Rüdiger Barth - The Last Winter of the Weimar Republic: The Rise of the Third Reich

Translated by Caroline Waight

THE LAST WINTER OF THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

Pegasus Books, Ltd.

148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor

New York, NY 10018

Copyright 2020 by Rdiger Barth and Hauke Friederichs

Translated by Caroline Waight

First Pegasus Books hardcover edition February 2020

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

ISBN: 978-1-64313-333-1

ISBN: 978-1-64313-388-1 (Ebook)

Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company

Paul von Hindenburg (*1847)

A legend of the First World War and President of the Reich, Hindenburg despised democracy.

Hindenburg is a granite-faced, bass-voiced Field Marshal with a commanding manner that makes little corporals tremble.

Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker, correspondent for the New York Evening Post

Kurt von Schleicher (*1882)

A power-broking general who suddenly found himself becoming chancellor.

It wont be easy to strike a deal with Schleicher. He has a clever but sly gaze. I dont believe he is honest.

Adolf Hitler

Franz von Papen (*1879)

A risk-taker bent on revenge

[Papen looks] like an ill-tempered billy-goat trying to stand to attention. A character out of Alice in Wonderland.

Harry Graf Kessler, journalist and bon vivant

Adolf Hitler (*1889)

As Fhrer of the NSDAP, Hitler wanted to create a dictatorship.

When finally I walked into Adolf Hitlers salon in the Kaiserhof Hotel, I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany. In something less than fifty seconds I was quite sure I was not.

Dorothy Thompson, American reporter

Joseph Goebbels (*1897)

Head of Propaganda for the NSDAP

The Fhrer is playing [] chess for power. It is an exciting and nerve-racking struggle, yet it also conveys the thrilling sense of being a game in which everything is at stake.

Joseph Goebbels

In November 1932, fourteen years after it was put in place, Germanys first parliamentary democracy found itself mired in its deepest crisis. The election on 6 November the second that year proved disastrous for the moderate parties that constituted the Weimar Republic. A full third of the workforce was unemployed, more than five million people in all, and many of those still in work had been hit with punishing wage cuts. The economy was at rock bottom, and political culture had taken a cutthroat turn. On the streets of Germanys cities, the situation frequently erupted into violent conflicts that left hundreds dead. Senior politicians, businessmen and journalists spoke in hushed tones of civil war.

It was only by virtue of President Hindenburgs emergency decrees that Chancellor Franz von Papen was able to govern at all. Emergency decrees had legal authority, but were not passed by elected representatives. Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution granted that power to the head of state, and since 1930 Hindenburg had been making generous use of the privilege.

Parliament could annul the emergency decrees or force the government to step down with a motion of no confidence the checks and balances of a constitution designed to maintain an even keel. To avert this, the president had already dissolved Parliament twice and called fresh elections. What resulted was the unprecedented paralysis of German politics.

The German electorate had just voted once again. In Parliament, Chancellor Franz von Papen a committed monarchist found himself facing a hostile majority; like Papen, they were only too willing to dispense with democracy entirely, but on their terms. This majority consisted mainly of Communists and National Socialists, extremists on the left and right who were united only in their hatred of the system.

The president wanted clarity once and for all, while the chancellor needed allies but only the German National Peoples Party, the DNVP, stayed loyal. They had fifty-one out of 584 representatives, laughably few. Now Papen was counting on the NSDAP to support his policies. Since July of that year, the Nazis had been by far the strongest faction in Parliament. If the worst came to the worst, Papen was even prepared to make their leader, Adolf Hitler, Vice-Chancellor: he hoped that would bring the German Fascists to heel. He had just made another attempt to woo the NSDAP, calling their proposed collaboration the aggregation of all national forces. Hitler, however, flatly rebuffed him.

The German Reich in November 1932 was in an alarming state. In his book The German Crisis, which had been published a few months earlier and had already been reprinted several times, the American reporter Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker wrote that Fifty thousand Bolsheviks made the Russian revolution. Germany has an estimated six million voters for its Communist Party. Five hundred thousand Fascists put Mussolini in power in Italy. Adolf Hitler has a possible twelve million voters behind the National Socialist Party in Germany. How long can the life of the German republic last?

That was the question. The coming winter would settle the fate of the Weimar Republic.

Chancellor on the Brink!

Decision Today

Der Angriff

Papen Offers Resignation

Entire Cabinet to Step Down? Hindenburg Speech Today

Vossische Zeitung

The German Reich was ruled from the Prussian capital of Berlin. More specifically, power resided in a handful of adjacent buildings in an area referred to by the name of the nearest street: Wilhelmstrasse.

If you walked out of the Reichstag, strolled through the Brandenburg Gate and took a right behind the Hotel Adlon on Pariser Platz, you were already as good as there. Head past the British embassy and the Ministry for Agriculture, and youd soon catch sight of the palace buildings on your right, with the Chancellery extension, built a year earlier and clad in travertine, sticking out like a sore thumb.

From the street the facades looked forbidding, but behind them stretched old, expansive gardens. Subterranean corridors led from building to building on the western side of Wilhelmstrasse, and a secret passageway was rumoured to weave among the attics. Even the gardens were connected via gates through which a person might slip unseen.

The cabinet meeting that derailed Franz von Papens career and brought General Kurt von Schleicher out of the shadows took place, as far as we know, in the garden room of the Chancellery. In the brighter months it was flooded with light through west-facing, floor-to-ceiling windows; even on that November morning the room was lit with a mild radiance. It was a fresh and sunny autumn day. Leaves glowed on oaks, elms and lindens, trees that had been ancient in the days when Frederick the Great walked among them on his morning stroll.