Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

and the party are one, and offer the unity that is the unconditional premiss of success.’
    Ernst Graf zu Reventlow,
a former critic of Hitler, 1927

9
BREAKTHROUGH

‘I had lost all I possessed through adverse economic conditions. And so, early in 1930,I joined the National Socialist Party.’
    An unskilled labourer,
newly won over to the Hitler Movement
‘How many look to him in touching faith as the helper, saviour, the redeemer from overgreat distress. To him, who rescues the Prussian prince, the scholar, the clergyman, the peasant, the worker, the unemployed.’
    Luise Solmitz, a schoolteacher,
on hearing Hitler speak in Hamburg, April 1932

The terrible burden of the breakdown threatened to bring all economic life to a standstill. Thousands of factories closed their doors. Hunger was the daily companion of the German working man. Added to this was the artificial whip of scarcity, wielded by the Jews, which sent working men scurrying from their homes to beg for food from the farmers… The government carried its measures against the public so far that many an honest working man had to resort to theft to obtain food… Burglaries, too, became daily occurrences, and the police had their hands full protecting the citizens’ property. All fellow citizens, with the exception of the Communists, yearned for better times. As for me, like many another, I had lost all I possessed through adverse economic conditions. And so, early in 1930, I joined the National Socialist Party. 1

    This was one individual’s story of how he became a Nazi. Another recounted:
    When we consider that on the one hand the policies of the Red government, particularly the inflation and taxes, deprived me of all means of livelihood, while on the other hand we soldiers of the front were being ruled by a gang of exploiters ready to stoop to any means to seize the starvation wages of our suffering, duped comrades, it will become clear why a number of us welcomed the activities of patriotic groups, particularly those of the Hitler movement. The combination of patriotic aims along with social reform led many an old soldier and idealist under the banner of the National Socialist Workers’ Party. 2

    These two new recruits were won over to the NSDAP as the economic crisis began to grip Germany. Neither the first, an unskilled labourer in his early thirties, nor the second, a small trader of around the same age who had been forced to sell up his bakery in 1926 for a low price (which he blamed on Jewish creditors) and eke out a living thereafter as a pedlar, were exact fits for the abstract sociological model of a typical Nazi supporter. 3 But their short accounts offer a glimpse of the type of psychology and motivation that were beginning to drive thousands – predominantly male, and for the most part young – to join the Hitler Movement as the storm-clouds gathered over Germany in 1930. In each case the personal bitterness and loss of self-esteem found a simple explanation in policies of the ‘Red’ government and a ready scapegoat in the Jews. The sense of betrayal and exploitation was acute. And it was not just a feeling that a change of government was needed. Among those drawn in increasing numbers from a wide variety of motives to the NSDAP in 1930 there was a common feeling of elemental, visceral hatred for the Weimar state itself, for the ‘system’ as it was so often called. Hatred, as Hitler had recognized, was among the most powerful of emotions. That was what he consciously appealed to. That is what drove so many of his followers. But there was idealism, too – misplaced, certainly, but idealism none the less: hopes of a new society, of a ‘national community’ that would transcend all existing social divides. There would, recruits to the Nazi Party believed, be no return to the class-ridden, hierarchical society of the past, resting on status, privilege, and the wealth of the few at the expense of the many. The new society would be fair without destroying talent, flair, ability, initiative, creativity in the way they saw threatened by the social egalitarianism preached by the Marxists. It would be one in which achievement, not status, would gain recognition, where the high-and-mighty would be deprived of their seeming God-given rights to lord it over the humble and lowly, where sweeping social reform would ensure that those who deserved it would gain their just rewards, where the ‘little man’ would no longer be exploited by