Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris

Illusionen,
I09–13, here 113.
    79 . Schacht, 317–19; Höhne,
Zeit der Illusionen,
I31–2; Richard J. Overy,
War and Economy in the Third Reich,
Oxford, 1994, 56. Following legislation brought in at the time of the currency stabilization in 1924, there were firm restrictions on the government’s scope for printing money. The discount bills – greatly extended under Schacht – were a way of getting round such restrictions.
    80 . Richard J. Overy,
The Nazi Economic Recovery,
2nd edn, Cambridge, 1996, 37.
    81 . Barkai,
Das Wirtschaftssystem des Nationalsozialismus,
I51; James,
The German Slump,
344; Overy,
War and Economy,
60.
    82 . Domarus, 208–9; Höhne,
Zeit der Illusionen,
59.
    83 . Cit. Heidrun Edelmann,
Vom Luxusgut zum Gebrauchsgegenstand. Die Ge
schichte der Verbreitung von Personenkraftwagen in Deutschland,
Frankfurt am Main, 1989, 173.
    84 .
AdR, Reg. Hitler,
xliii; Edelmann, 173.
    85 . Edelmann, 189 n.141; Höhne,
Zeit der Illusionen
62–3.
    86 . Hansjoachim Henning, ‘Kraftfahrzeugindustrie und Autobahn in der Wirtschaftspolitik des Nationalsozialismus 1933 bis 1936’,
Vierteljahrsschrift für Sozial-und Wirtschaftsgeschichte,
65 (1978), 217–42, here, esp., 228.
    87 .
AdR, Reg. Hitler,
xliii. For Todt’s contribution to motorway construction, see Franz W. Seidler,
Fritz Todt. Baumeister des Dritten Reiches,
Munich/Berlin, 1986, Part 3, here 97ff.
    88 . Kurt Kaftan,
Der Kampf um die Autobahnen,
Berlin, 1955, 81–3; and see Höhne,
Zeit der Illusionen,
60, 62–3.
    89 . Höhne,
Zeit der Illusionen,
59, 62. For Hitler’s personal interest in cars, and his friendship with Jakob Werlin of Mercedes, see Overy,
War and Economy,
72 n.17.
    90 . Höhne,
Zeit der Illusionen,
60, cit.
VB,
I2–13 February 1933.
    91 . Hans Mommsen,
Das Volkswagenwerk und seine Arbeiter im Dritten Reich,
Düsseldorf, 1996, 56–60.
    92 . Henning, 226 n.37.
    93 . Henning, 221–7.
    94 . See Overy,
War and Economy,
70–71.
    95 .
AdR, Reg. Hitler,
xliii.
    96 .
AdR, Reg. Hitler,
xliii-v. In fact, far more of the expenditure went on ordinary roads than motorways. (See Overy,
War and Economy,
60, 85.)
    97 . Edelmann, 174–5. The motorways were at first not a major factor in the reduction of unemployment (Höhne,
Zeit der Illusionen,
I29–31).
    98 . Helmut Heiber, ed.,
Goebbels-Reden, Bd .I: 1932–1939,
Düsseldorf, 1971, 67–70 (with Heiber’s editorial interpolations referring to the background acoustics in brackets); reprinted in Becker,
Hitlers Machtergreifung,
57–60, here 58–9.
    99 . Domarus, 204–8.
    100 .
TBJG,
I.2, 371 (11 February 1933).
    101 . Erich Ebermayer,
Denn heute gehört uns Deutschland,
Hamburg/Vienna, 1959, 21.
    102 . Jochmann,
Nationalsozialismus und Revolution,
424–5.
    103 . Becker,
Hitlers Machtergreifung,
74–5; Martin Broszat,
Der Staat Hitlers. Grundlegung und Entwicklung seiner inneren Verfassung,
Munich, 1969, 93.
    104 . Broszat,
Der Staat Hitlers,
90–95.
    105 . Papen, 260.
    106 . Domarus, 213; Broszat,
Der Staat Hitlers,
95.
    107 . Domarus, 210–11; Broszat,
Der Staat Hitlers,
98.
    108 . BHStA, MA 106672, RPvNB/OP, 20 February 1933.
    109 . Staatsarchiv München, LRA 76887, GS Anzing, 24 February 1933.
    110 . Broszat,
Der Staat Hitlers,
99.
    111 .Hans Mommsen, ‘Van der Lubbes Weg in den Reichstag – der Ablauf der Ereignisse’, in Uwe Backes
et al., Reichstagsbrand. Aufklärung einer historischen Legende,
Munich/Zurich, 1986, 33–57, here 33–42.
    112 . The question of who set the Reichstag ablaze has provoked the most rancorous of disputes. The Nazi version that it was a Communist plot was widely disbelieved at the time by critical observers and was not even convincing enough to secure the conviction of the leading Communists tried at the show trial at the supreme Reich Court in Leipzig in autumn 1933. The view that the Nazis, with most to gain, had set fire to the Reichstag themselves was immediately given wide currency among diplomats and foreign journalists, and in liberal circles in Germany (see François-Poncet, 94–5). Nazi authorship, as put forward in Communist counter-propaganda, orchestrated by Willi Münzenberg, in
The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the Reichstag,
Paris, 1933, carried the day for a long time. But the findings of Fritz Tobias in the 1960s, collected in his extensive evaluation and documentation
(Der Reichstagsbrand. Legende und Wirklichkeit,
Rastatt/Baden, 1962), supported by the scholarly analysis of Hans Mommsen (‘Der