What I Am Reading: "The Last Winter of the Weimar Republic" by Rüdiger Barth and Hauke Friederichs

I didn't really expect to like this book. Its authors, a journalist and an academic, described their account of the fall of the Weimar Republic as inspired by House of Cards, as an intense drama of backroom intrigue and ruthless operators. Given the utter mediocrity that House of Cards eventually spun into (or was from the beginning, depending on your point of view), this was not the most promising comparison. However, this book executed a tight, focused history without sexing anything up ("Why was the head of the DVNP so unpopular? So much would have been easier if Alfred Hugenberg hadn't been Alfred Hugenberg. Writing in his diary, Reinhold Quaatz had a sobering realization: 'he has no sex appeal.'" (Fri. 23 Dec.)) or dumbing anything down.

The book is essentially a ticktock of Kurt von Schleicher's Chancellorship, the overthrow of which saw Hitler appointed Chancellor. Every chapter covers a day between Thursday, November 17th, 1932, and Monday, January 30th, 1933, using newspaper reports and private documents to reconstruct the events of the day in question. Many political events and meetings are covered in only a few paragraphs, and some days don't have enough activity to take up more than a page or two. The result is a very brisk pace. The “documentary montage” is also, as the authors explicitly intended, devoid of any analysis or hindsight, with a tight focus on this specific timeline. A lot of micro-incidents that don't make it into the real history books are covered in multiple days of lead-up (a small election, a rally) or wind-down (a killing and subsequent funeral). This gives a very visceral feel for the history, as our own daily interactions with politics revolve to at least some extent around similar unimportant day-to-day micro-events. Days are anchored by headlines quotes as epigraphs at the beginning of each, and the political news is brought into relief by occasional notes of other goings-on, social events and strange advertisements.

Many characters, including those with extensive political backstories, are given only a brief introduction. As a result, a reader is helped by some moderate level of familiarity with the history in question. Even to me, though, there were some new figures to see through the eyes of: left-leaning nobleman Harry Graf Kessler, moderate society columnist, Jew, and Schleicher-friend Bella Fromm, visiting American trade unionist Abraham Plotkin, and others who kept useful day-to-day notes. Additionally, there are others who are minor, if familiar, historical figures who played outsized roles in this specific season, including Gregor Strasser, influential leader of the anti-capitalist Nazi faction, and Günther Gereke, Scheicher's activist-conservative Commissioner of Work, responsible for job creation.

The book is the story of the Schleicher administration, however. Scheicher was a desk general who had served as the official liaison between the military and the Reichstag, and had served as a behind-the-scenes power player in earlier political intrigues. At the beginning of the time period in question, he helped maneuver the overthrow of the Papen administration (which he himself helped bring into power earlier in the year), and was appointed Chancellor. The book covers his desire and efforts to form a broad centrist coalition of the left-wing Nazis (Strasser's faction), the center and establishment conservative parties, and the trade unions; but in its intentional lack of analysis spends little time on his underlying political goals, which included rolling back the Republic and forming an authoritarian, military government. This undesirable outcome sours him in my eyes, but the book takes a more neutral view of his brief and beleaguered administration. Schleicher was a better schemer than he was a leader. Unfortunately, his political failures led semi-directly to his murder by the Nazis in the Night of the Long Knives (of which my background mainly stems from In The Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson), where his papers were also taken; making the historian's job harder.

The book starts with the downfall of Papen, on November 17th, 1932, as the recent elections brought a Reichstag both hostile to him and devoid of a governing majority. President Paul von Hindenburg started searching the next day for a new Chancellor, hoping to find a coalition government (though Papen was still in the mix at first). Hitler hoped to become Chancellor, of course, but his main goal during this time was to become a "Presidential Chancellor," governing backed by Hindenburg's decree under Article 48 instead of accountable to coalition partners. Negotiations and backroom dealing proceeded chaotically until December 2nd when Schleicher, backed by supporters in the cabinet and clearing Papen out of the way, arranged to be appointed Chancellor. He had many useful tools at his disposal, including illegal wiretapping efforts that returned excellent intelligence and the result of a wargaming simulation, run on November 25th showing that Papen's government would not be able to hold out against a Nazi and Communist uprising. This wargaming affected a lot of the elite strategizing, as Schleicher and others analysed that they would need to bring the Nazis on-side to fight the Communists.

Schleicher set about attempting to empower his ideal coalition, the aforementioned alliance of the Nazi left, the Catholic center, the conservative right, and the trade unions. Some of his industrial and agrarian policies, focused intently on job creation in order to stabilize the dire Great Depression economic situation, did not win him friends among the Junkers and Industrialists who had been Papen's supporters, and who had Hindenburg's ear. Papen's political philosophy had been oriented more toward a new constitution and the restoration of the monarchy; though, lightweight that he was, Papen made no progress toward this goal.

The Nazis, meanwhile, were in a crisis at this time, with declining results in the recent Reichstag elections (and the Thuringian election on December 4th), a shortage of money, and a faction leader, Strasser, of dubious loyalty. Hitler spent much of the year-end running around putting out fires, though on January 15th, the party was able to spin modest gains in the Landtag elections of the tiny province of Lippe as a win.

After a wholesome German Christmas all around, Hitler began plotting with Papen, to be joined eventually by Otto Meissner, Hindenburg's close aide, and Oskar von Hindenburg, the President's Large Adult Son. Papen, motivated by revenge, wanted to depose Schleicher and return to influence, if not the Chancellorship itself. In the mean time, Schleicher worked to win over Strasser, and SPD/union leadership, with very little success. The frenzied scheming all had a clear deadline: the re-convention of the Reichstag at the end of January, eventually set for the 31st, at which point Schleicher would doubtlessly be deposed by a vote of no confidence. Schleicher hoped to convince President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag before then, but then unconstitutionally not call an election until the autumn, giving Schleicher the breathing room he needed to improve the economy.

However, by January 26th, Hindenburg had turned down this request more than once. Schleicher had fallen out with the President, who preferred to comfort himself with the fiction of the DVNP-Nazi coalition that Papen proposed to him, with the claim that it might soon gain a real parliamentary majority. This set off a final round of frenzied scheming as Schleicher's departure seemed imminent; the military schemed against Papen and the theoretical uprising his rule might produce, Hitler vacillated on letting Papen and others win over conservative allies, like DVNP leader Alfred Hugenberg, on his behalf, and which positions those allies would have in the cabinet. Though Schleicher turned down an offer of a military coup, Hindenburg was so afraid of rumors of one that he himself defied the constitution by appointing a new Defense Minister with out the say-so of the Chancellor (with Schleicher still a lame-duck in both positions). This put an end to Schleicher’s own scheming to stay on in Defense. Hitler and Papen also had to trick Hindenburg again; there were some indications that an actual right-wing coalition could form with the Nazis, but again Hitler preferred to govern by decree instead of be tied to allies, willing as they may have been. These days saw a dizzying array of discussions, proposed deals, and re-negations. On January 29th, the deal was sealed as Hitler wanted it, clearing the last hurdle with a literal last-minute bullying of Hugenberg, and Hitler and his motley right-wing cabinet was sworn in on January 30th. Papen told his allies that "...in two months [they'll] have pushed Hitler so far into a corner that he squeals." He was wrong.

Again, I liked this book a lot. It really forced me to pay attention to the small picture, even as the end result is famous and foreboding creeps in to the viewpoints of the men- and women-on-the-street. It is the closest I can come to seeing these events play out in real time, which shows once again that the Nazi rise was not inevitable, and that it was due to the overconfidence of people like Schleicher and the short-sightedness of people like Papen, conservatives and authoritarians, that paved the Nazi way to power. Frank Underwood wasn’t the worst villain around.