Prelude to War: 6. The Foundation Crumbles
Depression and the Death of Democracy (1929-1933)
On 24 and 25 October 1929, rumours of collapsing fortunes spread through New York city, and people rushed to Wall Street to see what was happening to the stock market. Many had savings invested through brokers, and others simply wanted information in an age before live broadcast news. The steps of the Sub-Treasury Building, directly opposite the Stock Exchange, became a focal point where crowds watched the ticker bulletins, waited for announcements from bankers, and tried to understand whether the financial system was collapsing.
On 3 October 1929, Gustav Stresemann died of a stroke at age 51. Stresemann had served as Germany’s foreign minister since 1923, negotiating the Dawes Plan that brought American loans to Germany, securing the Locarno Treaties, and bringing Germany into the League of Nations. He understood that the republic’s stability rested on fragile foundations and that German democracy had shallow roots. His death removed the one leader who combined diplomatic skill and realistic understanding of Germany’s position.
Three weeks later, the New York stock market crashed. On Thursday, 24 October 1929, investors panicked as stock prices plummeted. The selling continued through the following week. On Tuesday, 29 October, the market collapsed completely. American confidence shattered. American banks stopped lending abroad. American credit, which had financed much of Europe’s postwar recovery, disappeared.
Germany felt the impact immediately.
Since 1924, American loans had flowed into Germany at an extraordinary rate. Between 1924 and 1929, Germany borrowed roughly 25 billion marks, primarily from American banks. German companies used these loans to rebuild factories, purchase equipment, and expand production. German cities borrowed to construct housing, schools, hospitals, and infrastructure. The entire recovery rested on continued American credit.
The structure had an obvious flaw. Germany borrowed more than it paid in reparations. The system worked only if American money kept flowing. When that flow stopped, German borrowers could not repay existing loans or finance current operations.
After October 1929, American lending stopped. American banks recalled short-term loans to German banks and businesses. These loans had been routinely renewed when they came due, but now American banks demanded immediate repayment. German banks could not pay. They had lent money for longer-term projects. German businesses faced the same problem. They had invested in factories and equipment that could not instantly be converted to cash.
The credit system froze. Companies closed. Construction stopped. Investment vanished.
Unemployment began rising in late 1929. By March 1930, over 3 million Germans were officially unemployed. By September 1931, it passed 4 million. By January 1932, unemployment stood at 6 million workers, approximately 30 percent of Germany’s workforce. Millions more worked part-time or had given up looking for work.
The Great Depression hit Germany harder than any other industrial nation except the United States. Between 1929 and 1932, Germany’s national income contracted by roughly 40 percent. Industrial production fell by half. Steel production dropped from 16 million tons to 5.6 million tons. The construction industry virtually ceased operation. Tax revenues plummeted.
The unemployment insurance system, designed to support roughly 800,000 workers, collapsed under the burden of millions. Contributions fell as fewer people worked. Payouts soared. Benefits had to be cut precisely when need was greatest.
Social Catastrophe
Unemployment destroyed lives on a scale Germany had never experienced. It meant hunger. It meant cold. It meant humiliation. It meant despair repeated daily with no end in sight.
The unemployed queued for hours at labour exchanges to register and collect benefits. The exchanges, overwhelmed by numbers, processed claims slowly. Men waited in lines that stretched down streets. The benefits, when they finally came, barely covered rent and basic food. A single man received roughly 10 marks per week. A married man with children received perhaps 20 marks. This was enough to avoid starvation but nothing more. No money for coal to heat a flat. No money for clothes when the old ones wore out. No money for anything beyond minimal survival.
The unemployed sold possessions to raise money. Furniture went first, then clothes, then anything of any value. Pawnshops filled with the remnants of working-class life. When there was nothing left to sell, families moved in with relatives. Multiple families crowded into small flats. Some slept in shelters operated by charities or the city. Some slept on the streets.
Young men who had left school expecting to enter the workforce found nothing. They had never held a job. They had no skills to offer because they had never had the chance to learn them. They stood on street corners with hundreds of others, waiting for factory foremen or building contractors to appear and select a few for a day’s work. Most days, no one came.
Skilled workers with twenty or thirty years of experience saw their expertise become worthless. A master toolmaker, a trained machinist, a qualified electrician, none of it mattered when factories stood silent and no one was hiring. These men had built their identities on their skills and their reliability. Unemployment stripped away both.
Middle-class professionals suffered the same fate. Engineers found no companies building anything. Architects had no clients. Teachers discovered cities could not afford to hire them. The professional middle class had always defined itself through education, work, and social respectability. Unemployment threatened all three. A man with a university degree standing in a dole queue experienced not just material hardship but psychological trauma. His education had promised security. The republic had promised opportunity. Neither did.
Small business owners went bankrupt. Shop owners lost customers who had no money to spend. Craftsmen found no one wanted their services. Those who had borrowed to expand during the good years now faced demands from banks for repayment they could not make. Bankruptcy meant losing everything: the shop, the tools, the apartment above the business, the respectability that came with being self-employed rather than a wage worker.
Families broke apart under the strain. Men who could not support their families lost authority within the household and self-respect within themselves. Women struggled to feed children on budgets that shrank every month. They queued for charity bread. They watered down soup to make it last. They watched their children go hungry. Young people saw no future worth working toward. Marriage rates fell. Birth rates dropped. Suicide rates climbed.
The unemployed filled public spaces during the day because they could not afford to heat their homes. They stood on street corners in groups, talking, waiting, hoping for nothing because there was nothing to hope for. They sat in parks when weather allowed. They gathered outside labour exchanges. They became a visible presence in every German city, a constant reminder that the system had failed and millions were paying the price.
German cities, which had seemed so vibrant during the golden years, now displayed human misery on a massive scale. Men in worn clothes and broken shoes shuffled through streets looking for work that did not exist. Women queued for hours to buy the scraps of the cheapest food available. Children played in streets wearing whatever clothes their mothers could patch together. The prosperity of 1928 had vanished. The poverty of 1932 seemed permanent.
Middle-class Germans had supported the Weimar Republic, or at least tolerated it, as long as it delivered stability and economic opportunity. When the depression destroyed prosperity and delivered poverty and chaos instead, middle-class support for democracy evaporated. The Great Depression shattered faith in the economic and political systems that had governed Germany since 1918. Germans began looking for alternatives. They found them in the political extremes that promised to destroy the existing order and build something new.
The Electoral Earthquake
Elections for the Reichstag were scheduled for September 1930. In May 1928, during the prosperity, the Social Democrats had won 29.8 percent, the Nazis 2.6 percent with 12 seats, and moderate pro-republican parties roughly 60 percent combined. The extremes remained marginal. Two years of depression changed everything.
The election of 14 September 1930 revealed political collapse. The Nazi Party surged from 2.6 percent to 18.3 percent, gaining 107 seats. They became the second-largest party overnight. The Communist Party rose from 10.6 percent to 13.1 percent, gaining 77 seats. Together, the two anti-democratic extremes controlled more than 30 percent of the Reichstag.
The democratic parties collapsed. The Social Democrats fell to 24.5 percent. They remained the largest party but their support had eroded significantly. The Centre Party held roughly steady at 11.8 percent but could only hold its Catholic base. The liberal parties suffered catastrophic losses. The German Democratic Party fell from 4.9 percent to 3.8 percent. Stresemann’s German People’s Party collapsed from 8.7 percent to 4.5 percent. The educated, professional, middle-class voters who had supported economic liberalism and gradual democratic reform abandoned the liberal parties en masse.
The September 1930 election destroyed the possibility of stable, democratic government. No coalition of parties committed to the republic could form a majority. The Social Democrats, Centre Party, and both liberal parties together held only about 40 percent of seats. The extremes held more than 30 percent. They rejected parliamentary democracy entirely. The remaining seats went to various nationalist and conservative parties, none reliable supporters of democratic government.
The Nazi breakthrough came from multiple sources. Millions of Germans who had not voted in previous elections or who had supported small regional parties turned to the Nazis. Middle-class voters who had supported the liberal parties abandoned them. Young voters, many casting ballots for the first time, chose Hitler in extraordinary numbers. Rural voters left agricultural interest parties. The Nazis drew support from every social class except the industrial working class and practising Catholics.
The Nazi vote was strongest in Protestant rural areas and small towns, particularly in northern and eastern Germany. Farmers buried in debt and facing collapsing prices turned to the Nazis in huge numbers. Small-town tradesmen and shopkeepers voted Nazi. White-collar workers, junior civil servants, small business owners, all the groups that defined themselves as middle class and felt themselves sinking toward poverty, voted Nazi. These voters had believed in the republic during the golden years. The depression destroyed that belief. The Nazis promised to restore what the republic had taken from them.
Adolf Hitler campaigned everywhere. He had learned from his failed putsch in 1923. He would win power through elections, not force. He would destroy democracy using democratic means.
Hitler travelled by aircraft, still a novelty in 1930. This allowed him to speak in multiple cities each day, generating constant publicity. The image contrasted sharply with elderly political leaders. Hitler was 41. Most of Germany’s political leadership was in their sixties or seventies. Hitler presented himself as the leader of a new generation.
Nazi propaganda saturated Germany. Posters covered walls in every city and town. Bold graphics and simple slogans. “Work and Bread!” “Germany Awake!” “The System Must Go!” The SA numbered several hundred thousand, marching in formation and providing visible proof of Nazi strength. They also generated publicity through violence, attacking Communist meetings and fighting street battles.
Nazi rallies filled beer halls and auditoriums. Hitler spoke for hours, building emotional intensity. He raged against the enemies destroying Germany. He promised vengeance and renewal. The audience saw a movement that seemed powerful, confident, and unstoppable.
The Nazi message adapted to different audiences. To unemployed workers, jobs through massive public works. To the middle class, protection against communism and economic security. To farmers, debt relief and guaranteed prices. To nationalists, tearing up Versailles and restoring German military power. To everyone, he blamed specific enemies: the politicians who signed the armistice, the parties that accepted Versailles, international Jewish finance, Marxist traitors, and the weak democratic system that allowed them to thrive.
Hitler’s explanations were simple, clear, and wrong. The depression had complex causes. Hitler reduced it all to treason and conspiracy. None of it was true. But millions of desperate Germans wanted simple explanations and clear enemies. The Nazis provided both.
The Communist Response
The German Communist Party grew alongside the Nazis. In 1928, the Communists won 10.6 percent. By September 1930, they reached 13.1 percent. By November 1932, they held 16.9 percent. The party promised revolution, overthrow of capitalism, and a workers’ state modelled on Soviet Russia.
The Communist Party followed directives from Moscow. Joseph Stalin controlled the Communist International, which coordinated Communist parties worldwide. Stalin’s policy identified Social Democratic parties as the main enemy. This “social fascism” theory declared that Social Democrats defended capitalism and prevented revolution. They were the left wing of fascism. Communists must attack Social Democrats as fiercely as they attacked actual fascists.
This analysis was catastrophically wrong. German Communists treated the Social Democrats as enemies. They refused cooperation. They blocked united action against the Nazis. Ernst Thälmann, the Communist leader, declared that Social Democrats and Nazis were equivalent dangers. Some Communists even voted with Nazis to bring down Social Democratic governments.
The Social Democrats and Communists together represented the majority of working-class voters. In November 1932, they combined for 37.3 percent, more than the Nazis’ 33.1 percent. United, they could have blocked Hitler. They never united.
The Social Democratic Party wanted to defend democratic institutions through gradual reform. The party drew support from skilled industrial workers and urban professionals. Its leaders feared revolution and believed in working within the system. They remembered the chaos of 1918-1919.
The Social Democrats mistrusted Communists as reckless revolutionaries who would provoke civil war. They feared Soviet-style totalitarianism as much as Nazi tyranny. When forced to choose between defending democracy and allying with Communists who wanted to destroy democracy, the Social Democrats chose to defend democracy alone.
This split had deep roots. Social Democrats had supported German war credits in 1914. They had used Freikorps to crush the Spartacist Uprising in 1919, leading to Luxemburg and Liebknecht’s murders. Communists had never forgiven these betrayals. Fourteen years of mutual hostility could not be overcome even when democracy’s survival required it.
The working class divided. The left destroyed itself through internal warfare. The Nazis exploited the split, presenting themselves as the only force capable of ending Marxist division through national unity under authoritarian leadership.
Street Violence
Political violence reached unprecedented levels. Nazi stormtroopers and Communist paramilitaries fought battles in German streets. Both recruited from the same pool of desperate, unemployed young men.
The SA numbered over 400,000 by 1932. Most were young, unemployed, and angry. They wore brown uniforms, marched in formation, and presented themselves as disciplined soldiers. The SA provided food, shelter, camaraderie, and purpose.
Ernst Röhm commanded the SA. He was a scarred veteran of the Great War and a skilled organiser who believed the SA should seize power through force. The SA guarded Nazi rallies, attacked opponents, and fought street battles. Every confrontation generated newspaper coverage and demonstrated Nazi strength.
The Communists fielded the Red Front Fighters’ League, perhaps 100,000 at its peak. They defended working-class neighbourhoods, attacked Nazi rallies, and clashed with police. Communist paramilitaries gave as good as they got.
The pattern repeated constantly. Nazis would march through a Communist neighbourhood. Fighting would erupt. Both sides used fists, clubs, knives, occasionally guns. Police would intervene, often with more force against Communists than Nazis, since most police sympathised with the right.
Political meetings became armed camps. Every major gathering risked turning into a brawl. Speakers addressed audiences while paramilitaries prepared for battle. The violence worsened through 1932. In the months around the July 1932 election, political violence killed nearly 100 people.
The worst incident occurred on 17 July 1932 in Altona, near Hamburg. The SA marched through a Communist neighbourhood. Fighting erupted. Eighteen people died. Altona Bloody Sunday demonstrated that Germany stood on the edge of civil war.
The violence served Nazi purposes. It showed the state as weak and paralysed. It created the impression that only the Nazis could restore order, even as their own violence contributed to chaos. Hitler presented himself as the man who could end the fighting by crushing the Communists and establishing authoritarian control.
The Failure of Government
The parliamentary system broke down in the face of the depression. The September 1930 election had made stable, democratic government impossible. No coalition of parties committed to the republic commanded a majority in the Reichstag. The extremes at both ends controlled more than 30 percent of seats and blocked any coherent policy. German democracy, which had barely functioned even during prosperous years, could not survive this crisis.
Heinrich Brüning became chancellor in March 1930, appointed by President Hindenburg. Brüning belonged to the Centre Party, the Catholic political party that had been a pillar of Weimar democracy since 1919. He was 45, a former army officer and bureaucrat who had entered politics after the war. Brüning was intelligent, disciplined, and deeply committed to conservative economic orthodoxy. He believed Germany must balance its budget, maintain the gold standard, and prove to foreign creditors that Germany deserved relief from reparations.
Brüning could not command a parliamentary majority. He governed through presidential emergency decrees under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution.
Article 48 granted the president extraordinary powers. It allowed the president to issue decrees with the force of law when the republic faced emergency conditions. These decrees could override normal legislative procedures. The Reichstag could cancel a presidential decree by majority vote, but as long as no such majority existed, the decree stood. Article 48 had been designed as a safety valve for brief crises. It became the normal method of governance from 1930 onward.
Brüning used Article 48 repeatedly. When the Reichstag rejected his budget, he issued it by decree. When parliament opposed his economic policies, he implemented them by decree. He bypassed democratic procedures and ruled through presidential authority. The Reichstag remained technically in session, but its function became merely to demonstrate that no majority existed to override the president’s decrees. This arrangement destroyed parliamentary democracy in practice while maintaining its forms.
Brüning’s economic policy made the depression worse. He pursued deflation with grim determination. He cut government spending across all departments. He reduced unemployment benefits even as unemployment soared. He raised taxes even as incomes fell. He slashed public sector wages. His goal was to balance the budget and maintain the gold standard by driving down prices and wages until Germany became competitive in international markets again.
The policy failed completely. Deflation deepened the depression. Cutting government spending reduced demand, which forced more business closures, which increased unemployment, which reduced tax revenue, which required further spending cuts. The cycle fed on itself. Unemployment kept rising. Production kept falling. By pursuing fiscal orthodoxy during a depression, Brüning turned a severe crisis into a catastrophe.
Brüning also pursued a foreign policy goal. He wanted to prove that reparations were impossible and force their cancellation. He believed that if Germany demonstrated it could not pay even while imposing maximum austerity, the creditor nations would finally abandon reparations demands. He saw the depression as an opportunity to achieve through economic collapse what Germany had failed to achieve through negotiation: complete freedom from Versailles obligations.
This strategy required making the depression as visible and severe as possible. Brüning could not allow economic recovery because recovery would suggest Germany could pay reparations. German suffering became a bargaining chip in foreign policy negotiations.
The strategy eventually worked in foreign policy terms. In June 1931, American President Herbert Hoover proposed a one-year moratorium on all intergovernmental debts, effectively suspending reparations. In July 1932, at the Lausanne Conference, the European powers effectively ended reparations, reducing Germany’s remaining obligations to a token payment that was never made. Brüning achieved his foreign policy goal. But by then he had lost office, democracy had collapsed, and the Nazis controlled the streets.
Brüning’s domestic political position grew impossible. The Social Democrats tolerated his government because the alternative seemed worse. They did not support Brüning’s policies, but they voted against no-confidence motions that would have brought him down. This was “toleration” rather than genuine support. The Social Democrats believed that removing Brüning would bring someone even more hostile to democracy to power. They chose the lesser evil and paid a catastrophic price. Their voters saw the Social Democrats effectively supporting a government that cut benefits, raised taxes, and enforced austerity. Communist propaganda attacked the Social Democrats as traitors to the working class, and to unemployed workers facing benefit cuts, the accusation felt true.
In April 1932, under pressure from the Social Democrats and facing mounting evidence of SA violence, Brüning banned the SA and its sister organisation the SS throughout Germany. The ban was an attempt to restore order and reduce political violence. It briefly reduced street fighting, but it also enraged the Nazis and gave conservative critics another reason to seek Brüning’s removal.
President Hindenburg, who had appointed Brüning and sustained him in office, grew dissatisfied. Hindenburg was now 84, a relic of imperial Germany who had never accepted the republic. He had been Germany’s supreme military commander during the Great War, a figure of mythical status among nationalists and conservatives. He had reluctantly accepted the presidency in 1925 as a duty to the nation. He believed in authoritarian governance, military values, and traditional Prussian conservatism. He viewed democracy with suspicion and tolerated it only as long as it did not threaten conservative interests.
Hindenburg’s presidential term expired in 1932. Elections were scheduled for March. Hitler announced he would run. The prospect alarmed even conservatives. The Social Democrats, despite their hatred of Hindenburg’s politics, supported his re-election as the only candidate who could defeat Hitler. The Centre Party supported Hindenburg. The liberal parties supported Hindenburg. Only the extremes ran their own candidates: Hitler for the Nazis, Ernst Thälmann for the Communists.
The first round on 13 March 1932 failed to produce a majority. Hindenburg received 49.6 percent. Hitler gained 30.1 percent. Thälmann won 13.2 percent. A runoff was required. On 10 April 1932, Hindenburg won with 53 percent. Hitler received 36.8 percent. Thälmann gained 10.2 percent.
The election demonstrated several realities. A majority of Germans still rejected Hitler when forced to choose directly. But more than a third supported Hitler even when running against a legendary military hero backed by all democratic parties. The Communist vote remained substantial. And Hindenburg, at 84, had won re-election only by making implicit promises to the conservative elites who supported him. Those promises would destroy both Brüning and democracy.
Conservative Miscalculation
In May 1932, Hindenburg dismissed Brüning. The decision shocked Germany’s political establishment. Brüning had served conservative interests loyally for two years. His dismissal came because he had failed to deliver what really mattered to Hindenburg and the conservative elite: the restoration of authoritarian, conservative rule without any dependence on parliamentary democracy.
The move was orchestrated by General Kurt von Schleicher and a group of conservative advisers around Hindenburg. Schleicher was 50, a political general who had spent more time in Berlin’s corridors of power than on military exercises. He was intelligent, manipulative, and convinced of his ability to manage political forces through backroom deals. Schleicher and his allies believed they could build a government that commanded popular support through alliance with the Nazis while keeping real power in conservative hands.
Hindenburg appointed Franz von Papen as chancellor on 1 June 1932. The appointment astonished political observers. Papen was 52, an aristocrat, a monarchist, a Catholic conservative, and a political lightweight. He had briefly served in the Prussian parliament but held no significant position and commanded no following. He was personally charming, well-connected in aristocratic circles, and utterly unqualified to manage a nation in crisis.
Papen’s cabinet was aristocrats, landowners, industrialists, and conservative technocrats. Journalists dubbed it the “cabinet of barons.” The cabinet had no support in the Reichstag. It represented Germany’s traditional elites: large landowners, heavy industry, the military, and the bureaucracy. It explicitly rejected parliamentary democracy in favour of presidential rule.
Papen dissolved the Reichstag and called elections for 31 July 1932.
The July 1932 election produced catastrophe. The Nazi Party surged to 37.4 percent, gaining 230 seats out of 608. They became by far the largest party Germany had ever seen under democratic conditions. The Communists gained as well, rising to 14.3 percent with 89 seats. Together, the two anti-democratic extremes controlled 319 seats, an absolute majority.
The democratic parties collapsed. The Social Democrats fell to 21.6 percent. The Centre Party held at 12.5 percent. The liberal parties fell below 2 percent combined. The centre of German politics had vanished. No coalition of parties committed to democracy could form a majority.
The Nazis held 37.4 percent, a plurality but not a majority. They needed coalition partners. Hitler demanded the chancellorship. He refused any subordinate position. He wanted full power or nothing.
Papen offered Hitler the vice-chancellorship in a coalition government. Hitler refused. He had spent years building the Nazi Party into Germany’s largest political movement. He would not serve as deputy to an aristocratic nonentity appointed by conservative backroom dealers.
Negotiations collapsed. Papen continued to govern through presidential decree without parliamentary support. The arrangement was absurd. The government commanded perhaps 10 percent support in the Reichstag. It survived only because no alternative majority existed and because President Hindenburg backed Papen with emergency powers.
Papen lifted the ban on the SA that Brüning had imposed. Violence escalated dramatically. In June and July 1932, political fighting killed nearly 100 people.
The worst incident occurred on 17 July 1932 in Altona, near Hamburg. The SA organised a provocative march through a Communist neighbourhood. Thousands of stormtroopers marched through narrow streets lined with tenements where Communist workers lived. Fighting erupted. Communist paramilitaries attacked from windows and rooftops. The SA fought back. Police fired into the crowds. When it ended, 18 people lay dead and dozens wounded. Altona Bloody Sunday shocked Germany.
Papen used the Altona violence as justification for his most significant action: destroying Prussia’s democratic government.
Prussia was Germany’s largest state, containing roughly two-thirds of Germany’s population and territory. Since the early 1920s, Prussia had been governed by a coalition led by the Social Democrats. The Prussian government controlled its own police, maintained order in Berlin and other major cities, and upheld democratic values. Prussia represented the last major stronghold of functioning democratic government in Germany.
On 20 July 1932, three days after Altona Bloody Sunday, Papen staged a coup. Using presidential emergency powers, he declared the Prussian government had failed to maintain order. He dismissed the entire Prussian government. He appointed himself Reich Commissioner for Prussia, effectively placing Germany’s largest state under direct central control. He installed military and police commanders loyal to the central government. He purged Social Democratic officials from the Prussian police and bureaucracy.
The coup was illegal. Prussia’s government had maintained order better than most German states. The Prussian police had actively suppressed extremist violence from both left and right. But legality no longer mattered. Papen had presidential emergency powers and military backing.
The Social Democrats protested. They appealed to the courts. But they did not resist with force. They did not call strikes. They did not mobilise supporters for mass resistance. They hoped the courts would overturn the coup. The courts eventually ruled aspects of it illegal, but by then it was far too late. The largest democratic stronghold in Germany had fallen without a fight.
The failure to resist the Prussian coup marked the moment German democracy effectively died. If democracy could not defend itself in Prussia, where Social Democrats controlled significant force and had legal authority, it could not defend itself anywhere. The conservatives learned that Social Democrats would not fight. The Nazis learned the same lesson. Democracy’s defenders would protest, appeal to legality, and hope for rescue. They would not resist.
Papen called another election for 6 November 1932. Nazi support fell to 33.1 percent. They lost 34 seats. The party had peaked. Its finances were strained. Some Nazi leaders feared they would never gain more than a third of the electorate.
But the Nazis remained the largest party by far. The Communists had gained ground, rising to 16.9 percent with 100 seats. The extremes still controlled 296 seats, nearly half the Reichstag. No democratic coalition was possible. The crisis continued. Four elections in eight months had solved nothing.
Schleicher’s Gambit
In December 1932, Hindenburg dismissed Papen and appointed General Kurt von Schleicher as chancellor on 3 December. Schleicher, who had manoeuvred behind the scenes throughout Papen’s tenure, finally took direct responsibility. He was 50, a political general who had shaped policy from the shadows. Now he would try to govern openly.
Schleicher believed he could succeed through a different approach. Rather than relying purely on presidential decree, he would build a broader coalition. He would split the Nazi Party by bringing its left-wing faction into government. He would win working-class support by reversing austerity. He would create a “cross-front” coalition of workers and soldiers, uniting Germans across class lines.
The strategy required breaking Nazi unity. Schleicher approached Gregor Strasser, who led the Nazi Party’s left wing and controlled much of its organisation. Strasser was 40, a former pharmacist who had joined the Nazis in their early days. He was a talented organiser and commanded loyalty from many district leaders.
Strasser favoured participating in government. He believed the Nazis should accept cabinet posts even without Hitler as chancellor. He feared that endless opposition would erode Nazi support. He saw Schleicher’s offer as an opportunity.
Hitler saw it as betrayal. He recognised that Schleicher’s strategy threatened everything he had built. If Strasser and other Nazis joined government without him, the party would split. Hitler would lose control. In early December 1932, Hitler summoned Nazi leaders to Berlin. He confronted Strasser before other senior members, accused him of disloyalty, and demanded total commitment to his leadership. Hitler understood that personal loyalty was the Nazi Party’s binding force.
On 8 December 1932, Strasser resigned all party posts and withdrew from politics. He made no attempt to rally supporters or create an alternative movement. He chose loyalty by choosing resignation. Hitler’s victory was total. He purged anyone suspected of supporting Strasser and centralised all authority under himself. The split Schleicher required never materialised.
Schleicher’s coalition collapsed before it began. He could not deliver Nazi participation. He approached trade unions but they could not deliver support without Social Democratic approval. The Social Democrats refused to cooperate with a general who had helped destroy democratic government. Schleicher offered to reverse some austerity and implement public works, but without either Nazi or Social Democratic support, he commanded no majority.
Schleicher governed for 57 days and achieved nothing. He demonstrated that backroom cleverness could not substitute for political legitimacy.
Franz von Papen worked behind the scenes throughout Schleicher’s tenure. Humiliated by his dismissal and hungry for revenge, Papen maintained connections to Hindenburg and conservative circles. He met secretly with Hitler throughout January 1933.
Papen and Hitler negotiated a coalition government. Papen wanted revenge on Schleicher and restoration of his influence. Hitler wanted power. They found common ground. Papen would support Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. Hitler would lead a cabinet dominated by conservatives where Nazis held a minority of posts. Papen would serve as vice-chancellor with the right to attend all meetings between Hitler and Hindenburg. Conservative ministers would control the military, foreign affairs, and economics.
Papen convinced himself and other conservatives that they could control Hitler. They would surround him with reliable ministers. They controlled the army, the bureaucracy, and the president. Hitler might have mass support and street fighters, but real power lay in institutions conservatives commanded. Hitler would be useful for mobilising support and crushing the left. Once accomplished, conservatives could ease him aside.
Other conservatives shared this delusion. They believed they understood power. They thought Hitler was a talented demagogue but an amateur who could be managed by professionals. They convinced themselves Hitler needed them more than they needed him. They were wrong about everything.
Hitler negotiated from strength. The Nazi Party remained Germany’s largest force despite its November setback. Hitler commanded hundreds of thousands of stormtroopers. He had demonstrated he could mobilise millions of voters. He had total control of his movement. The conservatives needed Hitler to provide mass legitimacy. Hitler needed them only to overcome Hindenburg’s reluctance to appoint him.
Hindenburg resisted initially. He distrusted Hitler as a former corporal and Austrian upstart. He feared Hitler’s radicalism. But Hindenburg was 85, isolated, and surrounded by advisers who insisted Hitler must be brought into government. Schleicher had failed. No other option existed. Hindenburg’s son and close advisers assured him Hitler could be controlled. Hindenburg yielded.
On 30 January 1933, he appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany.
Democracy Dies
By January 1933, German democracy had ceased to function. The Reichstag still met but could not govern. No coalition of parties committed to democratic principles commanded a majority. Presidential emergency decrees had replaced democratic legislation. The political centre had vanished. The extremes controlled the streets and dominated the ballot box.
The depression continued unabated. Six million remained officially unemployed. The government appeared powerless. Conservative rule by presidential decree had failed under Brüning, Papen, and Schleicher. Democratic parties could not form majorities or implement policies. The Social Democrats held barely 20 percent of seats. They had spent two years tolerating governments they opposed. Their strategy had failed. The Centre Party held its Catholic base but could expand no further. The liberal parties had collapsed to insignificance.
The constitution’s emergency provisions, designed to protect democracy, were destroying it. Article 48 had become the permanent basis of government. Presidential dictatorship had replaced parliamentary democracy. Elections were held but could not produce functioning governments. Parliament met but had no power to legislate. Democracy had become a hollow shell.
Conservative elites faced a choice. They could continue with Schleicher’s failing government, establish an explicit military dictatorship, or bring Hitler into government where conservative ministers would limit his power. They chose Hitler.
The conservatives believed they had structured the arrangement to protect their interests. Hitler would hold the chancellorship, but only two other Nazis would serve in the cabinet. The key positions would go to conservatives. Franz von Papen would serve as vice-chancellor with guaranteed access to Hitler. Conservative ministers outnumbered Nazis nine to three. They controlled the institutions: the army, the bureaucracy, the foreign service. They thought this would allow them to use Hitler’s mass appeal while retaining real power.
They failed to understand that the chancellorship itself conveyed enormous power, that the Nazis controlled the streets through the SA, and that Hitler had spent fourteen years building a movement and had no intention of serving as anyone’s puppet.
On 30 January 1933, President Hindenburg administered the oath of office to Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. Hitler had achieved through elections and backroom deals what his Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 had failed to accomplish through force.
The Nazis erupted in celebration. That evening, thousands of SA stormtroopers marched through Berlin in a torchlit parade. They marched in perfect formation down Wilhelmstrasse past the Reich Chancellery where Hitler watched from a window. The procession continued for hours. The celebration was both demonstration and threat, showing Nazi strength and warning opponents what awaited them.
Conservative elites observed with satisfaction. They believed they had solved Germany’s crisis by bringing the Nazis into government under controlled conditions. They thought they had tamed the movement and harnessed its energy for conservative purposes. They had structured the government to protect their interests and limit Hitler’s freedom.
Within six months, every check on Hitler’s power would be destroyed. Within eighteen months, Hindenburg would be dead and Hitler would hold absolute power. Within eight years, Europe would be at war. Within twelve years, Germany would lie in ruins and tens of millions would be dead.
But on 30 January 1933, the conservatives congratulated themselves on their cleverness. They had, they believed, saved Germany from chaos by controlling the radical forces the depression had unleashed. They had opened the cage and convinced themselves they controlled the tiger.
Democracy died through the ballot box, the streets, and the calculated decisions of elites who thought they could manage extremism for their own purposes. The Weimar Republic fell because economic crisis destroyed faith in democratic institutions, because the left divided itself and paralysed its own resistance, because conservatives preferred Hitler to any accommodation with social democracy, and because millions of desperate Germans chose authoritarian promises over democratic chaos.
The depression made Hitler’s rise possible by destroying prosperity and faith in the existing system. The failure of democratic parties made it probable by demonstrating they could neither govern nor solve the crisis. The choice of conservative elites made it certain by conferring on Hitler the legitimacy and power of the chancellorship while deluding themselves that they could control him.
Four years of economic catastrophe destroyed fourteen years of democracy. The republic that survived revolution in 1918-1919, putsches in 1920 and 1923, hyperinflation in 1923, and foreign occupation had fallen to unemployment, polarisation, and the miscalculation of those who thought they could control forces they had unleashed.
Germany had chosen its path. War would follow.