In this concluding third part about Hitler’s path to power, you can read about what happened after the failed beer cellar coup in Munich in 1923 until the takeover and purge within SA in connection with The Night of the Long Daggers in 1934.
Hitler is imprisoned and becomes a national celebrity
A few days after the failed beer cellar coup (November 8-9, 1923), Hitler was arrested.
The coup attempt and the subsequent trial received great media coverage at national level as well. All of Germany followed the report from the courtroom. Hitler and the other coup plotters were accused of high treason – a crime that usually carries a very harsh punishment. But the trial instead developed into a legal scandal in which the right-wing and nationalist prosecutors and judges allowed Hitler to use the court for his own propagandistic purposes.
In court, Hitler declared that he would lead Germany back to its rightful position in the world. He took full responsibility and scolded the court with a commanding vote. Ludendorff, on the other hand, explained that Hitler had deceived him. ..
In just a few weeks, the Nazi leader went from being a southern German rebel to becoming a national celebrity. During the trial, Hitler had portrayed himself as a man who did his utmost to save the motherland in its most difficult moments.
Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, but was released after nine months.
Many prominent people visited him in prison. It was also now, during his mild captivity, that he wrote Mein Kampf , the work that became the Nazi Bible.
Hitler becomes Chancellor
In the winter of 1932, unemployment rose catastrophically in Germany. Between seven and eight million Germans were unemployed. Seventeen million people lived on benefits. Hatred grew everywhere. The unemployed hated employers. University students saw no future. Knives, chains and leather batons appeared on the streets, dance halls and restaurants. The middle class felt threatened by both big business and the labor movement. All this dissatisfaction gave Hitler the chance. The election of July 1932 was therefore a great success for him.
A number of great industrialists and financiers together sent a letter to President Hindenburg demanding that Hitler become Chancellor. Although there were socialist elements in the National Socialist Workers’ Party, they did not perceive Hitler as a socialist. They believed that Hitler would clear away these elements only if he gained power and that he was the only one who could save the country from all problems.
Hindenburg, an old Prussian nobleman, had strong distrust of “the little Austrian corporal”, whom he called Hitler. Against his will, however, he was eventually forced to appoint Hitler Chancellor.
Communist supporter Jan Valentin had just returned from Hamburg when he heard about Hitler’s appointment:
The locomotive shouted, porters and sandwich vendors shouted and the people around me talked. Firelei (Jan’s girlfriend) pulled me aside and said calmly: Hitler has just become Chancellor.
Throughout the day, the stormtroopers marched with eyes glistening with ecstasy under fluttering swastika flags. We who belonged to the inner circles of the Communist Party did not have any illusions about the terror that the Hitler movement would soon unleash against us. Within Hamburg’s vast harbor area, we kept our terrain. Never since 1930 had there been so much freedom from Nazi uniforms. It was the death of an SA man to go there alone. Red flags with the hammer and sickle hung in the windows, often in the hundreds on one and the same street. Posters shone on the walls that read: Death to fascism! Vote for Thälmann. In Berlin, at the same time, Göring had been commissioned to establish a new kind of secret police – the Geheime Staatspolizei – Gestapo.
The takeover
Hitler’s takeover was received with mixed feelings in the country. The Liberals were frightened. But the brown shirts celebrated, after living in poverty for years and risking their lives in the many street fights. In Berlin, their stormtroopers marched from the Tiergarten towards the Brandenburg Gate in orderly columns. Hour after hour, the singing Horst Wessel songs marched to rumbling drums (see the gray box below for facts about Horst Wessel). Hindenburg and Hitler stood in the window of the Presidential Palace and the Chancellery, respectively, receiving the greetings of the stormtroopers – an endless repetition of “Sieg Heil!”
The old president Hindenburg did not have much time left to live (see the gray box below for facts about Hindenburg’s death). After his death, no new president was appointed, but Hitler also took over that function and became the leader of the whole of Germany.
The fire in the Riksdag – Hitler becomes dictator
Once Hitler came to power in Germany, he used his position with complete ruthlessness. Göring gained control of the police. The SA and the emerging SS launched a complete terror against the Nazi opponents. Hitler’s main goal now was to become a dictator in Germany. The country was to be completely nazified.
The riots and street fights became bloodier than ever and the civil war was not far away. When the Riksdag was ravaged by fire in February 1933, Hitler was given a pretext (a fabricated cause) to intensify his purges among the opposition. Police found a confused man in the burning parliament building. His name was Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist and probably a psychopath. He pleaded guilty alone and was executed.
In fact, without knowing it, he was an instrument of the Nazis . They had found out about his plans and probably helped him in secret. Now the fire was declared a work of communists. Hitler shouted: “Now we must show them! The German people have been too soft for too long. Every communist leader must be shot! All communist parliamentarians must be hanged tonight!”
The Communist Party was eliminated. The Social Democrats and all other parties were banned. The last remnants of democracy must be eradicated, according to Hitler. Germany became a one-party state with the Nazi party as the only one allowed (see the gray box below for more facts about the fire in the Riksdag).
Brown shirts and black shirts
Germany had always been the land of uniforms. Anyone who did not wear a uniform was considered almost inferior. A zealous Nazi, writes a foreign reporter in the 1930s, must unconditionally know 315 different uniform types. It was not possible to confuse an “Obersturmbahnführer” from Hesse with a “Hauptstellenleiter” in Berlin.
There were SA’s brown shirts and SS’s black shirts. The brown shirts often behaved undisciplined and their uniforms were a motley mess. The black shirts, on the other hand, were characterized by uniformity. Their black blouses, black ties and black screen hats with skulls and crossed leg knots were worn by the strict and well-disciplined SS men. They were Himmler’s men.
SA
SA consisted of the men from the Nazis’ earlier days of fighting with street riots and fights. They were the fighters who paved the way for the Nazis. There were adventurers like Röhm and young people who fought in the war or in the various free corps. Under Röhm’s leadership, SA grew and became a political army that would bring the Nazis to power (see the box below for facts about Ernst Röhm).
In addition to fighters, there were also unemployed clerks, farm boys and business employees in SA. These were German nationalists but they were also socialists. The hatred of the capitalists and the stock market sharks was strong. They believed that Hitler had betrayed the “socialist” part of Nazism and instead allied with the right-wing Nazis around Göring. The SA men thus belonged to the Nazis’ left wing, the one that would be cut off during the “night of the long knives”.
The night of the long knives
Finally, it was the conservative circles in Germany that helped bring Hitler to power. And these conservatives feared the socialist fighters in SA. At the same time, there was strong dissatisfaction with Hitler within the SA ranks. The Nazis’ takeover of power had not given SA the reward they had hoped for. Röhm called Hitler “the ridiculous corporal” and considered him a traitor to the National Socialist cause with an emphasis on socialist. The crisis reached its peak in June 1934, after which Hitler decided to launch a major clean-up operation.
At dawn on June 30, a number of SS men drove to Wiessee. There, Röhm and some of his co-workers were arrested, while the others were killed in their sleep. Röhm was locked in a cell. Hitler at length hesitated to pronounce the death sentence on his old ideological weapon bearer Röhm. Finally, Hitler decided to give Röhm an opportunity to shoot himself. Röhm was informed that the Führen gave him another chance to draw “the right conclusion”. He was left alone with a pistol loaded with a bullet. But when nothing happened after a quarter, the order was given. Two shots were heard. Röhm fell while moaning: “Mein führer!”
On the courtyard of the Stadelheim Prison in Munich, “Schlesiske Hans” and “Enarmade Peter von Heyderbrec” and many other SA fighters fell in front of the arquebusering patrol. An SA man shouted to his old friend who belonged to the execution: What in the world is going on? We are completely innocent. The friend folded his heels and replied: You have been sentenced to death by the Führen. Heil Hitler!
While committing these murders of his old comrades, Hitler listened to roaring Wagnerian music. Maybe it was a way for him to escape from reality. Just a few weeks earlier, Hitler had stood with Röhm and sung the old soldier’s song “Ich hatte einen Kameraden”. Now he had him shot.
In Berlin, it was Göring who handled the purges. Gestapo men fetched Gregor Strasser from his home and liquidated him (see gray box below for facts about Strasser). Himmler worked with rapid investigations and hastily executed executions. Many “old fighters” from the early days of the Brown Army (SA) were confronted by archery platoons. They continued even after dark at the glow of army spotlights. The body was taken away on military trucks to be burned.
After the purge within SA, Hitler received increased support from army representatives and many influential industrialists. Hitler had secured his way to absolute power and Nazism had shown its true face.
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