傅国涌: 希特勒是如何上台的？
wanghx
标 题: 希特勒是如何上台的？
发信站: 一见如故 (Wed Mar 19 13:02:13 2008), 本站(yjrg.net)
希特勒是如何上台的？
——重读《第三帝国的兴亡》
傅国涌
希特勒在德国的崛起是20世纪人类的一大灾难，他屠杀了至少500万以上的犹太
人，80万吉卜赛人，200万以上的波兰人，600万的苏联战俘和平民（不包括在战争
中死亡的人数），他发动的第二次世界大战造成了近2000万士兵的死亡，还有2000
万妇女、儿童、老人在战争中死亡的。在人类历史上杀人之多能与他比肩的只有斯
大林等寥寥无几的几个人。最近重读美国威廉·夏伊勒的名著《第三帝国的兴亡——纳
粹德国史》，我感到这场人类的大灾难不仅是由希特勒个人造成的，德国整个民
族、德国的民众都有不可推卸的责任。是德国的民众将希特勒推上了政治舞台，在
某种意义上，他的上台代表了当时民心所向，这才是人类最深刻的悲哀。对此，本
书作者说“对于民主共和国的放弃和阿道夫.希特勒的得势，德国任何阶级、集团、
政党都不能逃避其应负的一份责任。”（265 页）
魏玛宪法
在第一次世界大战失败的废墟上，在战胜国美国总统威尔逊坚决主张废除君主专制
政体的强大压力之下，1918年11月，德国出现了一个由社会民主党人执政的共和
国，他们在军方的支持下把卡尔·李卜克内西、罗莎·卢森堡试图建立苏维埃共和国
的努力绞杀在血泊之中。在魏玛召开的国民议会上通过了一部民主的宪法，这就是
历史上的 “魏玛宪法”。从纸面上来说，这是二十世纪最自由、最民主的宪法之
一，“结构之严密几乎到了完善的程度，其中不乏设想巧妙、令人钦佩的条文，看
来似乎足以保证一种几乎完善无疵的民主制度的实行。”（85页）它的内阁制政府
是效法英、法的，拥有实权的民选总统是学习美国的，人民复决制则借鉴了瑞士。
实行构思严密、办法复杂的比例代表制和选票名单制，是为了防止浪费选票，同时
使少数派也能够拥有议席。
魏玛宪法宣布“政治权力来自人民”；年满二十岁，不分男女，都享有选举权；“所
有德国人在法律面前一律平等”；个人自由不可侵犯，所有人都有权自由表达意
见，结社或集会自由，信仰和良心自由......从字面上看这部宪法是动人的，德国
人民所享有的自由完全可以与美国比较，德国成为一个民主共和国。
但是在这种精妙的德国式设计中，有着不可避免的弊端。比例代表和选举名单制虽
然可以防止选票的浪费，却造成了为数众多的分裂小党派，使国会常常没有一个稳
定的多数派，导致政府不断更迭。宪法主要起草人雨果·普鲁斯教授曾主张解散普
鲁士等单独的邦，改为行省，加强中央集权制，但被国民议会否决。宪法规定总统
有紧急状态下的独裁权，在希特勒上台前的三任总理都是未经国会授权，而是应用
这一条款行使行政权的，实际上在希特勒上台前德国的民主议会制度就已经寿终正
寝了。所以人们常说是魏玛宪法本身埋葬了魏玛共和。
此外，按照魏玛宪法陆军应该从属于内阁、议会，但事实上军官团（及参谋总部）
是反对共和的。“合法选出的政府没有能够建立一支忠于它自己的民主精神、服从
内阁和国会的新陆军，这是共和国的一个致命错误。”（90页）还有德国的司法系
统、警察系统、控制着大工业卡特尔的巨头、帝国文官系统中的高级官员等等，都
是反民主的势力，而在德国所有这些强大的旧势力在第一次世界大战后没有受到任
何触动，他们——民族主义的、反民主、反共和的力量，在这个国家中是最强大的。
所以魏玛共和国一诞生就摇摇欲坠。
希特勒的纲领
凡尔赛和约给德国蒙上了一层浓重的阴影，马克贬值、法国占领鲁尔工业区，给德
国经济造成了致命的打击，马克最后崩溃，变成毫无价值的废纸。工业巨头、陆军
从中反而得到了好处，普通民众却在痛苦和绝望中抛弃了共和国。希特勒正是在这
样的背景下开始了他的政治冒险家生涯。这个来自奥地利，一无所有、曾经是维也
纳街头的流浪汉，1919年在慕尼黑参加了一个成立不久、微不足道、还不到100个
人的小党——德国工人党。他从未施展过的演讲和组织天赋从此得到了淋漓尽致的发
挥，很快就成为党的领袖。
他以典型的政客手法提出了党的25点纲领，这个纲领无所不包，几乎能满足每一个
人的每一项要求，，它能够把农民和大地主、小业主和大实业家都统统拉在一起。
所以他的无所不包的纲领实际上是模糊、不确定的，因为任何明确而肯定的纲领都
会把一部分人排除在外。到1933年竞选时他干脆拒不宣布纲领，说 “所有纲领都是
无用的，真正决定性的东西是人的意志，稳当的眼光，男子汉的勇气，笃守信仰，
以及内在意志——这些才是决定性的东西。”贯穿希特勒思想的中心就是血与土，即
狂热的种族主义和领土扩张政策。这在当时的德国不仅吸引了陆军、工业巨头，对
广大在战败国阴影中的民众也有巨大的号召力。
希特勒还在“德国工人党”前面加上了“国家社会主义”的词（National
sozialistisch），成了国家社会主义德国工人党，简称纳粹党，令人谈虎色变的
纳粹（Nazi）不过是德文“国家社会主义”（有位著名的学者说，按德文原意应该译
为“民族社会主义”）缩写的音译。如果光看名称，我们还以为他要建立一个社会主
义国家。其实在希特勒看来，纳粹党的社会主义口号不过是宣传，是他在取得政权
的道路上争取民众的手段，无非是用来骗取广大工人的选票。
希特勒要搞种族清洗，要扩张生存空间，发动无论对德国还是对全世界都是灾难性
的战争，这些都明白地写在他在啤酒馆政变失败后在狱中开始口授的《我的奋斗》一
书中，而德国民族还是把他推到了国家权力的宝座上去，这个悲剧到底是谁造成的呢？
民主程序
1924年5月的国会选举中，纳粹党得到近200万张选票；12月，纳粹党同一些种族主
义团体联合参加选举，所得选票不到100万张；到1928年5月，纳粹党在国会选举中
只得到81万张选票，在国会中只有12个席位，是位居第九的最小党。
希特勒1924年底一出狱，就恢复了《人民观察家报》，着手出版《我的奋斗》，创办
《国社党通讯》，通过魏玛宪法赋予他的言论、出版自由，大力宣传他的种族主义。
党员人数也稳步上升：
1925年，27000人；
1926 年，49000人；
1927年，72000人；
1928年，108000人；
1929年，178000人。
1929年席卷世界的经济危机给他的国家社会主义运动带来了机会，工人失业超过了
600万，人民的苦难成为他实现野心的台阶，希特勒大喜过望，他要把这一切转化
为支持他的政治力量。从1930年到1933年他离权力越来越近了。
1930年9月，纳粹党得到了6409600张选票，107个席位，成为国会第二大党。这次
选举的获胜不仅说服了千百万人民，也说服了企业界、陆军中的领袖人物。它极大
地唤起了德国古老的民族主义、爱国主义感情，由于他承诺既摆脱共产主义，又摆
脱民主政体的软弱无力，很快成为一股不可抵挡的潮流。
在1932年3月举行的总统大选中，希特勒得票11339446，占30.1%，仅次于兴登堡
（得票18651497，占49.6 %）；4月的第二轮投票中，兴登堡得到19359983张选
票，占53%，当选总统，但位居第二的希特勒也得到了13418547张选票，占36.8%。
同年7月，纳粹党在国会选举中获得13745000张选票，占全部选票的37.4%，在国会
608个席位中拥有了230席，一跃而成为第一大党。11月重新举行的选举，虽然丢了
200万张选票，丧失34个议席，但依旧是国会第一大党。
1933 年1月30日，兴登堡总统“按照完全合乎宪法的方式把总理一职的重任委诸阿
道夫·希特勒”（268页）。“魏玛共和国的悲剧、德国人十四年来徒劳无益地要想实
行民主制度的笨拙努力的悲剧，终于告终了。”（263页）德国人民最大的失误就是
没有团结起来反对它，尽管它最受民众拥护的1932年7月也只得到 37%的选票，但
是另外63%的德国人民四分五裂，目光短浅，不能联合起来对付共同的危险。在左
派、右派之间，德国也没有一个政治上有力量的中产阶级，德国的民主制度似乎注
定了要垮台。德国的、也是人类的灾难就此降临。
1933年3月举行的最后一次民主选举中，纳粹党得到17277180张选票，占总数的
44%，拥有国会288个议席。从第一次世界大战结束到1933 年，希特勒和他的纳粹
党就是这样一步步通过民主程序掌握了政权。
极权主义
希特勒上台后，就着手解散其他党派，先从共产党下手，摧毁了所有其他政党，最
后只留下了他的纳粹党，并用法律规定“国家社会主义德国工人党是德国的唯一政
党”；取消联邦制，摧毁了在德国历史上一直有地方独立自治权的邦政府和他们的
议会；取缔了工会和一切结社自由，禁止一切罢工；取消言论、出版自由，完全控
制了新闻、舆论；扼杀了司法独立；把犹太人赶出了政治生活和自由职业界；他通
过冲锋队、党卫军、秘密警察和集中营，进行残酷的种族和政治清洗，实施恐怖统
治（冲锋队本身也遭到血洗）；实现了政治、经济、文化、社会生活的一体
化......一句话，他彻底推翻了魏玛共和国，以独裁代替了民主。有讽刺意味的
是，在德国历史上最黑暗的极权主义统治时期还举行公民投票。
1933年11月，德国选民中有96 %参加投票，其中92 %赞成几乎是清一色的纳粹党国
会候选人名单，甚至在达豪集中营里关押的2242人中有2154人也投票赞成那个把他
们拘禁起来的政府！在舆论一律的纳粹德国，希特勒得到压倒多数的拥护是丝毫也
不奇怪的！
1934 年8月2日，87岁的总统、德高望重的兴登堡元帅去世，三个小时后希特勒就
宣布取消总统职衔，将总理与总统的职务合并为一，称为元首兼国家总理。这个时
候军队如果要推翻纳粹政权还是易如反掌，但他们不但没有这样做，反而向希特勒
宣誓效忠。德国人民则在半个月后举行了投票表决，95%的合格选民中有90%
（3800多万人）支持希特勒成为至高无上的元首。只有425万德国人投了反对票。
魏玛共和的民主程序葬送了它自身，德国人民在掌声中把希特勒推上了权力的顶
峰。当然，希特勒上台后就推翻了民主制度，他的那些灭绝人性的暴行，他发动了
给全世界带来巨大灾难的战争，这一切既不能由民主政治来负责，也不能由多数德
国人民来负责。
经济奇迹
1933 年初，希特勒上台时失业率为33%，达600万人，1933年底就减少了1/3，以后
逐年减少，1937年已减少到100万人不到。 1933年到1938年国民生产增长了102%，
平均年增长率11%，生产资料的增长尤为迅速，5年里翻了一番。国民的收入增加了
一倍。给大工业家也带来了巨额的利润。民众“在希特勒的统治下不再有挨饿的自
由”，到1938年失业率仅为1%，失业问题基本上解决了，工人失去组织和参加工会
的权利，生活却有了提高。德国人民几乎被表面上强调社会福利的新“国家社会主
义”所陶醉了。这一切仿佛奇迹一般，创造了希特勒的神话。如果说人仅仅是经济
动物，经济的高速增长是社会进步的唯一指标，那么纳粹德国所取得的成就是多么
辉煌。
纳粹的经济奇迹首先归功于金融奇才、举世无双的沙赫特博士，他通过大量扩充公
共工程和刺激私营企业的政策，来扩大就业。以大量发行纸币作为资金。同时大规
模地重整军备。“把他世所公认的金融奇才的浑身解数都施展了出来”，大量发行纸
币只是他的绝招之一。“他操纵通货的神通之广大竟到了这样的程度：据外国经济
学家的估计，有一个时期德国的货币竟有二百三十七种不同的价值。”“他为一个没
有流动资金和几乎没有财政准备金的国家创造信用的本领真是一种天才的杰作。”
（369页）他发明的“米福”票就是用来支付重整军备的票据，居然骗过了全世界。
虽然在二战后的纽仑堡受审时，沙赫特否认他曾参与过希特勒发动世界大战的阴
谋。但他确曾担任纳粹德国的国家银行总裁、经济部长、战时经济全权总代表，以
自己的声望和过人的才智为希特勒发动全面的战争在经济上准备了条件。
“出卖灵魂的景象”
希特勒确实迫害了许多科学家、文学家、艺术家，如爱因斯坦、弗朗克这样的物理
学家，哈伯尔、瓦尔堡这样的化学家都被迫退休或离开了德国。但是也有很多著名
的知识分子成为纳粹的帮凶。如物理学家勒纳德、斯塔克，尽管他们都获得过诺贝
尔物理奖，是国际上受到尊重的科学家。还有托马希克等，他们提出了在我们今天
看来完全荒唐的德国物理学、德国化学、德国数学等。
1933年秋天，有960个教授在著名的存在主义哲学家海德格尔、艺术史学家平德
尔、医学家沙尔勃鲁赫教授这些学界名流的带领下，公开宣誓支持希特勒与纳粹政
权。大物理学家海森堡也曾经拥护纳粹，为纳粹工作，和其他拥护纳粹的物理学家
一起参与为纳粹制造原子弹。另一个著名物理学家约当（Jordan）甚至是一个“法
西斯分子和竭诚的突击队员”。更有沙赫特这样为希特勒立下了汗马功劳的经济学
家。 “这是一幕使德国学术界的光荣历史蒙受污辱的出卖灵魂的景象”。
然而，这一切对于经历过反胡风、反右、文革的中国知识分子来说根本算不上什
么，也许在他们看来纳粹专制之下知识分子作出这些选择都是正常的，不仅可以体
谅，而且无可指责。灵魂的堕落莫此为甚，所以我们听不到多少真诚的忏悔，象巴
金的《随想录》、韦君宜的《思痛录》这样能在垂暮之年说出几句真话的书也是凤毛麟
角。他们甚至还会在骨子里为人类精神的耻辱一页辩护，笑话西方人没有经历过纳
粹专制那样的黑暗，不理解那些知识分子的处境。所以，我们的民族永远没有真正
的反省，总是在自我原谅中一次次、一代代地放弃自己作为知识分子，作为社会良
心应尽的责任。所以在灾难降临时分，我们总是只能看到一些小人物站出来说真
话，用自己只有一次的生命作代价表达他的良心，林昭、遇罗克、李九莲......，
面对这些名字我不知道知识分子们的内心是否有过不安？今天面对德国知识分子当
年在纳粹暴政下的屈从和助纣为虐，我们应该永远铭记这句颠扑不破的箴言：
“凡是忘掉过去的人注定要重蹈覆辙。”（桑塔亚那）
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发信人: jugojl (新三民主义), 信区: square
标 题: Re: 希特勒是如何上台的？
发信站: 一见如故 (Wed Mar 19 13:12:48 2008), 本站(yjrg.net)
太烂漫随笔化了。
德国的演变是根植于其民族特性和经济基础之上的。下面是比较完整而信服的叙述分析
By 1890, when he retired from office, Bismarck had built up an unstable
balance of forces within Germany similar to the unstable balance of
powers which he had established in Europe as a whole. His cynical and
materialistic view of human motivations had driven all idealistic and
humanitarian forces from the German political scene and had remodeled
the political parties almost completely into economic and social
pressure groups which he played off, one against another. The chief of
these forces were the landlords (Conservative Party), the industrialists
(National Liberal Party), the Catholics (Center Party), and the workers
(Social Democratic Party). In addition, the army and the bureaucracy
were expected to be politically neutral, but they did not hesitate to
exert pressures on the government without the intermediary of any
political party. Thus there existed a precarious and dangerous balance
of forces which only a genius could manipulate. Bismarck was followed by
no genius. The Kaiser, William II (1888-1918), was an incapable
neurotic, and the system of recruitment to government service was such
as to exclude any but mediocrities. As a result, the precarious
structure left by Bismarck was not managed but was merely hidden from
public view by a facade of nationalistic, anti-foreign, anti-Semitic,
imperialistic, and chauvinistic propaganda of which the emperor was the
center.
The dichotomy in Germany between appearance and reality, between
propaganda and structure, between economic prosperity and political and
social weakness was put to the test in World War I, and failed
completely. The events of 1914-1919 revealed that Germany was not a
democracy in which all men were legally equal. Instead, the ruling
groups formed some strange animal fording it over a host of lesser
animals. In this strange creature the monarchy represented the body,
which was supported by four legs: the army, the landlords, the
bureaucracy, and the industrialists.
This glimpse of reality was not welcome to any important group in
Germany, with the result that it was covered over, almost at once, by
another misleading facade: the "revolution" of 1918 was not really a
revolution at all, because it did not radically change this situation;
it removed the monarchy, but it left the quartet of legs.
This Quartet was not the creation of a moment, rather it was the result
of a long process of development whose last stages were reached only in
the twentieth century. In these last stages the industrialists were
adopted into the ruling clique by conscious acts of agreement. These
acts culminated in the years 1898-1905 in a deal by which the Junkers
accepted the industrialists' navy-building program (which they detested)
in return for the industrialists' acceptance of the Junkers' high tariff
on grains. （铁与麦的妥协）The Junkers were anti-navy because they, with
their few numbers and close alliance with the army, were opposed to any
venture into the fields of colonialism or overseas imperialism, and were
determined not to jeopardize Germany's continental position by
alienating England. In fact, the policy of the Junkers was not only a
continental one; on the Continent it was klein-deutsch.（小德意志主义
者） This expression meant that they were not eager to include the
Germans of Austria within Germany because such an increment of Germans
would dilute the power of the small group of Junkers inside Germany.
Instead, the Junkers would have preferred to annex the non-German areas
to the east in order to obtain additional land and a supply of cheap
Slav agricultural labor. The Junkers wanted agricultural tariffs to
raise the prices of their crops, especially rye and, later, sugar beets.
The industrialists objected to tariffs on food because high food prices
made necessary high wages, which they opposed. On the other hand, the
industrialists wanted high industrial prices and a market for the
products of heavy industry. The former they obtained by the creation of
cartels after 1888; the latter they obtained by the naval-building
program and armaments expansion after 1898. The Junkers agreed to these
only in return for a tariff on food which eventually, through "import
certificates," became a subsidy for growing rye. This alliance, of which
Bülow was the creator, was agreed on in May 1900, and consummated in
December 1902. The tariff of 1902, which gave Germany one of the most
protected agricultures in the world, was the price paid by industry for
the Navy bill of 1900, and, symbolically enough, could be passed through
the Reichstag only after the rules of procedure were violated to gag the
opposition.
The Quartet was not Conservative but, potentially at least,
revolutionary reactionaries. This is true at least of the landlords and
industrialists, somewhat less true of the bureaucracy, and least true of
the army. The landlords were revolutionary because they were driven to
desperation by the persistent agricultural crisis which made it
difficult for a high-cost area like eastern Germany to compete with a
low-cost area like the Ukraine or high-productivity areas like Canada,
Argentina, or the United States. Even in isolated Germany they had
difficulty in keeping down the wages of German agricultural labor or in
obtaining agricultural credit. The former problem rose from the need to
compete with the industrial wages of West Germany. The credit problem
rose because of the endemic lack of capital in Germany, the need to
compete with industry for the available supply of capital, and the
impossibility of raising capital by mortgages where estates were
entailed. As a result of these influences, the landlords, overburdened
with debts, in great jeopardy from any price decline, and importers of
unorganized Slav laborers, dreamed of conquests of lands and labor in
eastern Europe. The industrialists were in a similar plight, caught
between the high wages of unionized German labor and the limited market
for industrial products. To increase the supply of both labor and
markets, they hoped for an active foreign policy which would bring into
one unit a Pan-German bloc, if not a Mittel-europa. The bureaucracy, for
ideological, especially nationalist, reasons, shared these dreams of
conquest. Only the army hung back under the influence of the Junkers,
who saw how easily they, as a limited political and social power, could
be overwhelmed in a Mittel-europa or even a Pan-Germania. Accordingly,
the Prussian Officers' Corps had little interest in these Germanic
dreams, and looked with favor on the conquest of Slav areas only if this
could be accomplished without undue expansion of the army itself.
Chapter 27—The Weimar Republic, 1918-1933
The essence of German history from 1918 to 1933 can be found in the
statement There was no revolution in 1918. For there to have been a
revolution it would have been necessary to liquidate the Quartet or, at
least, subject them to democratic control. The Quartet represented the
real power in Germany society because they represented the forces of
public order (army and bureaucracy) and of economic production
(landlords and industrialists). Even without a liquidation of this
Quartet, it might have been possible for democracy to function in the
interstices between them if they had quarreled among themselves. They
did not quarrel, because they had an esprit de corps bred by years of
service to a common system (the monarchy) and because, in many cases,
the same individuals were to be found in two or even more of the four
groups. Franz von Papen, for example, was a Westphalian noble, a colonel
in the army, an ambassador, and a man with extensive industrial
holdings, derived from his wife, in the Saarland..
Although there was no revolution—that is, no real shift in the control
of power in Germany in 1919—there was a legal change. In law, a
democratic system was set up. As a result, by the late 1920's there had
appeared an obvious discrepancy between law and fact—the regime,
according to the law, being controlled by the people, while in fact it
was controlled by the Quartet. The reasons for this situation are important.
The Quartet, with the monarchy, made the war of 1914-1918, and were
incapable of winning it. As a result, they were completely discredited
and deserted by the soldiers and workers. Thus, the masses of the people
completely renounced the old system in November 1918. The Quartet,
however, was not liquidated, for several reasons:
1. They were able to place the blame for the disaster on the monarchy.
and jettisoned this to save themselves;
2. most Germans accepted this as an adequate revolution;
3. the Germans hesitated to make a real revolution for fear it would
lead to an invasion of Germany by the French, the Poles, or others;
4. many Germans were satisfied with the creation of a government which
was democratic in form and made little effort to examine the underlying
reality;
5. the only political party capable of directing a real revolution was
the Social Democrats, who had opposed the Quartet system and the war
itself, at least in theory; but this party was incapable of doing
anything in the crisis of 1918 because it was hopelessly divided into
doctrinaire cliques, was horrified at the danger of Soviet Bolshevism,
and was satisfied that order, trade-unionism, and a "democratic" regime
were more important than Socialism, humanitarian welfare, or consistency
between theory and action.
Before 1914 there were two parties which stood outside the Quartet
system: the Social Democrats and the Center (Catholic) Party. The former
was doctrinaire in its attitude, being anticapitalist, pledged to the
international brotherhood of labor, pacifist, democratic, and Marxist in
an evolutionary, but not revolutionary, sense. The Center Party, like
the Catholics who made it up' came from all levels of society and all
the Catholics who made it up, came from all levels of society and all
shades of ideology, but in practice were frequently opposed to the
Quartet on specific issues.
These two opposition parties underwent considerable change during the
war. The Social Democrats always opposed the war in theory, but
supported it on patriotic grounds by voting for credits to finance the
war. Its minute Left wing refused to support the war even in this
fashion as early as 1914. This extremist group, under Karl Liebknecht
and Rosa Luxemburg, became known as the Spartacist Union and (after
1919) as the Communists. These extremists wanted an immediate and
complete Socialist revolution with a soviet form of government. More
moderate than the Spartacists was another group calling itself
Independent Socialists. These voted war credits until 1917 when they
refused to continue to do so and broke from the Social Democratic Party.
The rest of the Social Democrats supported the war and the old
monarchial system until November 1918 in fact, but in theory embraced an
extreme type of evolutionary Socialism.
The Center Party was aggressive and nationalist until 1917 when it
became pacifist. Under Matthias Erzberger it allied with the Social
Democrats to push through the Reichstag Peace Resolution of July 1917.
The position of these various groups on the issue of aggressive
nationalism was sharply revealed in the voting to ratify the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk imposed by the militarists, Junkers, and industrialists on
a prostrate Russia. The Center Party voted to ratify; the Social
Democrats abstained from voting; the Independents voted No.
The "revolution" of November 1918 would have been a real revolution
except for the opposition of the Social Democrats and the Center Party,
for the Quartet in the crucial days of November and December 1918 were
discouraged, discredited, and helpless. Outside the Quartet itself there
w as, at that time and even later, only two small groups which could
possibly have been used by the Quartet as rallying points about which
could have been formed some mass support for the Quartet. These two
small groups were the "indiscriminate nationalists" and the
"mercenaries." The indiscriminate nationalists were those men, like
Hitler, who were not able to distinguish between the German nation and
the old monarchial system. These persons, because of their loyalty to
the nation, were eager to rally to the support of the Quartet, which
they regarded as identical with the nation. The mercenaries were a
larger group who had no particular loyalty to anyone or to any idea but
were willing to serve any group which could pay for such service. The
only groups able to pay were two of the Quartet—the Officers' Corps and
the industrialists—who organized many mercenaries into reactionary armed
bands or "Free Corps" in 1918-1923.
Instead of working for a revolution in 1918-1919, the two parties which
dominated the situation—the Social Democrats and the Centrists— did all
they could to prevent a revolution. They not only left the Quartet in
their positions of responsibility and power—the landlords on their
estates, the officers in their commands, the industrialists in control
of their factories, and the bureaucracy in control of the police, the
courts, and the administration—but they increased the influence of these
groups because the actions of the Quartet were not restrained under the
republic by that sense of honor or loyalty to the system which had
restrained the use of their power under the monarchy.
As early as November 10,1918, Friedrich Ebert, chief figure of the
Social Democratic Party, made an agreement with the Officers' Corps in
which he promised not to use the power of the new government to
democratize the army if the officers would support the new government
against the threat of the Independents and the Spartacists to establish
a soviet system. As a consequence of this agreement Ebert kept a private
telephone line from his office in the Chancellery to General Wilhelm
Groener's office at the army's headquarters and consulted with the army
on many critical political issues. As another consequence, Ebert and his
Minister of War Gustav Noske, also a Social Democrat, used the army
under its old monarchist officers to destroy the workers and radicals
who sought to challenge the existing situation. This was done in Berlin
in December 1918, in January 1919, and again in March 1919, and in other
cities at other times. In these assaults the army had the pleasure of
killing several thousand of the detested radicals..
A somewhat similar anti-revolutionary agreement was made between heavy
industry and the Socialist trade unions on November 11, 1918. On that
day Hugo Stinnes, Albert Vögler, and Alfred Hugenberg, representing
industry, and Carl Legien, Otto Hue, and Hermann Müller representing the
unions, signed an agreement to support each other in order to keep the
factories functioning. Although this agreement was justified on
opportunist grounds, it clearly showed that the so-called Socialists
were not interested in economic or social reform but were merely
interested in the narrow trade-union objectives of wages, hours, and
working conditions. It was this narrow range of interests which
ultimately destroyed the average German's faith in the Socialists or
their unions.
The history of the period from 1918 to 1933 cannot be understood without
some knowledge of the chief political parties. There were almost forty
parties, but only seven or eight were important. These were, from
extreme Left to extreme Right, as follows:
1. Spartacist Union (or Communist—KPD)
2. Independent Socialist (USPD)
3. Social Democrats (SPD)
4. Democratic
5. Center (including Bavarian People's Party)
6. People's Party
7. Nationalists
8. "Racists" (including Nazis)
Of these parties only the Democrats had any sincere and consistent
belief in the democratic Republic. On the other hand the Communists,
Independents, and many of the Social Democrats on the Left, as well as
the "Racists," Nationalists, and many of the People's Party on the
Right, were adverse to the Republic, or at best ambivalent. The Catholic
Center Party, being formed on a religious rather than on a social basis,
had members from all areas of the political and social spectrum.
The political history of Germany from the armistice of 1918 to the
arrival of Hitler to the chancellorship in January 1933 can be divided
into three periods, thus:
Period of Turmoil 1918-1924
Period of Fulfillment 1924-1930
Period of Disintegration 1930-1933
During this span of over fourteen years, there were eight elections, in
none of which did a single party obtain a majority of the seats in the
Reichstag. Accordingly, every German Cabinet of the period was a
coalition. The following table gives the results of these eight elections:
Jan. June May Dec. May July Sept. Nov.March
Party 1919 1920 1924 1924 1928 1930 1932 1932 1933
Communist 0 4 62 45 54 77 89 100 81
Independent
Socialist 22 84
Social
Democrats 163 102 100 131 153 143 133 121 120
Democrats 75 39 28 32 25 20 4 2 5
Center 91 64 65 69 62 68 75 70 74
Bavarian
People’s 21 16 19 16 19 22 20 18
Economic
Party 4 4 10 17 25 2 2 0 0
German
People’s
Party 19 65 45 51 45 30 7 11 2
Nationalists 44 71 95 103 73 41 37 52 52
Nazis 0 0 32 14 12 107 230 196 288
On the basis of these elections Germany had twenty major Cabinet changes
from 1919 to 1933. Generally these Cabinets were constructed about the
Center and Democratic parties with the addition of representatives from
either the Social Democrats or the People’s Party. On only two occasions
(Gustav Stresemann in 1923 and Hermann Müller in 1928-1930) was it
possible to obtain a Cabinet broad enough to include all four of these
parties. Moreover, the second of these broad-front Cabinets was the only
Cabinet after 1923 to include the Socialists and the only Cabinet after
1925 which did not include the Nationalists. This indicates clearly the
drift to the Right in the German government after the resignation of
Joseph Wirth in November 1922. This drift, as we shall see, was delayed
by only two influences: the need for foreign loans and political
concessions from the Western Powers and the recognition that both of
these could be obtained better by a government which seemed to be
republican and democratic in inclination than by a government which was
obviously hand in glove with the Quartet.
At the end of the war in 1918 the Socialists were in control, not
because the Germans were Socialistic (for the party was not really
Socialist) but because this was the only party which had been
traditionally in opposition to the imperial system. A committee of six
men was set up: three from the Social Democrats (Ebert, Philip
Scheidemann, and Otto Landsberg) and three from the Independent
Socialists (Hugo Haase, Wilhelm Dittman, and Emil Barth). This group
ruled as a sort of combined emperor and chancellor and had the regular
secretaries of state as their subordinates. These men did nothing to
consolidate the republic or democracy and were opposed to any effort to
take any steps toward Socialism. They even refused to nationalize the
coal industry, something which was generally expected. Instead they
wasted the opportunity by busying themselves with typical trade-union
problems such as the eight-hour day (November 12, 1918) and collective
bargaining methods (December 23, 1918).
The critical problem was the form of government, with the choice resting
between workers' and peasants' councils (soviets), already widely
established, and a national assembly to set up an ordinary parliamentary
system. The Socialist group preferred the latter, and were willing to
use the regular army to enforce this choice. On this basis a
counterrevolutionary agreement was made between Ebert and the General
Staff. As a consequence of this agreement, the army attacked a
Spartacist parade in Berlin on December 6, 1918, and liquidated the
rebellious People's Naval Division on December 24, 1918. In protest at
this violence the three Independent members of the government resigned.
Their example was followed by other Independents throughout Germany,
with the exception of Kurt Eisner in Munich. The next day the
Spartacists formed the German Communist Party with a non-revolutionary
program. Their declaration read, in part: "The Spartacist Union will
never assume governmental power except in response to the plain and
unmistakable wish of the great majority of the proletarian masses in
Germany; and only as a result of a definite agreement of these masses
with the aims and methods of the Spartacist Union."
This pious expression, however, was the program of the leaders; the
masses of the new party, and possibly the members of the Independent
Socialist group as well, were enraged at the conservatism of the Social
Democrats and began to get out of hand. The issue was joined on the
question of councils versus National Assembly. The government, under
Noske's direction, used regular troops in a bloody suppression of the
Left (January 5-15), ending up with the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and
Karl Liebknecht, the Communist leaders. The result was exactly as the
Quartet wanted: the Communists and many non-Communist workers were
permanently alienated from the Socialists and from the parliamentary
republic. The Communist Party, deprived of leaders of its own, became a
tool of Russian Communism. As a result of this repression, the army was
able to disarm the workers at the very moment when it was beginning to
arm reactionary private bands (Free Corps) of the Right. Both of these
developments were encouraged by Ebert and Noske.
Only in Bavaria was the alienation of Communist and Socialist and the
disarmament of the former not carried out; Kurt Eisner, the Independent
Socialist minister-president in Munich, prevented it. Accordingly,
Eisner was murdered by Count Anton von Arco-Valley on February Zl, 1919.
When the workers of Munich revolted, they were crushed by a combination
of regular army and Free Corps amid scenes of horrible violence from
both sides. Eisner was replaced as premier by a Social Democrat, Adolph
Hoffman. Hoffman, on the night of March 13, 1920, was thrown out by a
military coup which replaced him by a government of the Right under
Gustav von Kahr.
In the meantime, the National Assembly elected on June 19, 1919, drew up
a parliamentary constitution under the guidance of Professor Hugo
Preuss. This constitution provided for a president elected for seven
years to be head of the state, a bicameral legislature, and a Cabinet
responsible to the lower house of the legislature. The upper house, or
Reichsrat, consisted of representatives of eighteen German states and
had, in legislative matters, a suspensive veto which could be overcome
by a two-thirds vote of the lower chamber. This lower chamber, or
Reichstag, had 608 members, elected by a system of proportional
representation on a party basis. The head of the government, to whom the
president gave a mandate to form a Cabinet, was called the chancellor.
The chief weaknesses of the constitution were the provisions for
proportional representation and other provisions, by articles 25 and 48,
which allowed the president to suspend constitutional guarantees and
rule by decree, in periods of "national emergency." As early as 1925 the
parties of the Right were planning to destroy the republic by the use of
these powers.
A direct challenge to the republic from the Right came in March 1920,
when Captain Ehrhardt’s Brigade of the Free Corps marched into Berlin,
forced the government to flee to Dresden, and set up a government under
Wolfgang Kapp, an ultra-nationalist. Kapp was supported by the army
commander in the Berlin area, Baron Walther von Lüttwitz, who became
Reichswehr minister in Kapp's government. Since General Hans von Seeckt,
chief of staff, refused to support the legal government, it was
helpless, and was saved only by a general strike of the workers in
Berlin and a great proletarian rising in the industrial regions of
western Germany. The Kapp government was unable to function, and
collapsed, while the army proceeded to violate the territorial
disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles by invading the Ruhr in
order to crush the workers' uprising in that area. Seeckt was rewarded
for his non-cooperation by being appointed commander in chief in May 1920.
As a consequence of these disturbances, the general election of July
1920 went against the "Weimar Coalition." A new government came in which
was completely middle-class in its alignment, the Socialists of the
Weimar Coalition being replaced by the party of big business, the German
People's Party. Noske was replaced as Reichswehr minister by Otto
Gessler, a willing tool of the Officers' Corps. Gessler, who held this
critical position from March 1920 to January 1928, made no effort to
subject the army to democratic, or even civilian, control, but
cooperated in every way with Seeckt's secret efforts to evade the
disarmament provisions of the peace treaties. German armaments factories
were moved to Turkey, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
German officers were drilled in prohibited weapons in Russia and China.
Inside Germany, secret armaments were prepared on a considerable scale,
and troops in excess of the treaty limits were organized in a "Black
Reichswehr" which was supported by secret funds of the regular
Reichswehr. The Reichstag had no control over either organization. When
the Western Powers in 1920 demanded that the Free Corps be disbanded,
these groups went underground and formed a parallel organization to the
Black Reichswehr, being supplied with protection, funds, information,
and arms from the Reichswehr and Conservatives. In return the Free Corps
engaged in large-scale conspiracy and murder on behalf of the
Conservatives. According to The Times of London, the Free Corps murdered
four hundred victims of the Left and Center in one year.
The middle-class Cabinet of Konstantin Fehrenbach resigned on May 4,
1921 and allowed the Weimar Coalition of Socialists, Democrats, and
Center to take office to receive the reparations ultimatum of the Allied
governments on May 5th. Thus, the democratic regime was further
discredited in the eyes of Germans as an instrument of weakness,
hardship, and shame. As soon as the job was done, the Socialists were
replaced by the People's Party, and the Wirth Cabinet was succeeded by a
purely middle-class government under Wilhelm Cuno, general manager of
the Hamburg-American Steamship Line. It was this government which
"managed" the hyperinflation of 1923 and the passive resistance against
the French forces in the Ruhr. The inflation, which was a great benefit
to the Quartet,（因为这4股力量拥有生产资料） destroyed the economic
position of the middle classes and o\ver middle classes and permanently
alienated them from the republic.
The Cuno government was ended by a deal between Stresemann and the
Socialists. The former, on behalf of the People's Party, which had
hitherto been resolutely anti-republican, accepted the republic; the
Socialists agreed to support a Stresemann Cabinet; and a broad coalition
was formed for a policy of fulfillment of the Treaty of Versailles. This
ended the Period of Turmoil (August 1923).
The Period of Fulfillment (1923-1930) is associated with the name of
Gustav Stresemann, who was in every Cabinet until his death in October
1929. A reactionary Pan-German and economic imperialist in the period
before 1919, Stresemann was always a supporter of the Quartet, and the
chief creator of the German People's Party, the party of heavy industry.
In 1923, while still keeping his previous convictions, he decided that
it would be good policy to reverse them publicly and adopt a program of
support for the republic and fulfillment of treaty obligations. He did
this because he realized that Germany was too weak to do anything else
and that she could get stronger only by obtaining release from the more
stringent treaty restrictions, by foreign loans from sympathetic British
and American financiers, and by secret consolidation of the Quartet. All
these things could be achieved more easily by a policy of fulfillment
than by a policy of resistance like Cuno's.
The Bavarian government of the Right, which had been installed under
Gustav von Kahr in 1921, refused to accept Stresemann's decision to
readmit the Socialists to the Reich government in Berlin. Instead, Kahr
assumed dictatorial powers with the title of state commissioner of
Bavaria. In reply the Stresemann Cabinet invested the executive power of
the Reich in the Reichswehr minister, an act which had the effect of
making von Seeckt the ruler of Germany. In terror of a rightist coup
d’état (putsch), the Communist International decided to allow the German
Communist Party to cooperate with the Socialists in an anti-Right front
within the parliamentary regime. This was done at once in the states of
Saxony and Thuringia. At this the Reichswehr commander in Bavaria,
General Otto von Lossow, shifted his allegiance from Seeckt to Kahr.
Stresemann-Seeckt in Berlin faced Kahr-Lossow in Munich with the "Red"
governments of Saxony and Thuringia in between. The Reichswehr chiefly
obeyed Berlin, while the Black Reichswehr and underground Free Corps
(especially Ehrhardt's and Rossbach's) obeyed Munich. Kahr-Lossow, with
the support of Hitler and Ludendorff, planned to invade Saxony and
Thuringia, overthrow the Red governments on the pretext of suppressing
Bolshevism, and then continue northward to overthrow the central
government in Berlin. The Reich government headed this plot off by an
illegal act: The Reichswohr forces of Seeckt overthrew the
constitutional Red governments of Saxony and Thuringia to anticipate
Bavaria. As a result, Lossow and Kahr gave up the plans for revolt,
while Hitler and Ludendorff refused to do so. By the "Beer-Hall" Putsch
of November 8, 1923, Hitler and Ludendorff tried to abduct Kahr and
Lossow and force them to continue the revolt. They were overcome in a
blast of gunfire. Kahr, Lossow, and Ludendorff were never punished;
Hermann Goring fled the country; Hitler and Rudolf Hess were given
living quarters in a fortress for a year, profiting by the occasion to
write the famous volume Mein Kampf.
In order to deal with the economic crisis and the inflation,
Stresemann's government was granted dictatorial powers overriding all
constitutional guarantees, except that the Socialists won a promise not
to touch the eight-hour day or the social-insurance system. In this way
the inflation was curbed, and a new monetary system was established;
incidentally, the eight-hour day was abolished by decree (1923). A
reparations agreement (the Dawes Plan) was made with the Allied
governments, and the Ruhr was successfully evacuated. In the course of
these events the Social Democrats abandoned the Stresemann government in
protest at its illegal suppression of the Red government of Saxony, but
the Stresemann program continued with the support of the parties of the
Center and Right, including, for the first time, the support of the
anti-Republican Nationalists. Indeed, the Nationalists with three or
four seats in the Cabinet in 1926-1928 were the dominant force in the
government, although they continued to protest in public against the
policy of fulfillment, and Stresemann continued to pretend that his
administration of that policy exposed him to imminent danger of
assassination at the hands of the Right extremists.
The German Cabinets from 1923 to 1930, under Wilhelm Marx, Hans Luther,
Marx again, and finally Hermann Müller, were chiefly concerned with
questions of foreign policy, with reparations, evacuation of the
occupied areas, disarmament agitation, Locarno, and the League of
Nations. On the domestic front, just as significant events were going on
but with much less fanfare. Much of the industrial system, as well as
many public buildings, was reconstructed by foreign loans. The Quartet
were secretly strengthened and consolidated by reorganization of the tax
structure, by utilization of governmental subsidies, and by the training
and rearrangement of personnel. Alfred Hugenberg, the most violent and
irreconcilable member of the Nationalist Party, built up a propaganda
system through his ownership of scores of newspapers and a controlling
interest in Ufa, the great motion-picture corporation. By such avenues
as this, a pervasive propaganda campaign, based on existing German
prejudices and intolerances, was put on to prepare the way for a
counterrevolution by the Quartet. This campaign sought to show that all
Germany's problems and misfortunes were caused by the democratic and
laboring groups, by the internationalists, and by the Jews.
The Center and Left shared this nationalist poison sufficiently to
abstain from any effort to give the German people the true story of
Germany's responsibility for the war and for her own hardships. Thus the
Right was able to spread its own story of the war, that Germany had been
overcome by "a stab in the back" from "the three Internationals": the
"Gold" International of the Jews, the "Red" International of the
Socialists, and the "Black" International of the Catholics, an unholy
triple alliance which was symbolized in the gold, red, and black flag of
the Weimar Republic. In this fashion every effort was made, and with
considerable success, to divert popular animosity at the defeat of 1918
and the Versailles settlement from those who were really responsible to
the democratic and republican groups. At the same time, German animosity
against economic exploitation was directed away from the landlords and
industrialists by racist doctrines which blamed all such problems on bad
Jewish international bankers and department store owners.
The general nationalism of the German people, and their willingness to
accept the propaganda of the Right, succeeded in making Field Marshal
Paul von Hindenburg president of the republic in 1925. On the first
ballot none of seven candidates received a majority of the total vote,
so the issue went to the polls again. On the second ballot Hindenburg
received 14,655,766 votes, Marx (of the Center Party) received
13,751,615, while the Communist Ernst Thälmann received 1,931,151.
The victory of Hindenburg was a fatal blow to the republic. A mediocre
military leader, and already on the verge of senility, the new president
was a convinced anti-democrat and anti-republican. To bind his
allegiance to the Quartet more closely, the landlords and industrialists
took advantage of his eightieth birthday in 1927 to give him a Junker
estate, Neudeck, in East Prussia. To avoid the inheritance tax, the deed
to this estate was made out to the president's son, Colonel Oskar von
Hindenburg. In time this estate came to be known as the "smallest
concentration camp" in Germany, as the president spent his last years
there cut off from the outside world by his senilities and a coterie of
intriguers. These intriguers, who were able to influence the aged
presidential mind in any direction they wished, consisted of Colonel
Oskar, General Kurt von Schleicher, Dr. Otto Meissner, w ho remained
head of the presidential office under Ebert, Hindenburg, and Hitler; and
Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau who owned the estate next to Neudeck. This
coterie was able to make and unseat Cabinets from 1930 to 1934, and
controlled the use of the presidential power to rule by decree in that
critical period.
No sooner did Hindenburg become a landlord in October 1927 than he began
to mobilize government assistance for the landlords. This assistance,
known as Osthilfe (Eastern Help), was organized by a joint session of
the Reich and Prussian governments presided over by Hindenburg on
December 21, 1927. The stated purpose of this assistance was to increase
the economic prosperity of the regions east of the Elbe River in order
to stop the migration of Germans from that area to western Germany and
their replacement by Polish farm laborers. This assistance soon became a
sink of corruption, the money being diverted in one way or another,
legally or illegally, to subsidize the bankrupt great estates and the
extravagances of the Junker landlords. It was the threat of public
revelation of this scandal which was the immediate cause of the death of
the Weimar Republic by Hindenburg's hand in 1932.
The combination of all of these events (the real power of the Quartet,
the shortsighted and unprincipled opportunism of the Social Democrats
and the Center Party, the coterie around Hindenburg, and the Osthilfe
scandal) made possible the disintegration of the Weimar Republic in the
years 1930-1933. The decision of the Quartet to attempt to establish a
government satisfactory to themselves was made in 1929. The chief causes
of the decision were (1) the realization that industrial plants had been
largely rebuilt by foreign loans; (2) the knowledge that these foreign
loans were now drying up and that, without them, neither reparations nor
internal debts could be met except at a price which the Quartet was
unwilling to pay; (3) the knowledge that the policy of fulfillment had
accomplished about as much as could be expected from it, the Allied
Control Missions having ended, rearmament having progressed as far as
was possible under the Versailles Treaty, the western frontier having
been made secure, and the eastern frontier having been opened to German
penetration.
The decision of the Quartet did not result from the economic crisis of
1929, but was made earlier in the year. This can be seen in the alliance
of Hugenberg and Hitler to force a referendum on the Young Plan. The
Quartet had accepted the much more severe Dawes Plan in 1924 because
they were not then ready to destroy the Weimar regime. The challenge to
the Young Plan not only indicated that they were ready; it also became
an indication of their strength. This test was a disappointment, since
they obtained only five million votes adverse to the plan from an
electorate of 40 million. As a result, for the first time, the Nazis
began a drive to build up a mass following. The moment for which they
had been kept alive by the financial contributions of the Quartet had
arrived. The effort would never have succeeded, however, were it not for
the economic crisis. The intensity of this crisis can be measured by the
number of Reichstag seats held by the Nazis:
April Dec. July Dec. March
1924 1924 1928 1930 1932 1932 1933
7 14 12 107 230 196 288
The Nazis were financed by the Black Reichswehr from 1919 to 1923; then
this support ceased because of army disgust at the fiasco of the Munich
Putsch. This lack of enthusiasm for the Nazis by the army continued for
years. It was inspired by social snobbery and fears of the Nazi Storm
Troops (SA) as a possible rival to itself. This diffidence on the part
of the army was compensated by the support of the industrialists, who
financed the Nazis from Hitler's exit from prison in 1924 to the end of
1932.
The destruction of the Weimar Republic has five stages:
Brüning: March 27, 1930 May 30, 1932
von Papen: May 31, 1932-November 17, 1932
Schleicher: December 2, 1932-January 28, 1933
Hitler: January 30, 1933-March 5, 1933
Gleichschaltung: March 6, 1933-August 2, 1934
When the economic crisis began in 1929, Germany had a democratic
government of the Center and Social Democratic parties. The crisis
resulted in a decrease in tax receipts and a parallel increase in
demands for government welfare services. This brought to a head the
latent dispute over orthodox and unorthodox financing of a depression.
Big business and big finance were determined to place the burden of the
depression on the working classes by forcing the government to adopt a
policy of deflation—that is, by wage reductions and curtailment of
government expenditures. The Social Democrats wavered in their attitude,
but in general were opposed to this policy. Schacht, as president of the
Reichsbank, was able to force the Socialist Rudolf Hilferding out of the
position of minister of finance by refusing bank credit to the
government until this was done. In March 1930, the Center broke the
coalition on the issue of reduction of unemployment benefits, the
Socialists were thrown out of the government, and Heinrich Brüning,
leader of the Center Party, came in as chancellor. Because he did not
have a majority in the Reichstag, he had to put the deflationary policy
into effect by the use of presidential decree under Article 48. This
marked the end of the Weimar Republic, for it had never been intended
that this "emergency clause" should be used in the ordinary process of
government, although it had been used by Ebert in 1923 to abolish the
eight-hour day. When the Reichstag condemned Brüning's method by a vote
of 236 to 221 on July 18, 1930, the chancellor dissolved it and called
for new elections. The results of these were contrary to his hopes,
since he lost seats both to the Right and to the Left. On his Right were
148 seats (107 Nazis and 41 Nationalists); on his Left were 220 seats
(77 Communists and 143 Socialists). The Socialists permitted Brüning to
remain in office by refusing to vote on a motion of no confidence. Left
in office, Brüning continued the deflationary policy by decrees which
Hindenburg signed. Thus, in effect, Hindenburg was the ruler of Germany,
since he could dismiss or name any chancellor, or could permit one to
govern by his own power of decree.
Brüning's policy of deflation was a disaster. The suffering of the
people was terrible, with almost eight million unemployed out of
twenty-five million employable. To compensate for this unpopular
domestic policy, Brüning adopted a more aggressive foreign policy, on
such questions as reparations, union with Austria, or the World
Disarmament Conference.
In the crisis of 1929-1933, the bourgeois parties tended to dissolve to
the profit of the extreme Left and the extreme Right. In this the Nazi
Party profited more than the Communists for several reasons: (1) it had
the financial support of the industrialists and landlords; (2) it was
not internationalist, but nationalist, as any German party had to be;
(3) it had never compromised itself by accepting the republic even
temporarily, an advantage when most Germans tended to blame the republic
for their troubles; (4) it was prepared to use violence, while the
parties of the Left, even the Communists, were legalistic and relatively
peaceful, because the police and judges were of the Right. The reasons
why the Nazis, rather than the Nationalists, profited by the turn from
moderation could be explained by the fact that (1) the Nationalists had
compromised themselves and vacillated on every issue from 1924 to 1929,
and (2) the Nazis had an advantage in that they were not clearly a party
of the Right but were ambiguous; in fact, a large group of Germans
considered the Nazis a revolutionary Left party differing from the
Communists only in being patriotic.
In this polarization of the political spectrum it was the middle classes
which became unanchored, driven by desperation and panic. The Social
Democrats were sufficiently fortified by trade unionism, and the Center
Party members were sufficiently fortified by religion to resist the
drift to extremism. Unfortunately, both these relatively stable groups
lacked intelligent leadership and were too wedded to old ideas and
narrow interests to find any appeal broad enough for a wide range of
German voters.
The whole of 1932 was filled with a series of intrigues and distrustful,
shifting alliances among the various groups which sought to get into a
position to use the presidential power of decree. On October 11, 1931, a
great reactionary alliance was made of the Nazis, the Nationalists, the
Stahlhelm (a militaristic veterans' organization), and the Junker
Landbund. This so-called "Harzburg Front" pretended to be a unified
opposition to Communism, but really represented part of the intrigue of
these various groups to come to power. Of the real rulers of Germany,
only the Westphalian industrialists and the army were absent. The
industrialists were taken into camp by Hitler during a three-hour speech
which he made at the Industrial Club of Dusseldorf at the invitation of
Fritz Thyssen (January 27, 1932). The army could not be brought into
line, since it was controlled by the presidential coterie, especially
Schleicher and Hindenburg himself. Schleicher had political ambitions of
his own, and the army traditionally would not commit itself in any open
or formal fashion.
In the middle of this crisis came the presidential election of
March-April 1932. It offered a fantastic sight of a nominally democratic
republic forced to choose its president from among four anti-democratic,
anti-republican figures of which one (Hitler) had become a German
citizen only a month previously by a legal trick. Since Hindenburg
appeared as the least impossible of the four, he was reelected on the
second ballot:
First Ballot Second Ballot
Hindenburg 18,661,736 19,359,533
Hitler 11,338,571 13,418,051
Thälmann, Communist 4,982,079 3,706,655
Düsterberg, Stahlhelm 2,557,876
Hindenburg continued to support Brüning until the end of May 1932, when
he dismissed him and put in Von Papen. This was done at the instigation
of Von Schleicher who was hoping to build up some kind of broad-front
coalition of nationalists and workers as a facade for the Reichswehr. In
this plan Schleicher was able to get Hindenburg to abandon Brüning by
persuading him that the chancellor was planning to break up some of the
bankrupt large estates east of the Elbe and might even investigate the
Osthilfe scandals. Schleicher put in Papen as chancellor in the belief
that Papen had so little support in the country that he would be
completely dependent on Schleicher's ability to control Hindenburg.
Instead, the president became so fond of Papen that the new chancellor
was able to use Hindenburg's power directly, and even began to undermine
the influence of Schleicher in the president's entourage.
Papen's "Cabinet of the barons" was openly a government of the Quartet
and had almost no support in the Reichstag and little support in the
country. Papen and Schleicher realized that it could not last long. Each
began to form a plot to consolidate himself and stop the polarization of
political opinion in Germany. Papen's plot was to cut off the financial
contributions from industry to Hitler and break down the Nazi Party's
independence by a series of expensive elections. The chancellor felt
sure that Hitler would he willing to come into a Cabinet of which Papen
was head in order to recover the financial contributions from industry
and prevent the disruption of his party. Schleicher, on the other hand,
hoped to unite the Left wing of the Nazi Party under Otto Strasser with
the Christian and Socialist labor unions to support the Reichwehr in a
program of nationalism and unorthodox finance. Both plots dependent on
retaining the favor of Hindenburg in order to retain control of the army
and of the presidential power to issue decrees. In this, Papen was more
successful than Schleicher, for the aged president had no liking for any
unorthodox economic schemes.
Papen's plot developed more rapidly than Schleicher's and appeared more
hopeful because of his greater ability to control the president. Having
persuaded his close friends, the industrialists, to stop their
contributions to the Nazis, Papen called a new election for November
1932. In the balloting the Nazis were reduced from 230 to 196 seats,
while the Communists were increased from 89 to 100. The tide had turned.
This had three results: (1) Hitler decided to join a coalition
government, which he had previously refused; (2) the Quartet decided to
overthrow the republic in order to stop the swing to the Communists; and
(3) the Quartet, especially the industrialists, decided that Hitler had
learned a lesson and could safely be put into office as the figurehead
of a Right government because he was growing weaker. The whole deal was
arranged by Papen, himself a colonel and an industrialist as w ell as a
Westphalian aristocrat, and was sealed in an agreement made at the home
of the Cologne banker Baron Kurt von Schroder, on January 4, 933.
This agreement came into effect because of Papen's ability to manage
Hindenburg. On January 28, 1933, the president forced the resignation of
Schleicher by refusing to grant him decree powers. Two days later Hitler
came to office as chancellor in a Cabinet which contained only two other
Nazis. These were Minister of Air Goring and Frick in the vital Ministry
of the Interior. Of the other eight posts, two, the ministries of
economics and agriculture, went to Hugenburg; the Ministry of Labor went
to Franz Seldte of the Stahlhelm, the Foreign Ministry and the
Reichswehr Ministry went to nonparty experts, and most of the remaining
posts went to friends of Papen. It would not seem possible for Hitler,
thus surrounded, ever to obtain control of Germany, yet within a year
and a half he was dictator of the country.