A History of Germany 1918 - 2020. Mary Fulbrook

to the view, as did leading representatives of agrarian interests in the (by now Nazi-infiltrated) Reichslandbund, that the Nazis must be included in a coalition conservative–nationalist government in order to provide it with a measure of popular support and that, in order to include the Nazis, it would be necessary to offer Hitler the chancellorship. Those pressurizing Hindenburg to take this move were of the view that, if Hitler and one or two other Nazis were included in a mixed cabinet, they would be effectively hemmed in and could be ‘tamed’ and manipulated. The idea was that the army, industrial and agrarian elites would be able to benefit from and subvert Hitler’s demagogic powers and mass support. Finally, after a series of meetings in Ribbentrop’s house in Berlin in the last week of January 1933, and through the mediations of Hindenburg’s son Oskar, an acceptable set of arrangements was constructed and the President persuaded. On 30 January 1933 Adolf Hitler was, by fully constitutional means, offered the chancellorship of Germany by a reluctant President Hindenburg. With Hitler’s acceptance the process of dismantling Weimar democracy was accelerated and rapidly completed. For a while the fateful coalition between the old elites and the Nazi mass movement survived; in the end, the last-ditch gamble by elites, who had failed to rule Germany on their own, to try to survive through alliance with Hitler, proved to have been a historical mistake of inestimable and tragic proportions.

      Who, finally, should bear the burden of responsibility for the failure of Weimar democracy? What factors are most important in explaining its collapse? The Left has come in for criticism on a range of counts. The bitter hostility obtaining between the KPD and SPD has often been remarked on as a fateful split among those who should have been united in opposition to the greater evil of Nazism. In addition to the bitterness arising in the early years, when the SPD as the party of government had no qualms about using force to suppress radical communist uprisings, the rift was deepened by the late 1920s and 1930s, when the KPD, under the influence of Moscow, adopted the theory that social democracy was equivalent to ‘social fascism’. Whatever one’s views on these matters, in a wider sense the working class in the closing years of the Weimar Republic was scarcely in a position to resist the course of events effectively. In contrast to 1920, when a general strike had been sufficient to bring down the Kapp putsch, there was little that could be done on a mass scale in the early 1930s: it is extremely difficult to use the weapon of striking when one is unemployed or desperate to retain a job. For most ordinary working-class people, sheer material survival was all that could be striven for in the years of the Depression.

      More attention needs to be paid to those who were in a position to affect events – and indeed often did so, in a direction ultimately favouring Hitler. There are a number of separate strands that interacted to produce the fateful, but by no means inevitable, outcome. The pursuit of deflationary economic policies by Brüning served to exacerbate the economic crisis and nourish the conditions in which the NSDAP was able to achieve mass support. While industrialists may not have played an important role in fostering or financially supporting the rise of the NSDAP, they certainly made little effort to sustain the democratic political system and indeed attacked its structure and fabric sufficiently to render it weak in the face of the final onslaught. The agrarian elites who had such a favourable reception with Hindenburg must also bear a burden of guilt, as must those army officers who worked to undermine democracy and install an authoritarian alternative. The Social Democrats had faced a difficult enough task in guiding the Republic through its early stages, at a time when moderate parties had greater parliamentary support and authoritarian elites had effectively abdicated their responsibility and retired to the wings of the political stage; now, when pro-Republican forces were in a minority and conservative– nationalist forces were joined by a new, popular and virulent right-wing radicalism in the shape of the Nazis, there was even less possibility for democrats of the moderate Left or Centre to control developments.

It was this sociopolitical configuration, in a country defeated in war, reduced in territory and status, subjected to a burden of reparations, rankling with revisionism, lurching from one political crisis to the next, and finally suffering major economic collapse, which ultimately spelled the death of democracy. No one factor alone is sufficient to explain the collapse of the Weimar Republic: not the provisions of the constitution or the implications of the Versailles Treaty, the impact of the Depression, the strategies and political abilities of Hitler and the Nazi Party, or the decisions and actions of other prominent individuals; it was the peculiar combination, under specific historical circumstances, of a range of activities, orientations and pressures that produced the ultimate outcome. Perhaps the only comforting lesson from this complex period is that, while radical and extremist movements have arisen and may arise elsewhere and at other times (and indeed there were many in the interwar period, of which Mussolini’s Fascists were a notably successful example), such a unique combination of circumstances as occurred in Germany, opening the way for the rise of Hitler, is unlikely ever to recur in its entirety.

4 A ‘National Community’? State, Economy and Society, 1933–1939

      Gleichschaltung and Hitler’s State

      Hitler became Chancellor on 30 January 1933; but he had by no means actually ‘seized power’, as the myth of the Machtergreifung (seizure of power), supported by the celebrations and propaganda of the Nazis themselves at the time, would suggest. He still had much to do to consolidate his hold over German administration, government and people; indeed, at this time many still felt that he could be harnessed and restrained, and his popular support co-opted and redirected.

      However, in the course of 1933–4 Hitler systematically pursued a policy of so-called Gleichschaltung (literally, putting everyone ‘into the same gear’; coordinating, or bringing into line), in order to consolidate his hold on German politics and society. Even then, however, Hitler’s power was by no means absolute. His state was a complex system, riddled with rivalries among competing centres of power and influence, in which the notion of a charismatic Führer, above the fray, played a key role in maintaining a degree of cohesion. Equally important was the extent to which this system was, almost to the last, sustained by key elite groups (particularly in the army and industry) who, while not necessarily themselves ‘Nazi’, must bear a large degree of responsibility for the functioning and consequences of the regime.

Hitler had declared that the elections following his appointment as Chancellor would be the last free elections in a parliamentary state. In the event, the elections of 5 March 1933 were less than ‘free’. On 27 February 1933 the Reichstag was set on fire. While uncertainty still surrounds the circumstances of the arson attack, there is no doubt that it was the Nazis who obtained the utmost benefit from the consequences of the fire. It was used as the pretext for an emergency decree on 28 February, which suspended most civil liberties and legitimized mass arrests of Communists and Social Democrats. In conditions of mounting tension, with rising violence on the streets, and left-wingers no longer able to express their opinions freely, the elections of 5 March were held under highly intimidating conditions. Nevertheless, Hitler and the NSDAP still failed to gain an overall majority: with 43.9% of the vote, the Nazis won 288 seats, while the Left gained over 30% of the vote (128 votes for the SDP and 81 for the KPD) and the Centre (73 seats) and Liberals together won 18% of the vote. Even with the votes for the right-wing DNVP the Nazi-dominated ‘government of national concentration’ could only barely command an absolute majority and could not achieve the two-thirds necessary to pass an Enabling Law (Ermächtigungsgesetz) to alter the constitution and ‘legalize’ the destruction of democracy. Yet by 23 March this had become possible.

      On 21 March the Reichstag was formally opened in the Garrison Church at Potsdam. Much was made of this carefully stage-managed ‘Day of Potsdam’ by the Nazis, who attempted to emphasize continuities between Frederick the Great, Hindenburg and Hitler, with the great traditions of German and Prussian history culminating in the figure of Hitler. Somewhat relieved by these appearances, the Bavarian People’s Party, the German State Party and the Centre Party were prepared to consider voting for the Enabling Law. The Catholics in particular were rather reassured by Hitler’s insistence that the position of Christianity would be untouched in the future; and Centre Party politicians also felt that their willingness to ally with the Nazis might help to moderate