Germany Never Elected Hitler - The Machtergreifung | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1933 Part 1 of 3 - YouTube (2)
Hitler fumes with anger when he realizes that he's being played.
On the fifth day of the crisis, Strasser is forced to resign from his positions in the
party.
Schleicher's Third Position has failed before he even gets a chance to try it.
For Hitler, it is now all or nothing, him or Schleicher, Chancellor or bust.
And the general public in Germany goes to celebrate Christmas and New Year with false
sense of relief.
The economy continues to make public signs of recovery, with spending and employment
during the holiday season above expectations.
The Communists are relieved that the Nazis didn't make a government, who are relieved
that the Communists didn't form part of the government.
To the majority, it looks like a defeat for both extremes, especially Hitler- whom the
media now portrays as a loser, relegated back to just a provincial Bavarian trouble maker.
For Schleicher, it is nothing short of a disaster - he has no mandate, no coalition partners,
no plan, but he does have enemies.
Papen and Schleicher had been close friends and allies for many years.
But in only a few days, they have now become bitter enemies, and this will have consequences
for the whole world.
To salvage public support, Schleicher now publicly and repeatedly attacks the unpopular
Papen, which he had promised Hindenburg he would not do, s not only is the principled
old man in the Presidential Palace- Hindenburg- angered, he sees this as destructive to the
chances of forming any government at all.
On January 4, 1933, Papen meets Hitler in secret in Cologne at a prominent banker's
house.
The topic is how to overthrow Schleicher.
Papen's suggestion is the old one - a new government with himself as Chancellor and
Hitler as Deputy but now on equal footing.
Hitler is agreeable in general but evasive on the Chancellor issue.
The meeting leaks to the press, framed as an attempt to form a majority government finally,
one with the Nazis but under Conservative oversight.
A panicked Schleicher rushes to Hindenburg demanding him to charge Papen with treason
by Presidential executive order, Hindenburg declines.
On January 9, Papen meets in secret with Hindenburg and proposes a government with Hitler in some
form, but not as Chancellor.
On January 22, Hitler and Papen meet at Joachim von Ribbentrop's home in Berlin in yet another
secret meeting.
Von Ribbentrop, as many of you know, will one day be Nazi Germany's Foreign Minister.
Göring and Goebbels are there, as well as Hindenburg's confidants Otto Meissner and
Oskar von Hindenburg, the President's son, attend too.
They negotiate a compromise, Hitler as Chancellor, Papen Deputy Chancellor and Governor of Prussia,
and Göring Minister of the Interior of Prussia.
Meanwhile, Schleicher rushes to Hindenburg again, demanding that he dissolve the Reichstag,
declare a state of emergency, and suspend elections indefinitely.
Hindenburg declines, and when the attempted coup leaks to the press, Scheicher faces outrage
and loud public calls for his immediate dismissal.
Oskar von Hindenburg and Meissner now start convincing the President to go along with
Hitler and Papen's plan.
On January 28, Schleicher makes a last-ditch attempt to persuade Hindenburg to at least
Prorogue the Reichstag, let him govern for now, and announce new elections.
Hindenburg refuses again and Schleicher hands in his resignation.
The same day Papen meets Hindenburg and assures him that they have Hitler' boxed in' and the
tired old general agrees with the proposal.
The next day Papen and Hitler meet, and Hitler informs Papen of the real plan- announce elections
for March, ensure that these elections are a landslide for the Nazis, by whatever means.
Then they will enact an Enabling Law, giving Hitler dictatorial powers.
Papen will later claim that Hitler's words left him shaken to the core, but that it was
too late.
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler is formally appointed Chancellor of the German Reich by
presidential executive order.
Gregor Strasser, now a private citizen, reportedly evaluates the development like this to a friend:
"Dr. Martin, I am a man marked by death.
We shall not be able to go on seeing each other for long, and in your own interest;
I suggest you do not come here anymore.
Whatever happens, mark what I say: From now on, Germany is in the hands of an Austrian
who is a congenital liar, a former officer who is a pervert, and a clubfoot.
And I tell you the last is the worst of them all; this is Satan in human form."
He is referring to Hitler, Göring, and Goebbels in that order.
SEGUE Perhaps ironically, it is with the organization
that Strasser has built that the three will proceed to seize totalitarian power.
See, Franz von Papen is the one who's boxed in.
He might control large parts of the German administration, but remember that Strasser
built the Nazi party as a state within the state.
A powerful organization that now quickly reaches its tentacles into all aspects of governance.
Even as dictator of Prussia, Papen is powerless.
Göring is now Prussian Minister of the Interior with full control of the Prussian police and
administration.
Within days the Prussian state is fully controlled by the SA.
Göring formalizes the NSDAP intelligence efforts as the Geheime Staatspolizei, Gestapo
who proceed to infiltrate every aspect of Prussian public life.
Meanwhile, Hitler and Goebbels start setting up the Gauleiters to do the same in all of
the German provinces.
As the election campaign for the March elections gets underway, the NSDAP unleashes violence,
voter suppression, and terror on a scale that widely surpasses any previous election unrest.
On the night of February 28, a Dutch Communist sets fire to the Reichstag in protest against
the Nazis.
The next day Hindenburg signs the Reichstag Fire Decree, or Decree of the Reich President
for the Protection of People and State, enabling Hitler to suspend law and order to pursue
ostensible political enemies of the state.
In reality, it just makes the already ongoing activities of the party less cumbersome.
Now the Prussian Police, the SA and Hitler's bodyguard, the Schutzstaffel or SS arrest
thousands of KPD members, Social Democrats, and Liberals, many of them on the ballots.
To systematically jail, beat, torture, and sometimes murder them, Gauleiters, the SA
and SS set up improvised internment camps all across the country.
It is the beginning of the concentration camp system.
Political rallies of the Social Democrats and Communists are attacked and dispersed.
On election day 50,000 SA and SS come out to patrol the polling booths to safeguard
the elections.
Still, despite this massive voter intimidation and manipulation campaign, more than 30% still
dare to vote for the Communists or Social Democrats.
On March 24 the new Reichstag passes the Enabling Act, and Hitler is for all practical purposes
dictator of Germany.
It's an event that is sometimes analyzed as if it could have stopped the Nazis.
Many of the SPD deputies and all of KPD deputies were not even there; they were in Concentration
Camps.
Lining the walls of the plenary hall of the Reichstag were hundreds of uniformed, armed
SA men.
It was not the beginning of the Nazi power grab, but merely a ceremonial end.
Thirteen years earlier, Social Democrat, Liberal and Conservative politicians of Germany had
united around the idea of a free, tolerant and open democracy.
Faced with extremists on the right and the left, they had appeased one side to beat down
the other.
They had tried to win their votes by themselves embracing conspiracy theories and populist
positions.
Ideas that they knew were false, anti-democratic, and not even workable solutions.
Willingly or unwillingly they had moved closer and closer to extremism themselves.
They were now reaping the poisonous fruits that they had planted.
Fruit that will now kill many of them together with the tens of millions of innocent people
that they, the pillar of German democracy, had on this day condemned to death.
We've created a playlist of all the episodes we have done on Hitler's rise to power...
it will be here any moment now.
Our TimeGhost Army member for this episode is Omar Gallardo.
It's thanks to Omar and the rest of the TimeGhost army members' contributions that we can continue
shining a light on these events.
And as MLK said: "Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the
cup of bitterness and hatred."
Cheers, and stay safe!
