Hitler

30 per cent won by Hitler was lower than the NSDAP’s showing in the Oldenburg and Hessen state elections the previous year. With over 49 per cent of almost 38 million votes cast, the Reich President ended up a mere 170,000 votes short of the absolute majority. There had to be a second round.
    This time Nazi propaganda had a new gimmick. Hitler took to the skies in a hired plane, American-style, in his first ‘Germany Flight’
(Deutschlandflug)
, embellished with the slogan of ‘the Führer over Germany’. Flying from city to city in a truncated campaign squeezed into less than a week to accommodate an Easter truce in politicking, Hitler was able to hold twenty major speeches in different venues before huge audiences, totalling close to a million persons. It was a remarkable electioneering performance, the like of which had never before been seen in Germany. Hindenburg, with 53 per cent, was re-elected. But while Thälmann had slumped to only 10 per cent, Hitler had increased his support to 37 per cent. He had done much more than merely save face. Well over 13 million, 2 million more than in the first round, had voted for him. The Führer cult, the manufactured commodity of Nazi propaganda and once the property of a tiny collection of fanatics, was now on the way to being sold to a third of the German population.
    Quite literally while the votes were being counted, Goebbels was laying the preparations for the next battle: the series of state elections on 24 April in Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, Anhalt, and the city elections in Hamburg. All in all, this amounted to about four-fifths ofthe country. Without a break, the frenetic campaigning continued. In his second ‘Germany Flight’ between 16 and 24 April, Hitler – this time taking his campaign not just to the cities but deep into the provinces – gave twenty-five big speeches.
    The results were closely in line with the votes won by Hitler in the run-off presidential election. Leader and party were largely indistinguishable in the eyes of the voters. In the giant state of Prussia, embracing two-thirds of Reich territory, the NSDAP’s vote of 36.3 per cent made it easily the largest party, now far ahead of the SPD which had been the dominant party since 1919. Since the previous election, in 1928, the Nazis had held six seats in the Prussian Landtag. Now they had 162 seats. In Bavaria, with 32.5 per cent, they came to within 0.1 per cent of the ruling BVP. In Württemberg, they rose from 1.8 per cent in 1928, to 26.4 per cent. In Hamburg, they attained 31.2 per cent. And in Anhalt, with 40.9 per cent, they could nominate the first Nazi Minister President of a German state.
    ‘It’s a fantastic victory that we’ve attained,’ noted Goebbels, with justification. But he added: ‘We must come to power in the foreseeable future. Otherwise we’ll win ourselves to death in elections.’ Mobilizing the masses was in itself going to be insufficient, Goebbels was recognizing. Despite the immense gains over the previous three years, there were signs that the limits of mobilization were being reached. The way ahead was still anything but clear. But another door was about to open.
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    The state election campaign had been fought in the wake of a ban on the SA and SS. Chancellor Brüning and Interior and Defence Minister Groener, under pressure from the state authorities, had persuaded Hindenburg three days after the President’s re-election to dissolve ‘all military-like organizations’ of the NSDAP. The dissolution was directly occasioned by the Prussian police’s discovery, following a tip-off to Reich Minister of the Interior Groener, in raids on Nazi party offices, shortly after the first round of the presidential election, of material indicating the SA’s readiness for a takeover of power by force following an electoral victory by Hitler. There had been distinct signs during thepresidential election campaigns that the SA – now close to 400,000 strong – was straining at the leash. Talk of a putsch attempt by the Left in the event of a Hitler victory was in the air. The SA had been placed on nationwide alarm. But instead of action, the stormtroopers had sat depressed in their quarters after Hitler’s defeat. News of the impending ban leaked to the Nazi leadership two days before it was imposed. Some preparations could therefore be made to retain the SA as distinct units within the party organization by simply reclassing the stormtroopers now as