RadioBanter - THANKSGIVING'S BLESSING OF CAPITALIST FREEDOM

On Nov 27, 3:44Â*pm, "Chas. Chan" wrote:

the fascists are righties, and everyone knows it, but low
functioning, low information conservatives/libertarians/fascists.

The aristocrats and gentlemen of the Right who made up the majority of
Hitler's cabinet hated the concept of democracy even more than the
Nazis did, All over Germany, thugs in brown shirts took possession of
the streets and roughed up Communists, socialists, and Jews; they
chased socialist mayors and officials out of government buildings

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Chapter 1: Financing the 1933 Elections
On the cold winter weekend of January 28, 1933, Germany was officially
without a government. Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and his cabinet
had resigned on Saturday afternoon, and eighty-six-year-old President
von Hindenburg had not yet appointed a new chancellor. A nervous
tension spread over Berlin. Everyone waited for news; most felt
Germany was at an historic turning point.
Who would be the next chancellor? Hitler - the leader of the largest
party, the Nazis, who pledged to destroy democracy? Papen - the
aristocratic horseman who had been chancellor before Schleicher, but
who had no popular following? Perhaps Schleicher again, if he could
persuade the Social Democrats, the second largest political party in
the country, to join him in a coalition? Governing Germany in the
middle of an economic depression with nine million unemployed was not
an enviable task. The country had just had three different chancellors
in rapid succession. By tradition, the leader of the largest party was
usually appointed chancellor. But the Nazis had been the largest party
for over a year, and so far intrigues and political maneuvering had
succeeded in keeping Hitler out of power. Everyone guessed what a
Hitler government would mean. He had not kept his militarism, anti-
Semitism, and dictatorial ambitions a secret.
Political intrigues were so numerous that weekend that no one really
knew what was going on. Sensational rumors were being spread
throughout the city. Some said an army coup was imminent, that
Schleicher and the generals were about to abduct President von
Hindenburg and declare martial law. There were also rumors of an armed
Nazi uprising and a general strike by the socialist workers.
Hitler and Hermann Goering, the second most powerful man in the Nazi
party, stayed up all night on Sunday, January 29, trying to figure out
what Hindenburg might do. It was not until after 10 A.M. on Monday
that Hitler received a summons to the president's office. Even at that
point, the Nazis were not certain whether Hitler would be appointed
chancellor or Hindenburg would ask him to serve as vice-chancellor.
Across the street from the Chancellery, in the Kaiserhof Hotel,
Hitler's lieutenants were waiting, unsure of what was going on.
Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, said:

In the street the crowd stands waiting between the Kaiserhof and the
Chancellery. We are torn between doubt, hope, joy and despair. We have
been deceived too often to be able, wholeheartedly, to believe in the
great miracle. [S.A.] Chief of Staff Roehm stands at the window (with
binoculars) watching the door of the Chancellery from which the
Fuehrer [the leader, Hitler] must emerge. We shall be able to judge by
his face if the interview was a success. Torturing hours of waiting.
At last, a car draws up in front of the entrance. The crowd cheers.
They seem to feel that a great change is taking place....
A few moments later, he is with us. He says nothing. His eyes are full
of tears. It has come! The Fuehrer is appointed Chancellor. He has
already been sworn in by the President of the Reich. All of us are
dumb with emotion. Everyone clasps the Fuehrer's hand....Outside the
Kaiserhof, the masses are in a wild uproar....The thousands soon
become tens of thousands. Endless streams of people flood the
Wilhelmstrasse. We set to work...at once.
Hitler's victory was not a complete one by any means. He had been
appointed chancellor in a coalition government. Papen was to be his
vice-chancellor, and all the powerful cabinet posts were held by
Papen's conservative allies, rather than the Nazis. But at the moment,
Hitler's followers weren't worried about the details; for them the
only thing that mattered was that Hitler was chancellor. They had come
to power! All day, crowds gathered in the square outside the Kaiserhof
Hotel and the Chancellery.
At dusk Nazi storm troopers in their brown uniforms gathered in the
Tiergarten park, along with men of the Stahlhelm, an
ultranationalistic veterans' organization, for a torchlight victory
parade through the center of Berlin. As soon as it was dark, they came
marching by the thousands through the Brandenburg Gate, carrying
swastika flags and the black, white, and red flags of the German
empire. Bands marched between the units, beating their big drums as
the men sang old German military songs. But as each band came to the
Pariser Platz, where the French embassy was located, they stopped
whatever they were playing and, with an introductory roll of drums,
broke into the tune of the challenging war song "Victorious We Will
Crush the French."
The torches carried by the marchers glowed hypnotically in the
darkness. To foreign witnesses, it was a frightening sight. "The river
of fire flowed past the French Embassy," Ambassador FranÃ§ois-Poncet
wrote, "whence, with heavy heart and filled with foreboding, I watched
this luminous wake." Liberal Germans found it an "ominous sight." It
was, wrote one German reporter, "a night of deadly menace, a nightmare
in...blazing torches."
As the marchers came by the Chancellery, there were tumultuous cheers
for Hitler, who stood in an open window saluting them. He was so
excited that night, he could hardly stand still. He was raising his
arm up and down heiling, smiling, and laughing so much, his eyes
filled with tears. "It was an extraordinary experience," recalled
Papen, who was standing behind Hitler. "The endless repetition of the
triumphal cry: 'Heil, Heil, Sieg Heil!' rang in my ears like a
tocsin." When Hitler turned to speak with Papen, his voice choked with
emotion. "What an immense task we have set for ourselves, Herr von
Papen - we must never part until our work is accomplished." Hitler and
Papen were much closer allies than anyone at the time imagined.
It was after midnight when the parade ended. Being too excited to
sleep, Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, and a few other Nazis sat up talking
for hours. They could hardly believe it had actually happened: they
were in the Chancellery at last. That evening, Hitler said to
Goebbels, "No one gets me out of here alive." It was one of the few
promises he kept.
On the morning of January 31, Hitler's storm troopers gave the German
people a glimpse of what Nazi rule would be like. All over Germany,
thugs in brown shirts took possession of the streets and roughed up
Communists, socialists, and Jews; they chased socialist mayors and
officials out of government buildings and even broke into the private
homes of their political enemies. When people complained to Papen, he
laughed. "Let the storm troopers have their fling." Among his friends
at the Herrenklub, an exclusive gentlemens club, he boasted: "We've
hired Hitler." To a skeptic he replied: "What do you want? I have
Hindenburg's confidence. Within two months we will have pushed Hitler
so far in the corner that he'll squeak."
The facts seemed to support Papen's optimism. Not only did Papen have
Hindenburg"s confidence, but in fact the old president had promised
never to receive Hitler unless he was accompanied by his vice-
chancellor. Papen also held the important post of minister-president
of Prussia, Germany's largest and most powerful state. From the
composition of the cabinet, it seemed all the real power was in the
hands of the conservatives: the aristocratic General von Blomberg was
minister of defense, Baron von Neurath, a career diplomat, was foreign
minister, and the old archreactionary Hugenberg was both minister of
economics and minister of agriculture. The Nazis were outnumbered six
to two.
The two Nazis in the cabinet, Wilhelm Frick and Goering, held posts
that were thought to be insignificant. Frick was minister of the
interior, but he did not control the police, which in Germany was
under the jurisdiction of the individual state governments. Goering
was made minister without portfolio, but with the promise that he
would be minister of aviation as soon as Germany had an air force. He
was also named minister of the interior of Prussia, an office that did
not receive much notice by the public but did control the Prussian
police.
The aristocrats and gentlemen of the Right who made up the majority of
Hitler's cabinet hated the concept of democracy even more than the
Nazis did. These men belonged to the old ruling class of the kaiser's
Germany. They wanted to regain their old position of supremacy, lost
in 1918. They wanted to restore the monarchy, suppress the socialist
unions, avenge the loss of World War I, and make Germany the dominant
power in Europe. It was obvious why such reactionary nationalists
helped put Hitler in power: their goals and his were very similar.
Few people knew the full extent of Papen's collaboration with Hitler.
Historians have said he "did more than anyone else outside the Nazi
party to help Hitler to power." Papen helped Hitler because he was
trying to control him and use the Nazis for his own aims.
Papen was a handsome aristocratic-looking man with distinguished gray
hair and an officer's mustache. From an impoverished family of the
Westphalian nobility, he became a General Staff officer, a skillful
horseman, and a man of great charm. After a successful marriage to the
daughter of a wealthy Saar industrialist, he bought a large block of
shares in the Center party's newspaper, Germania. For a short time in
1932, Papen was chancellor, but his government had no popular support.
Papen believed it would be rather easy for an aristocratic officer
like himself to manipulate a former corporal, like Hitler, and thus be
able to use the Nazi's mass following to accomplish the aims of the
upper-class conservative nationalists.
Hitler immediately began to outmaneuver his conservative colleagues.
He reported to the cabinet that the Center party was making impossible
demands and could not be counted on to form a coalition with the Nazis
and the Nationalists that would have a majority in the Reichstag.
Because of this situation, Hitler argued he would have to call for new
elections. The only "demand" the Center party made was that Hitler
promise to govern constitutionally, but none of the other members of
the cabinet bothered to check Hitler's statement. They agreed to new
elections on the condition that Hitler promise that the composition of
the cabinet would not change regardless of the outcome of the voting.
New elections would provide Hitler with a chance to improve on the
poor results the Nazis had received at the polls the past November. If
the Nazis won a clear majority in the elections, they might be able to
get rid of their coalition partners. Hitler had every reason to
believe the election campaign would be a big success. The entire
machinery of government, including the radio, was now under Nazi
control and could be used for campaigning. The party had been flooded
with new applicants for membership since he had become chancellor. In
the cabinet meeting on February 2, Hitler discussed his preparations
for the elections. Wilhelm Frick, the Nazi minister of the interior,
proposed that the government set aside a million marks for the
election campaign. Count von Schwerin von Krosigk, the minister of
finance, rejected this suggestion. Hitler did not force the issue. He
would have to get the money elsewhere.
The theme of the Nazi election campaign was to be the fight against
communism. Hitler opened the attack in a late-night radio broadcast to
the nation on February 1. He blamed the hard times Germany had gone
through since 1918 on the Social Democrats, which had been the largest
party in the Reichstag during most of those years. The Social
Democrats, he reminded his listeners, were actually a Marxist party.
"Fourteen years of Marxism," he said, "have ruined Germany; one year
of bolshevism [communism] would destroy her. The richest and fairest
territories of the world would be turned into a smoking heap of ruins.
Even the sufferings of the last decade and a half could not be
compared to the misery of a Europe in the heart of which the red flag
of destruction has been hoisted." He went on to promise to put the
unemployed back to work and save the peasants from bankruptcy.
â€¨On his fourth day in office, just after opening the election
campaign, Hitler took time off to attend a very important dinner. He
had been invited to the home of General von Hammerstein, chief of
staff of the army, to meet the leading officers of the army and navy.
In a speech that lasted almost two hours, Hitler explained his plans
for rebuilding German military power.
The generals were the real power in Germany during the Weimar period.
After World War II, many Germans tried to cover up the role certain
members of the Officer Corps had played in helping to put Hitler in
power. Many historians naively accepted this view, but the real story
is quite different. Traditionally, the German Army ruled from behind
the scenes and had the final "power to veto" any important issue.
After the loss of World War I, the Versailles Treaty severely
restricted the size of the German Army. The only way the generals
could maintain mass training and develop new weapons was to finance
private paramilitary units, like the Free Corps, with secret army
funds.
Hitler not only began his career as an army agent, but even in the
1930s he was supported by a powerful faction in the army. Over several
years, General von Schleicher, who was in charge of a secret informal
political department of the army, funneled over ten million marks to
Hitler. Why? Many military officers wanted an authoritarian government
that could unify the nation. The people needed to be infused with a
new spirit of patriotism because powerful interests were planning a
war of revenge against the Allies. Naturally there was a division of
opinion among the generals as to how much power to give Hitler.
Hindenburg originally had strong reservations about appointing a man
from a lower-class background, like Hitler, chancellor. However, the
aggressive action the Nazis took against Communists was admired by
Hindenburg, and his relationship with Hitler rapidly improved.
One day, Hindenburg summoned Hitler when Papen was away from Berlin.
Hitler informed the president that Papen was out of town and reminded
him of the rule he (Hindenburg) had made, that the chancellor could
visit him only when accompanied by the vice-chancellor. "The old
gentleman [Hindenburg]," said Hitler, "replied that he wished to see
me alone, and that in the future the presence of Papen could be
regarded as unnecessary. Within three weeks, he had progressed so far
that his attitude towards me became affectionate and paternal. Talking
of the elections fixed for the 3rd of March, he said, 'What are we
going to do if you fail to get a majority? We shall have the same
difficulties all over again.'"
At the beginning of the election campaign, Hitler and Papen persuaded
old President von Hindenburg to sign an emergency decree to protect
law and order. The decree gave Nazi officials the right to prohibit
public meetings. Newspapers could be suppressed if they "incited"
civil disobedience or published "false" reports.