Fateful Alliance, The : German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light

303 Pages·2011·1.77 MB·English

by  Beck

The Fateful Alliance
GERMAN CONSERVATIVES AND NAZIS IN 1933:
THE MACHTERGREIFUNG IN A NEW LIGHT
HERMANN BECK
Published in 2008 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
©2008, 2010 Hermann Beck
First paperback edition published in 2010
All rights reserved.
Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beck, Hermann
The fateful alliance : German conservatives and Nazis in 1933 : the Machtergreifung in a new light /
Hermann Beck.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-84545-496-8 (hbk) ISBN 978-1-84545-680-1 (pbk) 1. Germany—Politics and government
—1918–1933. 2. Deutschnationale Volkspartei—History. 3. Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei
—History. 4. Conservatism—Germany—History. 5. National socialism. I. Title.
DD240.B3389 2008
943.086'2—dc22
2008007615
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library A version of Chapter IV was
originally published in 2005 as Hermann Beck,
“The Nazis and their Conservative Alliance Partner in 1933: The Seizure of
Power in a New Light,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 6:2 (2005),
215–243, Taylor & Francis, journal website: http://www.informaworld.com.
A version of Chapter V was published in 2006 as Hermann Beck, “Between
the Dictates of Conscience and Political Expediency: Hitler's Conservative
Alliance Partner and Anti-Semitism during the Nazi Seizure of Power,”
The Journal of Contemporary History 41:4 (October 2006), 611–640, Copyright @ SAGE Publications,
2006, by permission of Sage Publications Ltd.
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN: 978-1-84545-496-8 hardback ISBN: 978-1-84545-
680-1 paperback
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
Perspectives on the Nazi Seizure of Power, 30 January to 14 July 1933
New Aspects of the Nazi Seizure of Power
Previous Assessments of the Nazi Seizure of Power
The DNVP: Mass Party or Party of Notables?
Overview of Contents
CHAPTER I
Pragmatists versus Fundamentalists: The DNVP in the Weimar Republic, 1918–
1933
The DNVP during the Early Republic (1920–1924)
The Dawes Plan
From the Dawes Plan to Hugenberg (1924–1928)
The End of Conservative Moderation
The Young Plan
The First Division
Toward a More Authoritarian Republic
The Second Division
The DNVP and the Rise of Nazism
German National Assessments of Nazism before 1933
CHAPTER II
Uneasy Partners: The Relationship between the DNVP and the Nazis, 30
January–5 March
The Impact of 30 January
Opposition to Nazi Repression and Increasing Terror
CHAPTER III
Conservatives and the NSDAP during the “National Revolution” of March 1933
Becoming Obsolete: The Outcome of the March Elections
Crusades against Bourgeois Corruption and Special Interests
Nazi Attacks Prepare the Takeover
Conservative Bastions under Attack
The Last Hurdle: Potsdam and the Enabling Act
CHAPTER IV
The Nazis and the Conservative Bürgertum: A Clash of Worlds
Nazi “Revolutionary Fervor” in Action
Traditional Hierarchies and Conservative Values on the Line
Anti-Bourgeois Ideology and Rhetoric
The “Demise” of the Bürger
The Anti-Bourgeois Thrust of the Nazi Social Revolution
CHAPTER V
Between the Dictates of Conscience and Political Expediency: The DNVP and
Anti-Semitism
A Contradictory Record: Previous Research on the DNVP and Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitic Violence
Conservatives and Anti-Semitism
Nationale Juden
Protest, Regret, and Efforts to Help
Rejection and Disapprobation
The German National Predicament
Conclusion
CHAPTER VI
Rebellion against the Inevitable: The Tribulations of Spring 1933
“False Friends”: Nazis Turn Their “Revolutionary Fervor” against German
Nationals
Loss of Influence in Economic and Professional Organizations
Physical Violence and the Threat of Arrest
The Vain Struggle to Survive: German Nationals Imitate Nazi Styles
CHAPTER VII
Ignominious Demise: Defections, Prohibitions, and Final Dissolution
A Change in Climate
Prohibitions, Desertions, and Dissolutions
The End
Epilogue
Conservatism, National Socialism, and German History
National Socialism as an Anti-Bourgeois Movement
Appendix
Select Bibliography
Archival Sources
Newspapers and the Contemporary Periodical Press
Published Primary Sources and Secondary Literature
Index
PREFACE
This study has a long history. In 1996, when I shifted the focus of my research
from nineteenth-century conservatives and bureaucrats to the late Weimar
Republic and the early Nazi period, I was interested initially in the political
behavior of German professional classes and higher officials, commonly
summarized under the term Bildungsbürgertum, or “cultivated” bourgeoisie.
Germany owed its reputation in scholarship, administration, and technical
expertise to this numerically small, but socially influential, university-trained
elite. The Bildungsbürgertum was a uniquely German phenomenon that
originated as a distinct social class in the second half of the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. From the first, it was characterized by its close relationship
to the state, since its strongest component came from the upper echelons of state
bureaucracies in the various German states. In addition to high officials, this
class included the academically trained professions, notably university
professors, members of the legal profession, the Protestant clergy, and medical
doctors, most of whom were state officials as well. Until 1879 lawyers, for
example, had to be licensed by the state, and medical doctors had barely
managed to extricate themselves from the fetters of state governments by the
revolutions of 1848. University education and examinations in Germany
continue to be state-regulated to this day.
The constituent element of the Bildungsbürgertum was the common Bildung
of its members.1 Bildung was shaped by a belief in human perfectibility,
specifically that an individual's potential could be realized through a classical
education. This was the central notion of German Idealism and a cornerstone of
Wilhelm von Humboldt's reform of the Prussian university system, from where
the concept spread throughout Germany. Between the Reform Era and the
Revolutions of 1848, the power wielded by high officials in the larger states of
the German Confederation added to the prestige of the group and served as
justification for its corporate pride and feeling of self-importance. Germany's
late industrialization, as well as the initial weakness of a bourgeoisie often
hampered by state regulations, further advanced the ascendancy of the educated
elite and the social prestige bestowed on those with academic achievements and
titles. In the hierarchically structured world of Central Europe before 1933,
established members of the Bildungsbürgertum were thus bound to become role
models, whose behavior set social and occasionally even political standards that
were eagerly emulated by their social inferiors.2
Politically, the Bildungsbürgertum initially tended toward liberal ideas,
though there were great differences within the group as a whole: lawyers and
members of the emerging free professions were more liberal than civil servants.
In the revolutionary Frankfurt parliament Bildungsbürger represented all
political orientations, though liberals clearly outnumbered conservatives. The
liberalism of the majority of the Bildungsbürgertum was determined by its
opposition to the aristocracy, its struggle for constitutional reform, and the quest
for a sovereign nation-state. Before 1866, nationalism was a liberal ideal; the
aristocracy and other conservatives all across the German states were opposed to
a national unification that would entail partial forfeiture of their privileges. But
as opposition to Bismarck's policies evolved into support, “progressive”
liberalism turned into “national” liberalism and, gradually, by the end of the
1870s, the bulk of the Bildungsbürgertum had lost its forward-driving liberal
orientation. By the 1890s, many had turned into advocates of imperialist policies
and defenders of an aggressive nationalism. In this shift to conservatism, as later
to National Socialism at the end of the Weimar Republic, the future members of
the Bildungsbürgertum—university students—were in the vanguard of political
change: students preceded the established Bildungsbürgertum in appropriating a
new conservatism. Before the German defeat in the First World War and the
subsequent economic turmoil and inflation, this cultivated bourgeoisie had
enjoyed significant material security and comfort, as well as greater social
prestige than its counterparts in other European countries. To them, defeat in the
war was more than a military disaster: it signified a personal humiliation and the
loss of a distinct cultural identity. As a result, large sections of the educated elite
moved further to the political right. From the beginning, they vehemently
rejected the new Republic that bore the birthmark of a humiliating defeat. The
educated elite's fate had been closely aligned with that of the Empire; with the
Empire's demise, it suffered a decline in reputation that increased its alienation
from Weimar, to which inflation added the grievance of material destitution. The
inflation broke the economic spine of the Bildungsbürgertum, whose lifestyle
had been supported largely by their savings, as regular salaries rarely sufficed to
maintain the material accoutrements that went with their exalted social position,
such as domestic servants, Bildungsreisen, and a costly education for their
offspring. Probably no part of the German population felt the humiliating
changes in everyday life more deeply than the educated elite; none felt more
distant from a republican regime with which reconciliation seemed impossible.
Dispossession destroyed its political instinct, making it susceptible to political
choices that formerly pride alone might well have precluded.
Pervaded by the certainty of their social and cultural superiority, the majority
of the conservative and national-minded Bildungsbürgertum initially showed
little interest in the Nazi movement, despite the economic decline of a majority
of its members. Until about a year before Hitler came to power, it was thus
mostly the academic proletariat, the déplacé among the cultivated bourgeoisie,
those filled with festering resentment toward their more successful colleagues,
who expressed their spite by voting for the NSDAP. Even though extreme
nationalism, the hatred of Versailles and the “November criminals” and, in some
instances, anti-Semitism provided common ground with National Socialism, the
message put forth by National Socialists was too simplistic for the average
member of the Bildungsbürgertum. Its claim to epitomize a culturally superior
segment of the population ran counter to the anti-intellectualism of the Nazis.
But why then did a vast segment of the Bildungsbürgertum go over to the
Nazis, and how could the gradually evolving affinities between the Nazi
movement and the cultivated bourgeoisie be explained? That many did defect to
Nazism has been documented beyond doubt. Already in 1982 Richard Hamilton
showed that, beginning with the spring of 1932, large segments of the haute
bourgeoisie, including the Bildungsbürgertum, voted for the Nazi party. In his
electoral analysis of Germany's larger cities Hamilton impressively demonstrated
that inhabitants of the Villenvororte, the more affluent suburbs of large German
cities from Berlin to Hamburg and Munich to Mannheim, voted in
disproportionate numbers for Hitler and the NSDAP. Apart from factory owners
and businessmen, the population of these Villenvororte was made up largely of
members of the educated middle classes, professionals, and various categories of
higher civil servants employed by the Reich, the respective federal states, or
municipalities.3 As Michael Kater has shown, in relationship to the rest of the
population, the educated upper middle class increased both its proportionate
representation in the Nazi party and its membership in affiliated organizations,
such as the National Socialist Physicians' or Jurists' Leagues, in the wake of the
transfer of power to Hitler.4 Already in 1932, university graduates entered the
Nazi party at twice the rate of their percentage in the overall population. And
after Hitler became Chancellor on 30 January 1933, the academically trained
flocked into the NSDAP to the point that there was a marked shift in the party's
sociological profile, since the membership quota of the educated elite was four
times as high as their share in the population. According to Kater, members of
the legal profession, as well as doctors and dentists, were overrepresented in the
SS by a factor of seven, tenured university lecturers and professors by a factor of
four. It is beyond doubt that the cultivated bourgeoisie's initial enthusiasm for
the regime helped to consolidate Hitler's dictatorship and contributed to making
the new regime socially acceptable.
The motivation for this fundamental shift in political orientation seemed well
worth investigating. Were Bildungsbürger turncoats out of conviction?
Opportunism alone did not seem to explain the wholehearted (and often
unsolicited) enthusiasm with which the “National Revolution” was welcomed. In
the fever accompanying the Nazi successes after 30 January, the conversion of
many Bildungsbürger appeared to be genuine. To what exactly could National
Socialism appeal in this segment of the population which, by dint of education,
breeding, and social background, seemed unlikely prey for the “temptations” of
Nazism, the early public image of which was dominated by vulgarity, social
animosity, and street violence? Could nationalism and the promise to restore
domestic unity and order, combined with a concerted effort to rebuild German
might, alone account for the enthusiastic conversion? Was an anti-Semitism that
subtly insisted on cultural incompatibility a major factor? The actual search for
specific reasons proved difficult. A careful perusal of the files of civil service
organizations and the correspondence among, for example, Philologenvereine,
yielded few concrete results, while sources of a more personal nature, such as
collections of letters, literary bequests, and autobiographies, were often so
general that they might be applied to everyone or so dependent on the individual
lives of the respective writers that generalizations were impossible. Here I could
not quite ward off the suspicion that authors of some prominence, whose letters
were important enough to be published, or who later left their papers to an
archive, might have taken care to leave out any letter or other document that
might be too “incriminating” with respect to their relationship with National
Socialism. Admissions of early euphoria for Nazism could well harm their
posthumous reputations with the postwar German audience. Because of this
attempt to protect one's personal reputation, the kinds of documents I was
looking for would thus be difficult to unearth. My subsequent search in local
archives for the reaction of the conservative bourgeoisie to the Nazi takeover in
1933 was hardly more fruitful. I contacted more than forty local and regional
archives whose personnel were all kind enough to respond in detail to my
inquiries. With a number of significant exceptions, either few relevant materials
existed or the bulk of the holdings on 1933 were destroyed by air raids in the
second half of the war.5 It was startling to see that the protocols of city council
meetings for 1933, or at least for the decisive first half of 1933, when the Nazis
arrogated plenipotentiary powers to themselves on the national, regional, and