The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

by Adam Tooze

The DNVP, the other party on the extreme right, saw its share of seats cut from 103 to 73. These losses and the ensuing leadership crisis in the nationalist movement, leading to the election of the ultra-nationalist Alfred Hugenberg as head of the DNVP, were the headline news of the summer and autumn of 1928. By contrast, the Social Democrats, the founding party of the Weimar Republic, scored a major victory. Their representation in the Reichstag rose from 131 to 153 seats. Together with Stresemann’s DVP, the DDP and the Centre party they had a workable majority with Hermann Mueller as Chancellor. Gustav Stresemann continued for a fifth year as Foreign Minister. In 1928, therefore, despite the presence of elements such as Hitler and his party, the Weimar Republic had a functioning parliamentary system and a government committed to pursuing the revision of the Versailles Treaty under the good auspices of the United States. The potential for disaster was clearly there. But even the most pessimistic observers would have been hard pressed to predict that within ten years Germany would launch Europe back