Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

Bataillone,
51–2; Horn,
Marsch, 226–7.
Hitler waited more than a year before placing the reorganization of the S A in the hands of Franz Pfeffer von Salomon in autumn 1926.
    35 .
RSA,
I, 7–9.
    36 . Lüdecke, 256.
    37 . Heiden,
Hitler,
198.
    38 . Jablonsky, 168, based on the police report of the meeting.
    39 . Rosenberg made plain in his memoirs that he stayed away from the meeting because of resentment which went back to the support Hitler had given during his internment to the clique around Esser and Streicher. He knew that Hitler planned a public display of mutual forgiveness for what had gone on, but wanted no part in the theatricals (Rosenberg,
Letzte Aufzeichnungen,
114, 319–20).
    40 . Lüdecke, 257.
    41 . Lüdecke, 275.
    42 . Jablonsky, 168, 220 n.9. At the meeting in Munich in March to dissolve the Völkischer Block, Drexler is reported to have said that it was impossible to work alongside Esser. Nothing separated him from Hitler, but he could not continue with him as long as Esser was there (BHStA, Slg.Personen, Anton Drexler, Miesbacher Anzeiger, 19 May 1925).
    43 . Lüdecke, 255.
    44 .
RSA,
I, 14–28.
    45 . In his ‘Call to Former Members’ published the previous day, he had promised to account within a year for whether ‘the party again became a movement or the movement became stifled as a party’. In either event, he accepted responsibility (RSA, I, 6).
    46 . BHStA, MA 101235/I, Pd. Mü., Nachrichtenblatt, 2 March 1925, S.16.
    47 . BHStA, MA 101235/I, Pd. Mü., Nachrichtenblatt, 2 March 1925, S.16;
RSA,
I, 28 n.9; Lüdecke, 258.
    48 .
RSA,
I, 446, 448.
    49 .
RSA,
I, 5, 28 n.9; Horn,
Marsch,
216–17 and n.25–6.
    50 . According to Lüdecke, 253, Hitler fell into a rage about the inadequacies of generals as statesmen when the handling of Ludendorff was broached.
    51 . Horst Möller,
Weimar,
Munich, 1985, 54.
    52 . Ludwig Volk,
Der bayerische Episkopat und der Nationalsozialismus 1930–1934,
Mainz, 1965, 5, 7.
    53 .
RSA
I, 36.
    54 . Hanfstaengl, 15
Jahre,
179–80; Horn,
Marsch,
217.
    55 . See RSA, I, 38 n.2.
    56 .Lüdecke, 255.
    57 . Margarethe Ludendorff, 277–8.
    58 . Winkler,
Weimar,
279; Horn,
Marsch,
218 states that the choice for Jarres was to prevent embarrassment for Ludendorff. This was surely, however, an excuse rather than a reason.
    59 . Julius Streicher stated in a speech on 27 March, two days before the election, that the meaning of the election was to show that Germany needed a man like Hitler at its head (cit. Horn,
Marsch,
217 n.28).
    60 . Falter
et al., Wahlen, 76.
The Communists also registered serious losses, as the radicalization of politics in the Weimar Republic was – temporarily as it turned out – reversed.
    61 . Hanfstaengl, 15
Jahre,
180.
    62 . The Tannenbergbund was banned in 1933. For image reasons, however, the Ludendorffs were still allowed to publish. There was an official reconciliation of Hitler and Ludendorff in 1937, and at his death in December that year the General was accorded a state funeral. The
völkisch
religious movement he and his wife founded – the Deutsche Gotterkenntnis (German Knowledge of God) – was even granted formal status (Benz and Grami (eds.),
Biographisches Lexikon zur Weimarer Republik,
212–13; Wistrich,
Wer war wer im Dritten Reich,
180).
    63 . The death-throes of the DVFB were to last until 1933, but it was never again a force to be reckoned with (Horn,
Marsch,
218 and n.32).
    64 . Horn,
Marsch,
215–16; Joseph Nyomarkay,
Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party,
Minneapolis, 1967, 72–3. On 8 March, the NSFB (Völkischer Block) was dissolved in Bavaria, and most members returned to the NSDAP. Four days later, the GVG dissolved itself with a unanimous pledge of support for Hitler and the NSDAP.
    65 . Tyrell,
Führer,
107–8; Deuerlein,
Aufstieg, 246–7;
Horn,
Marsch,
222 and n.43. Hitler was permitted during the period of the bans only to speak at private functions – such as the meeting of the Hamburger Nationalklub he addressed in February 1926 – and at closed party meetings (though in Bavaria even speaking at these was for some time prohibited).
    66 . Deuerlein,
Aufstieg,
247; Reinhard Kühnl, ‘Zur Programmatik der Nationalsozialistischen Linken. Das Strasser-Programm von 1925/26’,
VfZ,
14 (1966), 317–33, here 318.
    67 . Albert Krebs,
Tendenzen und Gestalten der NSDAP,
Stuttgart, 1959, 183, 185. Strasser’s importance to the NSDAP is thoroughly examined by Peter D. Stachura,
Gregor Strasser and the Rise