Most observers assumed that Schleicher’s fall would mean Papen’s return to power as chancellor. Harry Kessler, for one, was horrified at this prospect. He wrote in his diary on January 28: “Schleicher has fallen and Papen is to form a new government. He now plays unequivocally the part of presidential minion, for he lacks all other support and has almost the whole nation against him. I feel physically sick at the thought of this mutton-head and gambler ruling us again and apparently acting as Foreign Minister as well.”
But what actually transpired was far worse. On January 29 Papen and Hitler worked out the details of their power-sharing arrangement. Hitler’s cabinet would include, in addition to Papen as vice-chancellor, Hugenberg as minister of economics, and Franz Seldte, chief of the conservative Stahlhelm veterans’ organization, as minister of labor. Only two cabinet posts would go to Nazis: Wilhelm Frick would take the Interior Ministry and Hermann Göring would become minister without portfolio. The Interior Ministry, however, was a crucial post, for it embraced the police. Moreover, Papen consented to Hitler’s demand that Göring take over the Prussian Interior Ministry, with similar police functions for that state. These were fateful breaches in the “conservative wall” around Hitler. But Papen remained oblivious to the danger. When a Prussian Junker questioned his wisdom in working with Hitler, he replied: “What do you want? I have the confidence of Hindenburg. In two months we’ll have pushed Hitler so far into a corner that he’ll squeal.”
Hitler was appointed chancellor by Hindenburg at 11:30 in the morning on January 30. Upon moving into the Chancellery, he reportedly said, “No one gets me out of here alive.” That evening the Nazis celebrated their victory with a torchlight procession through the streets of Berlin, the first of many such extravaganzas. Having assembled in the Tiergarten, the marchers paraded east through the Brandenburg Gate, crossed the Pariser Platz, then turned down the Wilhelmstrasse. Watching the procession, Theodor Düsterberg of the Stalhelm noticed thousands of townspeople joining the celebration. “The Berliners, usually so level-headed, witty and skeptical were in a state of collective delirium,” he reported. According to Hedda Adlon, who watched the procession from her husband’s famous hotel, crowds in the Pariser Platz “broke into prolonged applause” when one of the SA bands, upon passing the French embassy, struck up the war-song “Siegreich wollen wir Frankreich schlagen.” But not all Berliners were jubilant. As the procession passed his house near the Brandenburg Gate, Max Liebermann was heard to mutter: “Pity one can’t eat as much as one wants to vomit.”
When the parade reached the presidential palace on the Wilhelmstrasse, Hin-denburg appeared at a window and kept time to the music with his cane. As he watched the marchers go by he allegedly turned to Meissner and asked: “Did we really take all these Russian prisoners at Tannenburg?” Hitler received thunderous “Sieg Heils” at a window in the Chancellery next door. Behind him stood the master of ceremonies, Goebbels, for whom the event represented a personal triumph over the “Red Beast,” Berlin. As he said over the radio that night: “It is simply moving for me to see how in this city, where we began six years ago with a handful of people, the entire people is now rising up, marching by below me, workers and middle class and peasants and students and soldiers—a great community of the
Consolidation and Coordination
The new government in Berlin ensured that there would be no disruptions of its inaugural parade by imposing a ban on counterdemonstrations in the center of the city. The SA, however, was anxious to show that the entire town now belonged to the men in brown. Accordingly, on their way home from the march on January 30 a troop from Charlottenburg took a detour down the KPD-dominated Wallstrasse, daring the Communists to show their colors. A fireflght broke out, resulting in the death of an SA man. Immediately thereafter, the Berlin police descended on the district and arrested all the Communists they could find.
