1930-1933 FROM THE END OF PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY TO THE CABINET OF BARONS

In 1930 the last democratically accountable government was removed from office unravelling a chain of events which would bring the Nazis to power three years later. It is often argued that the depression, like some climatic phenomenon outside of human control, made this happen. This is wrong. The assault on the post-war political and economic settlement began before the crash of 1929.

On the one hand there was a marked swing to the left in the years 1926-1928. At the 1928 Reichstag election KPD and SPD votes increased by 17% and 14% respectively. In this period strike days rose from 1.3 million to 20.3 million and led to a significant increase in workers' victories. At the same time the employers were continually resorting to lockouts which multiplied eleven times over in the same period. These battles reached a peak in the Ruhr and, significantly, involved the state. The background to the Ruhr strike was a wage dispute which was, as the law envisaged, taken to compulsory state arbitration. The government's partial pay award infuriated the employers who declared war "on the principles of pay arbitration". In direct defiance of the government they locked out 250,000 workers. The result was a lower settlement for the workers, but it was still enough to leave the industrialists feeling "deprived of a decisive victory over the 'trade union state' by what they saw as the subservience of politicians to the masses." So even in the years of economic boom industrialists resented the price they paid for limited democracy.

The arrival of the depression dampened the conflict on the shopfloor but focused the class struggle even more sharply on the state. An "enlightened" businessman remarked that "Personally, I do not believe that the hard times we are in at present are to be explained solely or to a large extent by the world crisis... We have not only lost a war, but we have had a fundamentally new government, which has been concerned for 10 or 12 years to distribute charity to all sides." In 1930 a "Grand Coalition" headed by Hermann Müller of the SPD was in government. With the onset of mass unemployment it attempted to reduce rising dole costs but could not prevent a growing deficit, expenditure rising from 1.2 billion marks in 1928 to 2.7 billion in 1930. The attitude of industrialists in December 1929, at this key moment of crisis was expressed by the German Society for Industry or RDI (the German equivalent of the CBI in Britain):

Expenditures for welfare-state purposes must be cut; the bureaucracy must be pared down; state interference in labor-management disputes must be limited...; direct taxes... must be reduced; indirect taxes on mass consumption items must be increased... The time had come, the RDI proclaimed, for an end for compromising with socialism.

Carl Duisberg of IG Farben, the chemicals giant, who was seen as progressive and pro-republican, said: "capital is being destroyed through the unproductive use of public funds... Only an immediate and radical reversal in state policies can help." On 12 December 1929 a special RDI meeting was told that political parties 'inevitably strive for compromise, which, at best can only produce half measures. For us half measures will no longer do... In Germany there will only be economic peace when the 100,000 Party functionaries are out of the country. (Cries of 'Bravo!' and 'Mussolini!')".

The German President, was Paul von Hindenburg. Formerly one of the Kaiser's Field Marshals, he was an ageing conservative who replaced Ebert in 1925. In 1930 he stepped up plans to overthrow the Müller coalition. In the words of his State Secretary, Meissner, the President was concerned: "that the opportunity of forming an anti-parliamentary and anti-Marxist' government might again be lost. In that case the President would find it impossible ever to 'get away from governing with the Social Democrats".

In March the opportunity to end parliamentary democracy presented itself. The Grand Coalition fell apart when the SPD failed to win approval for raising employers' contributions to unemployment funds. Hindenburg now used Article 48 of the constitution to install a new Chancellor over the head of the Reichstag. Henceforth, the affairs of government were run by emergency decree and often without parliamentary approval. The three years that followed saw a succession of Hindenburg-nominated Chancellors beginning with a right-wing politician of the Catholic Centre Party, Brüning, followed by von Papen, von Schleicher and eventually Hitler.

What lay behind the collapse of parliamentary democracy? Turner insists:

The assault on the democratic institutions of the Republic that began in the spring of 1930 came not from big business but rather from another, but much more politically potent, remnant of the imperial era, the military. As Germany's capitalists looked on passively, and unconsulted, the generals stepped in and set in motion a reshaping of the political institutions of the country.

There is a problem with this approach. It does not explain why the the supposedly "politically potent" Reichswehr staggered from one crisis to another between 1930 and 1933. In fact the Reichswehr's disdain for democracy was cheered on by other sections. Since the forced compromise with the unions, men like Stinnes longed for the day "big business and all those who rule over industry will some day recover their influence and power". Thyssen said, "Democracy with us represents - nothing," and von Siemens stated that German people "were not ready for democracy". On the eve of the Grand Coalition's fall the Deutsche Zeitung wrote: "Industry must take advantage of the position of power it still retains to wipe out Social Democracy. It can only accomplish that if it eliminates parliamentarism."

If there was any doubt about whose side Brüning was on, it was soon dispelled by a vicious austerity programme designed to balance the budget. To do this he hit the millions already suffering misery. The emergency decrees worsened the social position of the working class, halving real wages between 1929 and 1932. This does not mean, as the KPD argued at that time, that Brüning and his sucessors were fascist. Despite weakening the influence of the Reichstag the government balancing act meant successive Chancellors sought to reconstruct a popular consensus by means of elections and appealing to "both sides". Indeed, these Chancellors very much depended on the acquiescence of the SPD to survive politically. Schleicher's brief ministry in 1933 even involved an attempt to construct a governing alliance in which the trade unions were to play a key role. This did not mean that Hindenburg's clique cared about parliamentary arithmetic, but though the Reichstag had lost much prestige, those in charge feared the risks entailed in abolishing it.

SPLITS AMONG THE ESTABLISHMENT

One reason for the instability was division amongst the elite itself. There was no common agreement about how the immense crisis could be solved. This showed up in the various political factions within the Reichstag, the German National People's Party (DNVP), standing mainly for landed and heavy industrial interests, with other parties such as the German People's Party (DVP) representing the middle class. This was one reason why a viable governing coalition could not be constructed.

The fault lines within industry have been described in these terms: "Despite the intersection of numerous points of organisational and political points of interest, heavy industry and light industry were antagonistic currents in the Weimar Republic." The roots of such differences were numerous. Those industries that came into the category of light industry produced modern goods for which there was high demand both nationally and internationally. In the period in question consumer goods were more profitable than those of heavy industry and so not only did the employers have some room for compromise, they did not want the incomes of their customers reduced too savagely. They also had no interest in an aggressive foreign policy which might cut off markets or lead to high taxation for armaments. By contrast heavy industry suffered a crisis of profitability even before the 1929 crash, and, as was the case in the Ruhr, tended to open confrontation with unions. Producing goods which depended mainly on domestic markets, heavy industry did not fear alienating foreign customers and it looked forward to lucrative contracts from a government favouring rearmament.

One measurable contrast between the two sectors was relative labour costs. In mining these formed over 50% of all costs, while in chemicals the figure was 15%. In a slump when investment plummeted heavy industry suffered much more than light industry which relied on a base of consumption needs. A concerted attack on organised labour was more attractive to bosses in heavy industry rather than light industry. Other sectors were also predisposed towards extreme right-wing politics. Influential farming interests, like heavy industry, were in crisis and, like that group, looked to nationalist policies of protectionism. German banks, as we have seen, were closely connected with industrial operations and so these too were drawn into the various political debates.

The divisions between the economic factions of capitalism were paralleled by divisions within the political sphere. The battle was not between democracy and dictatorship, however. As one writer puts it:

In its internal debates, the ruling class was now only concerned with the form the authoritarian state should take and with the extent to which repression against the left was necessary. The majority, particularly firms in the chemical and electrical sectors, were in favor of an authoritarian presidential system like the one which was in power from 1930 to January 1933. This regime based itself primarily on the state power apparatus and the emergency powers of the president and was relatively independent of elections, parties, and parliamentary majorities. However, it left parliamentary forms and procedures intact insofar as all parties and unions could voice their opinions and had opportunities for mobilization. On the other hand, strong forces located in heavy industry and among large landowners pushed for a radical change in the form of government, for an open dictatorship and for a complete suppression of the democratic and socialist forces.

Chapter 2 described how the Nazis developed a strategy for direct counter-revolution. In 1923 the ruling elite had rejected this strategy and the Nazis were checked as a result. To understand why Nazism became the favoured solution in 1933 we must look at some of the changes that had taken place in the Party since the Beer Hall Putsch.

NAZISM'S RESPECTABLE VENEER

Hitler had learnt from the failure in 1923: armed uprising was not a viable tactic, at least for the time-being. Therefore, while still in Landsberg prison he decided:

to pursue a new line of action... Instead of working to achieve power by armed conspiracy, we shall have to hold our noses and enter the Reichstag against the Catholic and Marxist deputies. If outvoting them takes longer than outshooting them, at least the results will be guaranteed by their own Constitution.

This did not mean he had altered his hatred for democracy which "must be defeated with the weapons of democracy..." Göring put it equally crudely: "We are fighting against this State and the present System because we wish to destroy it utterly, but in a legal manner... we said we hated this State, [now] we say we love it - and still everyone knows what we mean." This tactic has been well learnt by present day Nazi groups. Their public face is respectable but their policies are still as dangerous and those who believe that Nazis should be allowed free use of democratic rights to destroy it have not learnt from the past.

The Nazis' legalistic policy even applied to the Stormtroopers who had originally formed to spearhead a military assault on the state. Now Hitler told the press that the Stormtrooper units "were set up exclusively for the purpose of protecting the Party in its propaganda, not to fight against the State... I did everything I could to prevent the SA from assuming any kind of military character". Such tactics were forced upon the Nazis by circumstances of comparative economic prosperity and an easing of social tension. But there was more to it than that. The Munich fiasco proved to Hitler that he needed more than rabid anti-semitism, military plots and the odd war hero like Ludendorff to earn ruling class backing. If influential circles were to regard him as a serious contender for power with the ability to deliver counter-revolution he would need leverage in the form of popular backing. This did not mean relinquishing his contempt for the "masses". His directive to the SA was that:

The struggle against the present state will be raised above the atmosphere of petty acts of revenge and conspiracy to the greatness of an ideological war of extermination against Marxism... What we need is not a hundred to two hundred daring conspirators, but a hundred thousand and hundreds of thousands more fanatical fighters for our Weltanschauung (ideology). We must not work in secret conventicles but in huge mass marches...

The new approach combined electoral campaigns and street marches in a delicate balancing act between electoralism and force. The SA was forbidden to bear weapons, but kept ticking over through the organisation of street demonstrations and low key thuggery. It had to be ready for the exercise of counter-revolutionary violence after the taking of power.

The same calculated ambiguity applied to propaganda. On the one hand, to gain mass support the Nazis had to echo some of the discontent engendered by social crisis. At the same time, the Party dare not appear too anti-capitalist because this would alienate sections that would Hitler wanted support from. Its title - National Socialist German Workers' Party - contained both sides of the single tactic. Insofar as it was National(ist) and German it presented its credentials as a pro-establishment class faction. The terms Socialist and Workers pointed the opposite way. The two sides were in flat contradiction. It was impossible to serve both masters simultaneously yet the nature of the middle class is to be angry with both big business and workers, both of whom pose a threat. The title National Socialist, while objectively irrational, cleverly encompassed these middle class resentments.

What, then, was the real essence of Nazi politics, and what was there simply for show? Enough has already been said about the early years to suggest that Hitler's motivation was clearly counter-revolutionary. But Hitler was not the Nazi Party. Were there, perhaps, other important Nazis who took the left side of the equation more seriously?

It has been argued that there was a Nazi "left". If there were a case for this it would be strongest for the period following Hitler's incarceration when he lost direct control of the movement. As the NSDAP grew beyond its Bavarian origins it won members in industrial areas of the North. Here leaders like the Strasser brothers, Gregor and Otto, and Joseph Göbbels regarded themselves as the party's left conscience. In 1925 Göbbels, for example, posed the following question in his diary: "National and socialist! What goes first and what comes later?... First the socialist redemption, then the national liberation..." In 1928 his newspaper made the bizarre claim that it opposed "the bourgeois parties and Marxism alike because both are sworn enemies of the approaching workers' state." He published a letter entitled "National Socialism or Bolshevism" to "My dear friend from the Left", declaring "We agreed about the causes. No honest thinking person today would want to deny the justification of the workers' movements."

To judge whether or not such left-wing utterances were anything more than a front requires a consideration of the NSDAP's internal workings. It was divided into areas called Gaus, headed by Gauleiters. Describing the evolution of these local sections in the 1920s the Hamburg Gauleiter Krebs said: "The general discussion developed into a sort of order-receiving session. There was always the chance to ask questions and express opinions, but decisions were not reached by a vote any more - they were simply handed down from above. The system of free and secret election also atrophied." The result was "the triumph of the fascist/totalitarian tendency within what was originally at least a halfway democratic popular movement." Krebs saw this as the natural consequence of a deeply elitist movement led by a "Führer clothed with the glory of political infallibility."

Even if the Nazi left had been genuine, which it was not, it lacked even the ghost of a chance of influencing the NSDAP. In 1926 Hitler demolished any lingering left illusions at a special meeting in Bamberg, Bavaria. Göbbels diary tells the tale:

Hitler speaks for two hours. I am virtually wiped out. What sort of Hitler is this? A reactionary?... He says our task is the destruction of Bolshevism. Bolshevism is a Jewish thing... Compensate the aristocrats... Don't disturb private property. Horrendous!... we are Socialists. We don't want to have been so in vain!

But it was in vain. The encounter obliterated any naive ideas that Göbbels had that the NSDAP was remotely socialist and his capitulation was total. Later diary entries concerning Hitler contained phrases like this: "He is such a great man. One can only feel reverence in the face of his greatness." The farce seen at Bamberg would recur. The party needed to claim vague left-wing credentials to win a mass base and was bound to fool some Nazis into believing the words were meant seriously. Later on Hitler would cure such misconceptions with an execution squad.

TOWARDS THE ABYSS

In July 1930 Bruning's austerity programme was thrown out by the Reichstag. Hindenburg thene used emergency powers both to implement the policies and dissolve the parliament. An election followed. By installing Brüning as Chancellor and abrogating the powers of the Reichstag, the intention of Hindenburg, and his chief advisor, General von Schleicher had been to create a government above party which could stabilise Germany. To counter the organised working class such a government would only be viable in the long-term if it had at least some right-wing popular support. The 1930 election was called in the hope that parties ready to back Brüning would gain ground. The opposite happened. The Nazis, who were hostile to Brüning, gained 6.4 million votes and at 18% of the total stood second only to the SPD. The KPD came third.. This was clear evidence of political polarisation and the failure of the government strategy.

The actions of Hindenberg and his clique had opened a new path to power for the Nazis:
If Hitler could persuade these men to take him into partnership and make him Chancellor with the right to use the President's emergency powers - a presidential, as opposed to a parliamentary government - then he could dispense with the clear electoral majority which still eluded him and with the risky experiment of a putsch.

How was Hitler to prove his suitability for the Chancellor's position? It was now that the tactic of Nazi "legality" plus controlled street violence could come into play. Mass electoral support, while never enough to form a government, could supply what the army clique desperately lacked, a social base for right-wing anti-democratic policies. However, this in itself was not enough. After all, the army clique cared very little for formal political influence that rested on the counting of votes. Hitler's chief policy, and key selling point for the ruling class, was his determination and growing ability to wage a counter-revolutionary assault on the working class.

For a country run by military dictatorship, elections abounded in the years 1930 to 1933 and each was an opportunity for the NSDAP to shine. In May 1931, for example elections to the Oldenburg Landtag registered a 37.2% Nazi vote. In the spring of 1932 came a new Presidential election. Hitler stood against Hindenburg, winning 30.1% in the first round and 36.8% in the run-off. A fresh turning point came in July 1932 when the Nazis received 37.3% of the vote, the highest they would ever receive in a "free" election. This was still less than the SPD's 37.9% vote in 1919 (the more left-wing USPD also taking 7.6% at the same time). Thus Goldhagen's assertion that the Nazis gained power, "through electoral means" is simply wrong.

So how was it done? The end game of the Weimar Republic was, at one level, a convoluted series of manoeuvres and intrigues involving the military clique. At another level it was a lot simpler. Hitler convinced the elite that he should be given power. It did not depend entirely on the NSDAP gaining votes. Even before its spectacular successes sections of big business were beginning to rethink their attitude to Nazism. In the approach to the 1930 election (when by their previous showing the Nazis had won only 2.6% of votes) the influential mouthpiece of Ruhr industrialists, bankers and shipping firms, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung advocated voting either Nazi or DNVP because "every vote won for the right means a weakening of Social Democracy." After the election the Berlin Stock Exchange Journal lamented that in spite of Nazi growth, "the National Socialists have not managed... to tear the German working class from internationalism and draw the German socialist workers to nationalism.

Following the election direct contacts with big business and the government increased rapidly. Von Stauss, a director of one of the largest German banks was an early convert to the idea the Nazis should be in government. Even more prestigious was Schacht, former long-standing president of the Reichsbank. Heavy industry was represented by Thyssen, now chair of the massive United Steel Works. Thyssen's memoirs, are entitled "I paid Hitler". He details how he was introduced to Hess, Hitler's deputy leader, through Kirdorf, the director general of the Rhenish-Westphalian Coal Syndicate. Thyssen was kind enough to arrange a foreign loan which enabled the Nazis to retain their HQ, the Brown House, in Munich and modestly admits that "I have personally given altogether one million marks to the National Socialist party." Other friends of Nazism willing to help out included Grauert, managing director of the employers' association of the Ruhr iron and steel industry, and Pönsgen, its chair. Then there was Brandi, chair of the coal operators' association, Tengelmann, chair of "a major independent coal-mining firm, the Essener Steinkolhenbergwerke", Springorum of the Hösch company and Vögler, general director of United Steel.

One source of business support was the "circle of friends" organised by Keppler. He recounts that in May 1932 Hitler presented this group with his programme: "abolition of trade unions and abolition of all parties other than the NSDAP. No one raised any objection. On the contrary, these policies of the Führer's met with the fullest approval of the members of the circle of friends. They only expressed their apprehension that he would not be able to carry out these excellent ideas." Not all such sympathisers were enthusiastic, mainly because they could not see that the radical language the Nazis needed to construct their mass base was merely rhetoric. Schacht of the Reichsbank wrote to Hitler that while a "row of gentlemen" were ready to finance the NSDAP some were put off by "the mere mention of socialism" in the Party's name, an attitude that he found "plain silly".

When, in 1931, Hitler wanted to raise cash to arm the SA in the event of a civil war, Funk, his Berlin contact, installed him in "the large and fashionable Kaiserhof Hotel across the street from the Reich Chancellery" and that afternoon:

Funk brought two prominent executives of one of Germany's largest insurance firms, the Allianz... [T]he two callers had pledged five million marks to the SA in the event of a civil war... Hitler's astonishment at the magnitude of this sum left him briefly speechless - a truly extraordinary condition for the Nazi leader. And Funk had only begun. During the following days Funk paraded a succession of prominent Berlin businessmen through Hitler's hotel suite... When the procession ended, the total amount pledged came... to twenty-five million marks.

Turner suggests that these businessmen were rarely out-and-out Nazis, often retained their affiliations with other right-wing parties and were simply "adding additional coverage to the political insurance policies many had carried". The structure of such "insurance policies, however, is revealing. The big industrialist, Otto Wolff, disbursed his funds as follows: in 1931 he gave 7,500 marks to the DVP and 16,900 to the NSDAP; in 1932 the figures were 1,000 marks to the DVP, 15,000 to the DNVP and 160,800 to the Nazis! Much funding did come from ordinary NSDAP members. But this by no means invalidates the argument that capitalist backing was essential. While Nazism represented merely one ruling class strategy, as one writer puts it: "Even if only a minority of the employers were actively for the NSDAP, the plan put forward by the leading bodies of the economy was still one of disciplining the ranks of the working class, restricting the rights of the unions and elimination of the parliamentary system.

Although the move to install Hitler as Chancellor was not instigated by the industrial wing of the ruling class, as one historian suggests: "it was a move they were prepared to tolerate. This, it seems, and not who actually financed the Nazis and how much they gave, is the crucial point about the industrial elite in the Weimar Republic." Indeed support for Nazism often went beyond toleration. During Hitler's attempt to oust Hindenburg as President in the spring of 1932, "the Reichsland Association, which was by far the greatest industrialist association, recommended, with all due respect to Hindenburg, the election of Hitler." The essence of the relationship between business and the NSDAP is given in the following exchange between Schacht and Reusch in March 1932. The latter led the Ruhrlade, a secret organisation of 12 top industrialists with control over "the largest political fund of big business, and probably of any special interest group, in Germany".

Such attitudes had been carefully cultivated. Hitler learned in 1923 that support from the ruling class could not be taken for granted. His new approach balanced on a knife edge between gaining the necessary mass support to make him a serious player in the game of power politics and alienating the establishment because of connections with the vulgar masses. Equally the policy of legality and respectability had to be tempered with SA thuggery which both proved the NSDAP to be an awesome force to be reckoned with, and one capable of smashing the left.

The level of violence could sometimes be great. At one notorious incident in Potempa, five SA kicked a KPD member to death in front of his mother. Hitler had to hold his movement together as well as win respectable friends and so he sent a telegram protesting against their prosecution. In Prussia alone 82 people were killed and 400 badly wounded in political incidents between 1 June and 20 July 1932. For public consumption Hitler would later portray this as a heroic period during which the SA began the "Nazi revolution's" seizure of power. The truth was very different. The state was never the target. Fully 83% of those killed were either Nazis (38 in all), or Communists (30). These details show that the real purpose of the SA was far from revolutionary; it was deliberately counter-revolutionary:

For all their violent rhetoric, the storm troopers did not engage in frontal attacks against the power of the state; these Nazi activists may have been fanatics, as Hitler was so fond of boasting, but they were not so fanatical as to attack police stations and army barracks... and the concern which was felt within the SA not to be caught with firearms betrayed a considerable respect for the forces of law and order.

The Nazi approach to big business was nowhere better illustrated than in Hitler's address to the influential Dusseldorf Industry Club on 27 January 1932. It was staggering in its crude daring, but also in its fawning. Hitler began by reminding his audience that the main reason for their difficulties lay in the "internal division" of society. He then described the crisis of over-production gripping German capitalism which left their factories idle. He warned that "if bolshevism as a world idea tears the Asiatic continent out of the human economic community, then the conditions for the employment of these industries which have developed on so gigantic a scale will be no longer even approximately realized." This already contained the idea of Operation Barbarossa - the conquest of Russia to enhance German capitalism's prospects.

Harking back to the early experience under Bismarck he argued that "it was not German business which conquered the world and led to the development of German power, but in our case, too, it was the power-state which created for the business world the general conditions for its subsequent prosperity." So he offered the Nazi state as guarantor of future profitability. Then turning to the failure of official bourgeois parties and pointing to the SA he asked: "Where is the organization which can boast, as ours can, that at need it can summon 400,000 men into the street, men who are schooled to blind obedience and are ready to execute any order - provided that it does not violate the law?" Hitler admitted that SA tactics might be noisy and unpleasant:

in the evening a tumult and commotion arises, then the bourgeois draws back the window-curtain, looks out, and says: Once more my night's rest disturbed: no more sleep for me. Gentlemen, if everyone thought like that... then the bourgeois today could not venture into the street.

Now the keystone was fitted into the arch: "Today we stand at the turning point of Germany's destiny. If the present development continues, Germany will one day of necessity land in bolshevik chaos". His alternative was that "our people must be taken into a school of iron discipline." Such speeches were effective and by November 1932 letters were sent by leading bankers, industrialists and large landowners to Hindenburg begging him to make Hitler Chancellor, it being argued that "whatever the circumstances, almost the whole of industry wants the appointment of Hitler".

Support from industry provided the crucial background to the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor. Hitler was also assisted by other right-wing political forces. The pro-Nationalist newspaper, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung was arguing for the inclusion of the Nazis in a coalition government. Since the Nazis were a rival force, support was not unqualified:

A right-wing government, but not sole rule by the National Socialist folk. We are of the firm conviction that the pursuit of the open dictatorship of a single party, even when it possesses the powerful national merits of the National Socialists, would end in tragedy. The participation of Hitler in government has been our demand for years.

On 11 October 1931 the Nazis were invited to join the "Harzburg front" consisting of an impressive collection of right-wing forces, from Hugenberg's DNVP (Nationalists) to the Stahlhelm paramilitaries, the Junkers' Land League and industrialists. Though the front would fall apart because Hitler was not prepared to be a junior partner in this arrangement, it was invaluable in giving added respectability to Nazism, as well as cultivating useful connections with Hugenberg's media empire.

However, manoeuvres by traditional political parties were less important than before. The direct steps that would lead to a Nazi regime were taken by the military clique around Hindenburg. What motivated them? The Weimar army's outlook had grown even closer to mainstream capitalism than in pre-war days. In breaking from its Junker ways of thinking (if not its Junker social origins) it was "once again-well in advance of its British or French counterparts":

A close analysis of this ideology... would show that it resembles the technocratic ideals of state management more than traditional aristocratic values and that it bears a closer relationship to contemporary conditions than to the traditions of the past."

Like the industrial capitalists, the army elite would need convincing of the NSDAP's merits. Hitler was given every opportunity to do this. He was received by Chancellor Brüning in October 1930. A year later the contacts multiplied, partly driven by Schleicher, the "grey eminence" behind Hindenburg. It was he who arranged meetings with the Chancellor and President in October 1931. Schleicher met Hitler on several occasions and concluded: "Faced with the forces he controls, there is only one policy to adopt - to use him and win him over..."

At this point the Nazis suffered a setback. At the end of 1931 papers arising from secret Nazi discussions in the Hesse area came to light. These showed what local Nazis thought would happen if they got into power: executions of opponents, abolition of private property and compulsory work service. The "Boxheim papers" were repudiated by Hitler, and for good reason. They not only showed how shallow the claims to legality were, but the local group suggested a left-wing radicalism that was out of step with the party's efforts to win the ruling class. The damage could not be undone, however. With SPD-dominated Prussia leading the campaign, Brüning banned the SA and the black-shirted SS on 14 April 1932.

An army leadership truly 'above' politics would have welcomed this blow against paramilitaries who disrupted its 'law and order'. In fact, amidst deepening social division, subduing the Nazi right could only assist the Communist left. The Reichswehr's aloofness proved a hollow sham. Schleicher began intriguing to topple Brüning and exploited the social conflict between left and right to bring him down. The complaints against Brüning included his unpopular austerity programme which earned him the title "hunger Chancellor" and showed no sign of resolving the crisis. Industrialists felt that he was not hard enough on labour. Brüning had also threatened to expose the gigantic swindle of the "eastern aid" programme which syphoned public funds into the pockets of East Prussian Junkers, amongst whom Hindenburg was now counted. The President demanded Brüning's resignation and received it on 30 May 1932. He was replaced by a more right-wing figure - Papen.

The new Chancellor called a Reichstag election and, following Schleicher's advice, lifted the ban on the SA. As a result, within one month 99 people were dead and 125 gravely wounded. It is important to note that the SA did not fight their way back to legality; it was granted by the government. This is not to say that the military clique wanted to aid Hitler directly. When Hindenburg was asked if Hitler would be made Chancellor, he exclaimed: "This Bohemian corporal wants to become Reich chancellor? Never! At most he could be my Postmaster General. Then he can lick me on the stamps from behind." This was not just an expression of aristocratic contempt; the basis of Bonapartist rule was to stand 'above' the forces of a crisis-ridden in society. To accomplish this the left and right political forces had to balance out. While the strongholds of the working class organisation - the mass parties, trade unions and SPD state governments, such as Prussia - remained fundamentally intact the boot boys of the right could not be too much encouraged or too severely curbed.

As the crisis wore on increasing sections of the German elite were won to the idea of a counter-revolutionary regime. Only this could decisively redress the balance of international economic competition abroad, and left-wing forces at home. They wanted all this for free, without risk and without having to pay the price demanded by a Hitlerian protection racket. However, almost every step the Papen government took, from unbanning the SA onwards, narrowed its room for manoeuvre and made a Nazi government more likely.

Nowhere was this better illustrated than with the overthrow of the state government in Prussia. Papen and his cronies believed this would be their master-stroke, giving them real power over the situation. The result was the opposite to that intended. The state of Prussia was a stronghold of the left. It had large KPD concentrations in the crucial area of Berlin and a SPD state government under Braun, with its own powerful police force. A Nazi invasion of the working class district of Altona in Hamburg, and the ensuing street warfare (which cost 17 lives, including some police) gave Papen the excuse to stage a legal coup against Braun's Prussian government, on 20 July 1932. No resistance was offered.

No other decision of the Papen government had promoted the later Nazi seizure of power more effectively than the coup against Prussia... The bulwark of the Republic was razed to the ground well before the Nazis took over in early February 1933.

The humiliation of the SPD in Prussia helped the Nazis to their greatest success in a free Reichstag election 11 days later. During the campaign the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, hoped that "two or three National Socialists will enter the von Papen government" and warned of that:

if, against all expectations it is not Papen but Braun who wins the Reichstag election, then the German state would be thrown back to 1919. There would be a situation with no way out and unthinkable consequences in all areas of politics and the economy...

On 31 July the NSDAP scored a 37.3% vote by capturing a mass of mainly middle class votes to become the largest single party in the Reichstag. Hitler once more pressed his claims for the Chancellorship, arguing that "the Reich cabinet belongs to men who have the trust of the people". There was something tragicomical in this man, who despised democracy, demanding his electoral rewards, from Hindenburg, who despised it too.

HOW THE DECISION TO APPOINT HITLER WAS MADE

In the ensuing months Hitler gained power, but it was at the very moment his influence began to wane. How can this be explained? It did not arise solely from his electoral success, because the best chance for Hitler should have come in July 1932. By the same token, his prospects should have worsened when, in November 1932, new elections brought a dramatic loss of 2 million votes for the NSDAP. The same problem applies if we adopt the "power politics" approach and conceive of the military dominated state in isolation. Hitler was manifestly less of a threat to the army in November than in July; yet power was still handed over.

What happened must be explained on the basis of complex changes. In July the very strength of Nazism meant it served as a useful counter-balance to the leftward leaning working class. Schleicher was explicit on this point: "in the form of the Nazis there exists a counter-weight". He added that "although the Nazis are not very honourable brethren either, and have to be treated with the utmost caution, if they did not exist, one really would have to invent them".

As yet there was no need or desire to pay Hitler's price - the post of Chancellor. After November the risk that the Nazi party would disintegrate meant that it had to be saved (so that in turn it could save the elite). The key moves were determined by the machinations of individual members of the German elite. The first reaction by Papen and Co. to the July election result was to offer Hitler the Vice-Chancellorship. He turned this down flat; only the top job would do. In insisting on an all-or-nothing approach Hitler was playing a dangerous game. To press the NSDAP's claims for attention it exploited the dire economic crisis, middle class fears and radical rhetoric to assemble a mighty voting machine plus an SA hundreds of thousands strong. An economic improvement might sap mass support; a long delay would explode the unstable combination of right-wing ideology and radical rhetoric. Hitler did not have much time, and he knew it. Nevertheless, in addition to personal ambition, there was a political logic to his demand for the Chancellorship. To carry out his counter-revolutionary strategy required an untrammelled concentration of power. Anything less, such as a Vice-Chancellorship under Papen, would blunt that offensive and tie him to a doomed regime.

Papen had his own difficulties when the Nazis refused to cooperate. His government might for the moment have the power of the army to back it up, but its popular basis was non-existent. This was soon revealed when the Reichstag met and passed a motion of no confidence in the government by 513 votes to 32. Another election followed on 5 November 1932 in which the Nazi vote shrank by 4% and its seats in the Reichstag fell from 230 to 196 (out of 608).

The Party was thrown into crisis. Göbbels, leader of the Berlin Gau, described the "lapse into depression. Everywhere we are plunged into anger, strife and dissension." Financially the situation was "quite hopeless. Only outgoings, debts and obligations, together with the complete impossibility of obtaining any reasonable sum of money after this defeat." 1932 had been a year "eternal misfortune. Everything is smashed... The past was hard, and the future looks dark and gloomy; all prospects and hopes have quite disappeared."

The reaction of the press at the turn of the year 1932/33 is interesting, because it shows a debate over what should follow. The Berliner Tageblatt, allied to the DVP, feared a Nazi takeover and interpreted the November election as ending such a prospect. On 2 January 1932 it wrote of "New Hope": "Hitler is no dark threat any more. He is a political factor to be reckoned with who certainly should be taken seriously because of his supporters, but nothing more. A few days later it added:

The New Year holds out no great promise for the National Socialists, but great perplexity... Their papers and speakers no longer call out: 'the new year will bring us to power'; 'Hitler will be Reichspresident!' no longer 'Hitler will be Reichschancellor'.

The liberal Frankfurter Zeitung, like the Berliner Tageblatt, also had grave doubts about the Nazis, but it was impatient for a solution. Its front page article was entitled "Either/Or":

In broad circles of the economy hopes have begun the year 1933. It may be possible, by energetic and planned efforts, to take advantage of the quite considerable signs of a change in the economic situation. For this to happen nothing is more urgent than a stable political basis... For more than a year efforts have been spent on drawing the National Socialists into government. Either do it, or leave it be.

The DAZ, the most right-wing of the three papers and closely allied with heavy industrial interests and the DNVP saw the Nazi's very weakness as a reason for bringing Hitler into government. How was this odd conclusion reached? Power must be given and without delay since another election might bring further Nazi losses:

a new electoral campaign for the National Socialist movement would be an extraordinarily difficult burden for it to undergo, probably the most difficult since the establishment of the party. It would be a missed opportunity if the elements of the right in Parliament did not find a common agreement with the government at the eleventh hour. Otherwise, sooner or later, the left would again triumph, for they are already gloating over the constant signs of crisis in the NSDAP.

This fear of missing a golden opportunity to defeat the left was sharpened by a realisation that the economic cycle had indeed turned. By the end of 1932 production was already 15% higher than at the depth of the depression.

So from the point of view of the military clique the November election had solved nothing. Hindenburg's Chancellors were still faced with problems which they could do nothing to resolve. They lacked the power to crush the workers, and lacked the support of the middle class which was mostly in Nazi hands. Balancing on the head of a pin becomes impossible in conditions of turbulence. Papen's failure to find a means of producing a stable government while respecting the last vestiges of democratic procedures led him to formulate a plan which "would involve a breach of the present constitution by the President". This would have been received as a declaration of open counter-revolution. Yet without a deal with the Nazis the capitalist interest would be represented by an isolated and despised military regime. This would have been very dangerous, and Schleicher feared it would produce a civil war with the army fighting against the working class on the left while confronting Nazi hostility on the right.

At the same time in letters to Hindenburg, Hitler pressed his case hard for a counter-revolutionary government with himself in charge:

Now, after governing for six months, the von Papen cabinet has - as I anticipated - become hopelessly isolated... The bolshevization of the broad masses is proceeding apace. If a new government is to assume this terrible political, economic and financial heritage, then its efforts can only be crowned with success if it combines great authority with strong popular support.

During the rest of November meeting followed meeting, letter followed letter, but doubts about the risk of relinquishing control to an unbridled counter-revolutionary movement persisted. A deal with Hitler could not be made, but neither could a continuing Papen government be tolerated. Eventually the latter was toppled when Schleicher "played his trump card". He withdrew army support from Papen because of the "risk of civil war".

With support narrowing to vanishing point, the last hopes of the regime now rested on Schleicher, the army leader, who emerged out of the shadows, where he had been kingmaker to Brüning and Papen. Made Chancellor on 2 December 1932 he had to operate in the open. His solution was to try and break out of isolation by winning a mass basis from trade unions on the left and from a wing of the Nazis on the right. Schleicher accordingly wooed Leipart, leader of the free Trade Unions and Gregor Strasser, the Nazi organisation chief and business representatives. These efforts exasperated those sections of the ruling class who, like the DAZ, did not want to lose the chance of rolling back the Weimar compromise and solving German capitalism's problems by breaking the working class once and for all.

They reasoned that if Brüning, Papen and Schleicher could not solve the problems, then there was only one alternative, distasteful though it might be. Hitler must be put into power, and since he would accept nothing less, it would have to be largely on his terms. The manoeuvres that made Hitler Chancellor reveal with full clarity the character of the process. They began on 4 January 1933 with a meeting between Hitler and Papen at the home of a banker - Schröder. The background to this meeting was:

a submission to the Reich President which had been signed by fifteen industrialists. They had asked though without success, that following Papen's dismissal the new Cabinet should contain members of the Nazi movement in leading positions. Apart from Schacht, there were now a number of prominent representatives of heavy industry in the Ruhr, among them Fritz Thyssen, Paul Reusch and Albert Vogler, as well as some other influential bankers and business who, like Schröder, belonged to a growing minority in big business. This minority advised that, in order to stabilise the presidential regime and to put the economy back on an even keel, the leadership in the Cabinet should be left to the Nazis.

It would be a mistake to think that big business support of this kind directly catapulted the Nazis into power. The connection between economic power and the state was far more complex than a cause and effect relationship. But the confidence of important sections of the industry was essential. It still remained for the NSDAP to show it still had the potential to perform its counter-revolutionary duties and its influence had not slipped too far. In mid-January the Nazis poured all their efforts into recovering electoral ground in the tiny state of Lippe with its 90,000 strong electorate. The NSDAP bounced back with a 17% increase on its previously low vote. More important was the march against the KPD Headquarters in Berlin. Billed as a mass demonstration against "Red Murder", the claim was that "The brown parade rules Berlin". The Nazi leaders told their followers that they were engaged in a symbolic struggle not only against the left, but against the establishment. The truth about the 22 January march was rather different, as the Berliner Tageblatt explained:

The Nazis wish to boast that they could march "unhindered" through even the reddest district. Whoever saw this demonstration knows that that is not true. For the SA were drawn up behind walls of police officers and protected by a thousand police carbines along empty streets. They "demonstrated" in front of the police and dead house fronts. They "conquered" an empty city. They were able to collect in front of the Liebknecht house and march because the square and the streets were empty, because police truncheons and carbines guaranteed the route.

The Nazis had made clear that a Hitler regime would be a counter-revolutionary regime.

This does not mean that the circumstances that shaped Nazism's birth (the immediate threat of revolution) were present as it reached maturity. The immediate prospects of workers' revolution that existed in 1923 had long gone. But the solution to the elite's deep social, economic and political crisis would lie in breaking the bones of working class organisation. In 1933 Hitler's coming to power represented "a defensive reaction of the bourgeoisie, but a defense against the disintegration of its own system, far more than against any nearly nonexistent proletarian offensive."

Nazism remained counter-revolutionary in two senses. On the ideological plane the tremendous crash of 1929 raised questions in people's minds. The NSDAP's crude anti-semitic politics diverted millions from a real understanding of the causes. In the practical arena its primary role would be to attack and destroy the organisations of the working class.

At this point in time it was already becoming clear that Schleicher's plans were crumbling. They collapsed when Strasser proved unable to bring any sizeable sections of Nazis with him into a Schleicher-led coalition. Hugenberg of the Nationalist DNVP abandoned Schleicher and began negotiations with Hitler just three days later. Papen came forward with the suggestion of a coalition government. This would give Hitler the coveted post of Chancellor and powerful positions to other Nazis; but Papen himself was to be Vice-Chancellor with enough non-Nazis to keep Hitler in check (or so he hoped). So here we have Papen courting Hitler. Incredibly, at this stage, so did Schleicher! On 29 January Von Hammerstein, Army Commander-in-Chief, had a conversation with Schleicher which he reported in these terms:

We were both convinced that the only possible future Reich Chancellor was Hitler. Any other decision would generate a general strike, if not a civil war, and thus to a totally undesirable use of the army against the National Socialists as well as against the Left.

Note that it was only 'totally undesirable' to use the army against the Nazis. Hitler, who was staying with his piano manufacturing friends, the Bechsteins, nervously watched developments. His own testimony on the final outcome is clear. Some months later he praised "the part played by our Army, for we all know well that if, in the days of our revolution, the Army had not stood on our side, then we should not be standing here today." A revolution with army support?! Surely counter-revolution is the more appropriate term.

The next day, 30 January 1933, has been called "midnight of the century". It was the day that Hitler was appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg. The DAZ rightly interpreted Hitler's promotion with a front page headline: "To power!" and then reminded the NSDAP of its task:

The forces of disruption do not remain inactive. Mass poverty is the breeding ground of revolution... The German left ruled and has been ruling for a decade. The German right has been standing for years on the threshold of power. Finally it has entered.

The relief was palpable: "It must be said openly: the takeover of power by Hitler, Seldte and Hugenburg spared us potentially serious conflict in February."

The above account shows unequivocally that Nazism did not come to power through the ballot box or the will of the people. Though backed by the middle class, it was supported by industrialists and bankers and courted by both the previous and incumbent Chancellor plus the Army. Behind this tiny elite grouping was an enormous social process.