feeble. He would be the leader, not they. From
1925 to 1928 there were two important devel-
opments: a steady but slow growth of member-
ship of the Nazi Party and continuing bitter
internal disputes among the leaders, notably
Joseph Goebbels, Julius Streicher and the Strasser
brothers, Gregor and Otto. Hitler was handi-
capped by a ban on his making public speeches
until May 1928, and he did not dare defy it for
fear of being deported from Germany as an
Austrian citizen. He nevertheless sought to create
a tight, national Nazi organisation, insisting on
absolute obedience to himself. Right up to the
final triumph of 30 January 1933, when he
became chancellor, there was a real threat of
defections from the Nazi Party he led.
In 1925 Hitler judged that the established
government was too strong to be seized by force.
He changed his tactics. He would follow the
legal, constitutional road by entering Reichstag
elections to gain a majority, and only then estab-
lish his dictatorship. He never showed anything
but contempt for the Reichstag and, though
leader of the party, would never himself take part
in its proceedings. He advised his followers ‘to
hold their nose’ when in the Reichstag. During
the period from 1925 to 1928 he built up his
party as a virulent propaganda machine, insisted
that he alone should lead it, without requiring the
advice of leading party personalities, for it was an
essential element of his plans to cultivate the cult
of the Führer or Leader. The party membership
reached 97,000 in 1929. Was the economic crisis
then not the real cause of this sudden success?
The economic crisis which overtook the world is
usually dated from the time of the Wall Street
Crash in 1929. But this is misleading. By the
winter of 1927–8 distress was already felt in
Germany among the small agricultural farmers
and workers in north-west Germany and by arti-
sans and small shopkeepers especially. The Nazi
party made considerable headway in rural districts
in local and state elections in 1929 at the expense
of the traditional Conservative and Nationalist
Parties.
In that same year with the economic crisis deep-
ening, the conservative Nationalist, Hugenberg,
hoped to gain power by forming a broad alliance of
the right and using Hitler to win the support of
those masses which the conservatives had failed to
attract. A vicious campaign was launched against
the Young reparations plan of 1929. The repara-
tions and the politicians of Weimar were blamed
for Germany’s economic ills. The economic and
Nationalist assault proved explosive. But the
German electorate’s reaction in the Reichstag elec-
tion of September 1930 was not what Hugenberg
expected: the Nationalists lost heavily and the
Nazis made their first breakthrough at the level of
national elections, winning 107 seats to become
the second-largest party after the Socialists. In a lit-
tle more than two years their electoral support had
increased from 810,000 to 6.5 million.The period from 1930 to the end of January
1933 was in many ways the most testing for
Hitler. Industrialists, however, began to hedge
their bets and substantial financial contributions
began flowing into Nazi funds. The propaganda
campaign against Weimar became ever more
vicious. Support among the industrial workers in
the big cities could not be won over; the Catholic
south remained largely immune too. Although
originating in Bavaria, the Nazis gained the great-
est following in rural northern Germany. The
white-collar workers, the rural voters and ele-
ments of what is rather unsatisfactorily labelled
the middle class, especially those threatened by
Brüning’s financial measures with a drop in their
standard of living, were the new Nazi voters. The
Nazis and Nationalists did all in their power to
discredit Weimar democracy. Papen, the new
chancellor in June 1932, hoped to gain Hitler’s
sympathetic support by lifting the ban on the
SA (Sturm Abteilung, or storm troopers) and, in
July, by illegally ousting the socialist government
of Prussia.
Papen’s Cabinet of ‘Barons’, as it became
known from the titled nonentities of which it was
composed, enjoyed no support in the Reichstag.
The effect of the two elections that Papen induced
Hindenburg to call in July and November 1932 in
an unsuccessful attempt to secure some support in
the country and parliament were the coffin nails of
democracy, for those parties that were determined
to destroy the Weimar Republic between them