Hitler himself undoubtedly saw through this strategy from the start. His demand for new elections was intended as a direct counterstroke. By winning an unprecedented electoral triumph he wanted to break out of the box Papen had nailed together and with the sanction of the vote behind him throw off the role of puppet Chancellor. He certainly did not mean to let cheap words of honor stand in his way. Thus the “Cabinet of National Concentration” was already a system of crisscrossing mental reservations even before Hindenburg sent it out into the world with the words: “And now, gentlemen, forward with God!”
The Wilhelmstrasse had meanwhile filled with a silent crowd, assembled there by Goebbels. “Torn between doubt, hope, happiness and discouragement,” Hitler’s entourage waited in the Hotel Kaiserhof, across the square. Through binoculars Ernst Röhm nervously watched the entrance to the chancellery. Göring emerged first and called out the news to the people waiting. Immediately afterward, Hitler’s car came out of the driveway. Standing, Hitler received the plaudits of the crowd. When he joined his followers in the Kaiserhof a few minutes later, he had tears in his eyes, according to one of those present. Sometime before he had publicly vowed that once he possessed power he would never let it be taken from him. On the very afternoon of this January 30 he took a first step to guarantee this matter. Calling an immediate cabinet meeting, he had the cabinet formally decide—against the now impotent objections of Hugenberg—on the dissolution of the Reichstag and new elections. It was Papen himself who cleverly overcame Hindenburg’s last scruples by describing Hugenberg’s obstructionism as “a matter of party tactics,” which the President abhorred.
That evening the Nazis celebrated with a tremendous torchlight parade. All restrictions within the government quarter were lifted; spectators crowded the sidewalks, excited and noisy. “Tonight Berlin is in a really festive mood.”56 And among the spectators, keeping order and intervening in self-important delight, was the huge corps of police deputies. From seven in the evening until after midnight, 25,000 uniformed Hitler followers, together with Stahlhelm units, marched through the Brandenburg Gate and past the chancellery. In one of the illuminated windows the nervous, prancing figure of Hitler could be seen. From time to time the upper part of his body, with raised arm, abruptly leaned forward over the railing. Beside him were Göring, Goebbels, and Hess. A few windows farther along the façade Hindenburg looked out reflectively at the marching formations, abstractedly pounding his cane in time to the music of the bands. Despite the protests of those in charge, Goebbels had insisted that the Reich radio stations broadcast an account of the demonstration. Only the Munich station stuck to its refusal, as Hitler irritably noted. It was past midnight before the last columns had marched through the government quarter. And as Goebbels dismissed the waiting crowd with a shout of Heil for Hindenburg and Hitler, “this night of the great miracle ended… in an insensate tumult of enthusiasm.”
The so-called Seizure of Power by the Nazis was soon being hailed as “miracle” and a “fairytale.” The regime’s propaganda specialists deliberately chose phrases from the realm of magic to give the event the aura of a supernatural consecration. They could count on striking an echoing chord, because the event itself undeniably had something peculiarly displaced, something scarcely credible about it. On the political plane Hitler had made the unexpected step from a crisis that had nearly destroyed the party into the President’s office; and on the individual plane he had taken the leap from dreary beginnings, from lethargy and a tramp’s existence, to power. In truth: “Elements of fairy tales are recognizable in it, though badly botched.”57
The notion of a miracle, invented by Goebbels, has lived on to the present day. It colors all those analyses that postulate a demonic theory of Hitler, that try to view his success as the result of background intrigues by nameless powers, or make much of Papen and his machinations. The central thought, in all these theories, is that the seizure of power was a historical accident.
Undoubtedly Hitler’s way could have been blocked up to the very last moment. These opportunities were lost by chance, frivolity, and bad luck. Nevertheless, history was not diverted from its rightful course. A host of powerful trends, partly historical, partly political in nature, pointed toward what happened on January 30. The real miracle would have been a decision to resist Nazism. From the time Brüning was dismissed, all that stood between the republic and Hitler were the whims of a senescent President, Schleicher’s faculty for conniving, and the blinded simple-mindedness of Franz von Papen. Thus the background machinations, the schemings of various interest groups, and the high-level intrigues are relatively unimportant. All these influenced the circumstances in which the republic went aground but did not bring about the shipwreck itself.
This is by no means to assert that Hitler would have prevailed over more resolute opponents. Seldom in modern political history has a change of such enormous impact been more strongly determined by personal factors, by the caprices, prejudices, and emotions of a tiny minority. And seldom have the institutions of a state been so invisible at the moment of decision. Hitler in power is scarcely conceivable without the camarilla around the President. And however short a step separated him from power after the summer of 1932, that step was still beyond his own strength. His adversaries were the ones to make it possible: they had shorn the parties and the Reichstag of political power; they set up the series of election campaigns; they created the precedent of undermining the Constitution. Whenever one of them decided to resist the Nazis, another inevitably stood up to frustrate him. On the whole, the forces of the other side were up to the last greater than Hitler’s own. But since they turned against one another, they balanced one another out. It was not hard to see that Nazism was the enemy of alclass="underline" the bourgeois, the Communists and Marxists, the Jews, the republicans. But these groups wert all so blind and weak that very few came to the natural conclusion: they must unite against their common foe.