Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

n.31 – apparently based upon a verbal account by Otto Meissner); Winkler,
Weimar,
593·
    253 .
TBJG
I.2, 357 (31 January 1933, unpubl.).
    254 . For an example of intellectual underestimation of National Socialism, see Thomas Mann’s comments on 12 January 1933 in a letter to the Prussian Education Minister, Adolf Grimme: ‘The social and democratic Germany, I am firmly convinced, can trust in the fact that the present constellation is a passing one and that, despite everything, the future is on its side. The raging of nationalist passions is nothing more than a late and final flickering of an already burnt-out fire, a dying flare mistaken for a new glow of life’ (Deuerlein,
Aufstieg,
414).
    255 . See, for the landed élites, Wolfgang Zollitsch, ‘Adel und adlige Machteliten in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik. Standespolitik und agrarische Interessen’, in Winkler,
Staatskrise,
239–56; Horst Gies, ‘NSDAP und landwirtschaftliche Organisationen in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik’,
VfZ,
I5 (1967), 341–76; Dieter Gessner,
Agrarverbände in der Weimarer Republik,
Düsseldorf, 1976; Gustavo Corni and Horst Gies,
Brot, Butter, Kanonen: Die Ernährungswirtschaft
in Deutschland unter der Diktatur Hitlers,
Berlin, 1997, Part I. For the military élite, the argument has been most cogently advanced by Michael Geyer in his study,
Aufrüstung oder Sicherheit. Die Reichswehr in der Krise der Machtpolitik 1924–1936,
Wiesbaden, 1980, his more general survey,
Deutsche Rüstungspolitik 1860–1980,
Frankfurt am Main, 1984, 188–39, and his essays, ‘Etudes in Political History: Reichswehr, NSDAP, and the Seizure of Power’, in Peter D. Stachura (ed.),
The Nazi Machtergreifung,
London, 1983, 101–23, and ‘Professionals and Junkers: German Rearmament and Politics in the Weimar Republic’, in Bessel and Feucht-wanger, 77–133.
    256 . See Turner,
German Big Business,
318–28, for the stance of big business in late January 1933; also, Reinhard Neebe,
Großindustrie, Staat und NSDAP 1930–1933,
Göttingen, 1981.
    257 . An attempt to use the ‘Bonapartist’ model of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to explain how Hitler gained power is advanced by Eberhard Jäckel, ‘Wie kam Hitler an die Macht?’, in Karl Dietrich Erdmann and Hagen Schulze (eds.),
Weimar. Selbstpreisgabe einer Demokratie,
Düsseldorf, 1980, 305–21.
    258 . See, for instance, the recognition of this by Friedrich Meinecke,
Die deutsche Katastrophe,
3rd edn, Wiesbaden, 1947, esp. 11–12, 39–40.
    259 . See Mosse,
Crisis,
esp. Part One, for a thorough exploration of the strands of this consciousness.
    260 . See, esp., the influential work of David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley,
The Peculiarities of German History,
Oxford, 1984, and the debate on the ‘Sonderweg’ question:
Deutscher Sonderweg – Mythos oder Realität, Kolloquien des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte,
Munich/Vienna, 1982. The complexity of the differing continuities in German history which made National Socialism and a Hitler dictatorship possible – but by no means inevitable – is emphasized in a sophisticated analysis by Thomas Nipperdey, ‘1933 und Kontinuität der deutschen Geschichte’,
Historische Zeitschrift,
227 (1978), 86–111.
    261 . See Lothar Kettenacker, ‘Sozialpsychologische Aspekte der Führer-Herrschaft’, in Gerhard Hirschfeld and Lothar Kettenacker (eds.),
Der ‘Führerstaat’: Mythos und Realität. Studien zur Struktur und Politik des Dritten Reiches,
Stuttgart, 1981, 98–132.
    262 .
Regensburger Anzeiger,
31 January 1933.
    263 . Sebastian Haffner,
Geschichte eines Deutschen. Die Erinnerungen 1914–1933,
Stuttgart-Munich, 2000, 104–6 (quotation, 106).
CHAPTER 11: THE MAKING OF THE DICTATOR
    1 . Jochmann,
Nationalsozialismus und Revolution,
421.
    2 . Julius Leber,
Ein Mann geht seinen Weg,
Berlin, 1952, 90.
    3 . Josef and Ruth Becker (eds.),
Hitlers Machtergreifung. Dokumente vom Machtantritt Hitlers 30. Januar 1933 bis zur Besiegelung des Einparteienstaates 14. Juli 1933,
2nd edn, Munich, 1992, 45, cit.
Schwäbische Volkszeitung,
7 February 1933.
    4 . Becker,
Hitlers Machtergreifung,
32.
    5 . Becker,
Hitlers Machtergreifung,
34–5.
    6 . John Conway,
The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933–45,
London, 1968, 9.
    7 . H. Rößler, ‘Erinnerungen an den Kirchenkampf in Coburg’,
Jahrbuch der Coburger Lande s Stiftung
(1975), 155–6.
    8 . Theophil Wurm,
Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben,
Stuttgart, 1953, 84.
    9 . Cit. in Klaus Scholder,
Die Kirchen