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 These could rapidly be withdrawn, with far-reaching consequences – as indeed occurred after the Wall Street Crash of October 1929.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.
Plate 1 Unemployed dock workers inJanuary 1931.
well-being of millions of German families – to achieve certain foreign policy aims. In particular, he consciously exacerbated a worsening unemployment situation with the intention of lifting the burden of reparations payments from the German economy. This was effected first in the Hoover Moratorium of 1931 and then ultimately, when Brüning was no longer chancellor, by the cancellation of all reparations at the Lausanne Conference of 1932.Brüning’s deflationary policies have been defended by some historians,who suggest that there was no alternative set of economic policies either politically or technically open to him at the time. Brüning, on this view,operated in a period when there was very little room for manoeuvre (in Knut Borchardt’s phrase, Handlungsspielraum). Others, such as C.-L. Holtfrerich,have disputed such an interpretation, suggesting that a range of other policies was open both theoretically and politically and could thus have been pursued – and indeed other policies were being promoted increasingly by influential groups at this time.6 Whatever the balance of argument in this debate, one thing is quite clear: the consequences of Brüning’s policies were such as to produce the socioeconomic circumstances that provided fertile ground for Nazi agitation.
Brüning’s policies have been the subject of considerable debate. He pursued austere, deflationary policies designed – at the cost of sacrificing the well-being of millions of German families – to achieve certain foreign policy aims. In particular, he consciously exacerbated a worsening unemployment situation with the intention of lifting the burden of reparations payments from the German economy. This was effected first in the Hoover Moratorium of 1931 and then ultimately, when Brüning was no longer chancellor, by the cancellation of all reparations at the Lausanne Conference of 1932. Brüning’s deflationary policies have been defended by some historians, who suggest that there was no alternative set of economic policies either politically or technically open to him at the time. Brüning, on this view, operated in a period when there was very little room for manoeuvre (in Knut Borchardt’s phrase, Handlungsspielraum). Others, such as C.-L. Holtfrerich, have disputed such an interpretation, suggesting that a range of other policies was open both theoretically and politically and could thus have been pursued – and indeed other policies were being promoted increasingly by influential groups at this time.6 Whatever the balance of argument in this debate, one thing is quite clear: the consequences of Brüning’s policies were such as to produce the socioeconomic circumstances that provided fertile ground for Nazi agitation.
Brüning had been appointed Müller’s successor, on the collapse of Müller’s cabinet, without any dissolution of the Reichstag. However, when the latter demanded the withdrawal of a decree that Brüning had issued after the Reichstag’s rejection of parts of the finance bill, Brüning chose to have the Reichstag dissolved in summer 1930. Under the constitution new elections would have to be called within sixty days. These took place in September 1930. Now, under conditions of rising economic crisis, the NSDAP achieved its electoral breakthrough. With 6.4 million votes, or 18.3% of the total vote, the NSDAP became the second largest party in the Reichstag, after the SPD (with 24.5% of the vote). At last, with 107 deputies out of a total of 608, the Nazis had a large, visible, disruptive presence in the Reichstag. The NSDAP made its greatest gains in the Protestant, agricultural regions and small towns of north and northeast Germany. In 1930 they achieved figures of 27% in Schleswig-Holstein, 24.3% in Pomerania and 24.3% in Hanover South-Brunswick. In the mixed agricultural and small-scale industrial areas of Lower Silesia-Breslau (24.2%), Chemnitz-Zwickau (23.8%) and Rhineland-Palatinate (22.8%) the Nazis also achieved good results.7 Most impervious to Nazi penetration were Catholic areas, where Catholics tended to remain loyal to the Centre Party, and urban industrial areas, where the organized working class on the whole stayed with the two major parties of labour, the SPD and KPD, although, as the Depression worsened, the Social Democrats lost votes to the communists. (In 1930, when the Nazis gained 107 seats the communists won 77 seats.)
Presented, by skilful propaganda, as the party of dynamism and of youth, in contrast to the ageing, stolid image of the SPD, the NSDAP attracted many young voters and new voters with visions of a better future. The Nazis also benefited from the enhanced respectability and widespread publicity arising from cooperation with Hugenberg’s DNVP in the campaign against the Young Plan in 1929. With a more ‘respectable’ image, the NSDAP was able to make inroads among ‘pillars of the community’ – local notables such as mayors, schoolteachers and Protestant pastors. The increasing radicalism of frightened former liberals and conservatives who had previously supported a range of parties led many more into the Nazi camp. In the closing years of the Weimar Republic the support for liberal and conservative parties shrank markedly. The share of the vote held by the DVP and DDP collapsed from 20% at the beginning of the Weimar Republic to a mere 2.2% in July 1932; the DNVP’s share fell from 20% in late 1924 to 5.9% in July 1932; the Wirtschaftspartei and the agrarian parties also collapsed
