Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

Tyrell,
Führer,
225–6.
    244 . See Tyrell,
Führer,
170 (Heß to Hewel, 30 March 1927); and Krebs, 127 (Hamburg speech, October 1927).
    245 . Tyrell,
Führer,
225. The total of 20,000 speeches given by only 300 or so party speakers during 1928 puts the number of Hitler speeches – though not of course their impact – into perspective (Tyrell,
Führer,
224). Worries about his health may have been at least in part responsible for the decline in frequency of his speaking engagements. See David Irving,
The Secret Diaries of Hitler’s Doctor,
paperback edn, London, 1990, 31–2, for Hitler’s later comments about his violent stomach spasms in 1929.
    246 . Tyrell,
Führer,
225, and 219–20 for the party’s financial problems; see also Orlow, i.109–10.
    247 . Turner,
German Big Business,
83–99; Orlow, i.110 n.137.
    248 . Orlow, i.109.
    249 . With typical exaggeration, Hitler told Goebbels nine years later that he had been so distressed at the party’s financial state that he had thought of shooting himself. Then Kirdorf had come along with his contribution
(TBJG,
I.2, 727 (15 November 1936)). Turner,
German Big Business,
91 regards the gift as ‘improbable’, though he refers (cf. 386 nn. 15, 17) only to the post-war memoirs of August Heinrichsbauer and Albert Speer’s recollections of Hitler’s comments, and not to Goebbels’s diary entry. For the intermediacy of Elsa Bruckmann, see Deuerlein,
Aufstieg,
285–6. Kirdorf asked Hitler to put down his views in a brochure to be distributed privately to industrialists (Adolf Hitler,
Der Weg zum Wiederaufstieg,
Munich, August 1927; reprinted in
RSA,
II/2, 501–9). Kirdorf, formerly a member of the DNVP, resigned his membership of the Nazi party in 1928, within a year of joining, because of the ‘socialist’ aims of the party, but was an honoured guest at the 1929 Party Rally and rejoined the NSDAP in 1934.
    250 . According to the party’s own issue of membership cards, the number of members was 50,000 in December 1926 – still lower than before the putsch – 70,000 in November 1927, 80,000 on the eve of the 1928 election, and 100,000 by October 1928 (Tyrell,
Führer,
352). These figures take no account of the considerable numbers leaving the party, nor of blocks of cards issued but not occupied. Real numbers were, therefore, substantially smaller. Local membership figures reveal stagnatingmembership (Orlow, i.110–11). See Deuerlein,
Aufstieg,
291, for more exact figures for the distribution of membership cards by end of 1927 (72,590, marking a rise of 23,067 in the year).
    251 . Tyrell,
Führer,
196.
    252 . Tyrell,
Führer,
222.
    253 . Orlow, i.58–9. Philipp Bouhler became business manager (
Reichsgeschäftsführer)
of the party after its refoundation in 1925 and rose rapidly through the ranks of the NSDAP, ultimately becoming Chef der Kanzlei des Führers and head of the ‘Euthanasia Programme’. For a pen-portrait, see Wistrich, 29.
    254 . Stachura,
Strasser,
62–5, 67ff.; Tyrell,
Führer,
224.
    255 . Deuerlein,
Aufstieg,
287.
    256 . Peter Stachura, ‘Der kritische Wendepunkt? Die NSDAP und die Reichstagswahlen vom 20. Mai 1928’,
VfZ,
26 (1978),
66–99,
here 79–80.
    257 . Tyrell,
Führer,
188.
    258 . Tyrell,
Führer,
150.
    259 . See Bradley F. Smith,
Heinrich Himmler 1900–1926. Sein Weg in den deutschen Faschismus,
Munich, 1979; Peter Padfield,
Himmler. Reichsführer-SS,
London, 1990; character sketches of Himmler are provided by Fest,
Face of the Third Reich,
171–90; and Josef Ackermann, in Smelser-Zitelmann,
Die braune Elite,
115–33.
    260 . Tyrell,
Führer,
224.
    261 . Deuerlein,
Aufstieg,
292; Tyrell,
Führer,
193.
    262 . Orlow, i.151 speaks of a ‘new propaganda strategy, the rural-nationalist plan’, to replace the failed ‘urban plan’. (See also i.138.) Stachura, ‘Wendepunkt?’, 93 (discussion of the relevant literature, 66 n.2) also sees a fundamental shift, but as a consequence of the poor election results.
    263 .
Frankfurter Zeitung,
26 January 1928, cit. in Philipp W. Fabry,
Mutmaßungen über Hitler. Urteile von Zeitgenossen,
Düsseldorf, 1979, 28.
    264 . See Deuerlein,
Aufstieg,
249–50, cit. a
Weltbühne
comment of 17 March 1925, registering the ‘death’ of the
völkisch
movement.
    265 . See, for example, BHStA, MA 102 137, RPvOB, HMB, 19 May 1928, S.1: ‘In broad circles there is indifference towards the electioneering of the party leaderships’. The Nazi campaign remained largely confined to towns and