Thirty Days: January 1933 (Book Review)

 Hitler the happy politician

 

H A Turner Thirty Days: January 1933 (1996) A carefully detailed account of the thirty days of intrigue, deception, bungling, and conspiracy that led up to Hindenburg’s appointment of Hitler as Reichskanzler (chancellor, or prime minister) on January 30th, 1933. Turner shows that a handful of men – von Papen, Schleicher, the Hindenburgs, and a few functionaries of the Nazi and other parties – made the decisions that resulted in the Third Reich. He claims, and I think rightly, that although the changes in social and economic conditions  made a Hitler possible, the actual decisions to elevate him to power were made for personal and private reasons, some with intent, some casually, some ideologically, some with no goals other than immediate satisfaction of a personal aim or whim.

     At any time during those thirty days, different decisions could have been made, but none of the actors took the trouble to consider the long-range consequences of their choices. What appalls is the pettiness of the motives of von Papen, the Hindenburgs, and others. The Hindenburgs merely disliked Schleicher, von Papen hated him, both simply wanted to be rid of him. Schleicher himself didn’t really want to hold on to power, and was naive enough to believe that Hitler could be kept in check. He supported what von Papen wanted, not realising he’d already become irrelevant.    

     The only man who had any sense that the decisions could be and were history-making was Hitler himself. In the end, he did not so much wrest power from the Establishment  as accept it when it was thrust upon him. (The Nazis called it the Machtergreifung, part of their attempt to great an image of warriors). Those who made him chancellor vastly underestimated him. That this is no mere hindsight is supported by the comments of some politicians, journalists, and foreign diplomats who saw quite clearly that Hitler wanted total power. Hunen
burg, who had agreed to the conspiracy that manoeuvred Hindenburg into making a decision he had refused to make in November 1932, said the following day that he had made the greatest blunder of his career.

     In the end, Hitler came to power because other people made bad choices, for a variety of reasons. A book worth reading. ***