IN retrospect, Hitler's assumption of power early in 1933 seems to most people to have a kind of sickening malign inevitability, a case of reaping the whirlwind which fate had prepared. Professor Turner, an American academic, shows a very differing aspect of this crucial chapter of German and European history. What we are shown are not so much the workings of destiny as the lurchings of chance.
No doubt Hitler's political timing during those weeks was often excellent his manoeuvring was crafty and his scruples were nil, yet at one stage very little stood between him and virtual extinction for himself and his party politically. As so often at moments of crisis in his career, he gambled fatalistically on his luck, going for all or nothing, and it paid. Instead of facing public rejection and humiliation, he became Chancellor - the key post he had always coveted - and from then on there was no human agency in Europe capable of containing him.
In July 1932, in a general election, the Nazi Party had more than doubled its support, winning 37.4 per cent of the vote and 230 seats. (This was not necessarily mass approval of fascism, or anti Semitism - then still a minor issue - so much as the desperate wish of the German people that some firm hands might seize the helm of the battered, drifting ship of state.) Various conservative interests by now had accepted that Hitler would have to be given a share of governmental power, and he had previously entered into an understanding with the shifty Franz von Papen that he would cooperate with his cabinet. Instead, Hitler went back on his word, demanding the chancellorship for himself and various key posts for his henchmen, a package deal which was rejected by President Hindenburg.
His failure to enter into government antagonised many of the voters, who had hoped for a broadly rightist, nationalist alliance instead of yet another ephemeral coalition; and this reaction was reflected in the polls when another general election was held in November. This time the Nazis lost 34 seats, so that early in 1933 newspapers which supported the beleaguered republic were openly and exultantly proclaiming "Hitler's Rise and Fall". The prestigious Frankfurter Zeititog wrote: "The mighty Nazi assault on the democratic state has been repulsed."
Nazi membership declined sharply and, even worse for the party bosses, subscriptions and money donations fell off too, so that state police began to report officially that the NASDP was losing much of its old support and appeared to be facing financial and organisational collapse. Hitler himself faced open and covert rebellion among his aides, which at one stage drove him to threaten suicide if he did not get their full support and his own way. Somehow he hung on, and then at the thirteenth hour came the life belt thrown to him by Papen, who had finally talked President Hindenburg into coming to terms with "that Bavarian corporal".
The rest is history: various politicians of the Right including Papen - believed that they could use him, control him when in government and "hem him in". Too late, they learned they were dealing with a demonic personality driven by a messianic sense of mission, who would stop at nothing and was their master in intrigue. For Hitler, "democratic" party politics were a Trojan horse and nothing more.
Papen was undoubtedly one of the villains of the hour, and he was lucky after the war to escape with an easy jail sentence. There were others, however, including several members of President Hindenburg's entourage, his son Oskar, and, not least, Hindenburg himself. The aged field marshal had become used to bypassing the Reichstag - which, in any case, never carried much public respect - and to governing by decree, or by creating his own cabinets. He was fooled by Papen, a frivolous, vain but furiously ambitious cavalry officer with an aristocratic background, and a taste for high society and the pomp of office.
Papen himself was obsessed with obtaining revenge against his fellow officer General von Schleicher, then the kingmaker of the Weimar Republic and widely regarded as its "strong man". ,Schleicher certainly regarded himself as such, but though his intentions were almost certainly sound he lacked judgment or decision at certain crucial moments and was outmanoeuvred by Papen, his own political creation (and creature) whom he despised and had discarded. Papen, fatally, had the ear of Hindenburg who regarded him as an officer, a gentleman and a social asset, while Schleicher's brusqueness made him enemies. (He was later to die in the "Night of the Long Knives" in 1934).
If Schleicher, who represented the Army, had ruled in its name or with a military junta, Professor Turner thinks that Germany might have ended up with a regime which was hard, repressive but not intolerable - rather like what Franco was soon to impose upon Spain. He believes that war with Poland was inevitable, given the infamous "Polish Corridor" which cut off East Prussia and made Germany's frontiers in the East virtually indefensible; but it would have been a brief, limited war, and Central Europe would have gained rather than lost in political stability. Instead, with Hitler as warlord, it was swept forward unrelentingly towards Gotterdilmerung.
The book is cogently written and carries you along with it from first page to last. Joachim Fest, who has already written the standard book on Hitler, has a much wider span of time to cover: twelve years, instead of a mere thirty days. A certain amount of his new work is a rehash though an updated one of Hitler's initial struggles and intrigues to gain control of the Army, which was the only major obstacle to absolute power now that his political opponents were beaten, dead, discredited or in exile. The core of the Army leadership were, the career senior officers, mostly Prussians, who saw it as the guarantor of public order and the State, and distrusted all politicians.
Senior generals such as Fritsch and Blomberg were quickly disgraced and pushed offstage; Brauchitsch, the new commander in chief, sought a compromise stance, but by doing so he delivered the Army even more into Hitler's hands, while his refusal to condemn the atrocities which accompanied the invasion of Poland is a large black mark against his memory. From the start certain high ranking officers were horrified by Hitler's mentality, viewing him (correctly, as it turned out) as a dangerous maniac with a thirst for blood, who could embroil Europe in war. However, he was also the legally chosen head of state, and their officer's oath stood in the way of assassinating or even deposing him. There was some talk of certifying him as a lunatic and incarcerating him, but this too came to nothing.
A number of aristocratic officers and diplomats formed the hard core of anti Hitler resistance, notably Klaus von Stauffenberg who was the real heart of the Bomb Plot, which so narrowly failed. But there were others too socialists, Catholics, communists, Evangelical Protestants, lawyers, students, civil servants, many of whom died horribly for their convictions. Plots were laid again and again, either to be shelved at the last moment or betrayed, or simply to fail or go awry. Considering that Hitler's political survival, as described in Professor Turner's book, was so unlikely, his physical survival was even more so, and both must surely have strengthened his belief in himself as a man of destiny. Certainly his luck, until it finally turned, seems almost supernatural.
Even if he had been killed before 1945, would it automatically have killed off Nazism as well? It seems very doubtful, since he had so many fanatical lieutenants primed to take over, and certainly it would not have helped Germany's cause with the Allies. Undercover negotiations in Switzerland and elsewhere made this plain nothing but unconditional surrender would do, followed by the dismemberment of the country and its reduction, to virtually a subsistence economy. Given this ultimatum, Germany had little choice except to fight on, and the mass of the population seems to have accepted this with grim, almost suicidal resignation.
Joachim Fest makes it plain that far from being glorified as heroes who had salved the nation's conscience, most of the men and women who actively resisted Nazism were virtually ignored after the war. They were, apparently, a reproach to the millions who had passively accepted or endured the regime, and they were often represented as little more than an ambitious military clique. It is still frequently repeated that real opposition to Hitler only surfaced when the war was already lost, and it became a matter of saving something from the fire. Yet as Fest makes clear, the first army plot against him was hatched as early as 1938, and opposition was tenacious throughout his reign, even if it failed in the end. In his final summing up, Fest says firmly: "The importance of the resistance cannot seriously be challenged."