The Nazi party, 1919-1945 : a complete history

600 Pages·2010·4.89 MB·English

by  Orlow

Qk.NaziPartySC.fnl 4/3/08 10:26 AM Page 1
DIETRICH
ORLOW DDIIEETTRRIICCHH OORRLLOOWW
The BEST HISTORY of
NATIONAL SOCIALISM
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HISTORY
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Enigma Books
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Dietrich Orlow

The Nazi Party

1919–1945

A Complete History

Enigma Books
Enigma Books
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Copyright © 2010 Dietrich Orlow

ISBN-13: 978-1-929631-57-5
eISBN: 978-0-9824911-9-5

Printed in the United States of America

Originally published as:
The History of the Nazi Party
I. 1919–1933
II. 1933–1945

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the written permission of Enigma Books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data

Orlow, Dietrich.
The Nazi Party 1919-1945 : a complete history / Dietrich Orlow.

p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 13: 978-1-929631-57-5
ISBN 10: 1-929631-57-X

1. Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei--History. 2. National socialism--History.
3. Germany--Politics and government--1918-1933. I. Title.

DD253.25 .O75 2005
943.086
To Maria (Part I)

To Ingrid (Part II)

Contents

Preface x

Part I

1. Introduction 3

2. Growing Up in Bavaria: 1919–1923 10

3. Dissolution and Reconstruction: 1924–1926 34

4. The Failure of the Urban Plan: 1926–1928 54

5. ―Socialism! That is really an unfortunate word.‖: 1928–1930 88

6. Illusions and Dilemmas: 1930–1932 127

7. Hope, Frustration, and Triumph: 1932–1933 163

8. Conclusion 205

Part II

9. Introduction 215

10. ―Now It‘s Our Turn‖: 1933–1934 225

11. Purges, Struggles, and Crises: 1934–1936 288

12. Stalemate at Home, Expansion Abroad: 1937–1939 342

13. Dizzy with Success: 1939–1941 388

14. ―Working like a horse‖: 1941–1943 434

15. Pyrrhic Victories and Paradoxes: 1943–1945 488

16. Postscript 536

Abbreviations used in notes 542
Glossary 544
Checklist of Less Familiar Nazi Leaders 549
Bibliographic Note (Part I) 553
Bibliographic Note 554
Index 573
Preface

A t the outset of this new edition of the history of the Nazi Party it was clear that
a number of key issues needed to be addressed both for the author no less than
for the reader. Has new evidence surfaced that significantly altered the interpretive
framework in addressing such a subject? What about the historiographic context?
Has the study of the Nazi period itself changed, and how does the history of the
Nazi Party fit into this new landscape? Have methodological innovations also
changed the treatment of the field? And, more importantly does the book retain its
relevance and stand the test of time? Are its conclusions valid, or is this scholarship
of interest primarily as a unique contribution to the study of Nazi Germany?
To begin with the last question: I can report that the overall interpretations put
forth in this book retain all of their validity today. (A few more details on this later.)
The Nazi Party 1919–1945. A Complete History has had few competitors; the NSDAP
is not a frequently examined issue in the field of Nazi studies. This work in fact
remains the most comprehensive history of the NSDAP in any language. There are a
number of shorter treatments in the voluminous literature on Nazism and the Third
Reich, but since the original publication of this book only one new, full-scale history
has appeared. This is a recent contribution by two prominent historians of the
former German Democratic Republic, Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weissbecker. The
two scholars valiantly, but not very convincingly, attempt to breathe new life into the
rather discredited thesis that the NSDAP was essentially an instrument of Germany‘s
monopoly capitalists.1
The book‘s importance is continuously confirmed by the lack of significant new
evidence on the history of the Nazi Party. The Allied decision to make available to
scholars virtually all of the captured German documents gave me access to most of
the published and archival documentation that the Nazi Party generated during its
existence. Much of this evidence remained unpublished as I wrote this book. Since
then far more of the documentation has become available in printed form. A series
of major publication projects have given us well-edited versions of almost every
word that Adolf Hitler ever wrote or uttered.2 Jeremy Noakes‘ and Geoffrey
Pridham‘s essential collection of Documents on Nazism, 1919–1945 appeared as a one-

1. Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weissbecker, Geschichte der NSDAP, 1920–1945 (Cologne, 1998).
2. Adolf Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, 1905–1924, ed. by Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn (Stuttgart, 1980);
Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, ed. by Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Munich, 1999), mult. vols.; Hitler‘s Table Talk,
1941–1944: His Private Conversations, tr. Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens, intro. Hugh Redwald Trevor-
Roper (Enigma Books: New York, 2000); Hitler‘s Second Book, ed. by Gerhard L. Weinberg (Enigma Books:
New York, 2003); and Max Domarus, ed., Hitler: Reden 1932–1945, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1965), 4 vols.
Preface xi
volume publication in 1974; it has now grown to four volumes.3 One source I wish
had been available to me is the voluminous diaries of Joseph Goebbels. The Nazi
propaganda chief, who spent much of his time in close proximity to Hitler, was an
inveterate diary writer. Some of his notations were captured by the Western Allies;
these fragments were eventually published in a variety of publications. But the bulk
of Goebbels‘ handwritten diaries was captured by the Russians at the end of World
War II and shipped to Moscow. Here they remained until the collapse of the Soviet
Union. They were then returned to Germany and have now been published in a
superb, multivolume work, well-edited by Elke Fröhlich and the Munich Institut für
Zeitgeschichte.4 The Propaganda Minister‘s diaries are singularly self-serving and
egocentric, but they are also full of references to the Nazi Party, many of them sharp
criticisms of the way the NSDAP was run, especially after 1933.
The overall landscape of the field of Nazi studies has certainly changed, several
earlier axiomatic assumptions having been called into question; other historiographic
controversies were still in their infancy when this book first appeared. One of the
givens was that the Nazi Party was the German manifestation of a Europe-wide phe-
nomenon called fascism. That assumption was subsequently challenged by a group
of scholars who argued that there was no such thing as generic fascism. More
recently, the pendulum has swung back, and generic fascism as a concept acquired
new validity.5
Questions about the ―revolutionary‖ nature of Hitler and the Nazi Party were
not seriously debated by scholars a generation ago. Western historians, myself in-
cluded, generally assumed that the Nazis were a phenomenon with essentially
political and military, not social and economic, goals. (In the former Communist
East historians, of course, contended that Nazism was by definition a counter-
revolutionary movement.) It was not until much later that Rainer Zitelmann and
Michael Prinz articulated the thesis that Hitler and the Nazis, including especially the
left wing of the NSDAP, had ambitions that went beyond the accumulation of
power and anti-Semitism. They were determined to create a social and economic
revolution in Germany and Europe as well.6 This thesis has not been readily
accepted among scholars; many historians object particularly to the ―positive‖ veneer
which the ―revolutionary‖ theory gives to the Nazis.
Their emphasis upon the social aspects of Nazism does, however, place the
Zitelmann and Prinz contributions very much in the mainstream of recent writings
on Nazism and the Nazi Party. The most remarkable shift in the historiographic
landscape of the Nazi Party and Nazism has undoubtedly been the emphasis upon

3. Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds., Documents on Nazism, 1919–1945 (New York, 1975), 4 vols.
4. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I: Aufzeichnungen 1924–1941, ed. by Elke Fröhlich
(Munich, 1987), 4 vols.
5. See, my ―Fascists Among Themselves: Some Observations on West European Politics in the 1930s,‖ Euro-
pean Review, 11 (no. 3, 2003), 245–66 and the literature cited there. See also, Wolfgang Schieder, ―Die NSDAP
vor 1933: Profil einer faschistischen Partei,‖ Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 19 (no. 2, 1993), 141–54; and most
recently, Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York, 2004).
6. Rainer Zitelmann, Hitler: Selbstverständnis eines Revolutionärs (Hamburg, 1987); Michael Prinz and Rainer
Zitelmann, eds., Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (Darmstadt, 1991); and Michael Prinz, Vom neuen
Mittelstand zum Volksgenossen: Die Entwicklung des sozialen Status der Angestellten von der Weimarer Republik bis zum
Ende der NS-Zeit (Munich, 1986). See also, Horst Möller, ―Die Herrschaftsstruktur der nationalsozialistischen
Diktatur, Revue de l‘Allemagne, 29 (Jan.–March, 1997), 3–18.