How did Adolf Hitler rise from failed revolutionary to absolute dictator of the German nation? It is difficult to understand the appeal of this intolerant, vengeful man. He was socially crude, poorly educated, and given to fits of rage. But he knew how to work a crowd and how to project an image that people would follow. Those skills would carry him to the edge of world domination.
Adolf Hitler was a natural orator. He had demonstrated this ability back in the Munich days, when his speeches packed rented halls. Even rivals recognized his magnetism. “Hitler responds to the vibrations of the human heart,” said right-wing rival Otto Strasser.
. . . [he is able] to act as a loudspeaker proclaiming the most secret desires . . . the sufferings and personal revolts of a whole nation. . . . Adolf Hitler enters a hall, he sniffs the air. For a minute he gropes, feels his way, senses the atmosphere. Suddenly he bursts forth. His words go like an arrow to their target, he touches each private wound . . . liberating the mass unconscious, expressing its innermost [desires].1
There was something almost mystical in German ideas about leadership. Rudolf Hess had recognized this in his university paper. Germans did not want to be led by ordinary human beings like themselves, he wrote. They wanted “idols endowed with superhuman qualities”2—larger than life men with a commanding presence and big dreams. This was what Frederick the Great had been, what Prince Bismarck had been. This was what Adolf Hitler aimed to be.
“In Hitler, the prime German condition of leadership, of being quite unlike the led, found . . . fulfillment,” wrote historian Richard Grunberger. “[He was] immune to what life meant to the average man, he was teetotal [drank no alcoholic beverages], vegetarian, a non-smoker . . . a man without family, without human ties of love or friendship.”3
The worst mistake Hitler’s enemies made was to take him for a strutting clown. His odd appearance, self-dramatizing behavior, and outrageous ideas made him a target for mockery. Silent movie great Charlie Chaplin made a wildly funny Hitler in The Great Dictator.
According to military historian John Laffin, many an English schoolboy sent his playmates into hysterical laughter with a Hitler imitation. The young “führer” would strut around with a pocket comb held under his nose, a hank of hair pulled over his forehead, and a fanatical glow in his eyes. “Heil, Hitler!” everyone would shout, their arms jerking up and down in “Hitler salutes.”
The laughter was not justified. “There was nothing funny about Hitler whatsoever,” wrote Laffin. “The man had no sense of humour and the Germany of his time was a dark and desperate place, [full of] hatreds and prejudices, phobias and resentments.”4
Throughout the 1920s, the Nazi party remained small and relatively powerless. Then came the economic collapse of October 1929. The American stock market crashed, triggering a domino effect that shattered economies around the world.
The Great Depression, as it came to be called, was a disaster for the already shaky German economy. Businesses went bankrupt. Unemployment soared. Once more, the German worker was plunged into poverty by forces he did not understand. The Weimar government seemed paralyzed, unable to do anything to remedy the situation.
The Nazis stepped into the breach, offering catchy slogans and easy answers for the problems of the day. People began to listen. In the election of 1930, the party won 6 million votes (18 percent of the total), which translated into 107 seats in the Reichstag.
By 1932, German unemployment had soared to 6 million. In the elections that year, the Nazis more than doubled their share of the vote, with 33.1 percent. Their bid for power could no longer be ignored by the ruling elite; neither could their leader. On January 30, 1933, a reluctant von Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany.
The new chancellor began flexing his political muscles as soon as he was sworn into office. Hitler knew that the old-guard conservatives distrusted him. He was careful not to push them too far. He was also clever enough to figure a way around them.
His most immediate problem was dealing with the Communists. Having a right-wing fanatic as chancellor was more than they could stand. They called for open resistance, even for armed revolution. With a national election scheduled for early March, they openly opposed the Nazis in the political arena. Hitler needed an excuse to move against them.
That excuse came on the night of February 27, 1933. An arson fire destroyed the Reichstag building. The police arrested Marinus van der Lubbe, who was found at the scene. Van der Lubbe was a loner, a strange young man who claimed Communist sympathies but no longer belonged to the party.
Most historians and other authorities believe that the Nazis set the fire themselves, using the mentally unstable van der Lubbe as a dupe. Regardless of who or what caused the fire, it gave Hitler an excuse to go after the hated Reds.
Hitler claimed that the Reichstag fire was just the beginning of a Communist conspiracy to overthrow the German government. President von Hindenburg shared Hitler’s fear of the Communists. He signed an emergency decree that suspended civil rights, authorized emergency takeovers of state governments, and gave broad powers to the chancellor.
Hitler dispatched truckloads of SA and SS men to round up Communists and throw them into prison. Many Social Democrats and other left-wingers got caught in the hysteria and were hauled off to jail. In a matter of hours, more than three thousand were taken into custody. Soon, local jails could no longer hold all the enemies of the Reich. The Nazis built Germany’s first concentration camp, Dachau, which received its first prisoners on March 20, 1933.
Squads of Brownshirts went through neighborhoods and shopping districts, tearing down Communist election posters and replacing them with their own. The old-line Nationalists joined forces with the Nazis. It was a right-wing coalition, born of shared fear and suspicion. Wealthy industrialists, desperate to protect their businesses, financed a lavish campaign.
Hitler went on radio, warning against the Communist threat. Even now, the Reds were preparing for a “bloodbath,”5 he said. Only the National Socialists could stand against them. A vote for Hitler’s party was a vote for a free, strong, and united Germany.
In case this propaganda blitz was not enough, the party also used strong-arm tactics. Storm troopers roamed the streets, terrorizing Communists, Socialists, Jews, and anybody who did not support Hitler.
The Nazis received approximately 44 percent of the vote. That was enough to make them the largest party in the Reichstag. But it did not give Hitler the two-thirds majority he needed to take over the government. To him, that was just a technicality. One way or another, he would get the majority.
Hitler could not pack the Reichstag with more Nazis, so he took another tack. He ordered large scale arrests of Communist members of the Reichstag. On the day of the vote, Nazi loyalists targeted the Social Democrats, preventing as many of them as possible from entering the legislative chambers.
The techniques were crude, but effective. On March 24, 1933, the Reichstag handed the Nazis what they wanted. A two-thirds majority approved an “enabling act” that transferred legislative power to Chancellor Adolf Hitler. After that, the Reichstag was nothing but a rubber stamp for Hitler’s policies.
Totalitarian governments such as that of Nazi Germany are often called dictatorships or police states. Under an all-pow-erful leader, the state controls not only the economy and the government but people’s personal lives as well. The press and the media are censored. Free speech does not exist. The state tells its citizens how to behave, what to think, and even what to feel. Secret police enforce the will of the dictator with tactics designed to terrorize the populace into submission.
The three main totalitarian states of the twentieth century are the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin, the People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. Among them, these three governments killed millions of innocent people and enslaved many more. The only one that survived to the end of the twentieth century is the People’s Republic of China. Although the tactics of these three dictatorships were similar, their goals were not.
The Soviet Union and Mao’s China were Communist regimes (governments in power). The ideal Communist society is classless, without a distinction between rich and poor. Private property is forbidden. In theory, all citizens are equal, and the people own everything in common. In fact, the state owns it.
Nazi Germany was a Fascist state. The word fascist comes from ancient Rome, where the fasces (a bundle of rods tied together around an ax) was a symbol of authority. The three most important characteristics of Fascist philosophy are glorification of the state, aggressive militarism, and elitism (rule by a “superior” class).
Unlike communism, fascism does not seek a classless society. Instead, a powerful elite rules the country, controls its resources, and openly considers itself superior to the common people. Fascists believe in survival of the fittest. To them, life is a struggle, and only the strong survive.
Elitism opened the door for racism. In the Nazi view, race and genetics [inborn traits] determined a person’s worth. The Nazis idealized the tall, fair-skinned Nordics, or Aryans (a linguistic term that Hitler used to describe his so-called master race). According to the Nazis, Aryans were superior because they were born that way, just as Jews, Gypsies, and all dark-skinned peoples were born “inferior.”
Fascism thrives on war and conquest. The Nazis believed they had a right to invade weaker countries, destroying their governments and enslaving their people. During Hitler’s rise to power, one of his favorite themes was lebensraum (more living space) for the German master race. He planned to build a powerful military machine; then use it to conquer Europe for the German master race.
“To say that Hitler was ambitious scarcely describes [his] . . . lust for power and . . . craving to dominate,” wrote Hitler biographer Alan Bullock.6 Hitler was not satisfied to create a state based on Nazi principles. He wanted a state based on the führer principle.
The führer principle is the cult of the leader; the ultimate, godlike dictator, whose word cannot be disputed. It was no accident of history that Hitler got this kind of power. He had planned for it all along. In Mein Kampf, he made his intentions clear. He would:
free all leadership . . . from the parliamentary principle of majority rule.7
There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons. . . . Surely every man will have advisers by his side, but the decision will be made by one man [italics in original]. . . . In no chamber and in no senate does a vote ever take place. They are working institutions and not voting machines. The individual member has [only] an advisory voice. . . . The [final decision] is [made by] the responsible chairman. This principle—absolute responsibility . . . combined with absolute authority—will gradually breed an élite of leaders.8
These “elite leaders” formed a rigid chain of command. Every area of society, from science and education to art and entertainment, had its führer. As absolute master of his particular domain, he set the standards for everyone else to follow. Underlings answered to him. The elite leader, in turn, answered only to an immediate superior. Officials could be as high-handed as they liked, so long as they remembered the one unbreakable rule: Final authority always rested with the führer, Adolf Hitler. To challenge him, or even to question him too openly, was to court disaster.
Baldur von Schirach, head of the National Socialist Youth Movement, explained the relationship between the individual leader and the larger hierarchy in his book on the Nazi youth programs:
A single will leads the Hitler Youth. The [group] leader, from the smallest to the largest unit, enjoys absolute authority. This means that he has the unrestricted right to command because he also has unrestricted responsibility. He knows that the greater responsibility [comes before] the lesser one. Therefore, he silently subjects himself to the commands of his leaders, even if they are directed against himself. For him, as well as for the whole of young Germany, the history of the Hitler Youth is proof that even a fellowship of young people can be a success only when it unconditionally recognizes the authority of leadership.9
Adolf Hitler understood the use of ceremony, symbol, and propaganda in building his Reich: “He who would win the great masses must know the key which opens the door to their hearts,” he wrote in Mein Kampf.
Its name is not objectivity—that is weakness—but will power and strength. . . . One can only succeed in winning the soul of a people if, apart from . . . fighting . . . for one’s own aims, one also destroys . . . the [opponent]. In the ruthless attack upon the adversary the [volk] sees at all times a proof of its own right.10
Hitler loved to stage enormous rallies. They were grand, showy events with blaring trumpets, pounding drums, waving banners, and thousands of uniformed Nazis marching in close-order drill. Sooner or later, every Nazi group had the honor of marching in a grand parade; Brownshirts marched, and members of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Maidens marched. The Labor Service Brigade marched, wearing military-style uniforms and shouldering long-handled shovels instead of rifles.
Nazi flags were everywhere. Giant flags served as backdrops for the speakers’ platform, smaller ones decorated the lecterns, and regular-sized ones flew from every flagpole. Hitler himself designed the Nazi banner; a black swastika (hooked cross) in a white circle on a background of bright red.
Many other symbols of the Third Reich were created by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Goebbels’s job was to glorify the Reich, all but deify (make into a god) Adolf Hitler, and Nazify the arts and the media. Goebbels gave the Nazis their marching song and their famous stiff-armed salute. He also gave them their first public book burning.
The man behind the Nazi propaganda machine was the most intense of Hitler’s inner circle. Goebbels was born on October 29, 1897, to a strict Catholic family. In his youth, he was more interested in history and literature than in politics.
Physically, Goebbels was far from the Aryan ideal. He was neither blond nor muscular. He had black hair and enormous dark eyes, stood barely five feet tall, and had a crippled left foot from childhood polio. Goebbels used his nimble mind to make up for his physical deficiencies. He proved to be a skilled manipulator of public opinion.
Goebbels introduced the famous “Heil Hitler!” salute at the Nazi party congress of 1929. It was part greeting, part pledge of loyalty, part battle cry. The effect on the crowds was hypnotic. Constant shouts of “heil,” accompanied by the raised-arm salute, fused a crowd of individuals into a single political machine.
Singing the Horst Wessel song also stirred public emotion for führer and fatherland. Horst Wessel was an early member of the Nazi party who got killed in a fight. There was nothing heroic about his life; nothing glorious about his death. Horst Wessel’s only claim to fame was a song he wrote to honor the storm troopers. From this poor material, Joseph Goebbels created a Nazi hero and made his song into the official Nazi anthem.
In his effort to control German cultural life, Goebbels staged ritual book burnings. On May 10, 1933, in Berlin, books written by Jews, Communists, and other enemies of the Reich were publicly burned in huge bonfires. While flags flew, bands played, and soldiers marched, a crowd of Nazi loyalists threw armloads of banned books into the flames.
Like the Horst Wessel song and the Nazi salute, the book burning gave participants a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves. This fervor translated into loyalty to Hitler, volkish principles, and the Aryan racial ideal. As Germans affirmed that ideal, they also affirmed the racism behind it. In time, hating Jews, Gypsies, and other “polluters of German blood” seemed like part of the normal order of things.
The Nazis did not rely on propaganda alone to build their Third Reich. A vast network of secret state police existed to enforce government policies and ensure public loyalty to the Nazi party.
The Schutzstaffel (“guard detachment”), or SS, did not begin as a police unit. It was a small detachment of Ernst Roehm’s Brownshirts, formed to act as an elite bodyguard for Adolf Hitler.
On January 6, 1929, Hitler placed Heinrich Himmler in charge of the SS. He built it into an elite corps that enforced Nazi racial policies, ran the concentration camps, and operated the killing centers where millions of people were murdered.
The SS men regarded themselves as forerunners of the new German master race. Candidates for the unit had to have an unblemished Nordic appearance and be able to prove the “purity” of their Germanic ancestry. They had to believe in Aryan superiority without question and be willing to eliminate “inferior” peoples without remorse.
The round-faced, bespectacled Himmler did not look the part of a fanatical racist. He was soft-spoken, polite in the extreme, and able to present the most outrageous ideas of the Reich in a calm and reasonable manner. For example, in a speech to SS group leaders, he openly called for utter ruthlessness toward “inferior” peoples:
One principle must be absolute for the SS man: we must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to no one else. What happens to the Russians, what happens to the Czech, is a matter of utter indifference to me . . . . Whether the other peoples live in comfort or perish of hunger interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our Kultur [superior German culture].11
Born in Munich on October 7, 1900, Himmler was the son of a schoolmaster. At the age of seventeen, he joined the German Army, eager to find glory on the battlefields of World War I. He never got the chance. He was still in training when the war ended.
In 1920, he met Ernst Roehm and through him discovered the Nazi party. For the young Himmler, National Socialism was a perfect fit. He had what historian Robert S. Wistrich described as “natural snobbery.”12 He found Hitler’s notion of a German master race irresistible.
Two years after taking control of the SS, Himmler decided to create an SS security service to hunt down dissenters within the Nazi party. He gave the job of establishing this Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, to a ruthless young man named Reinhard Heydrich.
Heydrich was a former naval officer who had been stripped of his rank for “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentlemen.” He had gotten a young girl pregnant and then refused to marry her. As head of the SD, he found his place in the world.
Starting with one typewriter and a small office, he built a network of informers. He gathered information on party members, SA leaders, and anybody who might oppose the führer. Some of this information was political. Some of it was not. Heydrich had a taste for scandal. He used hidden microphones and cameras to poke into the private lives of top-ranked Nazis.
While Himmler and Heydrich transformed a bodyguard unit into an elite state police, another of Hitler’s close associates organized the feared Gestapo. Hermann Goering had actually achieved the hero status that eluded Heinrich Himmler. In World War I, Goering served in the German air corps. He was a daring pilot and won many decorations for his skill. After the death of the legendary “Red Baron” von Richthofen, Goering assumed command of the squadron known as the “flying circus.”
As a genuine flying ace, Goering lent prestige to the Nazis when he joined the party in 1922. In Hitler’s eyes, Goering personified the Aryan ideal. He was blond and blue-eyed, with a rosy complexion and an imposing physical presence. He was also flamboyant (given to showing off) and self-promoting. He loved fancy dress uniforms, impressive titles, and prestigious awards.
After Hitler became chancellor in 1933, he appointed Goering air minister of Germany and interior minister of the Prussian state. Goering made the most of his opportunities. One of his first official acts was to transform the Prussian state police into a new and more powerful organization known as the Geheime-Staats-Polizei (Secret State Police), or Gestapo for short.
The Gestapo soon spread over all of Germany. It operated outside the law, with authority to pursue “enemies of the Reich” wherever they might be found. The Gestapo did not have to wait for a person to commit a crime. Gestapo agents could arrest and question a suspected enemy “even if he is not about to be dangerous by a specific deed.”13
Hitler was relentless in getting his enemies out of the way. Any group that refused to join the Nazi program had to be rendered harmless. On April 1, 1933, he stuck a blow at his favorite target: the Jews. He called for a nationwide, one-day boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933. A week after that, he cut deeper, with a decree that barred Jews from all forms of government employment.
His next target was the labor unions, which he considered hotbeds of Communist and Socialist activity. He began by proclaiming a Day of National Labor to celebrate something that did not yet exist: unity between workers and government. On May 1, 1933, a nighttime rally drew an estimated several hundred thousand workers.14 They listened to the führer talk about the dignity of labor and the need for loyalty to the fatherland. By the time he finished, they were cheering and singing “Deutschland Uber Alles” (“Germany Over All”).
The next morning, the SS and SA went to work. They arrested labor leaders, shut down union offices, and muzzled the labor press. By the end of the day, they had essentially wiped out organized labor. The rank-and-file workers were forced to join a new organization called the German Labor Front. Similar actions followed, bringing more sectors of the German economy under government control. Hitler replaced existing agricultural organizations with a new political group for farmers, the Reich Nutrition Estate. In industry, the Reich Estates of Trade and Handicraft replaced the old Chamber of Industry and Commerce. The Adolf Hitler Foundation of German Business brought big business into the Nazi fold and gave the government control of the marketplace.
The next step was to eliminate any remaining political opposition. On June 22, the Social Democratic party was outlawed and its members expelled from the Reichstag. On July 14, Hitler and his cabinet declared the Nazi party to be the only legal political party in Germany. By December, the party and the state were united, forming a new German Reich that was both a government and a way of life.
All that remained for Hitler to do was bring the military into line, await the death of the aged and ailing Hindenburg, and prepare himself to assume more power than any other German had ever possessed.