Hitler

national renewal and rebirth. Those not firmly anchored in an alternative political ideology, social milieu, or denominational sub-culture found such language increasingly intoxicating.
    The Nazis had moved at one fell swoop from the fringe of the political scene, outside the power-equation, to its heart. Brüning could now cope with the Reichstag only through the ‘toleration’ of the SPD, which saw him as the lesser evil. The Social Democrats entered their policy of ‘toleration’ with heavy hearts but a deep sense of responsibility. As for Hitler, whether he was seen in a positive or a negative sense – and there was little about him that left people neutral or indifferent – his name was now on everyone’s lips. He was a factor to be reckoned with. He could no longer be ignored.
    After the September elections, not just Germany but the world outside had to take notice of Hitler. In the immediate aftermath of his electoral triumph, the trial of three young Reichswehr officers from a regiment stationed in Ulm, whose Nazi sympathies saw them accused of ‘Preparing to Commit High Treason’ through working towards a military putsch with the NSDAP and breaching regulations banning members of the Reichswehr from activities aimed at altering the constitution, gave Hitler the chance, now with the eyes of the world’s press on him, ofunderlining his party’s commitment to legality. The trial of the officers, Hanns Ludin, Richard Scheringer, and Hans Friedrich Wendt, began in Leipzig on 23 September. On the first day, Wendt’s defence counsel, Hans Frank, was given permission to summon Hitler as a witness. Two days later, huge crowds demonstrated outside the court building in favour of Hitler as the leader of the Reichstag’s second largest party went into the witness-box to face the red-robed judges of the highest court in the land.
    Once more he was allowed to use a court of law for propaganda purposes. The judge even warned him on one occasion, as he heatedly denied any intention of undermining the Reichswehr, to avoid turning his testimony into a propaganda speech. It was to little avail. Hitler emphasized that his movement would take power by legal means and that the Reichswehr – again becoming ‘a great German people’s army’ – would be ‘the basis for the German future’. He declared that he had never wanted to pursue his ideals by illegal measures. He used the exclusion of Otto Strasser to dissociate himself from those in the movement who had been ‘revolutionaries’. But he assured the presiding judge: ‘If our movement is victorious in its legal struggle, then there will be a German State Court and November 1918 will find its atonement, and heads will roll.’ This brought cheers and cries of ‘bravo’ from onlookers in the courtroom – and an immediate admonishment from the court president, reminding them that they were ‘neither in the theatre nor in a political meeting’. Hitler expected, he continued, that the NSDAP would win a majority following two or three further elections. ‘Then it must come to a National Socialist rising, and we will shape the state as we want to have it.’ When asked how he envisaged the erection of the Third Reich, Hitler replied: ‘The National Socialist Movement will seek to attain its aim in this state by constitutional means. The constitution shows us only the methods, not the goal. In this constitutional way, we will try to gain decisive majorities in the legislative bodies in order, in the moment this is successful, to pour the state into the mould that matches our ideas.’ He repeated that this would only be done constitutionally. He was finally sworn in on oath to the truth of his testimony. Goebbels told Scheringer, one of the defendants, that Hitler’s oath was ‘a brilliant move’. ‘Now we are strictly legal,’ he is said to have exclaimed. The propaganda boss was delighted at the ‘fabulous’ press reportage. Hitler’s newly appointed Foreign Press Chief, PutziHanfstaengl, saw to it that there was wide coverage of the trial abroad. He also placed three articles by Hitler on the aims of the movement in the Hearst press, the powerful American media concern, at a handsome fee of 1,000 Marks for each. Hitler said it was what he needed to be able now to stay at the Kaiserhof Hotel – plush, well situated near the heart of government, and his headquarters in the capital until 1933 – when he went to Berlin.
    What Hitler said in the