A History of Germany 1918 - 2020. Mary Fulbrook
1931 the so-called Harzburg Front – named after a rally in Bad Harzburg – consisting of Hugenberg’s DNVP, the leadership of the veterans’ Stahlhelm organization and Hitler’s Nazis, failed to develop a truly united front in opposition to the Brüning government.
In spring 1932 Hindenburg’s seven-year term of office as President came to an end. Brüning mismanaged – from Hindenburg’s point of view – attempts to obviate the need for reelection, and Hindenburg had to face the humiliation of going to a second ballot, having failed to win an absolute majority on the first round against a powerful vote for Hitler as President. Symptomatic of the politics of this period was the lineup of candidates: Germans of a Social Democratic or liberal persuasion were constrained to choose between the conservative nationalist Hindenburg, the Nazi Hitler, the right-wing Stahlhelm representative Theodor Duesterberg, or, at the other extreme, the declared enemy of the Social Democrats, the Communist Ernst Thälmann. The anti-democratic, elderly Field Marshal, who had been working systematically to replace parliamentary democracy by more authoritarian rule, was now the only possible choice for all those genuine and committed republicans who feared that a vote for any of the other candidates would only bring ‘something worse’. In the event, the reelection of Hindenburg was to effect precisely that result. From the early summer of 1932 a series of alternatives were pursued and played out, until finally the appointment of Hitler to the chancellorship seemed to the old elites and the ageing President the only viable solution to the perceived problems of the ill-fated Weimar Republic.
Hitler’s Path to Power
From April 1932 to January 1933 the final debacle of the Weimar Republic unfolded through a series of intrigues and machinations, as alternative strategies were pursued, and found unworkable, in relation to the economic, political and governmental crisis. Distanced from Brüning by his management of the presidential elections, Hindenburg was prepared to countenance the removal of this increasingly unpopular Chancellor. First the army minister Wilhelm Groener was forced to resign on 12 May, over the issue of his ban on the SA and SS in April; then, at the end of May, when Brüning gave Hindenburg an emergency decree to sign, proposing drastic measures to deal with indebted East Elbian estates, the President refused to sign and instead accepted Brüning’s resignation. Brüning’s proposal to dispossess East Elbian estates overburdened with debts was the occasion, rather than the cause, of his downfall; behind it lay wider plots for alternative political scenarios.
On 2 June the Catholic Franz von Papen became Chancellor – losing the support of his own Centre Party in the process. Papen failed in the period of his chancellorship to gain parliamentary support: his cabinet excluded Social Democrats and trade unionists and never succeeded in securing a substantial conservative nationalist base. On 4 June the Reichstag was dissolved and new elections called for 31 July. The ban on the SA and SS was lifted on 18 June, and despite the fact that the paramilitary organizations of the KPD were still outlawed, there was near civil war on the streets as Nazis and Communists engaged in violent battles. The alleged failure of the Prussian state police to control political violence – which had in effect been legalized by the Reich government, with its unleashing of the SA – provided the justification for a coup against the Prussian state government on 20 July. The SPD leadership of Prussia (at that time heading a caretaker coalition) was ousted and replaced by a Reich Commissar – a useful precedent for Hitler’s takeover of Land governments the following year. The SPD’s lack of resistance to this coup has often been criticized, but Social Democrats still believed in the rule of law and were unwilling to meet force with force; they also, by this time, were suffering from a certain weariness and resignation, a lack of a broader vision in the face of changing events.
In the General Election of 31 July 1932, held amidst this atmosphere of violence and crisis, the Nazis achieved their greatest electoral success in the period before Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor. With 37.8% of the vote, and 230 of the 608 seats, the NSDAP for the first time became the largest party in the Reichstag. Claiming to be a ‘people’s party’ or Volkspartei, transcending class boundaries and narrow interests, the NSDAP at the height of its electoral success did indeed succeed in gaining a relatively wide social spread of support, in contrast to the narrower socioeconomic, regional or confessional bases of the parties of the Weimar period.9 As before, the organized industrial working class tended to remain faithful to the SPD and KPD, with the latter gaining votes from the former, and particularly winning support among the increasing numbers of unemployed. But the Nazis actively solicited votes among the working class, and were to a limited but nevertheless significant degree successful in winning support among workers in handicrafts and small-scale manufacturing, who were not so fully integrated into the organized working class. Similarly, most Catholics remained loyal to their Centre Party, which had retained a remarkably stable vote throughout the Weimar Republic. The Nazis benefited most from the collapse of the liberal and conservative parties. The NSDAP’s greatest electoral successes were in the Protestant, agricultural and small-town areas of Germany, and their most stable vote from 1924 onwards came from small farmers, shopkeepers and the independent artisans of the ‘old’ middle class, who felt threatened by the tensions and tendencies of modernization and industrial society. This core was augmented in periods of economic crisis by a ‘protest vote’ from other sections of society, including a sizeable vote from the new middle classes, and among established professional and upper-middle-class circles. In Childers’ summary of these groups: ‘Motivations were mixed, including fear of the Marxist Left, frustrated career ambitions, and resentment at the erosion of social prestige and professional security. Yet, while sizeable elements of these groups undoubtedly felt their positions or prospects to be challenged during the Weimar era, they cannot be described as uneducated, economically devastated, or socially marginal’.10 Civil servants, pensioners and white-collar workers added their votes to those of the small farmers and shopkeepers in a rising tide of protest against the chaos that Weimar democracy, to them, had ushered in. People of all ages were in the end attracted to the apparently young, energetic, demagogic movement, which appeared to offer a new way forward out of the deadlock and disasters of the Weimar ‘system’.
Armed with his electoral success – which still fell short of an overall majority – Hitler was hoping to be offered the chancellorship by Hindenburg. But the President despised this upstart ‘Bohemian corporal’, as he called him, and snubbed him by refusing to offer anything more than the vice-chancellorship. Enraged, Hitler refused to accept second-best – and caused considerable anger and consternation among the ranks of the Nazi Party, which felt he had missed the opportunity of putting the Nazis into government.
When the Reichstag reopened on 12 September it passed a spectacular vote of no confidence in the Chancellor, Papen, by 512 votes to 42 (the remainder of deputies having abstained or stayed at home). Papen was unable to command either a parliamentary base or popular support for his government, but nor was he able, in tandem with Hindenburg, to finalize plans for establishing a nonparliamentary, authoritarian regime in complete breach of the constitution. Parliament was dissolved and fresh elections called for 6 November. By now the worst trough of the Depression was passing, and the Nazis lost some of their protest vote of the summer. With the loss of two million votes, parliamentary representation of the NSDAP after the November elections was reduced to 196 deputies. Nevertheless, the governmental crisis and parliamentary deadlock were not resolved. At the beginning of December, having been persuaded by General Kurt von Schleicher that unless matters were taken in hand a civil war was likely to break out that the army would not be able to control, Hindenburg rather unwillingly replaced Papen and appointed Schleicher Chancellor. Schleicher’s brief period in office – until 28 January 1933 – was characterized by an unsuccessful and somewhat farfetched attempt to cobble together an unlikely set of alliances, including trade unionists and the ‘left-wing’ of the NSDAP under Gregor Strasser. This attempt failed, and managed along the way to antagonize both industrialists – who were suspicious of Schleicher’s rapprochement with the unions – and agrarian elites, who viewed Schleicher’s plans for agriculture as a form of ‘agrarian bolshevism’, and not nearly as favourable to their interests as Papen’s policies had been.
During January 1933 intrigues and machinations in high places set in motion a campaign to convince