Category Archives: democracy

by | 24 May 2024 · 4:46 pm

Sicily Under Bentinck, 1811

From Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History, by John Julius Norwich (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. 244-247:

At this point it becomes hard to believe that Maria Carolina was still completely sane. Both the Duke of Orléans and Maria Amalia pleaded with her to be more moderate and not to condemn as Jacobins all those who dared disagree with her, but as always she refused to listen. In July 1811 five of the leading barons, including their principal spokesman the Prince of Belmonte, were arrested and deported to various small islands “for preparing to disturb the public peace.” Louis-Philippe was summoned to the palace but, fearing to suffer a similar fate, refused to go. His horse stood ready saddled in case he had to take refuge in the country, though this fortunately proved unnecessary.

But now at last the Queen met her match. Lord William Bentinck had arrived in Palermo four days after the arrest of the barons, as both ambassador to the Sicilian court and commander in chief of the British forces on the island. The son of that third Duke of Portland who was twice Prime Minister, he had been Governor of Madras at twenty-nine and had then returned to Europe to fight in the Peninsular War, having been promoted to the rank of lieutenant general at thirty-four after the Battle of Corunna. He was now thirty-six. He had been thoroughly briefed by Amherst and others, and—determined not to take any nonsense from Maria Carolina—he began as he meant to continue. But even he seems to have been surprised by the strength of her opposition to everything he proposed. Within a month of his arrival he had returned to London to obtain yet wider powers.

On September 16, while he was still away, the Queen suffered an apoplectic stroke. Any other woman of her age would have sought peace and quiet for a gentle convalescence; she, as soon as she was able, was back at her desk, plunged once more into the fray. She was desperately weak, befuddled by opium and no longer able to face Bentinck—who returned on December 7—with quite the energy that she had formerly shown; but her determination was undiminished, and he decided to waste no more time. He now spelled out his demands, making it clear that the annual subsidy being paid by the British would be suspended until all of them were satisfied. First and most important was the supreme command of Neapolitan-Sicilian forces, which he himself proposed to assume; among the rest were the return of Belmonte and his colleagues from exile and the formation of a new ministry under the Prince of Cassaro. Neither the King nor the Queen were to be involved in the administration. Should there be any objections, Bentinck declared that he would not hesitate to ship off both of them—and if necessary the Hereditary Prince as well—to Malta, putting the Prince’s two-year-old son on the throne under the Regency of the Duke of Orléans. Fortunately, this last threat had its effect; but Bentinck had already sent orders to the British detachments in Messina, Milazzo and Trapani to march on Palermo when, on January 16, 1812, the King formally transferred his authority to his son.

The new ruler was far from ideal. He was neat, methodical and bureaucratic, a conscientious husband and father, and would doubtless have made a moderately competent manager of a local bank; but of political understanding, let alone of courage or charisma, he possessed not a shred. His instinctive caution, timidity and “littleness of mind” frequently drove Bentinck to distraction; but—at least for the moment—he served his purpose.

ONE OF THE FIRST actions of the Prince Vicar—as the Hereditary Prince was now called, since he was standing in for his father—was to recall the exiled barons, three of whom were immediately appointed to serve in the new government, the Prince of Belmonte as Minister of Foreign Affairs. The most important task before them, as Bentinck emphasized, was to draft the new constitution, based on the British model and abolishing the feudalism that had for so long been the bane of Sicilian life. The next was to get rid of the Queen. Her health was now rapidly deteriorating, but she was intriguing with all her old determination against the new ministry. She was also developing persecution mania. “The French government murdered my sister,” she said to the British consul, Robert Fagan, “and I am convinced that your government intends to do the same to me—probably in England.” Perhaps for this reason, she was fighting like a tiger to remain in Palermo, and her husband and son took her side—not because they did not deplore her behavior as much as anyone but simply because they had always deferred to her and found the habit difficult, if not impossible, to break.

At one moment Bentinck decided to request an audience with Ferdinand, in the hope of persuading him to reason with his wife and to explain to her the harm she was doing; he was simply refused an audience. The only channel of communication open to him was through the royal confessor, Father Caccamo, who was happy to reveal Ferdinand’s true feelings about his wife. His Majesty was, he said, forever writing to her “andate via, andate via!”*2 and had described his marriage of forty-four years as a “martyrdom.” But, as he put it, “he had not the heart or the courage to force his wife out of the island.” His son the Prince Vicar felt much the same way.

Not that the Prince’s relations with his mother were in any way friendly; rather the reverse. She had never forgiven him for accepting the Regency; she had called him a revolutionary and a traitor; and when on the evening of September 26, 1812, he fell suddenly and seriously ill, her first reaction—before worrying about his health—was that he must immediately resign. The symptoms, as Bentinck reported to the British Foreign Minister Lord Castlereagh, were suggestive of poison, and “general suspicion was fixed on the Queen”—a suspicion fully shared by the Prince himself. When Bentinck suggested to his doctor that the illness might be due to the unwonted heat, the patient, trembling with fever, cried out, “Ce n’est pas la chaleur, c’est ma mère, ma mère!” It turned out not to have been deliberate poisoning after all, but the Prince never altogether recovered; his illness left him prematurely aged—bent, gray-faced and shuffling.

Meanwhile, in July 1812, the new constitution had been drafted and duly promulgated. Its fifteen articles granted the people of Sicily an autonomy that they had never before enjoyed. Executive and legislative powers were rigidly separated, and the feudal practices that had been observed for some seven hundred years were finally abolished. All this proved, however, surprisingly good news for the Bourbons, at least in Naples. There was increasing anti-French feeling in the city, where Murat was effectively a dictator, while Ferdinand—hard as it may be to believe—was seen as an enlightened constitutional monarch. In the country, by contrast, the constitution was a good deal less popular; the people seemed simply unable to take it in. Many of the barons too who had actually voted for it were horrified to find their former powers and privileges gone forever.

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by | 22 May 2024 · 6:11 am

Parthenopean Republic of Naples, 1799

From Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History, by John Julius Norwich (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. 210, 215:

When the French troops under General Jean-Etienne Championnet arrived in Naples in mid-January 1799, they found the populace a good deal more spirited than the army. The mob—the lazzaroni—was prepared to attack the invaders tooth and nail, and for three days there was bitter house-to-house fighting. In the end the lazzaroni had of course to give in, but not before they had stormed and gutted the royal palace. They had done so with a clear—or almost clear—conscience. Was their King [Ferdinand I] not known as il re lazzarone, in other words one of themselves? And even if he had abandoned them, would he not have preferred his treasures to go to his own subjects rather than to his French enemies? When at last peace was restored, a French officer remarked that if Bonaparte had been there in person he would probably have left not one stone of the city standing on another; it was fortunate indeed that Championnet was a moderate and humane man. Quietly and diplomatically he established what was known as the Parthenopean Republic, on the French revolutionary model. It was officially proclaimed on January 23, and acquired a number of loyal Italian adherents—though it was perfectly obvious to all that it had been the result of conquest, and that the French army of occupation was its only support.

…

By the end of the month [July 1799] the last of the rebels had surrendered. The French were returned to Toulon; the Neapolitans were put in irons to await their trial. Cardinal Ruffo had received little gratitude for having saved the monarchy—all the credit had somehow been given to Nelson—but in recognition of his past services he was now appointed Lieutenant and Captain-General of the Realm. There were those who believed that after the repudiation of his solemn treaty he should not have accepted the post; but he remained as loyal as ever to his monarch, and had no desire to stand on his honor if he could still prove useful. His appointment meant in practice that he was president of what was known as the Suprema Giunta, the Supreme Committee. Under this were two other committees of judges, one to try the military, the other the civilians. Much has been written about the deliberations of these committees, to demonstrate the cruelty and inhumanity of the Bourbons. In the event, their deliberations seem to have been remarkably merciful. Out of some 8,000 political prisoners, 105 were condemned to death (6 were later reprieved), 222 were condemned to life imprisonment, 322 to shorter terms, 288 to deportation, and 67 to exile, from which many were to return. The rest were set free. And that was the end of the flatulently named Parthenopean Republic. It had sought to inflict, by means of conquest, a form of government that the country and people did not want and which was already largely discredited even in France. Had it survived, it could have retained power only through violence or the threat of violence. The resulting police state would have been far worse than anything created by the Bourbons.

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by | 5 May 2024 · 6:20 am

Who Killed Weimar Democracy?

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 673-678:

Given all the cumulative problems it faced, it is surprising Weimar democracy lasted as long as it did, but we need to remember that it endured longer than Hitler’s Third Reich. The period from 1918 to 1923 was politically and economically turbulent, but democracy survived. Between 1924 and 1929, the economy stabilised, Germany regained international respectability, and democratic rule was never threatened. Even in the period of deep political and economic crisis between 1930 and 1933, during the time of authoritarian ‘presidential rule’, there was no attempt to overthrow the Republic.

The commonly held view is that the ‘Great Depression’ led to the collapse of Weimar democracy, and brought Hitler to power, is not credible. The USA and Britain suffered economic problems often as difficult as those of Germany, but democracy did not collapse in either of those countries. This suggests there was something specific about the nature of the political and economic crisis that was peculiar to Germany at this time.

The two decisive ingredients in the period from 1930 to 1933 were the supreme indifference of President Hindenburg, and his inner circle, to sustain democratic government, and the dramatic rise in electoral support for Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP. It was a toxic mixture of these two factors, operating at a time of deep economic depression, which ensured Germany’s experiment with democracy failed.

Yet the seeds of the Weimar’s democratic tragedy were planted by the type of democratic system established after the November Revolution of 1918, and embedded into the Weimar Constitution of 1919. The November Revolution was a very strange one indeed, which left Germany’s judicial, bureaucratic, and military elite largely intact. Weimar judges punished those on the Left with harsh sentences, while treating radicals on the Right very leniently, and the Reichswehr remained a law unto itself, being more preoccupied with shaking off the military restrictions placed upon it by the Treaty of Versailles than defending democracy.

One of the essential ingredients for the successful transition from an authoritarian to a democratic form of government is the existence of a strong, resilient party of the moderate Right, committed to the ideals of democracy. In Britain, the Conservative Party fulfilled this role, evolving from the late 19th century into a mainstay of the British party system. In Germany, no such party was able to take on that stabilising role. The leading conservative party in Germany was the DNVP. Between 1919 and 1930, its voter support reached a high point of 20.5 per cent and 103 seats in the December 1924 election, but then fell to a low point of 7 per cent at the September 1930 election, when it gained just 41 seats. During the Weimar era, the DNVP was a bitter opponent of Weimar democracy, with a leader in Alfred Hugenberg who moved the party to the extreme Right.

Germany’s military defeat in the Great War also cast a giant shadow over the Weimar Republic. The ‘stab-in-the-back’ myth, which held that Germany was not defeated on the battlefield, but betrayed by Liberals, Jews and Socialists on the home front, remained a powerful one. Some of these negative feelings fed into the general hatred of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The inclusion of Article 231, known as the ‘war-guilt clause’, seemed particularly vindictive. Add in the bill for reparations and you have a perfect recipe for deeply held animosity towards democracy. Any government forced to sign such a treaty would have been unpopular, but the fact this task fell to the SPD-led coalition government was deeply damaging for the stability of democracy. The tag ‘November Criminals’ was hung around the necks of those politicians who had instigated the fall of the Kaiser and were responsible for the establishment of democracy.

There were also two aspects of the Weimar Constitution which undoubtedly contributed to the failure of democracy. The first was the voting system, based on proportional representation, which gave Reichstag seats in exact proportion to the votes cast in elections. In Germany, this system did not work. In July 1932, 27 different political parties contested the election, ranging across the political spectrum, with each representing one class or interest group. These differing parties reflected the bitter divisions in German society and made the task of creating stable coalition governments extremely difficult, and eventually impossible. Some coalitions took weeks to form, but could fall apart in days. The last functioning Weimar coalitions were those led by SPD Chancellor Herman Müller between 1928 and 1930, involving the SPD, Zentrum, the DDP, the DVP, but they finally broke apart over the increasing payments of unemployment benefits.

The Weimar Republic also lacked the one key factor that made democracy stable in the USA and Britain – that is, a two-party system, with one left-wing liberal democratic and one conservative party, alternating in periods of power, with each loyal to the democratic system. If there had been a first-past-the-post electoral constituency system, as operated in Britain, then probably a small number of parties would have ruled, and there would have been a better chance of stable government, although given the deep differences between the Weimar political parties that is by no means certain.

Those who drafted the Weimar Constitution were unwittingly culpable in offering a means of destroying democracy. This was the special powers the Weimar Constitution invested in the role of the President. No one realised when drafting the Constitution how an anti-democratic holder of the post could subvert the power of the President. Article 48 gave the German President extensive subsidiary powers in a ‘state of emergency’ to appoint and dismiss Chancellors and cabinets, to dissolve the Reichstag, call elections and suspend civil rights. The two German presidents of the Weimar years were quite different. Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert was an enthusiastic supporter of Weimar democracy. He used Article 48 on 136 occasions during the period 1918 to 1925, but always with the intention of sustaining the Republic by preventing coup attempts, not with the aim of undermining or threatening its existence. Paul von Hindenburg, elected in 1925, was a great contrast. He was a right-wing figure, who had led Germany’s militaristic armed forces during the Great War of 1914–1918. Up until March 1930, Hindenburg never used Article 48 at all. Henceforth, influenced by a small inner circle of advisers, all militaristic and authoritarian in outlook, he appointed Chancellors of his own choosing, who remained in power using emergency powers granted under Article 48.

It was President Hindenburg, therefore, who mortally damaged the infant democratic structure in Germany more than anyone else. It was not the Constitution or the voting system that was the fundamental problem, but the culpable actions of Hindenburg, who chose to deliberately subvert the power it had invested in him. Hindenburg appointed three Chancellors between 1930 and 1933: Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen, and Kurt von Schleicher, all of whom governed using emergency decrees granted by the President.

The political crisis after 1930 was deliberately manufactured by Hindenburg, who refused to involve Social Democrats in government, who were the strongest supporters of democracy. It must not be forgotten, however, that from 1930 onwards Adolf Hitler was the single most dynamic and popular politician in Germany. He united the voters on the Right of German politics in a way no other politician had been able to do so since the beginning of the Weimar years. The NSDAP managed to be anti-elitist and anti-capitalist while at the same time being patriotic and nationalist. The spectacular voting rise of the NSDAP from 2.63 per cent of voters in national elections in 1928, to 18.3 per cent in 1930, then to a high point of 37.3 in July 1932, was on a scale never seen in a democratic election before.

It was not by elections that Hitler finally came to power, however, but he would not have even been considered as a potential German Chancellor without his huge electoral support. A total of 13.74 million people voted for Hitler of their own free will in July 1932. Solid middle-class groups, usually the cement that holds together democratic governments, decided to support a party openly promising to destroy democracy. This mass electoral support was the decisive factor that propelled Hitler to a position where he could be offered power. Hitler’s party grew because millions of Germans felt democratic government had been a monumental failed experiment. To these voters, Hitler offered the utopian vision of creating an authoritarian ‘national community’ that would sweep away the seeming chaos and instability of democratic government, and provide strong leadership.

Yet Hindenburg needed a great deal of persuading before he finally made Hitler the Chancellor of a ‘national coalition’. It was former Chancellor Franz von Papen who played the most decisive role in convincing Hindenburg that Hitler could be ‘tamed’ by being invited to lead a cabinet of conservatives. By then, the only alternative to Hitler taking on the role was for Hindenburg to grant Schleicher, the current Chancellor, the power to declare a ‘state of emergency’, ban the Communists and National Socialists, suspend the Reichstag indefinitely and rule with the support of the Reichswehr. Behind-the-scenes intrigues and the personal rivalry between Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher were also factors that played a crucial role in bringing Hitler to power. But it was Hindenburg’s decision in March 1930 to create a presidential authoritarian right-wing regime that was the most decisive step that opened a path towards this solution.

The real problem Hindenburg faced was that the three previous Chancellors, Brüning, Papen and Schleicher, had no popular legitimacy, and no parliamentary support. Hindenburg’s presidential rule had taken Germany down a blind alley. The only politician who could add popularity to Hindenburg’s faltering presidential regime was Adolf Hitler. It was the decision to appoint the NSDAP leader as Chancellor which put the final nail in the coffin of Weimar democracy, and opened the path to catastrophe for Germany and the world. Hindenburg had been the gravedigger and the undertaker.

The history of the Weimar Years is therefore a warning sign of how a democracy under poor leadership can drift towards a form of authoritarian rule that ultimately destroys it, under the pressure of economic crisis and unrelenting political instability. This is a question that continues to engage us today.

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by | 1 May 2024 · 2:23 pm

Political Violence in Germany, 1932

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 597-599:

Out on the streets, there was an alarming increase in violence between the National Socialists and the Communists. Yet the idea Germany was nearing civil war after 1929 has been greatly exaggerated. On 12 October, the Liberal-left newspaper Die Welt am Montag (The World on Monday) published statistics, based on official sources and newspaper reports, on those killed and injured during political clashes since the beginning of 1923 to July 1931. These revealed that 457 people had been killed, and 1,154 had been injured in the period. However, just over half of those fatalities (236), and one-third of those injured (462), had occurred in 1923 alone. Between 1924 and 1928, the period of economic stability, there had been 66 fatalities and 266 injured. From 1929 to July 1931, the number of deaths increased to 155, with 426 injured. Violence was certainly on the rise after 1930, but it never reached the levels of the 1919 to 1923 period. A closer look at the post-1929 statistics reveals which side suffered more victims. The Communists and Left radicals suffered 108 deaths since 1929, while in the same period, right-wing organisations, including the National Socialists, suffered 31 dead. There were only eight fatalities among pro-republican groups such as the SPD-led Reichsbanner. There were also 10 police officers killed. Most violent clashes resulting in death involved the National Socialists and Communists.

This picture can be confirmed in greater detail with the help of statistical surveys, and police reports in the German state of Saxony. In 1929, there were 51 recorded Communist–NSDAP clashes, in 1929, this jumped to 172, and then hit 229 in 1931. The most violent clashes happened during indoor meetings. There was, however, a noticeable difference in how the police dealt with these violent confrontations. The police acted against Communist ‘troublemakers’ far more often than against National Socialists. In 1929, the ratio of police interventions was 30 KPD to 11 NSDAP; in 1930, it was 121 KPD to 32 NSDAP, and, in 1931, it was 140 KPD to 63 NSDAP. It was only during 1932 that political violence really escalated, with the Prussian Ministry of the Interior recording 155 deaths; of these 55 belonged to the NSDAP and 54 to the KPD.

The information on weapons seized by police during NSDAP– KPD clashes shows that in 1929 the police confiscated only two guns and eight knives, a figure that rose to 17 guns and 181 other weapons in 1930, but in 1931 this fell to 5 guns and 78 other weapons. This is in stark contrast to the earlier Weimar era, from 1918 to 1923, when firearms featured heavily in clashes between Left and Right. As bad as violence was after 1929, it would be totally misleading to suggest the police could not contain it or that Germany was nearing civil war. In rural areas, there were hardly any violent clashes which resulted in fatalities at all.

The front line of Left–Right violent confrontations after 1929 was primarily in the big cities. Communists felt they ruled the working-class urban streets. Any place that was home to large numbers of industrial workers was prepared to violently resist the advance of the National Socialists on the streets. Communists rarely took action to break up Social Democratic political meetings, except for a few large-scale events, mainly organised by the Reichsbanner. In contrast, Communists adopted a proactive approach whenever the National Socialists held rallies and meetings in the big cities. Most of these violent confrontations occurred during and after indoor meetings. Communists initiated most of them, keen to emphasise National Socialists were not welcome in working-class areas. Well-organised Communist gangs arrived in force at NSDAP meetings, hell bent on violence. The police authorities, however, had a broad spectrum of special powers to break up or ban demonstrations.

As violence escalated, a culture of political martyrdom emerged, with those killed on both sides receiving elaborate funerals attended by thousands of activists.

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by | 30 April 2024 · 5:41 pm

Austrian-German Banking Crisis, 1931

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 575-576:

The bungled fiasco of the German–Austrian Customs Union led directly to the Austrian banking crisis. On 13 May, the Creditanstalt, the largest and most respected Austrian bank, suddenly declared bankruptcy, sending shock-waves through world financial markets. Jittery creditors everywhere withdrew funds. The bank’s initial losses amounted to 828 million Austrian schillings. During May, Austria’s foreign-currency reserves fell by 850 million schillings. Otto Ender, the Austrian Chancellor, was forced to put together a government-backed financial rescue plan by buying up 100 million schillings’ worth of Creditanstalt stock. Support in this rescue package was given by the powerful Rothschild banking family of Austria, and on 16 June the Bank of England provided a sizeable loan to the Austrian government to assist with the plan.

The Austrian banking crisis had a domino effect, with the panic-selling of the stock of German banks soon following. In early June, the Reichsbank announced it had suffered the withdrawal of 1 billion Reichsmarks since the Creditanstalt collapse, with foreign deposits falling by 25 per cent. The German government was now having great difficulty in raising foreign loans to service its huge public-spending deficit, and the Reichsmark was falling on currency markets. On 5 June, Brüning issued the Second Emergency Decree for the Protection of the Economy and Finances, which brought in reductions in welfare benefits, wage cuts for all public-sector employees, plus a ‘crisis’ tax, levied on better-paid white-collar workers, and increases in sales taxes on sugar and imported oil. The one concession to organised labour was a promise of 200 million Reichsmarks for the funding of public works. This new decree was accompanied by a blunt declaration from Brüning that ‘the limit of privations which we can impose on the German people had been reached’, and he further warned that Germany could not make the reparations payments due in 1931 under the Young Plan.

On 7 June, Heinrich Brüning, accompanied by Julius Curtius, the German Foreign Minister, met with Ramsay MacDonald, at Chequers, the British Prime Minister’s picturesque country retreat. The purpose of the visit was for a ‘mutual exchange of views’. Also present was Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England, who expressed dissatisfaction with Brüning’s announcement of his intention to suspend reparations payments. In response, Brüning explained his declaration was really a warning of what would happen if the issue of Germany’s payments for 1931 was not urgently addressed. The friendly meeting only yielded the release of a joint statement, which laid stress on ‘the difficulties of the existing position in Germany and the need for alleviation’.

The US President, Herbert Hoover, was following European economic affairs closely, and he fully appreciated the impact the financial collapse of German banks would have on American creditors. The magnanimous proposal by Hoover of a payments moratorium was initially opposed by the French government, Germany’s principal reparations creditor, but was finally accepted, on 6 July, with the condition that the German government spent the one-year saving on reparations for domestic rather than military purposes. The Hoover Moratorium really marked the beginning of the end of German reparations payments, which were never resumed.

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by | 28 April 2024 · 1:12 pm

Weimar Elections of 1930

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 552-554:

Given the horrors that followed, it now seems impossible to understand why German people of their own free will could vote in such large numbers for a party pledged to destroy democracy. In Dresden, Victor Klemperer, an academic at Dresden University, wrote in his diary: ‘107 National Socialists. What a humiliation! How close are we to civil war!’ In contrast, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency there was no reason for despair over Hitler’s strong showing in the national elections because ‘it was only a symptom, not necessarily of anti-Jewish hatred, but was caused by unemployment and economic misery within the ranks of misguided youth’.

It seems 24 per cent of NSDAP voters were voting in an election for the first time, many of them young people and pensioners, 22 per cent of new NSDAP voters had previously voted for the DNVP, with 18 per cent moving from the middle-class liberal parties, and 14 per cent from the Social Democrats. In sum, the biggest movement of voters to the NSDAP came from the middle-class conservative and liberal parties, and the party received the least swing votes from the KPD and Zentrum. There was also a strong reluctance to vote NSDAP in the big cities with large working-class industrial workers.

The most impressive gains for the NSDAP were in Protestant rural areas, especially those of northern and eastern Germany stretching from Schleswig-Holstein to East Prussia. The party performed very well in large northern states such as Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Hanover, Brunswick and Oldenburg, and achieved comparable results in predominantly Protestant Franconia and Hesse-Nassau. Voting support in these areas came primarily from elements of the lower middle class: small shopkeepers, farmers, self-employed tradespeople such as builders, plumbers, electricians and joiners, but there was also an upswing of support from middle-class white-collar workers, lower civil servants, teachers and university students. It was these who would represent the party’s core voters during its rise to power, but the NSDAP was not simply a ‘middle-class protest party,’ as was once thought. It is now clear Hitler’s party was able to gain support from all sections of society in a way the other political parties could not.

It was not, as is often supposed, primarily economic misery that drove voters to the NSDAP. Hitler’s campaign had focused on the failure of the Weimar political system to solve Germany’s problems, and this issue seems to have struck a far stronger chord with voters than the state of the economy. There was a growing loss of confidence in the Weimar political system, which made the decision to vote for a party that was not tainted by involvement in that system much easier. An editorial in the Frankfurter Zeitung spoke of an ‘election of embitterment’ in which voters expressed deep disaffection with ‘the methods of governing or rather non-governing’ of parliamentary government.

Hitler’s dramatic election breakthrough had a devastating impact abroad. There was a large withdrawal of gold and foreign currency from the Reichsbank, and a sharp fall in German stocks on international markets. Even larger German banks were shaken by the wave of panic selling. Julius Curtius, the Foreign Minister, who was in Geneva while the League of Nations was in session, reported when he heard the results: ‘the mood was one of the greatest alarm’. The world now started taking much greater interest in Adolf Hitler.

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by | 19 April 2024 · 6:02 am

Effects of the Arandora Star Sinking

From The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A Painter, a Poet, an Heiress, and a Spy in a World War II British Internment Camp, by Simon Parkin (Scribner, 2022), Kindle pp. 178-179:

THROUGHOUT THE WARM WEEKS OF July [1940], as Hutchinson’s internees appointed their leaders and cooks, drew up the schedule of lectures and entertainments, and learned to paint, a pile of suitcases sat in a corner of another internment camp in Devon, a few hundred miles away. Rescued from the wreck of the Arandora Star, these unclaimed effects were the somber luggage of the recently deceased. It was a smaller pile of belongings than those left at the doors to the Holocaust’s shower rooms, but still emblematic of injustice. As the swollen bodies of the dead began to wash onto Irish and Hebridean beaches, so fresh details about the tragedy continued to emerge, casting further doubt on the official version of events.

On July 30, in the House of Commons, the secretary of state for war, Anthony Eden was asked whether the government had known for sure that, as previously claimed, everyone aboard the Arandora Star had been a Nazi sympathizer. By now, Eden knew for certain that this had not been the case.

“Fifty-three [Germans and Austrians aboard] were or claimed to be refugees, but had nevertheless been placed in category A,” he conceded.

In Whitehall, the impersonal statistics were now clothed with the intimacies of story. Politicians learned that, among the dead, there was a German sailor who came to Britain as an anti-fascist, only to be interned with a “mélange” of Nazi sympathizers; there was a metalworker who, after spending four years imprisoned in Nazi camps, escaped to Britain, was interned, then killed in the sinking; there was the blind pensioner who had been separated from his wife for the first time in his life.

The admission that refugees of Nazi oppression had been aboard the ship caused widespread outrage and called into question the wider policy of mass internment, which had begun to seem less like a rational security measure and more like victim-blaming on an industrial scale. The Jewish Chronicle, which just a few months earlier had defended a wartime government’s “right to interfere drastically with the freedom of the individual,” now likened the “disgraceful hounding of refugees” to “Gestapo methods.” Readers agreed. “It seems strange that in order to defeat the Gestapo abroad, it should be considered necessary to introduce their methods at home,” wrote Moya Woodside in a typical letter published in the Northern Whig. The public’s attitude had changed. Policy would duly follow.

While still far from secure, Britain’s general position in the war had shifted enough that, as Churchill put it to his cabinet, it was now possible to “take a somewhat less rigid attitude in regard to the internment of aliens.” Arrests, which had continued at a rate of around 150 per day throughout July, were suspended. If a so-called enemy alien had thus far managed to avoid being apprehended, they would most likely remain free for the remainder of the war. Mass internment was finished.

“That tragedy may… have served a useful if terrible purpose,” said Lord Faringdon of the Arandora Star in a speech to the House of Lords later that week. “For it may have opened the eyes of those responsible, and of members of the public, and of His Majesty’s Government.” It would take months and years to unpick the tangled mess of internment. Politicians’ efforts to justify and distance themselves from the episode were, by contrast, immediate.

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by | 16 April 2024 · 8:37 am

U.S. vs. U.K. on Mass Internment

From The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A Painter, a Poet, an Heiress, and a Spy in a World War II British Internment Camp, by Simon Parkin (Scribner, 2022), Kindle pp. 65-67:

ON SEPTEMBER 1, 1939, TWO days before Britain declared war on Germany, police forces around the country received the order to unseal the envelopes sent by MI5 and arrest those individuals named within. In London, officers escorted the internees to the Olympia exhibition hall on Hammersmith, which had been set aside as a clearing center, even forcing the men to pay for the taxi ride. By the end of the week, 350 individuals had been arrested across the country and delivered to Internment Camp No. 4, an out-of-season seaside resort at Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, just fifteen miles away from the Kindertransport camp at Harwich.

Despite months of investigation and planning, this first wave of arrests—intended to capture only the most dangerous Nazi sympathizers and fervent communists—was characterized by mistakes and misunderstandings. Eugen Spier, Alex Nathan, and Dr. Bernhard Weiss, all Jews and staunch anti-fascists, were among the first men arrested and taken to Olympia, where they were herded alongside bona fide Nazis such as Hitler’s friend Ernst Hanfstaengl. Weiss was the former Berlin police chief and had become famous in Germany after he sued Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, more than forty times for libel and won every time. It was difficult to imagine a less likely suspect for a Nazi spy.

With those MI5 had deemed highest risk interned, the question of what was to be done with the thousands of other “enemy aliens” living in Britain immediately arose. In the House of Commons on September 4, the MP Arthur Greenwood put the following question to the home secretary, Sir John Anderson, who had been on the job only a day: “What steps [do you] intend to take to deal with aliens in time of war?”

For the first time in public, Anderson began to explain the government’s plans.

“A number of aliens whose suspicious activities have been under observation are already under detention,” explained Anderson. Others, he said, would now have to report to the police and obtain permits for change of residence, travel, and the possession of items such as cameras and motorcars.

“A large proportion of the Germans and Austrians at present in this country are refugees, and there will, I am sure, be a general desire to avoid treating as enemies those who are friendly to the country which has offered them asylum,” Anderson continued. “At the same time, care must be taken to sift out any persons who, though claiming to be refugees, may not, in fact, be friendly to this country.”

Here was the essence of the problem facing the British government. In a letter to the foreign secretary, Sir John Anderson explained that “It was felt… it would be wrong to treat as enemies [those] refugees who are hostile to the Nazi regime, unlikely to do anything to assist the enemy and often anxious to assist the country which has given them asylum.” And yet, there was a risk that there could be enemies posing as refugees, spies who had already entered Britain under the cloak of asylum.

On September 29, Cordell Hull, the US secretary of state, sent a telegram to the American embassy in London warning of the moral dangers inherent in a policy of mass internment. Hull referenced the lessons of the First World War, when “the rigorous… internment of enemy aliens” caused “widespread and seemingly unnecessary suffering to thousands of innocent persons.” Copies of the message were also sent to the American embassies in Berlin and Paris, a pointed sign of US neutrality at this stage of the war.

For now, however, the threat of mass internment seemed both remote and mitigated by the plan for the tribunals that, between October 1939 and March 1940, would deliberate no fewer than 73,353 cases, including that of Peter Fleischmann. Most were refugees, and the others long-established residents or people who, by chance, were in Britain at the outbreak of war. Nevertheless, the reliability and loyalty of everyone would be examined by a panel. If suspicions remained, they were to be interned.

Not everyone condoned such a magnanimous approach. Guy Liddell, MI5’s head of counterintelligence, summed up his view of the decision to forgo mass internment with a single word: “Farce.”

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by | 14 April 2024 · 12:39 pm

Death of Stresemann, 1929

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 506-508:

As news spread of Stresemann’s death, there was a flood of tributes. The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (German General Newspaper) wrote, ‘It seemed necessary for this man to die for his real greatness to be appreciated by his compatriots.’ There were glowing tributes from leading world leaders, including Ramsay MacDonald, the British Prime Minister, who commented: ‘His memory is secure, and I cannot believe the great service he has given to pacification with such patience and faith can now be undone.’ Aristide Briand, the French Prime Minister, sent a telegram to Stresemann’s widow Käte, which read: ‘I will always retain the deepest respect for his memory. In pursuit of our common ideal, Dr Stresemann caused me to appreciate his lofty outlook and fine loyalty.’

Stresemann lay in state in the German parliament. Thousands of people filed past the open coffin to pay their respects before his state funeral on 6 October. Hermann Müller, the Reich Chancellor, bowed to the coffin in the Plenary Hall of the Reichstag, where the memorial service was held, before delivering a moving eulogy, describing Stresemann as a towering figure in world politics. There was then a solemn funeral procession through Berlin, pausing for several minutes outside the Foreign Ministry, before proceeding to burial in the Luisenstädtischer Friedhof in Kreuzberg, Berlin. It was estimated that a crowd of 200,000 had lined the route. Film newsreels of the event appeared in cinemas around the world.

Gustav Stresemann’s record entitles him to be seen not only as the Weimar Republic’s most successful Foreign Minister, but undoubtedly its most dominant political figure. It is impossible to see German history in the 1920s taking the same course without him. Some politicians make an enormous difference, and he was one of those who did. He was a member of every German cabinet from 1923 to 1929, and the Social Democrats were his most consistent supporters. Stresemann raised Germany from a humiliated and disgruntled foe in 1923 into a diplomatic equal and Great Power again at the time of his death. His achievements as Foreign Minister ended the Ruhr occupation of 1923, contributed to the stabilisation of the Republic, finalised the Locarno and Rapallo Treaties and the Kellogg–Briand Pact, took Germany into the League of Nations, eased Germany’s reparations burdens through the Dawes and Young Plans, and brought the foreign occupation of Germany to an end. Never has the Nobel Peace Prize had a more justified recipient.

Stresemann’s death left a huge void in German political life. He had been a force of stability within a deeply unstable political system, and had gained admiration around the world. There was no speech at the League of Nations in the months following his death that did not begin with a homage to his memory. There was simply no one in Germany or outside it capable of stepping into his shoes.

It is difficult to calculate the exact part his tragic death played in the destruction of German democracy, and the souring of international relations, but he was probably the one Weimar politician who, through the sheer force of his personality, might have saved it, though Stresemann himself thought everything in politics was determined by the state of the economy. Critics of Stresemann have depicted him as an opportunistic and deceitful power-politician with a hidden militaristic agenda, with some even trying to depict him as Hitler in a morning suit. Between the extremes of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Stresemann was predominantly Dr Jekyll, whereas Hitler was always Mr Hyde. But there is truly little evidence in his private papers or his diaries of Stresemann desiring a war of revenge or territorial expansion beyond restoring the territory lost by Germany under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and putting an end to reparations.

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by | 5 April 2024 · 4:23 pm

Death of Weimar President Ebert, 1925

From The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933, by Frank McDonough (Bloomsbury, 2023), Kindle pp. 355-357:

The Barmat-Kutisker Scandal did little to improve the failing health of President Ebert, who had been suffering from undiagnosed severe stomach pain for weeks. He became even more ill in mid-February, and was confined to bed with what was initially diagnosed as a severe bout of influenza. His condition then deteriorated further, and his doctors next thought he was suffering from a recurrence of a severe gall-bladder infection known as cholecystitis. Finally, on 23 February, he was admitted to a hospital in Charlottenburg with appendicitis and peritonitis. Ebert underwent an emergency appendectomy, performed by August Bier, one of Germany’s most eminent surgeons. At first, he seemed to be recovering, but then his condition suddenly worsened. On 28 February at 10.15 a.m., Ebert died in his sleep, aged just 54, of post-operative septic shock, with his wife and family at the bedside.

Friedrich Ebert was a Social Democrat of humble origins, and a firm supporter of democracy, who had led democratic Germany through six difficult years from the ashes of defeat in 1918 to the threshold of international reconciliation. He considered himself a patriot and a social reformer, not a rabble-rouser. Despite all the hostility he faced from the extreme Left and Right, he remained the Republic’s anchor of stability, always showing a willingness to find a consensus among different viewpoints. His departure from the political scene was undoubtedly a bitter blow and a key turning point in the history of the Weimar Republic.

The state funeral of Friedrich Ebert was a huge public event, attended by vast crowds in Berlin and Heidelberg. Ebert’s coffin was draped in the flag of the Reich President in which the black-red-gold colours of the Republic were prominent. The black eagle on a yellow background was also displayed. The main ceremony was held in the presidential palace, followed by a sombre funeral procession including representatives of the police, the Reichswehr, the Reichstag and the German states, which wound a slow passage through Berlin’s streets to the Brandenburg Gate, and to the nearby Reichstag building, then proceeded to Potsdam railway station where the coffin remained for a while so that ordinary Germans could pay their respects.

…

The funeral train journeyed to Ebert’s home town of Heidelberg for the service and burial in the Bergfriedhof Cemetery. The memorial service began with the funeral march from Beethoven’s Eroica symphony, played by the orchestra of the German State Opera. A moving eulogy was then read by Hans Luther, the German Chancellor, and the ceremony ended movingly with the music of Mozart. A short newsreel film of the funeral, showing scenes from the Berlin and Heidelberg ceremonies, appeared in cinemas throughout Germany.

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