The Coming of the Third Reich

• Here, too, his example pointed forwards to the tangled mixture of the new and the old that was so characteristic of the Third Reich

  • New Note

• It is worth calling to mind that a mere fifty years separated Bismarck’s foundation of the German Empire in 1871 from the electoral triumphs of the Nazis in 1930-32

• It was here, rather than in the remote religious cultures and hierarchical polities of the Reformation or the ‘Enlightened Absolutism’ of the eighteenth century, that we find the first real moment in German history which it is possible to relate directly to the coming of the Third Reich in 1933.1

  • Not reformation or enlightenment

• Fear and hatred ruled the day in Germany at the end of the First World War. Gun battles, assassinations, riots, massacres and civil unrest denied Germans the stability in which a new democratic order could flourish. Yet somebody had to take over the reins of government after the Kaiser’s abdication and the collapse of the Reich created by Bismarck. The Social Democrats stepped into the breach

• A group of leading figures in the labour movement emerged in the confusion of early November 1918 to form a revolutionary Council of People’s Delegates. Uniting, for a brief period at least, the two wings of the Social Democratic movement (the Majority, who had supported the war, and the Independents, who had opposed it), the Council was led by Friedrich Ebert, a long-time Social Democratic Party functionar

• Ebert

• won the respect of his party not as a great orator or charismatic leader, but as a calm, patient and subtle negotiator who always seemed to bring the different factions of the labour movement together

• He was a typical pragmatist of the second generation of Social Democratic leaders, accepting the party’s Marxist ideology but concentrating his efforts on the

• day-to-day improvement of working-class life through his expertise in areas such as labour law and social insurance.

• His main aim in 1918-19 was formulated by the characteristic concern of the sober administrator: to keep essential services going, to stop the economy from collapsing and to restore law and order. He was converted to the view that the Kaiser should abdicate only by the realization that a social revolution would break out

  • New Note

• Ebert put loyalty to the party above almost everything else, and his outrage at the refusal of Haase and other opponents of the war to follow majority decisions in the party was a major factor in persuading him to bring about their expulsion

• Instead of revolution, Ebert wanted parliamentary democracy

• Many ordinary electors in Germany, whatever their private political views, saw voting for the three democratic parties as the best way to prevent the creation of a German Soviet and ward off the threat of a Bolshevik revolution

• The power to rule by decree was only intended for exceptional emergencies. But Ebert, as the Republic’s first President, made very extensive use of this power, employing it on no fewer than 136 separate occasions.

• He deposed legitimately elected governments in Saxony and Thuringia when they threatened, in his view, to foment disorder

• It was significant that on both occasions these powers were used to suppress perceived threats to the Republic from the left, whereas they went virtually unused against what many saw as the far greater threat to it posed by the right

  • Keyy

• But Article 48 included no proper provisions for the ultimate reassertion of power by the legislature in such an eventuality; and Ebert used it not just for emergencies but also in non-emergency situations where steering legislation through the Reichstag would have been too difficult. In the end, Ebert’s excessive use, and occasional misuse, of the Article widened its application to a point where it became a potential threat to democratic institutions.5

  • II To weakness of congress and imperial pres

• Other opponents in the muck-raking right-wing press attempted to smear him through associating him with financial scandals.

• His concern for a smooth transition from war to peace led him to collaborate closely with the army without demanding any changes

• in its fiercely monarchist and ultra-conservative officer corps, which he was certainly in a position to do in 1918-19.

• Throughout the years of his Presidency, he was subjected to a remorseless campaign of vilification in the right-wing press. For

• The unending wave of hatred poured over Ebert by the extreme right had its effect, not merely in undermining his position but also in wearing him down personally, both mentally and physically

• Obsessed with trying to clear his name from all these smears, Ebert neglected a ruptured appendix that could have been dealt with quite easily by the medical science of the time, and he died, aged 54, on 28 February 1925.8

• The elections to the post of President that followed were a disaster for the democratic prospects of the Weimar Republic.

• Hindenburg’s election was greeted by the forces of the right as a symbol of restoration.

• In the subsequent run-off, if either the Communists or the autonomous Bavarian wing of the Centre Party had voted for Hindenburg’s best-supported opponent, the Catholic politician Wilhelm Marx, the Field Marshal might have been defeated. But, thanks to the egotism above all of the Bavarians, he was elected by a clear majority

• For many, Hindenburg’s election was a big step away from Weimar democracy in the direction of a restoration of the old monarchical order.

  • Key

• Once in office, and influenced by his strong sense of duty, Hindenburg, to the surprise of many, stuck to the letter of the constitution; but, as his seven-year term of office wore on, and he moved into his eighties, he became ever more impatient with the complexities of political events and ever more susceptible to the influence of his inner circle of advisers, all of whom shared his instinctive belief that the monarchy was the only legitimate sovereign power in the German Reich

  • Key

• Persuaded of the correctness of the use of Presidential emergency powers by the example of his predecessor, Hindenburg began to feel that a conservative dictatorship exercised in his name was the only way out of the crisis into which the Republic fell at the beginning of the 1930S.

  • Key. Precedent by EBar but for conservative majority

• By 1930 at the latest, it had become clear that the Presidential power was in the hands of a man who had no faith in democratic institutions and no intention of defending them from their enemies.11

  • Key!

• It has often been said that such a system favoured small parties and fringe groups, and this was no doubt true

  • Structure of elections favored minority rule by allowing proportional representation without threshold. 1% of votes for party meant 1% of seats

• As it was, changes of government in the Weimar Republic were very frequent. Between 13 February 1919 and 30 January 1933 there were no fewer than twenty different cabinets, each lasting on average 239 days, or somewhat less than eight months. Coalition government, it was sometimes said, made for unstable government, as the different parties were constantly squabbling over personalities and policies. It also made for weak government, since all they could settle on was the lowest common denominator and the line of least resistance. However, coalition government in Weimar was not just the product of proportional representation. It also arose out of long-standing and deep fissures within the German political system. T

• The political milieux out of which these various parties emerged had been in existence since the early days of the Bismarckian Empire.13

• The liberals failed to overcome their differences and remained divided into left (Democrats) and right (People’s Party). The Centre Party remained more or less unchanged, though its Bavarian wing split off to form the Bavarian People’s Party. On the left, the Social Democrats had to face a new rival in the form of the Communist Party

  • Party/ coalition divisions which led to constant changes of leadership

• Already before 1914 this had resulted in a politicization of whole areas of life that in other societies were much freer from ideological identifications

  • Connected

• Thus, if an ordinary German wanted to join a male voice choir, for instance, he had to choose in some areas between a Catholic and a Protestant choir, in others between a socialist and a nationalist choir; the same went for gymnastics clubs, cycling clubs, football clubs and the rest. A member of the Social Democratic Party before the war could have virtually his entire life encompassed by the party and its organizations: he could read a Social Democratic newspaper, go

  • Politicization and ideologicalization of all aspects of life pre Weimar

• These sharply defined political-cultural milieux did not disappear with the advent of the Weimar Republic.16

• But the emergence of commercialized mass leisure, the ‘boulevard press’, based on sensation and scandal, the cinema, cheap novels, dance-halls and leisure activities of all kinds began in the 1920s to provide alternative sources of identification for the young, who were thus less tightly bound to political parties than their elders were.17 T

  • More possible parallels. In 1920s there was more exposure among young people.

• As in a number of other respects, therefore, the political instability of the 1920S and early 1930S owed more to structural continuities with the politics of the Bismarckian and Wilhelmine eras than to the novel provisions of the Weimar constitution.19

  • Key argument. “structural continuities with the politics of the Bismarckian and Wilhelmine eras than to the novel provisions of the Weimar constitution.19” Excerpt From The Coming of the Third Reich Richard J. Evans This material may be protected by copyright.

• Proportional representation did not, as some have claimed, encourage political anarchy and thereby facilitate the rise of the extreme right.

• and its arguably beneficial effects in the earlier phases of the Republic’s existence might have reduced the overall Nazi vote later on, it is impossible to tell for sure.2

• national plebiscites had little direct political effect, despite the fact that one provincial plebiscite did succeed in overthrowing a democratic government in Oldenburg in 1932. 21

• Such ministers were able to develop and implement long-term policies irrespective of the frequent turnover of leadership experienced by the governments they served in. Other ministries were also occupied by the same politicians through two, three or four different governments.22 Not by chance, it was in such areas that the Republic was able to develop its strongest and most consistent policies, above all in the fields of foreign affairs, labour and welfare.

  • Key. There was Continuity in leadership of minsteries and “Not by chance, it was in such areas that the Republic was able to develop its strongest and most consistent policies, above all in the fields of foreign affairs, labour and welfare.” Excerpt From The Coming of the Third Reich Richard J. Evans This material may be protected by copyright.

• never strong enough to be taken seriously

• When all these factors are taken into account, therefore, it does not seem that the federal system, for all its unresolved tensions between the Reich and the states, was a major factor in undermining the stability and legitimacy of the Weimar Republic.24

  • A key argument. It was not the constitution or federal system that failed on its own.

• All in all, Weimar Germany’s constitution was no worse than the constitutions of most other countries in the 1920s, and a good deal more democratic than many.

  • See previous note.