The Coming of the Third Reich

The Great Depression brought about the end of the “Grand Coalition” (247), a stable government in the Weimar Republic that had been in power since 1928 and was led by Social Democrat Hermann Müller. The Grand Coalition collapsed in 1930 over disagreements on how to handle the unemployment crisis. After this, “no government ruled with the support of a parliamentary majority in the Reichstag” (247).

The army remained a powerful and independent political force whose influence grew as civilian government bodies like the Reichstag were weakened by the political chaos caused by the Great Depression. Army officers hoped to establish a de facto dictatorship around President Hindenburg and intervened to stop military budgets from being cut. Younger officers in the army were also becoming more receptive to the Nazi Party.

Hindenburg set up a government with ministers chosen by him specifically. Although his powers were still limited and his government included established elected officials, the Social Democrats were excluded from the government. Hindenburg nominated Heinrich Brüning as Chancellor. Brüning represented the right-wing Centre Party, although that party had been “moving towards a more authoritarian position, more narrowly concerned with defending the interests of the Catholic Church” (250). He was also a monarchist, but “he had no detailed plan to restore the monarchy, let alone bring back the Kaiser” (251). While in power, he curbed civil liberties, limited the freedom of the press, and weakened the trade unions while also laying the groundwork for limiting the power of the Reichstag.

To address the Great Depression, Brüning cut wages and unemployment benefits and applied further means-testing to welfare. This drove more people into poverty, further devastating the economy. This was deliberate, as Brüning “wanted to demonstrate to the international community that reparations were causing real misery and suffering in Germany” (253) and hoped that the unemployment crisis would weaken the welfare state and labor unions.

In 1931, Germany’s National Bank collapsed, causing Brüning to ban the Reichsmark currency from being exchanged for foreign currency while keeping more of the Reichsmark from coming into circulation. At the same time, Brüning ignored demands to employ people in state-funded projects. Instead, he ordered that wages be returned to what they were in 1927 and initiated caps on prices. Such actions made him “the most unpopular Chancellor there had yet been in the Weimar Republic” and earned him the nickname the “Hunger Chancellor” (254-255).

A conservative in the Bismarckian mold, Brüning disliked the far-right and trusted President Hindenburg more than any of the political parties. Also, despite the Nazis’ growing popularity, Brüning and other politicians believed in the Nazis’ “inevitable political marginality” (255). So, as a result of a budget dispute, in 1930, Brüning and Hindenburg dissolved the Reichstag and called for new elections.

In their election campaign, Hitler and the Nazis described the Weimar Republic as a failure due to its handling of the economy, its political divisions, and “its delivery of national humiliation” (257). Hitler promised a strong Germany, united by race. The Nazis sought to appeal to different audiences and cooperated with more moderate right-wing politicians during their campaigns. The Nazi Party “outdid all other parties in their constant, frenetic activism and the intensity of their propaganda effort” (259).

The 1930 election resulted in the Nazi Party strengthening its support among small business owners, farmers, and the upper middle-class, receiving many votes from both first-time voters and older voters who had previously supported the Nationalist Party. Women also voted for the Nazi Party in significant numbers. While the Nazis made gains with working-class voters, a minority of them supported the Nazi Party. Workers from areas where the Communist Party and trade unions were strongest and the unemployed tended to not vote for the Nazis. Still, the Nazis made progress with groups across the board.

In the midst of the Great Depression, “the Nazis managed to project an image of strong, decisive action, dynamism, energy and youth that wholly eluded the propaganda efforts of the other political parties, with the partial exception of the Communists” (265). This was in spite of the fact that the Nazis did not offer concrete policies to solve Germany’s economic and social problems and that they were largely responsible for the street violence that frightened many voters. Evans argues that the Nazi platform was helped by its “vagueness” since it “allowed people to read into what they wanted to and edit out anything they might have found disturbing” (265), while the violence was blamed on Communism or on the passion of the lower-ranking members of the party.

Horst Wessel was a brownshirt (stormtrooper) who lived in Berlin and participated in attacks on local Communists. He was shot and killed by Ali Höhler, a member of a Communist paramilitary group, the Red Front-Fighters’ League, with ties to organized crime. Goebbels launched a propaganda campaign that presented Wessel as “a political martyr” (267). A song written by Wessel, calling for the murder of Communist paramilitary members and predicting Nazi dominance over Germany, was performed at his funeral and became publicized. Political violence had declined after 1923, only to increase again by 1930, mainly due to clashes between Communists and Nazis.

A widespread attitude among police was that political violence was distracting them from addressing growing crime in the Weimar Republic. This caused police to sympathize with the Nazis, with some police joining the Nazi Party.

In 1931, some Nazi documents, called the Boxheim documents, were taken by police, including plans for the violent overthrow of the government. Although Hitler claimed the documents were just contingency plans if a Communist government came to power, Chancellor Heinrich Brüning used the scandal around the Boxheim documents to help justify a decree banning political uniforms. However, the brownshirts simply wore recognizable white shirts instead. The brownshirts were outright banned by 1932, although many were protected by police.

The Nazi and Communist deputies in the Reichstag proved to be disruptive to the point that the Reichstag convened fewer times. Because of this, the political power and influence of President Hindenburg and the violent political activists on the ground increased. General Kurt von Schleicher became a prominent political figure representing the military. Along with other prominent conservatives, Schleicher believed “an authoritarian regime could be given legitimacy by harnessing and taming the popular might of the National Socialists” (276) and the military could achieve its goal of German rearmament. Because Brüning’s unpopularity made him dependent on the Social Democrats, the Nazis seemed more reliable for achieving moderate right-wing goals.

In 1932, the 84-year-old President Hindenburg ran for reelection. The main opposing candidate was Hitler himself. The Social Democrats rallied around the right-wing Hindenburg, even though it meant also supporting Brüning, “whose policies had been lowering the living standards and destroying the jobs of the very people the Social Democrats represented” (279). In the initial election, Hitler only gained 30% of the vote, while Hindenburg fell just short of a majority of the vote at 49.6% (281), leading to a run-off election. Boosting his profile by flying around Germany and delivering speeches, Hitler increased his share of the votes to 37% in the run-off election (281). This showed that the Nazis were continuing to gain ground in rural areas, the middle classes, and Protestant rural areas.

Brüning’s cuts to social services continued to be unpopular. Hindenburg disliked a proposal by Brüning to redistribute land from bankrupt estates to the unemployed. As a result, Brüning was pressured into resigning. Hindenburg replaced him with an even more conservative aristocrat and member of the Centre Party, Franz von Papen. Papen and his chosen ministers “saw themselves as creating a ‘New State’, above parties, indeed opposed to the very principle of a multi-party system, with the powers of elected assemblies even more limited than they had been in Brüning’s more modest vision” (284). Papen’s government filled the cabinet with aristocrats inexperienced in politics, causing his government to be called “the cabinet of barons” (284).

Hoping to gain Nazi support for their anti-democratic goals, Papen lifted the brownshirt ban. This increased political violence, culminating in the Nazis attacking the Red-Front Army in an area in Prussia dominated by Communists, Altona, and causing 18 fatalities. Papen used the incident as an excuse to dissolve the Prussian regional government led by Social Democrats. This nearly provoked an uprising and was partially opposed by the courts. However, Papen’s coup still “destroyed the federal principle and opened the way to the wholesale centralization of the state” (287). The Social Democrats had done “nothing” (287) to resist, because losing seats in elections and their acceptance of Brüning’s social services cuts had weakened the party. The labor unions couldn’t do much because they had been weakened by mass unemployment.

By 1932, the Social Democrats and the Communists imitated the Nazis in fighting “a war of symbols” (289), adopting simple symbols and slogans. However, this shift in strategy did not prevent the Social Democrats from being blamed for the crises of the Weimar Republic, as they had been the dominant party, nor did it ease middle-class anxieties about pro-labor parties. In the election campaigns of the early 1930s, all parties used the same image of “a giant, half-naked worker […] to symbolize the German people” (290) and had the giant worker violently removing representatives of the opposing parties.

Yet, Nazi propaganda under Goebbels remained unmatched. Nazi propaganda offered voters “either the old forces of betrayal and corruption, or a national rebirth to a glorious future” (291). Some images design to be assuring to the middle classes showed the giant worker in “benevolent” (293) poses, such as giving tools to the unemployed.

The elections of July 1932 made the Nazi Party the largest party in the Reichstag with the Communist Party also gaining seats. At the same time, there was “the almost total annihilation of the parties of the centre” (293-294). As in the 1930 election, the Nazis’ appeal mainly went to the Protestant middle classes and manual laborers, who had little involvement with labor unions. The Nazis claimed few voters from Catholics and industrial workers, because, Evans argues, “there was a strong economic and institutional underpinning of the labour movement or Catholic voluntary associations.” Still, the Nazis feared that the “Nazi vote had finally peaked” (295). This motivated the Nazis into seeking to install Hitler as Chancellor before their support among the electorate could decline.

Papen hoped to suspend the Reichstag and permanently suspend elections. However, the Nazis let a motion of no-confidence in Papen’s government made by Communist delegates to pass. It ruined Papen’s plans and caused new elections to be declared for November of 1932. Nazi support for the middle classes declined because of “Hitler’s populist attacks on Papen” (298) and his support of a strike by teleportation workers. The number of Nazi seats in the Reichstag declined from 230 to 196 seats. At the same time, the Communists gained another 11 seats (299), which was concerning to middle-class voters.

Because of electoral developments, “the Reichstag was even less manageable than before” (299) with members of the Social Democrat and Centre parties bitterly opposed to Papen and the Communist and Nazi delegates still hostile to the entire Weimar Republic. Papen considered banning both Nazi and Communist representatives, but to do so, he needed the backing of the military led by General Kurt von Schleicher, and he had lost their support. Papen declared he would resign by December of 1932.

The Reichstag had been severely watered down as an institution, but “any government which tried to change the constitution in an authoritarian direction without the legitimacy afforded by the backing of a majority in the legislature would run a serious risk of starting a civil war” (301-302). Schleicher was appointed the new Chancellor. He hoped to succeed where Papen failed in building a right-wing, authoritarian government with the support of the Nazi and Centre parties.

Concerned by their recent electoral losses and the depletion of party funds from campaigning, Nazis increasingly criticized Hitler for refusing to accept any government position unless he was appointed Chancellor. In response to this criticism, Hitler purged the party of Gregor Strasser, “his former second-in-command” (302), and Strasser’s supporters.

While this ruined Schleicher’s hopes for a strong right-wing coalition, the Nazis’ influence was in decline. Their future electoral prospects were threatened by a slow recovery from the Great Depression and Schleicher’s plans to address the unemployment crisis through public works programs. However, President Hindenburg and the conservatives feared an economic revival, and the weakening of the Nazis would strengthen the Weimar Republic against authoritarian changes. Hindenburg and others also opposed Schleicher’s reversal of social benefits and wage cuts and his proposals for land reforms and to nationalize the steel industry. Hindenburg’s conservative coalition decided to replace Schleicher with Hitler, who demanded that a Nazi, Wilhelm Frick, also be appointed Minister of the Interior.

After Hindenburg refused to extend Schleicher’s constitutional powers, Schleicher resigned as Chancellor. Schleicher had the support of the military, but they feared starting a civil war if they fought to keep him in power. Both Schleicher and the conservative ministers thought they and the military would keep Hitler in check.