My plan is now to get 51 percent of the votes, or an even larger percentage.
—ADOLF HITLER, AUGUST 18, 1932
“I must flatly deny the implication that I asked the president for ‘everything or nothing,’ ” Hitler said. “Holding only 37 percent of the nation’s votes, how could I demand all the portfolios?” It was August 17, and Hitler sat on the Haus Wachenfeld veranda in the midsummer heat with Karl von Wiegand, a reporter for the William Randolph Hearst media empire, while two other American correspondents, Louis Lochner of the Associated Press and Hans van Kaltenborn of CBS radio, the “Dean of American Commentators,” listened to daily by millions, awaited their turn.
Hitler generally conducted interviews with reporters in impersonal settings, as he did with The New York Times and the Japanese daily Tokyo Asahi Shimbun at his office at the Brown House in Munich. Unlike Mussolini, who welcomed banter and repartee, especially with attractive female journalists, Hitler was awkward in one-on-one settings. For all his beer-hall belligerence, he generally avoided personal confrontation. He was, according to Kaltenborn, essentially a shy, awkward man who “compensated for his timidity by raucous self-assertion,” protecting himself behind a wall of bluster even in private settings. When Harold Callender conducted an interview for The New York Times in the Brown House office, he found Hitler posturing and ranting almost exactly as he had at a public rally the night before. “He rose from his chair, walked about the room, sat upon a table, but was never at rest,” Callender reported, remarking, in particular, on Hitler’s “nervous gestures” and habit of “checking his rapid flow of speech to make sure his words were carefully noted.”
But on this mid-August Wednesday morning, four days after the Hindenburg debacle, Hitler had agreed to sit down in his most private and protected space with Wiegand, Lochner, and Kaltenborn. Hitler had held a press conference for foreign reporters at the Hotel Kaiserhof the previous December, much to the surprise and consternation of the political establishment. The government was blindsided by the event. August Weber, head of the Reichstag’s German Democratic Party, a left-leaning centrist faction, told his fellow Reichstag delegates that it was “simply intolerable” that Hitler could appear to be running a “separate government” from the Hotel Kaiserhof, as if he were “about to come to power.” Hitler defiantly scheduled a second press conference the following week, this time exclusively for British and American journalists, but canceled it at the last moment amid rumors of a police raid. Instead, Hitler arranged a live radio broadcast to address the American public directly over the CBS radio network, but this too was prevented when the German postmaster general, Georg Schätzel, banned Hitler’s access to state-owned radio cables. Hitler eventually found accommodation with William Randolph Hearst, who published the text of the scuttled speech in the New York American. That December, Time magazine featured Hitler on its cover, confirming Reichstag delegate Weber’s worst fears. Time observed, “Adolf Hitler sat in Berlin giving press interviews as though he were already Chief of State.” Paris-Midi marveled at “les tribulations héroï-comiques” of Hitler as he sought an audience outside his right-wing echo chamber. Now Hitler was having another go, this time on the Obersalzberg, but on this August morning neither as gesture nor as provocation but as political triage, the last recourse to repair political damage.
Hitler had found himself blindsided by the Hindenburg protocol detailing the president’s dressing-down of the National Socialist leader. Within hours, he had dispatched a pointed letter to Meissner and Planck: “The official communication published this evening diverges on important points so significantly from the actual course of events that I cannot allow the public to be informed in such a one-sided and distorted manner.” Hitler included his own version of the meeting, correcting what he saw as distortions of his words and intent. When Hindenburg said, “So, you are demanding control of the entire government?,” Hitler insisted, he had, in fact, provided a more nuanced response: “I said that is not definitive. There would still need to be further negotiations over the configuration of the cabinet, which cannot be resolved from today to tomorrow.” When Hindenburg allegedly faulted Hitler for reneging on agreeing to tolerate the Papen government in exchange for Hindenburg lifting the ban on the SA and dissolving the Reichstag to allow for new elections, Hitler said that Hindenburg had added, “I will not hold this against you since I understand that you feel forced by circumstances beyond your control.” Hitler went on to detail his post-meeting discussion with Papen in the corridor and Papen’s apparent diffidence, indeed arrogance, toward parliamentary process. “Oh, the Reichstag!” Papen allegedly said with a brisk wave of his hand. “I am surprised that you even care about the Reichstag.”
If the official protocol was not retracted, Hitler threatened, he would issue his own protocol to the press the next day. Meissner replied immediately: The government stood by every word. As promised, Hitler released his account of the Hindenburg meeting on Monday morning, to deafening silence in the mainstream press. Not a single news service picked up the story. The following day, Tuesday, August 16, the Völkischer Beobachter featured the Hitler protocol verbatim in a full front-page story, while the Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung, a local newspaper, owned by press secretary Dietrich’s father-in-law, published an extensive Hitler interview with softball questions that allowed Hitler to reaffirm his account of the meeting and to suggest that Hindenburg had violated the provisions of the Weimar constitution.
“I consider the involvement of the Reich president in the process of building a government as a transfer of responsibility from the shoulders of the Reich chancellor to the shoulders of the Reich president,” Hitler said in his interview, noting that this represented a brazen violation of Article 53 of the constitution that empowered the Reich president to appoint and dismiss the Reich chancellor, but not necessarily to negotiate the positions in the cabinet. Hitler further pointed out that that responsibility, according to Article 58, was left to the Reich chancellor. One cannot help but hear echoes of Hans Frank’s legal counsel here. Hitler also wondered why the National Socialists, as the country’s largest political party, were not allowed to run the government. With a nod to a classic Bismarck adage, Hitler quipped, “Politics is no longer the art of the possible, but rather the art of the impossible.”
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” Goebbels allegedly said; this was in fact the distillation of a cynical truth Hitler had commented on in a chapter on reasons for Germany’s surrender at the end of the First World War in the first volume of Mein Kampf. But big lies require big audiences. The Hitler correctives to the Hindenburg meeting were extensive, pointed, and useless. “Our press could not make it through the noise,” Dietrich recalled. “The [Hindenburg] maneuver succeeded.” Goebbels’s comment was more to the point—“Hitler fell into Hindenburg’s trap”—which appeared to have been designed by Schleicher. Hitler was left scrambling for an audience of last resort—the foreign press.
As foreign press adviser, Hanfstaengl belonged to a tight circle of well-heeled individuals, including Carl and Helene Bechstein in Berlin and Hugo and Elsa Bruckmann in Munich, who had supported Hitler since his earliest years in politics. Hanfstaengl, a graduate of Harvard University, was the son of a wealthy Munich publisher, a giant of a man with a “strangely distorted head” in the words of Bella Fromm, and hands of “frightening dimensions,” who played piano to calm Hitler in private and stage-managed his foreign press relations, not always with success. In November 1931, Hanfstaengl arranged an interview with Dorothy Thompson, an American reporter married to the Nobel Prize–winning author Sinclair Lewis. Thompson arrived for the interview reeking of alcohol, Hanfstaengl recalled, and ultimately wrote a disparaging profile of Hitler as “the very prototype of the Little Man.” Hitler said afterward, “Don’t ever bring me anyone like that again, Hanfstaengl.”
For the Obersalzberg interview, Hanfstaengl reached out to Kaltenborn, one of his best friends from his Harvard days. Kaltenborn happened to be in Berlin, staying at the Hotel Kaiserhof. Hanfstaengl sent him a telegram offering an interview with Hitler. Hanfstaengl sent an identical telegram to Lochner. Lochner had interviewed Hitler in 1925, shortly after the publication of Mein Kampf, and again in December 1931, two days after the Kaiserhof foreign press conference. When Lochner had asked how Hitler thought the press conference had gone, Hitler replied, “Judging by the way the German opposition press is jumping on me, they now at least have something to write about.” At the time, Hitler was feeling ebullient over his public relations coup. He wasn’t smiling on this mid-August Wednesday. Kaltenborn recalled that “the Führer had been chary about receiving American correspondents” ever since his encounter with Dorothy Thompson.
Lochner and Kaltenborn took an overnight train to Munich, where Hanfstaengl was waiting with Hitler’s private car and driver. They drove to Berchtesgaden, then up the series of switchbacks to the Hotel Türken, an Obersalzberg guesthouse with a beer garden, a favorite gathering place for “Hitler pilgrims” because of its unobstructed view of Haus Wachenfeld. The two men were surprised to encounter Wiegand, who had been invited separately by Dietrich.
Wiegand had known Hitler since 1921 and took lasting pride in having first introduced him to the American public. Wiegand called Hitler “one of the most interesting characters” he had encountered, noting his “toothbrush moustache” and “eyes that spurt fire when in action.” He christened Hitler the Mussolini of Germany. By the summer of 1932, Wiegand had been in contact with Hitler for over a decade and never had any problem arranging interviews. “On a number of occasions, he has called on me to have a chat,” Wiegand observed. The two men would meet in Hitler’s office or for lunch or dinner. On this August morning Wiegand asserted proprietary rights, insisting that he be allowed to conduct a one-on-one interview with Hitler. Lochner and Kaltenborn waited beneath a tree in the beer garden. Wiegand returned a short while later in a state of high irritation. “That man is hopeless,” he said. “I got nothing out of him. Ask him a question and he makes a speech. This whole trip has been a waste of time.”
Now it was time for Lochner and Kaltenborn. As the two men approached Haus Wachenfeld, in the company of Hanfstaengl, Lochner noticed the laundry that Hitler’s sister had hung out to dry. Hitler was waiting at the front door, dressed in a black suit and black tie, with a swastika lapel pin as the only dash of color. Hanfstaengl whispered the two journalists’ names into Hitler’s ear. Hitler greeted his guests without a smile—indeed, with “latent hostility,” as Kaltenborn later recalled.
“In your antagonism towards the Jews, do you differentiate between German Jews and the Jews who have come to Germany from other countries?” Kaltenborn asked Hitler in German. Hitler paused. His eyes bored into his guest. Kaltenborn remembered them as being fiercely blue. “We believe in a Monroe Doctrine for Germany,” Hitler said. “You exclude any would-be immigrants you do not care to admit. You regulate their number. You demand that they come with a certain physical standard.” Hitler added that he couldn’t care less about Jews in other countries; he was concerned only with those in Germany, and their attitude toward Germany, especially those with indications of disloyalty or anti-German attitudes. “And,” he added, “we demand the right to deal with them as we see fit.”
The men took seats in chairs beneath the open windows, listening to the chirping of canaries from inside and watching Hitler’s three dogs bound about the yard. Hitler’s sister brought coffee and cake. Now Lochner struck. “Did you promise Hindenburg to tolerate the von Papen government?” he asked. This was exactly the question Hitler had wanted. “No, I only promised to tolerate them so long as they were bearable,” he lied. “A general promise of toleration would have been sheer madness.” Hitler launched into the barrage of rhetoric behind which he liked to hide in close quarters. He talked domestic and international politics. He denounced the war reparations that devastated the German economy. He denounced every treaty that came to mind—Lausanne, Rapallo, the Young Plan (scheduling the reparations payments), and, most of all, the Treaty of Versailles. He went on to enumerate the failings of the French, the British, the Soviets, at which point Lochner sought to bring Hitler back to the point of the discussion.
“Herr Hitler,” Lochner said. “It is reported in the German press that in your interview with the Reich president you asked for the creation of a Nazi government in which you would exercise a power equivalent to that of Mussolini in Italy.”
“I never made such a demand in the form quoted,” Hitler said with annoyance. “How could I have demanded any such power when I was willing to leave the Reichswehr outside of my control? That would have provided an ample safeguard against any absolutism.” Nevertheless, Hitler added, he had the right to complete control of the government. Kaltenborn jumped in. “But you don’t have a majority vote,” he said.
“Under the rules of democracy a majority of 51 percent governs,” Hitler said. “I have 37 percent of the total vote which means I have 75 percent of the power that is necessary to govern.” By his calculations, Hitler possessed the majority of the majority. “That means I am entitled to three-quarters of the power and my opponents to one-fourth.” With 13.7 million voters, Hitler went on to say, he was in a “safe position” with the electorate. “Next time I will have fourteen to fifteen million and so it will go,” he predicted. “That is my hard-earned capital which no one can take from me. I slaved for it and risked my life for it.” He laid out the Strasser game plan, pointing out that since he had the largest party in the Reichstag, it was impossible to create a functioning majority without him. He could cripple the Reichstag and, with it, the democratic process. Hitler’s mood brightened at the thought. “Without my party no one can rule Germany today,” he said. He could make or break any government.
At this point, one of his dogs, who’d been coursing about the yard, bounded onto the terrace, interrupting Hitler, who pointed with his hand and ordered irritably, “Platz!” The dog slunk dutifully down the stairs and back to the lawn. Hitler then expanded on his stranglehold on the democratic process. “Europe cannot maintain itself in the uncertain currents of democracy,” he said. “Europe needs some form of authoritarian government.” He cited kings, the Catholic Church, and the Holy Roman Empire as examples of the continent’s long and enduring undemocratic legacies. “The authority can assume different forms,” Hitler continued. “But parliamentarism is not native to us and does not belong to our tradition. The parliamentarian system has never functioned in Europe.” He said that dictatorship represented the only viable future for Germany, but not one imposed on the country—rather, one embraced by the people, in which “the people declare their confidence in one man and ask him to lead.”
Sitting on the terrace, where he and Goebbels had cast their hopes upon the stars, Hitler repeated his vow to destroy democracy through democratic process. He called his storm troopers the “best disciplined body imaginable” and brushed away the notion of a rumored March on Berlin. “I don’t have to march on Berlin as they say I propose to do,” Hitler said, then added with a wisp of whimsy, “I am already there. The question is who will march out of Berlin?” Lochner noticed Hitler growing restless, his glance drifting beyond the terrace. Lochner tossed out a final question: “Do you expect to follow the paths of legality in your future steps?” “Oh, yes,” Hitler said dismissively with a brief smile. Then his glance fixed beyond them. They turned and saw Röhm, in his brown SA uniform, striding across the green lawn against the fierce blue sky.
As they rose, Hanfstaengl suggested he take a group photo with Lochner’s camera. Hitler looked annoyed but conceded, standing between Lochner and Kaltenborn, with Wiegand to the side. In the photograph, Lochner and Kaltenborn are beaming, Kaltenborn with the smug, knowing smile of an American who looks forward to telling America about “this man on the hill,” and Lochner with the self-satisfied look of having landed a scoop. Hitler stands with his arms locked across his chest, scowling.
Hitler’s ad hoc Obersalzberg press conference generated exactly the sort of press he had hoped for. The interview found its way into hundreds of local American newspapers across the Hearst empire, and into the pages of The New York Times, which picked up Lochner’s story from the Associated Press wire. “High up in the Bavarian mountains 107 miles from Munich,” The New York Times wrote, “Herr Hitler is calmly awaiting further political developments, declaring he is certain that no matter what Cabinet is established after the Reichstag meets on August 30 his Nazis will have at least 75 percent representation in the government.” But by the time the stories made it into American newspapers, the German news cycle had turned its focus to a local news story with implications not only for the nation but for millions of voters who needed to decide whether to cast their ballot for Hitler and his National Socialist movement.