A History of Germany 1918 - 2020. Mary Fulbrook
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Название: A History of Germany 1918 - 2020

Автор: Mary Fulbrook

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Историческая литература

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isbn: 9781119574248

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СКАЧАТЬ Many leading officers claimed that while they supported the German nation, they could not support the democratic state: thus, in the early years, in different ways, Generals Groener, Seeckt and others cooperated with right-wing groups and paramilitary organizations, such as the ex-servicemen’s association the Stahlhelm. German military schools were opened in Russia (under the Treaty of Rapallo) to train officers, and secret rearmament programmes were initiated in contravention of the Versailles Treaty. From 1926 onwards, General Kurt von Schleicher played a leading role in supporting and influencing President Hindenburg’s plans for a more authoritarian form of government that would reinstate the pre-1918 elites in what they deemed to be their rightful positions of power. Schleicher’s role was to become particularly important in the closing stages of the Republic’s brief history.

      Meanwhile, in the civilian arena, towards the end of the 1920s, increasing disaffection with democracy was reflected in the right-wards shift of a number of ‘bourgeois’ parties. Most notable among these was the DNVP, which was taken over by the right-wing nationalist press baron Hugenberg in 1928. After the death of Stresemann in 1929 the DVP also moved towards the Right. But even as they shifted, so they were being outstripped – and their support sapped away from them – by the emergence and dramatic growth of an infinitely more radical party: the NSDAP. And, unlike the traditional conservative and nationalist parties, the NSDAP was able, in the new era of plebiscitary democracy and economic crisis, to attract a wide popular following. Ultimately, elites disaffected with democracy were to feel they must ally with the Nazis to gain a mass base from which to bring the shaky edifice down.

      The Rise of the NSDAP

      Following Hitler’s release from imprisonment at the end of 1924, the NSDAP was formally refounded in February 1925. Over the course of the next few years, Hitler rose from his pre-1923 role of ‘drummer’ to become the undisputed leader or ‘Führer’, standing to some extent above the organizational fray and exerting his powers of charismatic leadership through his gifts of oratory and control of mass audiences.2 The eventual semblance of a well-organized, united party – symbolized by the brown-shirt uniforms of the SA, the serried ranks of units marching past the Führer with arms raised in Hitler salute, the visual and emotional effects of the mass rallies with the leader as the focal point – partially disguised more complex realities.

      The paramilitary SA – founded in 1920, one of the many paramilitary groups to spring up in the aftermath of the First World War – was at first organized only at the local level. After the return of the war veteran Ernst Röhm from Bolivia to head the organization in 1930, the SA remained somewhat unruly and, in conventional political terms, more radical than Hitler’s conception of Nazi ideology was to be. Nor were all Nazi leaders united on a clearly definable ‘ideology’ in any case. An important figure with ideas somewhat different from those of Hitler was Gregor Strasser, whose role in Nazi party organization was strengthened in 1925 when Hitler was banned from making speeches in public. Strasser, who had considerable organizational skills, played a key role in spreading the Nazi party organization across broad areas of Germany, beyond the original Nazi heartland in Bavaria. In some areas, particularly in northwest Germany, the NSDAP had a more ‘revolutionary’ or radical flavour.

      Economic Crises and the Collapse of Democracy

      The Weimar Republic had suffered since its inception from major economic problems. The means of financing the First World War – through loans and bonds rather than taxes – had laid the foundations for postwar inflation, which had been fuelled and exacerbated by government policies in connection with reparations in 1922–3. Even СКАЧАТЬ