From the archive, 3 August 1934: The death of President Hindenburg

President Hindenburg served three Germanys in their turn - the Empire of the Hohenzollerns, the Republic, and the Third Realm. The Empire and the Republic were deceived in him, although he himself was free from deceit. The Third Realm used him and then had no further use for him. No modern ruler had more power for good than he, and none was better intentioned - but it was through his agency that the calamitous Third Realm replaced the Republic he was pledged to defend. Always resolved to keep his oath on the Republican Constitution, he preserved a monumental placidity while that Constitution was assaulted.

Knowing him to be sincere, but not knowing that his sincerity was wholly static, millions voted for him, although he was neither of their party nor of their class, although he belonged to a world which to them was a bloodshot memory. They voted because it was he who had sworn that oath; there might be anarchy, upheaval, and change, but one thing seemed sure - as long as Hindenburg was President the oath would never be broken and the Constitution would be safe.

This faith, the faith of many millions, was born of goodwill and of a confidence that were not unreasonable - but it was soon shown to be a complete illusion. These millions were not only deceived in their own trustful hope, upon them descended the full force of the disaster Hindenburg had failed to avert.

He was elected President for the second time in the year before the Hitlerite Counter-Revolution. That Counter-Revolution was successful because, so far from being fought by the order it fought against, it had the moral and material support of that order, of which Hindenburg was the elected chief, its statutes being enshrined in the Constitution he was pledged to defend.

Although the Counter-Revolutionaries never concealed their true purpose, and although their leader, Adolf Hitler, publicly announced the intended execution of those who had devoted the effort of a lifetime to the establishment and consolidation of that order, Hindenburg not only refrained from action but paralysed the action of others. Although Hitler triumphant was sure to destroy the Constitution, not once did Hindenburg, the commander of this Republican stronghold, give orders for defence against the impending attack.

Long before Hitler’s final victory the Constitution was so amended that every clause guaranteeing one of the fundamental rights of man became an instrument for the destruction of that right. Hindenburg and those who officered the garrison that held out heroically with diminishing supplies and little ammunition left no doubt as to their sympathy with the foe and as to their willingness to let him in (provided he did not demand the full control but would share control with them).

In the end the foe was admitted - Hindenburg had sold the fort, not for material gain (for he was incorruptible) but in the supposed interests of his class, the landed gentry, whose exactions put an excessive strain on the already weakened garrison. Once inside, Hitler inflicted a martyrdom unparalleled in modern German history on the garrison and, so far from sharing the command with its officers, he assumed undivided control. Only occasionally, as in the protection of Von Papen, did Hindenburg influence events.

Hindenburg, the soldier of old Prussia and incapable of falsehood, was enmeshed in false legend. In books of German history he appears as the Victor of Tannenberg and the Liberator of East Prussia, although in any case the Battle of Tannenberg would have been won and East Prussia would have been liberated by the previous dispositions of the much-wronged General von Prittwitz and by the audacity of General von François. It was as Victor and Liberator that Hindenburg acquired the immense prestige that gave him - and with him the whole German High Command - the fatal influence that paralysed German diplomacy.

Thanks to Hindenburg and Ludendorff, war ceased to be an instrument of policy - policy became an instrument of war. Thus the German armies were able to win victories, but the German Government was unable to make peace. And so in the end a doom descended upon the German Empire, a doom lit up by the Revolution that held forth the promise of freedom, social progress, and international brotherhood. Hindenburg offered his services to that Revolution. Legend has it that it was he who led the German armies back in good order and so averted a general anarchy. The truth is that the good order was self-imposed through the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Councils elected by the rank and file.

Hindenburg, who had retired once before - in 1911 at the age of sixty-four, - retired once again. He was again called from his retirement in 1925 and - with the help of his immense prestige - he was elected President. For seven years it seemed as though the Constitution by which the Republic stood or fell had a sure guardian in the old soldier with the bluff, growling manner and the massive features. And so when his term of seven years had expired he was re-elected for another term at the age of eighty-five. In the second year of that term the Republic was handed over, unresisting and without a protest, to a doom so terrible that the whole civilised world still stands aghast and horrified. Even in an age so rich in betrayals as our own, that betrayal was surely one of the greatest.