Hitler

on Germany could only be dictated by the intention of driving the country from the disarmament negotiations, he claimed. ‘As a continually defamed people, it would be hard for us to stay within the League of Nations,’ ran his scarcely veiled threat. It was a clever piece of rhetoric. He sounded the voice of reason, putting his adversaries in the western democracies on a propaganda defensive.
    The stalemated Geneva talks were postponed until June, then until October. During this period there were no concrete plans for Germany to break with the League of Nations. Even later that month, neither Hitler nor his Foreign Minister Neurath were reckoning with an early withdrawal. As late as 4 October, Hitler appears to have been thinking of further negotiations. But on that very day news arrived of a more unyielding British stance on German rearmament, toughened to back the French, and taking no account of demands for equality. That afternoon, Blomberg sought an audience with Hitler in the Reich Chancellery. Neurath later acknowledged that he, too, had advised Hitler at the end of September that there was nothing more to be gained in Geneva. Hitler recognized that the time was now ripe to leave the League in circumstances which looked as if Germany was the wronged party. The propaganda advantage, especially at home where he could be certain of massive popular support, was too good a chance to miss.
    The cabinet was finally informed on 13 October. With a sure eye as always on the propaganda value of plebiscitary acclaim, Hitler told his ministers that Germany’s position would be strengthened by the dissolution of the Reichstag, the setting of new elections, and ‘requiring the German people to identify with the peace policy of the Reich government through a plebiscite’.
    The following day, the Geneva Conference received official notification of the German withdrawal. The consequences were far-reaching. The disarmament talks now lost their meaning. The League of Nations, which Japan had already left earlier in the year, was fatally weakened. In the decision to leave the League the timing and propaganda exploitation were vintage Hitler. But Blomberg, especially, and Neurath had been pressing for withdrawal long before Hitler became convinced that the moment had arrived for Germany to gain maximum advantage. Hitler had not least been able to benefit from the shaky basis of Europeandiplomacy at the outset of his Chancellorship. The world economic crisis had undermined the ‘fulfilment policy’ on which Stresemann’s strategy, and the basis of European security, had been built. The European diplomatic order was, therefore, already no more stable than a house of cards when Hitler took up office. The German withdrawal from the League of Nations was the first card to be removed from the house. The others would soon come tumbling down.
    On the evening of 14 October, in an astutely constructed broadcast sure of a positive resonance among the millions of listeners throughout the country, Hitler announced the dissolution of the Reichstag. New elections, set for 12 November, now provided the opportunity to have a purely National Socialist Reichstag, free of the remnants of the dissolved parties. Even though only one party was contesting the elections, Hitler flew once more throughout Germany holding election addresses. The propaganda campaign directed its energies almost entirely to accomplishing a show of loyalty to Hitler personally – now regularly referred to even in the still existent non-Nazi press as simply ‘the Führer’. Electoral manipulation was still not as refined as it was to become in the 1936 and 1938 plebiscites. But it was far from absent. Various forms of chicanery were commonplace. Secrecy at the ballot-box was far from guaranteed. And pressure to conform was obvious. Even so, the official result – 95.1 per cent in the plebiscite, 92.1 per cent in the ‘Reichstag election’ – marked a genuine triumph for Hitler. Abroad as well as at home, even allowing for manipulation and lack of freedom, it had to be concluded that the vast majority of the German people backed him. His stature as a national leader above party interest was massively enhanced.
    Hitler’s conquest of Germany was still, however, incomplete. Behind the euphoria of the plebiscite result, a long-standing problem was now threatening to endanger the regime itself: the problem of the SA.

11
Securing Total Power
    I
    Hitler’s unruly