The Coming of the Third Reich (The Third Reich Trilogy Book 1)

by Richard J. Evans

32 Long before 30 January 1933, the Centre Party had ceased to be the bulwark of Weimar democracy that it had once been.33

Reichstag. In May 1924 the Communists won 62 seats,

the protection of the capitalist economic order and the exploitation of the working class. Capitalism, they hoped, would inevitably collapse and the ‘bourgeois’ republic would be replaced by a Soviet state along Russian lines. It was the duty of the Communist Party to bring this about as soon as possible. In the early years of the Republic this meant preparing for an ‘October

influence of Stalin, tightened its financial

prepare the way for Nazism.

drafted

parts

Under Hugenberg, the Nationalists also moved away from internal

creating further resentment. Already in 1924, however, the chances of the swelling numbers of graduates finding a place in

from 1930 they were almost non-existent.146

all, and prison sentences averaging a mere

and was invalided out in 1916, working in the army censorship office up to the end of the war. Like other middle-class Germans,

around

the police as Adam Glauer. The Society

almost theoretical

sympathized with his nationalist ideas. Gürtner agreed to lift the ban on the Nazi Party and its newspaper, the Racial Observer, when the Bavarian

followers to join it and (a key new point) to submit themselves unconditionally

moved to push his most serious rivals out onto the margins of politics. First, as it became legal to reconstitute the brownshirt organization, he insisted that

the river, as arranged, and when the putsch backfired he took his unit back to Landshut again, where he was duly arrested.86 But in the end his rather peripheral participation in the putsch did not seem to the authorities to warrant particularly harsh treatment. Strasser therefore remained at large while the other Nazi leaders either fled or were landed in gaol. In April 1924 he was elected to the Bavarian Parliament. He proved to be a talented administrator, bringing together many of the fragments of the shattered ultra-right. Once the Nazi Party was legal again, Hitler, recognizing his ability, sent him to revive it in north Germany. By the end of 1915, Strasser’s tireless recruitment drive had increased the number of branches nearly fourfold, using a pronounced emphasis on the ‘socialist’ aspects of Nazi ideology to try and win over the industrial working class in areas like the Ruhr. Strasser was contemptuous of the other ultra-right groups which thought ‘the primitive solution of antisemitism to be adequate’. He told Oswald Spengler in July 1925 that Nazism was different because it sought ‘a German revolution’ through a German form of socialism.87 His idea of socialism, however, while it involved the state taking a 51 per cent stake in major industries and 49 per cent in all other businesses, also included the return of the guilds and the payment of

and so had not fallen under the spell of his growing personal charisma. They

appeal to the

and only managed single-figure

out onto the street, where he was picked up by another gang

movement leaders’ desire to avoid violence in

about the Nazis or the government. On 26 June

existing punitive

put onto the