The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy

623 Pages·1996·64.03 MB·English

by  Hans Mommsen

The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy

THE RISE AND FALL OF
Weimar Democracy
H A N S M O M M S E N
Translated by Elborg Forster t5 Larry Eugene Jones
The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill & London
0 1989
by Propylaen Verlag im
Verlag Ullstein GmbH
Frankfurt a. MainIBerlin
English translation O 1996
The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
The translation and publication of this book have been aided by
generous grants from the L. J. Skaggs and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation,
the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and Inter Nationes, Bonn.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book
Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mommsen, Hans.
[Verspielte Freiheit. English]
The rise and fall of Weimar democracy / by Hans Mommsen :
translated by Elborg Forster and Larry Eugene Jones.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographic references and index.
ISBN 0-8078-2249-3 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8078-4721-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Germany-History-1918-1933. I. Title.
DD237.M57 1996
943.085 - dc20 95-8902
CI P
Contents
Preface, vii
Abbreviations, xiii
Chapter One. The Fall. of the German Empire, 1
Chapter Two. The German Revolution, 20
Chapter Three. Founding a Democracy, 51
Chapter Four. The Inner Rejection of the Peace, 89
Chapter Five. Saving the Parliamentary System, 129
Chapter Six. Reconstruction at Home and Abroad, 172
Chapter Seven. The Extraparliamentary Offensive, 217
Chapter Eight. Dissolution of the Parliamentary System, 269
Chapter Nine. The Nazi Breakthrough, 318
Chapter Ten. Government in Crisis, 357
Chapter Eleven. The Road to Presidential Dictatorship, 399
Chapter Twelve. Government by the Threat of Coup d'~tat,4 38
Chapter Thirteen. From Authoritarian to Fascist Dictatorship, 490
Select Bibliography, 545
Index, 585

Preface
IN German historical consciousness, the Weimar Republic has always been
associated with the stigma of failure. Even in the deliberations of the Parlia-
mentary Council in Bonn, Weimar was always seen-but particularly by the
bourgeois center and Right-as a warning, as a situation whose recurrence
was to be avoided at all costs. In the political debates of the western occu-
pation zones, criticism of the liberal foundations of the Weimar Constitution
was widespread until the 1950s. It was only with the subsequent success of the
democratic regime under Konrad Adenauer that one began to view the Weimar
Republic in a somewhat more positive light. Since then, the republic has even
been invoked on occasion to highlight the continuity of Germany's democratic
and parliamentary traditions with the fateful deliberations at the Paulskirche in
1848-49. Yet despite the increasing willingness of many Germans to recognize
the accomplishments of the Weimar Republic, the general disdain they feel for
Weimar is unmistakable in the popular claim that "Bonn is not Weimar."
The argument that the rise of Hitler resulted from the "overdemocratiza-
tion" of the Weimar regime has since given way to a new emphasis on the
rupture in continuity that occurred when the Nazis assumed power on 30 Janu-
ary 1933. The stress on the consummate manipulative skills of Hitler and the
NSDAP only served to exonerate Hitler's allies and opponents from any real
responsibility for his installation as chancellor. The same way of thinking also
tended to attribute the collapse of parliamentary democracy to the obstruc-
tionist tactics systematically pursued by the parties of the extreme Left and
Right, namely, the Communists and National Socialists. According to this view,
the Weimar Republic was not only inherently viable, but its demise stemmed
from a certain "self-destructiveness" of democracy. And yet, as Arnold Brecht
has conclusively argued, it was not the Weimar democrats who were to be held
responsible for this demise. Given the bleak conditions facing Germany after
1918, the Weimar regime was able to achieve a remarkable degree of political
stability even though it never won the support of Germany's professional and
conservative elites. From the very outset, German elites looked on this regime
as a makeshift solution, as a transition and nothing more. Still, one should
not assume that the descent into a fascist dictatorship was already inevitable at
this time.
viii PREFACE
From the Wilhelmine Empire the Weimar Republic inherited profound
social tensions that were temporarily obscured by the war. Rooted in prerevolu-
tionary traditions, these tensions were exacerbated by a process of rapid mod-
ernization with which Germany's political institutions were not able to keep
pace. It was these antagonisms - and not the much discussed German Sonder-
weg-that, heightened by the German Revolution of 1918-19, did so much to
block the development of a pluralist social community and a liberal parlia-
mentary system. The fears and frustrations of an upper class that saw its social
privileges threatened by these changes further aggravated traditional class divi-
sions. The frustration of Germany's elites expressed itself in an unexpectedly
widespread acceptance of violence as a way of dealing with political opponents.
At the same time, it spawned a far-reaching moral indifference that contrib-
uted in no small way to the feeble resistance of the bourgeois Right to Adolf
Hitler and the Nazi movement. After 1919 significant segments of the indus-
trial labor force found their demands for the democratization and socialization
of the workplace almost totally rejected and were pushed to the periphery of
German political life by the reactionary military. What remained embedded in
the consciousness of this period, then, was not so much the accomplishments
of a revolution that had lost its momentum but the counterrevolution and the
quasi civil war it helped spawn.
The National Socialists conceived of the founding of the Third Reich as a
response to the November Revolution. Echoing notions that surfaced in the
immediate postwar period, they labeled their usurpation of power a "national
awakening." In doing so, they revealed the patently absurd character of the
fantasies long harbored by the bourgeois Right. Political actors of all stripes
repeatedly evoked memories of the German defeat and the November Revo-
lution. The collapse of the monarchy and the end of Germany's quest for
European hegemony exerted a lasting influence on the political options and
decisions of every German from 1918 on. The inner coherence of the period
between 1917 and the early years of the Federal Republic was thus inherent in
its point of departure in November 1918.
National Socialism represented a phenomenon characteristic of the emo-
tionally overcharged and politically reactionary atmosphere of the first years
after the end of the First World War. Originally founded as an offshoot of the
Pan-German movement, the NSDAP developed an independent profile of its
own under the leadership of Adolf Hitler and quickly moved away from the
tutelage of the Pan-Germans. Ideologically it drew from a mixture of national-
ist and anti-Semitic ideas that had existed in Germany ever since the founding
of the Second Empire. In this respect, the movement could make no claim
to originality. What was new, however, even though it was practiced only in
a rudimentary manner in the last years of the imperial era, were the party's
techniques for mobilizing its followers and for manipulating existing national
PREFACE iX
traditions for its own ends. National Socialism distinguished itself from similar
volkisch and nationalistic enterprises by a form of organization that pursued
action for its own sake. It was this feature that gave the NSDAP its specifically
fascist character. Complementing this was a complete lack of scruples in the
use of means and a leadership cult that was so completely focused on Hitler's
personality that it precluded the emergence of any other organized will within
the party.
National Socialism was successful in exploiting the anxieties and resent-
ments of those social groups in Germany that were adversely affected by the
process of modernization. At the same time, it greatly intensified the level of
national feeling that had been consciously fostered by the bourgeois parties
and interest groups extending as far to the left as the democratic camp as a
way of countering the threat that modernization posed to domestic political
integration. The extreme autism that led the German public to overestimate
its own importance rendered it incapable of correctly assessing the interests
of neighboring states and lent credence to the National Socialist contention
that Germany's potential for political power was solely a matter of the nation's
internal cohesion. The mobilization of regressive resentments and the simul-
taneous satisfaction of the need for mobilization made it possible for National
Socialism to establish itself as a sort of negative people's party.
Just as it would be misleading to imagine that National Socialism was a
unique phenomenon that destroyed the foundations of the Weimar Republic
from the outside, so would it be a mistake to interpret Weimar's external and
internal development as a mere prelude to the history of the Third Reich. Most
notably in the area of social relations, Weimar undertook a number of im-
portant initiatives that, even beyond those of the Third Reich, have left their
imprint on the social and institutional fabric of German history since the end
of World War 11. Still, there is no denying the fact that close ideological af-
finities existed between the NSDAP and the bourgeois Right and that Adolf
Hitler's rise as leader of a "national Germany" could have taken place only
against the background of a broader texture of antiliberal and antisocialist cur-
rents. The National Socialist conquest of power presupposed the subversion
of the parliamentary system and the organized labor movement, something
that had already been partially accomplished under the aegis of the bourgeois
presidential cabinets.
The transition to a fascist dictatorship, which began with the formation of
the cabinet of national concentration in January 1933, presupposed the use of
institutional instruments that had been forged and tested during the republi-
can era as a way of strengthening the prerogatives of the executive vis-8-vis the
parties and parliament. From a purely political perspective it is impossible to
determine just when the break between the republic and the dictatorship took
place. The passage of the Enabling Act on 23 March 1933 serves as a conve-