The Rest Is History - 298: The Nazis: Total Power

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

Hitler is chancellor, but he is not yet all-powerful. How does he go from becoming the leader of the Reichstag, to an unshackled dictator with nothing to check his power? *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Great jubilation. Down there, the people are creating an uproar. The torches come. It starts at seven o'clock. Endless. Till ten o'clock.

At the Kaiserhof. Then the Reich Chancellery. Till after twelve o'clock. Unending. A million people on the move. The old man takes a salute at the march past. Hitler in the house next door. Awakening. Spontaneous explosion of the people. Indescribable. Always new masses. Hitler in raptures. His people cheering him.

Wild, frenzied enthusiasm. Prepare the election campaign. The last will win it hands down that was joseph goebbels in his diary on the 30th of january 1933 celebrating adolf hitler becoming chancellor um and dominic sounding rather like alfred jingle in charles dickens pickwick papers they're very kind of staccato burst of prose yes i had that's not a comparison i'd thought of before no but, but you're right. But perhaps a little shard of light in what is otherwise going to be a very dark story, because with Hitler's elevation to the chancellorship, obviously he has his, well, he's kind of seized control of the levers of state, hasn't he? But he hasn't got hold of all of them. There's still, you know, he has a certain way still to go. So what would be your sense of how inevitable

the establishment of a totalitarian regime is now that Hitler has become Chancellor? Oh, that is an excellent question, Tom. I would say, given the alignment of forces in January 1933, so President Hindenburg is the top man. Hitler is the head of the government. He is in the cabinet with only two other Nazis. So Hermann Goering, who is running the Prussian Interior Ministry, Prussia, the biggest state in Germany, and he's normally under the Vice Chancellor, Franz von Papen,

but he's basically running it himself. And the Ministry of the Interior for the whole of the Reich is run by Wilhelm Frick, who's a Nazi of very long standing. So basically, they have the police, right? They have the police. They have the Interior Ministry, the police. But they have nothing else. Well, they have all the momentum.

They have the streets. But they also have the tacit support, I think this is absolutely crucial, of the kind of conservative power brokers. So against that background, I think it's fair to say, especially as they're facing a communist party that has made great progress in recent years, well, as events prove, I think all the Nazis have to do really is reach out their hand and they can take what they want. Because Papen, Hindenburg, the other kind of conservative figures, I mean, they think they're using the Nazis,

but there's never, as we will discover, there is never a point when the Nazis can go too far for them. I mean, this is the, as we talked about last time, this is the sort of chilling lesson for any democracy. You know, if you don't, there has to be a point

where you draw a very very very firm line and if you're not prepared to do that then your foes will push and push and push and suddenly you'll wake up and you'll realize there is no democracy left and this is exactly what happens so so that's the case with poppin and the army and more generally the parties on the right, that they don't really want to draw a line in the sand because they kind of approve of quite a lot of what the Nazis are actually doing. I mean, they maybe feel the Nazis are doing their dirty work for them. But what about the parties on the left, the communists and the social democrats? Because they're what, about a third of the electorate, half the electorate? I mean, they could precipitate a civil war. Could they have done that?

A civil war that they think they would lose. I think that's the key thing, that if the army are on the side of the right, which they undoubtedly are, then how does a civil war benefit you? Yeah, I suppose. You know, you could conceivably launch a general strike, but a general strike in the middle of the Depression with so many millions of people unemployed, I mean, you can fill those posts. A really ruthless government will find strike breakers. So it's difficult to see. The SPD, the Social Democrats in particular, have let things go so far that they've actually run out of levers of power. But let's go back to the 30th of January itself, so that moment.

So we ended the last podcast with Hitler swearing an oath to the Constitution or whatever, promising Hindenburg that he'll respect him, Hindenburg kind of shaking hands with him. But this is not a transfer of power like anything else because that scene that you describe from Goebbels' diary, I mean, Goebbels organizes this torchlight parade on that evening in Berlin. I mean, the Nazis themselves claim

there are kind of half a million, a million people. That's rubbish. There are probably 20,000. Yeah, it's very kind of Trump statistics. Yeah, very Trump statistics, 40,000. But again, you see, Tom, there's a very symbolic moment there. Hindenburg comes to the windows of his apartment,

which is at this point in the Reich Chancellery, to take the salute of the crowd. Hitler, of course, does so too, but the police, they train their searchlights especially so that people will see Hindenburg. They'll see that he's given his approval to this transfer of power. And all the talk is of this is a, I mean, this isn't just a normal government coming in. So Goering is on the radio and he says, anybody who remembers August 1914 will remember that this feels just like that. Right. And that led to disaster.

I mean, it's quite an odd thing to say, isn't it? Yeah, but I think the argument is that this time we will win. It's that last time we embarked on a great national crusade and we were defeated and betrayed. We were stabbed in the back. That's the Nazi claim. This time they're embarking on another national crusade, but a crusade of national renovation, and there'll be nobody.

We'll make sure no one stabs us in the back again. And the thing about all that you know you talked about goebbels and his talents as a theatrical impresario and you also talked last time didn't you about horst vessel a lot of young people undoubtedly are swept up by this so richard evans in his books um on the coming of the third reich that we've quoted from fairly extensively in the last three episodes he has a very very he uses the um the memoirs of a woman called melita maskman now she was a a nazi propagandist but she was a teenager at this point she was 15 years old and and she later on remembering this decades later she said she wrote we want to die for the flag the torch bearers had sung. I was overcome

with a burning desire to belong to these people for whom it was a matter of life and death. I wanted to escape from my childish, narrow life and to attach myself to something that was great and fundamental. And I think there's no doubt that when the Nazis take power at the end of January 33, that they do capture the imagination of a lot of actually quite idealistic young people who have maybe become desensitized to the violence and the horror. Or maybe are just dazzled by the torchlight displays and the flags and the swagger of it all, do you think?

Yes, of course. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you definitely get that from her memoir.'s she's out there her parents take her out there is actually violence at the demonstration she writes of somebody being punched in front of her and yet the sense of excitement the sense of a fervor of that sense of a crusade i mean you know if you're a teenager that would we did a podcast some time ago tom about the white rose movement that sense of a crusade. I mean, you know, if you're a teenager, we did a podcast sometime ago, Tom, about the White Rose Movement,

about the Scholls, Hans and Sophie Scholl. And they were very seduced by it, weren't they? They were seduced by it at first. You know, these very idealistic... Even though their father hated the Nazis. Yeah.

The Nazis were exciting. But I suppose to understand how they succeed, you have to, in a sense, kind of park that retrospective judgment and try and see it through the eyes of someone who doesn't know what's coming. And who might be naive, might be so young that they don't really have an understanding of politics. And just, I suppose, kind of grasp a sense of the dazzle of it all. They've been in the gutter.

And now they're being lifted up to see the stars. I mean, it sounds so trite, but I mean, if they're young, like, like Melita Meshman, I mean, they,

they would have no real understanding of politics. I mean, they would be completely seduced by, by, by what they're seeing. And so that's being laid on as, as a way of kind of winning support, but presumably the two urgent tasks that the Nazis face,

if they're going to consolidate this um this uh elevation of hitler to the chancellorship they need to square the army yep and they need to neutralize the left-wing parties yes would that was that those would be the two kind of prime i think absolutely yes they want to? They need the army on board for what they plan. So within days, I think four days or so, Hitler gives a speech to senior officers of the army. There is a new minister of defense who has been installed by the army's behest, basically, Wernher von Blomberg. He is much more sympathetic to the Nazis than Hindenburg or Papen, imagine.

So, you know, that's a great win for Hitler, if you like, that is somebody who is basically, he's a military man, he wants to see Germany great again. So it's fine by him that the Nazis are in charge. But if he hadn't been sympathetic to the Nazis, then what? I don't think it's conceivable that anybody would have been in that position who wasn't vaguely sympathetic to the Nazis. I think all the conceivable leaders of the army at that point, or ministers of defense or whatever,

because they think that the alternative is either endless political paralysis by these kind of parliamentary pygmies or communism. Hitler goes to talk to the senior officers in the army on the 3rd of February, 1933. And he says to them, listen, what I want to do is I want to bring back conscription. I want to build up Germany as a military machine again. I want to smash Marxism so that threat is gone forever. And I want to rip up the Treaty of Versailles, which has humiliated us. We weren't beaten in the First World War. We were stabbed in the back. Let's rip up Versailles and get our honour back and all this. And is he saying we're prepared to risk war with France and Britain?

Or we're willing to dismember Poland? He makes no bones about living space in the East, about Germany needs to expand. They go along with that, do they? Well, a lot of them think, great. I mean, don't forget, if you go back to our very first podcast, Tom, which was on this subject, which was, we started off talking about

all the intellectual currents of the 19th century. I mean, these men are products of their times as much as Hitler is. So a lot of them have read all this stuff. They've grown up amid talk of Lebensraum, pan-Germanism, Germany's national destiny, all this business. So they think to themselves, well, this is great. This is what I want to hear.

Somebody who finally will put us back on the map, as it were. Sensible policies for a happier Germany. That is what they think. Everybody who's become chancellor in the last couple of episodes of this podcast has immediately called an election to try and get a majority Hitler is determined to do this he wants a final showdown with Marxism as he puts it that's what he wants the election to be about but why why does he want an election why doesn't he just rely on force because at this point he feels like he needs the impression of legality that I mean the Nazis they get their totalitarian regime through political i mean obviously there's a violence on the streets obviously there's loads of intimidation and horror

as we will come to but they are always using the apparatus of democracy to do it and what he wants is legislation that will enable him to do that so to amend the constitution to basically give him what's called an enabling act that will basically allow him to override constitutional freedoms and to rule by decree himself, not relying on President Hindenburg will do it, and he'll basically turn Hindenburg into a complete cipher, a waste of space. But he needs two-thirds majority in the Reichstag to get the Enabling Act through. So that's why he needs an election. That's the requirement to amend the constitution. Correct. So basically, Hindenburg had refused Hitler's predecessor, General von Schleicher, a dissolution of the Reichstag, which Kershaw and Evans and the other historians think, you know, if Nazism was to be averted at the last moment, that's what Hindenburg should have given Schleicher. But he gives it to Hitler.

We've had 20 elections. Let's have a 21st. Exactly. And Hitler says to his cronies, right, the theme of this is attack on Marxism. That's what he wants the watchword to be. A fight against Marxism will be relentless. And of course, by attacking Marxism, making it about Marxism, he's able to put himself on one side as the guardian of stability, and the social democrats and the communists on the other to lump them in together. So he's getting loads of money pouring into the nazi coffers for industrialists so this is where the marxist idea that hitler has been brought to power by industry

basically comes from yeah because up to this point a lot of big business people and industrialists are very suspicious of the nazis they'd rather do business with the kind of conservative bigwigs that they've known and gone to clubs with and horse races and cocktail parties and so on, or yogurt drinking parties, as you claimed last time. Yes. So there's an extraordinary moment actually on the 10th of February at the Berlin Sports Palace, which I thought would really appeal to you, Tom. Hitler launches his campaign with this great hymn to national unity and talks of a national resurrection.

And he has this extraordinary passage where he brands himself as this sort of Messiah, as this Christ-like figure. I cannot divest myself of my faith in my people. I cannot disassociate myself from the conviction that this nation will one day rise again. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The hour will come at last in which the millions who despise us will stand by us and with us will hail the new hard-won and painfully acquired German Reich we have created together, the new German kingdom of greatness and power and glory and justice. Amen. I mean, you were talking before about Horse Vessel, the attempt to kind of ape Christianity and its rituals and its language, its ceremony, its spectacle, that's clearly what he's up to here, isn't it, don't you think?

Definitely. And trying to seduce Christians, Protestants, Catholics to follow him. Absolutely. Yes. The difference, of course, is that this is accompanied by a terror campaign. So we said before that the sort of muscles of the state are in the hands of Goering and Frick, his cronies. The army are clearly not going to step in and do anything. And immediately, basically, the stormtroopers go mad on the streets.

They're attacking trade unionists, communists, left-wingers, and so on. Goering explicitly tells the Prussian police, stop your surveillance of Nazii paramilitaries and other police pro-nazi the police go along with it i mean this is the fascinating thing about this that you can trace these threads all the way back so in the 19th century the police were very conservative and they saw the social democrats as the enemies of you know the the kaiser instinctively they're going to prefer the Nazis to communists. Exactly. That's exactly it.

And in fact, in February, later in February, Goering sets up an auxiliary police force. He says the police need help in combating the street violence. Right. And so this is what made up of brown shirts. Exactly. Brown shirts, the SS. Yeah, absolutely. There's too much street violence, so the people will sort it out. Yeah. The guys who've been the people will sort it out. Yeah, the guys who've been starting it will sort it out.

Exactly. All the time, the Social Democrats do nothing. Their own meetings, their own rallies are being broken up. Nazi stormtroopers are actually now, they're not just beating up communists and Social Democrats, they're killing them. So there's a good example. The Social Democratic mayor of a place called Stassf is shot dead by a nazi and and nothing happens and all the time the communists

they are there we know that they're paralyzed the nazis don't really know that the nazis are worried that at some point the communists will strike back. The communists will launch a revolution. The communists will pull off some kind of coup. Do they believe their own propaganda about the communists being a mortal threat? I think they do. Yes, absolutely. Yes, it would make sense that they'd be.

I think loads of Nazis believe their own propaganda. Does Hitler believe his own propaganda? There must be some part of him that's, he's so cynical and opportunistic. I mean, he's opportunistic, but he's also committed. But there must be part of him that knows that they're inflating the propaganda but deep down i think all the nazis do think that the communists are dangerous and the jews and left-wingers generally are deeply deeply dangerous and then they get what appears to be the proof. So we should talk a little bit about a man called Marinus van der Lubbe, who is a Dutchman, not a German. He's a building worker.

He's from Leiden in Holland. He's grown up in intense poverty. He has flirted with communism as a young man, but the communists were too disciplined for him. He's a bit of a wastrel. So he ends up as a kind of a narco-syndicalist. Kind of a little bit like Hitler then. Yeah. You know, he stays in DOS houses and men's hostels and stuff. He's a drifter. Drifting from political extremes. Exactly right. And he decides he's going to go off to the Soviet Union. You know, that's his utopia. He starts going east and he gets stuck in Poland, can't get any further. So he turns back west again. And in February 1933, it finds him in Berlin.

And he's shocked by the scenes in Berlin. He thinks these fascists have taken power, but nobody's doing anything about it. And his heart bleeds for the plight of the unemployed. And he thinks a great action, a great gesture will rouse the unemployed against these terrible fascists. And he has always been a great believer in property damage. He had damaged property in his hometown of Leiden in the Netherlands. And he thinks arson is the way forward. So on the 25th of February, he tries to burn down a welfare office, then a town hall in Berlin, then an old royal palace. And all of these completely fail. He's intercepted, the fires are put out, it's an absolute shambles.

Not even really reported in the papers. So two days later, Marinas van der Lubbe thinks, I'll go on better. He takes the last of his money that morning and he goes and buys matches and firelighters. Then he waits until darkness. And that night at nine o'clock, he gains entrance. He sneaks in to the Reichstag, the German federal parliament, this grand, late 19th century building. And he's got terrible eyesight. So by what that means, bizarrely, he's like the Marvel superhero Daredevil. Because he's got very bad eyesight, it means his other senses are very sharp.

So he's able to move around the darkened Reichstag. He goes to the restaurants and tries to set the furniture on fire. No good. No joy. He's just a very bad arsonist, basically. And then he finds his way into the debating chamber. And the debating chamber has these long, heavy, richly decorated curtains. Very flammable.

Very flammable. He sets light to the curtains. Up go the curtains. Up go the wood panels. There's a dome of the Reichstag debating chamber, debating chamber is an absolute inferno. Now, extraordinarily, across the street, Hitler's pal that he had sheltered with after the Beer Hall Putsch. Oh, Putzi. Putzi Hanfstengel, who I described as a sort of socialite, right-wing, waste-of-space socialite. Indolent.

Yeah. Indolent right-wing socialite.'s got flu or something he's got a kind of he's got man flu a very heavy cold so the rest of them are partying or doing something but he's not there he's and he's he's staying in goring's residence in an apartment at goring's official residence and the housekeeper wakes him up and says the reichstag is on fire and and he stares out of the window the reichstag is on fire um he telephones goebbels and says the reichstag is on fire goebbels thinks he's joking he says it's not it's not a joke it's really and the nazis pile down to the reichstag and they are stunned by what they see and delighted delighted? And they immediately see the opportunity. So the head of

the Prussian political police, this man called Rudolf Diels, he wrote an account of this later on, which Richard Evans quotes in his book. It's an extraordinary scene. Hitler turned to the assembled company, says Diels. I now saw that his face was flaming red with excitement and from the heat that was gathering in the cupola. He shouted as if he wanted to burst in an unrestrained way that i'd not previously experienced with him there will be no mercy now anyone who stands in our way will be butchered the german people won't have any understanding for leniency every communist functionary will be shot where he's found the communist deputies must be hanged this very night everyone in league with the communists is to be arrested against the social democrats and the reists is to be arrested against the social democrats

and the reichsbanner that's the social democrats paramilitary wing too there will be no more mercy and deals says the police guy says hold on a second i don't have this is a communist plot which it wasn't i think van der lubbe all we can tell is that he acted alone and And Hitler says, no, no, no. It's an ingenious, long-prepared thing. The criminals have worked out very nicely, but they're miscalculated. Haven't they, my comrades? These subhumans don't suspect at all how much the people is on our side. And that, of course, is the moment and the turning point in the story,

in a way, or the catalyst, because Hitler will use the Reichstag fire to cement his control of the German state. So Dominic, just before we go to a break, is there any suggestion that this was a Nazi plot? Yes, and it's wrong. So another book by Richard Evans about conspiracy theories came out about two years ago, and this was one of them. Either that the communists did conspire to set the Reichstag on fire, or that the Nazis set it on fire themselves. And there's actually no real evidence for that at all. Hitler was always, I mean, a terrible man, obviously, but Hitler did have some diabolical political qualities, and opportunism was chief among them. He was a brilliantly ruthless opportunist.

So this was his chance. This was a freakish occurrence that he seized on and turned into the pretext for everything that was to follow. But no, the Nazis didn't do it themselves. And Lubbe, the arsonist, he's captured by the Prussian police, but is he executed? What happens to him? He is executed, Tom. He was beheaded, guillotined. So not by a Prussian axe? Not by a Prussian axe. I think three days before his 25th birthday. So in January 1934.

And he was later pardoned, would you believe, by the German government. But he had done it. Yeah, oddly, because he did do it. But I suppose they were saying the death sentence for arson seems very strong. Okay. All right. Well, I'm glad all that's been cleared up. We'll come back in a few minutes

for the very final section of this terrifying story of the rise to power of the Nazis. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip,

and on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to the rest is history um dominic you have brought us to the brink

of the irrevocable triumph of the nazis in 1933 the right stag has been burnt down hitler has seized it as an opportunity to absolutely consolidate his power so what steps does he take i think we can probably tie up the rest of the story reasonably swiftly, Tom. So within hours of the fire, the police are heading out across Berlin. They have lists that they've long maintained of communist deputies and communist supporters, and they arrest about 4,000 people within hours. So the question you were asking before the interval about what if the police hadn't gone along with hitler what if the army or whatever i mean that's a sign of how prepared they are

to strike against the left yeah so they've so they've absolutely been squared and lined up exactly that they well it's not so much that they've been sort of squared and lined up it's that they they've been predisposed to this for decades. Yeah. You could argue for going back a generation or so. So the next morning, which is the 28th of February, Hitler's cabinet, which, as we've said, is not full of narcissists, largely conservatives

and sort of authoritarians, but not national socialists. They approve what becomes known as the Reichstag Fire Decree, the decree for the protection of people and state. And this has two big clauses. The first is to suspend the Weimar constitutional freedoms. So freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and allows the police to arrest you basically, without trial. So the suppression of the press, freedom of the press, I mean, that hitler's predecessor bruning had already of course yes brought in so he's this is exactly the point isn't it that most historians would make that the trouble is so many of these things have been anticipated by more by less malignant actors yeah going back to the very beginning of the weimar republic so the nazis can listen, we're not doing anything.

Just pushing it an open door here. Yeah, that Friedrich Ebert didn't do using emergency legislation and so on. But secondly, the second part of the decree, crucially, it says the government can intervene in the affairs of the German states and basically do what it wants, push them around. But it's not the president who has this power. It is the cabinet led by the chancellor. In other words, it's taking Hindenburg's emergency power

and effectively giving it to Hitler. And again, that is something that Papen had done, wasn't it, in July 1932 when he deposed the state government in Prussia? Yeah, exactly. Quite right, Tom. A dreadful precedent. Papen hesitated at that. And he was like,

taking the president's power away is kind of giving an awful lot of power to the chancellor. The president's pretty important. But basically, he has to go along with it. Goering is telling everybody, the communists, I have evidence that the communists have been planning this plot for years. We must act now, otherwise we'll be swept away

in this apocalyptic conflict with Marxism. And Hindenburg, aged 187, now pretty doddery, he signs it, gives away his own power. And does he do that because he believes Goering, because he's gaga? It's hard to say. It's really hard to say. Some historians think that he was gaga. So there are claims, there's apocryphal claims that when he watched the Nazi torchlight rally, the night Hitler became chancellor, that Hindenburg started talking to General Ludendorff, who wasn't in the room, and indeed hadn't been in the room for years, and thought that they were back in the First World War again. And people are like old man's gone completely mad but other people say that's exaggerated hindenburg did know what was going on but he just didn't he just went along with it

you know he thought it was fine so this unleashes now the stormtroopers and co have you know they have carte blanche they unleash absolute terror against the communists and against the social democrats. They've been, stormtroopers, their own accounts that they've written, they say, you know, we had been waiting for this for years to fight back against the kind of Bolshevik hordes and now finally we could do it and no one would stop us. I mean, they believe they're cleansing Germany. And the election is still going ahead. Yes. Oh, yes. So it's the absolute refinement of this kind of ballot box

and street fighting strategy. It is, absolutely. It's terrifying, actually, in this kind of cold-blooded, I don't want to say brilliance, but it's effectiveness, I suppose. So they're arresting communists all the time, banning communist meetings. It's basically impossible to be a communist from this point onwards, even though the party is not officially banned until after the election. But the election goes ahead on the 5th of March. There are flags everywhere, swastikas everywhere, there are SS and

SA men everywhere. everywhere and actually even against that backdrop hitler doesn't do quite as well as you might expect so the nazis get 44 percent of the vote when you add that to their nationalist partners that's 52 percent of the vote but not the two-thirds required for the to amend the constitution no so what so we'll see how they get the enabling act in a second because that is, again, I said about cold-blooded, ingenious effectiveness. You'll see how they do that. First of all, they go for the takeover of the states.

So again, building, as you said, on Papen's takeover of Prussia. So in the next few weeks, they raise the Nazi flag outside town halls, city halls, all over Germany. State governments are forced to resign or intimidated or put under house arrest. And the Reich Interior Minister, who's Wilhelm Frick, who's a Nazi, he installs special commissions to dismiss police chiefs and put in Nazi police chiefs and so on.

So the Nazis are basically a crushing local government. And by now, lots of social democrats are fleeing the country because they can see what's happening. So you have this surge of arrests. This is when Willy Brandt pleases. Exactly. People of that kind, organizers, party activists, party deputies, and so on. The far-sighted ones are already kind of getting out of Germany. And what about Brüning and people like that? Some of those are leaving. Some of them wait another year or so to the light of the long knives or so before they leave.

Because, of course, it's that classic thing, isn't it, Tom, that people confront in all similar situations. Do you hold on? Do you hope things will improve? Do you close your eyes and hope to keep your head down? Or do you run? Because if you run, of course, you destroy your life. You leave your old life behind. It's a terrible dilemma to be in.

But tens of thousands of people are arrested in Prussia, tens of thousands in Bavaria. course, you destroy your life. You leave your old life behind. It's a terrible dilemma to be in. But tens of thousands of people are arrested in Prussia, tens of thousands in Bavaria. In Bavaria, there is a very ominous development. So the Bavarian administration is now full of Hitler's old cronies, the people he knew back in Munich, people like Ernst Röhm from the SA, people like Hans Frank, Himmler, the new police president. And it's Himmler who tells the press on the 20th of March, they've opened a new camp for political prisoners, for dangerous communists and subversives at a place called Dachau. And it's not a death camp. Dachau is never a death camp. It is a concentration camp. But it's a concentration camp where people are being beaten to death and tortured and so on.

So there is absolutely, you know, the Nazis don't want to keep this entirely secret. They want to frighten you. They want to intimidate you. I mean, that's how it works. And what about Jews? Well, we'll come to Jews in just a second. Of course, during all this period, there have been increasingly ferocious and unbridled attacks on synagogues, on Jewish businesses, on Jewish shops and so on, Jews being attacked in the street. And whereas perhaps the police would have stepped in before, depending on the individual policeman or depending where you are, now it's very unlikely.

You know, you are being subjected to this campaign of horrendous bullying, violence, harassment, and possibly worse. So now Hitler begins to move towards the final step, the Enabling Act, that will allow him to rule as a dictator. It's preceded by one of these ceremonies, these spectacles that seems to capture everything that you and I have talked about in the last three and a half podcasts. It's called the Day of Potsdam Ceremony on the 21st of March. It's the opening of the new Reichstag, which is going to open as an opera house in Berlin. And it's held at the garrison church

that was the heart of the old Prussian monarchy. This kind of sacral space, Tom. A sacral space, yeah. And Hindenburg is there dressed in his full, you know, you said in the previous podcast, when he takes a bath, he wears his peaked helmet. He is there dressed in the uniform of a Prussian marshal. And he is standing beside, he salutes the empty throne of the Kaiser. Like the ghost of Bismarck.

Yeah. He's like the ghost of Bismarck and kaiser's ghost is kind of there on the throne so this is a nod back to the imperial traditions and hitler is there basically in a sort of frock coat in a suit in a you know well because he can't he can't go as a corporal can he that but of course him there in his suit he represents the present and modernity in the future and hindenburg represents the past. And they shake hands. They lay wreaths together at the tombs of the Prussian kings. So for all the conservatives, for people who aren't Nazis but are on the right- It's very reassuring.

Very reassuring moment. This is in the tradition that goes back to the Kaiser and the war of 1870, 71, and all that stuff. Two days later, at the Opera House, when the Reichstag opens, Hitler is back in his brown shirt uniform. The place is packed with stormtroopers. The communist deputies are all gone. So now the Nazis don't need so many people to get their two-thirds majority. Because the communists are now elite.

Their seats don't count? They've been banned? Exactly so. Exactly so. Okay. So Hitler gives this – he'd given a moderate speech in front of Hindenburg two days earlier. Now he gives a very dark speech. He says, if you don't give me this enabling act, there will be civil war and I won't answer for the consequences.

And actually, there is one very moving moment. The leader of the Social Democrats, Otto Wels, who's had numerous threats against his life. He dares to stand up and defend the Weimar Republic. He says our freedom and life can be taken from us, but not our honour. He's got a cyanide capsule with him because he knows what could await him. And as he's speaking, his voice is trembling, breaking with emotion. He says, in this historic hour, we German social Democrats profess our allegiance to the principles of humanity and justice, freedom and socialism. We greet the persecuted and the hard pressed. Their steadfastness and loyalty deserve admiration. The courage of their convictions, their unbroken confidence vouch for a brighter future.

And when he ends, the Nazis are jeering him and booing him and hurling abuse and threats and all this stuff. And then they vote. 444 people vote for Hitler's Enabling Act. That's not just the Nazis. It's the liberal parties. It's the conservative parties. It's the Catholic Center Party.

They all fall into line, only the Social Democrats, 94 of of them dare to vote against it but of course at that point the whole thing is lost and so vels he goes into exile doesn't he he does so he does indeed ends up in czechoslovakia i think hitler can rule by decree from this point onwards he doesn't even need hindenburg anymore hindenburg's just a glorified rubber stamp he doesn't even need the rice tag and. And from that point onwards, everything falls into place. They take over the trade unions. They ban the Social Democratic Party. The Catholic Centre Party dissolves itself. The first book burnings happen in May.

I mean, we've talked a lot about youth and young people in these episodes. Those book burnings, like the attacks on universities and academic freedom, they are driven by students themselves. It is students who disrupt their own lectures, who inform on their own professors. It is students who organize the famous book burnings of the 10th of May held in 19 different universities to students themselves who compile the lists of the books to be cancelled, throw them onto the bonfire. They're the most, you know... Burning idealism of youth.

Yeah, exactly, Tom. People dissolve their clubs. They dissolve... If you're in a stamp collecting club, it either becomes a Nazi stamp collecting club or you scrap it. Why do people do it?

Because this is what totalitarianism is all about. There can be nothing that is exclusive of the state. There can be none of Edmund Burke's little platoons of voluntary people just, you know, who are united by something external to the Nazi crusade. Basically, the only institution that does retain a kind of normal independence is the Catholic Church, isn't it? Because the Concordat is signed in this year as well. But they make an accommodation, Tom.

They make an accommodation, and that's why the Catholic Central Party dissolves itself. Yeah, and the Catholic Central Party, I believe, advised its members. It said, approach your Nazi colleagues and offer your services to them. And boycotts of Jewish shops. So maybe the moment to end, we did two podcasts at the beginning of the year about Auschwitz, but maybe the moment to end our narrative is the 1st of April, 1933. That is the first boycott of Jewish shops and businesses. When you have stormtroopers, Nazi Party activists standing outside Jewish shops and businesses, when you have stormtroopers, Nazi party activists standing

outside Jewish shops and businesses telling people, you don't come in here, or putting up signs. And that is, of course, the first, well, it's not the first warning by any means, but it's the most shocking warning yet of what is to follow. And there are no constitutional or practical breaks on what Hitler can do now? No. He can do what he wants. And he does.

Well, what a dark, dark story. What a dark story. So I guess there are various questions, aren't there, that come out of this. So one of them is what if? Was there an alternative? Could the Weimar republic have endured and become a success i mean i think you've answered that yeah i was going to say it seems i mean sure

it's hard to see how it could have not whether the weimar republic could have been a success but whether hitler could have been stopped which is slightly different and again and again there were moments where they could have been stopped yeah Yeah. Had firm lines been drawn in the sand. And to reiterate, now those lines probably would be drawn because we have this precisely this lesson in front of us. This is the paradigmatic moral political exemplar that haunts everybody. Yeah. To the degree that people are willing to see Hitler where

clearly Hitler doesn't exist, I would say. But equally, people are very understandably terrified of being the people who don't draw the line in the sand. Yeah, we're conscious of the threats. I think we're conscious of two things, aren't we, when we contemplate this story. So one is that democracy always has the potential to destroy itself because by nature, the tolerance and pluralism of democracy means you have to tolerate, or we tend to tolerate, the intolerant, yeah, anti-democratic parties, parties who would actually like to scrap the entire, you know,

it's like competitors in the sport who actually want to destroy the sport, as it were. But the other thing is um i suppose it's what this story tells us about humanity and human nature even in the most sophisticated modern literate self-consciously civilized society that the people who go along with this a lot of the people who facilitate it are judges police chiefs intellectuals i mean university students people from you know successful they're not all that the stereotype is to say oh these are people who are angry who are left behind who are resentful and of course they are but a lot of them are very well adjusted

high-minded people i think i mean i think what fascinated me about this subject was how moral ideals that had been instilled over centuries and centuries of Christian Europe could be trampled down so utterly. And it's the idea that there is no inherent human dignity, that all there is are rival races in a carnivorous struggle for dominance, that humans are nothing more than rival bands of chimps killing one another, and that that is the true stake that faces a people, a race, the defense of the bloodline. And the other is the idea that not only should you not care for the weak, but you should eliminate them. And I think that in both cases, I think it would be hard to imagine the Nazis doing what they did without the intellectual turbulence that followed Darwin. I'm not blaming Darwin for Hitler, but I think that that idea that nature is all about competition and that the strong should properly prevail over the weak,

which is a bastardized understanding of what Darwinism meant. I cannot imagine it happening in the way that it did. Because what is different between the Nazis and say the communists or the French revolutionaries is that the communists are upholding the idea that there is a kind of dignity in being at the bottom of the pile. I mean, that's what it's all about. Whereas the Nazis are not saying that. And also the communists are also, of course, very much internationalists. The counter arguments to that, Tom, would be that both Nazis and communists are equally keen on exterminating large numbers of people who don't fit the plan. Right. But the question is, for us, the quintessence

of evil is fascism, is Nazism, not communism. Even though Stalin killed and Mao between them killed far more than the Nazis did, Hitler remains for us the quintessence of evil because of the motives that he has in doing his killing. He's killing as a racist. He's not killing as someone who believes in a worker's paradise. So you think people are prepared to give some slack, as it were? at the bottom of the pile are endowed with a kind of a dignity and a power and a control is seen as being morally superior to the idea of wiping people out because of racist reasons, overtly racist reasons. I think you're probably right that people do think that though, of course, that's a terrible moral trap of its own, isn't it? Because it leads people to make excuses, as so many people, intellectuals did in the 1930s, for the most horrendous... Yeah, it is. But I think it's a reflection of the moral

assumptions that have governed Europe for as long as they have done, which is in turn why the Nazis serve as the ultimate political parable, political warning. We're far more nervous of Nazis coming to power, even the communists coming to power, even though both Nazis and communists have shown themselves utterly murderous when they do get totalitarian control. Because the nihilism is so offensive to our moral sense. I mean, to me, the Nazis, I think, are the Nazis a product of the late 19th century? I mean, clearly the ideas do come from the late 19th century, but it doesn't make it inevitable. So I think there's a future in which those ideas do float around, but they remain on the fringe or they percolate into mainstream politics. But to me, I mean, historians have different,

some historians think the Great Depression is really the key thing. But for me, I just feel like the First World War is absolutely, the First World War doesn't make Nazism inevitable. It definitely means that there's going to be a i would say a dictatorship in germany at some point because there's a dictatorship in so many countries gone the great the great depression is so lethal for germany because of the first world war because they fought it because they have um got in debt over it because their economy has been destroyed by it it It's that that makes them

vulnerable. I mean, everything that afflicts the German state in the wake of the First World War is basically because of the First World War. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. So if you compare something like Nazism, I would say so many of the conditions also existed. They were different, of course, maybe some of them less intense, but they existed elsewhere. So they might have existed. I mean, it pains me to say it, but you could imagine Britain losing the First World War and some terrible turn to a kind of resentful, bitter politics that involved perhaps scapegoating, who knows, the Irish, you know? Well, because that Darwinian, I shouldn't say Darwinian, the kind of social Darwinian habit of saying that, well, if you are strong, then you basically have the right to crush the weak.

I mean, that's been manifest in British and French imperial policy, you know, out in the empire. Yeah, I think that's true. And that cast of, I mean, you know, out in the empire. Yeah, I think that's true. And that cast of, I mean, you know, it's often said that what the First World War does is to bring to the metropole, to Europe. The violence of the colonies. The violence of the colonies.

Yeah. Which is then what the Nazis go on to do is, you know, I mean, you know, concentration camps, the idea of the concentration camp is originally a British idea in the Boer War. Yes, and I think if you change the focus to France, I mean, France, you think of the virulence of the anti-Semitism in the read up to the First World War, the Dreyfus case. I mean, actually, you could tell this story about France and you could say, you know, democratic traditions, very imperiled. They'd had coups. They'd had Louiss they'd had louis napoleon

becoming napoleon the third there was a terrible sense of bitterness because of their opinion yeah in the franco-prussian war or dgs going back to napoleon um you know you could write a sort of alternative universe a french sonderveg story in which there's a french fascism that is exterminatory in the 1920s and 1930s i don't believe there was anything in the German character or the German culture necessarily. I think it's in Germany's experience, the shattering experience of the 1910s that then leads into the 1920s. And then, as we've discussed, a series of terrible, terrible decisions by people who had choices, who could have decided differently.

You know, Hindenburg could have refused to let the Nazis into government, but they don't. And we know what happened next. Yeah. So I would say the swirl of ideas that then gets weaponized by the calamity of the First World War. And then, as you say, a series of contingent stages that could have gone other ways. And in that light, it could, again, it could have been France, it could have been Britain had they lost. Thinking back to Richard Evans and Ian Kershaw, they both say, okay, what's the future where those contingencies do go the other ways? And they say, probably Germany was going to have a military dictatorship in the 1930s, as most countries in Central and Eastern Europe did. So not dissimilar,

and maybe would have fought wars, perhaps would even have been dragged into a war with the old allies of Britain and France. But the difference is no other regime would have so cold-bloodedly set out to murder 6 million Jews. I think that's the big difference. And that anti-Semitism was so crucial, so central to Nazism from the very beginning. One other factor, of course, is the Bolshevik Revolution, which is also, I think, a key factor, because that essentially means that there can be no kind of left-right alliance against the extremes. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right about that, Tom. I think it means that for a lot of sort of respectable middle-class Germans, any left-wing politics seems like a step down to this abyss that will end

in their property being taken away and them being shot as kulaks or something. You know, this terror of Bolshevism. Bolsheviks were never Hitler's primary target. The primary target was always Jews. But the fear of Bolshevism and of left-wing subversion and of revolution definitely drives people into his embrace. I think people who, again, should have known better, the teachers and priests and civil servants. Well, but we do know better now. I mean, again, that's the thing, isn't it? We do know better now. But I suppose then they didn't, because there hadn't been a Nazi regime.

So Tom, last question, and a really, really cheery question for the new year. Do you think it could happen again? No, not like that. Oh, you surprised me. Because we have the example before us. There could absolutely be a collapse of implosion of democracy in a Western country. There could absolutely be an attempt to establish a totalitarian regime, but it would be very different. It would be, I think, subtler. The whole thing about the Nazis was that they were in your face. I mean, literally punching you in the face often. I think it would be, in a Western country, it would be subtler than that. And I think we will not have a reprise of,

of fascism because we have that example before us. It will be a different form of totalitarianism. I would say, and I hope that I don't live to be proved wrong, obviously. What do you think? I think there are obvious parallels of what happened in Russia in the 1990s with the Weimar Republic,

the sense of humiliation, sense of economic, social, cultural collapse, um, the thirst for, for leadership, um,

the search for scapegoats, all of those things. I mean, it's not quite analogous. There's no exterminatory logic to, to Putinism. I mean, it's pure nationalism,

I suppose you would say. Even there, they're saying uh we're in a fight against nazis yeah they are you're right i mean i suppose remain so perhaps uh the only way that anything approximating to a nazi regime might come to power is by claiming to be fighting against nazis right yeah but maybe you could argue that our fixation on Nazis, I mean, there are lots of... So when Donald Trump was elected in 2016, there was a great vogue among sort of left-leaning Americans writing books and articles saying, you know, Trump is Hitler. This is how Nazi Germany started, all this. Well, Timothy Snyder did, didn't he? Yes. I mean, very, very great scholar with a huge un you know i mean incredibly detailed

knowledge of the subject yeah i mean timothy snyder does this writes this column you know three times a week i think or certainly did write it three times a week but i think the danger with that is that you're replaying the battles of the past on you that the threats to democracy in the future will be different they won't be they won't get their origin from the fevered sort of fringes of the 1890s or whatever. But also, I mean, America has its own pathologies that might lead to... Of course. Yeah. Each country has its own. I mean, that's the story of the Nazis. Every country's pathologies are slightly different. And the Nazis were unique to germany and no other

country could have produced a national socialist party looking just like that but i think any country could produce is capable of producing a similar kind of well because because i suppose if you know if we're saying it's specifically a fascist i mean for me the essence of fascism is the fusion of the futuristic with the with the antique yeah um so it would have to be national it would have to be nationalist and so it would have to draw on specifics within a country's historical tradition so there you go um anyway a cheery a cheery subject so we've had Auschwitz and we've had the rise of the Nazis in the first month of 2023. Things will cheer up, we promise. Yes, because on Monday we will be returning with Atlantis.

So a very different subject. Civilization plunging into the depths of the ocean. And to come we have subjects such as Christopher Columbus, the fall of the Aztecs, the Cathars, and the life and career of Ronald Reagan. And upstairs and downstairs.

Oh yes, servants. In Edwardian Britain. The real Downton Abbey. So lots of slightly jollier subjects to come. So we'll say goodbye to you all and hopefully we'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip.

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