the outcome of the September 1930 elections the SPD chose to ‘tolerate’ the Brüning government rather than trying to topple it and risk new elections that might provide further support for the extreme Right. In the meantime, Brüning’s policies only served to heighten the misery of millions in the economic depression. Unemployment rose steadily, from 1.3 million in September 1929 to over 3 million by September 1930 to over 6 million by the beginning of 1933. This last figure represented one in three of the working population; with official underestimation of the true figures, and with widespread short-time working, perhaps one in two families in Germany were severely affected by the Depression. Brüning’s priority nevertheless remained that of showing that Germany was unable to pay reparations, whatever the cost in human misery, misery that could have been alleviated by public expenditure programmes and less deflationary policies. In summer 1931 the economic situation was further exacerbated by a financial crisis. A failed attempt at a German–Austrian customs union led to a withdrawal of French credits from Austria, precipitating a collapse of the main Austrian bank, a rush of bankruptcies in Austria and Germany and a banking crisis, which necessitated a ‘bank holiday’ of three weeks’ duration in July 1931.
In the midst of this mounting economic chaos, politics was increasingly played out not in Parliament but on the streets. Skirmishes took place between rival political gangs: most frequently, the paramilitary organizations of the KPD joined violent battle with the unruly SA units. Hitler, in an attempt to retain the air of respectability cultivated over the preceding few years, now made concerted efforts to improve his relations with conservative elites: the army, agricultural landowners, leaders of industry. While
Map 3.1 The electoral performance of the NSDAP, 1924–1932.
some industrialists – particularly Fritz Thyssen and the banker Hjalmar Schacht – had for some time been sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the prevailing attitude among business leaders was on the whole one of suspicion. Weimar democracy might have been rejected in principle; but it was quite another matter to consider Hitler’s Nazism as embodying a preferable alternative. Before 1933 industrialists were not important supporters, at least financially, of the NSDAP; small donations by local notables were a more significant source of NSDAP funds than any contributions from leaders of industry (with the exception of Thyssen, whose book entitled I Paid Hitler provided a basis for much of this myth).8 In the early 1930s it was clear to Hitler that he needed to woo industrialists and convince them that he was worth backing. On 26 January 1932 Hitler addressed the prestigious Düsseldorf Industry Club, seeking to create a distinction between his condemnation of ‘Jewish capital’ and capitalism in general. More important perhaps was a combination of increasing disaffection with Brüning’s management of the economic crisis and increased willingness, in the apparent absence of viable alternatives, to view Nazism as at least acceptable or tolerable. This shift in attitude was particularly important in army circles, who began to insist that officers and civil servants should be allowed to become members of the NSDAP. An attempt at developing links between conservative parties and the NSDAP in a right-wing ‘National Opposition’ was less successful. In October 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
