Hitler

ordinary party members. And since the Left also had its paramilitary organizations which did not fall under the Groener dissolution order, the authorities had delivered the Nazis a further effective propaganda weapon, which Hitler was quick to exploit.
    More importantly, the SA ban opened up the machinations that were to undermine the position not only of Groener, but of Brüning too, and to move the Reich government sharply to the Right. The key figure was to be General von Schleicher, head of the Ministerial Office, the army’s political bureau, in the Reichswehr Ministry, and seen up to now as Groener’s protégé. Schleicher’s aim was an authoritarian regime, resting on the Reichswehr, with support from the National Socialists. The idea was to ‘tame’ Hitler, and incorporate the ‘valuable elements’ from his Movement into what would have been essentially a military dictatorship with populist backing. Schleicher opposed the ban on the SA, therefore, which he wanted as a feeder organization for an expanded Reichswehr, once the reparations issue was out of the way. In secret talks with Schleicher on 28 April, Hitler had learnt that the Reichswehr leadership no longer supported Brüning. He followed this on 7 May with what Goebbels described as ‘a decisive discussion with General Schleicher’, attended by some of Hindenburg’s immediate entourage. ‘Brüning is to go in the next days,’ he added. ‘The Reich President will withdraw his confidence. The plan is to install a presidential cabinet. The Reichstag will be dissolved; all coercive laws will be dropped. We will be given freedom of action, and will then deliver a masterpiece of propaganda.’ Removal of the SA ban and new elections were, then, Hitler’s price for supporting a new right-wing cabinet. With the emphasis on elections, it is clear that Hitler thought, as always, essentially of little more than coming to power by winning over the masses.
    Brüning was able to survive longer than the conspirators had imagined. But his days were plainly numbered. On 29 May, Hindenburgbrusquely sought Brüning’s resignation. The following day, in the briefest of audiences, it was submitted.
    ‘The system is collapsing,’ wrote Goebbels. Hitler saw the Reich President that afternoon. The meeting went well, he told his propaganda chief in the evening: ‘The SA ban will be dropped. Uniforms are to be allowed again. The Reichstag will be dissolved. That’s the most important of all. v.Papen is foreseen as Chancellor. But that is not so interesting. Voting, voting! Out to the people. We’re all very happy.’
    XI
    The new Chancellor, Franz von Papen, an urbane and well-connected member of the Catholic nobility, a former diplomat and arch-conservative formerly on the right of the Zentrum, had been sounded out by Schleicher some days before Brüning’s fall. Schleicher had not only cleared the ground with Hindenburg for Papen’s appointment, but also drawn up a list of cabinet ministers and discussed the matter with some of them even before Papen agreed to serve. With his ‘cabinet of barons’ independent of parties, Papen made no pretence at parliamentary government. With no prospect of finding a majority in the Reichstag, he was dependent solely upon presidential emergency decrees – and the toleration of the NSDAP.
    As prearranged, the Reich President had dissolved the Reichstag, setting new elections for the latest possible date, 31 July 1932. Hitler now had his chance to try to win power by the ballot-box. State elections in Oldenburg at the end of May and in Mecklenburg-Schwerin on 5 June brought the NSDAP respectively 48.4 and 49.0 per cent of the vote. On 19 June in Hessen the Nazis increased their proportion of the vote there to 44 per cent. An absolute majority in the Reichstag election did not seem out of the question.
    The second part of Schleicher’s deal with Hitler, the lifting of the ban on the SA and SS, eventually took place, after some delay, on 16 June. The ban was already by then being openly flouted. Its lifting ushered in a summer of political violence throughout Germany such as had never been seen before. The latent civil war that had existed throughout the Weimar Republic was threatening to become an actual civil war. Armed clashes and streetfighting between the SA and the Communists weredaily occurrences. Nazi violence, it might be thought, ought to have put off the ‘respectable’ bourgeois following it was