Papen’s Legacy:
SPD Threatens Political Mass Strike – Communists Step Up Civil War Agitation
– Völkischer Beobachter
You Can’t Deny That Every Day
The Red Wall’s Taller and Wider. The First’s Already Smacked His Head Now Bring on the Next Rider!
– Die Rote Fahne
Totensonntag – Sunday of the Dead. The day when Germany commemorates its departed. Families make pilgrimages to graveyards. The journalist Alfred Kerr once described the atmosphere in the capital as follows:
Cemeteries in Berlin are less cemeteries … than convenient places for the accommodation of lifeless bodies.
They sprawl (in the city) flat and indifferent. Trains on metal girders thunder past; opposite are distilleries.
On the Sunday of the Dead all are drawn to these railway tombs: widows, sons, fiancées, daughters, mothers; with flowers.
Berlin’s instinct towards orderliness: the graves are tidied. Almost soaped down … only then does grief make its presence truly felt.
Cleaning, here, is a profession of the heart.
Sunday of the Dead. Some think of those they have lost – those who have died, though they still live and walk among us.
Sunday, a day suspended, a day of quiet, private conversation. But, in November 1932, there was no peace in Berlin.
At noon Meissner arrived at the Kaiserhof. He had come to meet Hitler and arrange another interview with the president for the following day.
Many National Socialists sensed their moment approaching. Goebbels, however, took a cooler-headed view of what was happening at the Chancellery. Did the president really intend to hand Hitler the reins of power? Or was he simply trying to assimilate the party into his government in order to curb its momentum? ‘Everybody mistrustful of Schleicher’, he noted in his diary. He counselled against optimism and overconfidence.
Hindenburg might have been hoping Hitler would fall in line, but Goebbels knew his Führer’s stubbornness.
He suspected, moreover, that General Schleicher was secretly in talks with other senior politicians in the NSDAP. Schleicher’s goal was obvious: to sow discord and division among the Nazis. Left-leaning Gregor Strasser, the second strongest man in the party, was currently enjoying his ‘obligatory fling’, as Goebbels called it. Roughly half the branch leaders of the NSDAP seemed to be on Strasser’s side. Opposed to Hitler’s all-or-nothing strategy, they wanted compromise, and the instant gratification that a scrap of power would bring. How would they respond if Strasser brought the conflict into the open? The air was thick with gossip.
All the parties in the Reichstag were dodging and feinting, wheeling and dealing. The Centre Party signalled its willingness to tolerate Hitler as chancellor. The DNVP wouldn’t even accept the Nazis’ invitation to talk. While Hermann Göring was negotiating with other party leaders, Goebbels went to the Kaiserhof to consult with Hitler and his most faithful followers. ‘From now on the Führer is playing chess for power,’ he later wrote. ‘It is an exciting and nerve-racking struggle, yet it also conveys the thrilling sense of being a game in which everything is at stake.’
What was the right move? A few months earlier Goebbels had written in his diary: ‘Legal? With the Centre Party? It’s enough to make you vomit!’
In any case, Hitler would carry out all future negotiations in writing. Goebbels was sure of that. No unnecessary emotion, no ill-considered turns of phrase. Every nuance mattered.
Being the French ambassador in Berlin had been a challenge even before the economic crisis, but the political situation was now utterly confused. The peace agreed at Versailles more than thirteen years earlier was still as much of a bone of contention as ever, resentment centring on the loss of territories like Alsace and all of Germany’s colonies, the issue of war guilt and the high reparations paid to France. André François-Poncet had known Germany since his youth, having attended school in Offenburg before becoming a student of German Studies, and had been injured in battle during the First World War. He was motivated by one primary goal: to improve Franco-German relations and prevent yet another war. He hoped to achieve a modus vivendi in which both countries could coexist peacefully side by side.
François-Poncet had been ambassador for just over a year. He threw countless receptions and parties, while his sweet-natured wife gained a reputation as ‘the most marvellous hostess in Berlin’, as Bella Fromm put it. François-Poncet was greying at the temples and his hair was thinning at the back – but, then, he was nearing his mid-forties. He set great store by an elegant appearance, and the tips of his moustache were always delicately twirled.
News of Papen’s resignation had reached him that same evening. The ambassador had never thought especially highly of Papen, once remarking that the man was ‘superficial, quarrelsome, false, ambitious, conceited, devious and scheming’. Papen pretended to be a friend to France, but François-Poncet was sure he was longing for the moment when the German army could exact its revenge and surge triumphantly into Paris.
Then there was Kurt von Schleicher. As François-Poncet well knew, there were many who considered him a realist and above all a cynic, a past master of intrigue. The military had no affection for him because his career had been made in the back office rather than at the front or the barracks. So what kind of impression did the Defence Minister make? The ambassador described him as follows: ‘Bald, with a shaved head, of striking pallor, wan, his expression like a mask with two gleaming, piercing eyes; his features are ill-defined in his bloated face, and his narrow lips are barely visible. None of this speaks in his favour. In one aspect, however, he is distinctive: his beautiful hands.’ Schleicher, observed the ambassador, spoke brusquely and without mincing words, but in conversation he often revealed a sharp wit. Oh, and one more thing about the General: ‘He likes to laugh. Loudly.’