Chapter Seventeen:
Kampfzeit II

1929 Baldur von Schirach becomes leader of the Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Studentenbund (National Socialist German Students' League).

Baldur von Schirach:

In 1929, the man who was the then so-called Reich Leader of the National Socialist Students Union retired, and the question arose of who should be given the leadership of all the university groups. At that time Rudolf Hess, on behalf of the Führer, questioned all university groups of the National Socialist University Movement, and the majority of all these groups cast their vote for me to head the National Socialist Students Union. This accounts for the curious fact that I am the only Party leader who was elected into the Party leadership. That is something which has otherwise never occurred in the history of the Party. 1

1929 In "The Great Nuremberg Ritual Murder Trial," Julius Streicher's familiarity with Jewish texts convinces the court that his attacks on Jews are religious in nature, and therefore unlawful. He is found guilty and imprisoned for two months. 2

1929 January 20 Heinrich Himmler, SS member 168, is appointed Reichsführer of the SS, which at this time consists of 280 men in seventy-five Staffeln (formations). Himmler, who was too young for active service in the Great War, is the first of his generation to gain such a party post. The young SS leader takes Hitler's admonition—that the SS should not be just another paramilitary grouping, but a truly elite force—very seriously. As Deputy Reichsführer SS, he had already instituted higher standards for recruits, beginning with their height. He demands that his men be over five feet eight inches tall: "I knew that men of a certain height must somewhere possess the blood I desired." 3

He later explained that, above all else, what he was looking for was "racial purity" in his recruits:

I used to think: Are there any definite indications of foreign blood in this man? Prominent cheekbones, for instance, which might cause people to say 'he has a Mongolian or Slav look about him'? Why did I do that? Let me draw your attention to the lessons of experience. Think of the types who were members of the soldiers' councils in 1918 and 1919. Every one of you who was an officer at that time has personal experience of a large number of these people. You will therefore be able to confirm that, in general, they were people who somehow looked odd to Germans, who had some peculiar feature showing that there was foreign blood somewhere. 3.5

During wartime reminiscences, Hitler will recall:

It was Maurice, Schreck and Heyden who formed in Munich the first group of "tough 'uns", and were thus the origin of the SS. But it was with Himmler that the SS became that extraordinary body of men, devoted to an idea, loyal unto death. I see in Himmler our Ignatius de Loyola. With intelligence and obstinacy, against wind and tide, he forged this instrument. The heads of the SA, for their part, didn't succeed in giving their troops a soul . . . . The SS knows that its job is to set an example, to be and not to seem, and that all eyes are upon it. 4

Otto Strasser, an often unreliable source, can perhaps be relied upon in the case of the following exchange he alleged to have had with the new Reichsführer SS:

"The SS will be an Order sworn to the Führer", Himmler is said to have said. "For him, I could do anything. Believe me, if Hitler were to say I should shoot my mother, I would do it and be proud of his confidence." "Heinrich, I shudder at you," Otto claims he replied. In fact, he later maintained that "Heinrich, I shudder at you" had become his usual greeting to Himmler, recalling that "He always took it with a laugh, indeed he was flattered." 5

1930 January 29 Reichsführer-SS Himmler writes to his comrade Ernst Röhm, who is serving as a military advisor to the Bolivian army: "The SS is growing and by the end of this quarter should have reached 2,000 . . . . as every month passes, service regulations and entry conditions are being tightened. 6

1929 February Owing to a world-wide depression in agricultural prices, and an accompanying downturn in industrial orders, the German economy takes yet another plunge downward. Unemployment is up, with 3.2 million Germans out of work. As the economy worsens, Nazi party membership grows proportionally. 7

1929 March 16 In Munich, Hitler pontificates on the relationship between the NSDAP and the Reichswehr:

There is another State in which the Army had a different conception of these needs. That was in the State where, in October 1922, a group made ready to take the reins of the State out of the hands of the gangsters, and the Italian Army did not say: 'Our only job is to protect peace and order.' Instead they said: 'It is our task to preserve the future for the Italian people.' And the future does not lie with the parties of destruction, but rather with the parties who carry in themselves the strength of the people, who are prepared and who wish to bind themselves to this Army, in order to aid the Army some day in defending the interests of the people. In contrast we still see the officers of our Army belatedly tormenting themselves with the question as to how far one can go along with Social-Democracy. But, my dear sirs, do you really believe that you have anything in common with an ideology which stipulates the dissolution of all that which is the basis of the existence of an army . . . .

The victory of one course or the other lies partially in the hands of the Army—that is, the victory of the Marxists or of our side. Should the Leftists win out through your wonderful un-political attitude, you may write over the German Army: 'The end of the German Army.' For then, gentlemen, you must definitely become political, then the red cap of the Jacobins will be drawn over your heads . . . .

You may then become hangmen of the regime and political commissars, and, if you do not behave, your wife and child will be put behind locked doors. And if you still do not behave, you will be thrown out and perhaps stood up against a wall, for a human life counts little to those who are out to destroy a people. 8

While Hitler delivers this address before a relatively small audience, the Voelkischer Beobachter prints up a special Reichswehr edition, and the Deutscher Wehrgeist, a monthly Nazi periodical, gives the speech much coverage. This wide propagation of Hitler's remarks points up the importance Hitler places on party relations with the Reichswehr. 9

1929 April 16 Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht speaks at the Paris conference in connection with German reparations: "Germany can, as a whole pay, only if the Corridor and Upper Silesia will be handed back to Germany from Polish possession and if, besides, somewhere on the earth, colonial territory will be made available to Germany."

Schacht will later testify:

I told Hitler we should try to get back a part of the colonies [that] belonged to us, and the administration of which was taken away from us, so that we could work there. I was thinking especially of the African colonies . . . but generally, any colonial activity; and of course, at first, I could only limit my colonial desires to our own property. Not I personally called them that. That is what the Treaty of Versailles calls them: "our property" . . . . [I did] not [mean] only "trade," but "developing the natural resources," or the economic possibilities of the colonies. I considered every kind of expansion within the European continent as sheer folly. I told him [Hitler] it was nonsense to undertake anything toward the East. Only colonial development could be considered. 10

1929 May Horst Ludwig Wessel, a composer of doggerel verse, the 22-year-old son of a Lutheran Minister, is appointed leader of SA-Troop 34 in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin. Wessel, who is proficient at the Schalmei (shawm), a peculiar German oboe, founds an SA Schalmeienkapelle (shawm band). 11

1929 May 1 Under immense scrutiny by the Berlin authorities, Goebbels orders his SA to keep a low profile during this day's May Day celebrations. It proves to be a clever and prudent move. One hundred and ninety-eight civilians and forty-seven police officers are injured in fighting between the Berlin police and the Red Front Fighters, while 1,228 people are arrested, and 33 die in the streets. Goebbels, figuratively, sits back, grins, and polishes his halo. 12

1929 May 4 Göring and Goebbels share the stage at a rally in Friedrichshain. Afterwards, they have their first face-to-face chat, with Göring telling Goebbels anecdotes about his time in Mussolini's Italy. In his diary, Goebbels refers to Göring as "an exemplary officer." 13

1929 May 14 Goebbels is invited to a party at Göring's luxury apartment in Berlin, as he tells his diary: "The Deputies are invited to a small party. We enjoy ourselves very much . . . . Göring has a wonderful house and as a rule is also a great guy."

Note: Although Goebbels' diary from later years was discovered unedited after the war, entries such as the above—unless otherwise noted—were edited by Goebbels prior to publication in Germany in 1934, under the title Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei, and have been used cautiously in this telling. 14

1929 Late May Goebbels, whose first impression of fellow Nazi, Hermann Göring, had initially been quite positive, goes head-to-head with him in the Reichstag over a policy dispute. Goebbels later records that Göring "is becoming ever more of a parliamentary bastard. On this, he is thick as a post and foul as a toad. So far, he has treated the others as riff-raff, and yesterday he tried it on me. But then he put things right." 15

1929 July 7 At an international conference at The Hague, American Owen D. Young, proposes to come to an agreement with the German Government that drastically reduces the annual reparations payments to the Allies. According to the plan, the payments would be 17 per cent less than under the Dawes Plan, but would take 59 years to pay off. In return, the Allies would pull out of the Rhineland five years early. The Young Plan will take effect on September 1, 1929. 16

Many years later, Hitler will recall:

Even men fairly close to us regarded the Young Plan as a relief for Germany. I remember having come to Berlin for a meeting. Papen . . . was explaining that he had scored a great success in reducing the total of reparations to a sum of five thousand eight hundred million marks. I commented that, if we succeeded in getting together such a sum, we ought to devote it to German rearmament. After the seizure of power, I immediately had all payments suspended, which we could already have done as far back as 1925. 17

1929 July Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht joins forces with fellow economists to push the Young Plan. Schacht:

The question at issue was whether one was justified in refusing to sign [the Young Plan], since to do so would give rise to the danger of serious new political entanglements; or whether, having signed, one should continue steadily to resist reparations in general, until the occasion arose which would enable them to be put an end to once and for all. I had decided in favor of the second method. 18

1929 July 9 A "Reich Committee for the German People's Petition" is organized by 63-year-old Alfred Hugenberg, a right-wing nationalist who is Germany's leading newspaper tycoon. The committee is in opposition to the Young Plan, and Hugenberg eventually convinces a reluctant Hitler to join. Hitler demands and receives complete independence as to how the campaign is fought, access to the full resources of the committee, and to Hugenberg's line of newspapers and other media outlets. As his personal representative on the committee, Hitler initially appoints Gregor Strasser, which strikes many of Hitler's allies as an odd choice. Hitler privately implies that he is playing all of them, and no one should suppose that he will gain anything but clear advantage from the situation. Among others serving on the committee are industrialist Fritz Thyssen, the General Director of Vereinigte Stahlwerke (United Steel) Dr Albert Voegler, Franz Seldte of the Stahlhelm, and Heinrich Class of the Pan-German League. 19

1929 August 1-4 A Party Rally takes place in Nuremberg, where 25,000 SA and SS men and 1,300 members of the Hitler Youth arrive on 35 chartered trains. A total of 30,000 to 40,000 Nazis attend: the biggest and most successful Party Rally to date. 20

Again, the Rally is all spectacle and propaganda, with guests such as Ruhr industrialist Emil Kirdorf, Theodor Duesterberg, the deputy leader of the Stahlhelm, and Count von der Golz of the Vereinigte Völkischer Verbände (United Racist-Ethnic Associations). All goes smoothly; no challenges to either the leadership, or policy, are entertained. 21

Emil Kirdorf, the most powerful and influential industrialist in Germany, very much enjoys his time at this party rally, later writing to Hitler:

Dear Herr Hitler: On our return home, my wife and I are eager to express our thanks to you for asking us to attend the convention of your party held between August 2 and 4, and for the elevating impressions we obtained there. Our intention was to express this thanks to you at the end of the session, and for that reason we were in the Deutscher Hof, where, unfortunately, we awaited you in vain, since without doubt your time was taken up with the brutal attacks of the Communists on your faithful party members and with concern for the protection of the latter . . . .

We shall never forget how overwhelmed we were in attending the memorial celebration for the World War dead and the dedication of the banners in the Luitpold Grove, at the sight of your troops marching by on the Hauptmarkt, of thousands and thousands of your supporters, their eyes bright with enthusiasm, who hung on your lips and cheered you. The sight of the endless crowd, cheering you and stretching out their hands to you at the end of the parade, was positively overwhelming. At this moment, I, who am filled with despair by the degeneration of our masses and the failure of our bourgeois circles toward the future of Germany, suddenly realized why you believe and trust unflinchingly in the fulfillment of the task you have set yourself, and, conscious of your goal, continue on your way, regardless how many sacrifices it may demand of you and your supporters. Any man who in these days, dominated by a brutal destruction of the patriotic qualities, could gather together and chain to himself such a troop of national-minded racial comrades, ready for every sacrifice, is entitled to nourish this confidence.

You may be proud of the honors and homages done you; there is hardly a crowned head who receives their equal. My wife and I are happy to have been able to witness them.

Anyone who was privileged to attend this session will, even though he may doubt or decisively reject particular points in your party program, nevertheless recognize the importance of your movement for the rehabilitation of our German fatherland and wish it success. With this wish, which we utter from a full heart, there rises in me even a small hope that it may be realized. Even if my doubts in the future of the German people cannot be entirely dispelled, since my observation, extending years back into the Bismarckian golden age of Germany and further, has shown that the German bourgeoisie are nationally speaking at a low level such as can be found in no other country, yet I have taken with me from the Nuremberg Congress the consoling certainty that numerous circles will sacrifice themselves to prevent the doom of Germanism from being accomplished in the dishonorable, undignified way I previously feared. With true German greetings from my wife and self; in friendship, Your Kirdorf. 22

Kirdorf becomes one of Hitler's most important financial contributors, something he later claims was brought about by the opposition he shared with Hitler against the Young Plan. 23

1929 August 8 Margarete Himmler gives birth to the couple's only child, Gudrun. Her doctor's son, Dr. Viktor Brack, will become Himmler's chauffeur, and later the head of the Nazi "euthanasia" program. 24

With Heinrich spending the vast majority of his time with his party duties, magnified by the poor financial situation of the couple, they have grown far apart. They never live together again, but neither do they divorce, even when Heinrich sets up house with a mistress in the 1940s. Margarete retains custody of Gudrun. Despite the difficulties, Himmler will remain devoted to his daughter, who will visit him often; he will call her almost daily when she is staying with her mother in Munich. [24.5 Read p. 180, 181. Note: Although she was not present, and had no evidence to prove her case, Gudrun later claimed that her father was murdered by his British captives in the last days of World War II, denying the official (and eyewitness) story that he had committed suicide with cyanide. Gudrun is still alive at the time of this writing (2013), and she has never renounced Hitler, Nazi ideology, or the crimes of her father.]

1929 September The "Reich Committee for the German People's Petition" proposes a "Law against the Enslavement of the German People", a manifesto against the Young Plan. The petition eventually gains enough support to compel the state to offer it up to a vote as a plebiscite. The plebiscite is scheduled for December 22. 25

Goebbels is totally against the alliance with Hugenberg, writing: "We still have too many philistines in the party. Sometimes Munich's course is intolerable. I'm not prepared to go along with a corrupt compromise. I'll stick to the straight and narrow path, even if it should cost me my personal position."

Hitler intercedes with Goebbels, convincing him that the move is simply strategic, and that he will break with Hugenberg the minute it is advantageous to do so. To win him over, he promises him the post of Reich Propaganda Chief in addition to his Berlin duties, with an office and flat in Munich from which to direct party propaganda. Furthermore, thanks to Hitler's intervention, Hugenberg places the entire anti-Young Plan press campaign in Goebbels' control, and allows him to run Hugenberg's media empire. on a temporary basis. Goebbels has a complete change of heart concerning Hugenberg, and energetically embarks on the task. From now until the plebiscite is held, all of Hugenberg's many newspapers will cover all of Hitler's speeches and proclamations on the subject. His name-recognition with the public will be enhanced by the resultant favorable coverage, much of where his own organization has no reach. 26

1929 September 2 Martin Bormann, NSDAP regional press officer and business manager for Thuringia, weds 19-year-old Gerda Buch. Her father, Major Walter Buch, serves as chairman of the Nazi Party Court. Hitler acts as a witness at their wedding. Gerda Bormann will give birth to 10 children, nine of whom will survive to adulthood. 27

1929 September 5 Hitler moves out of his modest apartment at 41 Thierschstrasse and moves into a high-end apartment building at 16 Prinzregentenplatz, where he takes over the entire second floor of the five-story apartment house. Frau Reichert, his landlady from the Thierschstrasse, and her mother, Frau Dachs supervise a 12-person staff. His favorite architect, Paul Ludwig Troost, specially designs the furnishings for the place with Hitler's tastes in mind; as a result, the furnishings are dark and heavy, and look as though they will last forever.

Hitler had recently become the guardian of his 46-year-old widowed half-sister's 21-year-old daughter, Angela Maria Raubal, who is known as Geli. While completing her medical studies in Munich, Geli will take a room in Hitler's suite on October 5. Her mother, Angela Raubal, continues to keep house at Hitler's Berchtesgaden villa. For the next few years, Hitler and Geli will be seen together in public often, and there will be no end to the rumors. 28

It is maintained by most Hitler biographers, to one degree or another, that Hitler was in love romantically with Geli, who looked even younger than she was. She was described as beautiful but frivolous; just Hitler's type. It is said that she was shallow, flighty, prone to impulsive words and actions, and felt smothered under the intense protection of her Uncle Alf, who inserted himself into all the details of her life. But was this relationship notable for sexual perversion, as some of Hitler's enemies at the time charged? There is no proof for the contention. Those who suppose that the relationship between Hitler and his young niece was somehow inappropriate, do so on third-hand testimony lacking corroboration. There is, however, abundant anecdotal evidence of his obsessively over-protective manner with her.

Rudolf Hess' new wife, Ilse, said of Geli: "It was not that she was so very pretty, as that she had the famous Viennese charm." Putzi Hanfstaengl called her "an empty-headed little slut, with the coarse bloom of a servant-girl, without either brains or character," while his wife saw her as "a nice, rather serious girl." Heinrich Hoffmann considered her "a lovely young woman who, with her artless and carefree manner, captivated everybody," but his daughter, Henriette, said she was "coarse, provocative and a little quarrelsome." 29

1929 September The number of unemployed in Germany stands at 1,320,000. 30

1929 October 3 Gustav Stresemann, considered the most able statesman to emerge in post-war Germany, dies of a stroke. Many years later, Hitler would only concede that, "Amongst my predecessors, Stresemann was not the worst." 31

1929 October 24 Black Thursday: The Wall Street Stock Market crashes. Known variously as the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Great Crash, and the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the Crash marks the beginning of the severe, worldwide, 10-year long Great Depression. The Völkish Right pays little attention to this event, which will be so instrumental in bringing them to power, and the Crash is not mentioned at all in the Völkischer Beobachter. 32

1929 October It is around this time that 40-year old Adolf Hitler first meets Eva Braun, the 17-year old daughter of a school teacher. Eva is employed in the office of photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. Foto Hoffmann is located at 50 Schellingstrasse, which is near the corporate office of the Völkischer Beobachter. Eva is standing on a ladder, looking for a file on a high shelf, when Hoffmann and Hitler enter.

"At that moment," Eva later tells her sister, "the boss came in accompanied by a man with a funny mustache, a light-colored English-style overcoat and a big felt hat in his hand. They both sat down on the other side of the room, opposite me." She had a sense that her legs were being admired. "That very day, I had shortened my skirt, and I felt slightly embarrassed because I wasn't sure I'd got the hem even."

"Herr Wolf. Our good little Fraulein Eva," Hoffmann says by way of introduction. The three of them go out to lunch. Eva Braun later tells her sister:

I was starving. I gobbled my sausage and had a sip of beer for politeness' sake. The elderly gentleman was paying me compliments. We talked about music and a play at the Staatstheater, as I remember, with him devouring me with his eyes all the time. Then, as it was getting late, I rushed off. I refused his offer of a lift in his Mercedes. Just think what Papa's reaction would have been!

When Eva is later told that the "elderly gentleman" is the famous putschist, Adolf Hitler, all she can say is "Oh?" 33

1929 October 27 In state elections, the NSDAP takes 7% of the vote in Baden; one of eighteen German states with independent parliaments (Landtag). 34

1929 November Foto Hoffmann relocates to a large second floor office above the Cafe Stefanie on the corner of Theresienstrasse and Amalienstrasse. Business has been good for Heinrich Hoffmann, who now has a work-force of 17. Baldur von Schirach recalled that Eva always worked the counter: "She took care of Hoffmann's Nazi postcards later, too, when she was the Reich Chancellor's mistress. She regularly had to report to Hitler which postcards were most in demand. For him it was a kind of "Gallup poll," with which he tested the popularity of his associates." 35

1929 Early November The NSDAP takes 8.1% of the vote in local elections in Luebek. 36

1929 November 17 The NSDAP takes 5.8% of the vote in Berlin city council elections, four times the percentage gained in 1928. This wins thirteen seats for the Nazis on the council, one of which Goebbels takes for himself. After all, he rationalizes, it is through his own efforts that the party has done so well, and who better to take a seat than him. Besides, immunity from prosecution comes with the job. 37

1929 November 22 Goebbels tells his diary:

Geli [in] Munich. With the boss until two in the morning. He now has a spacious apartment. Geli, Else, Muller, and Hoffmann are here. We talk and laugh. Lunch with him and Geli at noon." 38

1929 November Speaking in the small town of Hersbruck, near Nuremberg, Hitler warns: "The time will come when those responsible for Germany's collapse will laugh out of the other side of their faces. Fear will grip them. Let them know that their judgment is on the way." 39

1929 December SA man Walter Fischer, originally from Friedenau, is killed during a street fight with Red Front Fighters in Berlin. Goebbels, who has been on the lookout for a Nazi martyr for propaganda purposes, leads his SA on a memorial march to Fehrbelliner Platz. Three days later, at Fischer's funeral, Göring, Goebbels, and Prince August Wilhelm, listen as an SA Sturmführer by the name of Horst Wessel makes an emotional speech over the grave. Unfortunately for Goebbels' propaganda, it is soon revealed that Fischer had already resigned from the SA at the insistence of his father, a Social Democrat. In the event, Fischer's story does not catch on with the public, and Goebbels is soon searching for another, more appropriate Nazi for martyrdom. 40

1929 December 8 The NSDAP takes 11.3% of the vote in Thuringian state elections, a 300% increase. Having gained over 10% of the votes, the Nazis win three of the fifty-three seats in the Thuringian Landtag. With this minor leverage, Hitler manages to extort control of the posts of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of the Interior, which also controls the police and the civil service in Thuringia. "He who controls both these ministries and ruthlessly and persistently exploits his power in them can achieve extraordinary things," Hitler explained privately. 41

1929 December 22 The "'Law against the Enslavement of the German People" is soundly defeated when it receives only 13.8% of the vote. Hitler turns on Alfred Hugenberg, blaming the defeat solely on him; Hugenberg and the other Nationalists were lukewarm in their opposition to the Young Plan, Hitler charges. The clear implication is that Hugenberg should stick to his newspapers and leave the politics to abler hands, such as Hitler's. 42

1929 December 25 As a Christmas present, Hitler gives Eva Braun a portrait of himself. 43

1929 December 31 Year-end Nazi Party membership stands at 178,000 dues-paying members. 44

1930 January 14 22-year-old SA Sturmführer Horst Wessel is shot in the face; the bullet stops just short of his cerebellum. He will die of his wounds on February 23. Though Goebbels will spin a martyr's tale of Wessel being killed by Communists, it is likely that he was done in by a fellow National Socialist rival, Ali (Albert) Hoehler. The actual facts of the matter are suppressed. Before Wessel's death five weeks hence, all the witnesses to the murder, including Ali Hoehler himself, will die mysterious deaths. Ultimately however, the story of the valiant death of Nazi martyr Horst Wessel will be what Goebbels makes it.

Goebbels: "Leaving home and mother, he took to living among those who scorned and spit on him. Out there, in a proletarian section, in a tenement attic he proceeded to build his youthful, modest life. A socialist Christ! One who appealed to others through his deeds."

In furthering Goebbels' Wessel-the-Martyr propaganda, a doggerel verse written by Wessel in 1929 is soon set to music. The Horst-Wessel-Lied (Horst Wessel Song), will be the anthem of the Nazi Party from 1930 onward, and will be officially declared the co-national anthem of Germany on May 19, 1933. The first stanza of the Horst Wessel Song:

Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen dicht geschlossen!
SA marschiert mit mutig, festem Schritt.
Kameraden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen,
Marscbiern im Geist in unsern Reihen mit.

The flag on high! The ranks tightly closed!
The SA march with quiet, steady step.
Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries
March in spirit within our ranks. 45

1930 January 19 From Goebbels' diary:

With Göring to Viktoriagarten [in Berlin]. Overflowing. Feder speaks. The old simpleton. Then I come on. I spend an hour on the automaton Hindenburg and call the lying press to account. Everyone very excited . . . . From there together with Göring and Feder. Göring is a good fellow, and very affectionate. Feder a conceited, vain, jealous dandy. I can't stand him. 46

1930 January 20 From Goebbels' diary:

To Göring's to eat. Then with him and Schweitzer to the Deutsche Theater. The Kaiser from America, with Werner Krauss. A fabulous evening . . . . From there to the Schöneberger Ratskeller. Göring really carried on about Munich. Also about Hitler, in part with some justification. He works too little, too short, he is [word illegible]. And the women, the women! But against this stands an excess of ability and virtue, his charm, his goodness, his instinct, his human greatness. We are only glad that we have him and so put up with his weaknesses. 47

1930 January 22 The Reich Minister of Defense, General Groener, warns members of the Reichswehr against joining the NSDAP, which has been unlawful since 1927, and against engaging in politics: "They [the Nazis] therefore woo the Reichswehr. In order to use it for the political aims of their party, they attempt to dazzle us [into believing] that the National Socialists alone represent the truly national power." 48

1930 January 23 As a result of the December 8, 1929 Thuringian state elections, Party member Wilhelm Frick, as a member of a coalition cabinet, is appointed Minister of the Interior and Education in the State of Thuringia. He is the first Nazi to attain ministerial status anywhere in Germany, and his performance is followed closely by those who assume that the responsibilities of office will be beyond the Nazis. They are certainly proficient at opposition politics, but can they govern?

Frick sets our aggressively, leading with a series of racialist policies in a bid to create a showcase Nazi utopia in Thuringia. Frick begins by creating a new chair of Racial Questions and Racial Knowledge (Rassenfragen und Rassenkunde) at the University of Jena, which he grants to racialist radical Dr Hans Günther. Next, a racialist decree, "For the Protection of the German People from Negro Culture" (Wider die Negerkultur für Deutsches Volkstum) is issued. By adding in the racial dimension, Frick is able to attack long-established institutions, such as the schools and the police, in order to eliminate "undesirable elements," and make room for Nazi-minded replacements. Opposition is strong and immediate. Reich Minister of the Interior Carl Severing (SPD) will soon cut off the Reich subsidies for Thuringia, Frick will eventually be the target of a no-confidence vote, and will be removed from office. Those who had predicted that the Nazis would prove unable to govern congratulate themselves on their prescience, reassuring themselves that a Nazi Germany will never materialize. The Nazis are mere rabble-rousers, nothing more. There is obviously nothing from that quarter to worry about. 49

1930 February 2 Hitler predicts "with almost clairvoyant certainty" that "the victory of our movement will take place . . . at the most in two and a half to three years." 50

1930 February 23 SA Sturmführer Horst Wessel dies from his wounds. Paraphrasing the words of the Horst Wessel Song, Goebbels proclaims: "His spirit has risen in order to live on in all of us. [He is] marching within our ranks."

Goebbels turns Wessel's funeral into a propaganda stunt, featuring the first public performance of the Horst Wessel Song. Much to his displeasure, Hitler does not attend. The Communists assist in the endeavor, harassing the funeral marchers, and even bombarding the cemetery with stones. Goebbels writes: "As the coffin came to rest in the cool ground, there went up outside the gates the depraved cry of the subhuman . . . . The departed, still with us, raised his weary hand and beckoned into the shimmering distance: Forward over the graves! At the end of the road lies Germany!" 51

From Goebbels' Der Angriff obituary for Wessel:

He went forth as a preacher in the wilderness . . . harvesting hate rather than gratitude, and only persecution instead of recognition . . . . They laughed at him, mocked him, spat at him, wherever he came among them, and turned their backs on him with abhorrence . . . . In the end he was prepared . . . to forsake his mother and the parental home, going among those who mocked and spat at him . . . . Beyond, in a proletarian quarter, high above in a mansard room of a block of flats he created an austere young man's existence. A Christian socialist! One who through his deeds cries: 'Come to me, I will redeem you' . . . . Five weeks long he lay in agony close to death . . . . He did not complain . . . . And in the end, tired and wracked with pain, he gave up the ghost. They bore him to the grave . . . those he sought to save threw stones at the dead . . . . He drank the pain-filled chalice down to the dregs . . . . The deceased who is with us, raises his weary hand and points into the dim distance: Advance over the graves! At the end lies Germany! 52

1930 March 1 Gertrud Scholtz-Klink and her husband join the NSDAP. 53

1930 March 6 In a bid to gain support in the agricultural community, the NSDAP publishes the details of a peasant program developed by German agricultural expert, Richard Walther Darré. Among its recommendations are lower taxes for farmers—the "noblest class in the nation"—cheaper artificial manures, subsidized rural electricity, state-credits, revised inheritance laws, and higher tariffs. Rudolf Hess had introduced Hitler to Darré, who is an Auslandsdeutscher (German from abroad), having been born in Belgrano, Buenos Aires. 54

1930 March 7 Hjalmar Schacht resigns as Reichsbank Chairman in protest against the modifications being made to the Young Plan by Hermann Müller’s government. Schacht:

I had not only contributed my part toward the creation of the Young Plan, but in 1929, I also assisted in the setting up of the Young Committee; the so-called Young Plan had resulted in a number of improvements for Germany, which the German Government was now sacrificing step by step during the subsequent negotiations at The Hague. Thus the financial and economic condition of the nation again deteriorated. I revolted against this, and for both these reasons I resigned my office as Reichsbankpraesident in protest, in March 1930. 55

1930 March 13 President Hindenburg signs legislation, passed the previous day, approving the provisions of the Young Plan. 56

1930 March 13 Reich Minister of the Interior Carl Severing introduces the Law for the Defense of the Republic:

The right of assembly has become the wrongs of assembly, and press freedom has become press license. We cannot permit demagogues to inflame the masses any further. Last year in Prussia alone three hundred policemen were wounded and fourteen killed in the course of their duties. 57

1930 March 16 Hitler's Berlin Gauleiter is none too happy with his Führer. Hitler has repeatedly refused to side publicly with him against his enemies, the Strassers, and had even declined to attend the funeral of Horst Wessel. He complains to his diary:

Munich, incl. Chief, has lost all credit with me. I don't believe anything from them any longer. Hitler has—for whatever reasons, they don't matter—broken his word to me five times. That's bitter to realize, and I inwardly draw my conclusions. Hitler keeps to himself (verbirgt sich), he takes no decisions, he doesn't lead any more but lets things happen. 58

1930 March 27 Reich Chancellor Hermann Müller, an SPD politician, has been in power through a "Grand Coalition," made up of the Social Democrats (SPD), German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei — DDP), Catholic Centre Party (Zentrum), and the German People's Party (Deutsche Volkspartei — DVP). Such a broad coalition of parties is a recipe for policy disputes, and the leftist SPD and rightist DVP have been at loggerheads over unemployment insurance. The DVP and their friends in big business, ideologically opposed to unemployment insurance to begin with, simply refuse to allow the unemployment insurance tax on employers to rise from 3.5% to 4%. (What a thing to do to the job creators during a depression!)

During similar crises during the Weimar Republic, Reich President Hindenburg's predecessor, Friedrich Ebert, had invoked Article 48 of the Republic's founding document, allowing for rule by presidential decree. Hindenburg refuses to do so for Hermann Müller, and the embattled chancellor tenders his resignation. This has come to pass partly through the machinations of Major-General Kurt von Schleicher of the Defense Ministry, who has the president's ear. Because no government can rule with the support of a parliamentary majority in the Reichstag, the development ushers out rule by democracy and ushers in 15 years of authoritarian government in Germany. 59

1930 March 29 Politician Heinrich Brüning, a staunch monarchist, becomes the 12th Chancellor of the Weimar Republic. Brüning, who, as a captain of a machine gun company during the Great War had earned an Iron Cross, is the parliamentary leader of the Zentrum (Catholic Center Party). He is a favorite of General von Schleicher, who in turn is a favorite of Hindenburg. The new cabinet includes former Reich Chancellor Josef Wirth. 60

1930 March Party membership now stands at 210,000 dues-paying members. 61


Martin Bormann Jr, his godfather, and Gerda Bormann.

1930 April 14 Gerda Bormann gives birth to Martin (Kroenzi) Adolf Bormann, named after his godfather, Adolf Hitler. 62

1930 April 22 The United States, France, Italy, Britain and Japan sign the London Naval Treaty, which regulates submarine warfare and limits naval shipbuilding. The ratio between Britain, the US and Japan is set to 10:10:7. 63

1930 April 27 At a meeting of party leaders in Munich, Hitler rails against the "salon bolsheviks," and, while he does not come out against the Strassers by name, he appoints Goebbels the NSDAP's Propaganda chief. Goebbels is delighted, telling his diary: "Bravo! Hitler is starting to lead again. Bravissimo! A complete reckoning with Strasser and the Kampfverlag, salon Bolshevism, everything . . . . Strasser is white as a sheet. He stammers out a couple of sentences to close, and then it's all over. We've triumphed all along the line. The opposition lies shattered on the ground. Strasser is destroyed. Now we shall see about the newspaper question. And now all these cowardly creatures will move over to me. That's the way men are."

Hitler also speaks on foreign policy: "The formation of the world powers which once oppressed us no longer seems indissoluble, and already shows the most serious breaches. For many years I have been fighting for a connection with Italy. In the future England, too, will be France's foe . . . . A time will come when a new triple alliance: England, Germany, Italy, will form. With it will come our hour for the German Reich and people." 64

1930 May 5 The Dortmunder General-Anzeiger writes with undisguised admiration about the propaganda activities of the NSDAP: "Here one can only accord the strongest recognition to the organization, activity, and will to power which inspires the National Socialists. For years, the flag-bearers of the party have not avoided going into the most outlying villages and casting their slogans to the masses in at least a hundred meetings a day in Germany." 65

1930 May 21 During a two-day stay in Berlin, Hitler and Otto Strasser hold a series of face-to-face talks in Hitler's hotel room. Hitler confronts Strasser concerning an article, Loyalty and Disloyalty, written by Herbert Blank and published by Strasser. The Nazi Führer takes exception to the author's statement that the leader of the movement is but a temporary servant of the idea:

This is all bombastic nonsense. It boils down to this, that you would give every Party member the right to decide on the idea—even to decide whether the leader is true to the so-called idea or not. This is democracy at its worst, and there is no place for such a view with us. With us the Leader and the Idea are one, and every Party member has to do what the Leader orders. The Leader incorporates the Idea and alone knows its ultimate goal. Our organization is built up on discipline. I have no wish to see this organization broken up by a few swollen-headed litterateurs. You were a soldier yourself . . . . I ask you: are you prepared to submit to this discipline or not?

Strasser has too many complaints on his mind to consider submitting to Hitler's discipline: "You want to strangle the social revolution," he accuses Hitler, "for the sake of legality and your new collaboration with the bourgeois parties of the Right."

Hitler responds:

I am a Socialist, and a very different kind of Socialist from your rich friend, Reventlow. I was once an ordinary working-man. I would not allow my chauffeur to eat worse than I eat myself. What you understand by Socialism is nothing but Marxism. Now look: the great mass of working-men want only bread and circuses. They have no understanding for ideals of any sort whatever, and we can never hope to win the workers to any large extent by an appeal to ideals. We want to make a revolution for the new dominating caste which is not moved, as you are, by the ethic of pity, but is quite clear in its own mind that it has the right to dominate others because it represents a better race: this caste ruthlessly maintains and assures its dominance over the masses . . . . Your whole system is a desk product that has nothing to do with real life . . . .

What you preach is liberalism, nothing but liberalism. There are no revolutions except racial revolutions: there cannot be a political, economic, or social revolution—always and only it is the struggle of the lower stratum of inferior race against the dominant higher race, and if this higher race has forgotten the law of its existence, then it loses the day. 66

1930 May 22 Hitler and Otto Strasser confer in Berlin for a second day. Hitler is accompanied by Max Amann and Rudolf Hess, while Strasser brings along Hans Heinrich Hinkel. When Strasser opines that industry must be nationalized, Hitler replies:

Democracy has laid the world in ruins, and nevertheless you want to extend it to the economic sphere. It would be the end of German economy . . . . The capitalists have worked their way to the top through their capacity, and on the basis of this selection, which again only proves their higher race, they have a right to lead. Now you want an incapable Government Council or Works Council, which has no notion of anything, to have a say: no leader in economic life would tolerate it.

Strasser is aghast. "What about the Krupps?" he demands. "Are they to be given free reign as well?"

"Of course I should leave it alone," Hitler tells him. "Do you think that I should be so mad as to destroy Germany's economy? Only if people should fail to act in the interests of the nation, then—and only then—would the State intervene. But for that you do not need any expropriation, you do not need to give the workers the right to have a voice in the conduct of the business: you need only a strong State . . . . "

Herr Amann, would you stand for it if your stenographers suddenly wanted to interfere with your work? The employer who bears the responsibility for production also provides the workers with their livelihood. Our biggest employers in particular are not so much concerned about amassing money, about luxurious living, and so on. What is most important to them is the responsibility and the power. Because of their capability they have worked their way to the top, and because of their selectness, which again only proves their superior race, they have a right to lead.

Nothing is accomplished; the two men are as far apart as ever. "An intellectual white Jew, totally incapable of organization," Hitler scornfully says of Strasser after the meeting, "a Marxist of the purest ilk." 67

1930 May 26 The NSDAP purchases Barlow Palace, at 45 Brienner Strasse in Munich, to use as a national party headquarters. It will be known as the Brown House (Braunes Haus), after the color of the SA's uniforms. The purchase price is 805,864 Marks for the urban villa, which will have to undergo a complete renovation to become a functioning office building. With funds provided by German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, architect Paul Troost will redecorate and redesign the place from top to bottom. Party members are levied a 2 Mark fee to help pay for the HQ—for which they receive a special certificate—while the SS and SA are exempt. 68

1930 June The NSDAP captures 14.4% of the vote in Saxony, increasing their representation from five to fourteen, and making them the second strongest party in Saxony. 69

1930 June 26-29 Goebbels is again much disappointed with his Führer: "Chief wants me to throw out the little ones, but doesn't touch the big-shots. That's so typically Hitler. In Plauen high on his horse, today he pulls back again . . . . He makes promises, and doesn't keep them." Three days later comes more of the same: "[Hitler] backs away from the decision. So everything is turned upside down again. I'm certain he won't come on Monday [to Berlin] to save himself from having to make decisions. That's the old Hitler. The waverer! For ever putting things off!" "Monday" is July 3, the day that Hitler is scheduled to address a meeting at the Berlin Gau, and sure enough, Hitler calls off. However, he soon sends along a strongly-worded letter attacking the Strasser wing, which pleases Goebbels very much. 70

1930 June From Hitler's letter attacking the radical socialists in the party:

For months as responsible leader of the National Socialist Party I have been watching attempts to introduce strife, confusion and insubordination into the ranks of the movement. Under the mask of desiring to fight for socialism a policy has been advocated which corresponds totally to the policy of our Jewish-liberal-Marxist opponents. These cliques call for the very things our enemies desire . . . .

I now consider it necessary to ruthlessly throw these destructive elements out of the party, every single one of them. We have shaped and determined the essential content of our movement; we who founded this movement and fought for it, suffered for it in the prisons, and we who led it hack from collapse and up to its present height. Anyone who does not like the essential content of the movement which was established by us, and primarily by me, should not enter the movement or must leave it again. As long as I am leading the National Socialist Party, it will not become a debating club for rootless scribblers or unruly parlor Bolsheviks. It will remain what it is today: an organization of discipline created not for doctrinaire foolishness or political Wandervogel (vagabonds) but dedicated to fight for the future of Germany in which class distinction will be broken and a new German people will decide its own destiny! 71

1930 June 30 At a membership meeting at the Hasenheide in Berlin, Goebbels declares: "Those who do not fit in will be kicked out!" Otto Strasser stands to defend himself, but he is shouted down and roughly ejected from the hall by the SA, along with a small group of his supporters. 72

1930 July 1 Gregor Strasser, well aware that his brother is about to get the boot, resigns as editor of the Kampfverlag newspapers. "The departure of my brother and his fight against the party," Gregor told a friend, "is pure madness." He puts as much distance as possible between himself and his sibling. 73

1930 July 4 After Otto Strasser and twenty-five of his followers announce that "'the socialists are leaving the NSDAP" and quit the party, Goebbels tells his diary of his great victory: "'The whole thing ends in a great declaration of loyalty to the Movement, Hitler, and me." A few days later he adds: "Berlin is in order . . . . The air is cleared. The entire revolt of the literati reveals itself to be a storm in a teacup. Otto Strasser has lost completely." Very few others follow Strasser's lead by leaving the NSDAP, and he soon finds himself isolated. The 'Otto Strasser Clique' is finished. Gregor Strasser remains in the party. He later explained why: "I have sold my drugstore, and put all my money into the party. I am now dependent on my Reichstag mandate; if Hitler takes away my mandate, it's all over." 74

1930 July Alfred Rosenberg, in the Völkischer Beobachter, writes:

England, Germany, Italy, stand as though back to back. The stronger they become, the more dependent they are on one another. England's task is the protection of the white race in Africa and West Asia; Germany's task is to safeguard Germanic Europe against the chaotic Mongolian flood and to hold down France, which has already become an advance guard of Africa. (Take a look at the French colonial army and bear in mind that even now a Negro represents the French Government in the Geneva League of Nations.) Italy as a growing nation has a claim to Corsica, Tunis, Dalmatia, in order to prevent the destruction of Europe by French Negro armies. None of the three states can solve the task of destiny alone. 75

1930 July 16 Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning loses, 256 votes to 193, on his austerity bill in the Reichstag. He appeals to Reich President Hindenburg to allow him to issue an emergency decree under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. 76

1930 July 18 When members of the SPD and the NSDAP in the Reichstag combine to oppose Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning's emergency decree, Brüning successfully appeals to Reich President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag. New elections are scheduled for September 18. Brüning's actions in taking down this Reichstag can only be characterized as lazy and irresponsible. Certainly, some sort of deal could have been managed, but Brüning fails to pursue one.

This is just the sort of thing Hitler has been looking for. With party membership growing daily, and a full war chest, Hitler fully expects the upcoming elections to improve his party's electoral standing. The party lets out all the stops, organizing well over 1,000 meetings and rallies. Under the slogan "Bread and Freedom", Hitler tours Germany relentlessly, whipping up support for the Nazi ticket, speaking several times a day. Goebbels fills his papers with election propaganda, and litters the streets with leaflets and hand-outs. 77

1930 July 18 Hitler speaks in Munich: "It is not parliamentary majorities that mould the fate of nations. We know, however, that in this election democracy must be defeated with the weapons of democracy." 78

1930 July 21 Hitler, his half-sister Angela Raubal and her daughter, Geli, drive out to Oberammergau with Goebbels, to catch a performance of the Passion Play. Goebbels is especially taken by the Pontius Pilate scene, which he describes as "very nearly a model lecture on the Jews. It was always that way, and still is today." 79

1930 July 25 Kurt Daluege, who had joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1926, quits the SA and joins the rival SS, following a directive issued by Hitler. He is awarded the rank of SS-Oberführer (senior leader), and is given membership number 1,119. 80

1930 July 27 Hitler addresses a meeting of party leaders in Munich:

We know that no election can finally decide the fate of the nation. It is not parliamentary majorities that decide the fate of nations—they can destroy nations. But we know that in these elections democracy must be destroyed with the weapons of democracy . . . .

Herr Groener can do what he likes. We do not need a putsch. Herr Groener need only reckon: In 1919 we were seven men; in 1920, sixty-four; in 1921, three thousand; in 1922, seven thousand; in 1923, thirty thousand. In 1925 we were again one man. In 1926, seventeen thousand; in 1927, over forty thousand; in 1928, over sixty thousand; in 1929, over a hundred and twenty thousand; today, we are over two hundred thousand. Herr Groener, in two years we will be five hundred and six hundred thousand. And a time will come when a radiant Brown majority will enter the Reichstag, and then, Herr Groener: at Philippi we shall meet again! 81

1930 August Martin Bormann organizes the Aid Fund (Hilfskasse) of the Nazi Party. Through this welfare fund, he collects large sums for the official purpose of providing charity to the families of Party members who had been killed or injured while doing their duty for the Party. 82

1930 August From an anonymous pamphlet printed by a group of disgruntled SA men:

We, the proletarian section of the Movement, are naturally delighted! We are quite happy to starve so that our dear "leaders" can enjoy themselves on their salaries of 2,000-5,000 marks a month. We were also overjoyed to hear that at the Berlin Motor Show our Adolf Hitler had spent 40,000 marks on a big new Mercedes." 83



1930 August 7 SA Gruppenführer (East) Walter Stennes, and a delegation of SA-men, present their grievances to Berlin Gauleiter Goebbels. Stennes demands that SA men be allowed to sit in the Reichstag, promising that he would stage a "palace revolution," if he does not get his way. And the SA are underpaid as well. And when are they going to be able to bust heads with impunity? Stennes warns that if he leaves the SA, the majority of the rank and file will leave with him. It is no idle threat. 84

Hitler will later remember:

From the time I started to organize the Party, I made it a rule never to fill an appointment until I had found the right man for it. I applied this principle to the post of Berlin Gauleiter. Even when the older members of the Party bombarded me with complaints over the Party leadership in Berlin, I refrained from coming to their assistance, until I could promise them that in Dr. Goebbels I had found the man I was seeking. For Dr. Goebbels possesses two attributes, without which no one could master the conditions in Berlin: he has intelligence and the gift of oratory. Further, he is a typical son of the Ruhr—that type which, thanks to its close ties with the iron and steel processes, gives us a man of exceptional value and merit.

When I invited Goebbels to study the organisation of the Party in Berlin, he reported in due course that the weakness lay in the junior leaders, and he asked me for a free hand to make the necessary changes and purge the Party of all unsatisfactory elements. I have never regretted giving him the powers he asked for. When he started, he found nothing particularly efficient as a political organisation to help him; nevertheless, in the literal sense of the word, he captured Berlin. He worked like an ox, regardless of all the stresses and strains to which the latent opposition of people like Stennes must have exposed him. 85

1930 August 8 During a campaign speech at the Circus Krone, Hermann Göring calls Joseph Wirth—the Minister of the Interior—"a bottom spanker." He also accuses Minister of Defense Wilhelm Groener of merely "advancing from desk to desk." Göring proclaims that Groener should attend the upcoming Constitution Day parade "with a slouch hat on his head and a peacock's feather sticking out of a certain part of his anatomy!" The crowd loves it, but the government does not. Goering is slapped on the wrist with a 300-mark fine. 86

1930 August 27 SA Gruppenführer Stennes again confronts Goebbels, demanding that the SA receive three seats in the upcoming Reichstag, and a substantial pay increase as well. Goebbels complains to his diary: "'What an unbounded nerve! He is holding a pistol to my breast." 87

1930 August 30 The behind-the-scenes trouble with Hitler's SA (Sturmabteilung) comes to a head in Berlin when the local SA receives conflicting orders. Goebbels expects the Berlin SA to provide security for his speech this evening at the Sportpalast, while Walter Stennes, the East German SA leader, has ordered them to march in parade elsewhere. After a heated meeting of the local SA leaders, Stennes leads his SA units on a commando raid of party headquarters on Hedemannstrasse. They disarm the SS guards, and completely trash the place.

Among the issues at hand is the one that has plagued the organization from its inception: Is the SA merely a strong-arm of the political leadership, with license to bust heads at meetings? Or are they a paramilitary shadow army, waiting for the day when the NSDAP gains power, at which point they will replace the Reichswehr as the Reich's legal military establishment? With the exception of Hermann Göring, who was the SA head before the Putsch, the various leaders the SA had all preferred the second concept, in opposition to Hitler. This is hardly surprising; not only the rank-and-file, but also the SA leadership have their origins in the various post-war Freikorps formations. Hitler cannot expect them to be satisfied with being glorified bouncers, at least, not without the proper leadership, which he has not yet found. Göring is too busy with his Reichstag duties, and his contacts with big business and high-society, to take on such a task. But something simply must be done. 88

1930 August 31 For failing to stop Stennes from trashing party headquarters, Hitler dismisses the leader of the SA, Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, for dereliction of duty. Stennes retains his post. 89

The lot of an SA man could be a hard one, as a letter from a thirty-four-year-old SA man to Gregor Strasser illustrates:

In my work for the NSDAP I have faced a court more than thirty times and have been convicted eight times for assault and battery, resistance to a police officer, and other such misdemeanors that are natural for a Nazi. To this day I am still paying installments on my fines, and in addition have other trials coming up. Furthermore, I have been more or less severely wounded at least twenty times. I have knife scars on the back of my head, on my left shoulder, on my lower lip, on my right cheek, on the left side of my upper lip, and on my right arm. Furthermore, I have never yet claimed or received a penny of party money, but have sacrificed my time to our movement at the expense of the good business I inherited from my father. Today I am facing financial ruin. 90

1930 September 1 To wild cheers, Hitler addresses 2,000 Berlin SA men in the Berlin Ex-Servicemen's Building: "I am your Führer, and not elected or hired by you, not sought out by you and appointed by majority vote. No, I am your Führer on the strength of my work! . . . . And if all of you were to leave me, I should go on alone!." He announces that he is taking personal control of the SA and SS, with the official title of Oberster SA-Führer (OSAF). They lap it up.

An oath of personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler is led by 80-year-old war-hero General Karl Litzmann, "the Lion of Brzeziny." Walter Stennes reads out a Hitler Order calling for an increase in party membership dues, to fund a pay raise for all SA men. This does the trick; the SA rebellion is over. Hitler can get back to election campaigning. 91

1930 September 1 When she hears Josef Goebbels, Gauleiter of Berlin, speak at a rally, twenty-nine-year-old Johanna Maria Magdalena (Magda) Quandt, a divorced single mother, is so impressed that she impulsively joins the NSDAP. She volunteers to help out at the local party headquarters, eventually becoming a secretary for Goebbels' assistant at the main party headquarters, before becoming Goebbels' executive assistant.

1930 September Former Reichsbank Chairman Hjalmar Schacht travels to the United States for a two-month lecture tour "on questions that were presented to me by American friends." On the ocean voyage to the States, he reads Adolf Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, as well as the Party program.

Schacht:

[Mein Kampf] is a book written in the worst kind of German, propaganda of a man who was strongly interested in politics, not to say a fanatical, half educated man, which to me Hitler has always been. In [Mein Kampf] and, in part also in the Party program, there was one point that worried me a great deal, and that was the absolute lack of understanding for all economic problems. The Party program contained a few slogans, such as "Community interests come before private interests," and so on, and then the "breaking up of subjection to financial interests" and similar phrases, which could not possibly signify anything sensible. The same held true for Mein Kampf, which is of no interest from the point of view of economic policy, and consequently had no interest for me . . . .

With regard to the principle of the dominating Jewish influence in government, legal, and cultural questions, I have always said that I did not consider this influence to be of advantage, either to the German people and Germany, which was a Christian state and based on Christian conceptions, or to the Jews, since it increased the animosity against them. For these reasons I was always in favor of limiting Jewish participation in those fields, not actually according to the population, but nevertheless limiting them to a certain percentage. 92

1930 September 3 Wagner, the acting Chief of Staff of the SA, orders all members to swear an unconditional oath of allegiance to the person of the Party leader and Supreme Commander of the SA, Adolf Hitler, promising "to carry out all orders assiduously and conscientiously, in the knowledge that my commanders will never demand from me anything unlawful." 93

1930 September 8 Dr. Leonardo Conti, Senior Medical Officer at Stennes' headquarters, reports: "Under his [Stennes'] leadership, the SA is turning into a force owing no real allegiance to the Movement or its ideals. Stennes himself takes no stock of National-Socialist ideology and deliberately refuses to study it; he is capable of letting his troops loose at any moment." 94

1930 September 10 Hitler speaks before an audience of 16,000 at the Sportpalast in Berlin. He was scheduled to speak at a second rally, but had canceled because of exhaustion. 95

Hitler:

That is the great thing about our movement . . . that these [SA] men have outwardly become almost a unit, that actually these members are uniform not only in ideas, but that even the facial expression is almost the same. Look at these laughing eyes, this fanatical enthusiasm, and you will discover how in these faces the same expression has formed, how a hundred thousand men in a movement become a single type . . . .

Today when I saw these boys passing by me, suddenly I thought: how would it be if two more years passed and these boys were to don our old steel helmets, if they were volunteer regiments at Ypres again—the same face, the same expression, the same life in these men ? We saw heads of boys in which was already imprinted the proud man to be, which the people needs as a leader if it is not to be destroyed. That is what this movement wants. 96

1930 September 12 Hitler speaks in the Breslau Jahrhunderthalle to 20-25,000 inside the hall, with another 5-6,000 outside, listening to loudspeakers. 97

1930 September 14 On the morning of the election, Goebbels delivers a pep-talk to his campaign workers: "Do it jokingly, do it seriously! Treat your dear fellow creatures as they are used to being treated. Stimulate their rage and their fury, direct them to the proper course." 98

1930 September 14 In the 6th Reichstag election of the Weimar Republic, the SDP remains the largest party, with 143 of the 577 seats. The Communists poll 4.5 million votes, gaining them 77 Reichstag seats. But the big winner is Hitler's NSDAP, which goes from 12 seats to 107, with a rise in the total vote from 2.6% in the 1928 elections, to 18.3% now. Six and a half million Germans vote for the Nazis, which is eight times more than the last election. Along with electoral success comes a sharp increase in new party memberships. Together with Hugenberg's 41 Nationalist deputies and the 77 Communists, the 107 Nazis will soon turn the Reichstag into a political artillery battery directed against the Brüning government. As a result of the election, foreign capital to the value of 700 million marks soon flees Germany, the stock exchange loses 10% of its value, and German loan issues decline on the international money markets, placing stress on the Reichsbank. 99

1930 September 23-25 The Leipzig Reichswehr Trial takes place. Three young Reichswehr officers are charged with membership in—and proselytizing for—the Nazi Party, which at this time is unlawful. Hanns Ludin, Richard Scheringer, and Hans Friedrich are formally charged with "Preparing to Commit High Treason" (Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat). Nazi lawyer Hans Frank, assisted by Dr. Carl Sack, calls Hitler to the stand as a major defense witness, in order to answer charges that his party is revolutionary in nature, and a danger to public order. Hitler insists passionately that the phrase "National Revolution" is only to be interpreted "politically." His party intends to come to power legally. Further, he has nothing but the very highest regard for the Reichswehr, which could find no greater defender than the former Gefreiter, Adolf Hitler. 100

They [the SA] were set up exclusively for the purpose of protecting the Party in its propaganda, not to fight against the State. I have been a soldier long enough to know that it is impossible for a Party Organization to fight against the disciplined forces of the Army. I did everything I could to prevent the SA from assuming any kind of military character. I have always expressed the opinion that any attempt to replace the Army would be senseless. We are none of us interested in replacing the Army; my only wish is that the German State and the German people should be imbued with a new spirit . . . . I have always held the view that every attempt to disintegrate the Army was madness. None of us have any interest in such disintegration . . . .

We will see to it that, when we have come to power, out of the present Reichswehr a great German People's Army shall arise. There are thousands of young men in the Army of the same opinion . . . . 101 The concept of National Revolution has generally been considered in terms of purely domestic politics, but to National Socialists it means simply a German patriotic uprising. Germany was tied hand and foot by the peace treaties. All German legislation today is nothing but an attempt to impose the terms of the peace treaties on the German people. The National Socialists regard these treaties not as binding law, but as something forced upon us. We do not acknowledge our war guilt, nor will we burden future generations who are entirely guiltless with these fictitious debts. We will proceed against these treaties both on the diplomatic front and by circumventing every one of their provisions. If we fight against them with every means at our disposal, we will be on the way to the National Socialist revolution. 102

The presiding judge, interrupting: "Only in a constitutional way?"

Hitler:

Absolutely! . . . . On questions of this kind, only my orders are valid, and my basic principle is that if a Party regulation conflicts with the law, it is not to be carried out. I am even now punishing failure to comply with my orders. Many Party members have been expelled for this reason; among them Otto Strasser, who toyed with the idea of revolution. 103

On the third day of the much publicized trial, large and rowdy crowds protest outside the courthouse. The unrest spreads into the courtroom as spectators react with loud cheers, when Hitler declares: "I stand here under oath to God Almighty. I tell you that if I come to power legally, in my legal government I will set up state tribunals which will be empowered to pass sentences by law on those responsible for the misfortunes of our nation. Possibly, then, quite a few heads will roll legally." When the presiding judge weakly scolds Hitler, informing him that they are "neither in the theatre nor in a political meeting," Hitler appears the soul of reasonableness, which is made possible by an unwavering confidence in destiny:

Our propaganda is the spiritual revolutionizing of the German people. Our movement has no need of force. The time will come when the German nation will get to know of our ideas; then thirty-five million Germans will stand behind me . . . . We will enter the legal organizations and will make our Party a decisive factor in this way. But when we do possess constitutional rights, then we will form the State in the manner which we consider to be the right one. 104

The National Socialist Movement will seek to attain its aim in this state by constitutional means. The constitution shows us only the methods, not the goal. In this constitutional way, we will try to gain decisive majorities in the legislative bodies in order, in the moment this is successful, to pour the state into the mould that matches our ideas.

Hitler's proclamations of legal intentions are taken at face value by both the foreign and the domestic press, which cover Hitler's trial testimony as a lead story. The favorable press delights Goebbels, who cynically exclaims: "Now we are strictly legal!" 105

From General Alfred Jodl's IMT testimony:

The National Socialist Party I hardly knew and hardly noticed before the Munich Putsch. It was this Putsch which dragged the Reichswehr into this internal political development. At that time, with few exceptions, it met this test of obedience. But after this Putsch there was a certain cleavage in the views of the officers' corps. Opinions varied as to Hitler's worth or worthlessness. I was still extremely skeptical and unconvinced. I was not impressed until Hitler, during the Leipzig trial, gave the assurance that he was opposed to any undermining of the Reichswehr.

1930 September In an article printed in Britain's Sunday Express, Hitler writes: "The [recent] election, so to speak, took the temperature of the German people. The world was shocked to discover Germany in a fever—a high fever. That fever is bound to continue—to rise against existing conditions and unbearable burdens." Hitler demands that both the Versailles Treaty and the Young Plan be subject to revision, and insists upon "the return of the Polish Corridor, which is like a strip of flesh cut from our body . . . . If the German people must suffer as they are suffering today and will be suffering tomorrow, then let us have suffering that may come from saying 'No' rather than that laid on us by saying our 'Yes'." 106

1930 September Reichswehr Lieutenant Wilhelm Scheringer, one of the defendants in the ongoing Leipzig Reichswehr Trial, smuggles an article out of jail that is published in the Voelkischer Beobachter:

The actual purpose of the Reichswehr, to be a citadel of the military idea and the basic troop for the future war of liberation, pales. The need of earning bread becomes all-important. Soldiers turn into officials, officers become candidates for pensions. What remains is a police troop . . . . People think the old staff corporal is an impassioned soldier. They don't bother to ask where he is to get passion after ten or twelve years' service in the barracks . . . . They know nothing of the tragedy of the four words: twelve years as subalterns . . . . Let the old men be silent. They have their lives behind them, ours are just beginning. A lost war, an impotent state, a hopeless system, an enslavement enduring fifty-nine years, a Reich at the brink of the abyss: that is our life. And they are to blame . . . . Consequently, we have the right to fight with all means for our freedom and that of our children. The world may be sure that we are determined to do so, and we shall be victorious just as surely as France is a dying nation. 107

1930 September 24 Lord Rothermere, the owner of a British conservative newspaper, the Daily Mail, considers the results of the German Reichstag elections to be "the rebirth of Germany as a nation . . . [that] would draw not only the three million Germans in Czechoslovakia along with the three million Hungarians in Czechoslovakia and Rumania, but perhaps also the Hungarian people into its sphere of influence. As a result of such a development, Czechoslovakia, which has so gravely offended against the peace treaty (by the repression of national minorities as well as by her total rejection of disarmament), could be put out of existence overnight . . . . This great national combination under German leadership, which I see forming step by step as the new face of Europe in the immediate future, would be a bulwark against Bolshevism." 108

An interview with Hitler is published in Lord Rothermere's paper this day, and it reads as though the interviewer, Rothay Reynolds, shares Rothermere's favorable opinion:

Hitler spoke with great simplicity and with great earnestness. There was not a trace in his manner of those arts which political leaders are apt to employ when they wish to impress. I was conscious that I was talking to a man whose power lies not, as many still think, in his eloquence and in his ability to hold the attention of the mob, but in his conviction.

He is not a robust-looking man. He is slight in figure, and last night, after an exhausting day in the law-courts—where he stood for over two hours while giving evidence—followed by a conference, he looked exhausted and his face was dead white. But the moment he spoke I realized that there was in him a burning spirit that could triumph over bodily weariness. He speaks very rapidly, and in his voice there is a nervous energy that makes one feel the intense conviction behind his words. 109

If we examine more closely the shift of political power to the National Socialists, we find that it has all sorts of political advantages.

For one thing, it erects a reinforced wall against Bolshevism. It eliminates the grave danger that the Soviet campaign against European civilization would advance to Germany and thus achieve an impregnable position in the strategic center of Europe . . . . If the young Germany of the National Socialists had not worked with so much energy, there was a great likelihood that the cause of communism would make important progress and that this party would even have become the strongest party . . . . Enlightened opinion in England and France should therefore give the National Socialists full recognition for the services which they have performed in Western Europe. Under Hitler's supervision, German youth is actually organized against the corruption of Communism.

I pursued the same purpose in founding the United Empire Party in England . . . . It would be the best thing for the welfare of Western civilization if Germany were to have a government, imbued with the same healthy principles by which Mussolini in the last eight years has renewed Italy. And I see no need for Great Britain and France to maintain an unfriendly attitude toward the efforts of the National Socialists in the field of foreign affairs.

Their complaint that Germany, alone among the Great Powers, is disarmed, has just grounds. In Part Five of the Versailles Pact, the Allies obligate themselves to gradual disarmament. The disarmament of Germany was intended only as a prelude to a general renunciation of military power. While the German armed forces have been limited to a hundred thousand men and a few ships for coastal defense, Germany's neighbors have steadily increased their armaments. To subject a solid mass of more than seventy million patriotic and extremely able men and women in the real center of Europe to such a lasting sense of bitter injustice, is like opening the gascock in a sealed room. Sooner or later there must be an explosion. In their own interests the Allied Powers should open the tightly sealed windows behind which German rancor is gathering. 110

In the interview itself, Hitler warns: "Don't condemn us, therefore, if we should act as yourselves would act in our place. I hope that England will never find herself in a position like that of Germany, but if she were in such a position and if, in her darkest hour, she was stabbed in the back, what would be the attitude of England when on her feet once more? What would be the attitude of English patriots towards those among their own nation who had sought to destroy their country?" 111

1930 September 24 Ten days after the victory in the Reichstag elections, Hitler speaks in Munich:

If today our action employs among its different weapons that of Parliament, that is not to say that parliamentary parties exist only for parliamentary ends. For us Parliament is not an end in itself, but merely a means to an end . . . we are not on principle a parliamentary party—that would be a contradiction of our whole outlook—WE ARE A PARLIAMENTARY PARTY BY COMPULSION, UNDER CONSTRAINT, AND THAT COMPULSION IS THE CONSTITUTION. The Constitution compels us to use this means. It does not compel us to wish for a particular goal, it only prescribes a way—a method, and, I repeat, we follow this way legally, in accordance with the Constitution: by the way laid down through the Constitution we advance towards the purposes which we have set before us . . . .

And so this victory that we have just won is nothing else than the winning of a new weapon for our fight . . . . It is not for seats in Parliament that we fight, but we win seats in Parliament in order that one day we may be able to liberate the German people . . . .

Do not write on your banners the word "Victory" today that word shall be uttered for the last time. Strike through the word "Victory" and write once more in its place the word which suits us better—the word "Fight." 112

1930 Late September Hitler meets with former Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno, who is the chief of the Hamburg-America Line. Hitler presents himself as a moderate, and Cuno finds himself taken in by his seeming reasonableness. He soon puts Hitler in contact with financers and industrialists, and arranges for him to speak to the Hamburger Nationalklub. Every gain Hitler is able to make among members of this class has to fight hard for. He has that unfortunate "Socialist" taint that is so inimical to this crowd. 113

1930 September The number of unemployed in Germany stands at 3,000,000. 114

1930 October 4 The Leipzig Reichswehr Trial ends when the defendant officers are found guilty of high treason for joining the Nazi party. Ludin and Scheringer are cashiered from the army, and all three are given eighteen-month custodial sentences. 115

1930 October 5 In order to avoid publicity, Hitler meets with Reich Chancellor Brüning in the private home of Reichsminister Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus. Wilhelm Frick and Gregor Strasser sit in, but it is soon clear to everyone that no meeting of the minds is possible. Hitler refuses to cooperate with Brüning on any policy issues, and the meeting devolves into an hour-long monologue by Hitler, who proclaims that "First power, then politics" is his motto. Hitler's tirade is punctuated by the sounds of an SA singing troop circling the residence, serenading the participants of the "secret" meeting with SA fight songs. The Chancellor, who would later remark on the frequency with which Hitler used the word "annihilate" (vernichten) in his little speech, realizes that he can expect nothing but opposition from this quarter. 116

1930 October Alfred Rosenberg, editor-in-chief of the Völkischer Beobachter, publishes The Myth of the Twentieth Century, an unreadable racial tract that posits the existence of two opposing races: the Aryan race, which is the creator of all values and culture, and a Jewish race, which is the agent of cultural corruption. Realizing that there are some obviously controversial passages in the book, Rosenberg had given the manuscript to Hitler for his approval, but the Führer kept putting off reading it. The manuscript sat unread on Hitler's nightstand for over a year. Finally, Rosenberg begged him to approve it, as he wanted to get it published. Hitler still did not bother to read it, but handed it to Rosenberg with the comment: "I feel sure that it's all right." 117

Had Hitler been able to plow through Rosenberg's turgid prose, he may have had second thoughts about approving it for publication. The Myth of the Twentieth Century is notable for its anti-Christian views. The Catholic Church is a powerful voice in German politics and public opinion, and Rosenberg's book will stir much animosity toward the party. The pressure will become so great that Rosenberg will offer his resignation as editor-in-chief of the Völkischer Beobachter, but Hitler, to his credit, will refuse to accept it. After all, Hitler did give him leave to publish. Relations between Hitler and the Church will remain on shaky ground; Rosenberg is just one point of friction among many. 118

While Hitler stands by Rosenberg, he does not stand by the popular interpretation that Rosenberg's book represents the views of the Nazi party:

I must insist that Rosenberg's The Myth of the Twentieth Century is not to be regarded as an expression of the official doctrine of the Party. The moment the book appeared, I deliberately refrained from recognizing it as any such thing. In the first place, its title gives a completely false impression . . . a National Socialist should affirm that to the myth of the nineteenth century he opposes the faith and science of our times . . . . I have myself merely glanced cursorily at it. 119

Albert Speer:

Rosenberg sold his seven-hundred page Myth of the Twentieth Century in editions of hundreds of thousands. The public regarded the book as the standard text for party ideology, but Hitler in those tea-time conversations bluntly called it "stuff nobody can understand," written by "a narrow-minded Baltic German who thinks in horribly complicated terms." He expressed wonderment that such a book could ever have attained such sales: "A relapse into medieval notions!" I wondered if such private remarks were carried back to Rosenberg. 120

1930 October 13 At the opening session of the new Reichstag, the 107 uniformed Nazi members put on a show, responding to the roll call with an enthusiastic "Present, Heil Hitler!" Carin Göring attends to witness her husband's triumph. Toni Sender, a Socialist deputy, wrote: "This was the elite of the 'Aryan' race! — this noisy, shouting, uniformed gang. I looked at their faces carefully. The more I studied them, the more I was terrified by what I saw: so many men with the faces of criminals and degenerates. What a degradation to sit in the same place with such a gang!"

Gregor Strasser addresses the delegates: "Let us leave it at that and go along with the old system as long as democracy still exists . . . we are now for the democratic Weimar Republic as long as it suits us." However, the actions then being perpetrated on the streets of Berlin are a sign of things to come, and give the lie to Strassers democratic sentiments. Hundreds of SA men in civilian clothes are smashing the windows of Jewish shops, cafes and department stores throughout the city. 121

1930 October 14 Gregor Strasser, Feder, and Frick—The NSDAP "Socialists"—introduce a bill in the Reichstag to limit interest rates to 4%. Further, the legislation declares that "the entire property of the bank and stock exchange princes . . . must be expropriated without indemnification for the welfare of the German people as a whole . . . . The large banks must be taken over by the state without delay." Hitler, horrified, quickly instructs the Nazi deputies to withdraw the bill. When they do so, the Communists reintroduce the bill word-for-word. In this manner, the Nazis find themselves in the embarrassing situation of having to vote against their own bill. [122

1930 October 23 In a speech to the Italian Fascist Party in the Palazzo Venezia, Mussolini denies that he had ever said that fascism was not an "article of export," even though he had plainly written "La frase que il fascismo non e merce d'esportazione, non e mia" in Volume VI of his collected writings and speeches. In the event, he now says that fascism is "the order of the day in all countries," perhaps in reference to the recent electoral successes of Hitler's Nazi party. 123

1930 November 7 Goebbels first mentions twenty-nine year old Magda Quandt to his diary: "A beautiful woman by the name of Quandt is making me a new private archive." 124

1930 November 12 Ernst Röhm, just back from Bolivia, meets Goebbels for the first time. "He is very nice to me," Goebbels tells his diary, "and I like him very much. An open, straightforward soldier. A character." 125

1930 November 30 In the Bremen city elections, the NSDAP polls 25% more votes than previously, at the direct expense of all the other parties. 126

1930 November 30 At a meeting of SA leaders in Munich, Hitler announces that Ernst Röhm will become SA Chief of Staff on January 5, 1931. 127

1930 December 4 25-year-old Albert Speer, an assistant architect at the Technical University of Berlin, attends a mass meeting of five-thousand students at the Hasenheide to hear Hitler speak for the first time. 128

Speer:

What was decisive for me was a speech Hitler made to students, and which my students finally persuaded me to attend. From what I had read in the opposition press, I expected to find a screaming, gesticulating fanatic in uniform, instead of which we were confronted with a quiet man in a dark suit who addressed us in the measured tones of an academic . . . .

[Hitler appeared]—greeted with incredible enthusiasm. Receptive as I am to atmosphere, already this had its effect on me: I felt goose-skin going down my spine. And then—I had only seen Pictures of him in uniform, his hair sort of wild, but here he was, in a good blue suit, looking civil and well-cared for . . . .

[What impressed most] was first his unexpected shyness and then the restraint he displayed, both in what he said and how he said it. Later I often noticed this tendency of shyness in Hitler when he found himself in the company of highly educated people who were superior to him in knowledge. In the second half of his speech, the shyness disappeared and he spoke with urgency and conviction . . . of the need for young Germans to find pride. [Sereny From a letter by Speer, written in May 1953, to his daughter, Hilde, from Spandau. 129

1930 December 5 Der Angriff publishes excerpts from Hitler's December 4 speech:

[The First World War had] eliminated those who were the best and preserved the inferiors (Minderwertigen). Finally the war and its corollaries left Germany to a preponderance of these inferiors. For the past twelve years the policies of this country—policies of rank egotism—have been those of inferior spirits.

When nations abandon the old and traditional concepts of honor and heroism in the mistaken belief that they are old-fashioned and outdated, it leads to a slow weakening of the people's fiber . . . . Heroic ideas attract heroic elements. Cowardly ideas rally cowards . . . . Examine our times, examine what gives life and verve to our time. Then make up your minds and make your choice. You need to find a way that allows you to become part of—to absorb you into—the life and future of this nation. 130

1930 December 5 The anti-war film, All Quiet on the Western Front, is released in Germany, and premiers in Berlin. It is based on the novel by German author Erich Maria Remarque. The Nazis, who consider war among the noblest of human endeavors, are quick to protest its showing. When the film premiers in Berlin, at the Mozartsaal cinema, Goebbels leads the charge. He musters 150 SA men, who invade the theater, throwing stink bombs and letting go white mice among the patrons. In the following days, thousands of SA troops, skirmishing with the police, march through Berlin. "Over an hour [they marched]," writes Goebbels. "Six abreast. Fantastic! Berlin West has never seen anything like it." When banning all public displays and rallies fails to reduce opposition to it, the Film Board of the Interior Ministry, claiming that the movie is "a threat to Germany's honor," pull the film's certificate. In the war for the hearts and minds of the German people, Goebbels has won a culture battle. 131

1930 December 24 Even though she is running a temperature of 100°F, Carin Göring, who has been battling tuberculosis for many years, pushes herself to hostess a Christmas Eve party. From a letter to her mother:

I fell ill on Christmas Eve. I ran a fever of 39.5 degrees Celsius. The day was spent decorating the tree, organizing things, wrapping the presents. At eight o'clock Goebbels arrived to spend Christmas Eve with us. He came loaded with presents for us all. For supper we had just cold meats and fruit. Then Goebbels played the harmonium, which I had brought into the living room for the holiday, while we all sang the old Christmas songs, "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht", "O du frohliche, o du selige", etc. Thomas [Thomas von Kantzow, Carin's 19-year-old son from her first marriage] and I sang in Swedish, Goebbels and Cilly [their maid] sang in German, and we harmonized. The fir tree was lit and the presents handed round. Then I got a shivering fit and it was so violent that I fell back on the sofa and had to be carried off to bed, with a fever and a bad headache. 132

1930 December Hjalmar Schacht meets Hermann Göring for the first time, at the home of a mutual friend, Bank Director von Stauss. 133



  






Written by Walther Johann von Löpp
Copyright © 2011-2015 All Rights Reserved

Edited by Levi Bookin — Copy Editor
European History and Jewish Studies



 




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