Hitler's Table Talk

498 COLLAPSE OF WEIMAR REPUBLIC
experiences of the previous year, I was anxious to avoid giving
rise to any undue optimism within the Party, such as was
invariably the case whenever I was received by the Old
Gentleman.
I took the opportunity in this conversation with Herr von
Papen of pressing home my advantage and carrying a step
further the negotiations started by Goring for the tentative
formation of a Government. It was with the German
Nationalists that the negotiations proved most difficult, for
Geheimrat Hugenberg displayed a greed for portfolios out of all
proportion to the strength of his party, and, because he feared
that he would probably lose a great number of votes in any new
elections, he would not hear of an early dissolution of the
Reichstag. On 27th January, after a short absence from
Berlin, I had a personal conference with Hugenberg, but we
were unable to agree.
The negotiations for the formation of a Government were
further complicated by General Schleicher and his clique,
who did all in their power to wreck them. General von
Hammerstein, Schleicher's most trusted colleague and Commander-in-Chief
of the Army, was even stupid enough to have
the impertinence to ring me up and tell me that "under no
circumstances would the Wehrmacht sanction my acceptance
of the Chancellorship"! If Herr Schleicher and his friends
really imagined they could shake my determination with
puerilities of this sort, they were grievously mistaken. My only
reaction was to impress emphatically on Goring to accept as
Minister of the Reichswehr only a General who enjoyed my
confidence, such as General von Blomberg, who had been
recommended to me by my friends in East Prussia.
On a8th January the Weimar Republic finally collapsed.
Schleicher resigned, and von Papen was instructed to sound the
various parties with a view to the formation of a new Government.
For my own part, I at once declared that any halfmeasures
were now unacceptable to me. The 2gth, naturally,
was buzzing with conferences, in the course of which I succeeded
in obtaining Hugenberg's agreement to the dissolution
of the Reichstag in return for the promise to give him the
number of seats in the new Government which he had originally