A Democracy Destroyed

When the Bough Breaks

By CONSTANTINE FITZGIBBON ("N NCE Hitler had become Chancellor, on k./January 30, 1933, the transformation of Germany from a dying democracy into a totali- tarian dictatorship took only a couple of months. There were three phases. The first, which lasted through February, might be described as illegal terrorisation. The second, which went on through most of March, was a period of `legal' terrorisa- tion. On March 23, the Enabling Bill, which permitted the Government to legislate without recourse either to the Reichstag or to the Presi- dent, became law, and henceforth Hitler had total power: he immediately used that power to destroy all possible centres of opposition, ex- cept the army, which he did not yet dare to attack frontally. (It did not, however, oppose him openly for a further eleven years.) By July 14, 1933, the' totalitarian process was, to all intents and purposes, completed.

The Daily Mail, on January 31, had stated that Germany stood on the brink of a great political adventure, but congratulated that coun- try on possessing a stable government at last. And the Daily Telegraph, on February 1, had as headline: `HITLER SHORN OF ALL REAL POWER, Prisoner in his own Ministry,' Both appreciations were very far indeed from the truth.

Hitler, like Schleicher before him, had been appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg on the understanding that he would be able to find a majority in the Reichstag. The old man did not want yet another Presidential Chancellor, unless it be Papen, nor did either the President or Hitler's Nationalist allies covet yet another general election. Local elections had shown that the only probable gainers would be the Nazis and the Communists, if the circumstances were normal. Hitler therefore went through the motions of attempting to win the support of the Catholic Centre Party. He had no wish for these negotiations to succeed, nor did they. And on February 1 he insisted that the Reichstag be dissolved. He secured the agreement of Papen and of Hugenberg by promising that, regardless of the election's results, the Cabinet would re- main unaltered. The Reichstag was dissolved, and new elections were fixed for March 5.

Hitler's immediate aim was to win an abso- lute majority in the Reichstag. Once he had achieved this he could make use of his very con- siderable constitutional powers to obtain the two-thirds majority needed to amend the Con- stitution and give himself absolute power through an Enabling Act. This would be his last action within the old democratic framework, and indeed he promised that these would be the 'last' elec- tions, perhaps for ten years, perhaps for a hundred. (He was later to announce that the Third Reich would last a thousand years.) He planned to gain his majorities not only by win- ning votes, but also by killing or imprisoning his opponents, first the one hundred Com- munist deputies and then, if need be, a sufficient number of Social Democrats. The Catholic Centre, he had reason to believe, could be relied upon to prefer a deal to a fight.

The first couple of weeks of his Chancellor- ship were a period of lawless violence as his street fighters took their revenge on their per- sonal and ideological enemies. Beatings-up and shootings, principally of Jews and Marxists, but of others, too, became the order of the day, but in a disorganised fashion. However, Goering, now Prussian Minister of the Interior and thus in control of the Prussian police, was busy forging a far more formidable instrument of terror than these gangs of drunken rowdies could ever hope to become. Indeed, with the exception of the army, now neutral, the Prussian police was the most powerful force within Ger- many.

The Terror Begins It had been in general anti-Nazi, and Goering took over his new job with a long list of names, officers and officials, who were rapidly dismissed or shunted into sidings. Control of the police is always the first objective of totalitarians, and now that he had achieved it Goering wasted no time. He created a secret State police, modelled on the Russian one, and this was called the Gestapo. On February 15, he ordered the police to be ruthless with Marxists: a policeman who drew his gun too fast, he said, would not be punished, but one who was too slow would be. And on February 22 he appointed 25,000 SA and 15,000 SS (and 10,000 Stahlhelm) auxiliary policemen. Thus the Prussian police force be- came the first arm of the Nazi Party. In this period of chaotic terrorisation—when even foreign diplomats who looked Jewish were not safe from being beaten—it was henceforth more dangerous than not to appeal to the police for help. Communists, Social Democrats and people of Jewish blood, even if they were a-political, began to emigrate. They were the lucky ones.

Newspapers that presented the anti-Nazi case were banned again and again, not permanently, but individual issues. It was believed the tele- phones were being tapped. And on February 15 a Times headline described the regime as `fascist.' This, so far as I know, is the first time that a British paper had used that word about the Hitler-Papen coalition, with the exception, of course, of the Daily Worker, for whom all non-Communists were 'fascists.' The Times, in- cidentally, carried the best and fullest reports during this period. Its great Berlin correspondent, Mr. Norman Ebbutt. was to be withdrawn from Germany in 1937, at the request of the Nazi authorities. By then The Tittles and its editor, Geoffrey Dawson, were fully committed to the appeasement policy. In 1933 it had been more robust.

The Manchester Guardian also had few if any illusions about the new German Govern- ment. As early as February 6, remarking that many Germans believed that the Nazi brutalities would last only until the elections had been won, it commented: 'One wonders.'

The Beaverbrook press had a very competent Daily Express Berlin correspondent in the per- son of Mr. Sefton Delmer. In general, however, this group of papers preferred to extract the dramatic interest rather than the moral or even the political significance from German events.

Thus the Sunday Express, on February 12, pub- lished verbatim and without comment an exclusive interview Hitler had given a Colonel Etherton. The effect of this was to give Hitler several thousand pounds' worth of free publicity in Britain.

The Daily Telegraph mike up, rather belatedly on February 16, to the extraordinary powers that Hitler was assuming, after a couple of weeks of pointless speculation concerning the Bavarian and Prussian monarchists. The Daily Herald almost ignored German affairs throughout February.

To generalise about so varied a body as the British press is at any time unwise, but in early 1933 it might be said that, whereas its German correspondents were, in general, good, its leader- writers, in general, failed to draw the true con- clusions or even drew the wrong ones. Thus, on February 4, the New Statesman and Nation leader said : 'We shall not expect to see the Jews exterminated. . . There will doubtless be an onslaught on the Communists; but if it is pressed to extremes it will provoke a powerful reaction, and may even result in a "united Marxist front" which will give the Nazis and their allies more than they bargained for. . . . The Government . . . will now seek to get an independent majority at the polls. So far as we can judge there is small prospect of their succeeding. . .

The Reichstag Plot

As part of their plan to outlaw the Com- munists, the Nazis pretended on February 24 to have discovered evidence, never published, of a Communist plan for an uprising. And on February 27 the Reichstag building burned. It is still not certain whether Goering and certain SA leaders actually lit the flames themselves or whether they merely poured fuel on fires kindled by a moronic Dutch Communist arsonist. In either event they exploited the blaze to the full as proof of their imaginary Communist plot (which certainly never existed: incredible as it may seem, the Communists were still regarding the Social Democrats as their principal enemy), and on February 28 Hitler persuaded Hinden- burg that he sign a Bill temporarily suspending certain articles of the Constitution. These were the articles that guaranteed the rights of the in- dividual and also the States' rights, for the com- ponent States might have protected their own individuals.

The Nazis now moved on to phase two of their `legal' revolution. Concentration camps were set up, and into these were bundled many thousands of people whom the Nazis wished out of the way before the elections. Almost all the oppo- sition newspapers were now suppressed, nor were the opposition parties allowed to canvass, even had they dared to do so. Attempts were made to dragoon the foreign correspondents, particu- larly those of certain American newspapers who were reporting the atrocities more fully than were most of their British colleagues (the Manchester Guardian being the principal exception).

Meanwhile the Nazi electoral campaign neared its ear-splitting climax. Goebbels had plenty of money now, collected from the industrialists by Schacht, and he also had the whole of the State's communications network, including the wireless, for his propaganda. There were processions and parades each day, and almost everywhere. In fact, he did his best to deafen his compalriots with a propaganda the like of which the world had never before witnessed.

The Nazis campaigned with threats, not promises. Hitler refused to outline a programme. In one speech he said : 'If, today, we are asked for the programme of this movement, then we can summarise this in a few quite simple words; programmes are of no avail, it is the human purpose that is decisive. . . .' And Goering, speaking on March 3, said: 'Fellow Germans, my methods will not be crippled by any judicial thinking. My measures will not be crippled by any bureaucracy. Here I don't have to worry about justice. My mission is only to destroy and exterminate, nothing more.'

Majority by Force Despite all the terrorisation, intimidation and massive propaganda, this repulsive plan of ac- tion failed to win the support of the majority of the German electorate. The Nazi vote in- creased, of course, but only from 37 per cent to 44 per cent. The Catholic Centre Party actually increased its vote, too. The Communists lost a million votes, but it is surely surprising in the circumstances that they still polled close on five 'millions. The Social Democrats lost only a little of their support, a mere 1 per cent of their voting strength. The Nationalists, on the other hand, lost greatly to the Nazis, and not even the most provincial British newspaper could henceforth continue to believe that Hitler was Papen's and Hugenberg's stooge.

So even as late as March, 1933, the Nazi tyranny was imposed upon the majority of the German people against their expressed will. It was nevertheless imposed. By the physical elimination of the eighty-nine Communist deputies to the new Reichstag and many of the Social Democrats too, Hitler was assured of his majority. And he moved on to his next objec- tive, the Enabling Act. But first there had to come another of Goebbels's pageants. The, gutter wing of the Nazi Party had had its Roman holi- day of looting, murder and revenge. It was now time to placate 'respectable' Germany, and above all the army, by paying obeisance to the defunct ideals of Imperial Germany.

If our Britisly totalitarians were ever to achieve power, would they have the wit to kick off with a Coronation? That is approximately what the Nazis did, by convening the Reichstag, less the Marxist deputies, in a church.. And the church they chose was the Potsdam Garrison Church, where Frederick the Great lies buried, where the last Kaiser had worshipped his God of Battles, the very pantheon of German imperial might and militarism. The gallery was stuffed with retired but uniformed generals and admirals, including the Crown Prince in full regimentals. The Catholics were off in another church of their own, and Hitler, though nominally a Catholic, had had the tact to absent himself from this orgy of nostalgic patriotism. He spent the morning praying by the graves of dead Storm Troopers. But the nave was filled with Nazi and Nationalist deputies, and when the aged Field-Marshal, who had suc- cessively betrayed his Emperor and the Republic of which he had been President for eight years, raised his baton to salute the Kaiser's empty chair, it must have seemed to the representatives of the Second Reich that the Third Reich would be built upon their model. It was not for nothing that the date chosen was March 21, the anni- versary of the opening of Bismarck's first Reichstag in 1871. The army was placated, and Hitler could now get down to business.

Next day the Reichstag met again, not this time in a church, but, more suitably, in a theatre normally devoted to opera bufla. And the Enabling Bill was passed, for the Catholic Centre Party voted with the Nazis, the Communists were in gaol or on the run, and only those Social Demo- crats who were present voted against. All honour is due to those ninety-four deputies, many of whom had emerged from hiding and who were now arrested as they left the building, and, above all, to their leader, Herr Wels, who made a moving and courageous speech against the howls of the Nazis. Hitler, however, had achieved ab- solute power, and had done so at least with the outward appearance of legality, despite the oppo- sition of the majority of his compatriots, the en- mity of his foreign neighbours, all more powerful than he, the distrust of the army, and the dislike of the President and of what in this country would nowadays be called the Establishment.

He was home and dry. And by July Hugen- berg was out, Papen impotent, the trade unions smashed, and the only political party that might legally exist in Germany was the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The horrors were becoming systematic: the policy was Gleichschaltung, or 'levelling': the concentra- tion camps were filling: the Gestapo was active: the still greater horrors, of war and extermina- tion, lay ahead.

The British press reported these events, on the whole, fully and fairly. Yet reading these old papers, thirty years later, one senses a sort of incredulity. The Round Table, a monthly that was later to be the mouthpiece of the British appeasers, published an unsigned article in June, 1933, which summed up, superbly the situation as it had developed in Germany up to then. It spoke of Papen's folly, of the cruelty and the nihilistic idealism of the Nazis, of the weakness and lethargy of the democratic parties and the unions, of the brutal stupidity and inefficiency of the Communists, and the author remarked: 'The itish public finds it hard to understand that such things could happen in a civilised country.'

This was not the fault of the correspondents

'Queue-juniper!' on the spot, who were generally well aware that a major European catastrophe had occurred. Their editors and leader-writers were inclined to play down the correspondents' reports, and this tendency was to increase with the growth of ap- peasement. Finally, the great British public was as uninterested then as it is now in the foreigners' politics. Seven doom-laden years were to pass before the vapour trails overhead awoke them to the reality.

The Thirties and the Sixties This series of articles began with a question :1 what resemblance, if any, exists between the Britain of today and the democratic Germany of the late 1920s and early 1930s? Let us begin by examining very briefly the profound political differences that distinguish the two societies.

In the first place, we do not, as did the Junkers, the German army and many other seg- ments of their governing class, look back regret- fully to an alternative, authoritarian system of government destroyed a mere decade or so ago. The nostalgia felt in certain circles here for the good old days of the British Raj, when most of Mercator's map was red, does not arouse a complementary hostility to the current political system, for that has changed only marginally and almost imperceptibly. The experts may lament the decrease in Parliament's power and the corresponding increase in the authority of the executive and of the bureaucrats. The general public is more inclined to remember the Battle of Crichel Down, and, since that was a defeat for the civil servants, to assume that all is more or less as it should be. No class here, in fact, distinguishes between the pays legal and the pays reel. And this, in its turn, is undoubtedly con- nected with the preservation of the Monarchy.

The second major political difference is that in its declining years the Weimar Republic was simultaneously attacked by two mass movements dedicated to its destruction, the Nazis and the Communists. Our home-grown fascists are almost entirely negligible, and for the present our Communists scarcely constitute more than a fairly considerable nuisance which is more social and economic than political. The only large non-democratic movement in this country, the Committee of 100, with CND struggling at its heels, is ostensibly directed not against our political system as such, but against our alliances and our capacity for self-defence. Their success might well entail the end of democracy here, though even this is by no means certain.

Economically, again, we are in a much stronger position than were the Germans once the depres- sion had burst upon them. There is, of course, always the possibility of a disastrous slump here should the imbalance of payments become criti- cal. But that is a speculation for the future, not, as with the Germans, a present catastrophe.

Therefore, I think one may conclude that there is little or no danger of any sort of repetition of what happened in Germany, since neither the political circumstances nor the personalities are truly comparable and since, above all, the scale is so utterly different.

It is, however, when we come to the social climate that resemblances appear. Never, 1 think, in this century have our MPs, and there- fore our political parties, enjoyed less public esteem than at present. it is all very well to protest that the mass of Conservative voters in the shires, of Labour' voters in the cities, have not changed their attitude. The vocal minority that ultimately creates and conditions public opinion has another view, and this is shown as much by what they accept as by what they say.

They accepted, more or less as a matter of course, the horse-trading that preceded the election of the Labour Party's new leader early this year. Much the same sort of thing has been happening more recently with regard to the Conservative succession, while the news- papers speculate, again as a matter of course, about who will succeed in stabbing whom in the back. Our MPs are scarcely more respected than were the Reichstag's deputies, with their end!ess brawls and financial scandals: since Par- liaments consist of their members, the institution itself suffers discredit.

Again, there is a feeling abroad that fiddling and sharp practice are accepted as almost stan- dard procedure in business, from the top execu- tives of a big firm, who increase their private fortunes by phoney take-over negotiations, to the workman who steals what he can in time or goods from his employer. Whether this be true or not—and I believe it is not—the legend exists. Why bother about an expense-account society in which everybody is only in it for what he can get out of it?

Finally, there is the present national insistence on sex, from those peculiar churchmen and schoolmarms who troop into witness-boxes to extol obscene bpoks to the call-girls who pro- vide the wherewithal for some rich men and the entertainment for others. Again one may presume that only a small minority of the population is concerned with the commercialisa- tion of sex and the ultimate brutality—the negation of love—that derives therefrom. Never- theless—and even if this is not deliberate—these great circus sex trials, whether they be the Lady Chatterley case or the Vassall tribunal or the Ward trial, can only serve to undermine many people's faith in the values of our society, as the great political circus trials in Weimar Germany helped to undermine the Germans' faith in theirs.

English, and even more so Scottish, history has shown that puritanism makes a very strong appeal to very many inhabitants of this island. The reason may be that, being pragma- tists and not particularly religious, they feel a periodical need for a. moral steel corset if they are not to go off the rails altogether. And the political form that such puritanism usually takes involves a most distasteful and offensive ferret- ing about in the lives of others, with sanctions imposed against those who awaken the dis- approval of the puritans: If these endless scan- dals continue, if Britain is made to appe'ar as a combination of the Place Pigalle and a gamblers' and racketeers' paradise, run by corrupt and stupidly opportunist politicians who are unwill- ing or unable to clear up the mess or even to preserve the nation's security, then, sooner or later, the people's patience may become ex- hausted. There is no sign of a dictator, even the most gently English equivalent of a dictator, at present in sight. But Oliver Cromwell still broods outside the Palace of Westminster.