The Collapse of the Weimar Republic and the Rise of National Socialism in Germany (2024)

Sheri Berman

Understanding the fate of the Weimar Republic is perhaps the most important and difficult task facing a student of European political development. During the early twentieth century, Germany was among Europe’s most economically advanced countries with a politically active and highly educated population, ruled over by an increasingly sclerotic and divisive semi-authoritarian regime. Germany finally made a transition to democracy at the end of the First World War, but democracy collapsed after a decade and a half, plunging the country into one of the most monstrous dictatorships the world has ever known. Why did democracy fail in Germany? And why did this failure give rise to a new type of dictatorship—National Socialism—that ushered in the most tragic and destructive period in modern European history?

To answer these questions we must return to where chapter 8 left off, with the old regime on the eve of the First World War. The legacies of the old regime dramatically shaped Germany’s political development after 1918. By 1914 a majority of Germans favored some political reform, but various institutional safeguards enabled conservatives to resist changes that threatened their power and prerogatives; the ensuing political stalemate increased tensions within German society and diminished the legitimacy of reigning political institutions. The outbreak of the war temporarily paved over political and social divisions, but as the conflict dragged on, and the myth of a defensive war became increasingly untenable, dissension grew. By 1917 this dissension combined with growing disagreements between military and civilian authorities led the High Command to take the military’s traditionally privileged position in Germany a step further, sidelining the kaiser and other political actors and instituting essentially a military dictatorship.2Close

When the war ended, the challenge of leading Germany out of the chaos of defeat and through its first transition to democracy fell to the SPD, a party the old regime and wartime dictatorship left ill-prepared for this task. Alienated from the state, distrustful of other parties, itself distrusted by many Germans, and having never previously participated in national government, the SPD had to build a democratic Germany out of the rubble the High Command and the old regime left behind. Transitions to democracy—particularly first transitions—are always difficult, but it is hard to imagine a transition occurring under worse conditions than those facing the SPD and Germany in 1918. Not only did the Weimar Republic inherit myriad political and social problems from its prewar predecessor (see chapter 8 and below), Germany was in a disastrous situation at the end of the war. The Allied blockade, which lasted until 1919, stopped foodstuffs and other basic materials from reaching the country, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths from disease and malnutrition. The weakened population was then particularly vulnerable to the influenza pandemic that exploded at the end of the war: hundreds of thousands more Germans died as a result in the years 1918–1919. In addition, even before the war officially ended, Germany experienced a wave of domestic violence that reached civil war–like conditions in parts of the country. And of course, the young Weimar Republic was quickly saddled with a punitive peace, which exacerbated the country’s already desperate economic situation and generated outrage and humiliation among significant sectors of the population.

Despite this, the Republic managed to get through the immediate postwar period, but things did not improve much afterwards. During the 1920s the Weimar Republic was buffeted by further economic, social, and political crises. The Republic survived these as well, but when the Great Depression hit, many Germans no longer believed that democracy or the political parties associated with it could solve their or their country’s problems. This disillusionment created a golden opportunity for a movement capable of taking advantage of widespread anger and frustration. That the Nazis were able to do this was a consequence of the party’s evolution in the years leading up to the Great Depression. By the early 1930s the NSDAP had transformed itself from a marginal right-wing, anti-Semitic nationalist group into a powerful political movement that had infiltrated Weimar’s civil society and attracted broader support than any other political force in the country. As was true of its fascist counterpart in Italy, the NSDAP promised to provide what democracy had not: a strong state capable of uniting “the people,” eliminating their “enemies,” and recovering the country’s “rightful” international position after the humiliation of the First World War. Once in power, the Nazis turned out to be much more radical, ruthless, and effective than their Italian counterparts, transforming Germany’s state and society as well as Europe to an astonishing and appalling degree.

The Transition to Democracy in Germany

Although initially greeted with much enthusiasm as a way to re-unite the country and assert itself vis-à-vis its competitors, the First World War was disastrous for Germany. Almost two million German soldiers died, and another four million were wounded. By the winter of 1917–1918 deteriorating conditions on the home front combined with anger over Germany’s treatment of Russia in the Treaty of Brest Litovsk ratcheted up domestic tensions: strikes exploded in many parts of the country, and disturbances within the army and navy grew. During the spring of 1918 the High Command ordered a final massive offensive, but by August it was clear that all was lost. When the admiralty nonetheless called for a last-ditch battle against the British Royal Navy in October, German sailors mutinied and popular unrest engulfed the country. With the domestic and international situation in dire straits, the kaiser resigned on November 9. Phillip Scheidemann, an SPD leader, appeared on the balcony of the Reichstag and proclaimed, “Long Live the Republic!” and the office of the chancellor was handed over to another SPD leader, Friedrich Ebert. With this, democratization occurred in Germany.

Democratization eliminated the political institutions of the old regime but left behind deeply pernicious legacies, including politically and socially powerful anti-democratic elites embedded in the military, civil service, and judicial apparatuses, and deep societal divisions. Unlike its counterparts in Italy, the German Social Democrats accepted responsibility for leading Germany’s new democracy, but the party moved haltingly into this position having no previous experience governing the country or plans for how to achieve consolidated liberal democracy. Indeed debate continued within the SPD over basic issues like the desirability of “bourgeois” democracy and cooperation with bourgeois parties up through 1918.3Close As Max Cohen-Reuss, a prominent Social Democrat, later remarked: “It was unfortunate that we found ourselves in a situation that we were not prepared for. . . . We had not fought for it ourselves. [I]t had, so to speak, fallen in our laps.”4Close A similar criticism came from Friedrich Stampfer, a member of the SPD executive: “We should have emphasized to the masses that with the realization of democracy half of the program of Social Democracy had been achieved, and that the task facing the party now was to extend the position that we had won. We should have impressed upon our party comrades that democracy was not just a preliminary stage on the way to socialism, but rather a valuable achievement on its own.”5Close The SPD’s hesitancy and lack of preparation might have mattered less had the challenges it faced not been so great, but in 1918 it had to lead the country through political, social, and economic chaos.

In 1918 the SPD had to deal with a population devastated by the war and the blockade, troops streaming back from the front, and various groups staging uprisings in parts of Germany. Workers’ and soldiers’ councils (Räterepubliken) claimed authority in some cities,6Close and Germany’s second largest state, Bavaria, was taken over by a left-wing group led by Kurt Eisner and declared an independent, Soviet-socialist republic. On November 10 General Groener, who had succeeded Erich Ludendorff as quartermaster-general of the army and was thus the lead military figure during the immediate postwar period,7Close called Ebert to propose a logroll between the military and the new government to deal with the turmoil. Groener told the new chancellor that the officer corps was particularly concerned to fight Bolshevism and was at the government’s disposal for this task. In return for Ebert’s preserving the authority of the general staff and officer corps, Groener offered vague promises of loyalty to the new regime.8Close Ebert, also fearing Bolshevism and chaos, agreed to the deal. But the pact was lopsided; the military leadership retained almost complete control over the armed forces, while Groener’s loyalty proved fleeting, a disparity with fateful consequences for the Weimar Republic.

Meanwhile the Social Democrats and the Council of People’s Deputies (the name given to the government that took over in November 1918) appointed a national assembly to make decisions about the future development of the political system. This assembly9Close met in Berlin in December to decide on a date for national elections. Nearly two-thirds of the delegates were members of the SPD and fewer than one-fifth came from the USPD (Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or Independent Social Democratic party of Germany, which had broken away from the SPD in 1917 largely as a result of the latter’s unwillingness to more openly oppose the German war effort). Despite its domination by the SPD (often referred to during this time as the MSPD, or Majority SPD, to differentiate it from the USPD) the assembly demanded rapid and extensive change. For example, it called for some socialization, the “disarming of the counterrevolution,” an end to the wearing of badges of rank and uniforms off-duty, a voice for the soldiers in the election of their officers, and the formation of a “People’s Militia.” These demands, known as the “Hamburg points,”10Close reflected a relatively broad consensus on the need for social and economic reforms to accompany the political changes that had already occurred.

Faced with cascading demands and with little planning to guide it, the SPD government hesitated; its failure to act led to heavy criticism particularly from the left during December. Wilhelm Dittmann of the USPD warned his SPD colleagues that “the workers and soldiers councils would not stand by idly if the government and [party leadership] nullified the most important resolutions of the entire congress.”11Close Similarly, Hugo Haase, a key figure in the prewar SPD and then the USPD, argued that all it would take to decimate the Spartacists (an extreme left-wing group that would morph into Germany’s communist party) was to push through the social and economic measures being demanded by the masses.12Close On December 28 the USPD withdrew from the Council of People’s Deputies because of the MSPD’s unwillingness to reform the army, and the government’s use of anti-democratic troops to quell disturbances in Berlin. The withdrawal of the USPD led to the dismissal of civil servants who were USPD members; when the USPD chief of police in Berlin refused to resign in January 1919 and the pace of reforms continued to plod, another bloody confrontation occurred.

This “January” or Spartacist uprising—a movement led by the far left, including the newly formed Communist party (KPD, Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands)—resulted in a large workers’ demonstration in Berlin and the storming of the offices of the SPD newspaper. A counter-demonstration called by the MSPD succeeded in largely neutralizing the movement, and the USPD offered to call the whole thing off. While Dittmann tried to find a formula satisfactory to both sides, Ebert decided “to teach the radicals a lesson they would never forget.”13Close In order to put down what was actually a somewhat pathetic affair, Ebert’s colleague Gustav Noske relied chiefly on troops made up of reactionary ex-soldiers—the Freikorps. These troops went on a rampage, violently suppressing the workers and murdering the two best-known radical leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg; total casualties exceeded one thousand.14Close This episode further tarnished the MSPD’s standing and strengthened the conservative and independent inclinations of the military.

Protests against the government continued, but the elections of January 19, 1919, were a victory for the forces of democracy. The SPD emerged as the largest party by far, receiving 38 percent of the vote. The USPD received 7.6 percent of the vote; the left liberals (DDP) 18.5 percent; the Catholic Center (Zentrum) 19.7 percent; and the right liberals (DVP) 4.4 percent. The only other party to receive significant electoral backing at this election was the hard-right DNVP, which got about 10 percent of the vote (see Figure 12.1). The USPD refused to enter a coalition with the MSPD, so the MSPD joined with the DDP and Center party; together they had over 76 percent of the vote.15Close The National Assembly chose Friedrich Ebert as Germany’s first president; Ebert then called on Philipp Scheidemann to form a government. In this government the MSPD held almost all the important portfolios, including defense, economics, food, and welfare. But the new government, and the SPD in particular, had little chance to savor its victory. From the left came strikes and Council Republics, as well as a vociferous campaign against democracy by the KPD.16Close The new government felt it had no choice but to deal with some left-wing disturbances with the help of Freikorps, infuriating the left.17Close More worrisome, however, was the growing radicalism of and attacks by the nationalist right, especially after the signing of the Versailles treaty in June 1919. This treaty forced Germany to “accept . . . responsibility . . . for causing all the loss and damage” of the war, give up its colonies and as well as parts of its own territory to France, Belgium, and Poland; drastically limit the size of its army and navy; turn over a large amount of military material as well as coal and other resources to the Allies; and pay twenty billion goldmarks in reparations. These provisions fed a pernicious “stab in the back” legend, which held the new republic, and the SPD in particular, responsible for the “humiliation” of Versailles and the military defeat that caused it. That so many Germans believed this legend was partially a legacy of the power of and eventual dictatorship by the army during the war. By keeping the country’s true military situation from the public for as long as possible, the army leadership made Germany’s defeat in 1918 appear sudden and unexpected. And, by urging the kaiser to turn over power to the Reichstag and its parties only once defeat was inevitable, the military leadership ensured that the unenviable task of having to negotiate with the Allies would fall to the new Republic, and the SPD in particular, rather than representatives of the old regime.18Close

On March 13, 1920, a group of right-wingers under the leadership of Wolfgang Kapp and General Ludendorff attempted a putsch. Among the leaders of the military only a single figure, General Reinhardt, was prepared to forcibly fight the insurrection, and so despite their attempts to appease the army, Ebert and Noske were now left without troops to defend the government. Some members of the bureaucracy also refused to support the republican forces, while members of the old conservative elite received news of the putsch with glee. The continued power of many reactionary structures left over from the old regime consistently haunted the Republic.

The MSPD responded indecisively to the putsch. This led the trade unions under their leader Carl Legien to step up to defend democracy. Deciding that a show of mass force was necessary, the unions called a general strike. This was hugely successful, rallying workers as well as members of the middle class; the putsch quickly collapsed. Despite clear demands from the strikers for reforms, including the resignation of Noske and two other ministers with ties to the military, harsh punishment for right-wing participants in the coup, a purge of the army and civil service, and the socialization of certain “ripe” industries, little action was taken: Of the 705 people officially listed as having taken part in the coup, only one, Kapp, got a prison sentence; nothing much was done to deal with either the military or the bureaucracy and no socialization occurred.19Close

The collapse of the Kapp putsch did not end the disorder. Indeed, on the heels of the putsch another uprising occurred in the Ruhr, this time instigated by the extreme left. This was also crushed by troops from the army and Freikorps.20Close By the time the next elections rolled around in June 1920 support for the moderate parties most associated with the Republic—the SPD and DDP—had eroded dramatically while support for parties further to the left (the USPD and to some degree the KPD) and right (DNVP and DVP) had increased. Indeed, the parties most closely associated with the new republic lost their majority less than two years after having been swept into office and only a year and a half after they had enjoyed the support of 76 percent of the electorate.21Close

The 1920s

Turmoil persisted during the early 1920s. Violent far-right attacks on the Republic, including high-profile assassinations of Matthias Erzberger, a left-wing leader of the Catholic party, and Walter Rathenau, Germany’s foreign minister and a leading German-Jewish industrialist, continued. Many of the far-right groups that plagued the Weimar Republic had their roots in the prewar nationalist movements that had peddled an aggressive and virulently anti-Semitic nationalism as the solution to Germany’s problems (see chapter 8). Of these far-right groups, one deserves particular mention because in 1919 a young Austrian named Adolf Hitler attended its meetings and by the end of the year had become its propaganda chief. In early 1920, the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) and published a program that mixed nationalist, socialist, and anti-Semitic themes. In addition to calling for “the union of all Germans in a greater Germany,” a redefinition of the German nation that would include only those of “German blood,” and promising to combat “the Jewish-materialist spirit,” the program included planks to help the party fight Marxism and the SPD, in part by appropriating some of its main themes, particularly its critique of capitalism.22Close This combination of nationalism, anti-Marxist socialism, and anti-Semitism was fairly common in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Europe (see chapters 6, 7, and 8).23Close In 1923 the NSDAP attempted to overthrow the Republic with the Beer Hall putsch. This putsch was a flop that ended with Hitler in jail and the party banned, but reflecting the sympathies of the court, the sentences given the putschists were very mild. Hitler, for example, served only nine months, during which time he reconsidered his strategy for capturing power and wrote down his thoughts about his struggle in what would become Mein Kampf.

Alongside the Beer Hall putsch, the Weimar Republic was rocked by other crises in 1923. Communists in Saxony and Thuringia used their positions in provincial parliaments to plan a general uprising, and in Hamburg the KPD unleashed an unsuccessful insurrection. Most traumatic of all, however, was the invasion of the Ruhr. When Germany was declared in default of its reparations payments, France and Belgium invaded the Ruhr, sending nationalists into a frenzy and aggravating the Republic’s already difficult economic situation.

In order to compensate citizens who refused to cooperate with the invading authorities, the German government printed money, thereby contributing to the outbreak of the Great Inflation.24Close Probably everyone has seen pictures of Germans pushing paper money around in wheelbarrows or using it as fuel; by the end of 1923 the currency was essentially worthless. The Great Inflation was followed by a crushing stabilization, which hit white-collar workers and the middle classes particularly hard.25Close During the second half of the 1920s the Republic steadied itself as the German government gave in to the Allies, resumed reparations payments, and set up a new currency (the Rentenmark). Germany also made progress in foreign policy, due largely to the efforts of Gustav Stresemann, foreign minister from the fall of the Great Coalition in 1923 until his death in 1929.26Close For example, in 1924 the Dawes plan lowered the burden of reparations and secured French withdrawal from the Ruhr; in 1925 the Locarno treaties marked an important step towards Germany’s reintegration into Europe; and in 1926 Germany became a member of the League of Nations. Despite some real accomplishments during the mid-1920s, the Great Inflation, its aftermath, and the continued weakness of the economy made all groups more jealous of their socioeconomic interests and more strident in their political demands. Middle-class and rural groups resented both workers and big business, which they viewed as having a disproportionate influence over the national government and political parties. The SPD presented itself primarily as a “worker’s party,” and its support for measures such as the eight-hour workday and better wages were viewed by middle-class and rural groups as serving workers’ interests above all else.27Close Traditional liberal and conservative parties such as the DDP (the left liberal party), DVP (the National Liberals), and DNVP (the main conservative party), meanwhile, came to be seen by many middle-class and rural voters as the tools of big capitalists and financial interests, run by and for an unrepresentative elite.28Close Their vote accordingly dropped precipitously, especially during the latter part of the 1920s. By 1924 the DVP and DDP together attracted only about 15 percent of the vote, and splinter parties were capturing their alienated and fragmented constituency. By 1928—the high point of economic stabilization and supposedly the “golden age” of the Weimar Republic—splinter parties were outpolling the traditional parties of the middle.29Close The relative calm of the latter 1920s did, however, benefit the party most closely associated with the Republic—the SPD—and in the 1928 election, the last before the onset of the Depression, the Social Democrats scored a resounding victory, while the parties of the extreme right suffered significant losses. Critically, however, the parties of the bourgeois center did not recover30Close (see Figure 12.1) and the largely middle-class and rural voters who had previously voted for them remained without a political home.

During the latter part of the 1920s the NSDAP shifted course in response to these developments. Having failed to overthrow the Republic by force, and with its initial, heavily socialist appeal having failed to attract many urban workers, the NSDAP turned its attention to the middle-class, rural, and non-voters alienated from the Republic and traditional parties.31Close Particularly after 1928, the NSDAP toned down radical themes—for example, the expropriation plank in its official program was now interpreted as applying only to Jews and the party’s support for private property was made explicit32Close—and instead emphasized national ones with greater cross-class appeal.33Close The NSDAP said it would serve the entire German Volk and create a united people, or a Volksgemeinschaft, that would never again suffer the divisions and defeat of the First World War. The party also promised to reverse the “decay and rottenness” caused by democracy,34Close eliminate the “enemies” of the people (for example, Jews, Communists), restore order, and reclaim Germany’s “rightful” place in the world. The NSDAP gave Hitler firm control over major political decisions and its grassroots organization, and the party’s ties to civil society groups expanded.35Close Indeed the Nazis masterfully infiltrated Weimar’s rich associational life, using it to spread the party’s message and cultivate cadres of activists with organizational skills and dense social networks.36Close By the early 1930s the NSDAP was a different party than it had been at the time of the Beer Hall putsch: it was deeply embedded in Weimar’s bourgeois civil society, had “perhaps the most efficient and best equipped organizational structure in German politics,”37Close and an appeal designed to attract a broad range of disillusioned, disaffected voters.

An example of how these changes helped the NSDAP attract new supporters and reshape Weimar’s political dynamics is reflected in the political evolution of the German peasantry. During the interwar years peasants joined and participated in a wide range of professional, special interest, and regional associations, a trend carried over from the prewar era. Early in the Republic the peasantry tended to vote liberal or conservative, but like many other groups it eventually abandoned traditional parties. During the second half of the 1920s most peasants either withdrew from the national political arena or gave their support to one of the new splinter parties.38Close As the economic situation worsened during the late 1920s and early ’30s, the political situation in rural areas became increasingly volatile. Large landowners used their influence on the DNVP and other political organizations to secure a large amount of help, but the peasantry lacked a political champion that could secure aid for them.

Until late in the day the Nazis essentially ignored rural Germany, and certain aspects of the Nazi program such as land reform and expropriation drove farmers away. But by the end of the 1920s the NSDAP, clever and opportunistic in ways its competitors were not, noticed the political potential of the frustration and unrest spreading across the countryside. In 1928 it accordingly revamped its agricultural program, eliminating “offensive” planks and focusing instead on the needs and demands of rural inhabitants.39Close

R. Walther Darre was the key figure in Nazi agriculture policy, and by the end of 1930 he decided that the way to win the peasantry’s support and box out potential opponents in rural areas was to capture agricultural associations. In November 1930 an instruction sheet ordered the NSDAP’s agricultural apparatus (agrarpolitische Apparat, or aA) to:

Darre became particularly interested in the Reichslandbund (RLB), a major player in German agrarian life which by the end of the 1920s had 5.6 million members. During the 1920s the RLB cooperated with a number of bourgeois parties including the DVP and DNVP. But eventually many RLB members grew disgusted with the organization’s political vacillation and inept leadership, and began considering the NSDAP as a potential champion. During the latter part of 1930 Darre decided that the route to gaining control over the RLB was by “conquering one position after another from within.”41Close The aA focused first on placing supporters in lower ranks of the RLB, then on capturing leadership positions; by 1932 one of the four presidents of the RLB was a Nazi and non-Nazis were increasingly scarce at the top of the organization. The RLB gradually moved into the Nazi fold, burnishing the NSDAP’s image as the champion of Germany’s “neglected” groups while opening up new avenues for recruiting supporters. “The RLB and other agricultural organizations became convenient conveyor belts for Nazi propaganda reaching deep into the rural population. In this way the intermediate groups facilitated the rise of Nazism.”42Close

This Nazi infiltration of bourgeois civil society helped the NSDAP to achieve two goals that had long eluded German political parties—the creation of an effective political machine and a truly broad, cross-class coalition. In short, by the time the Great Depression hit, the NSDAP was well positioned to take advantage of the chaos that was about to consume Germany.

The Great Depression and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic

When the 1928 elections occurred during Weimar’s “Indian summer,” extremist parties did poorly while SPD did well enough to take power at the head of a Grand Coalition which included the SPD, DDP, DVP, the Center, and a regional party, the BVP. This government achieved some important successes, perhaps most notably the Young Plan, which revised reparations, set a time-limit on Germany’s payment obligations, and pledged the Allies to evacuate the Rhineland five years ahead of schedule.43Close But as the Great Depression swept over Germany, tensions within the coalition over foreign, economic, and social policy grew. In particular, a rapid growth in unemployment led to a large deficit in the unemployment insurance system. The SPD argued that the best way to deal with these shortfalls was by increasing contributions, while the DVP argued for a substantial revision of the system. A compromise acceptable to all coalition parties could not be reached, and the SPD-led government resigned.

The September 1930 elections revealed a dramatically different political landscape than existed in 1928. The SPD remained the largest party, although its share of the vote dropped from about 30 percent to 24.5 percent, but the NSDAP had catapulted itself into second place (18.3 percent vs. 2.6 percent in 1928) and the KPD into third (13.1 percent vs. 10.6 percent in 1928). Together anti-democratic parties received almost 40 percent of the vote.44Close The party system’s fragmentation also continued, with over thirty parties competing in the election and fifteen obtaining seats in the Reichstag. In response, the SPD declared that its most important task was defending the Republic and thus supported the chancellorship of Heinrich Brüning, a conservative from the Center party, as the lesser evil.45Close But while perhaps the lesser evil, Brüning was no friend to the SPD or democracy overall. Despite the devastating economic downturn, during his time in office Brüning chipped away at what remained of Germany’s social support system and pursued what we would today consider austerity. The SPD responded by attacking the chancellor’s “antisocial” agenda, but did not offer much in the way of an alternative. In fact, Brüning’s memoirs make clear that he often turned to members of the SPD for support.46Close These policies were deeply unpopular and lacked the support of a majority in the Reichstag. As a result, Brüning governed with the help of emergency decrees issued by the president, which article forty-eight of the Weimar Constitution enabled him to issue without the support of the Reichstag. Brüning used the term “authoritative democracy” to describe this form of rule—based on the backing of the president rather than the active support of a majority in the Reichstag—but it was not very democratic at all.

The context within which this all occurred was the ever more devastating economic downturn. Indeed, the Great Depression hit Germany harder than probably any other major industrialized country; only the United States suffered nearly as much. From 1929 to 1932, industrial production dropped by almost half, national income decreased by about a third, stock prices collapsed, banks failed, savings evaporated, investment disappeared, and during the winters of both 1931/32 and 1932/33 unemployment shot above six million. This led to a rise in support for the KPD and emboldened its attacks on the Republic and capitalism, trends that frightened business, middle-class, and rural groups further. Meanwhile, the SPD—the Republic’s largest and most important party—essentially sat on its hands. Having previously rejected explicit outreach to groups outside the working class, the party could not take advantage of the growing desperation of Germany’s farmers and middle classes, and having rejected unorthodox policy options for dealing with the economic downturn, the party had little to offer an electorate desperate for an alternative to Brüning’s austerity.47Close Into this void stepped the NSDAP.

During the early 1930s, the Nazis continued to reach out to almost all strata of German society, especially rural and middle-class groups. The party had already toned down its attacks on capitalism, though it did not eliminate criticism of free markets or calls for dramatic socioeconomic change. One way the Nazis attempted to square this circle was by stressing the difference between “rapacious” (raffendes) and “creative” (schaffendes) capital that National Socialists had developed generations before. The former was associated with finance, commerce, and Jews and was seen as serving no good purpose; the latter was linked to industry and production, reflected “German” values and virtues, and was necessary for a healthy society and economy. This distinction between raffendes and schaffendes capital was, as one observer notes, “indeed almost a stroke of genius; it permitted the Nazi party to assume an anticapitalist stance without frightening off the business world whose financial and political support it sought.”48Close

As Germany’s economic situation deteriorated, so too did its political situation. The Nazis attacked Brüning and the SPD for their passivity and promised that if they came to power they would jump-start the economy and alleviate the suffering of all Germans. Brüning, meanwhile, was trying to figure out some way to stay in power. His austerity policies and bypassing of the Reichstag alienated him from the SPD, but his willingness to even consider working with the SPD, unwillingness to fully eviscerate democracy, and attempts to ban paramilitary organizations, even those associated with the NSDAP, alienated the right. Ultimately unable to secure the support of a majority in the Reichstag or maintain the confidence of President Hindenburg, who, like much of the rest of the Junkers and military elite, increasingly viewed the chancellor as not conservative “enough,” Brüning was forced to resign in May 1932, pushing the Republic even further away from democracy.49Close

With Brüning’s departure, President Hindenburg appointed the even more conservative Franz von Papen as chancellor. In the run-up to the elections in the summer of 1932, von Papen allowed the Nazi paramilitary force (SA, or Sturmabteilung) almost free reign to violently clash with opponents, particularly its counterpart from the KPD, thus ensuring that the election would be Germany’s bloodiest and most chaotic yet. Overall, the NSDAP’s transformation over the previous years enabled it to fight an aggressive and versatile campaign. The party promised to fight the Depression and get rid of unemployment, contrasting these promises with the meekness of the government and the SPD. It distributed hundreds of thousands of copies of its economic program, which was organized around the basic principle that, “Our economy is not sick because there is a lack of production opportunities, but rather because the available production opportunities are not being put to use.”50Close In addition to calling for an alternative to Brüning’s austerity, the party also presented itself as the champion of all German citizens suffering from the Depression and the failures of the Republic. And thanks to its previous outreach efforts, the NSDAP could count on the support of many agricultural and middle-class associations during the campaign, including the RLB.51Close (Germany’s peasants and small farmers were very critical of the deflationary policies of the early 1930s.52Close) The election results were remarkable: a clear majority of voters cast their votes for explicitly anti-democratic parties,53Close and for the first time since 1912 the SPD lost its status as the country’s largest party, capturing only 21.6 percent of the vote and being replaced by the NSDAP with 37.3 percent of the vote; the KPD, meanwhile, got 14.5 percent of the vote. Electoral participation also shot up, as disillusioned voters stormed back to the polls (see Figure 12.2). As important as the size of the Nazi victory was its nature: the NSDAP had become a true “people’s party”: it received disproportionate support from the middle class, rural areas, and the young, but overall the party’s voters were “more equally distributed among the different social and demographic categories than any other major party of the Weimar Republic.”54Close

In the months following the election, von Papen eviscerated what remained of German democracy. He stayed in power after the election because he enjoyed the support of President Hindenburg, but had almost no support in the Reichstag or with the public at large. The only party willing to support him was the far-right DNVP, which received less than 6 percent of the vote in the July 1932 election. Although von Papen tried to appease the NSDAP by allowing the SA free reign, clamping down on freedom of the press and other civil liberties, and launching what was essentially a coup against the SPD-led government of Prussia, Hitler had little interest in playing second fiddle to him. And so in a bizarre and tragic move, the NSDAP joined its arch-rivals the KPD in September to support a vote of no-confidence against von Papen. The vote succeeded by an overwhelming majority and von Papen was forced to resign in September. Another set of elections were then called for November 1932.

Interestingly, for the first time in many years the NSDAP appeared to be faltering. Financial troubles and political differences, for example, over the conditions under which the party should take power, caused internal tensions, while the end of reparations payments in the summer of 1932 robbed the Nazi appeal of some of its force. As a result, for the first time in four years, the Nazi vote declined: In the November 1932 elections, the NSDAP lost two million votes, receiving about 33 percent of the vote vs. 37.3 percent in July and lost thirty-four Reichstag seats. This led many to breathe a sigh of relief, believing that the crest of the Nazi wave had been reached. Newspapers across Germany predicted that Hitler would never now gain power and that “the Republic has been rescued.”55Close However, although the Nazi vote declined, support for the Republic did not increase. The SPD’s vote fell again (to 20.6 percent) while the KPD’s and anti-democratic DNVP’s rose (to 17 percent and 8.3 percent, respectively). Thus, in November a majority of the electorate voted for anti-democratic parties with the NSDAP retaining its status as the largest of the bunch.

Nonetheless, while the NSDAP’s status made it possible to appoint Hitler chancellor, it did not make it necessary. And in the weeks after the election Germany stumbled on, briefly under the chancellorship of General Kurt von Schleicher, a conservative confidant of Hindenburg’s, who lacked any political base other than perhaps the military elite from whence he came,56Close but who hoped to remain in power by enticing the support of various groups, including the Strasserite (or “socialist”) wing of the NSDAP. Hitler, however, had little interest in coming to power on anything but his own terms.57Close Meanwhile, behind the scenes, conservative elites58Close and in particular von Papen, Oskar von Hindenburg (the president’s son), and Alfred Hugenberg were maneuvering to bring Hitler into a right-wing government that would be popular enough to finally put an end to democracy and “Marxism.” Just as conservative elites in Italy (see chapter 11) believed they could control and manipulate Mussolini, so did their counterparts in Germany believe they could use Hitler and the NSDAP’s support to mount a final attack against democracy and then shunt the Nazis to the sidelines. These machinations, combined with the fact that no other party was able to mount a convincing challenge to the Nazis or offer any real possibility of generating a working coalition in the Reichstag, led Hindenburg to finally name Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933. As historian Henry Turner noted: “It was a triumphant conclusion to a remarkable political comeback. A mere month earlier, Hitler had appeared finished. His party had suffered a staggering setback in the last national election. . . . Dissension and rebellion had broken out among his disappointed followers. Signs of improvement in the economy threatened to deprive him of one of the issues he had so successfully exploited since the onset of the depression. . . . Upon attaining his goal, Hitler himself reportedly marveled at how, as so often before, he had been rescued just as all seemed lost.”59Close As was the case in Italy, in short, although many factors contributed to democracy’s decline in Germany, it is impossible to understand its final collapse without paying attention to the actions of a conservative elite that was unable or unwilling to reconcile itself with democracy, becoming desperate enough eventually to support a fanatic who would destroy them as well as much of Europe.

The Nazi Regime

Hitler became chancellor of a government including Nazis and conservatives on January 30, 1933. Hitler eviscerated his conservative “partners” and all other opposition much more quickly than did Mussolini. Two days after coming to power Hitler dissolved the Reichstag and insisted on holding another election. In the following weeks and particularly after the German parliament (Reichstag) building was set on fire in February 1933—which the Nazis claimed was part of a Communist plot to overthrow the government but was surely the work of an individual—the Nazis used their own shock troops as well as the powers of the state, control over the police, declaration of a permanent “state of emergency,” banning of political meetings, limiting freedom of the press, and suspension of most remaining civil liberties to terrorize their political opponents, particular the SPD and KPD.60Close Despite this, the Nazis received only 43.9 percent of the vote in the March 5 elections, and so needed the support of the DNVP (which got 8 percent) for a majority in the Reichstag. This proved more than enough to get the job done. On March 23 all parties, with the exception of the SPD (and KPD, which had already been banned), voted to pass the Enabling Act giving Hitler essentially dictatorial powers. Hitler now spoke openly about the “revolution” to come: the transition from democracy to dictatorship was merely the first step on the road to transforming Germany’s society, state, economy, and position in the world.61Close

Building on the NSDAP’s already impressive infiltration of Weimar’s civil society, after coming to power the Nazis extended their control over these organizations and formed a wide variety of new ones. Eventually Nazi organizations covered almost every imaginable area of social and cultural life: youth and women’s groups, a “labor front” (replacing banned unions), and sports, leisure, and artistic associations. The Nazis reach into “civil” society gave the party an extensive and effective grassroots presence that enabled it to observe and shape society from the bottom up.62Close Meanwhile, Hitler’s ability to reshape Germany from the top down and eliminate any alternatives to Nazi rule was facilitated by the rapid consolidation of his hold over the state. Within a few months of coming to power, the government passed laws giving it control over the civil service, dissolving all other political parties, and creating a unitary rather than a federal state. In the summer of 1933 Hitler signed a Concordat with the Vatican, which promised that the Church and its affiliated organizations could work in Germany as long as they stayed out of politics and bishops swore an oath of allegiance to the new regime. Hitler also moved quickly against those within his own movement and coalition who were not viewed as completely loyal. The “Night of Long Knives,” or Röhm Putsch, in June 1934 eliminated the “left-wing” or Strasserite faction of the NSDAP and the SA, whose independence threatened Hitler’s monopoly of violence and relationship with the military. In addition, many conservative but non-Nazi elites, including von Papen and Schleicher, were killed or pushed aside. Soon after this bloodbath, President Hindenburg died and Hitler took over the presidency, leaving him the undisputed leader of a state already purged of most potential sources of opposition.

The only groups Hitler initially allowed to retain some independence were the military and business, mainly because their cooperation was necessary for the war effort to come and they were, in any case, eager to cooperate. The military shared Hitler’s desire to rearm and get rid of democracy, “Bolshevism,” and what remained of the hated Versailles treaty. In addition, soon after Hitler came to power, the head of the armed forces, Werner von Blomberg, dismissed officers who were not sufficiently pro-Nazi and the military took an oath of loyalty to him.63Close Despite its relative docility, Hitler had no intention of allowing the military any autonomy over the long term. He gradually chipped away at its independence64Close and in 1938 removed Blomberg as head of the armed forces and Colonel-General Werner von Fitsch as commander in chief of the army, and made himself chief of the Wehrmacht, Goering field marshal, and the weak Walther von Brauschitsch head of the army.65Close Hitler also reshuffled the foreign ministry, placing a loyalist, Joachim von Ribbentrop, at its head. Germany’s armed forces were finally fully under government control.

The business community’s autonomy was also undermined. Like the military, the business community largely welcomed Hitler’s rise, sharing with him the desire to eliminate democracy, the left, and the labor movement. It also benefited from the profits generated by the war preparations that began soon after he became chancellor. Nonetheless the business community paid a heavy price for these benefits: over time, decisions about what and how much to produce, levels and nature of investment, wages, prices, and the uses to which private property could be put were taken out of their hands and instead placed under the purview of the state.66Close Agriculture suffered a similar fate, but received less in exchange. Soon after the Nazis came to power, the entire agricultural sector was organized into cartels known as Reichsnährstand. Marketing boards (Marktverbände) fixed prices, regulated supplies, and oversaw almost all aspects of agricultural production. As time passed, regulation grew to the point where speaking of a market in agriculture became something of a misnomer since the state determined everything from what seeds and fertilizers were used to how land was inherited.67Close And even though farmers were granted a moratorium on debt payments and protection from food imports, the cumulative result of Nazi policies was a decline in agricultural production and rural standards of living and a record sell-off of farms.68Close

By the end of the 1930s the state touched every sphere of economic life, public spending as a share of the gross national product (GNP) had grown spectacularly,69Close and credit was politically distributed.70Close Even though the German economy remained nominally capitalist and private property was not fundamentally threatened, unless its owner was Jewish, “[t]he scope and depth of state intervention in Nazi Germany had no peacetime precedent or parallel in any capitalist economy, Fascist Italy included.”71Close This transformed relationship between the state and the economy reflected the Nazis’ long-standing insistence that all spheres of life had to be subordinated to the “national interest” (“Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz”).72Close The Nazi movement, according to Hitler, considered the economy “merely a necessary servant in the life of our people and nationhood. [The movement] feels an independent national economy to be necessary, but it does not consider it a primary factor that creates a strong state; on the contrary, only the strong nationalist state can protect such an economy and grant it freedom of existence and development.” Hitler once remarked that “the fundamental idea in [the Nazi] economic program is the idea of authority. . . . I want everyone to keep the property that he has acquired for himself . . . [but] the Third Reich will always retain its right to control the owners of property.”73Close

The Nazis’ economic policies were quite popular, especially after their “successful” response to the Great Depression. Upon coming to power, the Nazis proclaimed full employment a central goal74Close and began a number of highly publicized work-creation programs, stepping up highway, canal, house, railway, and other types of infrastructure projects financed essentially by central bank credits,75Close exhorting “business to take on extra workers and restrict hours of work and overtime,”76Close and restarting the flow of credit.77Close Germany’s economy rebounded and unemployment figures improved almost miraculously: when Hitler came to power in 1933, almost 6 million Germans were unemployed; by the end of 1934, this had dropped to 2.4 million; by 1938 the country enjoyed essentially full employment. Although most scholars now believe that much of this improvement was due to a simultaneous upswing in the international economy rather than the Nazis’ policies,78Close psychologically the Nazi policies were critical. By showing that the government was committed to getting the economy moving again, these policies gave many Germans renewed confidence in the future, making the recovery something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.79Close And even more important were the political consequences of the regime’s Depression-fighting policies. Many Germans gave the regime credit for the economic turnaround that occurred on its watch, and this boosted its popularity and legitimacy.80Close

The Nazis justified their economic policies in particular and the state’s control over the economy more generally as part of their attempt to create a true Volksgemeinschaft—an order in which the good of the national community took precedence. This new Volksgemeinschaft would, the Nazis insisted, end the deep divisions and hierarchies long embedded in German society. As perverse as it seems, increasing social equality and mobility was central to the Nazi appeal. As Hitler, for example, once noted, with the Third Reich “we have opened the way for every qualified individual—whatever his origins—to reach the top if he is qualified, dynamic, industrious and resolute.”81Close The Nazis would, Hitler declared, finally create “a socially just state” that would “eradicate [the social] barriers”82Close that had long divided Germans from each other. And indeed, during the Third Reich the old determinants of how far one rose in society—family, social status, wealth, education, etc.—were replaced by commitment to the cause and racial background. The Nazis also supported an extensive welfare state that included free higher education, help for families and child support, high pensions, health insurance, and a wide array of publicly supported entertainment and vacation options:

This welfare state was of course only for “ethnically pure” Germans, designed to increase socioeconomic equality and solidarity among them, while differentiating them from Jews and other “undesireables”84Close who were subject to discrimination and violence. The welfare state was thus part of the Nazis’ attempt to make race rather than class the key dividing line in modern society.85Close A clear classic statement of this view was made by Goebbels at the first Labor Day celebration held under Nazi auspices on May 1, 1933:

Especially up through 1939, most Germans’ experience with the Nazi regime was probably positive. The Nazis had seemingly conquered the Depression and restored some semblance of economic and political stability. The Nazi welfare state “benefited probably around 95 percent of” all Germans, and real possibilities for social advancement for hitherto low-status individuals were opened up by the regime. In addition, as long as they could prove their ethnic “purity” and stayed away from overt shows of disloyalty, most individuals had little to fear from the regime’s coercive apparatus. Most Germans, in short, “did not experience National Socialism as a system of tyranny and terror but rather as a regime of social warmth, a sort of ‘warm and fuzzy’ dictatorship (wohlfühl-Diktatur).”87Close In addition, support for the regime was bolstered by its foreign policy “successes,” most notably getting rid of what remained of the Versailles treaty and (re)-integrating into Germany parts of Central and Eastern Europe with German-speaking populations. Indeed by 1938 and the Anschluss with Austria, Hitler had managed to achieve “the ultimate goal of German nationalism, the establishment of Grossdeutschland, something which had eluded even Bismarck, and he had done so without provoking a war.”88Close Had Hitler stopped there, the Nazi regime might very well have gone down in history as Germany’s most popular and successful yet.

Conclusions

Understanding the fate of the Weimar Republic requires understanding the problematic legacies bequeathed to it by the old regime: a conservative elite entrenched in the military, judiciary, and bureaucracy; a deeply divided population; an aggressive and virulently anti-Semitic nationalist movement that fed off the sense that Germany was threatened by enemies within and without; a plurality political party, the SPD, suspicious of “bourgeois” groups and institutions and lacking national governing experience; and a catastrophic failed war and a “stab in the back” legend to justify it. As if these legacies were not enough, upon coming to power Germany’s first democracy immediately confronted extreme right- and left-wing radicalism, the fallout from a lost war and punitive peace, growing political disorder, and then a Great Inflation and a Great Depression. Even with more than “two strikes” against it, the Republic’s ultimate fate still depended on the actions of conservative elites. Desperate to eviscerate democracy, but lacking the popular support to do so, landed, business, military, and other elites believed they could use Hitler and the NSDAP to achieve their goals and then push them aside to regain their “rightful” place at atop the German political order.

This did not happen, of course, and this is because they, like so many others, did not appreciate the revolutionary nature of the Nazis. The Nazis represented a powerful and truly modern alternative to liberal, capitalist democracy in a way traditional, elitist authoritarian movements did not. By the time of the Great Depression, the NSDAP had a sophisticated organizational infrastructure, deeps roots in civil society, a message designed to appeal to a wide range of dissatisfied voters, and a broad, cross-class support base. Rather than promising a return to an old order that largely excluded them, the Nazis instead promised Germans a new order that would provide stability, unity, solidarity, community, a sense of purpose, and international prominence. The price to be paid for this new order turned out to be the death of many of Germany’s own citizens, particularly its Jews, and the destruction of much of the rest of Europe.

The Nazi project of course ultimately failed but not before transforming Germany’s state, society, and economy and the rest of Europe to an unimaginable and appalling degree. Ironically some of these transformations would help clear the way for the rebirth of liberal democracy in Germany and Europe at the end of the Second World War. Before examining how and why that occurred (see chapter 14), another type of political path traversed during the interwar years must be examined: that which occurred in Spain.

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