Disgusting Performances of Red ‘Internationale’ Germany Is Not Their Fatherland
– Völkischer Beobachter
Hitler Dodges Schleicher
Papen’s Mediation Fails
– Vossische Zeitung
Goebbels and Hitler visited Magda together at the Women’s Hospital, and she was thrilled to see them. The Führer, meanwhile, took the opportunity to deliver a ‘political lecture’ to some of the doctors.
Magda’s fever had gone down over the past few hours. ‘Herr Hitler,’ cried one of the medical staff, ‘if your presence at Germany’s sickbed is as effective as it was with Frau Goebbels, you’ll have us back to health in no time!’
Der Alarm was a weekly newspaper published by the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, an organisation with tens of thousands of members. The Nazis painted it as inflammatory propaganda, while the editors never tired of taunting and ridiculing the Nazis. It was often handed out at meetings of the Iron Front.
Somebody pressed a copy into Abraham Plotkin’s hands, in which it was announced that Hitler had admitted being 5 million marks in debt. It didn’t cross his mind that Der Alarm was using satire as a weapon.
Still, the paper wasn’t entirely wrong. Hitler was in debt – to the German government. In 1932 he had declared an income of 65,000 marks. His book Mein Kampf had already sold several hundred thousand copies and was still flying off the shelves, but he wasn’t paying enough tax on his royalties, and the arrears were adding up. Even if he did gain power, he might find himself with a six-figure bill.
Then again, power does come with certain privileges.
The Deutschland, Germany’s first armoured battleship, was launched in Kiel. It had been built at the Deutsche Werke shipyard and would be handed over to the navy at the end of February. German rearmament continued.
Yet again, the NSDAP was in a lather. Wilhelm Stegmann was exiting the party with immediate effect, having founded the ‘Freikorps Franken’ – essentially a splinter group of disgruntled Franconian SA commanders – one day earlier, and in doing so he pre-empted his inevitable expulsion on the grounds of ‘mutiny’. Stegmann’s group instantly attracted over a thousand members, including many former Brownshirts.
With a circulation of 560,000 copies, the Berliner Morgenpost, published by liberal-leaning Ullstein, was Germany’s largest newspaper. Unlike Hitler, its film critic had not enjoyed The Rebel. Despite its ‘magnificent picture-book visuals of a magnificent landscape’, the film was ‘a simple, straightforward story told in a wooden manner; the tale of a young student who finds himself at the heart of a political battle, fights heroically against Napoleon and is finally shot by a firing squad alongside his comrades’.
The Rebel was the portrait of a fanatic, set against a gorgeous mountain backdrop. It had heroic posturing, and it had dead Frenchmen.
What would happen if the NSDAP imploded – might it have a negative impact on the Republic? Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, State Secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote to the German ambassador in Washington: ‘I cannot say the National Socialists are doing well. Structurally the party has been badly shaken, and their financial outlook is bleak. Some have even wondered whether the party might not be collapsing too rapidly – that it may not be possible to reabsorb all the voters, and that we may lose many of them to the Communists.’
In Berlin, under pressure from its creditors, the Rotter brothers’ theatre company had gone bust. Fritz and Alfred Rotter – who had recently invited Bella Fromm to one of their extravagant parties – owned a complex tangle of major cultural enterprises in the capital, including opera houses and theatres. They had built their empire on borrowed money, and now it was crumbling.
The National Socialists pounced on the story. The labyrinthine structure of the Rotters’ company was ideal fodder for their propaganda, and their newspapers milked Alfred’s sudden departure from Berlin on 8 or 9 January – he’d bought citizenship of Lichtenstein long before – for all it was worth.
The Rotters were, of course, Jewish.
Elisabeth von Schleicher was throwing a tea party to benefit hospitals in Berlin. Bella Fromm saw a number of familiar faces from the ‘old elite’ of Berlin among the guests: civil servants, military officers, politicians. She discussed Papen’s recent speech in Halle with a friend. ‘It’s characteristic of Papen to work both sides of the street,’ remarked her friend. ‘He praised Schleicher’s speech at the Kyff häuser Bund, in which he had proposed conscription. At the same time, he is waiting to kick the props out from under him.’
Hugenberg and Schacht, too, were known to have met with Hitler. Other members of the Gentlemen’s Club were openly discussing whether the Führer hadn’t earned a shot. ‘It’s maddening to watch this blindness,’ sighed Fromm.
At least the National Socialists were still at each other’s throats. Cold comfort.
Paris didn’t understand the Germans. Why was the chancellor so unpopular? Ambassador François-Poncet explained the political situation in a dispatch to the French government: the right wing had been hoping Schleicher would install a military dictatorship, but the chancellor had taken off his uniform. He seemed weak. Unsoldierly. Instead of cracking down on the left, he’d let the unions force him into making concessions.
And now Schleicher had ‘declared open war’ on Hitler by associating with Strasser. ‘Amid all the opposing currents in Germany, the General cannot bring himself to make a decision; one gets the impression he’s waiting to see which current wins out before committing to one or the other.’
Lucky for the ambassador that diplomatic mail was sealed – Schleicher would not have taken kindly to François-Poncet’s frank assessment. At the end of the letter, however, the ambassador revealed the underlying goodwill he felt for Schleicher. ‘At present one can only say how quickly the General’s star is fading and how thoughtless are those who are willing – without knowing who will succeed him – to sacrifice one of the most talented and intelligent men in Germany.’
Annelies von Ribbentrop made an entry in her private diary: ‘Lengthy negotiations Joachim and Papen alone.’ Was her husband, Hitler’s latest acolyte, trying to convince Papen to let the NSDAP have the chancellorship?
Schleicher, meanwhile, was paid a visit by the Communists. No everyday event: after all, the KPD fought the General at every turn, and Schleicher wanted nothing more than to ban the party entirely. If only the consequences hadn’t seemed so volatile!
Ernst Torgler, an MP since 1924 and chairman of the KPD parliamentary faction for the last three years, arrived with his colleague Wilhelm Kasper, his equivalent in the Prussian State Assembly. They asked Schleicher to forbid the SA from marching directly outside the KPD’s headquarters, arguing that it was a deliberate provocation. A similar demonstration in Hamburg the previous summer had resulted in eighteen deaths, in a riot known as ‘Altona Bloody Sunday’.
Torgler and Kasper were prominent men. A few months earlier they had been at the centre of a political cause célèbre when it emerged that they had met with senior SPD civil servants to explore how the KPD could help them tackle the NSDAP.
When the secret talks became public knowledge, Papen – then chancellor – had used it to justify why he’d deposed SDP Prime Minister Otto Braun. And now his successor, Schleicher, was consorting with the enemy!
Hitler was staying put. There was too much going on in Berlin at that moment. Even Strasser had approached him, wanting to talk. He was certainly not about to restore his reputation that way, sniffed Goebbels. In any case, there would be no meeting between the most powerful man in the NSDAP and his former second-in-command. Not initially. First Göring would meet with Strasser and discuss where to go next. Goebbels might not have wanted to admit it, but clearly Hitler was leaving the door ajar. As usual, he was postponing a final decision for as long as he could.
In Fallersleben, a district in the Lower Saxon city of Wolfsburg, 120 members of the SA were off to the cinema. But they hadn’t come to see the show – they had come to prevent it. The theatre was playing All Quiet on the Western Front, an anti-war film based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque.
Shortly before the film was due to begin, the SA stormed the cinema. Armed with spades, the same weapon soldiers on the Western Front had used to attack each other in the trenches, they threatened the audience. Men from the Reichsbanner stopped the situation escalating and called the police, but only twelve officers showed up – hardly enough to subdue so many angry Brownshirts.
The police immediately cancelled the showing.