The fall of Weimar and the Rise of
Hitler
Hunter College history professor
Benjamin Carter Hett has given us an insightful history into the collapse of
the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitler. He understands the power of myth
wherein a large portion of the German population and most notably President
Paul von Hindenburg believed there was unity in August 1914 at the outbreak of
World War One and deceit in November 1918 when Germany surrendered. It was the
power of this myth that underlay the success of the German Right.
From the outset the social democratic
Weimar government was never viewed as legitimate by the German Right. Thus
there was a permanent built-in opposition to the government. That was
compounded by the communists in the late 1920s, following Stalin’s orders,
called the social democrats “social fascists.” As a result by 1931 there was an
anti-democratic majority consisting of communists and Nazis working almost in
tandem to destroy democracy. Although Hett covers the communist May Day demonstration
of 1929 that was put down by the Social Democrats he spends far too little time
on the role the communists played in bringing down Weimar.
Although the Nazis were marginalized in
the 1920s, the weakness in the farm economy, the continued burden of
reparations and the onset of the global depression enabled the Nazis under
Hitler’s leadership to unite the right. According to Hett German politics was
based upon three “confessionals”: the Protestants, the Catholics and the
socialist/communist factions. With the Left divided, Hitler utilizing the myths
of August and October dominated the Protestants and picked off enough Catholics
to become the leading rightwing party. As a result by 1933 the Nazis, by
default, had to be part of any coalition government and with their successful
bullying tactics they seized power. Of course they were aided by the deflation
policies of Heinrich Bruning’s Center Party coalition government. In part the
deflationary policies were designed to make things worse to relieve Germany of
its reparations liabilities.
Hett gets many things right especially
his view that the untimely death of foreign minister Gustav Stresemann in 1929 eliminated
a democratic voice in Germany’s center-right. In my opinion Stresemann was the
only politician who could have stopped Hitler. However Hett gets a few things
wrong. First he over-emphasizes the opposition to globalization. He neglects to
mention that globalization was at its apogee in 1914 and Germany was benefiting
from it. He conflates globalization with reparations and the gold standard.
Initially the real problem was with reparations which Hett notes were
relatively mild relative to history, but that is a low bar, the burden on
Germany was severe. He also mysteriously leaves out the 1922 assassination of finance
minister Walter Rathenau by rightwing extremists. Rathenau had the confidence
of both the British and French finance ministries and had he lived the
reparations issue might have been ameliorated. Hett also gets wrong blaming the
German farm crisis on the rise of U.S., Canadian and Australian wheat. That is
not quite true. The true causes for the fall in farm prices was the return to
market of Russian and southeastern European grain along with the mechanization
of agriculture that reduced the need for forage crops. The farm issue is
important because the core of Nazi supporters were the Protestant farmers.
Hett ends his book with the Night of the
Long Knives in 1934. Here Hitler eliminates Ernst Rohm’s S.A. and more
importantly much of the remaining conservative opposition. If there is a lesson
to be learned from Hett’s book, it is that conservatives are play with fire
when they suck up to rightwing demagogues. Hett has written an important book.
Read it.
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