Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

well-established political parties. Nor, with few exceptions, did they look for any. In Germany, ‘political space’ was opened up for the Nazi breakthrough by the prior fragmentation of support for the parties of the centre and Right. 5 In Germany, therefore, the economic crisis ushered in from the beginning a fundamental crisis of the state. The battleground was, from the outset, the state itself. That was what Hitler wanted.

10
LEVERED INTO POWER

‘We’ve hired him.’
    Franz von Papen, end of January 1933
‘We’re boxing Hitler in.’
    Alfred Hugenberg, end of January 1933
‘No. All things considered, this government was no cause for concern.’
    Sebastian Haffner (1939)

11
THE MAKING OF THE DICTATOR

‘It can’t be denied: he has grown. Out of the demagogue and party leader, the fanatic and agitator, the true statesman… seems to be developing.’
    Diary entry of the writer Erich Ebermayer,
for 21 March 1933
‘What the old parliament and parties did not accomplish in sixty years, your statesmanlike foresight has achieved in six months.’
    Letter to Hitler from
Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, 24 July 1933
‘In nine months, the genius of your leadership and the ideals which you have newly placed before us have succeeded in creating, from a people inwardly torn apart and without hope, a united Reich.’
    Franz von Papen, 14 November 1933,
speaking on behalf of the members of the Reich Government

12
SECURING TOTAL POWER

‘I gave the order to shoot those most guilty of this treason, and I further gave the order to burn out down to the raw flesh the ulcers of our internal well-poisoning…’
    Hitler, addressing the Reichstag on 13 July 1934
‘The Reich Chancellor kept his word when he nipped in the bud Röhm’s attempt to incorporate the S A in the Reichswehr. We love him because he has shown himself a true soldier.’
    Walther von Reichenau, part of guidelines for
political instruction of the troops, 28 August 1934

The making of the dictator was still incomplete at the end of 1933. Despite an astonishing transformation of the political scene which, at a speed few if any could have foreseen, had inordinately strengthened Hitler’s position, two notable obstacles remained, blocking his route to untrammelled power in the state. The obstacles were closely bound up with each other.
    Hitler’s unruly party army, the SA, had outlived its purpose. That had been to win power. Everything had been predicated on the attainment of that single goal. What would follow the winning of power, what would be the purpose and function of the SA in the new state, what benefits would flow for ordinary stormtroopers, had never been clarified. Now, months after the ‘seizure of power’, the SA’s ‘politics of hooliganism’ 1 were a force for disruption in the state. And particularly in the military ambitions of its leader, Ernst Röhm, the SA was an increasingly destabilizing factor, above all in relations with the Reichswehr. But its elimination, or disempowering, was no simple matter. It was a huge organization, far bigger than the party itself. It contained many of the most ardent ‘old fighters’ (in a literal sense) in the Movement. And it had been the backbone of the violent activism which had forced the pace of the Nazi revolution since Hitler had become Chancellor. Röhm’s ambitions, as we have seen in earlier chapters, had never been identical with those of Hitler. A large paramilitary organization that had never accepted its subordination to the political wing of the party had caused tensions, and occasional rebellion, since the 1920s. But, whatever the crises, Hitler had always managed to retain the SA’s loyalty. To challenge the SA’s leadership risked losing that loyalty. It could not be done easily or approached lightly. Faced with the dilemma of what to do about the SA, Hitler for months did little to resolve the tensions which continued to build. Characteristically, he acted finally when there was no longer a choice – but then with utter ruthlessness.
    The problem of the SA was inextricably bound up with the other threat to the consolidation of Hitler’s power. Reich President Hindenburg was old and frail. The issue of the succession would loom within the foreseeable future. Hindenburg, the symbol of ‘old’ Germany, and ‘Old’ Prussia, was the figurehead behind which stood still powerful forces with somewhat ambivalent loyalties towards the new state. Most important among them was