The end of the Weimar Republic

Brüning and Schleicher

To form the next government, Hindenburg selected Heinrich Brüning of the Centre Party. Brüning had not previously held high office, and his first concern was to pass a budget. He was unable to secure a majority in the Reichstag for his proposals, however, because the Social Democrats had combined with the Communists, Nationalists, and Nazis to make up the hostile majority. Faced with a parliamentary deadlock, Brüning resorted to the use of the president’s emergency powers under Article 48 to put his program into effect by decree (July 16, 1930).

Such a possibility had been envisaged at the time of Brüning’s appointment to the chancellorship by a small group of men around Hindenburg, prominent among whom was Gen. Kurt von Schleicher. It was Schleicher who had suggested Brüning to Hindenburg as chancellor, and Brüning, although sincerely attached to parliamentary institutions, accepted the view that the economic situation called for the use of emergency methods. His action was promptly challenged by the Social Democrats, who defeated him for the second time in the Reichstag. Brüning thereupon dissolved the chamber and fixed new elections for September 14, 1930. As it was at the time, Brüning’s decision to invoke Article 48 has remained the subject of much controversy.

The elections were held in an atmosphere of public disorder for which the Nazis, with the organized violence of their brownshirted Storm Troopers, and the Communists were chiefly responsible. The results were disastrous. The impact of the Depression on German society was reflected in the sensational rise of the Communist and, more especially, the Nazi vote. Despite these results, Brüning decided to remain in office. He had to face the noisy opposition of the Nazis and the Communists, who attacked his government as unconstitutional and proceeded to reduce parliamentary procedure to a prolonged brawl. The Social Democrats, however, alarmed at the threat to the republic from the rising power of the two extremist parties, rallied to the chancellor’s support, although they were critical of the deflationary policy he was pursuing. Their backing provided Brüning with sufficient votes to defeat frequent motions of no confidence while he put his program into effect by presidential decree, but the measures introduced by the government failed to check the downward spiral. In an attempt to alter the economic equation, on March 24, 1931, German foreign minister Julius Curtius proposed an Austro-German customs union. The move would have placated the large populations in both countries that favoured Anschluss (“union”) of the two German-speaking countries, but France and Italy forced the German government to abandon its plan.

In July 1931 a severe financial crisis led to the collapse of the Darmstadt and National Bank, one of Germany’s largest financial institutions, and in September the unemployment figure reached 4.3 million. On October 3 Brüning reshuffled his cabinet, assuming the role of foreign minister himself. His dour struggle to master the economic situation continued, and he displayed courage and integrity in standing up to unscrupulous opposition. In the early months of 1932, however, more than six million Germans were unemployed, and Brüning’s position looked increasingly precarious.

In these circumstances, the prospect of a presidential election was alarming. Brüning sought a prolongation of Hindenburg’s term, but Hitler and Hugenberg mustered enough support to kill the proposal. On March 13 Hitler and three other candidates competed against Hindenburg, and the 84-year-old field marshal polled 18,661,736 votes to Hitler’s 11,328,571. Hindenburg fell 0.4 percent short of winning an absolute majority in the first round, so a runoff election was held on April 11. In that contest, Hindenburg received 19,359,642 votes to Hitler’s 13,417,460. The chief reason for Hindenburg’s success was the decision of all the republican parties to vote for him as the defender of the constitution. That trust was soon to be broken.

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The political struggle in Prussia, the largest of the German Länder (states), was scarcely less important than that in the Reich. Since 1920 Prussia had been governed by a stable coalition of the Social Democrats and the Centre under the leadership of two Social Democrats, Otto Braun and Carl Severing. The Prussian government was regarded as the principal bulwark of German democracy and, as such, was a special object of the extremist parties’ hatred. In particular, they wished to wrest control of the Prussian police force from Severing. At the state elections on April 24, 1932, the Nazis scored another major success, winning 162 of 428 seats and becoming the largest party in the Prussian Landtag. The Social Democrat–Centre coalition remained in office solely in a caretaker capacity.

Brüning hoped to offset his setbacks at home with successes abroad. He sought to secure the abandonment of the reparation payments and the recognition of Germany’s right to equality of armaments. There was considerable support for the cancellation of reparations on the Allied side, but Brüning’s hopes were dashed by the postponement of the proposed conference until June 1932. Although the disarmament conference opened in February instead, French opposition quickly brought it to a standstill.

Meanwhile, intrigue within the president’s inner circle, in which Schleicher played a leading part, led Hindenburg to withdraw his confidence from Brüning (May 30, 1932). This step may be regarded as the decisive event for the survival of the Weimar Republic. Brüning’s program had raised powerful enemies among the industrialists and Junker landowners, and, once he had secured the reelection of the president, his usefulness in Schleicher’s eyes was exhausted.

Papen and Schleicher

One of the last acts of Brüning’s government had been to impose a ban on the Nazi SA (Sturmabteilungen). Schleicher secured Nazi tolerance for his new nominee, Franz von Papen, on the condition that the ban be lifted and new elections be held at once. Papen, although nominally a member of the Centre, was repudiated by that party, which remained loyal to Brüning. On June 2, 1932, Papen formed a nonparty cabinet, known as the “cabinet of barons,” in which Schleicher became minister of defense.

Papen’s government was highly unpopular in the country, but he relied upon the support of the president and the army, and he was fortunate enough to secure the success in foreign policy that had been denied to Brüning. At the Lausanne Conference in June–July 1932, reparations were virtually abolished in return for a payment of three billion Reichsmarks into a fund for European reconstruction. On July 20, 1932, Papen turned out the Braun-Severing government in Prussia and appointed himself Reich commissioner for Prussia. The Social Democrats, hamstrung by Communists who had branded them traitors to the working class, allowed Papen’s action to pass without effective challenge.

Immediately afterward elections to the Reichstag were held (July 31, 1932) and resulted in a Nazi triumph, giving them 230 seats in the Reichstag. Papen agreed with Schleicher that it was necessary to make the Nazis share the responsibility for governing the country, but he hoped to force Hitler to accept office on his terms, not Hitler’s. When the Reichstag met in September 1932, the Nazis succeeded in amassing an overwhelming vote against Papen, but Papen promptly dissolved the chamber and fixed new elections for November 6, and he governed in the meantime by emergency decree.

In the elections, the Nazis lost nearly two million votes, but Schleicher, alarmed at the prospect of continued deadlock and at the further increase in the Communist vote, forced Papen’s resignation and took office himself (December 3, 1932). Hindenburg, however, had been alienated by Schleicher’s intrigues, and when Schleicher in turn failed to win the support of the other parties or to bring the Nazis into his government, Hindenburg declined to give him the power to dissolve the Reichstag. In the meantime, Papen had made contact with Hitler and the Nationalists and was able to offer the president the prospect of a coalition that had a chance of securing a majority in the chamber.

Hitler was driven by the declining fortunes of the Nazi Party to accept considerably less than he had demanded earlier in 1932, but he secured the chancellorship for himself. Papen, for his part, was convinced that he had tied Hitler’s hands by forcing him into a coalition in which the Nazi ministers were heavily outnumbered and held no key posts and in which he himself became vice-chancellor as well as Reich commissioner for Prussia. On January 30, 1933, the coalition assumed office, and Hitler became chancellor of Germany legally, as he had been determined to do, and not by revolution.