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Weimar Republic

A colourful figure, even if a tragic one in equal measure, is the already mentioned Franz von Papen, Reich Chancellor from June until December 1932, and one of the most important puppet masters in the final phase of the Weimar Republic.

He was the source of the later to become famous sentence about Hitler’s role in the Hitler cabinet, which was formed afresh after the Reichstag elections on 30 January 1933: “In two months we’ll have pushed Hitler so far into the corner that he squeaks.”⁶⁵ He was to be mistaken as, in the end, he and his right-wing conservative alliance comrades would be outmanoeuvred by every trick in the book. One cannot understand this explosive rise of Hitler’s if one does not look at the last years of the Weimar Republic. The Republic, considered from the start with mistrust, yes, even with contempt, had been shaken in 1923 by hyperinflation and in 1929 by the world economic crisis. With the New York stock exchange crash in October 1929 the whole house of cards that was American bonds collapsed. They had been building on quicksand. Difficult economic circumstances led to political unrest. There were repeated bloody clashes between demonstrators and the forces of law and order. Businesses went bankrupt, mass dismissals increased the army of the unemployed. The road to catastrophe had been taken. The reparation payments from the Treaty of Versailles initially envisaged a total of 112 billion gold marks with the Young plan. This roused indignation as generations of grandchildren and great-grandchildren would then have to go on paying this right up to 1988! The government under its Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning were faced with the entirely unsolvable task of consolidating the currency, which was currently running away under hyperinflation and, at the same time, balancing the budget deficit. Everything had completely gone off the rails. On 27 March 1930 Brüning entered office with the plan to implement his government’s will in a quasi semi-authoritarian way by means of emergency presidential ordinances. This meant that the Reichstag was no longer able to exert its own control function over him. Its fate was already on the cards – German democracy lay in its death throes. The novel “Herrliche Zeiten“ [= Wonderful Times] envisaged someone whose party was able to secure for itself a considerable proportion of the votes with each fresh election. It was Joseph Goebbels. Just two years previously he had been sentenced to six weeks in prison⁶⁶ because he had beaten up a pastor. As a member of parliament for the NSDAP he enjoyed immunity from 1928.

“To the gallows with the corrupters of the people”. Radical rabble-rousing, yesterday as today, likes to use the threat of mediaeval execution methods. Event poster for a mass rally on 30 March 1928 in Berlin on the theme of “Freedom and Bread” with Wilhelm Kube and Joseph Goebbels.

However, Brüning’s government proved to be tough and enduring. It could also reckon with the support of the Reichswehr. This is because, as at the outset, the military played a significant role in securing the ruling system. Put bluntly: in certain circles one made sure of getting influential positions. This was also approved of and supported from on high. It was not so surprising after all as the supreme representative of the state was Paul von Hindenburg, former General Field Marshal and highly decorated hero of Tannenberg. After the premature death of the social democratic President of the Reich, Friedrich Ebert in April 1925, the former head of the army had been elected as his successor.

But no matter what Brüning’s government did: the downward trajectory of the economy could not be stopped. Brüning held on into the spring of 1932⁶⁷. But his policies found less and less favour with the venerable president of the Reich. Shortly after Heinrich Brüning’s re-election in April 1932, Hindenburg therefore decided to drop him, by then reviled as the “Hunger Chancellor. “The government has to go because it is too unpopular.”⁶⁸ In May 1932 Brüning resigned and Hindenburg’s confidant and comrade, General of the Infantry, Kurt von Schleicher, entered the field. Hindenburg was more than satisfied. Now matters could be speeded up: here he meant the creation of a new authoritarian constitution⁶⁹. However, Kurt von Schleicher, who no longer enjoyed unanimous endorsement in the ranks of his party and who saw his influence fading, decided to get himself out of the firing line and to install a puppet in Franz von Papen as the new Reich Chancellor, whom he believed he could control from the outside. On 1 June 1932 von Papen became the Chancellor of a minority government. He was a man with dyed-in-the-wool conservative views and a way of thinking that belonged firmly in the past. He now made a pact with a party increasingly gaining in influence, in order to avoid votes of no confidence and the rejection of emergency edicts in parliament: the NSDAP.⁷⁰ Von Papen regarded Hitler and his party for loyal and biddable alliance partners. But he was to be mistaken: as, when the NSDAP obtained 37.3% of the votes in the Reichstag elections in July 1932, Hitler claimed the position of chancellor for himself. But the old President of the Reich refused. He made no secret of his low opinion of the former corporal. At most “he would make him Minister of the Post Office so he could do the proverbial to him from behind on postage stamps…”⁷¹, he is said to have thundered when he was told of Hitler’s claims to power.⁷² The reversal was a huge blow to the NSDAP clique. The SA avenged the humiliation suffered by its “boss” with terror on the streets. There were dead and injured. Hitler avenged himself with total opposition: the devil entered into a pact with Beelzebub. Since, together with the votes of the KPD, the German Communist Party of all parties, on 30 August 1932 he now contrived a vote of no confidence, which forced fresh elections. His plan was successful. The Reichstag was dissolved. In the parliamentary elections in November 1932, the NSDAP however incurred a serious setback. It lost 2 million votes and dropped back to 33.1 %, the winner in the elections was the KPD, which had managed to increase its result from 14.5 % to 16.9 % of the votes. In contrast, the Centre Party, which Hitler had been courting as a possible coalition party, lost some of its share and ended up with 11.9 percent of the votes. The SPD, the German Socialist Party, dropped from 21.6 to 20.4 percent. But von Papen’s government – scorned as the cabinet of the barons – had to admit defeat too. Since, despite an increase in votes, neither it nor the DVP, the German People’s Party, which supported it, achieved more than 10 % of the votes. The minority cabinet remained.