A History of Germany 1918 - 2020. Mary Fulbrook

majority: the first, headed by Wilhelm Marx, failed to gain support in the May General Election, as did the second Marx cabinet in the General Election of December 1924. In the period up to the next General Election of May 1928, there were four different cabinets. The first, headed by Hans Luther, lasted less than a year, from 15 January to 5 December 1925. A coalition of the Right, it collapsed as a result of the opposition of the right-wing German National People’s Party (DNVP) to the Locarno Pact. The second, surviving less than five months, from 20 January to 12 May 1926, and again headed by Luther, was a bourgeois coalition lacking a parliamentary majority; it was brought down by a combination of forces in the Reichstag. The third lasted only from 16 May to 17 December 1926, headed once more by Marx, and was a renewed bourgeois coalition lacking parliamentary support; it was ultimately brought down by a vote of no confidence in the Reichstag proposed by the SPD and supported by both Communists and Nationalists, as well as by other smaller parties. A new right-wing coalition, headed again by Marx, lasted from 29 January 1927 until after the General Election of 1928.

      All of these brief cabinets had lacked the input of Social Democrats, who had been so central to the foundation of the Republic. After the short-lived grand coalition of the Stresemann government of 13 August–23 November 1923, the SPD had chosen to remain on the sidelines of parliamentary politics. In 1928 the SPD returned again to government in a grand coalition under Chancellor Hermann Müller: this was to be the last truly democratic regime of the Weimar Republic. But it faced almost insuperable historical challenges. From 1929 onwards Germany experienced mounting economic, social and political problems that finally tore apart the delicate fabric of Weimar democracy. And from 1930, fear of renewed elections ushered in a period of de facto presidential rule, as we shall see. But it is clear that even in the period from 1924 to 1928 the functioning of Weimar parliamentary politics was less than smooth, and the instability of governments only helped to bring the whole ‘system’ into disrepute.

The problems of Weimar parliamentary democracy cannot be attributed simply to specific constitutional features, such as the electoral system of proportional representation, or the ease by which chancellors could be voted out of office. Party politics reflected the deeper socioeconomic and cultural divisions in Weimar Germany. This in turn contributed to the fragmentation and increasing extremism of party politics in the later Weimar years, as economic and social conditions rapidly deteriorated, leaving a growing political vacuum in the centre. So democracy was on shaky foundations even before it was hit by the impact of the economic downturn and rising unemployment.

      For one thing, because of the new and prominent role of the state in economic and social affairs, socioeconomic conflicts were inevitably politicized. Particular issues became generalized; criticism of specific policies widened to become critiques of the ‘system’ as a whole. Again, these tendencies predated the onset of economic recession, and weakened the internal structure of Weimar democracy even before it was subjected to the sustained battering of the depression years.

      As early as 1923 employers had mounted an effective attack on the 8-hour day agreed in the Stinnes–Legien agreement of 1918; and the failure of the Zentral-Arbeits-Gemeinschaft (ZAG) to resolve industrial disputes led to the official resignation of the trade union organization, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (ADGB), in January 1924. After 1923 trade unions began losing members, funds and credibility. They had increasingly to rely on the state as the effective guarantor of their position. Yet employers, despite their relatively strong position, remained on the defensive. Although it is difficult to generalize about employers’ attitudes, the Ruhr lock-out of 1928 is a significant illustration of one important strand. Unwilling to concede even a modest wage increase (of 2–4%), certain Ruhr industrialists locked out around a quarter of a million workers in protest against the very system of state arbitration. Gradually, significant sectors of industry came to feel that it was the democratic parliamentary system itself, which guaranteed the position of workers and unions, that needed to be revised. As they lost faith in a system for which they had never, in any event, had much love, so also they began to withdraw support – and funds – from the liberal parties of the bourgeois middle. More broadly, the Weimar Republic was identified with the institutionalized power of workers and their political and union organizations – which employers, who had formed their attitudes in what were now seen as the golden days of Imperial Germany, tended to regard as essentially illegitimate, by definition little more than ‘enemies of the empire’ (Reichsfeinde), in Bismarck’s phrase.

Labour relations constituted but one element in undermining support for the Republic among elites. Far more widespread was the rejection of the Versailles Treaty and all it implied for Germany’s geographical boundaries, and for her political and military status. This resentment was extensive – and was to play an important role in the eventual mass popularity of the Nazi Party – but it took on a particular significance in connection with one particular elite: the army. While there are varying analyses of the role of the army in Weimar politics (ranging from older interpretations of the army as comprising a ‘state within a state’ to more recent explorations of the interconnections between army, industry and government), it is clear that in a number of ways the army played a key role in undermining Weimar democracy. The Reichswehr was to a degree split within itself; there were differences of attitude towards the Republic and a growth of factions after 1918.¹ Many leading officers claimed that while they supported the German nation, they could not support the democratic state: thus, in the early years, in different ways, Generals Groener, Seeckt and others cooperated with right-wing groups and paramilitary organizations, such as the ex-servicemen’s association the Stahlhelm. German military schools were opened in Russia (under the Treaty of Rapallo) to train officers, and secret rearmament programmes were initiated in contravention of the Versailles Treaty. From 1926 onwards, General Kurt von Schleicher played a leading role in supporting and influencing President Hindenburg’s plans for a more authoritarian form of government that would reinstate the pre-1918 elites in what they deemed to be their rightful positions of power. Schleicher’s role was to become particularly important in the closing stages of the Republic’s brief history.

      Meanwhile, in the civilian arena, towards the end of the 1920s, increasing disaffection with democracy was reflected in the right-wards shift of a number of ‘bourgeois’ parties. Most notable among these was the DNVP, which was taken over by the right-wing nationalist press baron Hugenberg in 1928. After the death of Stresemann in 1929 the DVP also moved towards the Right. But even as they shifted, so they were being outstripped – and their support sapped away from them – by the emergence and dramatic growth of an infinitely more radical party: the NSDAP. And, unlike the traditional conservative and nationalist parties, the NSDAP was able, in the new era of plebiscitary democracy and economic crisis, to attract a wide popular following. Ultimately, elites disaffected with democracy were to feel they must ally with the Nazis to gain a mass base from which to bring the shaky edifice down.

      The Rise of the NSDAP

The Nazi Party was, in the early 1920s, but one among many nationalist and völkisch radical political groups. It was catapulted to prominence with the onset of economic recession in the late 1920s: having secured only 2.6% of the national vote in the 1928 general election, the NSDAP became the second largest party in the Reichstag with 18.3% of the vote in September 1930. The Nazis owed their spectacular success to a combination of two discrete sets of factors: first, their distinctive organization and strategy: and second, the wider socioeconomic conditions that created climates of opinion and sets of grievances on which the Nazis could prey.

      Following Hitler’s release from imprisonment at the end of 1924, the NSDAP was formally refounded in February 1925. Over the course of the next few years, Hitler rose from his pre-1923 role of ‘drummer’ to become the undisputed leader or ‘Führer’, standing to some extent above the organizational fray and exerting his powers of charismatic leadership through his gifts of oratory and control of mass audiences.² The eventual semblance of a well-organized, united party – symbolized by the brown-shirt uniforms of the SA, the serried ranks of units marching past the Führer with arms raised in Hitler salute, the visual and emotional effects of the mass rallies with the leader as the focal point – partially disguised more complex realities.

      The