This Day in History [1933] - The Weimar Republic Dies

The usual caveat applies - I don't endorse Hitler.

Shortly after Hindenburg handed power to Adolf Hitler on January 30, 1933, Hitler persuaded Hindenburg to do something he refused to do for his predecessor [Kurt von Schleicher] only four days prior: dissolve the Reichstag and hold new elections.  The next day, Hitler addressed the nation on German radio.  In his Appeal of the Reich Government to the German People, Hitler gave a campaign speech.  He portrayed November 9, 1918 [the day the Kaiser “abdicated” and the Social Democrats proclaimed a republic] as the day the German people fell from grace.  He described the fourteen years since then as “fourteen year of Marxism” that ruined Germany, and that one year of Bolshevism would “annihilate Germany”.  He asked the German people for four years to save German farmers from “pauperism”, completely eliminate employment, and put the country’s finances on a “sound basis”.  He also vowed to “protect Christianity” and declared war on “cultural nihilism”, which he attributed to Communists.  These were themes he repeated in his February 10^th speech at Berlin’s Sportpalast.

Two days later [at the invitation of General von Blomberg] he addressed a group of senior German army officers.  At this meeting, he expressed zero tolerance of opposition and promised “extermination of Marxism root and branch”.  He told the gathering that the firmest authoritarian leadership and the “removal of the damaging cancer of democracy” [the ‘November parties’ and the Communists] was necessary for internal recovery.  He promised rearmament and a return of general conscription, and to remove the army from German internal politics.  Meanwhile in Prussia, Hermann Göring [in his role as Minister of the Interior] purged the police of non-Nazis and deputized 50,000 Stormtroopers.  This meant they could legally carry out their harassment of Communists with impunity.  The Reichstag Fire decree had given Göring the legal cover to act as he did.  Within the decree, there was a brief paragraph that gave the Reich government the right to intervene in the German Länder the right to intervene in order to “restore order”.   

The Reichstag Fire happened on February 27^th, for which Hitler and his followers blamed the Communists.  Coming conveniently only one week before German voters went to the polls on March 5th, the subsequent Reichstag Fire decree – with its suspension of civil liberties and haebeas corpus– declared open season on Communists.  Thousands of Communists were jailed, others went into hiding.  These actions suppressed the Communist vote, and the Communists were effectively eliminated as a political force, though they were not banned outright.  Social Democrats [SPD] also felt the wrath of Nazi Stormtroopers.  They broke up SPD meetings, beating up speakers and audience alike.  The government also banned newspapers of the SPD and the Catholic Center Party. 

The Nazi Party got the most votes in the March 5^th election 44 percent of the vote.  But only with the help of the German National People’s Party were the Nazis able to secure a Reichstag majority.  The newly elected Reichstag met at the Potsdam Garrison Church amid much pomp and ceremony.  The ceremony was meant to portray the continuity from the old Prussian monarchical tradition [as embodied by Hindenburg’s presence] and the new Nazi regime.  Two days later, the Nazis introduced an enabling act to the Reichstag.  The Enabling Act of 1933 [called the Law to Remove the Distress of People and State] had two main provisions: it gave Hitler dictatorial powers for four years.  It could be renewed every four years by the Reichstag.  Lawmaking was taken from the Reichstag and was given to the Hitler’s cabinet [in theory – in practice, the power passed to Hitler himself]; second, Hitler didn’t need Hindenburg’s agreement under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which allowed the Reich Chancellor to rule by decree with presidential approval.

Because the law allowed for departures from the constitution, the law itself was considered a constitutional amendment.  For such a law to pass it required approval of 2/3 of those Reichstag deputies present and voting.  Hermann Göring, as Reichstag president, changed procedural rules to make it easier for the law to pass.  Under normal rules 2/3 of Reichstag membership [not just of those who just showed up and voted] was required to bring the constitutional bill to the floor for debate.  Out of 584 total members that meant 423 would have to be present.  The Social Democrats and the Communists were expected to vote against it.  By simply ignoring the 81 Communist members, Göring reduced the quorum number to 378.  For those Communist members who weren’t present [probably arrested or in hiding], Göring declared any member “absent without excuse” to be considered as “present”.  Some SPD members were arrested by the Nazis under provisions of the Reichstag Fire decree.  Additionally, the Kroll Opera House [where the Reichstag assembled after the fire] was crawling with SA Stormtroopers as an added intimidation factor.  Hitler’s coalition partners in the German National People’s Party [DNVP] were already on board with the program.  Hitler then won the support of the Catholic Center Party.  They got a “written guarantee” that included a pledge to respect the continued existence of the constituent states [Länder], the Reichstag, an independent judiciary, and the presidency. Most importantly, Hitler pledged to respect the independence of the Catholic Church in Germany.  With the Communists out of the picture that left only the SPD in opposition.

Otto Wels: The Only Man to Publicly Oppose Hitler

During the debate over the act, Hitler pleaded his case by telling the assembled members that the “Marxists” [his term for the SDP] were responsible for the sad state of German affairs, to include toppling the monarchy, fomenting revolution, assuming the “war guilt” for World War I, the hyperinflation, the high unemployment, etc.  He also explained that he wanted to completely change the German mindset and all that help shape it - the entire system of education, the theater, the cinema, literature, the press, and radio.

SPD leader Otto Wels was the only dissenting voice in the debate, the only one to oppose Hitler publicly, and to his face.  He objected to Hitler’s characterization of a willingness by the SPD to accept “war guilt” for World War I.  He painted a picture of the SPD government having only four hours to accept or reject the “war guilt” clause of the Versailles treaty, otherwise the armistice of November 11, 1918 would expire and the Allies would resume hostilities.  Wels argued that if Hitler and the Nazis actually believed the brand of Socialism that they espoused, there would be no need for an Enabling Act.  He pleaded the SPD’s case for saving the German nation immediately after World War I:  

 

“No good can come of a dictated peace; and this applies all the more to domestic affairs.  A real Volksgemeinschaft cannot be established on such a basis. That requires first of all equality of rights. May the Government guard itself against crude excesses of polemics; may it prohibit incitements to violence with rigorousness for its own part. This might be achieved if it is accomplished fairly and objectively on all sides and if one refrains from treating defeated enemies as though they were outlaws. 

Freedom and life they can take from us, but not honor. 

We Social Democrats have borne joint responsibility in the most difficult of times and have been stoned as our reward.  Our achievements in reconstructing the State and the economy and in liberating the occupied territories will prevail in history.  We have created equal rights for all and socially-oriented labor legislation. We have aided in creating a Germany in which the path to leadership is open not only to counts and barons, but also to men of the working class…

The Weimar Constitution is not a Socialist Constitution. But we adhere to the basic principles of a constitutional state, to the equality of rights, and the concept of social legislation anchored therein. We German Social Democrats solemnly pledge ourselves in this historic hour to the principles of humanity and justice, of freedom and Socialism.  No Enabling Act can give you the power to destroy ideas which are eternal and indestructible. You yourself have professed your belief in Socialism. Bismarck’s Law against Socialists has not destroyed the Social Democratic Party. Even further persecution can be a source of new strength to the German Social Democratic Party.  We hail those who are persecuted and in despair. We hail our friends in the Reich. Their steadfastness and loyalty are worthy of acclaim. The courage of their convictions, their unbroken faith - are the guarantees of a brighter future.” 

Hitler knew what Wels was going to say [he was given Wels’ remarks prior to the debate], and to this he had a retort: 

You declare that the Social Democratic Party subscribes to our foreign policy program; that it rejects the lie of war guilt; that it is against reparations. Now I may ask just one question: where was this fight during the time you had power in Germany? You once had the opportunity to dictate the law of domestic behavior to the German Volk…

You state that being stripped of power does not mean being stripped of honor.  You are right; that does not necessarily have to be the case. Even if we were divested of our power, I know we would not be divested of our honor. Thanks to having been oppressed by your party, our Movement had been stripped of power for years; it has never been stripped of honor. 

It is my conviction that we shall inoculate the German Volk with a spirit that, in view of the Volk’s defenselessness today, Mr. Deputy, will certainly never allow it to be stripped of its honor.  Here, too, it was your responsibility, you who were in power for fourteen years, to ensure that this German Volk had set an example of honor to the world. It was your responsibility to ensure that, if the rest of the world insisted upon suppressing us, at least the type of suppression the German Volk was subjected to would be one of dignity. You had the opportunity to speak out against all of the manifestations of disgrace in our Volk. You could have eliminated this treason just as easily as we will eliminate it…

Your death knell has sounded as well, and it is only because we are thinking of Germany and its distress and the requirements of national life that we appeal in this hour to the German Reichstag to give its consent to what we could have taken at any rate." 

The Enabling Act passed by a vote of 444 to 94.  Only the SPD voted against it.  In effect, the Reichstag voted itself out of existence.  And so on this date, the Weimar Republic died.  The republic's death was long, slow and painful, but the coup de grace was quick.  It took Hitler only 52 days to kill the Weimar Republic once Hindenburg handed power to him.  Hindenburg was still Reich President, but his signature on the Enabling Act of 1933 gave Hitler a free hand to do whatever he wanted.

Who is Ivan Ilyin?

I was listening to Brian Whitmore’s Power Vertical podcast from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty [RFE/RL] the other day.  The subject was “Putin’s Russian Idea”, a “new Putinism” that is emerging as a new ideology.  To summarize this emerging ideology, Whitmore had this to say: 

“A common refrain in the ongoing conflict between Russia and the West is that unlike the Cold War, it lacked an ideological component.  I would submit, however, that this is changing, and changing rather fast.  While Putin’s Russia doesn’t have a fully-baked teleological ideology like the Soviet Union had in Marxism-Leninism, I would argue that the contours of an incipient and emerging ideology are beginning to come into focus.  At the heart of this ideology is the notion that Russia has a specific historical mission as the last bastion of traditional Christian values that have been abandoned by the West, that a strong paternalistic state and assertive foreign policy is necessary to defend these values at home and abroad.  Moreover, the Russia in this historical mission is not limited to the borders of the Russian Federation, but includes what the Kremlin calls “the Russian World”, or Russkiy Mir.  In many ways this harkens back to the ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality’ of Tsar Nicholas I.  It also draws on the thinking of White Russian émigré philosophers of the early 20^th Century like Ivan Ilyin.  And in an era where anti-establishment populism is on the rise in the West, the ‘new Putinism’ provides the Kremlin with a useful wedge issue to advance its interests.” 

Who is Ivan Ilyin?

In December 2013, Vladimir Putin gave “his” regional governors some homework for Christmas.  Note that I say “his” governors and not “Russian” governors.  Years ago, Russian governors could be elected by the people they served.  It’s an arrangement that worked like our own federation.  But now, there is only the appearance of a true federation because Putin appoints regional governors.  He can fire them anytime.  He took away that avenue of political pluralism from the Russian people.  But I digress…  Putin’s homework for all governors and senior politicians in the service of the state were three books for Christmas 2013 reading: Vladimir Solovyov’s The Justification of the Good, Nikolai Berdyaev’s The Philosophy of Inequality, and Ivan Ilyin’s Nashi Zadachi (Our Tasks).  Of the three, Ilyin was the only thinker whom Putin quoted in his speeches as president: in his presidential addresses of 2005 and 2006 and in his speech to the State Council the year after. In 2009, Putin went to the Sretensky Monastery to lay flowers on Ilyin’s grave.  Putin has an affinity for Ilyin.  Putin supervised the repatriation and reburial of Ilyin’s remains from Switzerland in 2005.  He also purchased Ilyin’s archive from Michigan State University and brought it back to Moscow.  Since Vladimir Putin went out of his way to bring Ilyin’s work and his mortal remains back to Russia, and since he wants people who work for him to get to know Ilyin’s works, I think it appropriate to dig into this early 20^th Century Russian émigré thinker. 

Information about Ilyin is scattered and somewhat hard to come by, but luckily I found a good source – Walter Laqueur.  Laqueur has long been a “go to” source for me, and he ranks with Robert Conquest and Adam Ulam for his Russian/Soviet scholarship.  His most recent work is Putinism: Russia and Its Future with the West [2015].  In his discussion of all things Putin, he devoted a chapter to the “rediscovery of Ivan Ilyin.”  Ilyin was well-known among Russian émigrés in the 1920s and 1930s, faded into obscurity, and only recently has been rediscovered.  He was born in Moscow in 1883 in an upper-class family.  He studied law in Russia and Germany and wrote on Hegel, Fichte, the philosophy of law, and religious questions.  In 1922, Lenin expelled him and he settled in Germany.  He settled in Berlin and worked at the Russian Scientific Institute, primarily as a political lecturer and writer.  He devoted his time to the fight against the Bolsheviks.   He edited Mankind on the Brink of the Abyss, a collection of essays devoted to the misdeeds of the Bolsheviks.  But because Ilyin refused to write anti-Semitic propaganda for Josef Goebbels [of which the Russian Scientific Institute was a part], Ilyin was fired from his job and had to relocate again.  With the help of Sergei Rachmaninov, he moved to Switzerland, where he lived until his death in 1954.  From 1954 until the mid-2000s, Ilyin’s writings languished in obscurity until discovered by Vladimir Putin.  After Putin repatriated his remains and brought Ilyin’s archives to Moscow, almost thirty of his books have been republished in Russia. 

 

Of the three philosopher-thinker whose readings were “assigned” by Putin to the regional governors, Laqueur describes Ilyin as the “most troubling.”  The regime in search of an ideology finally found a prophet in Ivan Ilyin.  He was a monarchist, but not along the lines of a constitutional monarchy one would find in the United Kingdom, Sweden, or the Netherlands.  Ilyin’s ideal monarch was more of an authoritarian dictatorship.  Putin isn’t a monarch, but he is an authoritarian who openly embraces the Russian Orthodox Church, and for many that’s enough.  Ilyin was opposed to liberal democracy.  Ilyin was very religious.  Ilyin wrote quite a bit, but it is hard to find [as one who doesn’t read or speak Russian, it was for me, anyway].  I can find more information written about Ilyin than stuff written by him.  Of the writings I could find, here’s a summary: 

On Fascism – Fascism’s rise was a necessary reaction to Bolshevism, and was necessary and unavoidable.  It was correct because it derived from a sense of patriotism.  But the Nazis went wrong because they were pagans that were hostile to Christianity, religion, churches.  Ilyin didn’t buy into the whole “Fürher [leader] principle”, which he dubbed “Caesarism”.  His definition of “Caesarism”: “godless, irresponsible, and despotic; it holds in contempt freedom, law, legitimacy, justice and the individual rights of men. It is demagogic, terroristic and haughty; it lusts for flattery, “glory” and worship, and it sees in the people a mob and stokes its passions. Caesarism is amoral, militaristic and callous. It compromises the principle of authority and autocracy, for its rule does not prosecute state or national interests, but personal ends.” My thought is that Ilyin loves an authoritarian monarch, as long as that authoritarian is religious.  Otherwise his opposition to “Caesarism” and his love of authoritarian monarchs are incompatible.  He thought the Nazis were too totalitarian, their one-party control was a mistake and they erred when the Nazi state took over complete control of the economy.  Fascists could be authoritarian, and that was enough to combat Communism/Bolshevism and could give religion, the press, academia, art, non-Communist parties the ability to operate without being judged by a fascist regime.  He thought the demagoguery and despotism of the Nazis was wrong because they took God out of the equation.  He thought Franco and Salazar [both authoritarians but also über-Catholic] had the right idea.  Even though their authoritarian regimes were fascists, they didn’t label themselves as such.  In Ilyin’s world, it’s ok to be authoritarian as long as you’re religious.  Putin’s regime is authoritarian, and it at least pays lip service to protecting traditional Christian values. 

On Democracy – Ilyin apparently wasn’t a big fan of democracy.  He saw the “great unwashed” as easily seduced by “revolutionaries and traitors”.  Given the tenor of his remarks on the subject, one can only conclude that Ilyin thinks the huddled masses are too stupid to vote and can’t be trusted to exercise the right to vote responsibly.  For Ilyin, voting leads to rebellion.  To wit:  “Every citizen is secured the right to crooked and deceptive political paths, to disloyal and treasonous designs, to the sale of his vote, to base motives for voting, to underground plots, unseen treachery and secret dual citizenship to all those crudities which are so profitable to men and so often tempt them.  The citizen is given the unlimited right to temptation and the corruption of others, as well as the subtle transactions of self-prostitution. He is guaranteed the freedom of disingenuous, lying, and underhanded speech, and the ambiguous, calculated omission of truth; he is granted the liberty to believe liars and scoundrels or at least pretend to believe them (in self-interest simulating one political mood or its complete opposite). And for the free expression of all these spiritual seductions he is handed the ballot.”   He cited Rousseau’s teaching that man is inherently good and rational, but then he concluded the good and rational are easily tempted to do the wrong thing by voting.  So the “managed democracy” [which is a euphemism for “rigged elections”] of Putin’s Russia is part and parcel of the “strong paternal state”. 
 

On Orthodoxy – Ilyin posited the foundation of the Russian nation was the Orthodox Christian faith.  He argued that nations without faith “decayed and died.”  Orthodoxy gave Russians many things – “sympathy for the poor, the weak, the sick, the oppressed, and even the criminal…a living and profound sense of conscience; a dream of righteousness and holiness; an accurate perception of sin; the gift of a repentance that renews; the idea of ascetic catharsis; and an acute sense of “truth” and “lies,” good and evil…that spirit of sacrifice, service, patience, and loyalty, without which Russia would never have withstood its enemies and built an earthly home.”  It was Orthodoxy that gave Russians their sense of “citizen’s responsibility”, and with that responsibility a subservience to a monarch, and not just any monarch but one who would serve God.  Ilyin attributed many gifts of the “Christian sense of justice” – “a will to peace, brotherhood, justice, loyalty, and solidarity; a sense of dignity and rank; a capability for self-control and mutual respect.”  His argument boils down to this – Russians are better than everyone else because of their religion [Russian Orthodoxy], which is better than either Catholicism or Protestantism.  This speaks to Whitmore’s argument that part of the emerging ideology is that Russia has the “special mission” to uphold traditional Christian values. 

On Forms of Sovereignty – Ilyin argued that a diversity of peoples throughout the world merits a diversity in sovereignty.  He didn’t like a “one size fits all” approach to governance.  In his world, democracy doesn’t work everywhere [“There are no identical peoples, and there should not be identical forms of sovereignty and constitutions. Blind borrowing and imitation is absurd, dangerous, and can become ruinous”].  Ilyin argued that for those states that are used to being ruled by a monarchy for centuries, it’s irresponsible to force a republican form of government upon them.  And so the deposition of the Tsar in 1917 in favor of some kind of democracy was a mistake.  The Bolshevik Revolution compounded that mistake.  A democratic, federated republic is not a good fit for Russia.  Political elections are ruinous, and Ilyin asserted the only way for Russia is a “national, patriotic, hardly totalitarian, but authoritarian dictatorship.”  Again, this gets back to the “managed democracy” of Putin’s Russia. 

There is no single “playbook” for Putin’s emerging ideology like Marx’s Communist Manifesto was for Communism, but Ilyin’s writings are a good place to start when trying to understand why Putin and his ilk do what they do.

This Day in History (1933) – The Reichstag Fire

The usual caveat applies - I don't endorse Hitler.

The day after Adolf Hitler took power, Josef Goebbles wrote the following in his diary:

“During discussions with the Führer we drew up the plans of battle against the red terror. For the time being, we decided against any direct countermeasures. The Bolshevik rebellion must first of all flare up; only then shall we hit back.”

Five days after Hitler took power [4 Feb 1933], his cabinet issued a decree [ratified by President Hindenburg] named Decree for the Protection of the German People.  This decree placed constraints on the press and authorized the police to ban political meetings and marches, effectively hindering electoral campaigning.  Hermann Göring, who had become acting Interior Minister and thus head of the police in Prussia, recruited 50,000 SA and SS members into the police. The ensuing campaign of violence and terror was waged against Communists and other Nazi opponents [the Social Democrats were a close second to the Communists in taking Nazi abuse].  The SA’s job was to fight in the streets, break heads/legs/any other body parts, to break up meetings of opposing political parties, and to cause general mayhem.   On February 24th, the Gestapo raided Communist headquarters. Hermann Göring claimed that he had found "barrels of incriminating material concerning plans for a world revolution".  However, the alleged subversive documents were never published. 

Then, on February 27^th, the Reichstag burned.  Conveniently, this was only a week before the March 5^th election.  A young Communist named Marinus van der Lubbe [who was a Communist until 1929] was apprehended at the scene.   Van der Lubbe made a full confession, but there were [and still are] many skeptics.  The UK’s Daily Express, Seftan Delmer opined the next day that the Nazis set the fire.  Fifteen months after the fire, an SA Gruppenführer named Karl Ernst confessed he and a group of fellow SA members set the blaze [William L. Shirer wrote as much in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich].  Regardless of who set the blaze, Hitler had his pretext for dealing with the Communists in his own way.  He initially wanted to shoot all the Communists.  The following day, the government issued its Reichstag Fire Decree.  Thousands of Communists were rounded up and thrown into jail.  Those who couldn’t be found went into hiding.

Marinus van der Lubbe

Karl Ernst

Here’s the Reichstag Fire Decree in its entirety.  For what the Nazis wanted to do, they didn’t need a lot of words – they just came right out and said it.  Gone were the days one could do anything he wanted, associate with anyone he wanted.  The German state could tap your phones and read your mail.  The state could search your house.  The state could seize any or all of your property.  They could do all of this without the niceties of getting a warrant.  The police state was born here.  The Weimar Republic's days were numbered.

Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State of 28. February 1933

On the basis of Article 48, Section 2, of the German Constitution, the following is decreed as a defensive measure against Communist acts of violence that endanger the state:

§ 1

Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Thus, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the right of assembly and the right of association, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications, and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property are permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

§ 2

If any state fails to take the necessary measures to restore public safety and order, the Reich government may temporarily take over the powers of the highest state authority.

§ 3

State and local authorities must obey the orders decreed by the Reich government on the basis of § 2.

§ 4

Whoever provokes, appeals for, or incites the disobedience of the orders given out by the supreme state authorities or the authorities subject to them for the execution of this decree, or the orders given by the Reich government according to § 2, can be punished – insofar as the deed is not covered by other decrees with more severe punishments – with imprisonment of not less than one month, or with a fine from 150 to 15,000 Reichsmarks.

Whoever endangers human life by violating § 1 is to be punished by sentence to a penitentiary, under mitigating circumstances with imprisonment of not less than six months and, when the violation causes the death of a person, with death, under mitigating circumstances with a penitentiary sentence of not less than two years. In addition, the sentence may include the confiscation of property.

Whoever provokes or incites an act contrary to the public welfare is to be punished with a penitentiary sentence, under mitigating circumstances, with imprisonment of not less than three months.

§ 5

The crimes which under the Criminal Code are punishable with life in a penitentiary are to be punished with death: i.e., in Sections 81 (high treason), 229 (poisoning), 306 (arson), 311 (explosion), 312 (flooding), 315, paragraph 2 (damage to railways), 324 (general public endangerment through poison).

Insofar as a more severe punishment has not been previously provided for, the following are punishable with death or with life imprisonment or with imprisonment not to exceed 15 years:

1. Anyone who undertakes to kill the Reich President or a member or a commissioner of the Reich government or of a state government, or provokes such a killing, or agrees to commit it, or accepts such an offer, or conspires with another for such a murder;

2. Anyone who under Section 115, paragraph 2, of the Criminal Code (serious rioting) or of Section 125, paragraph 2, of the Criminal Code (serious disturbance of the peace) commits these acts with arms or cooperates consciously and intentionally with an armed person;

3. Anyone who commits a kidnapping under Section 239 of the Criminal Code with the intention of making use of the kidnapped person as a hostage in the political struggle.

§ 6

This decree enters into force on the day of its promulgation.

Berlin, 28. February 1933

The Reich President von Hindenburg

The Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler

The Reich Minister of the Interior Frick

The Reich Minister of Justice Dr. Gürtner

The following are the articles of the Weimar Constitution that were affected by the Reichstag Fire Decree:

Article 114 The rights of the individual are inviolable. Limitation or deprivation of individual liberty is admissible only if based on laws. Persons deprived of their liberty have to be notified, at the next day on the latest, by which authority and based on which reasons the deprivation of their liberty has been ordered; immediately they have to be given the opportunity to protest against the deprivation of liberty.

Article 115 Every German's home is an asylum and inviolable. Exceptions are admissible only if based on a law.

Article 117 Privacy of correspondence, of mail, telegraphs and telephone are inviolable. Exceptions are admissible only if based on a Reich law. Article 118 Every German is entitled, within the bounds set by general law, to express his opinion freely in word, writing, print, image or otherwise. No job contract may obstruct him in the exercise of this right; nobody may put him at a disadvantage if he makes use of this right. There is no censorship; in case of the cinema, other regulations may be established by law. Also in order to combat trashy and obscene literature, as well as for the protection of the youth in public exhibitions and performances legal measures are permissible.

Article 123 All Germans have the right to assemble peacefully and unarmed; such assemblies do not require any prior notification or special permit. A Reich law can require prior notification for assemblies taking place in the open, and it can, in case of imminent danger for public security, stipulate that such assemblies in the open may be prohibited. Article 124 All Germans are entitled, for means which do not conflict with penal laws, to form clubs or societies. This right may not be limited by preventive measures. These regulations also apply for religious societies. Every club is free to acquire legal capacity. No club may be denied of it because of it pursuing political, socio-political or religious goals.

Article 153 Property is guaranteed by the constitution. Laws determine its content and limitation. Expropriation may only be decreed based on valid laws and for the purpose of public welfare. It has to be executed with appropriate compensation, unless specified otherwise by Reich law. Regarding the amount of the compensation, the course of law at general courts has to be kept open in case of a controversy, unless Reich laws specify otherwise. Expropriations by the Reich at the expense of the states, communities or charitable organizations may only be executed if accompanied by appropriate compensation. Property obliges. Its use shall simultaneously be service for the common best. Coming March 23rd:  The Enabling Act

This Day in History [1933] - Hitler's First Public Speech as Chancellor

Disclaimer: this is not an endorsement of Adolf Hitler or the Nazis.  

When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933 he convinced President von Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and call new elections, scheduled to be held on March 5^th.  Eleven days later [February 10^th] he made his first public speech at the Berlin Sportpalast.  It was a campaign speech but this one was different.  For once, the Nazis had all the resources of the government at their disposal.  This speech was filmed, and it was broadcast nationwide over German radio.  In practically every documentary I’ve seen about Hitler and Nazi Germany [and there have been many], there are excerpts from this speech.  It shows how Hitler could build tension in a room.  He begins quietly, as if making his audience shut up and pay attention.  Then as the speech continues, he becomes more animated – his audience is spellbound.  And when he finishes the entire arena erupts in ecstasy.  Hitler’s speeches during this campaign are pretty much the same – they all hit on the same themes.  They never provide any details about how Hitler is going to fix Germany.  They are clarion calls to make Germany great again.    

A good chunk of the speech was an indictment of what he called the ‘November parties’, the who ruled Germany in a variety of coalitions since the founding of the Weimar Republic: German Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Catholic Centre Party (Zentrum), and the liberal German Democratic Party (DDP).  In Hitler’s view, the November parties were responsible for all the misery the German people had suffered since the end of World War I in November 1918.  And by addressing all the November parties as Marxists, he lumps them together with the Communists, of whom many were afraid.  

“I have therefore rejected it ever come before this people, and make cheap promises. It can stand no one here against me and bear witness that I have ever said, the resurgence of Germany is only a matter of a few days. Again and again I preach, the resurgence of the German nation is the question of the recovery of the inner strength and health of the German people. So, as I even 14 years now worked, constantly and without becoming ever wavering in the development of the movement, and so how I managed seven man to these to come from 12 million, so I want and so we want to build and work on recovery of our German people.”  My interpretation: Hitler claims to have built the Nazi party from nothing into a huge national movement.  He can do the same for the German nation if given the chance.  And by the way, making Germany great again will take time; it won’t happen overnight.  

“I want to promise you that this resurrection of our people comes by itself. We want to work, but the people themselves, it must help. It should never believe that sudden freedom, happiness and life from heaven is given.”  My interpretation: if you want a better life, you’ll have to work for it.  

“We want guide all of our work from a knowledge, a belief: faith never on anybody's help, never to help, which is located outside of our own nation, of our own people! The future of the German people themselves alone lies in us.”   This alludes to the Dawes and Young plans, which were meant to help Germany pay the war reparations as part of the Treaty of Versailles.  Hitler opposed both plans because the German economy cratered after October 1929, when American banks called in their loans after the stock market crash.  Hitler blamed the subsequent massive unemployment on the November parties, for they were the ones that agreed to the plans with the American banks.  

“The fourth item on our program dictates that we rebuild our Volk not according to theories hatched by some alien brain, but according to the eternal laws valid for all time. Not according to theories of class, not according to concepts of class.”  My interpretation:  the Communists don’t have the answer for Germany’s problems.  It took fourteen years for the Marxists to bring Germany to ruin.  They’ve had their chance to make things good and right and they blew it – why trust them again?  

“Never I will remove me from the task to eradicate Marxism and its side-effects from Germany. Never I will be here inclined to compromise. One must be winners here: either Marxism or the German people.”  No need for interpretation here – it’s “us” or the Marxists.  

“By I fight for the German future, I fight for the German place and must fight for the German farmers. He gives us the people in our towns and cities. He has been the eternal source for millennia, and it must be preserved. And I'm going to the second pillar of our nationhood, then further on to the German workers to that German workers that no stranger should be more, and may be in Germany in the future, and we want to return again in the community of our people, for, we will be blast the gates, that he moves with in the German community as a carrier of the German nation.”  Farmers and workers of Germany, the Nazis are your friends.  

"We combat the phenomena of our parliamentary democratic systems, so we go over immediately to a twelfth point: restore cleanliness in our people, cleanliness in all areas of our lives, cleanliness in our management, cleanliness in public life, but also cleanliness in our culture. We want to recover mainly the German honor, restore respect for it and the commitment to her and want to burn in our hearts the commitment to freedom, want to titillate but again our people so that a real German culture, with a German art, with its German architecture, a German music, which should reflect the soul. And we want to awaken the awe of the great tradition of our people, bring the deep reverence for the achievements of the past, the humble reminder of the great men of German history."  Hindsight is 20/20 - here he wants to rid German culture of non-German elements [Jewish elements, perhaps?].  

“We want to introduce our youth again in this wonderful realm of our past, the work and creativity of our ancestors; humbly she should bow before those who lived before us and have created, worked, and worked, that we can live on. And we want to educate these young people especially to the reverence for those who have made the heaviest sacrifices once for our people life and future of our people.”  Again hindsight being 20/20, he’s telegraphing the creation of the Hitler Youth here.  

After talking for almost an hour, he finally makes the sales pitch - “For 14 years, have the parties of decay, of November, the revolution led the German people and abused, destroyed for 14 years, decomposed and resolved. It is not presumptuous when I step today before the nation and implore you: People of Germany, give us four years and then pass judgement upon us! People of Germany, give us four years and I swear to you: just as we, just as I have entered into this office, so will I leave it.”  

  

The Speech  - https://youtu.be/zu9aBznOIC8

Coming February 27^th:  The Reichstag Fire

This Day in History [1933] - Hitler Takes Power

Disclaimer: this is not an endorsement of Adolf Hitler or the Nazis.  

On this day in 1933, German President Paul von Hindenburg asked Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to become Chancellor of Germany and form a government.  Beginning with the failed Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, this was the culmination of a ten-year effort by Hitler and the Nazis to achieve supreme power in Germany.  Hitler had tried to take power by force with the Beer Hall Putsch, but it was unsuccessful.  After the failed coup attempt, Hitler was tried and jailed for treason.  He served eight months of a five-year prison sentence.  During his time of confinement, Hitler decided the only way to achieve power was to do so legally.  He also wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf.  It was only part autobiography, in which he ranted against democrats, Communists, and Jews, on whom he blamed all of society’s ills.  Mein Kampf was also Hitler’s blueprint for what was to come.  Here are the “cliff notes” on what led to this day in history.

The Germany that came out of the First World War was not the Germany that entered it.  Germany was an empire, ruled by the Hohenzollern monarchs, the last of whom was Kaiser Wilhelm II.  After over four years of war, Germany’s military leaders [Field Marshal von Hindenburg and General Ludendorff] concluded the war could not end with a German military victory.  The German population, exhausted by four years of war and the British blockade, lost faith in the Kaiser.  Prince Max of Baden took charge of a new government as Chancellor and negotiated for a peace based on Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points.  His government included representatives of the largest party in the Reichstag, the Social Democratic Party of Germany [leader:  Friedrich Ebert].  Germany’s High Seas Fleet had been in port since the Battle of Jutland in 1916.  Admiral Reinhard Scheer decided there would be one last “glory ride” against the British Royal Navy to restore the “valor” of the German Navy.  German sailors in Kiel, who viewed this as a suicide mission, would have none of this and mutinied.  The sailors formed a soldiers' and a workers' council on the Bolshevik Soviet model.  Soldiers and workers around Germany sympathized with the Kiel sailors and formed councils of their own. 

This revolution spread throughout Germany.  While Kaiser Wilhelm was at his army headquarters in Spa, Belgium, he learned that revolution spread to Berlin.  On November 9^th, SPD deputy chairman Philipp Scheidemann declared that the Kaiser had abdicated and that Germany was a republic.  This was news to the Kaiser, who had hoped to lead the army back to Germany to put down the revolution.  General Wilhelm Groener [who replaced Ludendorff in late October 1918] told Wilhelm he lost the confidence of the army and the army would not follow him.  Wilhelm went into exile in the Netherlands to live out his remaining years.  The same day as Wilhelm’s “abdication” Prince Max handed over his office to Friedrich Ebert.  Ebert and Groener soon made an agreement.  In return for the army’s pledged loyalty to the new civilian government, Ebert promised to call a constituent assembly, take prompt action against leftist [especially Communist] uprisings, and allow professional officers to maintain military command.   The army and the paramilitary Freikorps indeed put down leftist uprisings, the biggest of which was the Spartacist Uprising in January 1919.

Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, Germany was to pay the Allies reparations [£6,600,000,000].  Part of the reparations to the Allies [mostly France] was to come in the form of raw materials [coal, timber].  So onerous were the payments in raw industrial materials that German factories were unable to function, and by January 1923 Germany defaulted on its reparation payments.  After the German default, France occupied Germany’s Ruhr region to extract the reparations themselves.  As this happened, the German economy went further into a tailspin.   Before the occupation, hyperinflation was so bad one had to pay billions of Reichsmarks to pay for a loaf of bread.  The US stepped in with the Dawes Plan to loan Germany money to pay their reparations debts.  This helped stabilize the German economy, but unemployment was still at 15 percent.  When the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began, the US banks called in their loans.  Once they did the German economy sank into the abyss.  Millions more were put out of work.  Unemployment rose to 30 percent.  The government didn’t have any answers to the problems that beset Germany.

Germans lost confidence in the economy and in their political institutions.  The Weimar Republic was the first attempt to establish constitutional liberal democratic government in Germany.  Democracy was new to Germany, and many Germans didn’t like it.  They preferred the old, imperial order.  The Weimar Republic represented a compromise: German conservatives and industrialists had transferred power to the Social Democrats to avert a possible Bolshevik-style takeover.  The January 1919 National Assembly elections produced the Weimar coalition, which included the SPD, the German Democratic Party (DDP), and the Center Party. The anti-republican, conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) and the German People's Party (DVP) combined received 10.3 percent of the vote. The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, which had split from the SPD during the war, won 8 percent of the vote. But the lifespan of the Weimar coalition was brief, and the Weimar political system, which was achieving gains for both extreme left and extreme right, soon became radicalized.²  Such was the fragmentation of Weimar politics that during its 14-year lifespan, there were 20 different governments.  The Social Democrats came to be identified with the onerous Versailles Treaty and the economic struggles of Germany.  The National Socialist German Workers Party [the Nazis] and the Communists grew their support at the expense of the above-named parties.

Nazism became a true mass movement only after the beginning of the Great Depression.  But even then, the Nazis never gained a majority of the people's vote. Nazism generally appealed to only a third of the German people, and these came from its lower classes, armed forces and war industries.  The Great Depression gave Hitler a chance to blame the status quo, and he expertly exploited the people's misery to increase his political power. In elections held in September 1930, the Nazis won 18 percent of the vote, increasing their seats in the Reichstag to 107 [up from the 12 seats they achieved in 1928], second only to the Social Democrats [143].  By July 1932, the Nazis held 230 seats in the Reichstag.  They were the largest party in Germany, but yet they did not govern.  Between the Nazis and the Communists, they had a “negative majority” in the Reichstag.  They wouldn’t serve in a government together, nor would they become coalition partners with other parties in the Reichstag.  Chancellor Heinrich Brüning [German Center Party] tried to stem the effects of the Great Depression by tightening credit and rolling back wage increases.  These moves were unpopular.  Brüning lost the confidence of the Reichstag, but was able to govern via Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which allowed Hindenburg to rule by decree. 

Hindenburg fired Brüning and replaced with Franz von Papen [at General Kurt von Schleicher’s urging].  Von Papen had almost no support in the Reichstag.  Like Brüning before him, he relied on Article 48 presidential decrees to govern.  He lasted six months, after which the Nazis forced a no-confidence vote in the Reichstag and hence another election.  The Nazis lost 34 seats in November 1932, and von Papen replaced by von Schleicher himself.  Von Schleicher tried to split the Nazi party by aligning himself with Gregor Strasser, a left-wing opponent of Hitler’s within the party.  But unbeknownst to von Schleicher, Hitler had almost total confidence from other Nazi party leaders.  Von Schleicher tried to make common cause with Social Democratic labor unions and the Christian labor unions, but they wanted nothing to do with him.  Given this lack of support, von Schleicher tried to get Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag.  Instead, Hindenburg fired him.  Von Papen had taken note of the Nazis’ declining support between July-November 1932.  Von Papen, other politicians, and several other industrialists and businessmen convinced Hindenburg that since the Nazis’ electoral support was in decline, they could “control” Hitler.  On January 30, 1933 Hitler got the call to form a government.  Hitler’s first cabinet consisted of only three Nazis [himself, Herman Göring, and Wilhelm Frick].  Upon his appointment as Chancellor, Hitler convinced Hindenburg to hold new Reichstag elections in March 1933 to break the political stalemate.

To be continued…

Hitler’s First Cabinet

Office	Incumbent	Political Party
Chancellor	Adolf Hitler	Nazi
Vice Chancellor	Franz von Papen	None
Minister of Foreign Affairs	Konstantin von Neurath	None
Minister of the Interior	Wilhelm Frick	Nazi
Minister of Finance	Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk	None
Minister of Defense	Werner von Blomberg	None – career military
Minister without Portfolio	Hermann Göring	Nazi
Minister of Justice	Franz Gűnter	German National People’s Party
Minister of Economics	Alfred Hugenberg	German National People’s Party
Minister of Food and Agriculture	Alfred Hugenberg	German National People’s Party
Minister of Labor	Franz Seltde	German National People’s Party
Minister of Postal Affairs	Paul Freiherr von Eltz-Rübenach	None
Minister of Transport	Paul Freiherr von Eltz-Rübenach	None

¹Weimar Germany and the Rise of the Nazis, Excerpted from East Germany: A Country Study, Stephen R. Burant, ed. (Washington, D. C.: Federal Research Division of the Library of

Congress, 1987), pg. 5.

²Ibid., pg. 3-4.