Hitler

areas of life, intolerant towards anyone who sins against the nation, brother and friend to anyone willing to fight alongside for the resurrection of his people, of our nation’. Hitler reached the rhetorical climax of his speech. ‘German people, give us four years, then judge and sentence us. German people, give us four years, and I swear that as we and I entered into this office, I will then be willing to go.’
    It was a powerful piece of rhetoric. But it was little more than that. The ‘programme’ offered nothing concrete – other than the showdown with Marxism. National ‘resurrection’ to be brought about through will, strength, and unity was what it amounted to. For all nationalists – not just for Nazis – the sentiments Hitler expressed could not fail to find appeal.
    The accompaniment to the campaign was a wave of unparalleled state-sponsored terror and repression against political opponents in states under Nazi control. Above all, this was the case in the huge state of Prussia, which had already come under Reich control in the Papen takeover of 20 July 1932. The orchestrator here was the commissaryPrussian Minister of the Interior Hermann Göring. Under his aegis, heads of the Prussian police and administration were ‘cleansed’ (following the first purges after the Papen coup) of the remainder of those who might prove obstacles in the new wind of change that was blowing. Göring provided their successors with verbal instructions in unmistakably blunt language of what he expected of police and administration during the election campaign. And in a written decree of 17 February, he ordered the police to work together with the ‘national associations’ of SA, SS, and Stahlhelm, support ‘national propaganda with all their strength’, and combat the actions of ‘organizations hostile to the state’ with all the force at their disposal, ‘where necessary making ruthless use of firearms’. He added that policemen using firearms would, whatever the consequences, be backed by him; those failing in their duty out of a ‘false sense of consideration’ had, on the contrary, to expect disciplinary action. Unsurprisingly in such a climate, the violence unleashed by Nazi terror bands against their opponents and against Jewish victims was uncontrolled. This was especially the case once the SA, SS, and Stahlhelm had been brought in on 22 February as ‘auxiliary police’ on the pretext of an alleged increase in ‘left-radical’ violence. Intimidation was massive. Communists were particularly savagely repressed. Individuals were brutally beaten, tortured, seriously wounded, or killed, with total impunity. Communist meetings and demonstrations were banned, in Prussia and in other states under Nazi control, as were their newspapers. Bans, too, on organs of the SPD and restrictions on reporting imposed on other newspapers effectively muzzled the press, even when the bans were successfully challenged in the courts as illegal, and the newspapers reinstated.
    During this first orgy of state violence, Hitler played the moderate. His acting ability was undiminished. He gave the cabinet the impression that radical elements in the movement were disobeying his orders but that he would bring them under control, and asked for patience to allow him to discipline the sections of the party that had got out of hand.
    Hitler had no need to involve himself in the violence of February 1933. Its deployment could be left safely to Göring, and to leading Nazis in other states. In any case, it needed only the green light to Nazi thugs, sure now of the protection of the state, to unleash their pent-up aggression against those well known to them as long-standing enemies in their neighbourhoods and work-places. The terror-wave in Prussia inFebruary was the first sign that state-imposed constraints on inhumanity were now suddenly lifted. It was an early indicator of the ‘breach of civilization’ that would give the Third Reich its historical character.
    But it was not that the brutality and violence damaged Hitler’s reputation in the population. Many who had been initially sceptical or critical were beginning, during February, to think that Hitler was ‘the right man’, and should be given a chance. A slight upturn in the economy helped. But the fervent anti-Marxism of much of the population was more important. The long-standing hatred of Socialism and Communism – both bracketed together as ‘Marxism’ – was