The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

by William L. Shirer

But to have done so they would have had to suppress permanently, or at least curb permanently, the forces which had propped up the Hohenzollern Empire and which would not loyally accept a democratic Germany: the feudal Junker landlords and other upper castes, the magnates who ruled over the great industrial cartels, the roving condottieri of the free corps, the ranking officials of the imperial civil service and, above all, the military caste and the members of the General Staff. They would have had to break up many of the great estates, which were wasteful and uneconomic, and the industrial monopolies and cartels, and clean out the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the police, the universities and the Army of all who would not loyally and honestly serve the new democratic regime.