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 in the Protestant, agricultural and small-town areas of Germany, and their most stable vote from 1924 onwards came from small farmers, shopkeepers and the independent artisans of the ‘old’ middle class, who felt threatened by the tensions and tendencies of modernization and industrial society. This core was augmented in periods of economic crisis by a ‘protest vote’ from other sections of society, including a sizeable vote from the new middle classes, and among established professional and upper-middle-class circles. In Childers’ summary of these groups: ‘Motivations were mixed, including fear of the Marxist Left, frustrated career ambitions, and resentment at the erosion of social prestige and professional security. Yet, while sizeable elements of these groups undoubtedly felt their positions or prospects to be challenged during the Weimar era, they cannot be described as uneducated, economically devastated, or socially marginal’.10 Civil servants, pensioners and white-collar workers added their votes to those of the small farmers and shopkeepers in a rising tide of protest against the chaos that Weimar democracy, to them, had ushered in. People of all ages were in the end attracted to the apparently young, energetic, demagogic movement, which appeared to offer a new way forward out of the deadlock and disasters of the Weimar ‘system’.

      Armed with his electoral success – which still fell short of an overall majority – Hitler was hoping to be offered the chancellorship by Hindenburg. But the President despised this upstart ‘Bohemian corporal’, as he called him, and snubbed him by refusing to offer anything more than the vice-chancellorship. Enraged, Hitler refused to accept second-best – and caused considerable anger and consternation among the ranks of the Nazi Party, which felt he had missed the opportunity of putting the Nazis into government.

      Who, finally, should bear the burden of responsibility for the failure of Weimar democracy? What factors are most important in explaining its collapse? The Left has come in for criticism on a range of counts. The bitter hostility obtaining between the KPD and SPD has often been remarked on as a fateful split among those who should have been united in opposition to the greater evil of Nazism. In addition to the bitterness arising in the early years, when the SPD as the party of government had no qualms about using force to suppress radical communist uprisings, the rift was deepened by the late 1920s and 1930s, when the KPD, under the influence of Moscow, adopted the theory that social democracy was equivalent to ‘social fascism’. Whatever one’s views on these matters, in a wider sense the working class in the closing years of the Weimar Republic was scarcely in a position to resist the course of events effectively. In contrast to 1920, when a general strike had been sufficient to bring down the Kapp putsch, there was little that could be done on a mass scale in the early 1930s: it is extremely difficult to use the weapon of striking when one is unemployed or desperate to retain a job. For most ordinary working-class people, sheer material survival was all that could be striven for in the years of the Depression.

      More attention needs to be paid to those who were in a position to affect events – and indeed often did so, in a direction ultimately favouring Hitler. There are a number of separate strands that interacted to produce the fateful, but by no means inevitable, outcome. The pursuit of deflationary economic policies by Brüning served to exacerbate the economic crisis and nourish the conditions in which the NSDAP was able to achieve mass support. While industrialists may not have played an important role in fostering or financially supporting the rise of the NSDAP, they certainly made little effort to sustain the democratic political system and indeed attacked its structure and fabric sufficiently to render it weak in the face of the final onslaught. The agrarian elites who had such a favourable reception with Hindenburg must also bear a burden of guilt, as must those army officers who worked to undermine democracy and install an authoritarian alternative. The Social Democrats had faced a difficult enough task in guiding the Republic through its early stages, at a time when moderate parties had greater parliamentary support and authoritarian elites had effectively abdicated their responsibility and retired to the wings of the political stage; now, when pro-Republican forces were in a minority and conservative– nationalist forces were joined by a new, popular and virulent right-wing radicalism in the shape of the Nazis, there was even less possibility for democrats of the moderate Left or Centre to control developments.

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