Development of the organisation of the Cologne NSDAP

The Cologne Branch of the NSDAP was founded in the summer of 1921 and was recognised by the Munich Party executive committee in March 1922. Many Cologne NSDAP members had previously been members of the ‘German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation’, a right-wing extremist, anti-Semitic force. Its ban in July 1923 lead to a growth of the Cologne Nazi party. However, even the ‘Völkische Beobachter’ (a National Socialist news - paper) had to admit that the Cologne NSDAP suffered from ‘particularly difficult conditions’. Initially, it remained a splinter party that could hardly be taken seriously, it was characterised by inner-party fighting and was made illegal several times. Nonetheless, Cologne had a special importance from day one: Cologne was not only the headquarters of the local branch, it was also the seat of the NSDAP district of the Rhineland (until 1931) and then of the Cologne- Aachen district.

The Reichstag elections in September 1930 were a landslide victory for the NSDAP: Compared to the previous Reichstag elections in 1928, its share of the vote in Cologne increased from 1.6 to 17.6 per cent (nationally, it rose from 2.6 to 18.3 per cent). The organisation of the Cologne NSDAP had stabilised in the years running up to this election and was significantly extended thereafter: As of 1930, the ‘Westdeutscher Beobachter’ its newspaper since 10 May 1925, was published as a daily newspaper, membership figures increased to 3,000 and the number of local Gaus rose to 35, sub-organisations developed, parades and large scale events with important party members were performed, five mass rallies with Hitler alone took place in Cologne until the beginning of 1933. The significant growth of the party was also reflected in the rapid changing and increasingly large and representative agencies. Even though the Cologne NSDAP received considerably fewer votes than the overall Reich average, it had the organisational capacity to seize power in Cologne without major difficulties in 1933.

Lack of resistance

Any joint resistance by communists and social democrats, the main political opponents of the National Socialists, was thwarted by the deep ridge that ran between the two workers’ parties. This was true despite the fact that the SPD and the KPD had established political combat units against the National Socialists by founding the ‘Black, Red, Gold Banner of the Reich’, the ‘Iron Front’ and the ‘Red Front Fighters’ League’ and the ‘Anti-fascist Action’, respectively. To the KPD, the social democrats were known as ‘social fascists’ and represented their main political opponents. The SPD acted in the same vein and considered ‘Nazi equals Kozi (communist)’. Demands for the one ‘united proletarian front’ could not be implemented that way.

Misperceptions and illusions concerning the evaluation of the National Socialists prevailed among the majority of the national-conservative bourgeoisie, who had already begun to increasingly oppose the Weimar Republic and parliamentarianism. After the NSDAP’s victory in the Reichstag elections from July 1932 in particular, the upper middle class believed in the ‘taming strategy’, according to which the NSDAP would dispose of its radical elements such as the SA and play the role of a junior partner in return for a share in the government. From mid-1932 also in the newspapers and magazines published by DuMont Schauberg, participation of the National Socialists in government was considered favourably and Mussolini’s fascism in Italy was seen as a model for Germany. Even Konrad Adenauer, who unequivocally took position against the National Socialists as the Lord Mayor, moved to tolerate a government with a National Socialist participation by the Centrum party and in December of 1932, he even suggested that Hermann Göring become the Prussian prime minister. Many bourgeois parties initially considered their influence secured in a Hitler government of ‘national concentration’.

Rise in the economic and political crisis

The economic and political crisis after 1930 had a vital influence on the swift rise of the NSDAP. Germany was particularly hard hit by the outbreak of the world economic crisis caused by the crash of the stock market in New York on 24 November 1929, known as ‘Black Friday’. Unemployment in the German Reich rose from 1.3 million in September 1929 to 6 million in 1933. In Cologne, the figures increased from 50,000 in July 1928 to about 110,000 in July 1932. In Cologne, more than 230,000 or about a third of the entire population lived on unemployment benefits or welfare in 1932.

The economic crisis was soon complemented by a political crisis, the national crisis. As early as the Reichstag elections in 1930, the political system of the Weimar Republic had been shaken. Governments were no longer supported by a parliamentary majority in the Reichstag but were presidential cabinets and depended on the vote of confidence by the president of the Reich. One climax of this crisis was what became known as the ‘Prussian Strike’ on 20 July 1932, the coup d’état of the government of the Reich run by the Chancellor of the Reich, von Papen, against the SPD-led Prussian government that was declared ousted from power. This meant the elimination of one of the last bulwarks of the republic. The ‘Prussian Strike’ also had significant consequences for Cologne: The social democratic Chief of Police, Otto Bauknecht, was replaced by a conservative officer named Walther Lingens, a member of the Catholic Centre Party. Lingens remained in office until 1935. This was a crucial factor contributing to the smooth transfer of power also in Cologne.

The weeks leading up to the seizure of power in Cologne

On 4 January 1933, Hitler and the former Chancellor of the Reich, von Papen, met at Stadtwaldgürtel 35, in the house of Kurt Baron von Schröder, a banker, in order to prepare the transfer of power to Hitler. Therefore, this conversation in Cologne is also known as the ‘dawn of the Third Reich’. After Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the Reich on 30 January 1933, the Cologne National Socialists cracked down with great brutality on political opponents, many of them were kidnapped and brought to illegal concentration camps. One decisively new factor was the close cooperation between the police, the SA and SS. The Reichstag fire in 1933 was used as a basis to create an ordinance known as the ‘Reichstagsbrandverordnung’ (Reichstag Fire Ordinance) to abolish all fundamental rights, which had been enshrined in the Weimar constitution on 28 February 1933. On 13 March 1933, one day after the local elections, the National Socialists occupied the town hall, thus also seizing power in Cologne. Lord Mayor Konrad Adenauer had had to flee from the city one day previously.