Rosenberg, another earlier ally, celebrated Hitler as the ‘Leader of the German Nation’, writing about how the man in Munich established a ‘mysterious interaction’ between himself and his many followers. Hitler, on the other hand, all too aware that his enemies called him a demagogue, a tyrant, a megalomaniac ‘Majesty Adolf I’, described himself in self-deprecating terms as ‘nothing but a drummer and gatherer’, a mere apostle waiting for the Christ.9
This was all false modesty. As Eckart himself reported, an impatient Hitler could be seen pacing up and down the courtyard shouting, ‘I must enter Berlin like Christ in the Temple of Jerusalem and scourge out the moneylenders.’ Seeking to emulate Mussolini, on 8 November 1923 he staged a coup by storming a beer hall in Munich with the SA, announcing the formation of a new government with General Erich von Ludendorff, head of the German military during the First World War. The army did not join the rebels. The police easily crushed the coup the following day. Hitler was arrested.10
The Beer Hall Putsch had failed. Hitler, behind bars, sank into depression, but soon regained his poise, recognising that martyrdom beckoned. Widespread press coverage established his notoriety at home and abroad. People from all over the country sent presents, and even some of his guards whispered ‘Heil Hitler’ when they entered the small suite of rooms that served as his cell. The judges at his trial were sympathetic, allowing Hitler to use the courtroom as a propaganda platform, his words reported in every newspaper. He appeared before the court not as defendant but as accuser, portraying the Weimar Republic as the real criminals. He assumed sole responsibility for the putsch. ‘I alone bear the responsibility,’ he admitted. ‘If today I stand here as a revolutionary, it is as a revolutionary against the revolution. There is no such thing as high treason against the traitors of 1918.’ Now he scoffed at the idea that he was merely the drummer in a patriotic movement. ‘My aim from the first was a thousand times higher … I wanted to become the destroyer of Marxism.’11
The sentence for high treason was surprisingly short, a mere five years, further reduced to thirteen months, but it was still long enough to allow Hitler to write his political biography. By the time he was released, a few days before Christmas 1924, the bulk of the manuscript entitled Mein Kampf was finished. The volume appeared in the summer of 1925, although not until 1933 would it become a bestseller.
Mein Kampf summarised much of what Hitler had said in his beer-hall speeches. Behind every one of the country’s woes, be it a corrupt parliamentary system or the threat of communism, there lay a Jewish hand. His programme was clear: abrogate the Versailles Treaty, remove the Jews, punish France, build a greater Germany and invade the Soviet Union for ‘living space’ (Lebensraum). But Mein Kampf also contained elements of the Hitler legend. A genius child, a voracious reader, a born orator, an unrecognised artist driven by destiny to change the fate of a people. A man overcome by a passion like no other, one that allowed him to recognise the words that would ‘open the gates to a people’s heart like the blows of a hammer’. A man chosen by heaven as a messenger of its will. As a close follower put it, Hitler was an oracle, a Traumlaller, one who speaks prophetically in his dreams.12
The oracle was silenced. The state of Bavaria banned Hitler from speaking in public as he emerged from prison a free man. The Völkischer Beobachter was proscribed, his party closed down. Most of these restrictions were lifted in February 1925, but as late as 1927 propaganda posters showed the Führer muzzled by bandages with the words ‘Forbidden to Speak’, as Hitler portrayed himself as a persecuted patriot.13
Hitler turned to photography the moment he stepped through the studded iron gate of Landsberg Prison. Heinrich Hoffmann was waiting outside to record the event for posterity, but a prison guard threatened to confiscate his camera. Hitler posed instead in front of the old city gate, standing by the running board of the Daimler-Benz, looking resolutely at the camera, his moustache neatly clipped, hair slicked back. The picture was published around the world.14
Hitler could not be heard, but was now seen throughout the ranks and beyond, as Hoffmann published three picture books between 1924 and 1926. The last volume, entitled Germany’s Awakening in Word and Image, portrayed the leader as a saviour: ‘A man stood up from among the people, spreading the gospel of love for the Fatherland.’ Posters appeared, some of them showing a crowd of listeners waiting expectantly for the saviour to appear.15
On the way back to Munich, Hoffmann asked Hitler what he intended to do next. ‘I shall start again, from the beginning.’ The party was resurrected and given a new location in the Brienner Strasse, soon referred to as the ‘Brown House’. Hitler designed every detail, including the red leather chairs with the crest of the sovereign eagle, copied from ancient Rome, embossed on their backs. On either side of the entrance, two bronze tablets bore the names of those who had lost their lives during the Beer Hall Putsch, now seen as ‘martyrs to the movement’.16
But membership lagged. Not until 1927 did enrolment reach 57,000, the number attained before the putsch. These were the years of political eclipse, as the economy recovered, assisted by a new currency that tamed inflation and a flood of capital from the United States. Government stabilised. Germany was brought back into the international fold as it entered the League of Nations in 1926. Historians, with hindsight, would call these years the ‘Golden Age of Weimar’.
So lukewarm was support for the NSDAP that the ban on speaking was lifted in March 1927. But despite all the theatrics around Hitler’s public appearances, with music blaring, flags unfurled and banners waving, and followers with their hands outstretched to greet the leader, many seats remained empty. His rhetorical skills were intact, but his message no longer held the same appeal. The movement was in the doldrums.17
Yet even as his popular appeal stalled his image as a god-like figure spread among his followers. Joseph Goebbels, an ambitious, intelligent man with a deformed right foot who had only just joined the party, wondered in October 1925, ‘Who is this man? Half commoner, half God! Truly Christ or only John the Baptist?’ He was not alone. Even as attendance was below what had been expected at the first party rally in Nuremberg, held in the summer of 1927, the SA in their brown shirts enthusiastically celebrated their leader, who had choreographed the entire event: ‘faith in the Führer,’ he proclaimed to the assembled masses, ‘and not the weakness of the majority is decisive.’ Within the ranks of the party, the ‘Heil Hitler’ greeting became compulsory, symbol of a personal connection with the leader.18
Hitler himself was an astute judge of character. As an early believer recalled, he could size up a person at first glance, almost like an animal picking up a scent, sorting those who had ‘boundless trust and quasi-religious faith’ from those who retained a critical distance. The former were pitted against each other, the latter discarded as soon as they were no longer of use.19
Mein Kampf was mocked by enemies, but treated like the Bible by followers. The book repeatedly asserted that geniuses were not found through general elections. ‘A camel can pass through the eye of a needle sooner than a great man can be discovered by an election.’ His followers saw themselves as apostles who could see even as the minds of unbelievers were blinded. In an open letter to Hitler on the concept of leadership, written in 1928, Goebbels repeated this view, pointing out that ‘The great leader cannot be elected. He is there when he must be there.’ A leader was not chosen by the masses, a leader liberated the masses. The leader was the one, in times of great doubt, to point the way towards belief. ‘You are the first servant in the battle for the future,’ he continued, suggesting that the leader surround himself with a small group of true men who would roam the country to preach the faith to those who had fallen into despair. A year later, as Hitler turned forty on 20 April 1929, he ascribed to the ideal leader a combination of character, willpower, ability and luck. Hitler already had three of these qualities. His lucky star, Goebbels predicted, would soon shine.20
The party’s fortunes turned before the end of the year. On 3 October 1929 Gustav Stresemann, a pillar of Weimar democracy, died. A few weeks later Wall Street crashed, sending waves of panic selling around the world. Unemployment soared, passing the three million mark within months to culminate at six million by 1932. Faith in democracy dissolved, inflation took hold, and a sense of despair and hopelessness spread. Hitler was the man of the hour.21
A huge propaganda campaign was launched. Whereas other parties were content with a postal appeal or a newspaper advertisement, the Nazis engaged in intense and incessant activities. Hitler had always stressed the importance of the spoken word, and in 1930 one thousand professionally trained speakers fanned out to spread the message, reaching every hamlet. Rallies were organised, meetings held, posters and flyers distributed and swastikas painted on sidewalks.
The party was preaching to the converted, however. Among large parts of the population a wall of resistance existed that their propaganda could not break. The NSDAP referred to itself as ‘the Hitler movement’, as the figure of the Führer was the one propaganda element that was genuinely effective among a number of disaffected shopkeepers, Protestant farmers and war veterans. While the Nazis’ electoral share shot up from 2.6 to 18.3 per cent between May 1928 and September 1930, supporters of rival political parties, in the words of historian Richard Bessel, ‘remained remarkably immune to the influence of the cult which was built up around Hitler’.22
In September 1931 Hitler’s half-niece Geli Raubal shot herself in the chest with his Walther pistol. Two years earlier she had moved into her uncle’s apartment in Munich, and her suicide at the age of twenty-three immediately sparked rumours of sexual violence, possibly even murder. It was a publicity disaster, as the press also reminded readers of the homosexuality of SA leader Ernst Röhm. Far from being the party of family values, the NSDAP, enemies of the Nazis alleged, was a collection of sexual deviants.23
Six months later Heinrich Hoffmann published a photograph collection entitled The Hitler Nobody Knows. It humanised the image of the Führer. Baldur von Shirach, head of the Hitler Youth, provided a foreword. Hitler, he explained, was not only a leader, but also a ‘great and good man’. Few people realised that he cultivated simple, spartan habits and worked ceaselessly towards the greater good: ‘His capacity for work is extraordinary.’ He had no vices. ‘It is scarcely known that Hitler is a teetotaller, a non-smoker and a vegetarian.’ His hobbies were history and architecture. He read voraciously, boasting a library of 6,000 books, ‘all of which he has not just perused, but also read’. Hitler was fond of children and kind to animals. The cover showed a relaxed Führer reclining in an alpine meadow with a shepherd by his side. A hundred candid photographs showed Hitler as a baby, Hitler as artist, Hitler at home, Hitler at work, Hitler at leisure, Hitler reading, chatting, hiking, smiling.24
The book appeared in March 1932, in the middle of a presidential campaign. Paul von Hindenburg, a highly respected field marshal aged eighty-four, had been persuaded to run against Hitler. On the first official day of the runoff election, Goebbels published a piece entitled ‘Adolf Hitler as a Human Being’. All the themes of the picture book were reinforced. ‘Hitler is by nature a good man,’ Goebbels testified. A ‘human being amongst other human beings, a friend to his comrades, a helpful promoter of every ability and of all talents’. He was kind and modest, which is why all those who knew him ‘not only as a politician, but also as a person’ were devoted to him. Emil Ludwig, a contemporary biographer, commented: ‘All that Hitler lacked, the Germans were persuaded to imagine by his disciple Goebbels.’25
The good man showed himself to millions. Goebbels chartered an aeroplane, taking him to dozens of cities in a flying tour that popularised the Hitler cult. ‘Hitler over Germany’, the headlines screamed. The audience was kept waiting for hours, erupting in applause when Hitler finally descended from the clouds in his plane like a messiah. Young girls gave him flowers, local leaders paid their respects and SA bands played music. The crowds roared.26
An election poster pithily titled ‘Hitler’ made him instantly recognisable, with his face appearing to float free in space, lightened by a dark background. But all the propaganda failed to win Hitler sufficient support to prevail in his presidential bid. Hindenburg won overwhelmingly to become President of the Reich, or head of state, in April. National elections were held a few months later. Hitler kept up the same relentless schedule. His exhausting flying tours finally paid off, as the NSDAP became the most important political party in July 1932, with 37.3 per cent of the electorate.
Hindenburg nonetheless refused to name Hitler Chancellor of Germany, the equivalent of head of government. Rather than compromise, Hitler fumed, declining to join the governing cabinet. He toured the country to denounce the ‘reactionary clique’ in power in Berlin. Instead of embracing him, in what looked like a decline into oblivion, a more discriminating electorate gave the party less than a third of all votes in new elections held in November 1932. ‘The aura is gone … the magic has failed’, one newspaper observed. ‘A falling comet in the November fog’, another commented. Party members became disillusioned, leaving the ranks in the tens of thousands.27
On 30 January 1933 Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. It was the result not so much of an electoral process as of a series of sordid backstage political transactions in which Hindenburg played the leading role. The ageing president did not trust Hitler, but detested his rival even more. When Kurt von Schleicher, last chancellor of the Weimar Republic, proposed to rule as de facto dictator to break parliamentary stalemate, Hindenburg appointed Hitler instead.
Within weeks the Reichstag building where parliament convened was set on fire. Hitler used the incident to claim that a communist plot was in progress. Hindenburg, who did not trust the parliamentary system to contain the threat from the left, was persuaded to pass a decree suspending basic rights.
Terror and propaganda now advanced hand in hand, as hundreds of thousands of brownshirts hunted down their opponents. The mayor of Stassfurt, a social democrat, was shot dead on 5 February 1933. Countless other leaders of the opposition were intimidated, beaten up or paraded through the streets on their way to prison. Still, the NSDAP failed to secure an absolute majority on election day in March 1933, winning only 43.9 per cent of the vote. An Enabling Act was passed the same month, giving Hitler unlimited powers for four years.28
An even greater wave of terror followed. In May trade unions were dissolved, while in June all other political parties were disbanded. Violence did not target just political opponents or social outcasts, but was directed at all opponents of the Nazis. An estimated 100,000 people were detained without trial in 1933 alone. Hundreds died in custody. While many were subsequently released, their arrest had the desired effect, making fear a routine part of everyday life.29
The moment Hitler became chancellor, some municipal authorities began demonstrating their zeal by renaming streets, squares, avenues, schools, stadiums or bridges after their leader. On 31 March 1933 the centre of Hanover became Adolf Hitler Square. Three days later a central avenue leading from the Charlottenplatz to the Wilhelm Palais in Stuttgart was christened Adolf Hitler Street. For good measure a middle school in the same city was called Adolf Hitler School. In Charlottenburg, Berlin, the local authorities renamed Chancellery Place in honour of the Führer on the occasion of his birthday on 20 April 1933. Within a few years even the smallest village had its obligatory Adolf Hitler Street. Many also had an Adolf Hitler Square.30
People also wrote to honour the Führer. On 18 February Herr Weber, owner of a coffee and cake shop in Sondershausen, asked to be allowed to call his establishment the ‘Reich’s Chancellor A. Hitler’. The Führer declined. Three days later a rose breeder proposed to identity a new variety as ‘Adolf Hitler’, while an engineer wrote to christen a wind turbine in Berlin the ‘Adolf Hitler Tower’. An admirer from Düsseldorf baptised his daughter Hitlerine, while Adolfine, Hitlerike and Hilerine were also popular.31
But there were no statues of Adolf Hitler. Unlike most other dictators, the Führer insisted that statues and monuments be reserved for the great historical figures of the past. He was a leader of the future.32
Portraits of the Führer adorned every office, but outside the organs of the state demand for his image also rocketed. Some entrepreneurs asked for permission to use his name or profile to sell soap, cigars and sweets. Others bypassed the state altogether and produced bonbons or sausages in the shape of the swastika. To protect the ‘sacred nature and value’ of state symbols, Goebbels passed a law on 19 May 1933 forbidding any image of the Führer to circulate without the approval of the party.33
Hitler was only chancellor, and next to his portrait was that of the president. Hitler made the best of his predicament, using Hindenburg’s aura to place himself in a direct line of great German leaders. On 30 January 1933, the two men had appeared side by side on the balcony in the Wilhelmstrasse, greeting some 60,000 brownshirts in a torchlit parade choreographed by Goebbels. Two months later, at the ceremonial opening of the Reichstag in Potsdam, Hitler bowed respectfully to Hindenburg as he received his blessing. The event was shown in every cinema.34
By 1934 the brownshirts, who had done the dirty work, became increasingly vocal and demanded to be incorporated into the regular army. But conservative generals viewed them as thugs. Hitler had no wish to antagonise the military establishment. He also feared that Ernst Röhm, chief-of-staff of the SA, had become too powerful. On 30 June, in the Night of the Long Knives, he ordered his elite SS guards to purge the SA. Röhm was arrested and shot, along with dozens of other leaders, while thousands more were thrown into prison. Hindenburg, who retained control over the army as president, congratulated Hitler.
The old field marshal died on 2 August 1934. An hour later the offices of President of the Reich and Chancellor of Germany were united in the person of the Führer, who now commanded the army. The traditional oath of loyalty to the office of the president was altered and given to Adolf Hitler in name by every soldier.35
Hitler, having painstakingly built up his image as a charismatic leader, now sought a plebiscite for confirmation. The population was asked to vote on the merger of both offices on 19 August. There was a barrage of propaganda. Posters of Hitler were everywhere, with only one word: ‘Yes’. In Bavaria, where BMW had their factories, one observer noted: ‘Hitler on every bulletin board, Hitler in every display window, in fact Hitler in every window that one can see. Every tram, every window in every train wagon, every car window: Hitler looks through every window.’ In some places the brownshirts, who continued operations on a much-reduced scale after the purge, provided portraits for free, demanding that they be prominently exhibited. They returned within hours if their orders were not followed. Flags were also distributed and hung from windows. Households in central Dresden received instructions on the precise number of swastika flags they should display.36
Ninety per cent of the electorate approved. Five million people had the courage to spoil the ballot or vote No. As the Jewish scholar Victor Klemperer confided to his diary, ‘One third said Yes out of fear, one third out of intoxication, one third out of fear and intoxication.’37
The party’s annual rally followed the plebiscite. Since 1927 it had been held in Nuremberg, a small city in Bavaria with fortified buildings dating back to the Holy Roman Empire, considered to be the First Reich. The rallies had grown in size over the years, but none matched the ‘Rally of Unity and Strength’, as the gathering of 700,000 people was later called. As Hitler’s deputy Rudolph Hess announced during the opening ceremony: ‘This congress is the first to take place under the unlimited rule of National Socialism. It stands under the banner of Adolf Hitler as the highest and only leader of Germany, under the banner of the “Führer” as a concept embodied in state law.’ The rally concentrated on glorifying the Führer. Albert Speer, the party’s chief architect, built a huge field with a grandstand surrounded by 152 searchlights casting vertical beams into the night, creating what admirers called a Cathedral of Light around the Führer as he addressed vast formations of uniformed followers enthralled by his every word. As Hess summed up, ‘The Party is Hitler and Hitler is Germany just as Germany is Hitler!’38
In the years following his release from prison in 1924 Hitler had made his star the guiding principle of the party. Belief in Adolf Hitler became all-important: his intuition, vision and sheer willpower would propel the NSDAP forward. Hitlerism focused entirely on Hitler. As Mein Kampf had pointed out, when people adored a genius they released their inner strength. Only Jews denounced reverence for great souls as a ‘cult of personality’. Now the people as a whole were asked to unite in their adoration of one man.39
The cult of personality abased all others inside the party. Ten days after the 19 August 1934 plebiscite a circular from the NSDAP demanded that portraits of Goering and Goebbels as well as other leaders be taken down from the party premises. When followers assembled for the next rally in Nuremberg a year later the slogan proposed by Hess was shortened to ‘Hitler is Germany just as Germany is Hitler’.40
Towering above all others had many advantages. Most people detested the thuggish brownshirts and had welcomed the Night of the Long Knives, unaware of the scale of the massacre because Goebbels tightly controlled the newspapers. Many saw in their chancellor a courageous man who put his country above his erstwhile comrades, moving with lightning speed against the powerful men who had become a danger to the state. But the purge had also demonstrated that conflicting forces were at work inside the Nazi movement. Hitler appeared to be the only one who could hold together very diverse and sometimes antagonistic internal party factions. While he exploited their rivalries for his own benefit, all of them had to serve him in common subordination. And when things went wrong, ordinary people blamed his underlings, rarely the Führer, building up his aura of invincibility even further.41
Two weeks after the Reichstag fire Goebbels moved into the Ordenspalais, an eighteenth-century palace in the Wilhelmstrasse directly across from the chancellery. As Reich Minister of Propaganda and Enlightenment he worked tirelessly on the cult of the Führer. On 19 April 1933, as Hitler was about to turn forty-four, Goebbels addressed the nation. Many admirers had rushed to join the ranks of the party, he explained, while millions of ordinary believers had only seen him from afar. But even the few who knew him well were overcome by the magic of his personality. ‘The longer one knows him,’ Goebbels continued, ‘the more one admires him, and the more one is ready to give oneself fully to his cause.’ Over the next decade Goebbels would glorify the leader in an annual speech on the eve of his birthday, which became a major holiday marked by parades and public celebrations.42
Every aspect of daily life fell under the control of the one-party state. In a process called Gleichschaltung, or synchronisation, the party took over or replaced completely every organisation from the education system down to a local sports club. All adopted a uniform Nazi outlook. Goebbels oversaw the press, with every newspaper spreading the same message, always dominated by fulsome praise of the Führer.
His word was everywhere. His most important speeches were published in all leading newspapers and distributed by the millions in separate pamphlets produced by the party’s printing house. Starting in 1937, every week hundreds of thousands of posters appeared with a quotation for display in party offices and public buildings. Weekly mottos were also printed in the newspapers under a special headline, usually if not always some saying of Hitler’s.43
Sales of Mein Kampf rocketed. At the German Book Week held in Bremen in November 1933 party member and literary critic Will Vesper announced that Mein Kampf was ‘the holy book of National Socialism and the new Germany that every German must have’. A million copies were sold by the end of the year. Four years later sales passed the four million mark: ‘A Book Conquers a Nation!’ trumpeted a Berlin newspaper. It became the gift of choice for newly-weds, while free copies were later handed out to soldiers fighting on the front.44
Excerpts and abridgements of the sacred text also appeared. In 1934 the chapter entitled ‘Nation and Race’ appeared as a brochure and was distributed to schools two years later. Collections of quotations from the Führer became popular, for instance, Words of the Führer and Hitler’s Words. But a few years later Hitler intervened, demanding that these publications be banned, as they simplified his thought. He insisted that his words be read in their entirety.45
His voice was also everywhere. Hitler first spoke over the radio one day after he became chancellor. It did not go well, with some listeners even complaining that his tone was harsh and ‘un-German’. Hitler worked on his broadcasting skills. He was, after all, a practised orator. ‘Sound, I think, is much more suggestive than image,’ he opined. ‘We can get endlessly more out of this.’46
Hitler was heard again on the eve of the March 1933 elections. Goebbels was elated: ‘This hymn vibrates through the ether over the radio in all of Germany. Forty million Germans stand on the squares and streets of the Reich, or sit in taverns and homes next to the loudspeaker and become aware of the great turning-point in history.’47
‘Radio is all mine,’ Goebbels enthused, soon approving a scheme whereby millions of cheap sets were sold below production cost. ‘All of Germany Listens to the Führer with the People’s Radio!’ became the slogan, and by 1941 some 65 per cent of all households boasted a subscription. But even people without a radio could not escape the voice of their saviour. Loudspeaker pillars were erected in cities, and mobile loudspeakers installed in small towns. In March 1936 Victor Klemperer came across a Hitler speech on a visit to Dresden. ‘I could not get away from it for an hour. First from an open shop, then in the bank, then from a shop again.’48
Hitler was almost entirely absent from newsreels before he became chancellor. Here, too, Goebbels saw an opportunity to exploit a new technology for propaganda purposes. On 10 February 1933 a team of camera operators and their assistants shot Hitler’s thirty-three-minute speech in the Berliner Sportpalast, a huge indoor arena in the Schöneberg district of the capital. But the film failed to capture the bond between the orator and his audience. Goebbels developed doubts, and while Hitler became a regular presence in weekly cinema newsreels his appearances remained fleeting.49
Hitler intervened and commissioned Leni Riefenstahl to make Triumph of the Will, a lavish documentary of the 1934 party rally in Nuremberg. Riefenstahl used moving cameras, aerial photography and synchronised sound to produce a masterpiece of propaganda, one that presented a murderous regime that had just carried out a bloody purge as a mesmerising, quasi-religious experience in which faithful masses were united with their saviour in a mystical bond. The star was Adolf Hitler, descending like a god from the clouds by plane in the opening scene. Triumph of the Will won awards in Germany, the United States, France and other countries. More films followed, including a propaganda piece entitled Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces and a documentary on the 1936 summer Olympics in Berlin. All of them were screened in special previews for the party elite, shown in theatres around the country and taken to the countryside in mobile cinemas.50
Goebbels tried to enlist Hoffmann, but the court photographer was determined to remain ‘just a businessman’. His business thrived, with shops in every major city. Since the Führer’s image was protected by law, the court photographer had a virtual monopoly over the market. He sold his photos as portraits, postcards, posters and calendars. His book The Hitler Nobody Knows, published in 1932, sold some 400,000 copies, and was followed by a series of equally successful picture books, including Youth around Hitler, Hitler in Italy, With Hitler in the West and The Face of the Führer. All appeared in a range of formats, from coffee-table books to miniature editions easily tucked into a pocket by soldiers on the front.51
Painters, sculptors, photographers, printers and even the Post Office were referred to Hoffmann’s studio. His reach extended still farther after Hitler put him in charge of the annual Great German Art Exhibition in 1937. Every year dozens of artworks depicting Hitler, many copied from Hoffmann’s photos, filled entire rooms.52
Goebbels controlled propaganda, but not schools and universities. To his great disappointment, the Ministry of Culture he had been promised went to Bernhard Rust. Hitler liked to divide and rule, encouraging rivalry among his underlings or giving them overlapping tasks so as to consolidate his own power. It made him the ultimate arbiter, while relegating them to subordinates constantly competing to outdo one another.
Rust, a zealous Nazi, made sure that children were indoctrinated into the cult of the leader from their very first day in school. The Hitler salute was introduced by the end of 1933. His portrait hung in every classroom. Old textbooks were removed, with some burned in giant bonfires, while new ones endlessly hammered home the same message: love the leader and obey the party. Instead of reading Goethe, they recited the poem ‘Mein Führer’ by Hans H. Seitz: ‘I have seen you now; And will carry your image with me; Whatever may happen; I will stand by you.’53
In potted biographies children were told the story of a man who had risen from obscurity to save his people. The Story of Adolf Hitler Told to German Children by Annemarie Stiehler concluded: ‘As long as Germans walk the earth, they will think of Adolf Hitler with gratitude, the one who fought his way from unknown soldier during the world war to Führer and saved Germany from great need.’ In some schools children prayed every day for the Führer: ‘Dear God, I beg you; Let me become a pious child; Protect Hitler every day; That no accident may befall him; You sent him in our distress; O God protect him.’54
Our Hitler, published in 1933 by Paul Jennrich, enjoined young readers to ‘Wake up and follow him!’ Youngsters enrolled in the Hitler Youth, an organisation overseen by Baldur von Shirach. Since it was the only youth organisation allowed to exist, membership rocketed after 1934, until three years later it became mandatory for all Germans. They pledged love and loyalty to the Führer. They sang, paraded and prayed in his name: ‘Adolf Hitler, you are our great Führer. Thy name makes the enemy tremble.’55
Adults or children alike were told ‘The Führer is Always Right’. Robert Ley, leader of the German Labour Front and unswerving follower of the Führer, used the slogan at the Nuremberg rally in 1936. It appeared across the nation, proclaimed on banners, posters and in newspapers.56
Goebbels, Riefenstahl, Hoffmann, Rust, Shirach, Ley, all worked tirelessly to promote their leader. But the greatest architect of the cult remained Hitler himself, lead actor, stage manager, orator and publicist all rolled into one. He constantly fine-tuned his image. After 1932 he projected himself as a leader in close touch with his people, saluting millions at parades and rallies. But he was also keen to present himself as a great statesman and player on the world stage.
As soon as he moved into the chancellery he hired an interior designer to transform the premises. Hitler detested the old building, seeing its overwrought grandeur as a parable for the political decay of the nation. Rooms were opened to light and air, old partitions removed, floorboards ripped out, crisp, clear and straight lines introduced. As the temple of democracy was torn down, a new Reception Hall was erected, complete with swastika mosaics in the ceiling and bronze lamps along the walls. God was setting his house in order.57
Several years later, Hitler’s favourite architect, Albert Speer, received a blank cheque to build a new chancellery, a vast building that monopolised the entire northern side of the Vossstrasse. Hitler treasured the polished marble of the main gallery, which was twice the length of the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles: ‘On the long walk from the entrance to the reception hall they will get a taste of the power and grandeur of the German Reich!’ His office was 400 square metres in size, giving the Führer great joy every time a visitor had to cross the large expanse to reach his desk.58
Hitler’s apartment in Munich was also refurbished, with every detail carefully designed, down to the door handles. His interior designer Gerdy Troost created an atmosphere of muted, bourgeois luxury, with books and art prominently displayed. ‘We might have been in Park Terrace, Glasgow,’ one visitor commented. All was designed to convey an air of reassuring familiarity and stability.59
The principal stage for Hitler’s performance as a cultivated and trustworthy statesman, however, was neither in Berlin nor in Munich. In 1933 Hitler bought a small chalet in the Bavarian mountain retreat of Obersalzberg, which was refurbished and expanded into a sprawling compound named the Berghof (the alpine retreat is sometimes referred to as Berchtesgaden, the name of the local town). Gerdy Troost, who had transformed his home and office, filled the spacious halls and bedrooms with rich fabrics, luxurious tapestries and modern furniture. The centre of the Berghof was the Great Hall, a reception room the size of a small gymnasium, dominated by a giant window that could be lowered to offer a sweeping view of the snow-capped mountains. There Hitler held court, with every detail designed to impress his visitors. They were dazzled by the sheer size of the Great Hall, then overawed by the huge expanse of window, the largest piece of glass ever made at the time. Nothing stood between them and the mountain peak. Furniture was placed along the wall to leave the room’s centre uncluttered. But the oversized sofas had deep backs, compelling visitors to lounge, recline or perch on the edge. Hitler sat up straight on a chair, dominating all others.60
Outside, Hitler posed for Heinrich Hoffmann’s camera, feeding the deer from his terrace, playing with his dog, greeting children. Soon, thousands of well-wishers and tourists arrived, hoping for a glimpse of the Führer. It was ‘like a wonderful dream to be so near to the Führer’, one woman from Frankfurt recalled. Outsiders were banned in 1936, but leading personalities continued to visit without announcement: they, too, were barred two years later.61
Inside, Hitler received a steady flow of dignitaries, from kings and ambassadors to religious leaders and secretaries of state. Many were carefully selected sympathisers, and most were duly impressed. Former British prime minister Lloyd George, who visited in 1936, went back home declaring that Hitler was the ‘George Washington of Germany’ and a ‘born leader of men’. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor came and posed for the camera.62
The Berghof, however, also provided the ideal stage for intimidating potential opponents. When Kurt Schuschnigg came to negotiate the fate of his country, Hitler arranged for some of his most brutal looking generals to sit in the background, glaring menacingly at the chancellor of Austria while Hitler ranted for a full two hours.63
Still, Hitler was no Mussolini, a dictator who managed to beguile some of the world’s greatest leaders. Hitler’s best tactic was not so much to charm as to disarm, lulling those who met him into a false sense of security. Hitler was a master of disguise, hiding his personality behind a carefully constructed image of a modest, kind and simple man. He knew how to absorb and give expression to the emotions of a crowd, and equally he knew how to read his visitors, adapting his tone and demeanour to hide his intentions and downplay the threat he represented. When the American journalist Dorothy Thompson published I Saw Hitler in 1932, describing him as ‘formless and faceless’ after a lengthy interview, ‘the very prototype of the Little Man’ who would only smite ‘the weakest of his enemies’, Hitler was amused. She was just one in a long line of people who underestimated what the little man could – and would – do.64
From the chancellery and the Berghof, the two power centres of the Third Reich, Hitler set out to pursue the vision he had expressed in Mein Kampf, although he did so more by following his intuition, seizing opportunities when they presented themselves, than by adhering to any definite programme. Germany withdrew from the League of Nations in October 1933. Conscription was reintroduced in violation of the Treaty of Versailles in March 1935, the armed forces expanding to six times the permitted number. Even as Hitler made promises of peace, he prepared his country for war. In March 1936 he took his first international gamble, as his army marched into the demilitarised zone in the Rhineland. His own military advisers had warned him of the risks, and his troops were under strict instructions to retreat if they encountered any opposition from France. But nothing happened, except for a vote of weak condemnation by the League of Nations. ‘With the certainty of a sleepwalker, I walk along the path laid out for me by providence,’ Hitler quipped. He himself now began to believe in his own infallibility.65
The Rhineland coup crushed Hitler’s opponents. They were further isolated by a carefully orchestrated show of unity between the leader and his people, held in the guise of a referendum two weeks later. A wave of terror had already thinned the ranks of critics of the party, as people were sent to prison for the slightest infraction. Robert Sauter, an ordinary citizen who queried the reliability of newspapers, was confined for five months. Paul Glowania, a resident in Ludwigshaven, expressed doubts about the regime in the privacy of his own home, was overheard, denounced and sentenced to a year. ‘Germany is silent, nervous, suppressed; it speaks in whispers; there is no public opinion, no opposition, no discussion of anything,’ noted W. E. B. Du Bois, the African-American civil rights activist who spent months travelling through the country in 1936.66
Propaganda, combined with terror, convinced the others to vote Yes. Even in a small town of 1,500 people, there were posters everywhere, on fences and houses, including giant portraits of Hitler. In Breslau every display window was mandated to feature a dedicated Hitler corner. Shopowners who refused were threatened with a day in a concentration camp. Elsewhere brownshirts appeared on the doorstep of each household, telling their occupants how many posters must be displayed. Cases of resistance still occurred, with portraits of Hitler covered in paint or torn down overnight. The result of the referendum was that 99 per cent voted Yes. ‘It is the miracle of our age that you have found me among so many millions,’ he told ecstatic supporters at the party rally in September 1936, ‘and that I have found you is Germany’s great fortune.’67
Hitler now had the popular backing he needed to expand the Third Reich. But in order to wage war he believed that the economy must become self-sufficient. As early as 1933 exports had been curbed, price controls introduced, grain stores built and consumption rationed. In 1936 Hermann Goering was put in charge of the Four-Year Plan, cranking up the effort to reach economic independence by 1940. It brought widespread shortages. The American journalist William Shirer reported from Berlin that long queues of sullen people waited before the food shops, as there were shortages of meat, butter, fruit and fats. Import substitutes meant that clothes were increasingly made from wood pulp, gasoline from coal and rubber from coal and lime. Cost-conscious people wondered how much money was wasted on propaganda, not to mention the millions lavished on the mountain retreat for the ‘simple worker of his people’.68
Panem et circenses, bread and circuses, was an old principle well understood by modern dictators, but the entertainment was also faltering: the parades and rallies all looked the same, the speeches sounded alike. ‘Gone is the belief in the magical powers of Hitler,’ one commentator ventured. Still, many credited Hitler for having freed the country from the shackles of Versailles. Hitler had elevated their country to its rightful position in the world and restored their army to its former glory.69
Most of all, the cult provided protection against disillusionment with the system. People blamed the party, not their leader. The more disenchanted they became, the more they characterised Hitler as a man kept in deliberate ignorance by his underlings. He only wanted the best for his people. ‘If only Hitler knew’ became a popular expression.70
Hitler, having portrayed himself as a sleepwalker guided by the hand of destiny, knew that he had to show that his star was still in the ascendant. In March 1938 he gambled again. Even before the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918 there had been calls for the unification of Austria and Germany into a Greater Germany. The Treaty of Versailles forbade the union and stripped Austria of the Sudetenland, giving the German-dominated area to Czechoslovakia. In February 1938 Hitler had browbeaten the chancellor of Austria into appointing Nazi sympathisers to key positions in Vienna. On returning home, Schuschnigg scheduled instead a plebiscite on the issue of unification. Hitler was furious, sent an ultimatum and invaded on 12 March. He himself crossed the border the very same day in a motorcade, to be welcomed by cheering crowds. Austria became the province of Ostmark.
The international response was subdued and encouraged Hitler to eye the Sudetenland. Still, like many gamblers, he vacillated, torn between confidence and self-doubt. In September 1938 he loudly threatened war at the annual party rally. Within days Neville Chamberlain travelled to the Obersalzberg, where his host received him on the Berghof’s front steps. Halfway through a three-hour conversation, Hitler suddenly switched roles, transforming himself from an unpredictable megalomaniac who threatened war into a perfectly reasonable negotiating partner. Hitler pledged not to use force against Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain agreed to the cessation of the Sudetenland, signing the Munich Agreement two weeks later. ‘He looks entirely undistinguished,’ the prime minister admitted to his sister, but Hitler was ‘a man of his word’. Hitler clapped his hands in sheer delight the moment Chamberlain left the Berghof. The Sudetenland was occupied without a shot being fired.71
On 20 April 1939 Adolf Hitler was fifty. ‘The fiftieth birthday of the creator of Greater Germany. Two days of flags, pomp and special editions of the newspapers, boundless deification,’ noted Victor Klemperer. The celebrations had been under preparation for weeks by Goebbels, who addressed the nation over the radio on 19 April, asking Germans to join him in fervent prayer to almighty God: ‘May he grant the German people’s deepest wish and keep the Führer in health and strength for many more years and decades.’ Shortly afterwards party leaders appeared at the chancellery to offer their congratulations. At nine in the evening the Führer showed himself to the crowds. Hundreds of thousands formed a guard of honour along the road from the Wilhelmstrasse all the way to Adolf Hitler Place in Charlottenburg, where Hitler inaugurated a new section of the new east–west axis, also called the Via Triumphalis. The ten-lane avenue was ablaze, with powerful lights throwing gilded swastikas and imperial eagles, mounted on columns every twenty metres, into sharp relief against a dark sky.72
Birthday presents, piled high in several rooms at the chancellery, were opened around midnight. There were gifts from his entourage. Albert Speer, the Führer’s architect who had built the Via Triumphalis, used one of the salons to erect a four-metre-high model of a gigantic Arch of Triumph to be built in Berlin. Small bronze casts, white marble nudes and old paintings were heaped on long tables. There were also tributes from the people. Farmers sent their produce. A group of women from Westphalia had knitted 6,000 pairs of socks for the Führer’s soldiers. Others had baked a two-metre-long birthday cake.73
The real festivities came the following day, as the former corporal acted as an emperor, reviewing his mighty war machine before an astonished world. He wore his usual brown uniform, but sat on a throne-like chair placed on a raised dais, covered with red plush, protected by a giant canopy decorated with eagles and iron crosses. Tanks, artillery, armoured cars, and tens of thousands of soldiers in full fighting regalia greeted their Führer along the Via Triumphalis, with 162 warplanes flying overhead in close formation.74
The Via Triumphalis cut through the heart of the capital, but it also linked Hitler to the country’s imperial past. Albert Speer had designed the avenue as an extension of the Unter den Linden, developed by Prussia as a Via Triumphalis after its victory in the Napoleonic Wars. The axis was part of a grandiose plan to transform Berlin into the capital of a thousand-year Reich, a gleaming city called Germania that would rival Egypt, Babylon and ancient Rome. The plan, based on original sketches provided by the Führer himself, included a gigantic Grand Hall designed to host 180,000 people. The Arch of Triumph, meanwhile, would reach an enormous 117 metres. As Speer later put it, Hitler demanded ‘the biggest of everything to glorify his works and magnify his pride’.75
‘The Führer is celebrated by the nation like no other mortal has ever been,’ Goebbels effused. Hitler seemed to have miraculously united a nation still deeply divided only six years earlier. In an important reflection on the Nazi regime, the German journalist and historian Sebastian Haffner calculated that more than 90 per cent of the population were followers of the Führer.76
Victor Klemperer was more prudent: ‘Who can judge the mood of eighty million people, with the press bound and everyone afraid of opening their mouth?’ When Hitler spoke in the Theresienwiese, an open space in his old stamping ground of Munich, half a million people had been expected, but at most 200,000 turned up. ‘They stood there as if the speech had nothing to do with them,’ one observer noticed. Most had been frogmarched to the event from neighbouring enterprises and factories. Speer himself remembered that in 1939 the cheering crowds were entirely stage-managed, even if some were genuinely enthusiastic.77
‘The fiftieth birthday of Hitler was celebrated with such extravagance that one might really believe that his popularity is soaring. But those who really know the common people realise that much, but by no means all, is mere appearance,’ wrote an anonymous critic of the regime. For two weeks before the event, people were bombarded with exhortations to decorate their homes, and woe betide any who failed to comply. Even churches were given specific instructions by the Ministry of Propaganda on how to ring their bells on the great day.78
Whether or not they adored the Führer, as Goebbels proclaimed, they lived in fear of war. Even fanatical followers heaved a sigh of relief after Austria was peacefully incorporated into the Reich, but they did not trust the Munich Agreement. Chamberlain, upon his return to London, had received a boisterous welcome, holding a flimsy piece of paper flapping in the wind: ‘Peace for our time,’ he had confidently declared. Wild crowds had also cheered in other parts of Europe, but not in Germany. People thought it a bluff. ‘They don’t understand Hitler,’ they whispered.79
Chamberlain was convinced that Hitler had merely hoped to absorb the Sudetenland, when in fact the Führer wished to eliminate all of Czechoslovakia. This he did on 15 March 1939, as the country was invaded and divided up among Germany, Hungary and Poland. A week later American president Franklin Roosevelt sent a message asking Hitler to pledge that he would not attack other nations in Europe. Chamberlain himself announced that Britain would intervene if Polish independence was threatened. Despite the appearance of strength and unity, a thick cloud of fear hung over the birthday celebrations.80
A few months later, as apprehensions of war mounted, Hitler stunned the world by signing an alliance with Stalin. The arch-enemies were now allies, meaning that there would not be a war on two fronts. But Hitler made a fatal miscalculation. With the Soviet Union on his side, he thought that France and Britain would not dare to intervene in Poland. It was a huge gamble, but Hitler trusted his intuition, which had proved him right so far. He had built an image of himself as the man of destiny and had come to believe in it. He dismissed dissenting opinions, including those of his own generals. When Hermann Goering suggested that it was not necessary to wager everything, Hitler replied: ‘In my life I have always put my whole stake on the table.’ Germany invaded western Poland on 1 September, the Soviet Union eastern Poland on 17 September.81
On 3 September Britain and France declared war. People were in a state of shock. Instead of the wild enthusiasm of 1914, the declaration of war aroused, in Heinrich Hoffmann’s words, ‘abysmal despondency’. ‘Today, no excitement, no hurrahs, no cheering, no throwing of flowers, no war fever, no war hysteria,’ observed William Shirer from Berlin. ‘There is not even any hate for the French and British.’82
Hitler, too, was taken aback. Hoffmann found him ‘slumped in his chair, deep in thought, a look of incredulity and baffled chagrin on his face’. But he recovered soon enough, as reports of swift military advances in Poland began to flow in.83
The invading troops reached Warsaw within a week, but the streets of Berlin saw no wild rejoicing. ‘In the subway going out to the radio studio I noted the strange indifference of the people to the big news,’ Shirer confided to his diary. Resignation took over, as rationing increased, with French and English ships enforcing an economic blockade that affected almost every commodity, halving imports of cotton, tin, oil and rubber. In many shops – confectioner’s, fishmonger’s, grocer’s – the Führer’s picture, with flag cloth and victory green, replaced the rationed goods in window displays. Income tax increased by a hefty 50 per cent to finance the war effort.84
By October even rubber overshoes were restricted to 5 per cent of the population. Over the winter temperatures plummeted to below zero centigrade. Half the population was freezing and without coal. Robert Ley read a Christmas proclamation over the radio: ‘The Führer is always right. Obey the Führer!’85
When Hitler celebrated his birthday on 20 April 1940 no church bells rang, because many of them had been melted down to make bullets. Despite his victories in Denmark and Norway, invaded a few weeks earlier, a mere seventy-five well-wishers stood outside the chancellery waiting for a glimpse of the leader.86
Hitler realised that he could not break the economic blockade. Again he risked everything, making a bid for victory now that his troops still had sufficient supplies. On 10 May 1940 the German army marched into the Netherlands, Belgium and France. It was a resounding success, with tanks easily outflanking French fortifications to reach Paris on 14 June. Four days later an armistice was signed in the very same carriage of the Compagnie des Wagons-Lits where Marshal Ferdinand Foch had dictated his terms to the German delegation on 11 November 1918.
When the invasion of France had been announced six weeks earlier, many people had responded with apathy. ‘Most Germans I have seen,’ commented William Shirer, ‘are sunk deep into depression.’ Now they cheered Hitler, who was welcomed back home as the ‘Creator of a New Europe’. Hitler had overseen the choreography of the Victory Parade himself, insisting that it ‘reflect the historical victory’ achieved by his troops. As his train pulled slowly into the railway station, a crowd that had waited for hours cheered jubilantly. The Führer shed a tear, visibly overcome with emotion. People thronged the route back to the chancellery. ‘The streets are covered in flowers and look like a colourful carpet,’ wrote Goebbels, as ‘excitement fills the entire city.’87
Spontaneous scenes of joy erupted across the country, as people celebrated the armistice. There was relief after the dread of war, but also genuine euphoria at the ease with which Hitler had achieved his objectives. Again, it seemed, the hand of providence had guided the Führer to victory.88
In an eloquent speech at the Reichstag, Hitler offered peace to Britain. It was one of his best performances, calculated to rally a population that longed for peace behind the inevitable fight against Britain. The sway of his body, the inflections of his voice, the very choice of words, the cocking of his eyes, the turning of his head for irony, the gestures with his hands, the clever combination of the confidence of a conqueror with the humbleness of a true son of the people, everything created the impression of a sincere man of peace. ‘He can tell a lie with as straight a face as any man,’ noticed William Shirer. Part of the show was for his generals, massed together on the first balcony: with one imperious flick of the hand, he promoted twelve generals to the rank of field marshal. Hermann Goering became Reich Marshal.89
Britain refused to sue for peace. To their intense consternation, many ordinary people now realised that the war would not end speedily. The Battle of Britain followed, but Reich Marshal Goering failed to bomb the island into submission. Hitler adopted another plan, one close to his heart ever since he had written Mein Kampf, namely, the conquest of Russia. Germany depended heavily on deliveries of oil and grain from Stalin. The Soviet Union appeared weak, their troops having suffered great losses after a botched invasion of Finland in the winter of 1939–40. Hitler was convinced he could win a quick victory. He gambled again and betrayed his ally, as some three million soldiers crossed the Russian border in June 1941.
German troops soon became bogged down in a costly war of attrition. After Japan attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Hitler declared war on the United States, a country that had never loomed very large in his thinking. He apparently underestimated its ability to produce wheat, coal, steel and men. The war on two fronts that everyone had dreaded now became a reality. One defeat succeeded another, as the Führer, sure of his own genius, brushed aside the army’s high command, interfering in every aspect of the war. He repeatedly refused to withdraw his troops from Stalingrad, the city named after his nemesis. After hundreds of thousands of German soldiers died in one of the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare, the remaining Wehrmacht troops surrendered in February 1943.90
For years Germans had been told that Hitler was the master of the short, lightning war, a blitzkrieg conducted far away from home. In a speech at the Berliner Sportpalast on 18 February 1943, broadcast over the radio and reproduced in every newspaper, Goebbels told the population that total war was now inevitable.91
Hitler disappeared from view. To quell rumours of his declining health, he spoke briefly on 21 March 1943. It was a dull performance, delivered so hastily that some listeners suspected it was the work of an impersonator. His hand suffered from a tremor which worsened over time, which no doubt contributed to his reluctance to appear in public. As his secretary noted, he believed that an iron will could prevail over everything, yet was unable to master his own hand.92
On the eve of the Führer’s birthday on 20 April 1943 Goebbels explained in his annual peroration that men of great calibre did not need to show themselves before the full footlights of the world stage. In endless days of work and wakeful nights Hitler was toiling hard on the nation’s behalf, carrying the heaviest burden, and facing the greatest grief.93
Some derided Goebbels. Others were in a state of deep shock. Many realised that Stalingrad was a turning point, that Germany was losing the war. There were harsh words for the regime, although people knew how to express themselves without becoming liable to criminal prosecution. It was clear to all that if major strategic blunders had been made, only one man could possibly be responsible, a man who might not rest until all was destroyed.94
By summer 1943, as Mussolini fell from power, criticism of the regime became more open. People listened to foreign radio, keen to learn more about the advancing enemy troops. The Hitler salute was in striking decline. ‘Many party members no longer wear the party badge,’ observed one report from the Security Service of the SS. ‘Let us hope the English will be in Berlin before the Russians’ became a wish that was heard ever more frequently, noted the estranged diplomat Ulrich von Hassell.95
With total war came even more drastic rationing, as ordinary people were placed on a starvation diet. Still, they fared better than others. The moment Poland was invaded, the systematic killing of Jews and other undesirables began. Extermination camps were set up in occupied Poland in 1941, and soon millions of Jews from all over Europe were transported in sealed freight trains, for destruction in gas chambers. Their belongings were confiscated, catalogued, tagged and sent to Germany to assist the war effort.
Paper and cardboard, too, were rationed, but not for Heinrich Hoffmann’s photography business, since pictures of the Führer were considered ‘strategically vital’. Every month, some four tonnes of paper were earmarked for his company.96
On 6 June 1944 the Allied powers landed in Normandy. The nightmare of encirclement now became real, as two powerful armies moved towards Germany in a giant pincer movement. Hitler, still convinced of his own genius, badgered his generals and pored obsessively over maps, but since no victory was forthcoming he became increasingly suspicious of those around him. On 20 July 1944 several military leaders made an attempt on his life by placing a bomb inside a briefcase at the Wolf’s Lair, a command post in Prussia. Hitler escaped with a few bruises. It reinforced his belief that fate had chosen him, as he pressed on with the war effort, thinking that a miracle weapon or a sudden change of fortune would rescue him and his people at the eleventh hour.
By then he had become a different person. Heinrich Hoffmann described him as ‘a shivering shadow of his former self, a charred hulk from which all life, fire and flame had long since departed’. His hair was grey, his back stooped, and he walked with a shuffle. Among his own entourage, Albert Speer noted, discipline began to slacken. Even his most devoted followers at the Berghof remained seated when he entered a room, as conversations continued, some falling asleep in their chairs, others talking loudly with no apparent inhibition.97
On 24 February 1945, with the Russians at the gates, a proclamation by the Führer was read over the radio. Hitler predicted a turnabout in the fortunes of war. He was widely mocked, even by party members: ‘another prophecy by the leader,’ one of them exclaimed ironically. Soldiers talked openly of his ‘megalomania’. With the rumble of the front in the distance, ordinary people began taking down the swastikas from public buildings, angry at the failure of the leadership to surrender. Others removed his picture from their living room. ‘I cremated him,’ said one old lady.98
During the last months of the war, Hitler withdrew into his bunker, built underneath the new chancellery. It was ‘the last station in his flight from reality,’ wrote Speer. Still he ordered the fight to continue, determined to bring death and destruction to a nation that did not deserve him.99
On 20 April 1945, Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday, the first enemy shell hit Berlin. Bombardment was relentless. Two days later nothing but a white façade standing amidst smoking rubble was left of the Ministry of Propaganda. Old and trusted associates began deserting the sinking ship, Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goering among them. Hitler shot himself on 30 April. He had heard of Mussolini’s undignified end and had ordered that his remains be incinerated to prevent any desecration. His body, together with that of Eva Braun, his long-term mistress whom he had married a day earlier, was dragged out of the bunker, doused in petrol and set alight.
A wave of suicides followed among the most committed Nazis, including the entire Goebbels family, Heinrich Himmler, Bernhard Rust and Robert Ley. Thousands of ordinary people also killed themselves. As soon as the Red Army arrived, a Protestant clergyman reported, ‘whole good, churchgoing families took their lives, drowned themselves, slit their wrists or allowed themselves to be burned up along with their homes’. But the Führer’s death prompted no spontaneous displays of public grief, no outpouring of sorrow by distraught believers. ‘Strange,’ one woman reported from Hamburg after the radio announced Hitler’s death, ‘nobody wept or even looked sad.’ A young man who had long wondered how his countrymen would react to the death of their leader was astonished by the ‘monumental, yawning indifference’ that followed the radio announcement. The Third Reich, Victor Klemperer observed, was gone overnight, almost as good as forgotten.100
All resistance collapsed the moment Hitler died. Expecting the same ferocious partisan war they had fought at home, Red Army officers were taken aback by the docility of the population. They were also surprised by the number of people who produced communist flags out of scarlet Nazi banners with the swastika cut from the centre. In Berlin this turnabout was referred to as ‘Heil Stalin!’.101