The following months were filled with the background maneuvers of these men. Their various motives and interests are hard to determine. Hitler had appeared on the political scene as a tremendous and troublesome force, and their general intention was to integrate him, to bind him, and also to use him as a threat against the Left. This was the last attempt, springing from the deluded arrogance of a traditional leadership, by old Germany to regain a forfeited role in history.
The first victim of this group was, ironically, Brüning himself. The Chancellor, trusting that he would be backed by the President, had incurred the enmity of some of those “mighty institutions” that his opponent Hitler was trying so persistently and successfully to cultivate. He had too often refused to consider the demands of industry. Now he antagonized Hindenburg’s peers in the landowning class. They expected subsidies from the state, but Brüning wanted to make such financial aid conditional on an examination of the profitability of the estate in question. Hopelessly indebted properties were to be used for resettling some of the unemployed upon the land.
The landowners were appalled. Their fierce attacks on the proposal culminated in the charge that the Chancellor had Bolshevistic tendencies. Given the President’s age and weak judgment, one cannot say how much he was swayed by such pressure. But there is no doubt that it at least contributed to his decision to drop Brüning. Moreover, Hindenburg bore a grudge against the Chancellor for leading him to fight on the wrong front for reelection. Nor did his entourage let him forget that painful affair. Brüning’s hour struck when he lost thé confidence of Schleicher, who alleged that he spoke in the name of the army.
The beginning of Brüning’s overthrow was marked by what looked like an act of governmental vigor, but actually exposed the hidden contradictions within the leadership of the Reich, thereby hastening the death of the republic. The government banned the SA and the SS. Since the discovery of the Boxheim Papers, fresh evidence had accumulated of the real intentions of the Nazis. The party’s army was becoming more impatient and brash than ever. And Hitler kept up his pretense of legality by off and on publicly worrying how long he would be able to keep his brown storm troops in check. Testily, Ludendorff referred to Germany as territory “occupied by the SA.”
Two days before the first presidential election, Goebbels had noted in his diary: “Thorough discussion with SA and SS leadership of standards of behavior for the next few days. Everywhere a wild restiveness prevails. The word putsch haunts the scene.” For election day, Röhm had decreed a state of emergency readiness and his brown shirts encircled Berlin. While raiding several of the SA’s organizational centers, the Prussian police found detailed instructions for violent measures to be taken if Hitler won. Although there was no evidence of any plans for a large-scale uprising, the police did come upon the secret putsch cue familiar from other documents: “Grandmother dead.” Orders were also found instructing the storm troopers of the eastern territories to refuse to participate in the country’s defense if there were a Polish attack—a discovery that must have made its impression on Hindenburg in particular. Several state governments were urging a Reich ban on the SA and SS. The decision to impose the ban was now taken unanimously; it was an action long weighed and repeatedly postponed before finally being taken.
But a few days before proclamation of the ban, events took a dramatic turn. Schleicher, who had at first agreed to the ban and even boasted of being its author, changed his mind overnight, and when his shift did not meet with instant approval, began intriguing furiously against the ban. Soon he had won over Hindenburg, on grounds that the ban would make the President even more unpopular with his already disappointed followers on the Right. Schleicher himself had decided that it would be better to collaborate with the SA in dissolving all other private defense organizations, such as the Stahlhelm or the loyally Republican Reichsbanner, and to collect them all into a militia or a military sports association subordinated to the army. But his change of heart also sprang from his temperamental love of intrigue. The crude method of a ban was antipathetic to him; he liked subtler procedures. His counterproposal, significantly, was to present Hitler with a number of ultimatums demanding the demilitarization of the SA. The demands would be so impossible to meet that by rejecting them Hitler would be placed in the wrong.
With some scruples, and with anxious side glances at the “old wartime comrades” now serving in the SA and SS, Hindenburg finally signed the decree; and on April 14, in a widespread police action, Hitler’s private army was broken up, its headquarters, shelters, schools and depots occupied. This action was the most energetic blow that the government had struck against Nazism since November, 1923. The official statement at last showed a certain mettle on the part of the republic: “It is exclusively the concern of the State to maintain an organized force. As soon as such a force is organized by private parties and the State tolerates this, a danger to law and order already exists…. Undoubtedly, in a constitutional state power may be organized by the constitutional organs of the State itself. Any private organized force therefore cannot by its very nature be a legal institution…. In the interests of its own preservation, the State must order such forces dissolved.”
Backed by the belligerence and strength of his 400,000 men, Röhm at first seemed ready for a trial of strength. But Hitler would not hear of it. Instead, without more ado, he incorporated the SA into the party organization and in this way kept its organization intact. Here was another example of a Fascist movement abandoning the field without a fight at the first show of resistance by the government. Similarly, in 1920 Gabriele d’Annunzio had evacuated the city of Fiume in response to a single cannon shot. Once more Hitler declared himself on the side of legality, and called for strict observance of the ban. He did this not out of fear but because any other measure would have nullified the “Fascist constellation,” the alliance between conservative rule and a revolutionary-popular movement.
Hitler’s compliance may have come easily to him since by that time he had received information—from Schleicher or people close to Schleicher—about friction within the administration. On the whole he showed an air of confidence. On the eve of the day that was to begin the dismemberment of the Hitler movement, Goebbels noted a conversation with Hitler in the Hotel Kaiserhof: “We discussed personnel questions for the period of taking power just as if we were already the government. I think no movement in the opposition has ever been so sure of its success as ours!”
The very next day a strikingly frosty letter from Hindenburg to Minister of Defense Groener gave the signal for a monumental intrigue. A passionate campaign in the rightist newspapers, joined by a choir of prominent voices of the nationalist camp, went along with it. The Crown Prince thought it “incomprehensible” that the Defense Minister of all persons should help to “shatter the marvelous human material that has been brought together in the SA and SS and is receiving valuable training there.” Schleicher advised his Minister, who still regarded him as his “adopted son,” to resign, and either circulated spiteful slanders against Groener or did nothing to stem such slanders. Word went round that Groener was ill, or that he was a pacifist, or that he had brought the army into disrepute when his second wife gave birth prematurely. Schleicher wittily told President Hindenburg that in the army the baby was called “Nurmi,” after the Finnish runner famous for his speed in the final spurt.