A History of Germany 1918 - 2020. Mary Fulbrook

World War – was at first organized only at the local level. After the return of the war veteran Ernst Röhm from Bolivia to head the organization in 1930, the SA remained somewhat unruly and, in conventional political terms, more radical than Hitler’s conception of Nazi ideology was to be. Nor were all Nazi leaders united on a clearly definable ‘ideology’ in any case. An important figure with ideas somewhat different from those of Hitler was Gregor Strasser, whose role in Nazi party organization was strengthened in 1925 when Hitler was banned from making speeches in public. Strasser, who had considerable organizational skills, played a key role in spreading the Nazi party organization across broad areas of Germany, beyond the original Nazi heartland in Bavaria. In some areas, particularly in northwest Germany, the NSDAP had a more ‘revolutionary’ or radical flavour.

During 1925–6 the NSDAP suffered much infighting. Hitler, on returning to the public rostrum, was able to transcend this factionalism and unite the party under his unique form of leadership. The Berlin party chief Joseph Goebbels was persuaded of Hitler’s merits and made it his task to promote and strengthen the ‘Führer myth’ through propaganda. At the same time, the ‘putschist’ strategy of the early years was rejected in favour of following a legal, parliamentary road to the overthrow of parliamentary democracy. New party organizations were founded to penetrate a range of social and professional groups. In 1926 the National Socialist League of German Students and the Hitler Youth were founded. The League of Nazi Lawyers, the League of Nazi Doctors, the League of Nazi School-teachers and the Fighting League for German Culture were all established by 1929. In 1928 the National Socialist Factory Cell Organisation (NSBO) was created in an attempt to infiltrate the heartland of left-wing politics, the working class. From 1930 onwards, concerted efforts were made to infiltrate existing agrarian and white-collar worker pressure groups, such as the Reichslandbund and the Deutschnationale Handlungsgehilfenverband. Attempts were also made to win over – or at least neutralize and allay the suspicions of – important industrialists.

The Nazis propagated, not a coherent doctrine or body of systematically interrelated ideas, but rather a vaguer world-view made up of a number of prejudices with varied appeals to different audiences, which could scarcely be dignified with the term ‘ideology’. As far as Hitler himself was concerned, two major elements were of decisive importance. One was his radical anti-Semitism; the other was his ambitious set of foreign policy aims – his desire for mastery of Europe, the creation of ‘living space’ (Lebensraum) for the ‘Aryan’ Germans and eventually for mastery of the world. Linked to these was Hitler’s anti-communism: ‘Jews and Bolsheviks’ were often pejoratively associated, even indissolubly equated, as in their alleged responsibility for the debacle of 1918. The fight against the perceived evils of modern capitalism was to be a simultaneous fight against ‘international Jewry’ and against the threat of communism. Anti-Semitism was far from unique to Germany at this time, but Hitler’s ‘racial’ interpretation gave it a particular virulence. It certainly fell on fertile ground as far as wider anti-Semitic prejudices were concerned; however, while anti-Semitism was undoubtedly a major theme for Hitler and for Nazi activists, it was less important as an element in the Nazi Party’s appeal to the wider population.³ At this broader level, Nazi ‘ideology’ was a somewhat ragbag collection of largely negative views combined with a utopian vision of a grandiose future coloured by nostalgic appeals to aspects of a mythical past. Thus, Nazism opposed what they saw as pernicious, potentially threatening tendencies of ‘modern’ capitalist society: the evils of big business (large department stores, supposedly often owned by Jews), international finance (‘Jewish’) and revolutionary communism. Nazis promoted a vision of a harmonious national community (Volksgemeinschaft) that would be racially pure (cleansed of the ‘pollution’ of Jews, hereditary degenerates and other supposedly racially or biologically inferior types), and that would overcome the class divisions that beset Imperial and Weimar Germany. Nazism claimed to be able to transcend the divisions and heal the wounds of capitalist society and to present a new way forwards to a great future, presenting a genuine alternative to both the discredited authoritarianism of the Imperial past and the ‘despicable’ democracy of the Weimar present. How this transcendence would look in detail and in reality was never fully spelled out: Hitler was able to appeal to a wide range of groups harbouring different resentments – and to allay suspicions on a number of fronts – precisely because he was never very specific on the details of the proposed new order. In addition to particular social grievances and fears, there was very widespread nationalist resentment about the Treaty of Versailles from which Hitler was able to benefit. But most important for the expanding appeal of Nazism were the economic developments in the closing years of the Weimar Republic.

      Economic Crises and the Collapse of Democracy

      The Weimar Republic had suffered since its inception from major economic problems. The means of financing the First World War – through loans and bonds rather than taxes – had laid the foundations for postwar inflation, which had been fuelled and exacerbated by government policies in connection with reparations in 1922–3. Even after the stabilization of the currency in 1923–4 and the revision of reparations arrangements with the Dawes Plan, the Weimar economy was far from strong. For one thing, it was heavily reliant on short-term loans from abroad. These could rapidly be withdrawn, with far-reaching consequences – as indeed occurred after the Wall Street Crash of October 1929. For another, as Harold James has put it, ‘Weimar’s economy suffered from an inherent instability, and like any unstable structure required only a relatively small push to bring down the whole structure’.⁴ On both the industrial and agrarian fronts there were difficulties. Workers were heavily reliant on state arbitration to back wage claims that were disputed by employers, and, on some interpretations, relatively high labour costs contributed to the problems of the Weimar economy. Whatever one’s view on the question of whether wages were ‘too high’ in an era characterized by ‘Taylorism’ and ‘Fordism’ (the attempted rationalization of labour and enhanced productivity through the introduction of American time-and-motion studies, assembly-line methods and the like), distributional struggles certainly contributed to Weimar’s political problems. Nor was all well on the agricultural front, and the difficulties in the agrarian sphere were to play a major role in the rise of Hitler. From 1924, when the agricultural protectionism introduced at the beginning of the war came to an end, there was a need for rationalization in agriculture. From the mid-1920s onwards, agricultural indebtedness increased, and every year there were greater numbers of bankrupt estates: a heightened political radicalism among farmers resulted. Agrarian elites also came to bring considerable pressure to bear on President Hindenburg – himself a Junker with experience of indebtedness – in the final intrigues leading to the appointment of Hitler as chancellor.

Given its inherent weaknesses, it is scarcely surprising that Germany’s economy was affected so badly by the world recession in the years after 1929.⁵ Whatever the intrinsic political weaknesses of Weimar democracy even in the ‘golden years’, it was undoubtedly the Depression that precipitated the actual collapse of Weimar democracy and paved the way for the rise of the Nazis to power.

      The Grand Coalition of 1928–30, including the SPD, led by Chancellor Hermann Müller, was the last genuinely parliamentary government of Weimar Germany. Plans had already been made for its replacement by a more authoritarian alternative – essentially presidential rule through a chancellor and cabinet lacking majority support in Parliament – several weeks before its actual collapse. Having survived earlier crises, the Müller administration fell over the issue of unemployment insurance in the wider context of economic recession and rising unemployment. In October 1929 the Wall Street Crash prompted the withdrawal of American loans from Germany, and heralded a phenomenal rise in bankruptcies and unemployment in the following three years. With rising numbers out of work, unemployment insurance could no longer be paid at the level decreed in the unemployment insurance legislation of July 1927. Müller’s coalition government was unable to reach agreement on the issue of whether to raise contributions or lower the level of benefits. Foundering on this issue, the last cabinet of the Weimar Republic to rely on parliamentary support was replaced by a presidential cabinet under Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, which, lacking majority support in Parliament, was to rule by presidential decree.