Industrialist input

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The author of the submission: Hjalmar Schacht (photo from 1931)

The industrialists' submission was a letter signed by nineteen or twenty representatives from industry , finance and agriculture , which was addressed to Reich President Paul von Hindenburg on November 19, 1932 with the request that Adolf Hitler be appointed Chancellor . The Reich President did not immediately comply with this request, but instead appointed Kurt von Schleicher as Reich Chancellor on December 2, 1932 . The industrialists' entry was first published in 1956 in the Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft and has long been considered proof that large-scale industry played a central role in the rise of the NSDAP to power .

The addressee of the submission: President Paul von Hindenburg

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Right at the beginning, the text of the submission is based on the same sentiments of the signatories and the Reich President (“Like your Excellency, imbued with ardent love for the German people and fatherland”). Hindenburg's more recent policy of governing independently of the Reichstag with emergency ordinances is welcomed, as is a " government independent of parliamentary party system" presented as necessary , as expressed in the "ideas of a presidential cabinet" expressed by Chancellor Franz von Papen . This goal (which later in the text is also presented as fundamentally shared by the DNVP and the NSDAP ) had after the Reichstag election of November 6, 1932 , in contrast to the current cabinet, "a full majority in the German people [...], if one - as it has to happen - disregard the state- negative Communist Party ”.

The goal is presented as an alternative to the "previous parliamentary party regime". The contemporary political conditions of the Weimar Republic are characterized by “the repeated dissolution of the Reichstag with increasing number of new elections that intensify the party struggle”, which “should counteract not only political, but also any economic calming and consolidation”. Here the text alluded to the global economic crisis , which had a particularly serious impact in Germany. However, since “any constitutional amendment that is not supported by the broadest popular current” would “trigger even worse economic, political and emotional effects”, Hindenburg is asked that “the reorganization of the Reich Cabinet should be carried out in the greatest possible way Bring people's strength behind the cabinet ”.

Subsequently, the signatories profess to be "free from any narrow party-political attitude". The national movement "that goes through our people" is presented as the "promising beginning of a time" that "creates the indispensable basis for a resurgence of the German economy by overcoming class antagonism " . In order to make the sacrifices necessary for this ascent, "the largest group of this national movement [meant the NSDAP] was to be involved in the government".

In conclusion, the signatories predict that “transferring the responsible leadership of a […] presidential cabinet to the leader of the largest national group […] will eradicate the weaknesses and errors that are inherent in every mass movement and allow millions of people who are now marginalized to carry away affirmative force ”.

The entry was handwritten in particularly large letters so that Hindenburg could read it personally.

Signatory

The sixteen first signatories were:

  1. Hjalmar Schacht , former President of the Reichsbank, member of the Keppler Circle - he wrote the text.
  2. Friedrich Reinhart , board spokesman of Commerz- und Privat-Bank , board member of AEG , president of the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Commerce, member of the Keppler circle
  3. August Rosterg , General Director of Wintershall AG , member of the Keppler circle
  4. Kurt Freiherr von Schröder , Cologne private banker in the JH Stein bank , member of the Keppler circle and the German gentlemen's club . The decisive negotiations before Hitler's appointment as Chancellor took place in his house a few weeks later .
  5. Fritz Beindorff , owner of Pelikan AG , on the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank
  6. Emil Helfferich , board member of the German-American Petroleum Company , chairman of the supervisory board of HAPAG , member of the Keppler circle
  7. Franz Heinrich Witthoefft , Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Commerz- und Privat-Bank, President of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce , member of the Keppler circle
  8. Ewald Hecker President of the Hanover Chamber of Commerce and Industry, member of the Keppler Circle, chairman of the supervisory board of Ilseder Hütte
  9. Kurt Woermann medium-sized shipowner from Hamburg and member of the NSDAP
  10. Carl Vincent Krogmann , co-owner of the Hamburger Bank, shipping company and trading house Wachsmuth and Krogmann , board member of the Hamburg National Club , from 1933 to 1945 mayor of Hamburg , member of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce and member of the Keppler circle
  11. Kurt von Eichborn , partner in a private bank in Breslau
  12. Eberhard Graf von Kalckreuth , President of the Reichslandbund , member of the German Men's Club
  13. Erich Lübbert , General Director of Dywidag , Chairman of the AG for Transport , member of the Stahlhelm Economic Council
  14. Erwin Merck , head of HJ Merck & Co. , a Hamburg commercial bank
  15. Joachim von Oppen , President of the Brandenburg Chamber of Agriculture
  16. Rudolf Ventzki , General Director of the Esslingen machine factory
The only major industrialist among the signatories: Fritz Thyssen

The signatures of the following personalities that were missing on the copy of the letter, which is in the files of the office of the Reich President, were handed in:

17. Fritz Thyssen , chairman of the supervisory board of the United Steel Works , the only really important industrialist among the signatories.
18. Robert Graf von Keyserlingk-Cammerau , board member of the agricultural employers' associations, member of the German gentlemen's club
19. Kurt Gustav Ernst von Rohr-Manze , landowner.

Whether Engelbert Beckmann , the President of the Westphalian Land Association, signed the petition is controversial.

Historical context

In 1931 and 1932 there had been numerous attempts to contribute to the transfer of power to the NSDAP through lists of signatures and petitions, for example a petition by the "Economic Policy Association Frankfurt" of July 27, 1931 and a declaration by 51 professors from July 1932 in the Völkischer Beobachter . In the autumn of 1932 the Hamburg National Club and the Berlin National Club from 1919 campaigned for a Hitler government. According to the historian Gerhard Schulz, the Reich President's Office was “literally inundated” by such submissions from committed National Socialists.

The idea for the industrialists' submission came up at the end of October 1932 in the Keppler district and was supported by Heinrich Himmler , who acted as a liaison to the Brown House . The drafting was in the hands of Hjalmar Schacht, who was the only member of the Keppler circle with significant political experience.

The entry related to the result of the Reichstag election on November 6, 1932 . In this election, the NSDAP had for the first time suffered losses in a Reichstag election and received significantly fewer votes than in the election on July 31, 1932 ; their share had fallen from 37 to 33 percent. The KPD, on the other hand, had clearly gained votes. Many right-wing voters had returned from the NSDAP to the DNVP. The petitioners stood up for Hitler in a situation when they saw the danger that the National Socialist movement could perish again.

For Chancellor Franz von Papen , the election result meant a catastrophic defeat, as the parties that supported him - in addition to the DNVP and the DVP , which drifted into the opponents of the republic after Stresemann's death - only won a little over ten percent of the votes. He therefore submitted his resignation on November 17, 1932. Before that, he had already started exploring on behalf of Hindenburg how the NSDAP could be involved in government responsibility. He had been informed in advance of the petition by co-signer Hecker and was no longer opposed to a letter from Keppler to Schröder dated November 13, 1932, according to a chancellorship of Hitler. But Hindenburg persistently refused to give Hitler the powers of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution . But since Hitler did not want to seek a parliamentary majority for his government, the project did not progress.

When, on January 30, 1933, Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor of a Presidential Cabinet , Emil Helfferich said he was supposed to have requested the industrialists' submission as an important document for this process. This information is missing in the memoirs of Otto Meissner and all other close acquaintances of Hindenburg, which is why its truthfulness is also questioned.

assessment

In recent research, input has been judged a failure since the study by Henry Ashby Turner (1985). As evidence, u. a. cites a letter from Schacht to Hitler in which he dampened his hopes for strong industrial support for his appointment as Reich Chancellor on November 12, 1932:

“It seems that our attempt to get a number of business signatures for it has not been entirely in vain, although I believe that heavy industry is unlikely to go along with it, but it gets its name 'heavy industry' from theirs Clumsiness. "

In fact, it was expected that many more entrepreneurs would be won: including Wilhelm Cuno , Karl Haniel , Robert Bosch and Carl Friedrich von Siemens , all of whom had refused. The influential lignite industrialist and member of the Ruhrlade Paul Silverberg , who despite his Jewish origins had been in favor of Hitler's chancellorship since mid-1932, had not been asked to sign, although he was ready to do so. The “overwhelming majority of industry” did not sign the petition because, as the historian Reinhard Neebe noted as early as 1981, they resolutely rejected the transfer of government responsibility to the National Socialists. In the autumn of 1932, most large industrialists did not want Hitler, but Papen and his anti-parliamentary-conservative conception in power.

This is also indicated by a comparison with the appeal of a DNVP-affiliated “German Committee” on November 6, 1932, which spoke out in favor of the Papen government, for the DNVP and against the NSDAP under the heading “With Hindenburg for the people and the Reich!”. A total of 339 personalities had signed this appeal, including several dozen large industrialists, significantly more than in the case of the industrialists' submission. Here one read such prominent names as Ernst von Borsig (chairman of the mining association Ernst Brandi ), Erich von Gilsa (a close colleague of Reusch), Fritz Springorum and Albert Vögler . The signatures of the latter two make it seem unlikely that they, as Friedrich Reinhart (1931–1934 he was spokesman of the board of Commerz- und Privatbank) claimed in a letter to Hindenburg's State Secretary Otto Meissner on November 21, 1932, actually with the industrialists' submission and were in solidarity with their diametrically different thrust; the heavy industrialists mentioned did not add their signature.

The termination of the petition was also a failure: because of Papen's resignation on November 17, Hitler had hopes for his meeting with the Reich President on November 19. To his annoyance, however, it was not possible to submit the application in good time before this date, because State Secretary Meissner did not submit the application to Hindenburg until November 22nd. She was unsuccessful. Hindenburg continued to reject Hitler as Chancellor and instead appointed Kurt von Schleicher.

The historian Karsten Heinz Schönbach, however, states a change of heart at Hindenburg. While Hindenburg had rejected all of Hitler's claims on November 19, he offered Hitler on November 21 to get "a working majority" in the Reichstag. This offer failed, however, not because of Hindenburg, but because of Hitler.

The thesis advocated in Marxist literature that power was handed over to the NSDAP as a result of the influence exerted by big industry is not shared in today's specialist literature. The historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler (1931–2014) ruled that the petition should not be viewed as an “ultimatum of“ big business ””, “but it was symptomatic of the widespread sympathy for Hitler”.

literature

  • Eberhard Czichon : Who helped Hitler to power? On the share of German industry in the destruction of the Weimar Republic . Cologne 1967.
  • Volker Hentschel: Weimar's last months: Hitler and the downfall d. Republic , 2nd edition, Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1978.
  • Reinhard Neebe: Big Industry, State and NSDAP 1930–1933. Paul Silverberg and the Reich Association of German Industry in the Crisis of the Weimar Republic (= critical studies on historical science. Volume 45). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1981, ISBN 3-525-35703-6 ( online , PDF; 6.9 MB).
  • Henry Ashby Turner : The Big Entrepreneurs and the Rise of Hitler . Siedler Verlag, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-88680-143-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albert Schreiner: "The submission of German financial magnates, monopolists and junkers to Hindenburg for Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor (November 1932)", in: ZfG , 4 (1956), pp. 366–369.
  2. ↑ Wording of the input from Wolfgang Michalka and Gottfried Niedhart (eds.), Die ungeliebte Republik. Documents on domestic and foreign policy in Weimar 1918–1933 , dtv, Munich 1980, p. 340 ff.
  3. ^ Gerhard Schulz : From Brüning to Hitler. The change in the political system in Germany 1930–1933 (= Between Democracy and Dictatorship , Vol. 3), de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1992, p. 1018.
  4. ^ Gerhard Schulz, From Brüning to Hitler. The change in the political system in Germany 1930-1933 (= Between Democracy and Dictatorship , Vol. 3), de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1992, p. 1019.
  5. ↑ Eberhard Czichon , Who helped Hitler to power? . Cologne 1967, p. 71 and Reinhard Kühnl (ed.), The German Fascism in Sources and Documents , Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1977, p. 162, list him as a signatory. After Gerhard Schulz , Von Brüning zu Hitler. The Change in the Political System in Germany 1930–1933 (= Between Democracy and Dictatorship , Vol. 3), de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1992, pp. 1019 f., His signature never reached the Reich President; also Henry A. Turner , Die Großunternehmer und der Aufstieg Hitler , Siedler Verlag Berlin 1985, p. 365, speaks of only 19 signatures and does not mention Beckmann.
  6. ^ Werner Maser : Hermann Göring, Hitler's Janus-headed Paladin . Berlin 2000, p. 140 f.
  7. ↑ Eberhard Czichon : Who helped Hitler to power? , Cologne 1967, p. 49
  8. ^ Gerhard Schulz: From Brüning to Hitler. The change in the political system in Germany 1930–1933 (= Between Democracy and Dictatorship , Vol. 3), de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1992, p. 1018.
  9. ^ Karl-Heinz Minuth (Ed.): Files of the Reich Chancellery . The von Papen cabinet, Boldt Verlag, Boppard 1989, vol. 2, no. 208 accessible online ; Gerhard Schulz even suspects that Papen himself was the initiator of the petition, from Brüning to Hitler. The change in the political system in Germany 1930–1933 (= Between Democracy and Dictatorship , Vol. 3), de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1992, p. 1019
  10. ↑ Eberhard Kolb , The Weimar Republic , 6th edition, Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, p. 145
  11. ^ Emil Helfferich: 1932–1946 facts, a contribution to finding the truth . Jever 1969, p. 19.
  12. ^ Henry A. Turner : The big entrepreneurs and the rise of Hitler , Siedler Verlag Berlin 1985, p. 365 f.
  13. ^ Reinhard Kühnl : German fascism in sources and documents . Cologne 1978, p. 158.
  14. ↑ Reinhard Neebe: Big Industry, State and NSDAP 1930-1933. Paul Silverberg and the Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie in the crisis of the Weimar Republic . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1981 (= Critical Studies in History, Volume 45), p. 167 f. online (PDF; 6.9 MB)
  15. ↑ Reinhard Neebe: Big Industry, State and NSDAP 1930-1933. Paul Silverberg and the Reichsverband der Deutschen Industrie in the crisis of the Weimar Republic . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1981 (= Critical Studies in History, Volume 45), p. 136 online (PDF; 6.9 MB)
  16. ↑ Eberhard Czichon: Who helped Hitler to power? . Cologne 1967, p. 71 f.
  17. ^ Gerhard Schulz, From Brüning to Hitler. The change in the political system in Germany 1930–1933 (= Between Democracy and Dictatorship , Vol. 3), de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1992, p. 1018
  18. ^ Karsten Heinz Schönbach: The German Corporations and National Socialism 1926–1943 . Berlin 2015, p. 334.
  19. ↑ See e.g. B. the article https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/96133.denkoppel-f%C3%BCr-hindenburg.html "Denkbie für Hindenburg"] by Kurt Pätzold in the daily newspaper Junge Welt on November 19, 2007.
  20. ^ Gerhard Schulz: From Brüning to Hitler. The change in the political system in Germany 1930–1933 (= Between Democracy and Dictatorship , Vol. 3), de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 1992, p. 1019 .; Eberhard Kolb, The Weimar Republic , 6th edition, Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, p. 145.
  21. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Deutsche Gesellschaftgeschichte , Vol. 4: From the beginning of the First World War to the founding of the two German states 1914–1949 CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2003, p. 533.