To the outside world, such pronouncements added to the aura of dementia surrounding the man. As at the beginning of his career, the reputation of being a queer duck preceded him. It was hard for people to take him seriously; one theory was that his odd traits sprang from the colorful idiosyncrasies of Bavarian politics. The style he cultivated often aroused ridicule. Thus, for example, he made an object of veneration of the flag that had been carried on the march to the Feldherrnhalle; it was called the “Blood Banner” and whenever other standards were consecrated, they were touched with the tip of this Blood Banner. Presumably mystical forces flowed on contact. Party members to whose radically pure pedigree he wanted to pay tribute might find themselves addressed, in letters, as Euer Deutschgeboren, a form of address roughly equivalent to “Your German-born Worship.” But other activities suggested that the Nazi party was pursuing its goals with seriousness and determination. At the end of 1926 the party set up a speakers’ school to give its followers the techniques and information needed for effective public speaking. By the end of 1932 this school had, according to its records, trained some 6,000 speakers.
In the spring of 1927 the governments of Saxony and Bavaria, no longer nervous about the Nazi party, decided to lift the ban on speeches by the party leader. Hitler readily gave the requested assurances that he would not pursue any unlawful goals or use any unlawful means. But speak he would, and glaring red posters announced that at eight o’clock in the evening of March 9 Adolf Hitler would once again, for the first time since the ban, address the people of Munich at the Krone Circus. The police report on the meeting reveals how deep an impression the event made on the informant himself:
The circus is considerably more than half filled by ten minutes past seven. From the stage hangs the red swastika flag. The stage is reserved for prominent party members and the speaker. The seats in the boxes also seem to be reserved for special party members, since they are assigned by brownshirts. A band has assembled on the platform. No other decorations were to be seen.
The people on the benches are excited and filled with anticipation. They talk about Hitler, about his former oratorical triumphs at the Krone Circus. The women, who are present in great numbers, still seem to be enthusiastic about him…. There is a craving for sensation in the hot, insipid air. The band plays rousing marches while fresh crowds keep pouring in. The Völkische Beobachter is hawked about. At the ticket office each visitor is given a copy of the Program of the National Socialist Workers’ Party, and at the entrance a slip is pressed into everyone’s hand warning against reacting to provocations and emphasizing the need to maintain order. Small flags are sold: “Welcoming flags, 10 pfennig apiece.” They are either black-white-red or entirely red, and show the swastika. The women are the best customers.
Meanwhile the ranks are filling. “We have to make it like the old days!” people are saying. The arena fills…. Most of the spectators belong to the lower economic groups, workers, small artisans, small tradesmen. Many youths in windbreakers and knee socks. Few, hardly any, representatives of the radical working class are to be seen. The people are well dressed; some men are even in evening dress. The crowd in the circus, which is nearly entirely filled, is estimated at seven thousand persons.
It is now half past eight. From the entrance come roars of Heil. Brownshirts march in, the band plays, the crowd cheers noisily. Hitler appears in a brown raincoat, walks swiftly, accompanied by his retinue, the whole length of the circus and up to the stage. The people gesticulate in happy excitement, wave, continually shout Heil, stand on the benches, stamp their feet thunderously. Then comes a trumpet blast, as in the theater. Sudden silence.
Amid roars of welcome from the spectators, the brownshirts now march into the hall in rank and file, led by two rows of drummers and then the flag. The men salute in the manner of the Fascists, with outstretched arms. The audience cheers them. On the stage Hitler has similarly stretched out his arm in salute. The music surges up. Flags move past, glittering standards with swastikas inside the wreath and with eagles, modeled on the ancient Roman military standards. Perhaps about two hundred men file past. They fill the arena and stand at attention while the flag-bearers and standard-bearers people the stage….
Hitler steps swiftly to the front of the stage. He speaks without a manuscript, at first in a slow, emphatic way; later the words come tumbling forth, and in passages spoken with exaggerated emotion his voice becomes thin and high and ceases to be intelligible. He gesticulates with arms and hands, jumps agitatedly about, and is bent on fascinating the thousands in the audience, who listen with close attention. When applause interrupts him, he raises his hands theatrically. This protest, which occurs frequently in the later course of the speech, strikes a histrionic note, and indeed is deliberately overplayed. The oratorical performance in itself… did not strike this observer as anything remarkable.37
That Hitler could speak again did not remove the difficulties of the party. Yet Hitler himself, it now appeared, had gained rather than lost by the ban. For he had been tided over the period of general amused indifference, when meeting halls would have remained empty and his name and message would have only become a bore. He soon realized this and behaved accordingly, In 1927 he spoke in public fifty-six times; two years later he had reduced his public appearances to twenty-nine. There are indications that at this period he began to see the advantages of living in semidivine remoteness. The moment he returned to the masses, he was competing with the overpowering force of unfavorable circumstances. Failures began to pile up, and with this came criticism from within the party. It was directed equally against his style of leadership and against the stringently maintained policy of legality. Even Goebbels, so embarrassingly subservient to Hitler and one of the prophets of the Führer cult, assailed the strictly legal course in his 1927 pamphlet, Der Nazi-Sozi. Answering the question of what the party should do if its efforts to obtain a majority failed, Goebbels broke out with: “What then? Then we’ll clench our teeth and get ready. Then we’ll march against this government; then we’ll dare the last great coup for Germany; then revolutionaries of the word will become revolutionaries of the deed. Then we’ll make a revolution!”
Hitler’s personal conduct also met with criticism, particularly his arrogance toward tried-and-true party comrades. One old party man objected to “the much-discussed wall around Herr Hitler.” There were murmurings about Hitler’s negligent conduct of party business and his jealousy complex in regard to his niece. In the early summer of 1928, when his chauffeur Emil Maurice surprised him in Geli Raubal’s room, Hitler raised his riding whip in such threatening fury that Maurice saved himself only by leaping out the window. With “unconditional devotion” the chairman of the Investigation and Mediation Committee, Walter Buch finally felt compelled to express his view “that you, Herr Hitler, are gradually falling into a degree of misanthropy that causes me worry.”38
Faced with these rumblings within the party, Hitler canceled the planned party rally for 1928 and instead convoked a meeting of the leaders in Munich. He forbade all preparatory local meetings, and when he opened the session on August 31 he delivered a highly charged speech in praise of obedience and discipline. Only totally committed elites could constitute a “historic minority,” he declared, and thus shape history. To remain operative, the NSDAP must have at most 100,000 members: “That is a number to work with!” All the rest must be followers, rallying around and serving the purposes of the party only in specific cases. Scornfully, he dismissed a motion to elect a “senate” to aid him. He did not think much of advisers, he said. The motion had been offered by Gauleiter Artur Dinter of Thuringia; he had Dinter removed from his post and soon afterward expelled from the party. There had, it is true, been some background to this seemingly arbitrary action. Hitler had previously had a correspondence with Gauleiter Dinter in which he announced that as a politician he “claimed infallibility” and “had the blind faith that he would some day belong among those who make history.”