Hitler

the NSDAP’s badge of honour, awarded to him as party member No.9, dating from the refoundation of the party on 25 February 1925. Neither this nor a plaintive letter he wrote to Rudolf Heß on 18 June 1934 emphasizing his lengthy service and continuing loyalty to the party could save his skin. Hitler was unforgiving to those he felt had betrayed him. His final reckoning with Gregor Strasser came on 30 June 1934, when the former second man in the party was murdered in what came to be known as ‘the Night of the Long Knives’.
    Ultimately, the Strasser affair – the most serious of the inner-party crises since 1925 – revealed once again most graphically just how strong Hitler’s hold over the party had become, how much the NSDAP had become a ‘leader party’.
    IV
    The events of January 1933 amounted to an extraordinary political drama. It was a drama that unfolded largely out of sight of the German people.
    A fortnight after Schleicher had taken over from him as Reich Chancellor, Franz von Papen had been guest of honour at a dinner at the Berlin Herrenklub. Among the 300 or so guests listening to his speech on 16 December, justifying his own record in government, criticizing the Schleicher cabinet, and indicating that he thought the NSDAP should be included in government, was the Cologne banker Baron Kurt von Schröder. A few weeks earlier, Schröder had been a signatory to the petition to Hindenburg to make Hitler Chancellor. For months before that, he had been a Nazi sympathizer, and was a member of the ‘Keppler Circle’ – the group of economic advisers that Wilhelm Keppler, a one-time small businessman, had set up on Hitler’s behalf. Already in November – though nothing came of it at the time – Keppler had told Schröder that Papen might be prepared to intercede with Hindenburg in favour of a Hitler Chancellorship. Now, after Papen’s Herrenklubspeech, interested by what the former Chancellor had had to say, Schröder met him for a few minutes late in the evening to discuss the political situation. The two had known each other for some time. And since Schröder also knew Hitler, he was the ideal intermediary at a time that relations between the Nazi leader and the former Chancellor were still icy. Out of the discussion came the suggestion of a meeting between Hitler and Papen. The meeting was fixed to take place at Schröder’s house in Cologne on 4 January 1933.
    Papen arrived around midday. He found Hitler – who had entered through the back door – together with Heß, Himmler, and Keppler, waiting for him. Hitler, Papen, and Schröder adjourned to another room, while the others waited. Schröder took no part in the discussions. Most likely, the question of who was to lead the new government was left open at the meeting. Papen spoke loosely of some sort of duumvirate, and left open the possibility of ministerial posts, even if Hitler himself did not feel ready to take office, for some of his colleagues. After about two hours, discussions ended for lunch with the agreement to deal with further issues at a subsequent meeting, in Berlin or elsewhere. Papen evidently felt progress had been made. In a private audience with the Reich President a few days later, Papen informed Hindenburg that Hitler had lessened his demands and would be prepared to take part in a coalition government with parties of the Right. The unspoken assumption was that Papen would lead such a government. The Reich President told Papen to keep in touch with the Nazi leader.
    A second meeting between Hitler and Papen soon followed. It took place this time in the study of Ribbentrop’s house in Dahlem, a plush residential suburb of Berlin, on the night of 10–11 January. Nothing came of it, since Papen told Hitler that Hindenburg still opposed his appointment to the Chancellorship. Hitler angrily broke off further talks until after the Lippe election.
    Elections in the mini-state of Lippe-Detmold, with its 173,000 inhabitants, would at other times scarcely have been a first priority for Hitler and his party. But now, they were a chance to prove the NSDAP was again on the forward march after its losses the previous November and after the Strasser crisis. Despite the poor state of the party’s finances, no effort was spared towards obtaining a good result in Lippe. For close on a fortnight before the election, on 15 January, Lippe was saturated with Nazi propaganda. All the Nazi big guns were fired. Göring, Goebbelsand Frick