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 MACMILLAN AND COMPANY LIMITED Little EsBex Street London WC2 also Bombay Calcutta Madras Melbourne THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED 70 Bond Street Toronto 2 ST MARTIN'S PRESS INC 176 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10010 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.