HINDENBURG THE WOODEN TITAN By the same author

Brest-Litovsk: The Forgotten Peace, March 1918 Munich: Prologue to Tragedy The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918-1945 King George VI: His Life and Reign John Anderson: Viscount Waverley A Wreath to Clio E. Briber, Berlin PRESIDENT VON HINDENBURG HINDENBURG THE WOODEN TITAN

JOHN W. WHEELER-BENNETT

Palgrave Macmillan This book is copyright in all countries which are signatorieB of the Berne Convention

~Preface and new Bibliographical Note: John W. Wheeler-Bennett 1967 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1967 978-0-333-04550-3

First published 1936 Reissued with Preface and new Bibliographical Note 1967

ISBN 978-0-333-08269-0 ISBN 978-1-349-15236-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-15236-0

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Library of CongreBB Catalog Card number: 67-15778 TO GERALD PALMER

AND TO HIS MOTHER

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

WITH GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION CONTENTS PREFACE TO THE REISSUE ix

BmLIOGRAPHICAL NoTE TO THE REISSUE X'V

PART I: TANNENBERG AND PLESS 1

PART II: KREUZNACH AND SPA • 77

PART III: WEIMAR AND NEUDECK 225

INDEX 477

Vll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS President von Hindenburg frontispiece

Jollou·iny pn(Je 270

Hammering Nails into the Wooden Statue

Hindenburg with Wounded Men on his 70th birthday, October 2nd, 1917

The Wooden Statue in the Siegesallee, Berlin

Hindenburg at Spa, June 1918

Hindenburg walking with the Kaiser and Ludendorff at Spa, April 1918

Hindenburg's Bomb-proof Dug-out at Spa

One of the Three-mark Pieces specially issued for the Tenth Anniversary of the Weimar Constitution (August 11, 1929)

Loyal Support PREFACE TO THE REISSUE

WHEN I wrote this book in 1936 the conditions then prevailing in the Third Reich were such that in writing of my personal sources of information I was only able to say:

Out of regard for my many friends whose help has been invaluable to me, and to whom my gratitude can never be adequately expressed, I will only say that wherever possible I have supplemented the written word by personal conversations with the author, and with many whose memories and recol­ lections have not yet been committed to paper.

Now, when the book is being reprinted thirty years later, one can be more definite and explicit. By reason of a series of circumstances with which I need not bore the reader I was in an exceptionally fortunate position to observe the decline and fall of the Weimar Republic. I had among my friends and acquaintances six Reich Chancellors-Stresemann, Lutl.!Yr, Muller, Bruning, Papen and Schleicher-as well as various members of their cabinets, and this con­ nection gave me something of a ringside seat during my frequent visits to Germany during this period, since all of them spoke to me with considerable frankness. It was however, to Heinrich Bruning and Gottfried Treviranus, whose friendship I still cherish with sincere a.ffection, that I owed most of my information concerning the latter years of the Weimar period and the transition from constitutional government to the Cabinet of ix X PREFACE TO THE REISSUE Barons. It was Franz von Papen, whom I last saw in the dock at Nuremberg awaiting his acquittal as a major War Criminal, who assured me on the morrow of Hitler's triumph at the polls of March 5, 1933, that all was well since in the National Coalition, on which Hindenburg had insisted when appointing Hitler Chancellor, the Nationalists could always outvote the Nazis in Cabinet! Could bathos and ineptitude go further? General von Hammerstein told me much about von Schleicher's fall, and from Edgar Jung, who had inspired Papen's famous Marburg speech and whom I saw in hiding just prior to the Blood Bath of June 30, 1934, I learned many things. For the First World War period of von Hindenburg's life, I talked with General von Seeckt, General Hoffmann and Colonel Bauer, Ludendorff's Chief of Operations on the Western front (whom I found in a Chinese gunboat moored in the Yangtze River off Shanghai), and for the civilian struggles during this same war period I had spoken with Baron von Kuhlmann, Count Bernstorff, the former German Ambassador in Washington and uncle of that Albrecht Bernstorff whose friendship so many of us in this country were so proud to enjoy, and Wilhelm Solf. It was von Kuhlmann who told me of the Marshal's admission in 1918 at the Crown Council, that he "needed the Baltic Provinces for the manoouvring of his left wing in the next war", and the former Foreign Secretary's recollections of the Brest-Litovsk conference were supplemented by those of Ambassador von Roesch and State Secretary von Schubert, both of whom had been present in junior capacities. To General Groner and to Heinrich Bruning I owe the basic information for my account of the scene at Spa in November 1918 and Hindenburg's part therein, and the Emperor Wilhelm II told me at Doorn .in August 1939 that it was the most accurate account yet written of his abdication. PREFACE TO THE REISSUE xi In addition, I was made free of that brilliant and galactic circle of Anglo-American journalists then operating in Berlin. Norman Eb butt and Douglas Reed, Sefton (Tom) Delmer and Darcey Gillie and Hugh Carleton Greene, Edgar Mowrer and Hubert (Knick) Knickerbocker, John Gunther and Raymond Swing; they were a shining company, caring deeply about the events they recorded. Though I had for some years been collecting material for a book on Germany during the First World War and the Weimar Republic, the idea of writing this book as a biography of Marshal von Hindenburg did not occur to me until I had listened to a conversation at a dinner­ party in Berlin during the fateful summer of 1932, which witnessed the close of the Weimar period in post-war German history and the ringing up of the curtain on the Prelude to Hitler. The past days had been full of great happenings. The Chancellor, Dr. Bruning, had resigned together with his Cabinet, and his successor was Herr von Papen, nomin­ ally a man of the President's own choice, actually the nominee and puppet of the leaders of the Palace Camarilla, General Kurt von Schleicher, the President's own son, Colonel Oskar von Hindenburg, and the Secretary of State, Dr. Meissner. Later, a decree had been published dissolving the Reichstagand fixing July 16 as the date for new elections. The Reichstag President, Dr. Lobe, had gone at once to the President to protest against the dissolution of a body which only a few days before had given a vote of confidence to Dr. Bruning's Government, and, alter­ natively, if there must be new elections, to secure the President's assurances that the liberty of the voter should be guaranteed as heretofore. As a result, an anxiously expectant public was informed that President von Hindenburg had promised full liberty to the elec- XII PREFACE TO THE REISSUE torate and that the elections should be held in the usual manner. It was this latest event which formed the general topic of conversation at dinner, and the anxiety of many of those present was in great measure relieved by it. If the President had given his word everything would be all right. At length, however, a very different view was put forward by a retired naval officer, since dead, who had earned great distinction during the war. "Hindenburg's record is a bad one," he said. "Ludendorff won his battles for him, and he betrayed Ludendorff; the Kaiser made him a Field-Marshal, and he betrayed the Kaiser; the Right elected him in 1925, and he betrayed the Right; the Left elected him in 1932, and he has betrayed the Left. Were I Lobe, I would not put too much faith in Hindenburg's promises." "And," added someone, "if you remember, there was another Paul von Hindenburg." The significance of the last remark escaped me, but the admiral's statement came as a very definite shock to my beliefs concerning the President. In company, I believe, with most Englishmen, I entertained a strong admiration for the veteran Field-Marshal, regarding him as the ideal type of single-minded patriot who had twice emerged from a well-earned retirement to answer his country's call to further service, and having every claim to the title of Vater des V olkes, and the more familiar and endearing designation Der Alte Herr. To one holding these views, therefore, the naval officer's strictures sounded little short of blasphemy, and I left that evening with the firm intention of investi­ gating them with the greatest care, for it seemed necessary in the interest of historical truth that they should either be substantiated or disproved. As a result, then, of researches which have involved, besides consultations of memoirs and official documents, PREFACE TO THE REISSUE xiii long conversations with those best qualified to know and state the facts of the case, I believe that it is not inadmissible to place upon certain of the principal events in the life of Marshal von Hindenburg the interpretation put on them by the naval officer, more particularly, perhaps, upon those which occurred after his remark was made. But like most generalities of its kind, which are apt to be made by strong individual personalities, it was an over-statement.1 Essentially Hindenburg's character shows him to have been a man of service, without ambition, and with no love of pomp and ceremony. He had little regard for reward; he asked simply, throughout the seventy years of his active life, "Where can I serve?" but he did not always consider sufficiently the answer. Once convinced along what line his duty lay- and the ease with which conviction was achieved became progressively greater with advancing years - he would pursue that policy with obstinate stolidity and little discrimination until deflected towards some other path of service. . With a temperament of this nature it was impossible to escape the charges of disloyalty and betrayal, more particularly as the changes of course and conviction became more frequent. But throughout the intricate pattern of inconsistencies which marked the last fifteen years of Hindenburg's life there ran the single thread of service to Germany which had dominated his whole career. Not the least remarkable part of that career was the legend which suddenly surrounded his name, and the manner of its birth. If ever there was a victim of a legend it was Hindenburg, for, despite himself, he was in time translated from a military sphere, for which he 1 It will be remembered, for example, that the German General Elections of July 1932 were held in perfect freedom though the campaign preceding them was marred by much violence. xiv PREFACE TO THE REISSUE was eminently well fitted by training and tradition, to the political arena, for which he had neither liking, sudden attainment of almost supernatural adoration on the part of the German people, who elevated him to the aptitude, nor equipment. His misfortune was the position of a god and expected from him god-like achievements. The story of his life is both pitiful and tragic, for no figures in history are more tragic than those who have outlived the faith in their greatness, and Hindenburg must be numbered amongst these. It was not given to him to die before his name had become one for exe­ cration by many of his countrymen. In approaching my subject my greatest difficulty has been one of focus. Hindenburg's personality is an elusive one, or perhaps it is truer to say that it has a "self-protective colouring"; it is continually melting into the background. For the Marshal very rarely dominated the events of his long lifetime. Far more often he was dwarfed by them, and always he played the part of a facade. At no time can it be said that he was a free agent. Forces for good and evil used his name and his legend to promote policies or to facilitate intrigue. Throughout he remained a Wooden. Titan, a giant among men, but a dumb giant. For this reason it has been necessary to consider in rather greater detail than the reader may at first think justified the circumstances and personalities which controlled and influenced Hindenburg throughout his long life. Because of the tendency of the central figure to merge into the background, it is essential to under­ stand fully what the background was, and only by this means is it possible to arrive at even a partially faithful picture. This, then, is what I have tried to do. JOHN W. WHEELER-BENNETT June 1966 GARSINGTON MANOR, OxFORD BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE TO THE REISSUE

WHEN I wrote this book there already existed a number of biographical works on Marshal von Hinden­ burg, chief among which were those by Alfred Niemann, Theodore Lessing, Frederick Voigt and Margaret Gold­ smith, General Buat, A.M. K. Watson, Thomas Ybarra, Gerhard Schultze-Pfaelzer, Emil Ludwig, Rudolf Olden, and Major Gert von Hindenburg. In the writing of this book I consulted all of these works, of which only the last three had been published since the Marshal's death, but I was very much more dependent upon first-hand material. For Parts I and II, I had made use of the memoirs and diaries of Hindenburg himself, Generals Ludendorff, Hoffmann, von Falkenhayn, the younger von Moltke, von Fran9ois, and von Kluck, Field-Marshal Conrad von Hotzendorf, Colonel Bauer, Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz, the Kaiser, the German Crown Prince, the Crown Prince of Bavaria, Prince Max of Baden, Herr von Bethmann Hollweg, Dr. Michaelis, the younger Hertling, Herr von Payer, Dr. Erzberger, Count von Valentini, Frau Margarethe Ludendorff, Count Ottokar Czernin, Philip Scheidemann, the younger Ebert, Gustav Noske, Lenin, and Leon Trotsky, and of H. E. Armstrong's Grey Wolf. Invaluable material was found in the publications of the Reichstag Committee oflnvestigation, Die U rsachen des deutschen Zusammenbruchs im Jahre 1918. Translations of the reports of this committee have been XV xvi BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE TO THE REISSUE prepared and published in English by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace under the title of German Official Documents Relating to the World War, and by Dr. Ralph Haswell Lutz, under the auspices of the Hoover War Library at Stanford University, California, entitled The Causes of the German Collapse in 1918. There is also the very valuable study, The Birth of the German Republic, by Dr. Arthur Rosenberg, one of the Secretaries of the Committee, and many impor­ tant documents are to be found in Ludendorff's two volumes on The General Staff and Its Problems. For the war episodes, apart from the information con­ tained in the authorities referred to, I made use of the Official History of the Great War, published under the direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence, particularly those volumes dealing with the military operations in France and Belgium in 1918; the Reports of General von Kuhl and Colonel Schwertfeger; General Sir Edmund Ironside's exhaus­ tive study of the battle of Tannenberg; Rudolf van Wehrt's Tannenberg; and the comprehensive works of Sir Winston Churehill and Pr.ofessor C. R. M. F. Crut­ well, former Principal of Hertford College, Oxford. The account of the events at Spa and in Berlin during October-November 1918 was based upon a study of the memoranda and reports prepared by the principal actors in the drama, including Admiral von Hintze, General Count von Schulenburg, General von Plessen, General Count von Marschall, Count Gonthard, Colonel Niemann, and General Eisenhart-Rothe, together with the official German White Book on the Preliminary History of the Armistice, V orgeschichte des Waffenstill­ standes, of which an English translation has been published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In addition, there is the admirable work of Dr. Maurice Beaumont, The Fall of the Kaiser. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE TO THE REISSUE xvii Other works which I found of particular assistance in the preparation of these first two Parts are Karl Tschuppik's Ludendorff; Karl Nowak's The Collapse of Central Europe and Chaos; and Dr. Lutz's The German Revolution, 1918-1919, supplemented by his documen­ tarywork, The Fall of the German Empire, both published under the auspices of the Hoover War Library. In the preparation of Part III, I was confronted with an embarras de choix mais pas de richesse. The political literature of the post-war period in Germany was enormous, and, for the most part, inaccurate and partisan. Of first-hand material there is little of great value, for political passions render the memoirs and writings of Grzesinski and Otto Strasser as untrust­ worthy as those of Goring and Goebbels. But there are certain books which were of the greatest assistance, among them Konrad Heiden's Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus and Geburt des dritten Reiches, published in English in one volume as A History of National Socialism; Georg Bernhard's Die deutsche Tragodie; Arthur Rosenberg's Geschichte der deutschen Republik; and, of course, the Stresemann Papers, and the admirable biographical studies of him by Rudolf Olden and Antonina Vallentin. Certain works by English and American authors must be included in this category; for example, Germany Puts the Clock Back, by Edgar Mowrer, and The Fall of the German Republic, by R. T. Clark; while for accurate studies of the Nazi Revolution itself there was nothing better than Powys Greenwood's German Revolution, and Germany Enters the Third Reich, by Calvin B. Hoover. I also used my own works on Disarmament, Security, and Reparations, viz.: The Problem of Security, Dis­ armament and Security Since Locarno, The Pipe Dream of Pea.ce, The Reparation Settlement of 1930, and The Wreck of Reparations.

8 xviii BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE TO THE REISSUE Since the conclusion of the Second \Vorld War much documentary material has come to light which was unavailable to me thirty years ago. For example, Franz von Papen, Otto Meissner and Hjalmar Schacht have written their autobiographies- indeed the last­ named has written two - and Heinrich Bruning has published his famous Brief. 1 There have also appeared works · of meticulous scholarship by such eminent German luminaries as Erich Eyck and Karl Dietrich Bracher, dealing with the historyofthe Weimar Repub­ lic and more especially of its downfall. 2 More recently Professor Hubatsch published a number of Hindenburg's letters a.nd papers in his new biography.3 In taking all these into consideration I lind that, though they add great detail to my original narrative, they do not invalidate my facts nor cause me to change the con­ clusions which I formed while writing the book. The story remains the same and it is a tragic one. I have not made any change in the text, partly because t~e fact that the book is being produced by the process of photo-lithography precludes this, and part]y because certain aspects of its contents have· in any case been elaborated in later books of mine, notably Brest-Litovsk, the Forgotten Peace and Nemesis of Power, the German Army in Politics, 1918-1945. June 1966 JOHN W. WHEELER-BENNETT 1 Franz von Papen, Memoirs (London, 1952); Otto Meissner, Staatssekretar unter Ebert-Hindenburg-Hitler (Hamburg, 1950); Hjalmar Schacht, Account Settled (London, 1948) and My First Seventy-six Years (London, 1955); Heinrich Bruning, 'Ein Brief' in Deutsche Rundschau (July 1947). 2 Erich Eyck, Geschichte der Weimarer Republik, 2 vols. (ZUrich and Stuttgart, 1954-6). Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die Aufliisung der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart, 1955); Karl Dietrich Bracher, Wolfgang Sauer and Gerhard Schulz, Die N ationalsozialistische Machtergreifung (Cologne, 1962). 3 Walter Hubatsch, Hindenburg und der Staat (Gottingen, 1966).