Though the 1944 military resistance that coalesced around Count von Stauffenberg has become the stuff of popular legend - and was no doubt commendable in its aims - the truth is that the military establishment lined up behind Hitler beginning in 1931, and was the pillar of his support in the crucial years of 1933 and 1934 that cemented Nazi government. There are two intertwining explanations for why this is the case: yes, the military aligned with many elements of Nazi ideology, but Hitler, amply aided by the military politician Kurt von Schleicher, also created the conditions for a pragmatic alliance in 1933/34, if not earlier. The development is best described as a shared enmity against the republic that slowly accumulated until it became an outright alliance.

The ideologies that united Nazism and the military are obvious, though did not at first result in a full, unequivocal alliance. After World War One, a large segment of German manhood, conditioned by trench life, sought the establishment of German greatness by feat of arms. Though it took on a particular bitterness after the war, that had always been, broadly speaking, the goal of Germany’s martial junker overclass, from 1871 through to the bloodiest days of Hindenburg-Ludendorff’s last-ditch offensive against the allies in Spring 1918. The Nazis, like the junkers, believed deeply that violence was the key to power, not feeble parliamentarianism and party politics.

In the streets of Munich after the failed red uprising of 1918-1919, the Nazi-military alliance can (with the benefit of retrospect) already be seen forming. It was the Reichswehr that funded Hitler’s rise through the ranks of the Nazi party. Ernst Rohm was a member of the 100,000 man Reichswehr, and he ensured that the money and arms flowed from official sources into Nazi hands, and introduced Hitler to members of high society. (Kershaw, 154). Rohm and Ehrhardt - another former military man, fresh from leading a Freikorps militia in the crushing out of rebellion in Berlin - helped train the SA under the aegis of the Reichswehr. For a military limited by Versailles, the SA was a source of clandestine manpower; Rohm helped Hitler “play for big stakes,” as Kershaw puts it, when he included the SA in military drills during the red uprising in the Ruhr during 1923, fully expecting war with the French once again. (Kershaw 173, 194)

In the immediate post-war period, then, there was no great project either on the part of military men or Hitler to forge an alliance against the republic. It was a matter of convenience for both sides, facilitated by an overlapping psychology of violence, hatred of the reds, non-specific disgust with democracy, and, most importantly, the Reichswehr's need to circumvent the Versailles Treaty's restrictions. Indeed there were many groups, from citizen’s militias to the Freikorps, who entered informal alliances with the Reichswehr at this time. The military was not yet ready to act in step with Hitler, as made amply clear when the Bavarian reichswehr under Otto von Lossow refused to join the Beerhall Putsch, and aided in its suppression.

In any case, the military’s dislike of the new republic need not manifest in action directed overtly against the republic’s existence. Though many military men were involved in the 1920 Kapp putsch, it was actually Hans von Seeckt, the self-proclaimed “non-political” leader of the Reichswehr, who almost toppled the republic when, asked to act against the conspirators, he insisted that “Reichswehr does not fire on Reichswehr.” Though a scratch workers’ strike called by President Ebert saved the democracy, this early episode demonstrates that the Reichswehr might claim to be “non-political,” but in effect were waiting for something better to come along, whether monarch or dictator. Likewise, von Lossow's moves against the Nazis three years later can scarcely be seen as defending the republic, but rather defending the cause of conservatism against an over-hasty move.

The most important shared ideology between Nazism and the military, then, was a general disdain of republicanism, an ideology the military could enact merely by refusing to actively defend the republic. As we shall see, this implicitly political abstention from politics would default in favor of the Nazis in 1933.

With the Nazi movement gaining steam in the early 1930’s, the “non-political” Reichswehr was quickly becoming a myth. The 1930 trial of two cadets at Ulm accused of participating in political activities by campaigning for the Nazi party was one sign; when Hitler took the stand and promised he would never interfere with the structure of the army, nor try to seize power unconstitutionally, he was already beginning to look to many officers like their best choice.

Wilhelm Groener, Minister of Defense under the presidential dictatorship of Heinrich Bruning, was an exception that proved this new rule. At first concurring with many in the military that the SA should be integrated into a national militia, in the course of 1932 he was convinced by several state interior ministers to ban the SA. Groener’s protege Kurt von Schleicher, scheming for an open alliance between Nazis and the military, first urged Groener to ban the SA and SS, then campaigned against Groener within the Reichswehr. Forced to answer to the Reichstag, an old (and at the time sick) Groener was humiliated by his right-wing critics, and told by Schleicher that he no longer enjoyed the support of the Reichswehr. In April, 1932, months before Bruning’s fall, Groener stepped down - the first domino in the chain leading to 1933. (Craig, 440-450)

Kurt von Schleicher, having engineered the rise of Franz von Papen as a new presidential-dictator under Hindenburg, began putting his plans into motion through Papen's office. In 1932, he can be seen as the embodiment of a certain sect of the German upper crust at this time, eager to bring the Nazis and their fervent followers into the conservative fold without compromising the old army. Having lifted the ban on the SA and SS, and having called a new election - a too-clever-by-half plan to increase the Nazi vote while courting their favor, totally dependent on a quickly reneged promise by Hitler to cooperate in government - Papen was unsuccessful in breaking the deadlock in the Reichstag. The street violence grew worse, the yet intransigent Nazi wing was now the largest in the Reichstag, and Papen was still unable to govern. After a second election that took a few seats from the Nazis, showing their vulnerability without materially changing the legislative deadlock, Schleicher stepped up to the Chancellorship in his turn in December 1932.

This was the crucial moment in the formation of the Nazi-military alliance, as Gordon Craig writes. Schleicher’s failure to break the Nazis by drafting Gregor Strasser to his cause meant that the military establishment had gone toe-to-toe with the Nazis in the political arena, and lost. (Craig, 461-65). At this point, fearing bolshevism, nauseous at the idea of another Papen government, the military simply acquiesced to Hindenburg’s appointment of Hitler. Like Seeckt, they deliberately did nothing in the key moment. So Hitler would later say in 1933, “If the army had not stood on our side, then we should not be standing here today.” (Wheeler-Bennett, 285)

Finally, after years of deliberate campaigning and careful maneuvering, Hitler was in a position to make a direct bid for army support. In March, 1933, following directly on the Reichstag Fire, immediately before the vote on the Enabling Act, Hitler threw a lavish military ceremony in the old garrison town of Potsdam, a signal to the old order that Hitler was their man. Come 1934, with Hindenburg ailing, with Papen once again angling at the Chancellorship, and with Ernst Rohm threatening a second revolution, where the embittered SA would take over the army, Hitler, with army support, moved to crush Rohm and all of those aligned against the military and their junker allies. Von Schleicher, too, was murdered, as Hitler also used the opportunity to settle with every old enemy he could track down.

Hitler had made himself the military’s man, and in this light it is no mystery that he largely held their support, in spite of tensions, throughout the rearmament of the 30’s and the early, successful campaigns of the war. He did much to make himself loved, and it took many reversals on the battlefield for the military to take action against the fuhrer.

Cited:

Craig, Gordon. The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640-1945. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, 1889-1936 Hubris. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998.

Wheeler-Bennet, John. The Nemesis of Power, the German Army in Politics 1918-1945. New York: The Viking Press, 1967.