Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [16]
Meanwhile, however, Germany was beginning to pull herself together. Foreign loans, the American Dawes Plan which poured money into Germany, a firm government in which the outstanding figure was Gustav Stresemann, finally put Germany on the road to recovery. The five years from 1924 to 1929 were the best Germany had between wars. They were lean years for Hitler; good times for everyone else were bad times for the Nazis. As a national party, they could muster only twelve out of 491 seats in the Reichstag in 1928.
But in 1929, the world’s bubble burst. The Depression began with the failure of Austrian banks and rapidly spread throughout the world. American loans stopped coming in, the world economy ground to a halt, unemployment rose, and with it Hitler’s hopes.
There was an election to the Reichstag in 1930. The Nazis went all out, damning the government, the Western Powers, the capitalists, the Jews. In the desperate masses of Germany they found willing listeners. They returned from the elections with 107 seats, more than the Communists, and just less than the majority Socialists. Nazism was a force in Germany, and Hitler a major contender for power.
The next couple of years were bad ones. The country was run by successive coalition governments, who went through the same process: formation of a coalition, attempt to solve the country’s difficulties, government by decree, setting aside of the regular parliamentary system, collapse. By 1932, it was really the army that kept governments afloat, or sank them, by granting or withholding its willingness to back any given combination. The army leaders did this while steadfastly denying that they were interested in politics. What they really wanted was a leader acceptable to them. Their first choice was Franz von Papen, a fellow officer and politician. He could not square the circle, so they then turned to Kurt von Schleicher; he too proved unable to master the German scene.
The irony of Hitler was that he was nobody’s first choice, but most people’s second or third. The men who really counted in Germany—the soldiers, the businessmen, the established politicians—kept making their deals and shutting him out. His followers urged him to carry out a coup d’état, but he insisted on waiting. He moderated his tone and promised all things to whatever group he was talking to. He told the generals he would give them what they wanted, which was true enough; he said the same to big business, which was also true. Finally, they all thought they could use him, and on January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler, ex-artist, ex-corporal in the List Regiment, took office as Chancellor of the German Republic.
Hitler then carried out what has come to be called the Nazi Revolution. In effect, he used the organs of parliamentary government to destroy parliamentary government. The state governments of Germany were stripped of their powers. All public positions were restricted to Aryans, that is, non-Jews. The judicial system was overhauled and a series of People’s Courts set up; summary execution and the concentration camp made their appearance in German life. The National Socialist Party was declared the one legal party in the state. Racial laws were passed against Jews; the churches in Germany were nationalized; in industry, strikes and lockouts were forbidden. From now on, Germans would march forth together—and they would all be in step.
Of all the factions in Germany which had to be satisfied, or eliminated, the army was the most important. Ostensibly shunning politics, it was in reality the one force in the