Hindenburg Offers Hitler Mandate:
Is Stable, Working Majority Feasible for Hitler Cabinet? – Hitler to Give Written Reply This Afternoon
– Vossische Zeitung
Hitler Visits Hindenburg Again
– Der Angriff
Police were deployed outside the Kaiserhof that morning. SA men in brown shirts had gathered, shifting from one foot to the other. Hitler, they believed, was nearly at the finish line, and they were eager to cheer him on.
His limousine was already waiting outside. The Chancellery was only a hundred paces away, but Hitler preferred to be driven; he climbed out of the car on the other side of the street like the statesman he wanted to be.
The spoken word counted for little when it came to power. Instead, writing was read out and notes exchanged – the consequence of 13 August 1932, when Hitler had considered himself as good as chancellor, only to find that Hindenburg had changed his mind at the last minute, despite all assurances to the contrary from the president’s camp. It had been a plot, he was sure of it. Who was behind it? Papen? Schleicher? Hitler didn’t trust either of them an inch. Carefully considered letters were now his instruments of choice.
At their meeting, which began at half past ten, Hindenburg informed Hitler that he had until Thursday evening to establish ‘whether and under what conditions’ he could obtain ‘a stable, working majority in the Reichstag with a clear, consolidated agenda’ under a Hitler-led cabinet. As it happened, Hitler had already handed him his response in a letter at the beginning of their conversation.
‘I have only one request for Your Excellency,’ wrote Hitler.
At least give me the authority and status given to the men before me, who could not contribute as much to the great value of the authority and significance of Your Excellency’s name as I can. … My own name and the existence of this greatest of German movements are themselves security, but they would necessarily be destroyed if our efforts led to an unfavourable outcome. In that case, Herr President, I see not a military dictatorship following after us but Bolshevist chaos.
Did that cut any ice? Many German citizens were, in fact, afraid of the Communists. The clock was ticking. Hitler had been given Hindenburg’s mandate in writing – and he now had eighty hours to think it over.
In Tegel Prison, Carl von Ossietzky signed a statement drafted for him by his lawyer. The editor-in-chief of the Weltbühne was facing another accusation, this time for having published a series of critical articles about Reemtsma, a tobacco company, which uncovered corruption and sleaze within the industry and the Finance Ministry. The libel suit was currently being heard, and Ossietzky was being held responsible for the journalistic content of his magazine. For the third time in a few months, he was having to defend himself. It was the second time he was doing so from prison.
It was unnerving. What should he do? Ossietzky distanced himself from the two articles on Reemtsma that he himself had put into the magazine. Was he getting tired of fighting? ‘The thick wall never fails to make its presence felt,’ he had just written to his friend Kurt Tucholsky in exile.
Defence Minister Schleicher still hadn’t come to terms with the fact that his predecessor and long-time boss and mentor Wilhelm Groener no longer wanted to speak to him. True, one of Schleicher’s intrigues had played a role in Groener’s resignation, and Groener had been unable to quell the scurrilous rumours that he was going senile – perhaps somebody close to him had even spread them – but that was how politics worked. Did he have to be so bitter?
On 21 November Schleicher tried again to save their old friendship, and congratulated Groener on his upcoming sixty-fifth birthday, both personally and in the name of the Wehrmacht.
‘Most honoured Excellency!’ wrote Schleicher. ‘I hope that this new year of Your Excellency’s life will lead to the discussion I have long awaited, as I believe I have a right at least to learn the reasons for our estrangement, which are unknown to me.’
Did Schleicher’s letter change anything? Groener knew him better than most. At the end of May 1932 – almost three weeks after he stepped down as Defence Minister and Minister of the Interior – he had explained Schleicher’s motives in a letter to one of his allies: ‘It’s not that he’s trying to get the Nazis into power; he wants it for himself, and he wants to do so through Hindenburg. With the aid of Hindenburg’s son, a close friend, he wields great influence over the president. Meissner, who cares for nothing but his little job, is only too willing to assist.’
Moreover, Groener added, ‘Schleicher has long dreamed of governing via the military, without the Reichstag. But his plans, which obviously he no longer shares with me, are deeply obscure, and perhaps the Nazis will prove more cunning even than he.’
Some time later, on 18 June 1932, more than two weeks after the downfall of Chancellor Brüning, Groener wrote to the same friend:
When I think back on recent developments, Schleicher seems to me more and more of a puzzle. When we dined at the Russian embassy about ten weeks ago, he told several German guests (you can ask Schäffer) that the military would never tolerate the Nazis coming to power, and that over there (Hammerstein) was the man whose ruthless energy would prevent it. Perhaps it was all a sham.
‘Hammerstein’. Groener meant Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, Commander-in-Chief of the German armed forces. Elsewhere, Groener had commented that ‘Hammerstein follows his friend Schleicher like a well-behaved hunting dog.’
Four Nazis attacked a newspaper seller on Friedrichstrasse who was distributing Social Democratic papers on behalf of the Reichsbanner. The twenty-nine-year-old was left with serious head injuries. The attackers fled when the police arrived.
It was a test of the party’s nerve. By all appearances, Hindenburg still wanted nothing to do with a presidential dictatorship. The leaders of the NSDAP withdrew once again to the fourth floor of the Kaiserhof to confer. Gregor Strasser stuck his neck above the parapet: they had to negotiate with the DNVP. The time had come for a coalition!
Hitler rebuffed the idea. He would make no compromises.
From outside they could still hear their supporters baying as they gazed up at the top floor of the hotel where the National Socialists were gathered.
‘Heil Hitler,’ they roared.
The mood in the street was one of feverish anticipation, as though their moment was finally near at hand. More than a few members of the party itself were also convinced that Hitler was already chancellor.
‘Poor deluded lot!’ thought Goebbels. ‘He was never further from it.’
Yet, in theory, their calculation was paying off. The pressure on the street was growing, the SA was ever-present, the Communists were making a racket, as they’d hoped. It all helped. Surely there had to be some way to break the old man’s resolve?