Such model behavior and political change of heart were the conditions for parole, the court having held out some prospect for this after Hitler had served a mere six months of his five-year-sentence. We may well wonder how the Nazi leader who had already violated one parole, had escaped another prosecution by the intercession of a government minister, had for years instigated riots and meeting-hall rows, who had deposed the national government, arrested cabinet ministers and been responsible for killings, could possibly be granted so early a release. And in fact a complaint from the office of the state prosecutor had for the time being delayed the court’s action. But the state authority was inclined to pardon the lawbreaker for sharing its own bent. Consequently, it put very little pressure behind the obligatory deportation of Hitler. In a letter to the Ministry of the Interior dated September 22, 1924, the Munich police commissioner’s office had referred to this deportation as “essential,” and Prime Minister Held, the new Bavarian governmental chief, had even sent out feelers to discover whether the Austrians would be willing to take Hitler if he were deported. But nothing further had been done. Hitler himself was extremely worried; he tried in every conceivable way to prove his docility. He was angry when Gregor Strasser arose in the Landtag to denounce the continued imprisonment of Hitler as a disgrace for Bavaria and splutter that the country was being ruled by a “gang of swine, a mean, disgusting gang of swine.” He was also displeased by Röhm’s underground activity.
Once more, circumstances were working in his favor. In the Reichstag elections held on December 7, the völkisch movement was able to garner only 3 per cent of the votes. It had previously had thirty-three deputies in the Reichstag; of these, only fourteen returned after the election. The results seemed to indicate that the radical Right had passed its peak. Apparently the Bavarian supreme court saw it that way, too, for it supported the lower court’s decision to grant Hitler parole, despite the protest of the state prosecutor. On December 20, while the inmates in Landsberg were already preparing to celebrate Christmas there, a telegram from Munich ordered the immediate release of Hitler and Kriebel.
A few friends and followers, who had been informed beforehand, appeared with a car outside the prison gate. They were a disappointingly tiny group. The movement had fallen apart, its members scattered or at odds. Hermann Esser and Julius Streicher were waiting at Hitler’s Munich apartment. There was no grand scene, no triumph. Hitler, who had put on weight, seemed restive and tense. That Very evening he went to see Ernst Hanfstaengl and at once asked him: “Play the Liebestod for me.” Even while in Landsberg, such sorrowful moods had taken hold of him. Die Weltbühne carried an ironic obituary reporting the early demise of Adolf Hitler and adding that the Germanic gods had no doubt loved him too well.
Crises and Resistances
Hitler will run out of gas!
It was in fact a depressingly changed scene to which Hitler returned from Landsberg. The turn of events could be traced to the stabilization of the currency. On the one hand, people could again feel that society had a reliable foundation. On the other hand, the end of the inflation worked hardship on the professional promoters of turmoil—for the Free Corps and the paramilitary associations had depended for support on foreign currency, trivial sums of which could go a long way under inflationary conditions. Gradually, the government acquired solidity and authority. By the end of February, 1924, it rescinded the state of emergency proclaimed on the night of November 9. In the course of the same year Foreign Minister Stresemann’s policy of reconciliation began to show results. These were not so much a matter of specifics as an improvement in the psychological climate within Germany. Gradually, the anachronistic hatreds and resentments of wartime began to dissolve. The Dawes Plan offered a prospect of solving the reparations problem. The French gave signs of willingness to evacuate the Ruhr. Security treaties were being discussed and even the question of Germany’s entry into the League of Nations. With the influx of American capital, the economy began to recover. Unemployment, which had created such scenes of misery on street corners and at bread lines and welfare offices, was tangibly receding. These changes for the better were reflected in the election results. In May, 1924, the radical forces still had one more success, but by the December elections of the same year they had been markedly thrown back. In Bavaria alone the racist-nationalist groups lost nearly 70 per cent of their following. Although this shift was not instantly reflected in a strengthening of the democratic centrist parties, it did appear as though Germany, after years of crisis, depressions, and threats of upheaval, was beginning to return to normality.
Like many others among the brand-new class of unemployed professional politicians, Hitler himself seemed to have reached the end of a ten-year phase of irregular living and to be faced once again with the law and order, the “domestic tranquillity,” that had horrified him as an adolescent. Viewed in sober terms his situation was hopeless. Though he had covered himself with glory during his trial, he had since been reduced to the sorry role of the failed and half-forgotten politician. The National Socialist Party and all its organizations had been banned, as had the Völkische Beobachter. The Reichswehr and most of the private patrons of the movement had withdrawn their support; after all the excitement and playing at civil war, they had turned back to the routine of everyday life. In retrospect, many people dismissed the year 1923 with an irritated shrug. It had been a crazy time, a bad time. Dietrich Eckart and Scheubner-Richter were dead, Göring living in exile, Kriebel on the way to exile. Most of Hitler’s closer followers were either in jail or had quarreled with one another and dispersed. Immediately before his arrest, Hitler had managed to send a scribbled note to Alfred Rosenberg: “Dear Rosenberg, from now on you will lead the movement.” Adopting the pseudonym Rolf Eidhalt (Ralph Oath-keeper), an anagram of Adolf Hitler, Rosenberg tried to hold the remnants of Hitler’s former following together under the guise of a Grossdeutsche Volksgemeinschaft (GVG) (Greater German People’s Community). The SA was continued under the guise of various sports clubs, glee clubs, and marksmen’s clubs. But Rosenberg had no talent as a leader; the movement soon broke up into feuding cliques. In Bamberg Streicher founded a Völkischer Block Bayern (Bavarian Racial-Nationalist Bloc), which claimed a measure of independence. Finally, Esser, Streicher, and a Dr. Artur Dinter from Thuringia, author of some wild racist maunderings in the form of novels, seized the leadership of the GVG, while Ludendorff, together with von Graefe and Gregor Strasser (soon joined by Ernst Röhm) organized the National Socialist Freedom Party as a kind of united front for the nationalist and racist groups. Thus various would-be leaders tried to make use of Hitler’s absence as a means of rising in the nationalist movement or even dislodging Hitler from the star position he had won during the trial and forcing him back into the role of “drummer.”