SOME GENUINE PROBLEMS WITH THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

The mainstream parties ignored the problem of inflation in 1919-22 until it got completely out of control.Parliamentary coalitions often dissolved; the average life span of a cabinet was less than one year.Farmers suffered greatly from a collapse of world commodities prices, beginning in 1926/27, but politicians representing urban consumers did not respond.The National Unemployment Insurance Act of 1927 calculated dues and benefits on the premise that there would never be more than 2 million unemployed. Even moderate party leaders resorted to confrontation tactics in 1930 that yielded paralysis in the Reichstag.

RIGHT-WING CRITICS OF WEIMAR

Hitler’s “National Socialist German Workers Party” (NSDAP) remained a fringe group until 1930.

The German Nationalist People’s Party (DNVP) participated in coalition governments in 1925-27 but lurched rightward under Alfred Hugenberg in 1928.

The 300,000-member “Stahlhelm: League of Combat Veterans” became militantly anti-republican in 1927/28.

“Conservative revolutionary” and “Young Conservative” intellectuals gained support from various publishers (e.g., Hans Zehrer of Die Tat), youth groups, and economic interest groups.

Catholic monarchists held retreats at the Benedictine Monastery of Maria Laach.

Alois Hitler (1837-1903):This illegitimate son of a

maid achieved respectability as an Austrian civil servant

Klara Hitler (1860-1907), the third wife of Alois

and his second cousin

“I had honored my father, but my mother I had loved.”

(Mein Kampf, end of chap. 1)

The Hitlers came from the borderland between Lower Austria & Bohemia, in an Austrian Empire wracked by

ethnic tension

1889: Adolf Hitler born in Braunau1900-05: High school in Linz1908-13:Vienna years1913: Moves to Munich

Where’s Adolf? (School photo at age 10.)

TWO YEARS LATER HITLER WAS STRUGGLING IN HIGH SCHOOL AND FLUNKED HIS FIRST YEAR

Georg von Schönerer (1842-

1921), who excluded Jews from his Austrian

Pan-German League,

called himself the Führer, and

introduced the “Heil” greeting. He

exhorted young men to remain

bachelors until 25 and avoid meat and

alcohol.

“Carriage Shafts” (Austria, 1900):“Schmul’s Patent Automobile. Cheapest

operation!Completely safe!”

Hitler displayed NO political activism before World War I:

(watercolor by Hitler, Munich, early 1914)

Adolf Hitler with two

fellow dispatch

runners and his dog, Foxl, in Fournes,

France (1915)

Munich experienced

Communist rule for six weeks in

spring 1919

A Bavarian Heimwehr militia

unit that helped to suppress the Munich Soviet

Republic

Captain Ernst Röhm, who armed Bavaria’s militias,

promoted Hitler’s political

training, and followed Hitler

into the “German Workers’ Party” in

autumn 1919

Anton Drexler, founder of the German Workers’

Party, and Hitler in Bavarian costume, ca.

1920(see WRS, pp. 124-26, for their 25-Point Program)

“HITLER SPEAKS!” (postcard to commemorate a rally in Munich’s Krone Circus Hall,

1923)

Postcard of Hitler in Landsberg Prison (1924), where he dictated vol. 1 of

Mein Kampf

TOTAL GERMAN SALES:

1929: 23,0001932: 80,000

1933: 1,500,000

1945: 10,000,000

MEIN KAMPF INSISTS ON THE FOLLOWING POINTS(compare WRS, 130-33)

1. He had become a militant pan-German nationalist already in high school in Linz [probably true].

2. In Vienna he had learned about the “Social Question” and understood the grievances of workers.

3. In Vienna he had fierce debates on a construction site with Marxist trade unionists who dragged the Fatherland, religion, and morality through the mud [?].

4. “Wherever I went [in Vienna] I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity.” Jews accounted for “nine-tenths of all literary filth, artistic trash, and theatrical idiocy.”

5. He had formed his complete Weltanschauung in Vienna and never learned anything important thereafter [?].

“Combative” ----- “Commanding”

“Visionary” ---- “Ironic”

Dr. Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), appointed

Gauleiter of Berlin in 1926

Gregor Strasser (1892-1934), pharmacist & Reich Organization Leader of the

NSDAP

“On the 9th of

November1919”(DNVP

propaganda against Weimar)

“Free of Versailles! Away

from Jewish-Socialist

Serfdom! For Freedom and Fatherland!Your Slogan:

German Nationalist!”

(DNVP campaign poster, May

1924)

“Like a bolt of lightning, that’s how the black-white-red victory on December 7 must work” (DNVP, Dec. 1924)

“Vote for Grand Admiral Tirpitz”

ALFRED HUGENBERG (1865-

1951)

1890-1907: Prussian civil servant, co-founder of the German Pan-German League1907-1918: CEO of the Krupp Works1919: Elected to Reichstag for DNVP, founds newspaper chain1925: Denounces Treaty of Locarno1927: Denounces welfare lawsAugust 1928: Replaces Count Westarp as DNVP chairSEE HIS PARTY PROGRAM IN WRS, 348-52.

The Stahlhelm (300,000 members) proclaimed in September 1928 that “We hate with all our souls the

current state form, because it hinders the liberation of our enslaved Fatherland.”

Rally by 50,000 in Berlin, June 1929

The “First President” of the Stahlhelm, Franz Seldte,

supported the DVP, but his “Co-President” Theodor Duesterberg,

pushed for a rightist “National Front”

The DNVP supported Duesterberg for

President in March 1932

“And You?”(Stahlhelm poster,

1932):See WRS, 339-40

Lieutenant Ernst Jünger(1895-1998):

Photographed soon after the war’s end with

thePour le mérite

(the “Blue Max”):Storm of Steel (1920)

made him famous [see WRS, pp. 18-20, 369-72,

375-77].

The monastery church at Maria Laach, a Benedictine Abbey restored in the 1890s.

The monks yearned for a new “Holy Roman Empire.”

“Christ Pantocrator” mosaic (1911):The monks celebrated the advent of the 3rd Reich in

1933

Edgar Jung (1894-1934)

Great War and Free Corps veteran

1924: Organized the assassination of pro-French separatists in Speyer, then opened law practice in Munich

1927: Published The Regime of the Inferior

1932: Became advisor and speechwriter for Chancellor Papen

June 1934: Shot on Hitler’s orders for writing speeches critical of Nazi lawlessness

See WRS, 352-54.

Arthur Moeller van den Bruck (1876-1925)

Born to civil servants in Solingen, he flunked out of Gymnasium but became a cultural historian.1914: Volunteered for military service and worked in Army Command’s press office.1919: Co-founded the June Club in Berlin to perpetuate the “Spirit of 1914).1923: Published Das Dritte Reich.1925: Committed suicide.

Ernst Niekisch (1889-1967)A schoolteacher who helped to found the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919; expelled from the SPD in 1926, he founded a “National Bolshevik” movement.

Frontispiece for Hitler—Germany’s

Ruin (1932):See WRS,

338-39

Carl Schmitt (1888-1955)

1911: Earned law doctorate at Strasbourg1925: Excommunicated from Catholic Church1926: Becomes professor at Berlin Commercial Academy1929: Exalts the role of the President as “Guardian of the Constitution”1932: Legal counsel for Reich Chancellors Papen and Schleicher1933: Joined Nazi Party and became professor at the University of Berlin(See WRS, 334-37, 342-45,