Chapter 66 Chapter Eleven "Misstep" (1)

"Whether it is a people or a woman, it is unforgivable to stumble. For the first adventurer who comes can knock them down and take them." 1933-1934.6 The next morning, Frau Goebbels brought Hitler flowers.At that time, he was in the hotel room, looking out the window.He turned slowly and took the bouquet "with dignity". "This is the first bouquet of flowers, and you are the first woman to congratulate me," he murmured—according to her.After a moment of silence, he seemed to continue talking to himself, "Now, people should understand why I am not the deputy prime minister. For a long time, even my party members didn't know me!" After a long silence, she walked towards the door go. "Yes," she heard him say softly, "I have to be alone for a while."

He sees what happened as fate, another step along a long-charted path.Yet those who had empowered him saw him as little more than a pawn in their hands.Papen, for example, boasted to those in his circle: "We hired him." Then he said to his critical friends: "What do you want? Hindenburg trusts me. In two months, We can squeeze Hitler far into the corner and let him squeak and yell!" Junkers, represented by Papen, believed that they had bought a dictatorship, but Hitler had no intention of being their puppet.He immediately set about laying the groundwork for a dictatorship.First, he dismissed a series of issues and demands raised by the Center Party.He said new elections were necessary because negotiations with the party had failed.Then, through Papen, he persuaded Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag.

The significance of the first steps is rarely understood.The editorials of the bourgeois liberal newspapers did not foresee revolutionary changes.After all, there were just two more Nazis in Hitler's cabinet—Göring and Frank. "From the perspective of the composition of the cabinet, Herr Hitler has to accept greater restrictions," said the "Frankfurter Zeitung" arrogantly that day-it commented 48 hours later, "It is obvious that the government revolves around Hugenberg. Not around the Chancellor.” Even the Social Democrats were not surprised—it was widely believed that Hitler could not win a two-thirds majority in Reichstag and thereby change the Weimar Constitution.

The New York Times took a similar view: "The composition of the cabinet leaves no room for Herr Hitler to rejoice in his dictatorial ambitions." , with reasonable calm", while the "public reaction to the news was apathetic". While these observers were assuring the world that Hitler was incompetent, he concealed his revolutionary intentions behind a string of inspiring yet conservative phrases in a February 1 radio address to voters.He made it clear that he only wanted to restore the old virtues of the past.He kept silent about his plans for dealing with the Jews.In fact, he said nothing about anything that would hurt or frighten the average citizen.

During Hitler's radio speech, the US chargé d'affaires in Berlin was having dinner with a man capable of making a man a king, the head of the Reichsbank that helped bring Hitler to power one. He disclosed that he was Hitler's financial and economic adviser; he assured the American that the Nazis "were not attempting to carry out their famously seditious reforms" and that "all the big businessmen were sympathetic to the new regime." This last statement is exaggerated, but Hitler could not have become Chancellor without the support of industrialists and the military.Most of the officer corps agreed with Karl Donitz (a fledgling in the Navy) that it was simply a choice between Hitler and the Reds.

The reason why the military supported Hitler, like the industrialists, had its own agenda.Hitler knew this too.He didn't think highly of the generals. “Before I was chancellor,” he admitted years later, “I thought the General Staff was like a dog that had to be held tight because it threatened everyone.” To this day, his experience with generals is is unpleasant.In Munich, Lossow "betrayed" him; Schleicher tried his best to prevent him from becoming chancellor.Now, now that he is in power, he must resolve to make peace with the military and use them for the revitalization of Germany.

On the evening of his fourth day as chancellor, he took the first step: he was invited to dinner at the home of General von Hammer Stein (who had openly despised the Nazis).The dinner was arranged by the new Defense Minister von Blomberg to recommend the Führer to the military leadership.After dinner, he got up to give a speech.In the presence of these characters, he was a little reserved at first.He spoke of the catastrophic economic problems the country was facing.His answer was not to expand exports, because there is overproduction worldwide and previous customers in Germany have developed their own markets.His conclusion is that unemployment and recession will continue until Germany recovers*?previous world status.

Indoors, people listened with gusto.This solution is what most of them want.Hitler went on to say that pacifism, Marxism, and "democracy growing like a cancer" must be eradicated.For Germany to be revived, rearmament was the first; once the fatherland had been re-established, it "must conquer the eastern lands and ruthlessly Germanize them." Lest they panic about his blueprint for the future, Hitler assured his audience that, They need not worry about their domestic and foreign policies.He will not use the army to deal with domestic unrest; for the next few years, the army should be dedicated to "achieving its main goals, training well, and defending the motherland in case of invasion."With regard to the S.A., he reassured that only the army "will be allowed to bear arms, and its organization will not be changed".

Admiral Erich Raeder had a good impression of Hitler and thought the rest of the audience felt the same.Generals Warner von Fritsch and Friedrich Fromm, however, feared aggression, while General Ritter von Lieber believed that Hitler was trying to bribe them. "If a merchant's goods are good," he later quipped, "there's no need to sell them loudly like a philistine." Reaction was mixed, but Hitler gained a new group of followers.Those who wished to convert the new government into a military dictatorship as a first step towards the restoration of the monarchy were ready to approve the reforms of the National Socialists; Tend to let things go.

Using constitutional emergency powers that he had despised, Hitler imposed a decree (“for the protection of the German people”) to impose controls on political rallies and newspapers.Neither Papen nor any of his other ministers protested Hitler's terms.In the face of this unanimity, Hindenburg bowed and signed the decree.Soon another emergency decree was passed - replacing the Prussian regime with his own.Although people protested, Hitler's answer was reasonable—the new Prussian Prime Minister Papen will surely hold the new Minister of the Interior Goering—but the fact is that Hitler has completed the second step towards dictatorship .

Upstarts emerged in Germany.The Hamburg president was a product of a new concept, one of thousands of lower-middle-class men who rose to prominence overnight.Teachers, lawyers and businessmen also became leaders.Never before had so many poor people made political successes, old Nazi fighters, now receiving dividends for their loyalty to Hitler and the party. Like Hitler, there may have never been a chancellor in Germany who saw himself as the head of state and was fully prepared to assume leadership.The same cannot be said of the Nazi Party.It was his magnetic attraction and the fulfillment of his dreams of power and status that kept the party afloat.Yes, the upstarts did carry out a National Socialist revolution at local levels, but this was due to conservative pretentiousness and confusion among the liberals and the left. While rank-and-file party members were clumsily organizing village, city, and provincial institutions, their leaders were establishing authority over their defeated opponents.In front of strangers, he is very humble, even a little embarrassed.At first, many people mistake this for weakness.Before long, however, he had the upper hand on those who underestimated him. "At cabinet meetings," recalled the Minister of Finance, Duke Lutz Schwering von Klossigert, a former Rodez scholar, "one could not but recognize and admire his character. All discussions: his memory is absolutely accurate, and he can answer the most distant questions raised in the discussion with the most exactness; he is absorbed in the discussion; his mind is clear, and he can turn the most complicated problem into a simple - sometimes too simple the art of synthesizing the results of lengthy debates; and the ingenuity to look at a well-known problem from a long and fruitless discussion from a new angle." It is not surprising that Schwering von Klossigert and other government officials would have admired him so much that they had never met such a powerful man.That month's "Observation Pictorial" published a cartoon describing his rise to the top among the powerful.He was no longer a disheveled figure in a wrinkled military overcoat with a whip.Smiling, confident, and wearing a well-made, well-fitting soft coat—he became an icon of confidence.