Germany: the Crisis of the Weimar Republic (1929-1933)

Bachelor in Politics, Philosophy and Economics Germany: The Crisis of the Weimar Republic (1929-1933) Submitted by: Marina Grego 077042 Arianna Lombari 077922 Sofia Mauceri 075892 Date: 25/11/2014 Course title: Contemporary History Course instructor: Christian Blasberg Abstract This essay analyzes the causes for the downfall of the Weimar Republic focusing on the years from 1929 to 1933. There are many theories that try to explain the fall of the Weimar Republic, but the two main causes that this paper discusses are whether the it failed because of the flaws in its Constitution, or whether the Weimar Republic collapsed because of external circumstances and individual political choices. This essay is structured in a way, where there is firstly a brief introduction, then the two theories are presented individually and finally in the conclusion they are compared. In the end, It is concluded that even though some constitutional mistakes had a great impact in the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the main cause of its decay are external events and the political decisions made during the final years. The keywords of this paper are: constitution, Weimar Republic, article 48, proportional system, economic crisis, von Hindenburg, von Papen, Brüning, von Schleicher and Müller. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Germany: the crisis of the Weimar Republic (1929-1933) 1 2.1. The fall of the Weimar Republic as a result of its Constitution 1 2.2. The downfall of the Weimar Republic as the result of external factors and individual political choices (1929-1933) 4 3. Conclusion 7 Bibliography 10 1. Introduction The collapse of Weimar Republic and the seizure of power of the Nazi regime is surely one of the most debated matters in German history; historians still debate today about what caused the downfall of the Weimar Republic, and this paper deals with two thesis for this topic; the first one, if it was due to inherit structural constitution flaws, and the second, if it was provoked by external factors, such as the already existing economic crisis and the individual decisions made by politicians, especially focusing on the last years of the Republic. To explain how the constitution's structure may have or may have not influenced the rise of the Nazi Party, we will focus on its most debated points; these being article 48 and the proportional system, focusing between the relationships between the President, his Chancellor and the parliament (the Reichstag). On the other hand, we will explain the point of view of other critics who argue that maybe the Republic could have survived, blaming its failure to individual mistakes and to external issues, saying that the republic had the basis of a good constitution, however written in a disadvantaged time because of the post-war social and economic crisis Germany was undergoing. In support of that, in his classic study about the Weimar culture, Peter Gay observed that the Weimar Republic was “born in defeat, lived in turmoil and died in disaster”. In order to analyze these two thesis we focused on authors supporting both cases, mostly from recent literature; this is because only after the 1950s historians started criticizing the constitution itself for its possible responsibilities in the downfall of the Weimar Republic, in particular, many have debated on the importance of the proportional system for elections. All the authors that we considered take into account previous historical research, allowing an easier and clearer comparison between different streams of thought. 2. Germany: the crisis of the Weimar Republic (1929-1933) 2.1. The fall of the Weimar Republic as the result of its Constitution Few days after the Spartacists' uprising, the Republic of Weimar was declared in February 1919 : it was nothing but the result of the external pressure coming from the victors of the First World War, especially United States and France, who forced the National Assembly to draw a new constitution for the state. German historian Willhelm Mommsen declared that the Republic was nothing but “the only possible form for the new state after the collapse at the end of the World War” and not, as many experts asserted, the outcome of any German republican movement. Many were the disagreements that had risen among the population due to the really strict conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. In his work, “Hitler and the 1 Nazism”, Richard Geary states that right from the beginning, the Weimar Republic – designed by democrats and socialists – was rottenly seen by the population who felt really angry against the Versailles diktat. As stated in article 231 of the Treaty, Germany was the only country responsible for the outbreak of the war, and therefore had to pay financial reparations to the winning states; in addition the German government had to give up fundamental territories -such as Alsace and Lorraine to France, and Silesia to Poland- and ended up losing more than 13% of its territories. Disagreements were even worsened by the ratification of the Dawes plan and of the Young Plan, which were expected to reduce the burden of the reparations, but caused even more discordance between the government and the right-wing extremists, and were only useful to held the Republic together a little longer. While dealing with social and economic matters such as the high rate of unemployment, inflation, and the reparations, the government progressively lost the trust of an increasing portion of the population, who therefore shifted their electoral preferences towards the Nazi party, that appeared like the perfect anti-communism authoritarian force opposed to the weak current democratic government. When the Weimar constitution was written, the aim was to create a constitution that was genuinely democratic, in order to repair the lack of democracy of Kaiser William II. The constitution introduced a bi-cameral assembly: a parliament that was made up of two layers; one represented the whole nation (the Reichstag) and made whole-nation decisions while the other represented regions (the Reichsrat). Two are the main points of focus over which the accuses on the Weimar Constitution are built upon: the first is article 48 and the correspondingly massive powers given to the President, and secondly the introduction of the absolute proportional representation. The President of the Republic was given wide-ranging powers; to represent the new state, to conclude treaties and alliances, to elect his Chancellor, to exercise the right of supreme command over the armed forces and to dissolve the Reichstag. Under article 48 of the constitution he could temporarily suspend constitutional guarantees and intervene if he deemed it necessary to restore public safety and order and take temporary measures in order to keep under control the faced issue. Some say that under the mandate of President Friedrich Ebert, member of the Social Democratic party, there was no abuse of the power to guide the nation through periods of high difficulties. He only used the article to accelerate the government's legislation and never to pass bills that had failed in the parliament. Sure enough Ebert did his best to preserve the integrity of the Republic from the attempts of both the left and the right to undermine the democracy without abusing of the powers given by article 48. However, with president Hindenburg the clause was used to face the 2 economic crisis of the time- for the first time under Chancellor Brüning's mandate-, and from that moment on it has been reputed as the instrument for the Republic's destruction. Different points of view are to be found within the two authors Dick Geary and Henig Ruth; while the first believes that Hindenburg used of the article only after the realization that no major coalition could have been constructed inside the Reichstag, meaning that there was no other way to govern but to use this presidential power, thus showing that there wasn't an exploitation of the inaccuracies inside the constitution, Henig states that starting from Brüning's mandate, the ideal function of the Chancellor had broadly changed; Brüning and Hindeburg had a compliance on altering the Republic “from a democratic-parliamentary one to a presidential-style government” [Henig Ruth; “The Weimar Republic” (1998), page 63]. Brüning's use of the clause 48 in order to enact into law a whole finance bill disregarding the Parliament's different inclinations, is a clear evidence that stands for Ruth's opinion. Several counter claims on this matter can be put forward; Eberhard Kolb, in “The Weimar Republic” (2004) evidences that the article 48 actually helped those who used it in order to accelerate the bureaucracy and provide quicker measures to face certain issues. Additionally, he claims that even though the article was conceived and used in a first moment as an instrument to help the Republic's recovery, in a later stage it became the main device used for its annihilation. Yet, this across-the-board use of article 48 can be also seen as a situation which Hindenburg was forced in, pushed by the absence of a coalition that would have permitted the Reichstag to have a majority force; this fragmentation of the parliament was caused by the lack of mutual collaboration and constant disagreement of the political parties inside of the parliament, which permitted an increase of the President's power and influence. Again Kolb himself puts forward a different argument, stating that the political parties were weakened since the very birth of the Republic, because of the stronger position of the President, that, as the constitution states, had the role of 'supervisor and provider of help in an emergency' towards the parliament. This position of helplessness before the President left the parties unwilling to compromise in the Reichstag. Therefore, the President had free access to the exaggerate power. Nonetheless, when the Article 48 was conceived in 1919, it was meant to give the opportunity to the President to oppose the parliament, which powers had to be tempered; and it is also important to remember that in that period a radical wing from the working force had just guided some rebellions, thus showing that there was the possibility of a regional parliament opposing the national government, therefore there was a need of enforcing the Presidential law in order to guarantee national stability. Following this point of view, the proportional representation of the electoral system, obviously led to an excessive fragmentation of the political representation. This elective system was only criticized after 1945, period in which a growing 3 number of historians and critics placed the responsibilities of the Republic depletion upon the proportional system. The system is mainly blamed to have promoted the creation of new small parties, many of which were a result of a division inside already existing ones, making it much more problematic to form a stable majority inside of the Reichstag, and, most importantly, of favoring the rise of extremist powers. As Kolb reports, one of the most ardent critics of the proportional representation system is the political scientist Ferdinand Hermens, who in the 1950s was one of the first to blame it for the Weimar fiasco, stating that with a majority system the Nazi party wouldn't have gained such a wide-spread importance. Many supporters of Hermens later stated, following this idea, that with a voting system based on relative majorities the triumph of the National Socialists could have been avoided, as also the election of Hitler as Chancellor. According to Ruth Henig, some of the problems that the parties had to face mainly concerned the difficulty of operating on a wide ground such as an entire country and efficiently cooperate with each other; in the author's opinion, in the end they weren't able to take any decision nor in the political or economic deals, and this could be blamed on the proportional system, that contributed into fueling divisions inside of the parties. 2.2 The downfall of the Weimar Republic as the result of external factors and individual political choices (1929-1933) Until 1928 it seemed like the Republic was stabilizing thanks to Stresemann's foreign policy and to some economic recovery, but after his death and the 1929 Wall Street crash, Germany faced a worsening of its situation. This only favored the right wing extremists, especially Hitler's Nazi Party (NSDAP). Before that, Paul von Hindemburg had been elected in 1925; he was a first world war veteran that had enjoyed a long career in the Prussian army, becoming a field marshal. Hindemburg was a critic of the new democratic system and in Berlin, after his election, he was greeted by a cheering crowd waving white and red flags, the colors of the old empire. The fact that an old, nationalist war hero was being elected, demonstrates, as some historians like Ruth Henig and Hans Mommsen believe, the urge of the population for a return to the kaisers era, a time during which Germany was an economic and political supremacy; in particular, they question the actual support of the population at the beginning of the republic for a real shift to democracy; as Stresemann once said, German people wanted a president “in uniform and with strings of medals”, and that is because the Weimar Germany's society was a society in transition, that was experiencing the pressures of modernization and of industrialization, and the newly established democratic structure was not strong enough to cope effectively with such 4 pressures when they were even reinforced by new social and economic tensions arising from the previous years. His election is, again in Henig's opinion, a defeat of the republic, since it represented a step back into the Wilhelmine age, with a leader that wasn't used to the balances of a parliamentary democratic system but was much more keen in military command. Meanwhile, the Nazi Party had been able to enter the Reichstag for the first time in 1924 with 32 seats, and by the 1930 elections, with 19% of the popular vote, it was able to begin the fragile coalition system by which every Chancellor from hat moment on hadn't been able to govern with the majority of the Reichstag. This force of opposition ultimately ended the current Müller government, that was only kept together until the end of the negotiations for the new reparations agreement, the Young Plan, which lasted for over a year. But the force of the nationalist opposition which erupted during 1929 dealt a serious blow not just to Müller’s government but to the whole system of parliamentary democracy. On 29 March 1930, Heinrich Brüning was appointed as Müller's successor. The new government was expected to be a more conservative one. Since Brüning had no majority support in the Reichstag, he became the first Chancellor to operate independently of parliament through the use of the emergency powers granted to the president by article 48 of the constitution. On 16 July the Reichstag voted against the proposal to tax civil servants’ earnings submitted by Brüning. His response was to use the emergency powers of article 48 to pass the entire finance bill into law. On 18 July, the SPD moved for a suspension of the emergency decree and they linked this motion with a vote of no confidence supported by the Communists, the Nazis and the Nationalists. At this point, Brüning dissolved the Reichstag. Between 1930 and 1932, he tried to reform the Weimar Republic without a parliamentary majority, governing, when necessary, through the President's emergency decrees enacting a policy of deflation, drastically cutting state expenditure, believing that with less spending he would have helped the economy. Most German capitalists and landowners originally supported his conservative policies, believing that conservatives would best serve their interests. As more of the working and middle classes turned against Brüning, however, more of the capitalists and landowners declared themselves in favor of his opponents from the Nazi Party. At this point, author Henig believes that Hindenburg had several reasons by 1932 for not keeping Brüning under his government anymore. First of all because, Brüning’s economic cuts had alienated and driven into opposition not just socialist-inclined workers but also civil servants and government officials. Secondly, Hindenburg’s son Oskar and his military and aristocratic confidants were increasingly attracted by the radical program of national reconstruction put forward by the Nazis, and they were strongly opposed to Brüning’s support for a ban on the public activities of the Nazi SA and SS. Thirdly, Brüning had failed to extend the President’s term of office, leaving Hindemburg to facing a new presidential election. 5 Nothing highlights the change which had taken place in the German political landscape since the late 1920s more vividly than this election campaign, in which Hindenburg had lost support of the right wing parties; in the first ballot, on 13 March 1932, Hindenburg secured over 18.5 million votes as against Hitler’s 11.3 million, failing to win an overall majority and was thus forced to a second round, where Hitler still received almost 37 per cent of the votes. During this time Brüning was being viciously attacked by the Prussian Junkers, who opposed his policies of distributing land to unemployed workers and denounced him as an "Agro-bolshevik" to Hindenburg. As a result of this, Brüning's and his cabinet resigned, on 30 May 1932. He was replaced with Franz von Papen, member of the catholic centre party, who expressed German capitalism with his anti-democratic beliefs; his real aim was to abrogate the Weimar constitution and create a government without political parties and that followed the values of bourgeois and aristocracy; his cabinet was known as the “cabinet of barons”, because of its aristocratic members who were completely unprepared for facing political affairs. His government was constantly ridiculed by Germans and he had practically no support from the Reichstag. One of von Papen’s first measures was to lift the ban, previously submitted by Brüning, on the SA and the SS, as a way to appease the Nazis, whom he hoped to trick into supporting his government. He ruled in an authoritarian manner by launching a coup against the centre-left coalition government of Prussia, a move described by Eberhard Kolb as a prelude to the Nazi seizure of power. The July elections showed once again how it was just a matter of time before the Nazis would took office in a new government; Ruth Henig thinks that their impact on the electorate was so vast thanks to their modern campaigning slogans and strong nationalist image, accompanied with the charismatic personality of Hitler. With 319 seats out of a total of 608, the Nazis and Communists now commanded an absolute majority in the Reichstag. The negotiations which began at that time revolved around the terms on which Hitler should have been brought into power. Von Papen was willing to agree to Hitler’s becoming Vice-Chancellor in his government, and to allow the Nazis a number of ministerial posts, but no more. Von Schleicher, the minister of defense, however, thought that Hitler’s strong showing in the election justified his appointment as Chancellor, and tried to bring Hindenburg round to this point of view. The President remained unimpressed with Hitler, and when Hitler told him explicitly that he would not co-operate with the new government unless appointed as Chancellor, the President simply responded that he could not accept that responsibility “before God, his conscience and the Fatherland”. However, Hitler had many ways in which he could continue to press his claims, for instance he could work to construct a majority coalition in the Reichstag. To this end, he entered into negotiations with the Catholic Centre and Bavarian People’s parties. 6 An alliance between the Catholic Centre Party and the Nazi Party had already operated successfully in some regional parliaments and now Hitler was hoping to use it to further his ambitions to gain the Chancellorship. Consequentially, von Papen was given the authorization to dissolve the Reichstag and to call fresh elections. The Reichstag’s response was to pass a vote of ‘no confidence’ in von Papen’s government. The second Reichstag election of 1932 was held on 6 November and yielded 33.1% for the Nazis, a little less than the previous elections but still a huge result. The Chairman of the Catholic Centre Party, Kaas, told Hindenburg in late November 1932, “There are 12 million Germans in the right opposition (Nazi Party) and 13.5 in the left (KPD 6 million, SPD 7.3 million) with the communists growing stronger daily. The left could unify at any time and it is going to be a long, cold winter. The NSDAP must be brought […] into government now.” Still, von Papen and Hindenburg refused to surrender to Hitler’s request. But increasing numbers of important interest groups—amongst industrialists, in the army, even in Hindenburg’s own family circle—were arguing that Hitler had to be brought in to power at the head of a new government, and that there was no other way to combat Communism. On 17 November Von Papen offered his resignation, and von Schleicher became the new Chancellor, having to face the most difficult challenge to try finding a deal with Hitler and the Nazis. Von Schleicher’s strategy rested on two main aims: the first one was to try negotiating with a more well-disposed Nazi leader than Hitler, taking advantage of the fact that in the 1932 elections the Nazis had lost a little percentage of the electorate, thus aiming to split the Nazi Party; secondly, he tried to gain the support of workers and their unions by abrogating some of von Papen’s most reactionary economic measures. He failed on both counts: his attempts to bring the Nazis into government under Gregor Strasser as his Vice-Chancellor failed when Strasser stepped out of negotiations, forced by Hitler himself who meanwhile was still demanding to become head of a new government and trying to hold the party together; on the other side, Schleicher was very criticized by nationalists exponents when he tried to negotiate with trade unions as a way to break the political stalemate. By January 1933 it was very clear that no one could form an effective government without Hitler. In a series of negotiations that included Von Papen himself, Hindemburg and the president's son Oskar, Hitler appeared modest in his demand, asking for just a few ministerial posts for the Nazis and his chancellorship. Also, they tried to convince the President that Hitler couldn't do damage as Chancellor of a nationalist government, with von Papen as his Vice-Chancellor, and that the new government would have the support of the Reichstag and of the public. Hindemburg finally agreed to appoint Hitler as Chancellor on the 30 January 1933. 7 3. Conclusion The debate about the end of the Weimar Republic continues until these days. Many are the contradicting theories regarding it. But in the end, was the fall of the Republic due to the weak constitution or to the decisions of the main figures of those years? Both have good supporting evidence as we showed, but there are also many interesting opposed opinions; for instance, many today strongly believe that the causes of the fall of the Republic are not to be found in the constitution; until the 1950s the blame on the proportional representation system was widely accepted by many historians, but today it lost character. One of the critics of it is Dick Geary who explicitly states that the reasons for the downfall are not to be found inside the constitution; he insists on the fact that the issue was not about the high number of existing parties, caused by the proportional system, but in their nature: first of all he says that each party had different interests in representing different classes or groups. As a proof for that he uses the example of the SPD, for which represented the working-class electorate, and had close links with the Free Trade Unions, while the DVP was more associated with big business interests. Secondly, many of the parties refused to welcome the democratic system (this is clear if we just think about the Nationalists with their authoritarian and imperial-like preferences, or how the Communists believed the Weimar Republic to be just a figuration of capitalism). Moreover, Geary believes that the real factor that contributed to the fall of the Weimar democracy is to be found in the constant economic crisis, much more relevant, in his opinion, than the constitutional weakness itself. This is also Henig's conclusion who, while admitting the importance that a proportional system had in fuelling the already existing division between parties, believes that the social, economic and social crisis Germany was facing “led political parties to appeal ever more intransigently to their own particular section of the electorate and to try to prevent supporters from being lost to other parties.” [Ruth Henig, “The Weimar Republic” (1998), page 28]. Eberhard Kolb also believes that a relative majority system would not have saved the Weimar democracy from the shift in the electorate towards more extremist wings, especially in the end of the 1920s, leading anyway to a rise of the Nazi party. This conclusion regarding the role of the constitution in the Weimar ongoings is today widely accepted and it is clear that the failure of the Republic did not completely depend on a weak constitution but on a much wider series of critical situations. We can support this conclusion also by looking once again at the relevance that article 48 had in the occurrences; of course its use was very influential in the rise of extremist forces, but it is to remember that if the parties had collaborated more instead of following their single interests, a majority would have been formed, balancing the President's powers. 8 Finally, recapping, what led to the fall of the Weimar Republic are a wide rage of situations; first of all the regime was established in very inauspicious circumstances, in a defeated country and at the end of a long war, which consequences were visible in the social and economic crisis that Germany was undergoing. A further important issue is the lack of support from the population in the introduction of a democratic republic, that can be clearly seen in the 1925 election of Hindenburg as we previously stated. Moreover, many historians like Hans Mommsen have questioned how much support there was between the population for an effective change in the social and political landscape; he believes that it is important to underline that the fear of the ongoing disorders, prevented the population from having a social revolution that could have wrested power and influence from the traditional elites and to laid firm foundations for the new republic. Another factor that damaged the Republic from the beginning is the struggle that the political parties had to undergo in ending the war, creating a new government and collaborating in order to create a stable government. These difficulties were of course worsened by the lack of a real economic growth, that also led to dangerous electoral shifts towards anti-democratic extremist parties. Thanks to the wide support from the population gained by the Nazis, Hitler was able to negotiate his rise to power, leading, in a short period of time, to his election as Chancellor by a reluctant Hindenburg, and afterwards, to the Third Reich. 9 Bibliography Books: 1. GEARY DICK: Hitler and Nazism. Routledge, London and New York 2000, pp. 13-38. 2. HENIG RUTH: The Weimar Republic, 1919-1933. Routledge, London, New York 2002, pp. 13-15, 57-85. 3. KOLB EBERHARD: The Weimar Republic. Routledge, London, New York 2004, pp. 101- 223. 4. MOMMSEN HANS: The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, London 1989, pp. 217-544. 5. SHIRER WILLIAM L.: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. A History of Nazi Germany. Arrow Books, London 1998, pp. 102-244. Articles: 1. BESSEL RICHARD: The Nazi Capture of Power. In: Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 39, n. 2, 2004, pp. 169-188. 10