Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

See Heinrich August Winkler, ‘Extremismus der Mitte? Sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte der nationalsozialistischen Machtergreifung’,
VfZ,
20 (1972), 175–91. Harold James, ‘Economic Reasons for the Collapse of the Weimar Republic’, in Ian Kershaw (ed.),
Weimar. Why did German Democracy Fail?,
London, 1990, 30–57, here 47, points out that in the 1928 election, a quarter of the total vote went to parties with an individual share of under 5 per cent.
    297 . James, ‘Economic Reasons’, 32–45. The underlying structural economic weaknesses of the Weimar Republic were most emphatically outlined by Knut Borchardt in his
Wachstum, Krisen, Handlungsspielräume der Wirtschaftspolitik,
Göttingen, 1982.
    298 . Deuerlein,
Aufstieg,
297.
    299 .
RSA,
III, 245–53.
    300 . See Baldur von Schirach, 17–25, 58–61, 68; Fest,
The Face of the Third Reich,
332–54; and Michael Wortmann’s pen-portrait in Smelser-Zitelmann,
Die braune Elite,
246–57. Figures for the Nazi successes in student union elections are given in Tyrell,
Führer,
380–81.
    301 . Deuerlein,
Aufstieg,
299–301; Hitler’s own accounts, in articles published in the VB, are printed in
RSA,
III/2, 105–14. Orlow, i.154, referred to them as among ‘the few humanly moving articles [Hitler] ever wrote’. The vivid, and rich, descriptive style is not, however, typically Hitlerian and suggests considerable editorial embellishment of the text. For ‘Wöhrden’s Night of Blood’
(Blutnacht von Wöhrden),
see also Gerhard Stoltenberg,
Politische Strömungen im schleswig-holsteinischen Landvolk 1918–1933,
Düsseldorf, 1962, 147; and Rudolf Heberle,
Landbevölkerung und Nationalsozialismus. Eine soziologische Untersuchung der politischen Willensbildung in Schleswig-Holstein 1918 bis 1932,
Stuttgart, 1963, 160.
    302 . For use of the term ‘crisis before the crisis’, see Dietmar Petzina, ‘Was there a Crisis before the Crisis? The State of the German Economy in the 1920s’, in JürgenBaron von Kruedener (ed.),
Economic Crisis and Political Collapse. The Weimar Republic 1924–1933,
New York/Oxford/Munich, 1990, 1–19.
    303 .
RSA,
III/2, 202–13, 233–6, 238–9, 260–62.
    304 .
RSA,
III/2, 210.
    305 .
RSA,
III/2, 238.
    306 . Orlow, i.161–2; Stachura,
Strasser,
69. Some support for the suggestion that Himmler was responsible for the tactic of ‘speaker concentration’ is offered by two letters from Gauleiter Kube to Himmler from 23 June and 4 November 1928 in BDC, Parteikanzlei, Correspondence, Heinrich Himmler.
    307 . See Ellsworth Faris, ‘Takeoff Point for the National Socialist Party: The Landtag Election in Baden, 1929’,
Central European History,
8 (1975), 140–71, here 168. The penetration of social networks by the Nazis is emphasized by Rudy Koshar,
Social Life, Local Politics, and Nazism: Marburg, 1880–1935,
Chapel Hill, 1986; and, for Catholic districts in the Black Forest, by Oded Heilbronner, ‘The Failure that Succeeded: Nazi Party Activity in a Catholic Region in Germany, 1929–32’,
Journal of Contemporary History,
27 (1992), 531–49; and ‘Der verlassene Stammtisch. Vom Verfall der bürgerlichen Infrastruktur und dem Aufstieg der NSDAP am Beispiel der Region Schwarzwald’,
Geschichte und Gesellschaft,
19 (1993), 178–201.
    308 . Orlow, i.162.
    309 . See Faris, 168.
    310 . Falter
et al, Wahlen,
108.
    311 . Falter
et al., Wahlen,
98; Deuerlein,
Aufstieg,
302.
    312 .
RSA,
III/2, 275–7, 277 n.3; Pridham, 85–6.
    313 . Falter
et al., Wahlen,
90; Faris, 144–6.
    314 .
RSA,
III/2, 291 n.10.
    315 . Winkler,
Weimar, 346 ff.
    316 .
RSA,
III/2, 290 n.1; Winkler,
Weimar,
354. Hitler took the decision to join without consulting other leading figures in the party (Orlow, i.173).
    317 .
RSA,
III/2, 292 n.1.
    318 . Orlow, i.173. Goebbels claimed to be on the scent of a plot by Otto Strasser and his supporters against Hitler in early August 1929. Though this was a reflection of Goebbels’s paranoia, Hitler’s dealings with the ‘reaction’ had indeed sharpened the growing antagonism of the ‘national revolutionary’ grouping around Otto Strasser (
TBJG,
I.1, 405 (3 August 1929);
Tb
Reuth, i.393–4, note 54).
    319 . Winkler,
Weimar,
354–6. Nine out of thirty-five electoral districts returned over a fifth of votes in favour of the plebiscite proposal.
    320 . The
VB
’s circulation was still only 18,400 (for a membership of around 150,000) (Tyrell,
Führer,
223).
    321 . Albrecht Tyrell, IV.
Reichsparteitag der NSDAP,