Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The German Cabinets from 1923 to 1930, under Wilhelm Marx, Hans Luther, Marx again, and finally Hermann Müller, were chiefly concerned with questions of foreign policy, with reparations, evacuation of the occupied areas, disarmament agitation, Locarno, and the League of Nations. On the domestic front, just as significant events were going on but with much less fanfare. Much of the industrial system, as well as many public buildings, was reconstructed by foreign loans. The Quartet were secretly strengthened and consolidated by reorganization of the tax structure, by utilization of governmental subsidies, and by the training and rearrangement of personnel. Alfred Hugenberg, the most violent and irreconcilable member of the Nationalist Party, built up a propaganda system through his ownership of scores of newspapers and a controlling interest in Ufa, the great motion-picture corporation. By such avenues as this, a pervasive propaganda campaign, based on existing German prejudices and intolerances, was put on to prepare the way for a counterrevolution by the Quartet. This campaign sought to show that all Germany’s problems and misfortunes were caused by the democratic and laboring groups, by the internationalists, and by the Jews.

The Center and Left shared this nationalist poison sufficiently to abstain from any effort to give the German people the true story of Germany’s responsibility for the war and for her own hardships. Thus the Right was able to spread its own story of the war, that Germany had been overcome by “a stab in the back” from “the three Internationals”: the “Gold” International of the Jews, the “Red” International of the Socialists, and the “Black” International of the Catholics, an unholy triple alliance which was symbolized in the gold, red, and black flag of the Weimar Republic. In this fashion every effort was made, and with considerable success, to divert popular animosity at the defeat of 1918 and the Versailles settlement from those who were really responsible to the democratic and republican groups. At the same time, German animosity against economic exploitation was directed away from the landlords and industrialists by racist doctrines which blamed all such problems on bad Jewish international bankers and department store owners.

The general nationalism of the German people, and their willingness to accept the propaganda of the Right, succeeded in making Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg president of the republic in 1925. On the first ballot none of seven candidates received a majority of the total vote, so the issue went to the polls again. On the second ballot Hindenburg received 14,655,766 votes, Marx (of the Center Party) received 13,751,-615, while the Communist Ernst Thalmann received 1,931,151.

The victory of Hindenburg was a fatal blow to the republic. A mediocre military leader, and already on the verge of senility, the new president was a convinced antidemocrat and anti-republican. To bind his allegiance to the Quartet more closely, the landlords and industrialists took advantage of his eightieth birthday in 1927 to give him a Junker estate, Neudeck, in East Prussia. To avoid the inheritance tax, the deed to this estate was made out to the president’s son, Colonel Oskar von Hindenburg. In time this estate came to be known as the “smallest concentration camp” in Germany, as the president spent his last years there cut off from the outside world by his senilities and a coterie of intriguers. These intriguers, who were able to influence the aged presidential mind in any direction they wished, consisted of Colonel Oskar, General Kurt von Schleicher, Dr. Otto Meissner, who remained head of the presidential office under Ebert, Hindenburg, and Hitler; and Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau who owned the estate next to Neudeck. This coterie was able to make and unseat Cabinets from 1930 to 1934, and controlled the use of the presidential power to rule by decree in that critical period.

No sooner did Hindenburg become a landlord in October 1927 than he began to mobilize government assistance for the landlords. This assistance, known as Osthilfe (Eastern Help), was organized by a joint session of the Reich and Prussian governments presided over by Hindenburg on December 21, 1927. The stated purpose of this assistance was to increase the economic prosperity of the regions east of the Elbe River in order to stop the migration of Germans from that area to western Germany and their replacement by Polish farm laborers. This assistance soon became a sink of corruption, the money being diverted in one way or another, legally or illegally, to subsidize the bankrupt great estates and the extravagances of the Junker landlords. It was the threat of public revelation of this scandal which was the immediate cause of the death of the Weimar Republic by Hindenburg’s hand in 1932.

The combination of all of these events (the real power of the Quartet, the shortsighted and unprincipled opportunism of the Social Democrats and the Center Party, the coterie around Hindenburg, and the Osthilfe scandal) made possible the disintegration of the Weimar Republic in the years 1930-1933. The decision of the Quartet to attempt to establish a government satisfactory to themselves was made in 1929. The chief causes of the decision were (1) the realization that industrial plants had been largely rebuilt by foreign loans; (2) the knowledge that these foreign loans were now drying up and that, without them, neither reparations nor internal debts could be met except at a price which the Quartet was unwilling to pay; (3) the knowledge that the policy of fulfillment had accomplished about as much as could be expected from it, the Allied Control Missions having ended, rearmament having progressed as far as was possible under the Versailles Treaty, the western frontier having been made secure, and the eastern frontier having been opened to German penetration.

The decision of the Quartet did not result from the economic crisis of 1929, but was made earlier in the year. This can be seen in the alliance of Hugenberg and Hitler to force a referendum on the Young Plan. The Quartet had accepted the much more severe Dawes Plan in 1924 because they were not then ready to destroy the Weimar regime. The challenge to the Young Plan not only indicated that they were ready; it also became an indication of their strength. This test was a disappointment, since they obtained only five million votes adverse to the plan from an electorate of 40 million. As a result, for the first time, the Nazis began a drive to build up a mass following. The moment for which they had been kept alive by the financial contributions of the Quartet had arrived. The effort would never have succeeded, however, were it not for the economic crisis. The intensity of this crisis can be measured by the number of Reichstag seats held by the Nazis:

April

Dec.

July

Dec.

March

1924

1924

1928

1930

1932

1932

1933

7

14

12

107

230

196

288

The Nazis were financed by the Black Reichswehr from 1919 to 1923; then this support ceased because of army disgust at the fiasco of the Munich Putsch. This lack of enthusiasm for the Nazis by the army continued for years. It was inspired by social snobbery and fears of the Nazi Storm Troops (SA) as a possible rival to itself. This diffidence on the part of the army was compensated by the support of the industrialists, who financed the Nazis from Hitler’s exit from prison in 1924 to the end of

1932. The destruction of the Weimar Republic has five stages:

Brüning: March 27, 1930-May 30, 1932

von Papen: May 31, 1932-November 17, 1932 Schleicher: December 2, 1932-January 28, 1933

Hitler: January 30, 1933-March 5, 1933

Gleichschaltung: March 6, 1933-August 2, 1934