Conservative and progressive extremists had a larger combined representation that the Social Democrats who had traditionally been the largest single party in the Reichstag, and contributed to the Reichstag malfunction during a time of severe economic crisis that were merely met with austerity measures in the form of reducing public spending and raising taxation as potential solutions that proved to be ineffective, and were also met with public protests that materialised in the form of voting for extremist political parties. Although President Hindenburg’s and rightist advisors were disturbed by the rise of extremist parties, reducing the power of the Reichstag seemed more important than stemming the tide of political extremism, which was also supported by industrialists providing financial support to the NSDAP. The growth of anti-democratic parties increased the disfunction of the Reichstag. The Nazis and communists often deliberately obstructed parliamentary debates, and while those who wanted to limit parliamentary rights, such as Brüning and Hindenburg’s advisors, the political instability in the Reichstag was a welcome form of dubious evidence for their conviction that parliamentary democracy was implausible, which was reinforced by the political chaos perpetuated by competing mobs of political supporters
There did not appear to be any solution for abating political extremism at this time, while the SPD chose to support Brüning and tolerate his continued use of Article 48 in the interest of enabling presidential government to function with a semblance of Reichstag support. This led to acquiescing to deflationary policies designed to stimulate exports through reducing wages, salaries and public expenditures while increasing consumer goods taxes and ordering price cuts, while also providing subsidies to industry and agriculture. These measures following conventional economic solutions to recover from the depression would bear most heavily on the working class, and precipitated new elections that would certainly bolster wide popular support for the NSDAP as a party of reactionary protest against the Weimar republic, without providing realistic solutions to end the economic crisis, in the face of dissatisfaction among broad elements of the electorate with the mainstream political parties, and in reaction to the widespread fear of communism.
Fighting extremism could also have been accomplished by suppressing it, but this is always difficult in a democracy, and the peculiar federal structure of Weimar was a special hindrance. Law enforcement was the prerogative of the states, and not the national government. However, the state governments could not suspend constitutional guarantees, except with the specific approval of the federal government under Article 48 that provided for the emergency suspension of civil rights. Prussia excluded Nazis and communists from municipal offices and the civil service in 1930, and prohibited the wearing of paramilitary uniforms. However, this was hardly effective, since the federal government could not interfere if state governments appointed Nazis to public office, as is what happened in the state of Brunswick. The national government could have done this only if it took over the police under Article 48, which would have led to serious conflict in Bavaria, where separatist sentiment was greatly robust.
Brüning took some mild measures to control radical violence before 1932, such as giving police permission to shut down meetings on 48 hours notice. Posters and other advertising had to be approved by the police. Private uniforms were banned by police, and then nationally in November 1931. The penalties for high treason were raised, and the police could arrest anyone who bore arms in public meetings and parades. However, these measures fell short of outright disbanding of paramilitary formations that now far outnumbered the size of the regular army. By the end of 1931, the centre of gravity of German political life was rapidly moving away from the Reichstag to the streets, where the Nazis and their opponents came into frequent collision while Hitler was determined to use the electoral process to bring him and the NSDAP into power through exploiting the prevailing apathy and despair among the electorate, based on the premise that the increasing numbers of his followers would achieve the unification of the German population on the strength of romanticised ideals for a brighter future. The Nazis had enrolled over 100,000 in the SA, and therefore as large as the professional army in 1931, which protected party meetings and intimidated political opponents, and in street fighting against leftist quasi-military organisations, such as the Iron Republican Front for the Defeat of Fascism and the Red Front and the Reichsbanner, which appeared as an outbreak of a threat of civil war that the Nazis used to promote their cause.
While there was political violence at the grassroots levels, the defects of the constitution showed the weaknesses of the government at the highest level. The proportional representation, which allowed for extremist candidates to acquire a voice in the national government that could become amplified while destabilising parliamentary democracy by drawing support from conventional political parties, and the popular election of the president as two constitutional defects only existed in theory. Besides, the two-thirds vote necessary to amend the constitution would have been difficult to get in the Reichstag. Two attempts were made in 1924 and 1930 to change proportional representation by enlarging the number of election districts and limiting candidacies, but both attempts failed due to opposition of the rank-and-file party members. A third defect was in the allocation of presidential powers. Hindenburg as president later proved to be a fatal decision for the republic as a result of a defect in the constitution that allowed him to remove the final obstacle to Hitler’s future rise to power. The constitution called for the election of the president by popular vote, rather than chosen by the two houses of parliament. There was also a defect in the allocation of presidential powers that were not carefully limited. A chancellor could be dismissed even before he was defeated in the Reichstag by a vote of no confidence. A chancellor could also be appointed by the president, even if he had no chance of getting the support of the Reichstag. He could thus sign decrees dissolving the Reichstag and rule by decree in its absence during a political deadlock, which would subsequently be frequently used as the Reichstag proved to be unproductive at passing bills. Hence, Hindenburg imposed 109 emergency decrees between 1930 and 1932, in contrast to the Reichstag promulgating twenty-two enactments during a time when the separate political parties would not bring themselves to cooperate to resolve economic difficulties. Hindenburg thus governed by decree during a time when parliamentary democracy appeared to be impossible to operate, especially from the dissolution of the Reichstag in February 1931.
The constitution did not provide minimal guarantees for the control and limitation of police powers in such cases. A fourth shortcoming was the peculiarity of the federal system. Prussia was so large that it literally functioned as another central government, rather than a regional one, and there was almost continuous friction between the two cabinets housed in Berlin. The overall distribution of power between the federal government and the states was unsatisfactory. An attempt was made in 1928 to ameliorate the Reich-Prussian dualism by increasing national jurisdiction over Prussian provinces and regionalising them, but this effort failed. Brüning’s financial and economic policy was also constrained by the regulations of the Young Plan reparations payments regulations to reduce them to a practicable scale, which were ratified by Germany in May 1930 in exchange for French occupation troops withdrawing from the Rhineland, which took place by June 1930.
Deficit spending and inflationary policies to deal with economic difficulties was nearly impossible while Germany was largely obliged to follow policies of other states, which led to economic factors that contributed to the breakdown of the republic during the ongoing world economic crisis. The reparations settlement was thus destroyed as a result of the onset of the Great Depression before it had been implemented, as the foreign debt greatly exacerbated the effects of this economic crisis. Germany announced its inability to pay reparations in June 1930, after having had made the equivalent of 10.8 million gold RM between September 1924 and July 1931, while having had borrowed 20.5 million RM. This change in economic circumstances led to temporarily halting reparations payments by the introduction of the Hoover Moratorium in July 1931, which stopped international debt payments for a year, and ended reparations payments altogether in practice, after Germany had paid two billion in reparations out of seven billion in loans that were later repudiated. The budget was nearly balanced and the public debt was low, but fighting extremism by economic means also proved to be ineffective at a time when unemployment reached between thirty-five and forty percent, while the remainder of the workforce was underemployed as industrial capacity was reduced to 1890s levels, and the state was on the verge of insolvency as international trade was reduced by more than half of what it had been before the economic collapse in the U.S.
Political factors also continued contributing to the breakdown of political stability during this time. The crucial importance of the presidency was then emphasized in the spring of 1932, at the end of Hindenburg’s term of office. Although he was in a state of mental and physical decline and wanted to retire, Brüning insisted that he remain at the head of affairs as the only alternative to Hitler when the Nazi vote was increasing in every Land election. Conservative political elements expected that Hitler’s influence could be stemmed by re-electing Hindenburg as president in the 1932 presidential elections. Recognising that the NSDAP was a seditious organisation dedicated to undermining the constitution and overthrowing the republic, an emergency decree was passed on 13 April 1932 banning all paramilitary organisations, following Brüning’s urging Hindenburg to support nationwide action against the Nazis.
Hindenburg showed a lack of political insight, rather than displaying sound judgement in the affairs of state at a time when he was ailing both physically and mentally at an advanced age. Brüning was pressured into resigning, largely due to the influence of Kurt von Schleicher, a military adviser to Wilhelm Gröner, the Minister of Defence, who envisaged creating an authoritarian regime, a revitalised military force, and curbing the influences of radical political parties, specifically both the NSDAP and the KPD. However, while Brüning was depending on the SPD to forward realistic economic policies without raising taxation that would further impoverish the national population and allowing prices to drop faster than wages, the September 1931 election results led to diminishing support, as was indicated by the governing coalition reducing its number of seats from 236 to 183, and the NSDAP increasing its support, especially from among the unemployed who did not vote for the KPD, from 12 to 107. Schleicher interpreted the September 1931 election results as the SPD increasingly losing popular support, and therefore sought to harness this support from the NSDAP instead as a pragmatic matter of expediency.
Schleicher persuaded Hindenburg to press for Brüning’s resignation for having banned the Sturmabteilung as a self-styled revolutionary army and Schutzstaffel, Hitler’s personal security unit, as serious dangers to state security. Schleicher decided to appoint a new chancellor who would not show any favour to socialists and do their best to prepare the ground for coming to an understanding with Hitler, who he thought could be manipulated, believing that the Nazis’ influence could be reduced by allowing them to share government responsibility, which he and others believed would divide the moderates from the radicals in the NSDAP, and also tried to persuade Hitler or another National Socialist to join the government under a non-Nazi chancellor, while Hitler always insisted on being given the chancellorship himself.
New elections were called, and the stage was then set for Brüning’s dismissal at the instigation of Schleicher, the Reichswehr minister, which removed the last semblance of a functioning Weimar democracy. His resignation was largely due to Schleicher determining that avoiding a Nazi takeover that would likely strain the loyalties of the Reichswehr was to come to terms with Hitler and include him in a presidential cabinet under a more conservative chancellor, as a result of Brüning having banned the SA and SS under pressure from several Lȁnder as a serious danger to state security, which Schleicher believed could lead to right wing reactions to banning nationalist organisations. Schleicher therefore persuaded Hindenburg in early May 1932 to dismiss Brüning by informing him that Hitler had agreed not to oppose a new chancellor on the condition of lifting the ban on the SA and SS, and ordering new elections. Hindenburg agreed that Brüning was to be dismissed due to his dependence on SPD support, and starting the restructuring of the political order by appointing a new chancellor.
Brüning had been operating the presential system for two years, and consequently seriously undermining parliamentary democracy, which conformed to Hindenburg’s advisers’ plans to restore the monarchy and reduce the powers of the Reichstag. He was aware that his deflationary policies that contributed materially to the abolition of reparations, he greatly strengthened the popularity of the extremist parties while failing to remedy unemployment that reached to between thirty-five and forty percent, or a total of approximately six million, and was now was preparing cautiously to stimulate the economy by drafting a program of public works, including a proposal to dissolve some inefficient estates in East Prussia to be re-settled with 600,000 unemployed and function as small-scale farmers. East Prussia third largest province in Prussia with the lowest population density in Germany that had received loan subsidies to sustain its agricultural production since 1926, which were reinforced with credits granted to East Prussian agricultural producers on 18 May 1929, and then further decrees from July 1930, culminating in sixty-one laws and regulations for this purpose termed Eastern Aid on 31 March 1931 to relieve debt burdens for agricultural enterprises east of the Elbe River.
A representative of landowning circles, Oldenbourg-Januschau, visited Hindenburg and persuaded him that the chancellor was an “agrarian Bolshevik” bent on socialising agriculture. When Brüning appeared with these new emergency decrees on 29 May 1931, Hindenburg refused to sign them, and insisted on the formation of a more right-wing cabinet while Brüning did not manage to prepare the way for a conservative restoration, which necessarily entailed dealing with the Nazis to reach a compromise with them. The chancellor could not turn the electoral tide in the government’s favour against the left with his economic measures, and reparations and disarmament also likely to be resolved in Germany’s favour, and therefore tendered his resignation on 29 May and that of his cabinet, which Hindenburg accepted on the basis of refusing to sanction threats to the preservation of large agrarian estates.
Economic considerations influenced Hindenburg to agree with his close conservative advisors to engage the National Socialists and marshal their support as junior partners in an authoritarian regime. Brüning was removed from office due to his lack of support among conservatives and nationalists, and appointed Franz von Papen on 30 May 1932 in an attempt to restore a conservative government, which lacked popular support to operate. Like Hindenburg, Papen also lacked political insight, or like Brüning, lacked mass appeal, and did not have any parliamentary support at all and was determined to dismantle the republican system. As an aristocrat with military and industrial connections, he was opposed by the left and the Centre Party for having replaced Brüning, and he was not personally popular with the nationalists either. Moreover, Hitler attacked him, just as he had attacked Brüning, regardless of his appeal to the NSDAP by abolishing the ban on SA and other Nazi uniforms that Brüning had instituted, and dismissing the governments of various provinces and assuming control as Reich commissioner. New elections were called again on 4 June in an effort to appease the Nazis and acquire their support in order to collaborate on terms acceptable to the conservatives.
Following a bitter election campaign marked by further street violence regardless of the government ban on paramilitary formations, the NSDAP received 37.3 percent of the national vote in June 1932. The second ballot resulted in Hindenburg receiving 19.359 million votes, or nearly 50 percent of the vote. Hitler received 13.418 million, or 30.1 percent of the vote, and the Communist party candidate Ernst Thälmann, 3.706 million, or 13.2 percent in what was effectively a plebiscite for or against National Socialism supported by nationalist voters and an old soldier’s name backed by the Socialist and the Centre parties and an alternative to lawlessness. Although the NSDAP was defeated, Hitler harnessing the strength of his charismatic non-conventional appeal won a great moral victory by nearly doubling the vote in favour by acquiring an additional two million votes when the population was duped into believing that he would be able to provide radical solutions on the basis of propaganda of Goebbels creating a cult following based on vague positive appearing imagery and simplistic optimistic messaging with underlying claims of introducing radical new policies at NSDAP rallies that were instrumental in appealing to audiences of voters to be manipulated through fanfare and Hitler’s influential eloquent speeches appealing to their senses rather than reasoning through simplistic messaging, which were delivered rapidly at different locations by taking advantage of making innovative use of air travel, as well as radio broadcasts and films to reach wide segments of the electorate through masterful propaganda orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels who created a personality cult around Hitler as an alleged national saviour. Another underlying element of creating this cult following was setting up alleged enemies of the state in the form of the Jews who held an inordinate amount of influence over the population, and communists who advocated the overthrow of the state, as scapegoats for the nation’s ills.
Papen suspended the nationwide ban on the SS and SA at Schleicher’s instigation on 14 June, in return for a promise from Hitler that the Nazi Reichstag fraction would not oppose his continuation in office or vote down his emergency decrees in an attempt to integrate the right. This led to a new wave of street violence during the summer of 1932. Meanwhile, in order to gain favour with the right before going to the polls and strengthen the government against Hitler, Schleicher and Papen decided to stage a coup to displace the SPD-Centre Prussian government in order to gain control of the police, arguing that the Prussian government had failed in its duty to impose law and order in this largest German state. Papen declared a state of emergency in Prussia on 20 July 1932, and appointed himself Reich commissioner and dismissed the Prussian ministers on the grounds that they had favoured the communists and failed to prevent street violence, for which Papen was responsible by lifting the ban on the SA. This coup nevertheless did not enable Papen to gain nationalist support away from Hitler and the NSDAP.
Papen then called for new Reichstag elections on 31 July 1932. The Nazis gained a slight increase from the presidential election, and emerged as the strongest party in Germany with 13,745,000 votes, composing 37.4 percent of the total, and holding 230 seats in the Reichstag. Hindenburg won 53 percent, Hitler, 36.8 percent and Thälmann, 10 percent respectively in the presidential election, which constituted protest votes against the Hindenburg government. As the leader of the largest party, Hitler then had a constitutional right to form a government, and Schleicher and Papen agreed he must join the cabinet. Meanwhile, Hitler demanded full powers for his party, which caused a complete political deadlock while attacking the Papen government, not leaving any hope that Reichstag would tolerate his leadership. When the Reichstag met on 30 August 1932, the NSDAP and the KPD formed a majority in the Reichstag with their opposing views on destroying parliament democracy, thus making constitutional government impossible. Papen promptly dissolved the Reichstag when it met in September 1932 while knowing it had no hope of success after Göring, the newly elected Reichstag president, carried a motion of no confidence in the Papen government with a vote 512 to 42.
Hence, even at the time of Hitler’s strongest parliamentary success in free elections, the clear majority of German voters opposed him, but his profile nevertheless was greatly promoted as a form of messianic personality with ongoing influential Nazi propaganda, regardless of the vague pledges for future economic prosperity and political stability without forwarding any distinctive rational plans to sustain this rhetoric promising positive developments for every constituency, while voters cast protest votes for the NSDAP in reaction against the failure of the Weimar republic. Among this reaction sentiment was the economic crisis that the SPD had failed to manage and therefore generated resentment, while the conservative policies of the Centre party also failed to provide encouragement for the future, which mainly retained its Catholic southern German electoral support base, while Brüning’s policies did not alleviate economic hardships. The German National People’s Party (DNVP) and the German People’s Party (DVP) retained their conservative outlook that likewise did not inspire optimism by following a new approach to the future, while support for the Communist party (KPD) increased mainly among the unemployed who sought radical solutions to the ongoing economic crisis. In short, the NSDAP succeeded in garnering a broad range of support, including various segments of the electorate who feared a communist state seizure of their property, including the unemployed, the self-employed and members of the middle class, on the strength of vague promises to establish a positive new order in reaction to the difficulties of the time as voters sought to find radical solutions to the “crisis of capitalism” through legal means at the national level.
The next election on 6 November did not resolve the deadlock, but there was a significant fall in the Nazi vote, polling 11,730,000 votes, composing thirty-three percent of the vote, and returning with 196 seats, and was confirmed at subsequent Land elections. This was in part due to Papen’s withdrawal from the disarmament conference until Germany was conceded equality in armaments, which impressed nationalist opinion and led to an increase in nationalist seats from thirty-seven to fifty-two. The communist vote also increased to nearly six million, giving them a hundred seats, partly due to Hitler’s supporters becoming disillusioned with the leader’s failure to seize power in August, while the KPD retained support from unskilled labourers whose sources of income were especially precarious, and remained gravely concerned about the ongoing economic instability, whereas unionised workers typically represented a bloc of solidarity that primarily supported the SPD, and worked together with Jews with whom they shared their economic concerns.
An indefinite amount of middle class supporters were also disconcerted by Hitler’s attempts to gain working class votes, although the lower middle class having unstable sources of income who had been largely unconcerned with national political life, as the primary base of support for the NSDAP. While minority segments of the population among industrialists and military personnel supported the NSDAP, this party largely drew a wide range support as a reactionary protest party against the Weimar republic political parties that had represented coherent population elements, particularly the lower middle class, commonly composed of small business owners, the self-employed, shopkeepers, merchants, and landowning farmers who feared becoming economically dispossessed. The Nazis claimed they would protect and revitalise the middle class from large capitalists that could outcompete middle class earning capacity, and “Marxist Jews” who called for the socialisation of investment assets, arguing that the other political parties had neglected their interests by catering to the interests of large business owners who they claimed influenced political life through using their extensive wealth, and radical leftists who threatened the middle class with the expropriation of their private property exercised political influence through collective organisations, such as the trade unions and leftist political parties, which isolated the middle class, while also specifically targeting Jews as an imaginary enemy that was represented in the two former population segments. Although the NSDAP vote was slightly reduced, it remained the strongest party, and it was clear that the new Reichstag would not tolerate Papen as chancellor, who also lacked the support of the Centre Party that expelled him from the party due his unpopularity among its members. Papen submitted his resignation in November, assuming that Hindenburg would reinstate him while Hitler would be unable to form a government by forming a parliamentary majority, and accept Papen’s proposals to dissolve the Reichstag, postpone elections, and rule by decree until the constitution had been amended along authoritarian lines while giving a reflationary programme time to work.
Although Hindenburg supported Papen, Schleicher persuaded Hindenburg he believed he would be able to divide the NSDAP by removing its left-wing led by Gregor Strasser, in addition to marshaling support from sympathetic trade union elements in the SPD and the Centre party, and introduce a constitutionally admissible progressive social program. Schleicher also informed the cabinet that Papen’s policy would lead to civil war and a general strike, and even a Polish invasion, which the Reichswehr would be unable to resist. Hindenburg thereby appointed Schleicher as Chancellor on 2 December 1932, rather than risking the possibility of a civil war.
Schleicher had always hoped to reduce Nazi influence by letting them share government responsibility, believing that they could be moderated through having to take responsibility, which would then divide the NSDAP into moderates and radicals. Hence, he attempted to persuade Hitler or another Nazi to join the government under a non-Nazi as chancellor, but Hitler still insisted on complete power as chancellor, which Hindenburg refused to grant. Schleicher soon realised he had miscalculated, as Hitler was able to reassert his control over his party, and also turned to the left with a program of public works, price-fixing, restoration of wage and relief cuts, and land resettlement in East Prussia that turned the right against him, and also did not gain the support of the Socialist and Centre parties. He then proposed dissolving the Reichstag in which he could not gain a majority, and then declare a state of emergency, ban the Nazis and communists and postpone elections indefinitely in the face of a new political deadlock.
Papen meanwhile persuaded Hindenburg that Hitler was a viable alternative to Schleicher, since the Nazis and Nationalists could have a reasonable chance of obtaining a majority in the Reichstag. Papen suggested to Hindenburg that Hitler was now willing to share power with them to placate restless elements in his party if he were appointed chancellor and would take two Nazis into the cabinet, while the other seven ministers would be conservatives, and Papen himself would be vice-chancellor. This was calculated at containing Hitler’s influence and be forced to take account of the conservative majority, and thereby stabilise domestic political life. Pressure from opposition from landowners against Schleicher likewise influenced Hindenburg, and Schleicher also lost the backing of heavy industry that Papen had had during his chancellorship. In addition to facing hostility from conservatives, Schleicher also lost the unqualified confidence of the military. He was thus unable to form a majority government in the face of an overwhelming hostile Reichstag, which he proposed dissolving, declaring a state of emergency, banning the NSDAP and the KPD, and postponing elections indefinitely to prevent a no confidence vote in his government. Although he was not affiliated with the NSDAP, Papen was sympathetic to Hitler, and organised a secret meeting with Hitler and his immediate subordinates, and president Hindenburg’s son, Major Oscar von Hindenburg, who agreed to recommend to his father that Hitler should be appointed as chancellor, in exchange for five thousand acres of land and an army promotion. Rather than allowing imposing a full presidential dictatorship indefinitely in the face of political instability, Papen then persuaded Hindenburg that the NSDAP and DNVP could obtain a Reichstag majority as an alternative to the Schleicher government, in which he envisaged Hitler’s influence would be contained, which Schleicher admitted to Hindenburg on 23 January that he was unable to establish a parliamentary majority in the face of NSDAP opposition. Hindenburg then decided to dismiss Schleicher on 28 January 1933.
The Nazi electoral rise had been stopped in November 1932, and disputes within the NSDAP and between the SA and the party showed signs of weakness that could lead to a break if it was held in opposition for much longer. However, unlike the other parties, the NSDAP would not stand to lose voter support after having taken hold of the government during a time of crisis. Having large armies of violent street fighters without any respect for law and order, the Nazis were determined not to let power slip out of their hands after they had gained access to the national government. After Hitler had become chancellor and the police having been under Nazi control, the Nazis took violent action against communists and other forms of opposition. Apart from voter support that could later be dismissed, Hitler was also favoured by elements in the army, which was the only German institution that was historically powerful enough to oppose him, and gained the army’s support by restoring a sense of hope through an expanded army, which was something that the limited Weimar army could not offer them. Besides, like many other, the army leaders considered foreign powers and the communists to be the main dangers to the state, and therefore shared more with the Nazis than with the other parties. Moreover, there were not any right-wing alternatives to the NSDAP in the view of middle-class voters, who were concerned about the increasing support for the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during these early years of the worldwide depression that had begun following October 1929 the stock market crash in New York on 29 October, leading to the German economy to collapse thereafter upon American loans being suddenly recalled. Social conditions were marked by relentlessly rising unemployment, as well as the right-wing press encouraging voting for Hitler who claimed to be able to lead the way to recovery, albeit on ambiguous messaging with Nazi propaganda posturing Hitler as a potential saviour of the nation.
The collapse of the Weimar republic effectively began when Brüning had chosen to govern in an authoritarian manner, and the democratic political system then continued being demolished. When Papen took office and the Social Democratic government was removed, an irreversible decision to rule through an authoritarian right-wing regime that was not supported by parliament, without taking notice of the left and the trade unions. Although Schleicher made a belated attempt to return to a more efficiently balanced system, but this attempt foundered on the interests of industry, large-scale agriculture, and other conservative-nationalist elements that had been strengthened by the Papen regime. These became more determined than before that no attempt should be made to overcome the crisis of Weimar parliamentarianism and its welfare system with the help of a temporary application of authoritarian policies, as they envisaged was exploiting the crisis to deliberately bring about a permanent change of the constitution in an authoritarian direction, outside the spirit of the constitution through using Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The army also set out to gain a dominant influence on government formation and government policy through direct links with the President, outside of the sphere of parliament and cabinet decision making. However, conservative-nationalist elements could not provide a popular support for a conservative restoration, and meanwhile, both the authoritarian presidential governments of Papen and Schleicher remained dependent on the political support of the National Social Party of Germany (NSDAP, or the Nazi party), which was in turn supported by a mass rejection of Weimar parliamentarianism and non-conservative parties. The slow evolution towards a more democratic society that had begun during the later days of the empire and continued under the Weimar Republic thus ended with a radical break in its development. Threats from the political extremes were one of the causes that later led to the breakdown of the Weimar republic, as the rise of intransigent anti-democratic political parties eventually succeeded in building up mass followings, and the majority of the voting public ultimately voted for parties that were committed to dictatorship. (See http://www.weimarer-wahlen.de/en/index.html.)
The gains made by the communist party were considerably high until December 1932, although the NSDAP received 33.1 percent of the vote, which composed the highest number of vote among twelve competing political parties. The onset of the Great Depression and mass unemployment at a time when capitalism appeared to be discredited, and the Stalinist Soviet Union was hardly affected due to the isolation of the Soviet economy from the world. This astonishing success of the NSDAP in the September 1931 elections was due to the prevailing economic distress and increasingly greater demoralisation with the Weimar political system, as well as Hitler’s extraordinary political acumen creating a break with the past that was reinforced with his vague positive messaging along with colourfully staged displays during NSDAP meetings appealing to people’s emotions over reasoning, particularly those with limited intelligence and political consciousness with conservative values, while skillful Nazi political propaganda directed voters’ attention to envisaged enemies of the national population. The number of NSDAP occupied seats then more than doubled and became the largest party in the Reichstag in July 1932, whereas the SPD that was associated with the creation of the Weimar republic and the subsequent economic problems as a result of overspending, while the other major political parties likewise appeared to be increasingly discredited and could not provide any alternative radical solutions out of the economic crisis of capitalism, while most of the unemployed voted for the KPD, in contrast to those who were fearful of losing their property in a violent revolution and civil war. In contrast, the NSDAP received votes from a wide range of employed and self-employed social elements who also primarily provided this party with grassroots financial support, regardless of the party failing to provide viable lucidity for how it would fulfill its promises for an improved future society, on the grounds of socialism on a national or ethnic nationalist “racial” level to be established through legal rather than revolutionary means.
Many voters who were disappointed with the non-radical conventional parties joined other dozens of small parties built around single issues that appeared to advocate for their concerns, such as the segments of the population affected by the inflation and farmers facing economic crisis, which also weakened the more moderate parties and made the formation of parliamentary majorities more difficult. There was strong attraction of the NSDAP with younger Protestant voters. In terms of voting, the problem of the Weimar republic was that the most radical socialist and Protestant parties reduced or eliminated more moderate and democratic parties. The NSDAP took over most of the Protestant votes, and also gained support among the socialists and Catholic voters, although these latter ones proved more resistant to them than the former. The communists also became stronger among socialist voters, but never managed to dominate it or expand the voting base beyond it. The Nazis also absorbed most of their voters until 1933, which, in addition to the rise of the numbers of seats held by the hitherto marginal radical parties, paralysed the functions of parliamentary democracy due to the NSDAP and the KPD having won a destructive majority after both had renounced launching an uprising to take power after 1923, and instead looked to gaining power through parliamentary means.
Apart from radicalisation of political life and political violence between the extremist political parties, there were likewise other causes for the breakdown of the Weimar Republic that the Nazis had put out of business through legal means. Firstly, people did not recognise that the Weimar Republic emerged from a lost devastating war, and was poorer than before the war due to astronomic wartime spending and hidden inflation. This was not acknowledged in public, and most people remained unaware of deep structural problems. Hence, the revolution of 1918 and the Weimar Republic were blamed for Germany’s economic and social problems. In order to eliminate wartime debts, to pay reparations and to fund a social welfare state, the Weimar governments would have to triple the 1913 taxes at a time when people were much worse off. Only a full awareness of the problem and a united stable government with widespread support could have put Germany’s economy and finances on a healthy standing again, but this would have implied a many more years of suffering and poverty, which was an unacceptable prospect to the masses who had already suffered because of the war, and would neither believe nor accept that all had been in vain, and that after all of the suffering during the war, they should be much more worse off than before. Hence, Germany was much poorer after the war because it had fought it, which was not publicized. It was easier and seemed more plausible to blame the hardship on Versailles and the Weimar politicians who had signed the peace treaty.
Another long term problem was that the revolution of 1918 was more of an accident and hardly expressed a majority feeling for the disappearance of the monarchy and the Bismarckian constitution, while all but the radical left was determined to eliminate the monarchy. When revolutionary unrest made this impossible, the SPD and later the democratic parties took power when conservatives did not want it, and when the circumstances for the creation of a social welfare state, the goal of the SPD, could not have been worse. Hence, Ludendorff succeeded in the SPD and the democrats having to share the blame for the dysfunction the old elites had caused.
A third long term problem of the Weimar republic was the widespread anti-democratic feeling on the left, and especially on the right. The radical leftists considered the Weimar republic to be a capitalist state based on a group of conservative and reactionary military and aggressive industrialists, and socialists had betrayed their cause by allying themselves with reactionary circles. The radical rightists saw the revolution of 1918 as unacceptably overthrowing the monarchies, while the stab in the back legend conveniently placed the blame for military breakdown and the subsequent peace treaty on the democrats and socialists who willingly executed foreign interests, and also argued that parties and parliaments had too much power, believing that parties divided and undermined the true interests of the state.
Another question is why the Nazis succeeded in the Weimar republic, which resulted from the short-term causes of the republic’s breakdown. During the relative stability in 1928 when the economic conditions appeared to be recovery on the strength of American loans, a Social Democrat, Hermann Müller, who formed a government with broad parliamentary support that included the SPD, most of the middle-sized parties, and the German People’s Party (DVP), a conservative pro-industrialist party, on the moderate right. The interests of the parties in this coalition government contradicted each other, especially since worker and employer interests were both represented in the government, but these parties managed to solve their conflicts by compromise as long as the economic situation remained stable. With the beginning of the depression, the preservation of unemployment insurance became a serious problem at a time when millions lost their jobs. Employers and the bourgeois parties wanted to cut state support for the jobless, while the SPD and the trade unions considered this to be too harsh at a time when increasingly more workers became dependent on state support, and this conflict ended with the breakup of this grand coalition in March 1930.
The first step toward the end of the Republic was then the establishment of a presidential cabinet under Heinrich Brüning in March 1930 with the approval of President Hindenburg who agreed to sign presidential decrees if the government faced opposition in the Reichstag. Brüning envisioned restoring a more authoritarian constitution that would limit parliamentary rights and keeping the socialists and trade unions out of the state, while relying on the support of conservative interests to supersede parliamentary democracy that had ceased to function. This government was no longer supported by a Reichstag majority until the Nazi takeover. The government no longer functioned democratically within the framework of the constitution while depending on using the president’s emergency powers to undermine to impose legislation, rather than protect democracy.
Conservatives intended to transform German democracy into an authoritarian system, while perhaps reasoning that the early depression would make it possible to remove the democratic SPD from power. Although the Reichstag could later disapprove the president’s measures, the president could in turn dissolve the Reichstag and call for new elections. Between the dissolution and the elections, Hindenburg and Brüning could enact laws without parliamentary control. After Hindenburg had given his approval to dissolve the Reichstag in the summer of 1930 and 1932, the extremist parties, especially the Nazis, were able to make enormous gains while profiting from the economic crisis. Industrial production had fallen by forty percent, an estimated fifty percent of businesses went bankrupt, and while an estimated six million Germans were unemployed by February 1932 that mostly affected workers under twenty-five years old, real wages had fallen by a third. Communist votes also increased with the start of the Great Depression and almost doubled until December 1932 while the KPD benefited from economic disruption and mass unemployment as capitalism appeared to be discredited and the Stalinist Soviet Union was hardly affected. However, most communists did not realise that this resulted more from the isolation of the Soviet economy from the world market, rather than the merits of socialist economics. While being blindly obedient to Moscow’s direction of the Third International uniting the world’s Communist Party’s under the Soviet Union’s leadership, the KPD contributed to destabilizing the Weimar Republic by concentrating on fighting the Nazis as well as the SPD, and therefore divided working class unity among the voting public.
Brüning’s politics failed to secure Hindenburg’s reappointment without an election in the spring of 1932, which was only possible through a two-thirds majority vote in favor of Hindenburg in the Reichstag. Meanwhile, the NSDAP, the conservative nationalist and anti-democratic German-Nationalist People’s Party (DNVP) composed of conservatives and other right-wing organisations, including remnants of anti-Semitic parties, and the KPD, however, thwarted Brüning’s efforts to avoid presidential elections. Hindenburg gained almost 50 percent of the vote, whereas Hitler received 30 percent when they actually took place from 13 March to 10 April 1932, Ernst Thälmann, the Communist leader, received 13 percent. In the second ballot Hindenburg won 53 percent to nearly 37 percent for Hitler, and only 10 percent for Thälmann. The clear majority of the German voters opposed Hitler, regardless of his strongest parliamentary success in free elections. However, Hindenburg resented that right-wing parties voted for Hitler, whereas he was elected the SPD and the Center Party that supported Brüning. At a time when a confidential contact between president and chancellor had become crucial, Brüning could not maintain Hindenburg’s confidence, and was dismissed at the end of May 1932. Unlike Brüning, his successors, Franz von Papen and General Schleicher, had hardly any parliamentary support and continued disrupting parliamentary democracy.
Schleicher had always planned to undermine Nazi influence by allowing its representatives to share government responsibility, expecting this enormous burden of political responsibility would reduce their power the Nazis and divide the party into between moderates and radicals in view of disputes within the NSDAP and between the Sturmabteilung (SA) as a political military force, which became an increasingly dangerous element in public life under the leadership of ex-Reichswehr Captain Ernst Röhm, the Chief of Staff of the SA from 5 January 1931. At a time when the severely depressed prevailing economic conditions led to high unemployment drew large amounts of unemployed and a significant proportion of criminals to join the SA, and engaged in dramatically greater amounts of violent incidents, this paramilitary political force was characterised as an undisciplined mob. Röhm introduced its centralisation and improving its discipline and coordination, and increased its size from 250,000 to 400,000 members who underwent military training. Schleicher repeatedly attempted to persuade Hitler or one of his associates to join the government under a non-Nazi as chancellor. Hitler always refused, and persisted in his demand to being given the chancellorship. Papen planned for a coup d’état to dissolve the Reichstag altogether without setting a date for it to re-convene while imposing martial law, but Schleicher rejected this idea because he feared a Polish attack on Germany. Schleicher, as the new chancellor on 2 December 1932 and January 1933 made final attempts to split the NSDAP, until he realised the danger of Hitler’s chancellorship.
The destruction of democracy from 1930 to 1932 gave the Nazis unprecedented opportunities for expanding their power and taking over a weak state. This also is important in explaining why the Weimar republic failed, in view of the overwhelming electoral successes of the NSDAP from 1930 onward while support conservative and right-wing parties broke down, becoming a credible alternative to the more moderate parties that were anti-democratic and anti-socialist. The Nazi message also went beyond the traditional anti-republican feeling. The Nazi idea of a Volksgemeinschaft, or people’s community, provided a vision of social unity and coherence for a society that was torn by political and social antagonisms that was a powerful propagandistic motive mainly among the young, while also infusing older splinter groups with a spirit of unity while promising many things to everybody, and any contradictions between left and right extremes would be resolved in a “pure” Volksgemeinschaft.
In terms of specific successful contents, abolition of Versailles by unconditionally rejecting it was first, and then law and order, restoration of a functioning economy, work and anti-Semitism. They were thus elected because they made the most convincing point about abolishing Versailles, reconstructing the country, restoring jobs and national wealth, and leading Germany to new glory. Whereas Brüning hoped to obtain Allied concessions by trying to fulfill the Treaty of Versailles in order to show this was impossible, as had been Rathenau’s policy, few people doubted that Hitler was serious about rejecting it altogether. Whereas the reform programs of the presidential cabinets lacked popular support, the NSDAP’s revolutionary rhetoric and impressive nationwide organisation convinced many voters that they would restore order and prosperity. Their violence was also obvious, but many voters had gotten used to political violence since the 1918 revolution, and order would be restored after the Nazis had gained power. Hence, millions of voters who voted for the Nazis and allowed them to become the strongest party in the Reichstag, the industrialist and agrarian circles who influenced Hindenburg who took action to undermine Weimar democracy, and the anti-democratic parties, including the NSDAP and the KPD, and their supporters who voted to abolish parliamentary democracy, were thus responsible for the breakdown of the Weimar republic.
Conservatives who could influence the national government and conservative party politicians first undermined the Weimar Republic, and when they could not garner much popular support for an authoritarian regime, they hoped that using the NSDAP as the strongest right-wing party in parliament by bringing them into the government would mitigate their radical elements to restore stability and stem the increase of support for communism. However, they did not consider the presence of hundreds of thousands of street fighters and the Nazi control of the police under the Nazi Interior Minister, Wilhelm Frick. Governing with the Reichstag in 1932-1933 became impossible when Nazis and Communists held a destructive majority and prevented staging resistance to prevent Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. Hitler’s appointment as chancellor on the strength of his leadership of the strongest party in the Reichstag to attempt to overcome the paralysis of parliamentary democracy led to disastrous consequences that followed due to the ongoing economic and political crises.
Schleicher was rendered powerless as a result of intrigues led by Papen and certain prominent German industrialists who undermined Hindenburg’s confidence in Schleicher. Schleicher could not succeed against an overwhelmingly hostile Reichstag without the president’s emergency decrees. Papen succeeded in inducing Hindenburg to appoint a new cabinet on 30 January 1933, with Hitler as Chancellor, von Papen as Vice-chancellor, and another Nazi, Wilhelm Frick, as the Minister of the Interior, and a third Nazi, Hermann Göring, as minister without portfolio and Prussian Minister of the Interior, giving him control of Germany’s largest police force, and Papen as vice-chancellor. The nine other ministers all did not belong to the NSDAP, and Papen as vice-chancellor was confident that it would be possible to contain Hitler’s influence, which proved to be a gross miscalculation.
Having massive armies of violent street fighters without any respect for law and order, the Nazis were determined to maintain their grip on power slip out of their hands once they had access to the national government. When the news spread that Hitler had become chancellor, the SA and huge crowds of Nazi supporters took to the streets and used violent means to instill terror to stabilise their power prior to calling a new election, since the NSDAP had yet to acquire a majority of Reichstag representatives.
Hitler became chancellor at the head of a coalition government, with only three out of twelve ministers in the new cabinet belonged to the NSDAP, while the others had served in the earlier cabinets. Prior to Hitler’s appointment, his conservative allies conferred the decisive concession to call new elections after the previous election of November 1932. He hoped to win a majority in the new election campaign, and would then be able to use the power of the state in support of the NSDAP. Hermann Göring as the Nazi Interior Minister that controlled Prussia’s police apparatus and thereby the head of the police all over Germany greatly contributed to abolishing the Weimar democracy. Legislators’ lack of aptitude for responsible government, traditional adherence to authoritarian rule, the sense of internal disunity at the national and the state levels caused by the presence of various minor parties, economic difficulties and social distress, a sense of distrust of the treatment of a democratic Germany, all contributed to the downfall of the republic and the growing popularity of Hitler and his anti-democratic movement, while there remained the prevailing sense of pessimism among the population. which looked forward to future stability that Hitler pledged to deliver. Papen had expected that it would be possible to limit Hitler’s influence to an inconsequential degree within a few weeks, which was profoundly miscalculation. Hitler knew that according to the constitution, his term of office depended on his ability to acquire majority support in the Reichstag. The parliament could vote him out, or Hindenburg could dismiss him. Hitler was hereafter able to ruthlessly exploit the apparatus of the state at his disposal. Göring thoroughly purged the Prussian police, and senior officers were replaced with an additional 50,000 reliable supporters, mostly enlisted from the SA, SS and Stahlhelm contingents of paramilitary street thugs who did not have police training and legal discipline, who began acting as armed auxiliary police officers outside judicial constraints and under the cover of state authority. Göring issued a decree on 17 February encouraging police officers to make unconditional use of weapons against left-wing opponents to use their weapons with impunity, including using lethal force with legal accountability, adding that hesitation or restraint about using force, ostensibly to ruthlessly defend state authority, could result in being subject to disciplinary action.
The Reichstag was dissolved on 1 February 1933, and new elections were called for March. In addition to receiving large amounts of funding from various sources, including the Association of German Industrialists who contributed three million RM for this campaign alone, and Hugenberg continually providing media exposure to the NSDAP that was portrayed as the final hope for the salvation of the nation, Hitler was also empowered with using emergency presidential powers according to article 48 of the Weimar constitution, and remarked at the cabinet meeting on the same day that this was to be the last Reichstag election, and there would not be a return to parliamentary democracy. Hitler initially announced his long-term goals privately to a group of generals on 3 February 1933, when he pledged to impose strict authoritarian rule that would eliminate Germany of the “cancer” of democracy and “exterminate” Marxism, along with preparing Germany for war through rearmament and introducing universal military service. He also spoke of “radically Germanising” the east to create “living space” (Lebensraum). Regardless of their personal disdain regarding the more vulgar aspects of National Socialism, they were in broad agreement with Hitler’s programs, and most of them remained conforming to those objectives until the end of the regime.
Hitler used a communist appeal for a general strike on 4 February as a pretext to impose an emergency decree “For the Protection of the German People” that allowed for severe restrictions on the freedom of the press and assembly, in the event of “an immediate danger to public safety,” or in instances in which “the organs, organisations and offices of the state and its employees were insulted or mocked.” Hence, Hitler and his subordinates were given wide discretion to suppress political opposition that was deemed to be hostile to the state during the election campaign, and marked an initial step toward the destruction of constitutional democracy, as it was applied against all other opposition political parties, and also established the precedent for governing by decree. Hermann Göring applied this decree to the widest extent in Prussia, where he had been appointed minister of the interior. Although Göring was formally subject to von Papen as Reich commissar for Prussia, he dismissed the few remaining democrats in the upper levels of the Prussian civil service, police force, and the judiciary. All of the previous Prussian police agencies were merged into a secret police force, the Geheime Staatspolizei, or Gestapo, to contribute to achieve the nazification of German society through the NSDAP and the SA as a political paramilitary force enforcing this process.
This new state security organisation was ordered to cooperate fully with the SA, the SS, and the nationalist Stahlhelm in a thorough campaign of terrorising the population in conjunction with the police, along with 50,000 auxiliary police officers in Prussia, mostly drawn from the SA to allegedly maintain order during the election campaign. SA gangs of thugs who were granted free reign of disrupt meetings of the democratic parties that were systematically broken up, many communists and some social democrats were brutally attacked or killed during the five-week election campaign, while also fighting against other such political paramilitary formations, and thus became a key element of the NSDAP’s rise to power through staging forcible intimidation of the opposing parties and random Jewish victims. The opposition press was silenced, including by their offices being subject to arson attacks. Financial support from leading German industrialists for the NSDAP was secured in a secret meeting on 20 February, with pledges of serving their interests and extirpating communists and trade unionists. The NSDAP likewise received investments from large enterprises abroad, including General Motors, IT&T, Eastman Kodak, Standard Oil, Singer, International Harvester, Gillette, Coca-Cola, Kraft, Westinghouse, and United Fruit, while the middle class provided mass popular support, but did not benefit economically from the concentration of capital, in addition to losing political freedoms.
Goebbels orchestrated a key incident that would lead to the NSDAP seizing unlimited political authority, with the consent and cooperation with Göring who used their subordinates to start a fire in the Reichstag on the night of 27-28 February, which constituted a decisive opportunity to expand the power of the NSDAP as a key propaganda opportunity that cultivated Hitler’s narrative about the necessity to restore order by stifling anarchy. This incident set a simple beneficial pretext for Nazi propaganda to cause widespread suspicion of alleged aggressive communist activity, and any anti-Nazis were immediately arrested on the same night. President von Hindenburg was immediately prevailed upon to give his consent to an emergency decree that limited individual and political rights guaranteed by the Weimar Constitution, in accordance with Article 48 of the Weimar constitution, which stipulated that the president could bypass parliament in the event of an emergency, which proved in practice to be an egregious weakness that Hitler exceedingly exploited to abolish the rule of law.
This so-called “Decree for the Protection of the People and the State” of 28 February 1933 provided legislative authority to exercise arbitrary powers, which inevitably led to ruthless Nazi terror that had already taken place for several weeks by suspending all of the fundamental civil liberties that were guaranteed by the constitution and legalising “protective custody” on the pretext of the state maintaining emergency powers. All of the basic rights of the citizen were suspended, and authorised the Reich government to assume full powers in any federal state government that proved to be unable or unwilling to restore public order and security when necessary, and ordered death or imprisonment for a series of crimes aimed at opposing the state. This decree allowed for more invasive violations of democratic rights, including searching homes without a warrant, confiscating property and outlawing meetings of groups that could oppose the NSDAP. The KPD was outlawed outright immediately, and four thousand communist party members were arrested on the night of the fire. The death penalty was extended to include a number of crimes, including treason and arson. It allowed for summary arrests and placing opponents to the Nazis in “protective custody” in some of the first concentration camps that were set up by the SA and the SS.
While this decree was to be directed against communists, this constituted the fundamental law that established the Nazi dictatorship that would open the way toward introducing legislative measures for the purposes of marginalising, disempowering and ultimately removing any elements of society that Nazi authorities would claim were inimical to the state. The Nazis claimed the burning of the Reichstag on the night of 27-28 February 1933 that was blamed on Marinus van der Lubbe, a mentally unstable Dutch vagrant who was accused of being a communist, was arrested twenty-four minutes after the fire had been discovered. Goebbels claimed this was a signal for communist uprising, while evidence gathered by an international committee supports the conclusion that the blaze was set by an SA/SS Sondergruppe under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, and the director of the police division in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, Kurt Daluege. This event led to the immediate arrest of an estimated four thousand communist officials and party members, along with intellectuals and professionals who had opposed the Nazis. Parliamentary democracy thus ended through Hitler obtaining Hindenburg’s consent to a decree on 28 February to suspend civil and political liberties that would remain in force until 1945, which included allowing for arrest on suspicion and imprisonment without trial.
Although the NSDAP received 43.9 percent of the vote in the elections in March 1933, which ratified the NSDAP-led administration following receiving 43.9 percent of the vote, Hitler remained lacking a two-thirds majority to seize absolute power. The NSDAP therefore entered into a coalition with the German National People’s Party and banned the existence of the Communist Party on 23 March, which gave them the necessary majority. Acquiring this majority led to immediately making parliamentary democracy obsolete by granting dictatorial powers to the NSDAP. Conservatives and nationalists had underestimated how they could Hitler to remain in power, as his ruthlessness became increasingly apparent, and the National Socialist seizure of power could not be reversed.
Further repressive conditions were imposed on the basis of the Enabling Act, promulgated on 23 March 1933, or the “Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Reich,” This legislation was passed by 444 votes to 94, with only Social Democrats opposed after the Communist Party was banned and representatives were intimidated by the SA and the SS. Hitler’s cabinet was hereby empowered enact laws without Reichstag consent or presidential approval, and effectively established a Nazi dictatorship, enabling the dismantling of democratic institutions and the suspension of the constitution. Further political consolidation of the absolute political power followed. As the potential serious opposition from within the national socialist movement was purged, Hitler maintained control over the military. While resistance to the regime became nearly impossible due to the Gestapo having free rein to prosecute critics of the regime, which deterred the rest of the population. Organised resistance practically ceased by 1935, when six hundred thousand communists had been arrested, two thousand killed in SS administered concentration camps. Out of the 422 communist party executive members in 1933, 219 were imprisoned, 125 were in exile, 42 had resigned, and 12 remained operating underground. Apart from most notably the communist underground, the regime enjoyed overwhelming popularity that also made resistance appear to be hopeless, and was extremely dangerous in practice as the Gestapo located any potential “undesirable” elements of the population, including Jews, gypsies, the disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and the marginalised, such as Freemasons and “reactionaries.” Many people denounced others who they suspected of subversive activity or hostility to the regime in which a climate of fear was cultivated, terror helped uphold solidarity with the regime as a result, while the public offices of the Gestapo were readily accessible, along with journalists reporting on its allegedly ubiquitous nature that reinforced political policing through generalised public surveillance. Meanwhile, there was not any convincing alternative to National Socialism while democracy had become discredited. Furthermore, Hitler was clearly the most popular politician in Germany in what appeared to be stabilised political conditions, and this became even more the case when economic recovery continued and Hitler scored stunning foreign political successes.
The National Socialist seizure of power throughout the population would prove to be swift and brutal, which paralysed the opposition with mass arrests, whereas conservative elements in the military, the civil service and industrialists capitulated and collaborated with the regime in the interest of crushing leftist opposition and reversing the effects of the Versailles treaty. Facing intense intimidation, imprisonment, and the threat of concentration camps, the major political parties of the Weimar Republic were pressured into formally disbanding themselves. The German National People’s Party, the NSDAP coalition partner, dissolved itself on 27 June, followed by the German State Party on 28 June, the Centre Party on 3 July 3, and both the Bavarian People’s Party and German People’s Party on 4 July. A legislative ban was promulgated on 14 July that imposed the NSDAP monopoly on power through the enactment of the Law Against the Formation of Parties, which made it the only legal political party in Germany, and mandated imprisonment for anyone attempting to maintain or establish any other party organization. The National Socialist regime would then undergo a radical transformation known as “synchronisation” of all institutions to consolidate state controls, and eliminating their independence, which neutralised the probability of collective resistance against newly established authoritarian authority that generated prevailing bystander apathy in the face of an atmosphere of fear and mutual suspicion about denunciation to the political authorities.
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