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One of the many Volkish groups that existed in 1919 was the German Workers’ Party headed by the railway mechanic Anton Drexel and the right-wing journalist Karl Harrer. The party was based in Bavaria where there were pitted battles between right-wing nationalist groups and the radical left-wing groups sympathetic to Communist ideas. The German Workers’ Party was founded January 9, 1919—it was a formal organization of the earlier Workers’ Study Circle that had emerged in the immediate aftermath of German defeat in 1918. Adolf Hitler, a thirty year old World War I veteran was working as an agent for the army in 1919 and was assigned to see what was going on in various political groups of Munich. One of his tasks was to check out the German Workers’ Party. By September 1919 Hitler became a member of the Party. See also "Program of the German Workers' Party." 1920: The German Workers’ Party Changed Name
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Image: The newspaper entitled Völkischer Beobachter. |
In February 1920, the German Workers’ Party (DAP) changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP or Nazi), emphasizing the need to combine both socialist and nationalist ideals for widespread popular appeal. Hitler who had become a dominant figure in the Nazi party by 1920 was largely responsible for expanding party membership in the Munich area; by 1921 Nazi branches were forming outside the Munich area. Helping to disseminate the party ideals was the newspaper entitled Völkischer Beobachter; in 1921-2 it came out twice a week; and after February 1923 it appeared daily. By August 1921 Hitler emerged as the key figure in the party: he rejected the traditional way of running the party by committees and insisted that the party be organized and run by a dominant leader.
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Photo: SA marching in the street. |
Also during this period the party started the Gymnastic and Sports Section to prevent disruption in Nazi Party meetings and create disruption in the meetings of other parties; in October 1921 this section was renamed the Storm Troopers (SA), and primarily drew its membership from ex-soldiers and ex-Freikorps (Free Corps, paramilitary groups from the right).
A political correspondent of the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten offered a graphic description of the SA breaking up a meeting of the Bavarian League on September 14, 1921:
The meeting, which was well attended, came to a premature end owing to an attack systematically planned by the National Socialists. National Socialist youths had early on taken the seats near the speakers’ platform, and numerous National Socialists were distributed as well throughout the hall. When Hitler, the leader of the National Socialists, appeared in the hall, he was greeted by his followers with demonstrative applause. His arrival gave the cue for the violence that followed. The former editor of the Völkischer Beobachter, Esser, climbed on a chair and declared that Bavaria owed the situation it was in to the Jews. Ballerstedt had always avoided the Jewish question. The National Socialists therefore saw themselves 'forced to stop Ballerstedt from speaking, and let Hitler speak instead. Hitler’s followers, bent on making it a National Socialist meeting, thereupon occupied the platform. But a large section of the meeting protested and demanded that Ballerstedt should speak. He had pushed his way through to the platform, but could not begin because the National Socialists were all the time shouting ‘Hitler!’ The uproar grew even worse when someone tried to prevent the fight which was feared by switching off the electricity. When the lights came on again, Ballerstedt declared that anybody who tried to disturb the meeting would be charged with disturbing the peace. After this the young people on the platform, many of them hardly in their teens, surrounded him, beat him up and pushed him down the platform steps. Ballerstedt received a head injury which bled badly. As the audience were naturally growing more and more excited, three members of the state police appeared in the hall. A [plain clothes] detective declared the meeting dissolved. A fairly strong group of state police then cleared the hall; this operation went smoothly without further incident after an announcement that the charge for admission would be refunded. As quoted in J. Noakes and G. Pridham, eds., Nazism: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 [Schoken Books: New York, 1983] Vol.I, pp. 24-25. |
 |
Photo: Mussolini's 'March on Rome' in October 1922. |
Mussolini’s ‘March on Rome’ in October 1922 had a tremendous impact on Hitler and his style of leadership of the Nazi Party. In the early years membership in the party, Hitler had not thought of himself as a cult like figure. However, as his biographer Ian Kershaw has argued, "Mussolini’s ‘March on Rome’ inspired Hitler to reshape his own image as a leader—he came to view himself as a special kind of leader. His followers were also beginning to see him in this light and the Völkischer Beobachter carried articles that alluded to the leader whom Germany awaited."
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Photo: Julius Streicher, headed the right-wing party in northern Bavaria known as the DSP, pledged his allegiance to Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP. |
Also during the autumn of 1922, Julius Streicher, who headed a right-wing party in northern Bavaria known as the DSP, pledged his allegiance to Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP. This was an important addition to the Nazi Party that was continuing to grow in membership.
The crisis of 1923 prompted the Nazis under Hitler’s leadership to take drastic action. In January, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr in order to demand payment of the reparations. The Weimar government established a policy of passive resistance to the foreign occupation and mobilizing right-wing paramilitary groups into a force known as the Black Reichswehr, including members of the SA. Also part of this force were reinstituted units of the Freikorps (Free Corps, paramilitary groups from the right) that had been disbanded in 1920.
In addition to the uncertain political situation, hyperinflation created widespread popular discontent and criticism of the Weimar government.
 |
Photo: Gustav
Ritter von Kahr, head of the government and granted emergency powers.
Courtesy of Photographie |
Right-wing groups railed that the Weimar government was not doing enough to protect the German state. These groups were particularly fearful that left-wing governments would weaken Germany in its efforts to protect the homeland from foreign occupation. With the recent example of Mussolini’s ‘March on Rome,’ the Nazis and other right-wing organizations began talking about the need to organize a March on Berlin. In Bavaria right-wing groups managed to place Gustav Ritter von Kahr at the head of the government with emergency powers. Shoring up the Kahr government was General Otto von Lossow, the general in command of the local army garrison.
To some extent the government in Berlin responded to the situation. Gustav Stresemann replaced Cuno as head of the government and took action to remove the left-wing governments that had emerged in Saxony and Thuringia. Kahr and his administration were willing to wait to see what would happen and temporarily put aside plans for a march on Berlin.
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Photo: Nazi party stages the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. |
Hitler was not so patient. He felt it was imperative to act immediately before the government reestablished order. Early November 1923 was a propitious time for such action. In addition to the political uncertainty, hyperinflation reached its pinnacle, creating social dislocation and fear.
The historian, Paul Bookbinder, aptly describes the economic scene:
Thus in 1923, Germany entered a state of hyperinflation which would so scar the German psyche that the mere mention of inflation in Germany more than seventy years later can topple ministers and raise public alarm. By November 1923, the German mark, which had traded at 4.2 to the American dollar in July 1914, was trading at 4.2 trillion marks to the American dollar, although it was not really trading at all because no one wanted it. At this point, there were no longer any real winners in the inflation. Other nations refused to accept German marks. Inflation far exceeded the unions' capacity to renegotiate contracts. Even farmers with food to sell found the normally inelastic demand for their products shrinking. Malnourished elements of the population had no assets to trade for food and no currency that anyone would accept. All property invested at fixed money values such as government bonds, mortgage bonds and savings bank deposits became worthless. . . . In the worst days of the height of the inflation, workers who could still manage if demanded that they be paid twice a day and given an hour off after each payment so that they could spend the money before it further depreciated. Paul Bookbinder,Weimar Germany (Manchester University Press: Manchester,1996), p. 168 |
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Photo: Hitler and crowd at Beer Hall Putsch. |
On the night of November 8, 1923, Hitler and Goring, along with about sixty members of the SA, stormed a crowd in a large beer cellar in Munich and arrested three Bavarian administrators—Gustav Ritter von Kahr, Otto von Lossow, and Colonel Hans Ritter von Seisser. The administrators were coerced into signing a statement that handed the government over to Hitler. General Erich Ludendorff, who was sympathetic to a right-wing coup, arrived at the scene. Although he had not known the specific plans for November 8th, he supported Hitler’s action. Initially, it appeared that the coup had succeeded.
However,the next morning von Lossow repudiated his signing of the statement. General von Seeckt, Commander in Chief of the Reichswehr, pressured Lossow to oppose the national revolution. Lossow’s troops and the police fired on the Nazis as they marched through Munich to take over the government buildings. In the fray, eighteen Nazis were killed; Hitler fled from the scene and was eventually captured; Ludendorff walked away from the bullets and was not wounded.
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Photo: (left to right)
Kriebel, Ludendorff, Hitler, and Brückner of the Beer
Hall Putsch in 1923. Source: Bundesarchiv |
The trial of Hitler and Ludendorff took place in February-March 1924. Although Hitler initially considered the putsch a disaster, the trial allowed him to spread antidemocratic propaganda. The judges largely sympathetic to right-wing causes gave Hitler a sentence of five years with the possibility of parole after six months. Ludendorff was acquitted.
See also Hitler and his party members provided an annual
re-enactment of Beerhall Putsch march, November 1938 and captured the
re-enactment
in a propaganda film.
 |
Photo: Aerial view of Landsberg
Prison where Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1924. From |
As a result of the Beer Hall Putsch, the Nazi Party was banned. Many observers of the time believed that the abortive coup had ended Hitler’s political career and that the Nazi Party would not reappear on the political scene. Hitler served his sentence in Landsberg Prison in April 1924. Originally, Hitler believed he would be out in six months; as it turns out he was not released until December 20, 1924 after nine months incarceration.
Hitler’s imprisonment was not a harsh experience; in fact, he had relatively comfortable quarters and an opportunity to keep in touch with his following.
Hitler’s biographer Ian Kershaw describes the conditions of imprisonment:
Hitler returned to Landsberg [after his trial] to begin his light sentence in conditions more akin to those of a hotel than a penitentiary. The windows of his large, comfortably furnished room on the first floor afforded an expansive view over the attractive countryside. Dressed in lederhosen, he could relax with a newspaper in an easy wickerchair, his back to a laurel wreath provided by admirers, or sit at a large desk sifting through the mounds of correspondence he received. He was treated with great respect by his jailers, some of whom secretly greeted him with ‘Heil Hitler’, and accorded every possible privilege. Gifts, flowers, letters of support, encominiums or parise, all poured in. He received more visitors than he could cope with—over 500 of them before he eventually felt compelled to restrict access. Around forty fellow prisoners, some of them volunteer internees, able to enjoy almost all the comforts of normal daily life, fawned on him. He read of the demonstration on 23 April, to celebrate his thirty-fifth birthday three days earlier, of 3,000 National Socialists, former front soldiers, and supporters of the Volkish movement in the Burgerbraukeller ‘in honour of the man who had the present flame of liberation and the Volkish consciousness in the German people’. Under the impact of the star-status that the trial had brought him, and the Fuhrer cult that his supporters had begun to form around him, he began to reflect on his political ideas, his ‘mission’, his’restart’ in politics once his short sentence was over, and pondered the lessons to be learned from the putsch. (Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris [WW. Norton and Company; New York, 1999] pp. 215-216.) |
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Image: Cover of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. |
During these months of incarceration, Hitler found the time to dictate his autobiography that came to be known as Mein Kampf. Here, he laid out his plans for the Nazi Party program.
One thing that Hitler realized from the abortive coup was that in the future he must not go against the military forces. Rather he must work within the existing system relying on propaganda and mobilization of the masses. In contrast, Ernst Rohm, a commanding force in the SA who had taken part in the Beer Hall Putsch, continued to believe that the use of paramilitary force was the most effective strategy for staging a ‘national revolution’.
Another lesson that Hitler drew from the failed putsch was that he must rely on his own leadership and not rely on the cooperation of paramilitary forces to gain his objective. Hitler now saw himself as the leader of a new Germany. “He was the predestined Leader himself.” In Mein Kampf Hitler clarified what attributes were needed in a great leader—attributes that he had begun to see in himself:
The combination of theoretician, organizer, and leader in one person is the rarest thing that can be found on this earth; this combination makes the great man. |
See also a cartoon about Hitler, called "April 1st," that was published on April 1, 1924 while Hitler was in the Landsberg Prison. It presents Hitler's triumphant entry through the Brandenburg Gate as a silly April Fool's idea. However, on 30 January 1933, the event occurred.
Soon after Hitler’s release from Landsberg in December 1924, Hitler refounded the Nazi Party vowing to have the party work within the Constitution. Critical in the months after his release was his asserting himself as the Leader since there had been a number of challenges to his leadership while he was in prison.
Crucial to the reestablishment of the party was the creation of a young cadre of Nazis absolutely loyal to Hitler. While there was a slow growth of membership in these years (1925-8), a strong party organization of dedicated followers helped to create the infrastructure of the party, necessary for its future growth. The party organization existed in the gau (districts) throughout Germany which corresponded to the electoral districuts; local branches of the party existed within each gau.
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Poster: Propaganda poster enticing young men to join the SS (Schutstaffel, or Defense Squadron). |
The cadre of young members were supportive of Hitler’s ideas of using propaganda and mobilization rather than coups to gain power. Along with a growing number of SA (Sturmabteilung, Storm Troopers) who showed their devotion Hitler, Hitler developed personal body guard known as the SS (Schutstaffel, or Defense Squadron).
Strengthening the organization of the Party and establishing the strong leadership (Fuhrerprinzip) in the mid 1920s prepared the Nazi Party to take advantage of economic and political crises that emerged in the late 1920s.
Although the Weimar government had stabilized the economy in 1924 with loans from the United States and reduced reparations payments, the image of a prospering and vital Republic was superficial. Much of the revival depended on outside sources, especially loans from the United States, a situation that made Germany vulnerable to the economic forces outside Germany. Moreover in 1927-8, the shift to big business and organized labor that characterized economic developments had an adverse effect on workers in agriculture, artisans, and small retailers. Particularly pronounced discontent broke out among the lower middle classes in Northwest Germany during 1927-8, incensed by increased salaries for civil servants.
The Nazi Party took advantage of this discontent rallying support among artisans and peasants. During these years the Nazi Party did not focus as much on gaining support among workers as it had in the early 1920s. Between October 1928 and September 1929 the membership of the party went from 100,000 to 150,000.
 |
Photo: Masses of people after receiving news of the US Stock Market Crash of 1929. |
The Stock Market Crash on Wall Street in October 1929 magnified the economic problems for Germans since the Weimar Republic had depended on American loans for its recovery in 1924.
The following statistics of unemployment and bankruptcies in Germany between 1928 and 1932 suggest the economic plight of these years:
Unemployment |
Bankruptcies |
|||
Year |
Number |
Year |
Number |
|
1928 |
1,862,000 |
1928 | 10,595 |
|
1929 |
2,850,000 |
1929 | 13,180 |
|
1930 |
3,217,000 |
1930 |
15,486 |
|
1931 |
4,886,000 |
1931 |
19,254 |
|
1932 |
6,042,000 |
1932 |
14,138 |
|
Figures culled from Joachim Remak, ed., The Nazi Years, p. 24. |
||||
The historian, Ian Kershaw, suggests what these statistics meant in terms of human suffering for the German people.
Between 1930 and 1932 the Nazis capitalized on the economic discontent and sought to appeal to the widest possible base—artisans, peasants, the middle classes and the workers. Joseph Goebbels who took charge of the propaganda wing in March 1930 developed a sophisticated propaganda machine using the latest techniques of coordinated press campaigns, massive rallies during election campaigns, and film shows. The mass rallies had a particular impact on youth. Adding to the strength of the party was the increased numbers in the SS under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler. |
Noakes and Pridham summarize the social and geographical bases of support for Nazism in the 1928-33 period. It is especially important to note the growing number of middle and lower middle class supporters for Nazism as these groups grew increasingly disappointed with the failure of the Weimar Republic to stabilize conditions.
Between 1928 and 1930 the Nazi Party had concentrated largely on trying to win over sections of the middle class, notably the peasantry, the artisans, and the small retailers. After 1930, while still continuing much of their propaganda for these groups, they revived their pre-1928 efforts to win over the workers. In January 1931, for example, they established a Factory Cell Organization (NSBO) in an attempt to challenge the Left in their factory strongholds. This organization, however, had little success. Apart from white collar workers, the majority of workers remained loyal to the Social Democrats and Communists and, if under the pressure of unemployment they became more extreme, they tended to move to the Communists rather than the Nazis. Those blue collar workers who did support the Nazis tended to fall into one or more of the following categories: young, unorganized, employed in small workshops, in small towns or semi-rural areas, or in municipal or state enterprises e.g. gas works, railways. The middle classes proved much more vulnerable. They felt their economic position and their social status threatened by the Left, and the Social Democrats often appeared a more immediate threat than the Communists. [...] Electoral statistics confirm that while the Party drew support from all classes the middle class was significantly over-represented. They also show the significance both of religion and of the rural/urban division. The main strength of Nazism lay in the Protestant and predominantly rural areas of the north German plain stretching from East Prussia to Schleswig-Holstein. Eight out of the ten districts whith the largest Nazi vote in July 1932 are in this area; the exceptions of Liegnitz (Silesia) and Chemnitz-Zwickau. Nazism was weakest in the big cities (e.g. Berlin and Leipzig) and in the industrial areas generally, particularly in predominantly Catholic ones (e.g. Dusseldorf East and West). In the cities it tended to draw most support from upper middle class districts. It was also weakest in overwhelmingly Catholic rural areas (e.g. Koblenz-Trier). The religious factor is most evident in Bavaria, where the north (Franconia) contained many Protestants who tended to vote Nazi, while in the overwhelmingly Catholic south (Upper and Lower Bavaria) the Nazi vote was the lowest in Germany although the Party had originated and was still based there. Noakes and Pridham, I, pp. 81-82. |
Between 1930 and 1933 three chancellors—Bruning, von Papen, and Schleicher—failed to solve the deteriorating economic situation. To a considerable extent the Weimar constitution had been suspended to meet the crises: President von Hindenburg granted each of the chancellors emergency powers.
Meanwhile, the Nazi Party benefited as the traditional parties of the Weimar Republic lost support. The chart below graphically demonstrates the electoral strength of the Nazi Party:
 |
The political parties of the republic represented many different shades of opinion, ranging from the far right nationalists, to the liberal supporters of the Weimar Republic, to the leftist extremists supportive of the Bolshevik Revolution. |
Chart: Party representation in the Reichstag 1920-33. From "Weimar Germany: Democracy on Trial" p. 97. |
|
The Nazi Party became the official party of the German state when Hitler became Chancellor on January 30, 1933. The party had a monopoly of control of the state and greatly enhanced its membership to accommodate its new functions.
The increased membership and tasks of the party had an impact on both ordinary party members as well as party functionaries. Michael Kater notes:
[B]y the end of 1934 the party apparatus increased its strength from a few hundred full-time workers to nearly three quarters of a million dedicated zealots (full-time and part-time). Less than five years later—shortly before the war—the party included 1.7 million officers, counting everybody from the regionally organized core leadership cadres to the various ancillary and adjunct organizations. Michael Kater, The Nazi Party, p. 190. |
Much of the growth of the party was due to the addition of officers at the grassroots level—Blockleiter and Zellenleiter. By January 1939 there were 463,048 block and 89,378 cell leaders.
Following Hitler’s assumption of power the organization of the party became much tighter than it had been in the “time of struggle.” The fuhrerprincip became the overriding principle of organization—the head of the party delegated authority to every level in the party hierarchy and the hierarchal structure was strictly maintained.
The gauleiters reported to Hitler and commanded the Kreisleiters. The Kreisleiters commanded the Ortsgruppenleiters; and the Ortsgruppenleiters commanded the Blockleitersand Zellenleiters.
The Law for the Unification of Party and State (December 1933) laid the basis for Nazi Party officials to infiltrate all levels of the state bureaucracy. This process of infiltration was known as gleichshaltung (coordination). As the coordination progressed, party functionaries became omnipresent in the life of Germans during the Nazi era. The local leaders (block and cell leaders) checked on the attendance of youth in the Hitler Youth meetings, monitored party activities of adults in their area, made sure that heads of households made contributions to the party, and constantly checked to see that residents were remaining loyal to the party and its ideals.
Once the Nazi Party was in power and had consolidated its authority over the state, an apparatus of terroristic laws were increasingly refined to assure that Germans were compliant with the Nazi regime. Three major institutions constituted the apparatus of terror: The Gestapo (Geheime Statspolizei; Secret State Police); the SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squad); and the SD (Sicherheitsdienst; Security Servicie).
Hermann Goring was the founder of the Gestapo. When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, Goring held the position of Minister without Portfolio in the Cabinet. He was also the Minister of the Interior in Prussia, a position that put him in charge of the Prussian Police. In this capacity he separated out Department 1A of the Prussian Police and made it a separate force. It was 1A that became the nucleus of the Gestapo. The Gestapo sought to suppress all anti-Nazi thought and to eliminate all opposition to Hitler. In 1934, when Goring became Minister of Aviation, the Gestapo began to expand as an arm of the SS.
The SS began as Hitler’s personal bodyguard during the “time of struggle.” After 1929, Heinrich Himmler took leadership of the SS and developed the organization into an elite corps. SS members were expected to be model Aryans. Members were to swear absolute obedience to Hitler. Members of the aristocracy and the professions were drawn into the SS.
After the Nazis came into power in 1933, the SS greatly expanded. By 1933, it had 52,000 members. In April 1934, Himmler came to Berlin to take charge of the Gestapo. At this point Himmler combined two positions: head of the SS and head of the Gestapo.
Two months later, in June 1934, the SA was greatly weakened in a purge known as the ‘Night of Long Knives.’ The SA leader, Ernst Rohm, was murdered along with other leaders of the SA. After the purge, the SS became independent of the SA and absorbed the Gestapo.
By the late 1930s, the SS assumed control over all police forces in the Reich. The twelve departments of the SS duplicated the twelve departments of the state. One after another of the state agencies became absorbed by the SS. The SS conducted arbitrary arrests and imprisonment of suspects. It also administered the system of concentration camps. When the war broke out in 1939, the SS took control of the resettlement of populations in areas absorbed by the Reich.
The third organization that constituted the apparatus of terror in the Nazi era was the SD. Working as an arm of the SS, the SD conducted intelligence and counterintelligence. Over 100,000 informers pried into all aspects of Germans’ private lives. Reinhard Heydrich was in charge of the SD. By the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Heydrich presided over all security services for the state in the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; Main Office for the Security of the Reich).
Insert Chart of the Fuhrer here.
Recruiting competent functionaries during the war years became increasingly difficult as the war progressed. Hitler Youth were attracted to service in the armed forces rather than the party ranks. Moreover, the experienced and competent old-timers joined the armed forces.
Generally speaking, the Nazi Party officials did not like military service and did everything in their power to put off or prevent the need to serve in the armed forces. Those who did serve were often able to get short assignments.
When party officials did report for service, they were often given positions of relative comfort. They often managed to get the plush administrative posts in the newly acquired territories.
As more and more functionaries were assigned to occupied areas, the numbers of talented and dedicated party functionaries decreased at home. By 1942, the party was unable to find sufficient numbers to fill vacancies. Increasingly, the party needed to select individuals who were efficient bureaucrats rather than those with dedication and zeal for the party ideals.
While the overall competence of party functionaries declined during the war years, the tasks assigned to functionaries were more complicated than they had been during peacetime. The party leaders began thinking of themselves as omnipotent:
The party leaders’ heightened consciousness of omnipotence during the war generated further and crasser acts of graft, corruption, and licentiousness, all in accordance with the laws that govern patterns of autocratic behavior. Although the party’s remuneration to its full-time officers continued to be more than sufficient. . . . These temptations were difficult to resist. Petty graft and embezzlement, involving local Party funds, valuable raw materials collected for recycling, and stocks of groceries and alcohol, became general at the lower level of the hierarchy. The ration-card system was circumvented wherever possible; black market dealings were a popular if somewhat risky supplement. By 1940 even kreisleiters, shielded by their more experienced superiors, were helping themselves to monies out of illegitimate “special accounts” that Reich Party Treasurer Schwarz found hard to trace. Michael Kater, The Nazi Party, p. 225. |
The general public came to believe that the Nazi functionaries were leading extravagant lives. They identified the higher echelons of the part with fancy automobiles, large homes, art collections and lavish parties. In 1943, the SD feared that the lifestyles of the party hierarchy might lead to “expressions of open revolt.” Michael Kater, The Nazi Party, p. 225, n. 27.
The historian, Joseph Persico, offers insights into the lifestyle of Hans Frank, appointed Governor General of Poland when World War II broke out in 1939. A part of western Poland settled by Germans was annexed to the Reich; the Soviet Union took control of eastern Poland. Frank was placed in charge of the middle area of Poland, representing about forty percent of the original state of Poland. As soon as Frank learned of his post in Poland, he reportedly raced home to announce to his wife, Brigitte, that she was to be the “queen of Poland.” Frank’s excitement knew no bounds when he arrived at his Polish residence:
At his first sight of Wawel Castle, the ancient seat of Polish kings, Frank behaved like a child given a huge toy. His open touring car roared through the gateway and into the courtyard of a structure dating from the tenth century. Resplendent in a personally designed uniform with flaring breeches and black boots, he bounded up the steps to the main entrance, trailed by adjutants. He entered the throne room, its walls cloaked with medieval tapestries depicting Noah’s ark. Here, he decided, he would hold official receptions. Nearby he found an only slightly smaller room, its twenty-foot walls sheathed in tool red leather. This would be his private office. In another wing he came upon the royal bedchamber, the bed raised up on a platform approached by marble steps. Over the bed a canopy of gilded brocade hung suspended on four marble pillars. He spied a jewel-like chapel off the bedroom. This would please Brigitte, who had never abandoned their Catholic faith as Frank had done in order to advance his career under atheistic Nazism. [It became known to the Nazi hierarchy that Frank’s wife was running a fur smuggling operation in addition to leading a sumptuous lifestyle.] Joseph Persico, Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial, p. 21. |
Hitler seems to have tolerated the graft and corruption since he believed this tied the functionaries closer to him and the existing regime. On several occasions, Hitler put forth orders prohibiting functionaries from sumptuous living and profiteering. However, most of these orders were inadequately enforced or withdrawn.
In the case of Hans Frank, Hitler supported Himmler in confronting Frank about his corruption and his wife’s smuggling. Himmler did not depose Frank. Rather, he forced Frank to agree to abide by SS directives and carry out decrees against the Jews.
In the concluding months of the Nazi regime in late 1944 and 1945, party functionaries took out their frustrations on the civilian population. They intruded on daily life of citizens more than previously. They also pressed for all able-bodied civilians to serve in the emergency paramilitary units of the Volkssturm (Peoples’ Army).
Also, in the concluding months of the war, party functionaries sought to relieve themselves of responsibility for the deeds of the Nazi regime. Some sought to escape Germany. Others went into hiding, and a few committed suicide. Whatever the tactic, it was rare to find a functionary who would take personal responsibility for his/her role in the Nazi regime.
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