Volkish and Anti-Democratic Thought Before 1933 Tim B. Müller
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Volkish and Anti-Democratic Thought before 1933 Tim B. Müller In the two-page feature article of its New ocrats. Precisely the defeats the volkish and Year’s issue of 1933, the Frankfurter Zeitung – anti-democratic circles had had to endure again the leading liberal-democratic newspaper of the and again had contributed to their radicalization Weimar Republic – declared: “The turning point in the Weimar Republic. 2 This interpretation ap- has come.” The “turnaround” was “pervasive, pears paradoxical, but only at first sight. Closer and above all: it encompasses all of the essen- examination of the anti-democratic world before tial areas” – the economy, domestic politics, 1933 helps us to understand how improbable foreign politics, the “overall intellectual situa- their success seemed to many at the time. It tion”. Clear signs of an “easing of tension” were was true that, ideologically and culturally, Na- discernible. Most importantly, “the massive tional Socialism was rooted in the “underworld National Socialist attack on the democratic of extremist politics and tiny, eccentric political state” had not only been “fended off”, but sects”. 3 It is not so easy, however, to draw a countered with a “mighty counter-attack” by direct line between this radically nationalistic, the government, which had led to the “demy- racist and anti-Semitic political milieu and the stification of the NSDAP” (National Socialist establishment of National Socialist rule. 4 German Worker’s Party, or Nazi party). It was precisely the strategy of the new Reich chan- The expectations of the contemporaries, their cellor Kurt von Schleicher that had contributed debates and the forms in which political con- “to inflicting upon the National Socialists the flicts were carried out in the Weimar Republic series of failures and losses first observed in the all seemed to suggest that – regardless of its Reichstag elections of 6 November (in which the fragility – democracy was the probable scenar- NSDAP lost two million votes)”. For the intel- io, whereas its destruction seemed improbable, ligent observers of the Frankfurter Zeitung it even in the early 1930s. 5 Like other democra- had been demonstrated that “nothing could be cies in Europe, the young republic had come to more wrong than to say that the spirit of liberal terms with all kinds of crises, and in the eyes of democracy in Germany is dead”. To be sure, the many there was no viable alternative, wheth- parties had suffered in 1932, “but democracy er they liked it or not. In 1928, even intellectual hasn’t suffered; over the past half year it has opponents had made peace with democracy. virtually experienced a triumph”. 1 The executive director of the Deutschnationaler Handlungsgehilfen-Verband (German National Today, in retrospect, this perspective seems odd, Association of Commercial Employees), a right- even incomprehensible. Wasn’t the great Nation- ist employees’ trade union affiliated with the al Socialist victory – its assumption of power on Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National 30 January 1933 – just around the corner? In People’s Party), demanded of its party that it any case, the expectations of many contempo- open its arms to democracy, not only tactically raries immediately prior to that event were very but also out of conviction, and that it develop a different: democracy had once again success- republican brand of conservatism. The German fully warded off its enemies, and the economic National People’s Party had participated in gov- upswing had already set in. With a view to these ernments and set out on the (still very long) path expectations regarding the present and future towards becoming a conservative-democratic in early January 1933, historiographic research people’s party. It should be added, however, that poses the question as to what they mean for our strong radical right-wing forces were also form- understanding of democracy’s demise. ing within the party in opposition to this “silent democratization”. 6 One aspect that has been pointed out by inter- national scholarship is also quite evident in the Two years later, after the outbreak of the world quotation from the Frankfurter Zeitung : hardly economic crisis – which dwarfed all previous anyone reckoned with a victory of the anti-dem- crises – everything changed. Yet the end of 226 | 227 democracy was not an accident, but the result ultimately appointed Reich chancellor in January of decisions. Society was dominated by bank- 1933 was anything but inevitable; rather, it was ruptcies and company failures, mass unemploy- the outcome of a concatenation of erroneous ment, impoverishment and hunger. To be sure, political calculations and intrigues in elitist cir- the economic disaster seriously unsettled the cles. That date, however, marked a break in the democracy, and the “austerity policy” pro- political development. The new “normality” that claimed by the government and Heinrich Brüning was created by the Nazi regime from early 1933 further aggravated the crisis between 1930 and onward through threats and the implementation 1932. Presumably, however, neither of those two of violence, and in which everything would soon factors led to the downfall of the democracy of revolve around war and racism, had virtually Weimar. 7 In 1932, the aggravation of the crisis nothing to do with democratic normality. 8 was what enabled the old elites around Reich Chancellor Franz von Papen, a number of eco- For the National Socialists, however, mass nomic leaders, and ultimately Reich President participation, public stagings and legitimation Paul von Hindenburg to implement a plan to con- through acclamation were already political vert the parliamentary-democratic republic into methods in the late phase of the Weimar Re- an authoritarian presidential system. This strat- public. To use Hans Mommsen’s formulation in egy also included the reversal of the prohibition somewhat altered form, democracy was breath- on the SA enacted just a few months earlier, ing down Hitler’s neck like a “parasite”. 9 He and which loosed a wave of violence. Along with con- his party had a better understanding of how to straints placed on the freedom of the press, the go about politics in democracy, how to take ad- “Preussenschlag” (“Prussian coup”) of 20 July vantage of moods, and how to exploit problems 1932 – with which Prussia’s Social Democratic for one’s own aims than those in power since minority government was deposed – eliminated 1930: he defeated democracy with democracy. important democratic institutions. This anti- Not only did democracy exhibit a deficit, already democratic plan, however, did not call for an perceived by contemporaries, in connection with assumption of power by the National Socialists, its policies for coping with crises. What is more, and – as demonstrated by the quotation from the democracy’s moral enemy – however transpar- Frankfurter Zeitung – opinions voiced at the time ent his camouflage – presented himself as the convey that people considered the democracy better democrat. Hitler not only promised better so strong that it would survive these authori- living conditions, but also social recognition and tarian machinations. The fact that Hitler was political participation as the perverted fulfilment 1 “Ein Jahr deutscher Politik”, Frankfurter Zeitung , 1 Jan. 1933, pp. 1f. 2 See Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931 (New York, 2015), pp. 511–18. 3 Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (London, 2004), p. 37. 4 In recent research, Geoff Eley, Nazism as Fascism: Violence, Ideology, and the Ground of Consent in Germany 1930–1945 (London, 2013) and Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in History and Memory (London, 2015), pp. 87–117, for example, emphasize the political watershed of 1933. 5 See for example Moritz Föllmer and Rüdiger Graf, eds., Die Krise der Weimarer RePublik. Zur Kritik eines Deutungsmusters (Frankfurt, 2005); Rüdiger Graf, Die Zukunft der Weimarer RePublik. Krisen und Zukunftsaneignungen in Deutschland 1918–1933 (Munich, 2008); Wolfgang Hardtwig, ed., Politische Kultur- geschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit 1918–1939 (Göttingen, 2005); idem, ed., Ordnungen in der Krise. Zur Politischen Kulturgeschichte Deutschlands 1918–1933 (Munich, 2007); Thomas Mergel, Parlamentarische Kultur in der Weimarer RePublik. Politische Kommunikation, symbolische Politik und Öffentlichkeit im Reichstag (Düsseldorf, 2012); Tim B. Müller and Adam Tooze, eds., Normalität und Fragilität. Demokratie nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Hamburg, 2015); Benjamin Ziemann, Front und Heimat. Ländliche Kriegserfahrungen im südlichen Bayern 1914–1923 (Essen, 1997). 6 See Michael Dreyer, “Weimar als ‚wehrhafte Demokratie‘ – ein unterschätztes Vorbild”, Michael Schultheiss and Sebastian Lasch, eds., Die Weimarer Verfassung. Wert und Wirkung für die Demokratie (Erfurt, 2009), pp. 161–89; Barry A. Jackisch, The Pan-German League and Radical Nationalist Politics in Interwar Germany, 1918–1939 (Farnham, 2012), p. 154; Mergel 2012 (see note 5), pp. 323–31 speaks of “silent republicanization”. 7 For decades, Brüning’s deflation policy had been controversially discussed by scholars; for an introduction to the topic, see Andreas Wirsching, Die Weimarer RePublik. Politik und Gesellschaft (Munich, 2008), pp. 109–14, 128f. 8 Apart from the classical representation by Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die Auflösung der Weimarer RePublik. Eine Studie zum Problem des Machtverfalls in der Demokratie , 2nd reprint of 5th edition (Düsseldorf,