Dustin Olson: Could the fall of the Weimar Republic be a glimpse into the USA's future?
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Written by: Dustin Olson
The storied ascension of the Third Reich is one of history’s most disquieting affairs. Popular lore surrounding National Socialism’s rise emphasizes the importance of a demoralized Germany. The country: battered by suffocating economic sanctions and reparation payments, on the heels of losing the ‘war to end all wars’, was ripe for a populist demagogue to seize power. These factors did, of course, contribute to Adolf Hitler’s eventual wholesale takeover of German politics. We would be remiss to conclude, however, that these factors paint a complete picture of the conditions facilitating brown-shirt Nazi fascism.
The Weimar Republic, Germany’s first experiment with democracy, wasn’t the unmitigated disaster that it is often made out to be. Yes, it did end in utter tragedy and had its early growing pains like political assassinations, social unrest, and attempted coups in the years immediately following the war. However, by 1924, unrest began to stagnate and there were glimmers of hope for this young republic. Weimar Foreign Minister, Gustav Stresemann, a committed republican in the coalition government, worked to enhance Germany’s international reputation. His diplomatic efforts resulted in less intense reparation payments and German admission into the League of Nations. In securing loans from the United States to curb earlier inflation, Germany was also able to enjoy the fruits of the Golden Twenties.
With a more stable economy, Weimar social-political life also stabilized. There were no more political assassinations, roving political street gangs dissipated and authoritarian sympathizers kept to themselves. Individual freedoms were also enhanced. Berlin fostered a vibrant cultural resurgence as a cosmopolitan artistic hub, rivaling the most progressive European cities. Ostensibly, life in the newly minted democracy didn’t seem too bad.
Unfortunately, the Weimar Republic proved to be a house of cards. Neoliberalism and globalization were in their nascent stages, providing early examples of their logical outcomes. Germany made reparation payments to France and England, France made payments to England, and both France and England made payments to the US. Conditions were primed for disaster.
The US financial collapse in 1929 was the catalyst. Basing its survival almost solely on foreign affairs and the global economy, the Republic would soon end in tragedy extending well beyond its borders. Despite the appearance of a burgeoning liberal democracy, there were still large swaths of disenfranchised Germans. The officer core, who had authoritarian inclinations from the Kaiser eras, never forgot the humiliations of Versailles. The local economy was centralized and dominated by big business combines, which made no pretense of their distaste for social democracy, worker’s rights, and union support. Technocratic civil services were likewise not committed to political liberties and democratization. If the German parliament proved ineffective in satisfying these factions’ vested interests, then they were perfectly happy promoting a more effective replacement.
It is important to remember that European liberal democracy was for many countries, still in its early stages. Germany had, in essence, been forced to adopt this system after the war. The purported benefits Germans reaped from liberalism did not extinguish their openness to less liberal alternatives. As historian Robert Paxton observes:
Fascism remained available…for future emergencies. If faced with disintegration of the economy in depression or inflation, disintegration of the class struggle in modern decadence, and disintegration of the notion of class struggle, frightened Europeans might well turn to a forcible integration of economy, culture, and classes in a fascist state.
As with the rest of the globe, an already sizable wealth inequality skyrocketed in Germany after the 1929 market crash, with six million unemployed Germans becoming increasingly desperate. In response, political factions on the far right and far left became increasingly influential. On the one hand, communist parties were championing socio-economic revolution. On the other, the far-right National Socialists were propagating nationalism. Conditions were ripe for a populist like Hitler and he knew it: “Never in my life have I been so well disposed and inwardly content as in these days. For hard reality has opened the eyes of millions of Germans to the unprecedented swindles, lies and betrayals, of the Marxists deceivers of the people.” The flames of early Nazi blut und boden hyper-nationalism would be fanned once again, promising to Deutschland wieder grossartig machen!
As early as 1927, there were already significant nationalist sentiments among farmers due to a global agricultural recession. These sentiments extended to small business owners, artisans, minor civil servants who received wage cuts, and other members of the lower-middle class hammered by debt after 1929. These groups felt abandoned by their country, as their way of life was washed away in the tides of globalization. In wanting to maintain, or return to their middle-class status, these groups were anti-communist and thus skeptical of proletariat workers and unions. Furthermore, they shared no affinity with neo-liberal cosmopolitanism, feeling increasingly alienated from their country. Under such circumstances, Hitler could further stoke nationalism by providing ‘true’ Germans with targets they could blame for their current woes, viz. Jews, transients, and communists. Seizing this opportunity, much as he did nearly a decade earlier with his Beer Hall putsch, Hitler whipped these populist sentiments into a major political movement.
From this populism, Hitler was eventually able to garner support from right-leaning business elites. To them, his boorish intensity was tolerable given the political targets of his vitriol: left-of-centre Social Democrats and the far-left German Communists. These elites provided propaganda in the schools and national media, and significant financial backing. As a result, the National Socialist Party’s status burgeoned from 2% in 1928, to 37.7% of the popular vote in 1932, making the Nazis’ the largest single party in the Reichstag.
Assisting this ascension was the devolution of left leaning German political parties. In 1930, the German Social Democrats lost their majority government. Centre-left parties unwilling to unify became fractured, rendering themselves obsolete. In fact, German Communists eventually worked with Hitler to protest the ‘business-as-usual’ approach taken by the earlier Democratic Socialists during the 1929 crisis. Meanwhile, centre-right and business parties held their noses and coalesced around Hitler, with hopes of directing Nazism’s popularity to conservative purposes. These hopes proved the final nail in the Weimar left’s coffin.
In 1932, popular rightwing President Paul von Hindenburg chose his third chancellor in many years, to be Baron Franz von Papen. With sympathies to stringent far-right conservatism, von Papen lifted a ban on Nazi public assembly, knowing that in so doing, Brown-shirts would take to Berlin’s streets to combat communists. The ensuing violence, 400 wounded and 82 dead, provided von Papen an excuse to employ presidential emergency powers—a constitutional loophole that eventually ended the entire republic. With these powers, von Papen usurped the Prussian state government, which was the final Social Democratic stronghold in Germany. It wouldn’t be until after WW2 that a moderate, much less a left leaning, party would have any actual influence in German politics.
Unsurprisingly, Hitler was not satisfied with merely acquiring a sizable portion of the Reichstag. He had grander ambitions. With his increasing popular support, the Nazi success in the July ’32 election, and business and political elites hopeful to capitalize on his popularity, Hitler’s political capital was at an all-time high. He utilized this capital to strong-arm Hindenburg into naming him German Chancellor in January 1933, which was the president’s constitutional prerogative. Shortly thereafter was the infamous Reichstag fire.
Under very suspicious conditions, it was almost immediately concluded that a Marxist revolutionary had started the blaze. Hitler convinced Hindenburg to suspend sections of the constitution that protected personal liberty and expression, allowing for limitations on such liberal cornerstones as freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and privacy. Hitler’s brown-shirted stormtroopers, now sanctioned as state police, moved swiftly, arresting any politician, academic, or community leader with known social democratic or communist sympathies. All of this was again constitutionally permitted in the name of “protecting the state and its people.”
These activities were politically convenient for Hitler, with an election scheduled for March 4. The Nazi’s aspired to have an outright Reichstag majority, thereby removing any parliamentary, and ultimately presidential, inhibitors on Hitler’s power. Alas, the Nazis failed to win a conclusive majority, receiving only 44 per cent of the vote. Hitler was, however, able to convince the Catholic Center Party and the dwindling German Nationalist party to side with the Nazi’s on voting matters. This coalition allowed for Hitler to whip votes in a parliament whose communists and social democrats were jailed the month before. On March 23, 1933, with a vote of 441 to 92, a constitutional amendment allowing the chancellor to promulgate laws at his discretion passed, and with it ended the Weimar Republic. Despite the many nefarious activities used in his ascent to political power, Hitler made this ascent constitutionally and with the acquiescence of the majority of Germans.
With his overthrow nearly complete, all that was left for Hitler to do was usurp power from the remaining influential institutions. He did so through violence and rewards. For individual German states, which maintained a high degree of autonomy, governments not sympathetic to National Socialism were forcibly removed by the military and Nazi storm troopers. Power was centralized to the Reich. Promises of a return to their former glory, and strategic shows of support to specific individuals, satisfied the armed forces high command, despite high tensions between them and the S.A. storm troopers. Promises of increased manufacturing, gutting of social democratic reforms, and a business-friendly Minister of Economics kept the rich industrialists and business elite on friendly terms with the Reich. Middle Class rabble rousers, such as unionists and liberal academics, were displaced. The Third Reich was born.
* * *
Democratic acquiescence to tyrannical rule is an old tale. Classical political theorists were skeptical of democracy for this reason. It vexed Plato that demagogues might acquire political power by popular assent, simply through eloquence and sophistry. His student Aristotle pushed these concerns a step further, observing that democratic constitutions are best, only when there is a robust middle class who are interested in maintaining the status quo. With economic inequality, democracies foster populism, which then manifest as de facto tyrannies. William Shirer, author of the iconic Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, explains how these points apply to Weimar Germany: “Between the Left and Right, Germany lacked a politically powerful middle class, which in other countries…had proved to be the backbone of democracy.”
This point is worth noting today, as economic inequality is increasing at a staggering rate, with wealth extraction coming predominantly from the middle class. At present, we are going through recession that by all accounts will eclipse 2008 many times over—more closely resembling the crash of ’29. In response, we’re finding disaster capitalism in its most blatant application. Giant banks and multinational corporations are receiving unprecedented ‘bailouts’, paid for by the taxpayers, with resounding acclimation from political leaders. All the while, citizens are held hostage by biological forces beyond their control. Neo-liberal ideology mandates such measures, of course. This is what the markets demand; ignore the middle class, the poor be damned.
We are again faced with an ‘integration of economy, culture, and classes’, characteristic of the fascist state. And indeed it has been forced, but not by us. No. We’ve simply acquiesced. Distracted by ‘modern decadence’, we’ve passively observed everything become commodified, subject only to market forces. Meanwhile, those liberal institutions that justify political authority in the first place are being systematically corroded and eroded, and have been for at least 40 years. Healthcare, education, old-age pensions, environmental regulations, consumer protections, and workers’ rights have all been usurped by the profit at any price mantra. When the going gets tough, we don’t strive for a New Deal. We militarize, financialize, and privatize.
These social conditions have already brought a resurgence of nationalism and a disdain for the other. Caught up in asinine partisan squabbles defending our preferred political candidates, we fail to face the fact that those we defend only care about us insofar as we elect them, preferring to help their owners in the lobby. The result of this system remaining unchecked is that elections no longer matter. Recent events in the Democratic primary reveal this point in spades. Voter suppression, municipal gerrymandering, and ad hoc voter laws all serve to prevent meaning correctives in our politics. Unlimited campaign spending, the lack of a meaningful media willing to speak truth to power, and blind partisanship further undermine democracy.
Purported liberal democracies like the US, with its marriage of neo-liberalism with neo-conservatism, are ripe for fascism. The alienated working-class wars with itself. Liberal elites are complacent in their comforts, failing to address the conditions that enable tyranny. Many think that President Trump exhibits tyrannical tendencies. But let us consider what he inherited from Obama and Bush before him: a national security state that employs mass surveillance with a militarized police force that is arbitrarily deployed and predominantly racist; repeated kowtowing to corporate interests at the expense of the working class; a renunciation of Habeas Corpus; military might like the world has never seen; an utterly dysfunctional education system; concentration camps; and a complete lack of political accountability.
Imagine if Hitler was handed this infrastructure.
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