The years between 1923 and 1928 were prosperous for Germany; the economy had a minor ‘boom’ thanks to ‘the young plan’. Müller, chancellor at the time, put in action a plan where Germany would borrow money from America so it could secure payment on it’s reparations. This was fine until the Wall Street crash in 1928 threw Germany, and most of Europe, into depression. America demanded it’s loans back and Germany’s economy slumped. Inflation rose to an absurd amount, people became extremely poor, and they had lost whatever small confidence they had in democracy. Hindenburg threw Muller out of his chancellorship; Muller was the last chancellor to have a majority in the Reichstag.
Germany was ruled by a method of government very similar to the American one we see today. It used proportional representation to make sure it covered the whole population’s vote more effectively, and this is the reason why the Nazis, at first, were allowed to get any seats at all. The idea of this type of democracy was to keep all the different parts, the judiciary, the parliament and the executive separate from one another. However as the Weimar republic continued these separations became less and less, effectively bypassing the parliament completely.
People began looking to other parties for leadership. They looked either to the extreme left, communism, or to the extreme right, National Socialism. The Nazis, although still small at this time (12 seats in 1928), had something no other parties had; successful political methods. As the depression grew, people began to be more desperate. People feared the growing communist following, the feared revolution, and as such looked to the far right, Hitler’s Nazis were becoming more organised, with Hitler as their leader after coming out of jail. They began branching the party to all different parts of the country, which made the indoctrination far more effective as it reached a wider audience. Audience was their main strong point, they appealed to everyone, their policies were bland and unconvincing, yet it was what everyone wanted to hear.
The SA was another brilliant idea that was very well implemented, its members were young and easily indoctrinated, and its violence was appealing. People wanted to feel the comradeship of this organisation and this led many people to join, helping spread Hitler’s words. In 1932 the SA, in Prussia alone, caused 461 political riots!
People were not that unaccustomed to Dictatorship; they had lived under a monarchy up until the 1st world war. They were a people who felt that the end would justify the means, how wrong they were.
From 1930 till 1933 there were 3 chancellors, they all had the same aims and ideas; they wanted to reform the Weimar republic into something feasible, something that could lead Germany into a new age of democratic rule. They differed on few matters in their policy making. Brüning (1930-32) was the only chancellor who actually attempted working with the Reichstag; he believed they should have a greater role. However as his reign went on, he found it continually more difficult to do this, especially when they blocked his agrarian reforms. His place was weakened due his dislike of the Nazi party.
Papen was totally against the Reichstag, he saw no point in going through them, he simply used article 48 more and more when things didn’t go his way. Papen’s coup on Prussia’s state government just emphasises several key things about this period, not only was this man running the country through article 48, he was running it like a dictatorship, he just simply took over Prussia’s state government. It’s not really that much of a huge leap to the Nazis taking their power.
Papen’s idea of running the country under martial law was a step to far and all sides of the problem lost confidence, Hindenburg put Von Schleicher in charge. Being a past General, Schleicher knew that they could be on the brink of civil war, so he tried to open his government up. He made links with the trade unions and the more socialist wings of the Nazi party. However, just as Brüning before, his agrarian reforms upset the precious elite. It was nicknamed ‘agrarian Bolshevism’, in other words they considered the idea communist. Von Papen’s government was abolished and replaced by one with Hitler at its helm, surrounded by democrats, but none the less, Hitler was its chancellor.