home | 1901-World War II | Europeans in Africa and Asia in the 1920s

A "No More War" demonstration in Berlin, 1922

Klara Hitler

He was a decorated veteran,
joined by other decorated
men, such as Goering and
Rudolf Hess.

France's Foregin Minister Briand, left,
and Germany's Chancellor Stresemann

Opinion in Germany

After World War I, Germans from Marxist to ultra-conservative were united in looking forward to their nation's regeneration, but they differed as to how regeneration was to be accomplished and where to cast blame for their nation's troubles. Public opinion in Germany was like public opinion elsewhere: it contained portions of half-truths, untruths and myth. Many Germans blamed their nation's troubles on the old regime of Wilhelm II for losing the war and for having turned power over to the socialists. Some blamed their nation's defeat on those who had signed the armistice, seeing these men as traitors and pacifistic cowards. They believed that the German army had marched home in tact after having been stabbed in the back.

Prominent among those believed to be traitors were Jews - among them the murdered Communist leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, and Kurt Eisner, who had led the takeover Communist takeover in Bavaria. The leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution were thought to be predominately Jewish - as was Leon Trotsky, Gregory Zinoviev and Karl Radek. Béla Kun, who led the Soviet regime in Hungary, was also Jewish - as was Karl Marx. Many Germans who opposed Communism saw Jews as inclined to be internationalist rather than loving the German fatherland, because, they believed, the Jews had a heritage of wandering and rootlessness.

Many Germans saw little difference between the Communists and the Social Democrats who had taken power in Germany just before the Armistice. The Social Democrats were traditionally a Marxist party. They still had a red flag, although they had long given up on Marx's idea of revolution. And seeing the Social Democrats as internationalist like the Jews, some Germans - including the decorated war veteran, Adolf Hitler - associated the Social Democrats with Jews.

Germans tended to look upon themselves as a superior people - as did most tribes and nationalities through history. It was a view that had been reinforced by Germany's accomplishments in science and industry. From reading the ancient Roman historian, Tacitus, some Germans believed that Germans had an inborn special character. Tacitus had described Germans as a people who did not mix with other tribes. And believing themselves superior, most Germans saw this as having benefited their nation, and they disapproved of Germans interbreeding with lesser breeds - including Jews.

Anti-Semitism in Germany dated back to Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism. Luther had wanted Germany to deprive its Jews of all their cash, jewels, silver and gold. He had wanted their synagogues set afire, their homes destroyed and Jews driven out of the country. In the late nineteenth century, when people were superimposing Darwin's theory of evolution onto social development, anti-Semitism in Germany - as well as elsewhere - received a boost with enhanced concern about bloodlines and race. And Germany's anti-Semitism had some of its roots in its peasantry's opposition to the big cities. Jews had been heavily represented in money lending in Europe, and nineteenth century German novels written for country folk depicted money lending Jews entering rural areas from the cities and depriving peasants of their wealth and land. One such book that sold in the millions was Der Büttnerbauer (The Peasant from Büttner). Adolf Hitler, an avid and eclectic reader, was to claim that this book was among the many books that had influenced him. In Der Büttnerbauer, a German peasant becomes indebted to a Jewish moneylender. The peasant's land is foreclosed. And, losing the soil soil that had nourished his life, he hangs himself - end of story.

Perhaps anti-Semitism was greater in Germany than in Italy or France because Germany had more Jews per capita. Nevertheless, the Jews in Germany were but a small percentage of the population: 0.9 percent, compared to 0.5 percent in France, and 0.13 percent in Italy. In absolute numbers, about 600,000 Jews lived in Germany, as opposed to about 100,000 in France and 45,000 in Italy.

The rise in number of Jews in Germany was a recent development, coming soon after 1880 with a migration from Eastern Europe into Central and Western Europe and the United States. These migrants went mainly to big cities, and in Germany's big cities they became highly visible, some of them rising in trade and commerce, in the professions, including journalism, and in cultural pursuits.

Acceptance of Jews in Germany's cities was widespread, and there was a high degree of assimilation, with some intermarriage, some prominent gentile men having taken wives from Jewish families. But in the cities some Jews continued to wear orthodox clothing and appearance. They had accents, and many chauvinistic Germans were suspicious of people with foreign accents. And some Jews responded to gentile hostility with an unpleasant, defensive manner rather than the traditional courtesy to which German gentiles were accustomed. As Hannah Arendt pointed out, anti-Semitism in Germany poisoned the personalities of some Jews.

Anti-Semitism had been strong among German students in the late nineteenth century, a product of the students of those years being elitist and favoring a strong and spiritual Germany, a Germany opposed to the liberalism, materialism and immorality that they associated with the Jews. Continuing into the 20th century, in 1901 the faculty of the University of Heidelberg opposed the existence of a Jewish fraternity on campus on the grounds that it endangered peace among the students. This anti-Semitism at universities extended into postwar Germany, many students believing that national revitalization would be helped by ridding Germany of Jewish influences. These students tended to be from Germany's more wealthy and refined families, but they had allies among Germany's coarse and less pampered gentiles.

Coup Attempts and the Erzberger Assassination

Many Germans blamed the government of Ebert for having signed the having the peace treaty in 1919 - not understanding the army's role in the matter. No blame had been put on the great Ludendorff for his reckless pursuit of the war in 1918. And no blame was put on Hindenburg, who had told Ebert that returning to defensive warfare was hopeless and that the German Army was not up to it.

In 1920 came the Kapp putsch - led by a fifty-two year old repatriated German from New York, Wolfgang Kapp. Kapp was a dissatisfied government official, a hawkish bureaucrat in the East Prussian Ministry of Agriculture. His partner in the conspiracy to overthrow Ebert's government was an army general, Walther von Lüttwitz, who had led the Free Corps forces that defeated the Spartacists in Berlin. Lüttwitz was upset because of plans by the Ebert government to disband the forces under him. He was worried that Germany did not have enough men in arms to defend Germany against the Communists, and he believed that Russian Bolsheviks would soon overrun Poland and be on Germany's border, from which they could better support Germany's Communists.

Some in the Free Corps who had been fighting Communism in Germany's northeastern borderlands, joined the plot. They felt that the Ebert government was reneging on promised pay, and they feared that their units would soon be dissolved. Also joining the revolt was the former general, Erich Ludendorff , who returned from exile in Sweden and urged the conspirators to "clean out the parliamentary stables."

The government learned of the conspiracy, dismissed Lüttwitz and ordered Kapp's arrest. The conspirators rushed ahead with their plans. They asked British agents what Britain's reaction would be to a conservative revolt carried out to suppress a Leftist revolution. The British said they would not intervene directly or indirectly against their coup provided the coup planned to establish a constitutional government.

Joining the coup in spirit were various army officers, university professors and members of the judiciary - the majority of whom were opposed to parliamentary squabbling and saw parliamentary government as alien to Germany. Many of them believed that monarchy was a superior form of government, seeing benefit in what they saw as monarchical impartiality. Some of them associated the monarchy with the Lutheran Church, with rule by divine right.

Hindenburg was among the monarchists who despised republicanism, but as the head of Germany's army he had sworn to support Ebert's government, and as a matter of honor he refused to announce his support for the revolt. But he sent his best wishes to its leadership.

On March 13, 1920, a well-armed army of Free Corpsmen marched through the Brandenberg Gate, in central Berlin, singing "Deutchland, Deutchland Über Alles" and carrying flags of the old imperial colors. Painted on their helmets was the swastika, popular with high school students and others after the war. No firing of their weapons was necessary. Ebert's government had fled to the city of Dresden.

The active leader in Germany's postwar army was General von Seeckt. Like Hindenburg he had taken an oath of allegiance to the government. Moreover, he had a distaste for illegal, military coups, which he associated with Latin America. He refused to join his army with the Kapp putsch. But, opposed to German soldiers fighting German soldiers, he did not want his army to move against the putsch. He wished the military to remain neutral, and to escape being caught in the middle he decided to go on leave.

A few army commanders outside Berlin declared their support for the government, while most, like Seeckt, chose to remain on the sidelines. Joining them on the sidelines were Rightists in the state of Bavaria, who were unenthusiastic about any government in Berlin. An exception in Bavaria was Hitler, who, with a few others could not contain their excitement and flew in a private plane to Berlin.

The Ebert government called on workers across Germany to go out on general strike. His appeal was more successful than had been the calls for a general strike by the Communists. And joining the strike were the Communists, who were reminiscing about the Bolshevik move against Kornilov in the summer of 1917. Work stopped across Germany. Nothing moved, including into or out of Berlin. And in Berlin, people supporting the government filled the streets.

Those who led the coup sat in government offices in Berlin that could not function. Coup leaders were unable to withdraw government money from any bank. The Free Corps leader, Ehrhardt, was ordered to get money from the banks by any means, but he refused, saying an officer could not appear to be a safecracker. Kapp was proving himself to a poor organizer. He was without plans for a New Order, and he was having trouble finding his chief aide, Schnitzler - a bogus doctor and freelance journalist. Kapp is reported to have roamed the halls of government shouting, "Where is Schnitzler? Where is Schnitzler? I cannot govern without Schnitzler."

It became obvious to the coup leaders that they lacked sufficient support to govern. Ludendorff - forever the die-hard - told Kapp to hold out. But two important supporters, the commander of Berlin's security police and the commandant of a Berlin army unit, told Kapp that he had to quit. Kapp gave up one hundred hours after having taken power. Five coup leaders with disguised identities, Schnitzler and Ludendorff among them, fled to Munich. The Free Corps marched out of town, past the citizens who lined the streets, hostility in the glances between them. A small boy laughed at the Free Corps, and a soldier broke ranks and clubbed the boy. The crowd responded, and the Free Corps fired into the crowd killing a few. Then they resumed marching out of town.

Another Failed Coup by the Communists

The Kapp putsch had reinvigorated the Communists, and they were inspired to by the continuing difficulty by workers to feed their families. In places they had received arms as the government had opened arsenals to those willing to defend the government. And during the strike, Communist leaders had given fighting speeches and had become influential with other striking workers. The hopes of these Communist leaders had been stimulated by the united struggle against the Right. Red Army brigades had been formed, many of them World War I veterans. The brigades in Germany's Ruhr region were 50,000 strong. It was too much excitement for sober judgment, and the Communist leaders again believed that it was possible to overthrow the government. Any friendly objections to their plans could be dismissed by traditional Marxist opposition to "fatalism." Doctrinaire Marxists were inclined to dismiss conclusions based on probability. They too believed in will.

Ebert called off his general strike on March 16, and facing another assault from the Communists he called for help from General von Seeckt. Just after the failure of the Kapp Putsch, von Seeckt returned to active duty, and he began reconstructing the army with the number of men that the peace treaty with the Allies allowed: 100,000 men. He wished to consider the Free Corps as having outlived its usefulness, but the Free Corps was rescued by the Communists. Although the Free Corps was despised, many still believed that they were still needed to protect Germany from the Communists. Ebert's government offered the Red Armies amnesty if they gave up their weapons, but in Saxony the Central Committee of the German Communist Party called for an insurrection and proclaimed a general strike. And with the Communists threatening Germany with armed revolution again, Free Corps units were called up again.

The strike was opposed by the mass of the German workers. It fizzled out and was suppressed. So too was the Communist rising in the Ruhr. There the fighting was bitter, the government troops taking no prisoners and killing the enemy wounded. The fiascoes resulted in recriminations within Germany's Communist Party and a mass decline in its membership.

Von Seeckt against the Free Corps

In victory, von Seeckt would now move against some Free Corps units. Von Seeckt still wanted a highly disciplined and well-trained force, a force unencumbered by the strife of party politics. He took into the army several of the larger, better disciplined Free Corps units, and, with the power of the law, he had some of the wilder Free Corps units disbanded.

The disbanded felt betrayed. They were passionate, common  men who did not like von Seeckt's cold, formal, aristocratic bearing. Some leaders of outlawed units changed the name of their unit and disguised the units purpose. Some units went to Munich where they were viewed with more favor than elsewhere in Germany, and there they were able to maintain a clandestine existence while protected by Bavaria's dispute with federal authority. And some disgruntled Free Corpsmen made a failed attempt on the life of von Seeckt.

The Assassination of Erzberger

Some men in the Free Corps blamed the defeat of Germany on Matthias Erzberger, who had led the delegation that signed the armistice in 1918. Erzberger was a devout Catholic with influential connections in the Vatican. He had been a supporter of the war and for annexations, but before the war's end he had become an opponent of submarine warfare. Toward the end of the war, seeing Erzberger as leading proponent of peace and reconciliation, Germany's hawks accused him of being in the pay of the French. Then, after the war, he became Ebert's Minister of Finance, and he remained the target of hatred by Germany's hawks and Rightists.

A few in the Free Corps believed that if they killed enough leaders in Ebert's government, Germany's Communists might come to power, giving the Free Corps reason to take up arms again and take power. A few in the Free Corps stalked Erzberger in August 1921 while he was strolling in the Black Forest on a holiday, and they killed him with twelve shots into his head. They called it an "act of liberation" and returned to Munich, where they were given false passports by the Bavarian Police. The Communist coup that the murderers of Erzberger had hoped for had not materialized, and they fled to Hungary.

Agreement with the USSR and Another Assassination

By now, Hindenburg's autobiography, Out of My Life, had been published. In it, Hindenburg supported the stab-in-the back fantasy about the defeat of Germany's army. Hindenburg was still benefiting from his not having signed the armistice agreement in 1918 - as a supreme military commander had been obliged to do. He would never have described the real reason for Germany's defeat: his and Ludendorff's stupidity. Germany's defeat, claimed Hindenburg, was due primarily to revolution on the home front and the establishment of a republic.

Into 1922, hatred for the "November Criminals" (those who had signed the peace treaty) remained very much alive in Germany. And defiance of Allied demands for continued reparations payments was winning applause from common Germans. France was still asking for more in reparations than Germany could pay, but in April, at Genoa in Italy, a meeting attended by representatives from the major European powers was attempting to solve postwar problems including reparation payments.

At the conference at Genoa, the representative from the Soviet Union was seeking economic aid and recognition for his nation. Poincaré, representing France, was especially disdainful toward the Russians. The representatives from the Soviet Union and Germany were receiving little respect, and they responded to their similar frustration by meeting at a villa just outside Genoa: Rapallo. There they agreed to re-establish diplomatic and consular relations, and they agree to most-favored trade between their two countries. In a spin-off of this meeting, the Russians and Germans met again, in secret, to discuss military collaboration. Secretly they agreed that Russia would manufacture arms for sale to Germany and German pilots and tank crews would train on Russian soil - hidden from the Allies. Germany was to train Russian army officers in the military matters, and, in Russia, German officers and scientists were to do research and development in weaponry - forbidden by the Paris peace treaty.

Germany's President, Ebert, was shocked by what his diplomats had done, while representatives of Germany industry were delighted at the opportunity that the agreements with the Soviet Union presented. Superficial aspects of the Rapallo Agreement became public knowledge in Germany, and anger arose from those opposed to any dealings with Bolshevik Russia. Anti-Semitism was involved in this opposition, because the German delegation that made the agreement with the Russians was led by Walter Rathenau, Ebert's Minister of Foreign Affairs. Rathenau had been one of Germany's leading industrialists and financiers. He had risen in prominence during World War I as the government's organizer of industry. And he was a Christian who was outspoken about his Jewish roots.

Rathenau described himself as thoroughly German, as belonging to "no other tribe or people." But Rathenau was in a dangerous position. More than three hundred assassinations had taken place since the armistice, and Rathenau was accused of representing world Jewry and wanting to deliver Germany to the Bolsheviks and of besmirching Germany's honor. As Rathenau was being chauffeured in an open car, two young men in their twenties, members of an outlawed Free Corps unit that had migrated to Bavaria (the Ehrhardt Brigade) were in a car that pulled up along side Rathenau. As their car passed they shot at Rathenau with a submachine gun and threw a hand grenade.

A memorial service for Rathenau at the University of Berlin had to be canceled in fear of a riot by anti-Semitic students. The two assassins were tracked down by Berlin police. One was killed in a shoot out and the other committed suicide.

Adolf Hitler, His Youth and Political Party

Adolf Hitler had loved his mother dearly and had been deeply wounded by her death when he was eighteen. He knew isolation and homelessness when he was nineteen, and he had experienced the near madness that can accompany this. In multi-ethnic Austria-Hungary he had found identity and pride in being German, and when the war broke out in 1914, he enthusiastically joined the army to serve his adoptive nation, Germany. His passionate patriotism made him a courageous soldier, Hitler winning for himself the Iron Cross Second Class in December 1914, then in May 1918 a regimental certificate of bravery, and finally, on August 4, 1918, the Iron Cross First Class, rarely awarded to an enlisted man.

In February 1919, Adolf Hitler was serving with a remnant of the German Army that was processing Russian and French prisoners of war for release. In March, he returned to Munich, still in the army and a trusted anti-Bolshevik, working with army intelligence trying to keep track of the many different political organizations. Hitler was assigned to investigate a group of about twenty-five who called themselves  the German Workers' Party. The group met in beer halls, which was the custom in Bavaria. They saw themselves as patriotic Bavarians in support of common working people. They believed that Germans were a superior breed. And they were inclined toward anti-Semitism.

As Hitler was leaving one of the little party's gatherings, a speaker began espousing Bavarian independence from Germany. Enraged, Hitler turned, interrupted the speaker, and denounced the speaker's idea as ruinous, as dividing and therefore weakening Germany. It was an idea, he said, that was fit for a traitor or a provocateur. Hitler's outburst impressed the party's leaders and members, and, having won some recognition, Hitler returned to later meetings, and he spoke again. He was not one of those slow in putting together his words or losing focus. His service in the military gave him confidence, and believing strongly in something made him a good speaker. He preached to the already converted about the terrible peace treaty signed at Paris. He denounced the "November Criminals," the Jews, Marxist internationalism, and the Social Democratic leaders of the government in Berlin, whom he labeled Marxists.

In 1920, Hitler quit the army, remained in Munich, and devoted his free time to the German Worker's Party, attracting attention in Munich and bringing new members into the party. One of those joining the party was Rudolf Hess, who had served in the same infantry company as Hitler during the war, then as a flyer, and after the war as a member of the Free Corps, and now he was enrolled at the University of Munich. Another member of the party was Ernst Roehm (Röhm), who had been born in Munich, had been an army captain during the war and had been a member of the Free Corps that drove out the Communists Munich in 1919.

One who had joined the German Worker's Party before Hitler was Alfred Rosenberg. Like Hitler, Rosenberg read a lot of books. He was a German from Estonia who had lived in Russia, had studied in the Crimea, had read a lot of Nietzsche, and he had read a lot of anti-Semitic authors, including Houston Chamberlain. Rosenberg was destined to be recognized as the party's leading theorist. But he was a different kind of bookworm than was Adolf Hitler.

Hitler had read a lot of ancient history, and he had a theory about ethnicity that encompassed all humanity. He saw human history as a struggle between nations for living space and for regional domination. The Aryans who had invaded Europe thousands of years ago - the ancestors of the Greeks, Germans and others who were not Slavic - he saw as a superior people. It was right and natural, he believed, for the superior people to conquer and subdue inferior people. This Aristotle had believed, and so too a variety of 19th century intellectuals. But, unlike Aristotle, Hitler harbored no sympathy for the golden mean. Said Hitler, "Until the present day the half-hearted and the lukewarm have remained the curse of Germany."

Unlike Rosenberg, Hitler did not speak much about abstractions. Men in the party were little interested in abstract ideas and had little respect for Rosenberg. Abstractions did not carry well in speeches or pronouncements. Rather than presenting himself as scholarly, Hitler presented himself as a man of action for the building of a new Germany. Those impressed by the party and Hitler were moved by verbal attacks, not only against Jews and those politicians who had been in power during Germany's defeat but also against bankers and international capitalists, whom they saw as among the insufficiently patriotic.

Those who joined the German Worker's Party tended to loathe the upper classes, including the Hohenzollern monarchy and Bavaria's old royalty. And they tended to be without admiration for Germany's Lutheran or Catholic churches, which they associated with the divine right of monarchies. Members of the German Workers' Party tended to believe in an egalitarianism inspired in part by the glory attained by the common soldier during the war. Germany's conservatives looked with favor upon the Hohenzollern monarchy the altar, and Hitler separated himself from the old, conservative elite. Germany's aristocratic and upper class politicians had disdained the notion of organizing common people. Hitler, on the other hand, favored organizing common people. As a youth he had been impressed by the ability of the Social Democrats to organize great demonstrations of marching, unionized workers. Hitler favored organizing common people similar to the Social Democrats. He announced that Germany's liberation would come only from a welling up from the great masses. Without the help of the German workingman he said, we will never regain a German Reich (empire).

Hitler spoke of the monarchy, led by Wilhelm II, as having contributed to the defeat in war by having been "rotten to the core." He denounced the middleclass for believing in its superiority and for having accepted "Jewish propaganda." And while speaking up for the masses, Hitler denounced the word proletariat. The word proletariat, he claimed, had been invented by the Jews. The Jews, with their Marxist theory, he said, had created class division. Hitler continued to call for a return to the classlessness and unity that had existed when the nation marched off to war. And in this, Hitler had the support of Ludendorff, who was still meddling in politics, Ludendorff speaking of the honor of the common soldier as being worth that of a king.

The German Worker's Party becomes the "Nazi" Party

In August 1920, the Worker's Party acquired a new name: the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), which some people were to shorten to Nazi. With Hitler as the party's star speaker, the party's founder, G. Feder, was alternately tolerated and ignored. By the end of 1920, the party's membership stood somewhere around 3000, with many of its new members being former members of the Free Corps looking for a new home.

Between 1920 and 1922, the Party struggled and grew to around 6,000 members. Perhaps with the loss of the war in mind, they had victory in the forefront of their minds. They declared "hail victory" often, which in German is "sieg heil." The new party members tended to be younger than those in Germany's traditional parties, and many of them were students. They were a German 1920's version of the cocky 1960s student activists in the United States, except that they were racist and nationalistically gung-ho. But they were similar in that they were impatient and enthusiastic for change. Their youth added to their fanaticism and energy. They tended to be dissatisfied with the older generation, either for having stumbled into the war or for having failed to win it, and for having created a messed-up world.

Like the student radicals in the sixties, the National Socialists had their rallies and their marches, but they also had violent confrontations with the opposition - no polite sit-downs as had been learned in the civil rights movement. National Socialists had to escort their fellow party members home through hostile blue-collar neighborhoods where Social Democrats, union people and Communists lived. The "Nazies" fought street battles against leftists, battles that were sometimes initiated by the leftists and sometimes by the Nazies.

In Munich's unionized factories, any worker who spoke in favor of the National Socialists or other Rightists might be expelled or beaten. This was true also elsewhere in Germany, as Hitler's small organization spread thinly across the nation. The disturbances that these few caused led some states to outlaw the National Socialist Party. In 1922 the state of Baden forbade the party to carry on its activities. The states of Thuringia, Prussia, Schaumburg-Lippe, Hesse and Brunswick followed Baden's example. So too did the city of Hamburg. To counter these laws, the National Socialists in these areas changed the name of their organization, and they continued their propaganda campaigns with less violence.

Inflation, Occupation and Hitler's Failed Coup

Under pressure from the Allies to make reparation payments, the German government let inflation run and the value of the German mark decline. Industrialists benefited as cheaper money meant less that they had to pay their workers in real wages, and it meant cheaper prices for the goods they sold abroad. With wages extremely low, businesses could well afford to hire people, and the problem of unemployment ended. And their sales abroad expanded.

For Germany, basing its money on gold was out of the question. Because of the war, Germany had no gold reserves. Industrialists were content to watch the mark continue to slide. At the beginning of 1920 the German mark had been only worth only one tenth what it had been before the war. Those who had their money in property, or stocks, in anything but cash, were able to hold onto this wealth. Those who lent money lost, as it could be repaid with cheaper money. Those who had savings accounts - cash - were, by 1923, all but wiped out.

The French saw Germany's inflation as its attempt to wheedle out of responsible reparation payments. Moreover, in January 1923, Germany was late in making deliveries of coal, and, to fetch this coal, French and Belgian troops occupied Germany's Ruhr. French soldiers, with artillery, tanks and machine guns fanned out over the Ruhr. They established machine gun posts at strategic points such as railroad stations and on roofs overlooking city squares. The French took over German customs, German railroads, ports and other transportation routes, and they jailed hundreds of German officials. They ordered Germans to continue production. But the Germans in the Ruhr started sit-down strikes. The French jailed German civil servants who refused to comply with French orders. The whole German nation was united in its outrage against the French, with some Germans - Hitler among them - favoring more than passive resistance to France's occupation. Some French sentries were shot. And some Germans threw stones at the French troops.

Germany's most productive industries were idle, which brought scarcity and a further rise in prices. And with Germany's economy disrupted, the German mark sank to new lows. The German government started printing more money to pay those who were out of work, which sent the mark lower still. Before the year was over it would cost a billion marks to send a letter from Germany to the United States. Some people had little more than raw cabbage for food. People could not afford fuel with which to cook or heat their homes. Those on fixed incomes - widows, orphans, retired persons, civil servants, teachers, and those who had been receiving benefits from war injuries - in effect lost their incomes. A hatred of those who remained well-to-do was benefiting those like Hitler who were railing against capitalists, financiers, Jews and the Allies and their peace treaty.

Trouble in Munich

In Bavaria's capital, Munich, the Social Democrats, under Adolf Hoffman, had returned to power after the overthrow of the Communist regime there in 1919. But then local military leaders removed the Social Democrats from office, and in the place of Hoffman they appointed a monarchist, Gustav von Kahr, as Bavaria's premier. Most Bavarians were Catholics, and anti-Communism in Bavaria was more intense than elsewhere in Germany. Amd Bavaria's nobility, officer class and peasantry supported a restoration of the monarchy in the person of Crown Prince Rupprecht, son of Wilhelm II.

In Bavaria, an alliance among Rightist para-military groups formed in opposition to France's occupation of the Ruhr. According to the army commander in Bavaria, General von Lossow, these para-military groups had fifty-one percent of all available weaponry in the state. Among these groups, Hitler's National Socialist party, was most prominent. With weapons that had origins in Army barracks, Hitler's National Socialists were doing field exercises and parading through Munich's streets. And the Kahr regime gave Hitler and his party free reign, Kahr seeing Hitler as another useful Bavarian serving the cause of patriotism.

In theory, the National Socialist party continued to be ruled by a committee, but by early 1923 Hitler was clearly in charge. During the French-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, Hitler's party grew rapidly in Bavaria and across Germany. A police report issued in the summer of 1923 estimated that the party had risen from 6,000 to 35,000 in Munich alone, and to approximately 50,000 in all of Bavaria. With the National Socialists now was another war hero, Hermann Goering (Göring), the nation's leading surviving ace aviator and air corps commander. Also living in Munich was Ludendorff, who was in sympathy with the rhetoric of the National Socialists and eager to join others in actions against the republican government in Berlin.

Hitler pounded away against France's invasion, and he was still pounding away at the Jews, blaming the crisis on Jewish financiers and Marxists. "Clear out the Jews," he said, "Our own people have genius enough! We need no Hebrews!" He assaulted the press for being inadequately nationalistic." We must demand," he said, "that the press become the instrument of national self-education." The government, he said, should see to it that people were not poisoned by misinformation. "We are fanatical in our love for our people," he said in one speech. "We have faith that one day heaven will bring the Germans back into a Reich (Germany) over which there shall be no Soviet star, no Jewish star of David, but above that Reich there shall be the symbol of German labor - the swastika."

Encouraged by Ludendorff's support, Hitler began planning a march on Berlin - like the march that Mussolini was thought to have made on Rome the year before. Hitler, however, was without the invitation to govern that Mussolini had received. He planned to ally his National Socialists with Kahr's Rightist government in Munich, by force if necessary, in preparation for the march. He planned also to proclaim martial law. And he planned that after taking power in Berlin he would put all persons dangerous to national security into concentration camps (Sammellager). And he planned to send with them to the camps all those persons who were unproductive, those he called "useless eaters," where they would be put to productive labor.

Disintegration and the Beginnings of the Stresemann Era

In August 1923, Germany's president, Ebert, appointed a new chancellor, Gustav Stresemann, as the head of coalition government of moderate parties, including the Social Democrats. Stresemann is an example of men who  - unlike those born into royal or aristocratic families - rise to the top because of their intelligence. He was the son of a Berlin innkeeper and beer distributor. He had been a student of history, economics and literature, receiving a doctorate at the age of twenty-three and writing his dissertation on the growth of the bottled beer industry in Berlin. His interest in history, the German classics and poetry continued when he entered a career in business and then politics. In politics he had become a champion of small businesses including small manufacturers, against big business combinations. At the age of twenty-eight, Stresemann was elected to a seat in Parliament, becoming its youngest member. He had married a young woman from a Jewish family that had converted to Christianity. And he was known as a man of courage who said what he meant and was willing to stand up for an unpopular cause.

When Stresemann became chancellor - at the age of 45 - he also took the office of Foreign Minister. He faced not only ruinous inflation but a failed passive resistance to French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr. The French had bypassed the refusal of Germans to work by bringing in their own laborers to work in Germany's mines and on Germany's railroads. Hostility toward France by Germans remained at a fever pitch, but on September 26 Stresemann ended passive resistance and sent workers in the Ruhr back to work. He attempted negotiations with the French government, trying to settle the reparations issue while winning some small face-saving measure for his government. He sought cooperation between German and French industries and to give France assurances of the security of the border between them. The government of Poincaré refused to negotiate its position in the Ruhr. Then Stresemann asked industrialists in the Ruhr to negotiate with the French and to promise the French their reparations payments. To other European nations, including Britain, Stresemann pointed out that economic trouble in Germany meant eventual trouble for the whole of Europe.

Stresemann's willingness to give in to French demands for reparations angered many Germans, especially Rightists and other the super-nationalists. Stresemann's government faced crises on many fronts. In the city of Leipzig, in Saxony, the Communists called for action to turn state power into a Soviet regime. In Thuringia, the old Free Corps leader, Ehrhardt, escaped from prison and organized a private army. In the town of Küstrin, about fifty miles east of Berlin, a Rightist force of four hundred seized the town. In the Rhineland, Germans were conspiring to make the Rhineland independent - a conspiracy encouraged by the French, who saw such a move as weakening Germany.

Bavaria was also making threats. In Munich, Kahr and other Rightists were labeling Chancellor Stresemann's government as Marxist - President Ebert being a Social Democrat and many in the government also being Social Democrats. With other Rightists in Munich, Kahr was dreaming of a march on Berlin to "sweep aside the Marxists" to restore order in the nation, and Kahr thought that in the process he could make Bavaria semi-autonomous. With him in this dream was General von Lossow, who had also picked up on Hitler's label of Stresemann's government as Marxist. Von Lossow was defying orders from General von Seeckt, claiming that he, von Lossow, was not obliged to a government that was under Marxist influence.

Seeing a threat from the Right, the Leftist governments in Saxony and Thuringia sought unity on the Left. Factory councils called for war against the Right. In Saxony, the government took two Communists into its cabinet. Two days later, the government of Thuringia followed suit. Unable to fight a war against the Communist regimes and Bavaria at the same time, Stresemann's government pursued a showdown first against the Left. It declared martial law and declared it unconstitutional for a German state to permit Communists in its government. Stresemann demanded the resignation of the government in Saxony. There, Communists and their allies took to the streets and plundered. The violence spread to Hamburg, where fourteen were killed before police could restore order, while  Stresemann's government was sending troops into Saxony and Thuringia.

Social Democrats in Stresemann's government were appalled by Stresemann having moved against the Left but not against the Right in Bavaria. They left Stresemann's government, leaving no "Marxists" in the government against which the Bavarian Right might rage. Meanwhile, Munich's Archbishop, Cardinal Faulhaber, saw the need for reconciliation rather than hate and civil war. He denounced the hatred directed against "our Jewish fellow citizens and other ethnic groups." He complained that civil war would bring more civil desolation and ruin. The extent of the archbishop's influence is unknown, but Kahr, at any rate, had decided to make peace with Berlin. He was impressed with Stresemann's success in crushing what he saw as Leftist disorders. Kahr was distancing himself from the National Socialists, and he banned Hitler's mass meetings.

The Hitler-Ludendorff Putsch

One who was not influenced by Stresemann's actions in Saxony and Thuringia was Adolf Hitler. He planned for his coup and march to Berlin to begin on November 8 - the fifth anniversary of the first soviet takeover in Munich. In the evening of that day, Hitler's troops surrounded the town hall where Kahr was to speak. Hitler and a few others entered the crowded hall, Hitler wearing his Iron Cross and carrying a revolver. He shoot a round into the ceiling to get attention. Hitler's troops blocked the hall's doors. Hitler announced that the "national revolution" had begun. With Kahr was von Lossow, and Hitler took the two of them into an adjoining room, told them that a new government had been formed that was supported by Ludendorff. He told them that they had no choice but to join his rising and that if he failed he would kill himself . It was an odd way to form an alliance. However, Kahr and von Lossow humored Hitler, assuring him of their support. Hitler then returned to the hall where he triumphantly told his captive audience that a new Bavarian government had been formed under Kahr and that a new national government was formed, led by himself, with Ludendorff as the supreme commander of a new nationalist army. Ludendorff then took his place at the head of the revolt.

Hitler's force consisted of fully trained, partially trained and untrained men thrown together. Few veterans were among them. Many were high school and university students too young to have fought in the war. The leader of this para-military force before Ludendorff's arrival was the old infantry captain, Ernst Roehm, who saw the force as ill trained. They were without good communications between units and without capable group leaders. They were without artillery. But the rebels believed that von Lossow's army was on their side. And, feeling confident, Ludendorff said that "the heavens will fall before the Bavarian Reichwehr (Army) turns against me."

Hitler believed in the magic of the Ludendorff name, and Ludendorff, putting his military genius to work, ordered a bunch of Nazi kids to take a government building. The kids and police faced each other at point blank range, neither wanting to start shooting. With the police unwilling to back down, the kids did, and they disappeared as suddenly as they appeared.

Other forces under Ludendorff smashed the local Social Democrat newspaper and captured offices of the War Ministry, but when they tried to occupy police headquarters, the police refused to join the revolt and arrested them. Ludendorff's forces remained without their planned control of the city's communication and transportation centers. Kahr and von Lossow, free of Hitler's firepower,
renounced their promise to Hitler. And Kahr announced that he was dissolving the National Socialist party - a betrayal that Hitler would not forget.

The second day of the coup - November 9th - began with the army on alert at its base, awaiting orders. Ludendorff's forces were alone and outnumbered. Ludendorff had again miscalculated. Bavaria's army was defying him and the sky was not falling. A showdown between the National Socialists and Munich's authorities came around noon. Hitler, Ludendorff and about two thousand followers were marching toward the city center, with flags flying and singing patriotic songs, with Hitler hoping to pick up supporters as they marched. The parade came upon a line of police. As Hitler approached the police he ordered them to surrender. A shot was fired, believed by some to have come from among Hitler's marchers. Then many of the police began firing, the gunfire between the police and the rebels lasting two or three minutes. Hitler threw himself down, as any good soldier would, and he dislocated his shoulder. Ludendorff marched through the firing, policemen perhaps  taking care not to aim at him.

Hitler's coup was over. The bulk of the marchers and Hitler had fled the scene. Four policemen and fourteen of Hitler's supporters - mostly youths - were dead. Ludendorff was taken into custody. A police official offered to inform Ludendorff's family that he was safe and sound. Ludendorff shouted that he wanted no favors and that he would no longer wear his uniform. He screamed that he was a prisoner and had to be escorted to the bathroom to urinate. No one would, and nature prevailed as Ludendorff relented and went to the urinal by himself. Soon afterward, Ludendorff was released.

Hitler had not shot himself as he had promised, and two days after the coup he too was arrested, and soon he was released. Ludendorff, Hitler and others were charged with treason and ordered to stand trial, which was to take place in March, 1924. Kahr and Lossow retired from public life. Bavaria began rebuilding its links to the federal government, and Bavaria's new government kept in place Kahr's ban against the National Socialists.

Hindenburg and European Reconciliation

Chancellor Stresemann moved against inflation. He set limits on spending and banned emergency currencies issued by local governments. A new currency, the Rentenmark, was established, backed by a mortgage on real estate and industrial equipment. The adequacy of these in backing up the currency was questionable. But, however unredeemable the currency, what mattered was the nation accepting currency, and ordinary Germans were willing to give accept the currency so long as it provided them with purchasing power. The new currency worked. And to help stabilize its currency, Germany pegged its value relative to the U.S. dollar.

Included in the limits on spending was the end of payments to the unemployed. Some Social Democrats were hostile to the new money policy, believing that it favored the rich. Some bankers, industrialists and Stock Exchange speculators were interested in maintaining inflation and were also hostile, and some of the speculators went bankrupt. With the stabilization of the new currency came a rise in the cost of labor, and unemployment quickly rose to 1,500,000. And, abandoned by the Social Democrats, the rise in unemployment was followed in December, 1923, by the fall Stresemann's government.

A question of Reconciliation and Economic Recovery

Another centrist government was formed, and Stresemann remained in the new government as foreign minister. Stresemann urged reconciliation and cooperation with France. Despite hostile opinion among his fellow Germans, he announced to the international community his government's willingness to obey Germany's obligations as stated in the Versailles Treaty. Aware of France's fear of Germany, he announced the intention of his government to meet as far as possible France's concern over its military security. He spoke of Europe's economic interdependence and of Germany's need for a step by step move toward regaining its independence and freedom of action within the European community.

Stresemann's policy of moderation and conciliation worked. The British recognized that Germany's economic recovery was in their interest, and they wanted to help Germany. A move toward economic recovery in the world was stimulating a greater desire for international amity by some other men of influence. Both Britain and Italy had become disenchanted with France's intransigence. Mussolini was wondering about the possibility of a future war against France. He was interested in Italy recovering Tunis and Corsica, and he was exploring the possibility of an alliance with Germany.

An international commission chaired by a Chicago banker, Charles G. Dawes, was named to re-examine the problem of Germany's reparation payments. Dawes had been chief of supply procurement for the American Expeditionary Force during World War I, and he was popular among the French. The French were also looking forward to a sustainable economic recovery in Germany, and they designed a flexible plan that would spread Germany's reparation payments across many years based on Germany's ability to pay, with no payment required for the plan's first year. France received assurances of payment in the form of mortgages on German railroads and heavy industries, and an agreement was made that Germany would re-establish control over its border customs and its railroads in the Ruhr. John Maynard Keynes of Britain, and many others, liked the plan, while many Frenchmen believed that their government had been too lenient with the Germans.

France's government was now a Leftist coalition, its premier and foreign minister being the moderate and conciliatory Edouard Herriot, a man, unlike Poincaré, in the habit of displaying human warmth. The Dawes plan went into effect in September 1924, and France began withdrawing from its occupation of Germany's Ruhr and returning to Germany its normal communications and transport connections.

Elections for Parliament in Germany, in December 1924, brought a drop in seats held by the Communists and the National Socialists. The Communists, whose seats had increased from four to sixty-five during the crises of 1923, dropped to 45. Seats for the National Socialists fell from 32 to 14. The moderate Social Democrats also lost seats, which dropped from 130 to 103. Germany's rightist Nationalist Party were the winners, increasing their seats to 131 and becoming the largest party in the Germany's parliament - the Reichstag. The centrist parties held fewer seats, but they remained well represented.

Early in 1925 President Ebert died, and the Nationalist Party urged Hindenburg to run for the presidency, hoping they would benefit from his popularity. For many Germans Hindenburg was still a national hero, and the conservatism of most German voters resulted in his being elected. Hindenburg took office as President in May, repeating what he had told voters during the campaign: swearing to devote all his strength to the well-being of the German people, to protect them from harm, to maintain the Constitution and laws, and to conscientiously fulfill his duty and be just to all. "So help me God."

The election of Hindenburg was received calmly in Britain, but the French were agitated, many of them seeing Germany as having displayed its warlike instincts. And French newspapers continued to describe Germany as unregenerate and as plotting day by day to avenge their defeat in the war.

Avoiding another war was an issue for many in Britain as well as for the French. In Britain, Winston Churchill was complaining that sooner or later Germany would re-arm and that France might want to war against Germany to prevent this. And, Churchill argued, Britain should not put itself in the position of having to support France in another war against Germany. Britain, he said, should tell the French that the more they are friends with Germany the more Britain will be a friend of France. Churchill appeared to believe that a prosperous and contented German nation was less of a danger to the world, but in 1925 he also observed danger in Germany. He wrote that Germany was united by "an intense hatred of France." He recognized Germany's greater military potential vis-à-vis than France, and he spoke of  "enormous contingents of German youth growing to military manhood year by year …inspired by the fiercest sentiments."

In the interest of maintaining peace, Britain, Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia met at Locarno, in Switzerland. The foreign ministers - including Stresemann - established good personal relations. Mussolini appeared to play a responsible role in European diplomacy. They put the World War behind them, never using the words "allies" or "enemies." They were attempting the reconciliation that should have been made at Paris in 1919. Stresemann was eager to see France satisfied on the issue of its security, knowing that this would help Germany win what it could in the evacuation of the French from the Rhineland. And France agreed to evacuate the Rhineland by the first weeks of 1926. Germany, in turn, agreed to leave the Rhineland demilitarized. The participants at Locarno agreed to respect one-another's borders - the borders created at the Paris Conference in 1919. They agreed to cooperate against any aggressor to whatever extent geography and military capabilities allowed. They agreed that disputes that could not be solved by negotiations were to be submitted for arbitration to the League of Nations. And it was agreed that Germany would enter the League of Nations.

The Pact of Locarno was received with skepticism by many in France. And in the Soviet Union it was viewed with hostility, suspicious Bolsheviks, among them Stalin, believing that Germany was abandoning its Rapallo agreements for a new orientation westward and that the other powers had cozied up to Germany for the purpose of isolating the Soviet Union.

At Locarno, Stresemann had done what was necessary to get what he wanted for Germany. He had demonstrated to the other nations Germany's good will. But when he returned home to Germany he found that he was the object of hostility. The public would have preferred the prewar style of  diplomacy that had led to Germany's isolation. Rightists denounced Stresemann for having given away Alsace and Lorraine and other border lands - matters already agreed to at Paris. The Nationalists, who had been part of a coalition government, withdrew from the government. Ludendorff denounced the agreement at Locarno as a "shame and dishonor." Communists opposed it believing it would put Germany into a camp opposed to the Soviet Union. Hindenburg had no enthusiasm for it. Stresemann argued that the pact would keep France and Britain from uniting against Germany, and  - despite the opposition of the Nationalists, Communists and National Socialists - he managed to obtain the Reichstag's ratification of the Locarno agreement.

In January 1926, Germany applied officially for membership in the League of Nations. In September, Stresemann gave his maiden address before the League. And that same year - 1926 - he became the first German to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which he shared with France's foreign minister, Aristide Briand.

Hitler and Ludendorff to 1927

Hitler had learned a lesson that some others were to ignore: that an armed uprising in a democracy was not the way to power. Hitler admitted the coup had been a mistake. He thought now of gaining power through legitimate means - through electioneering. Hitler, Ludendorff and Roehm had been put on trial in Munich in 1924, a trial well reported in newspapers across Germany. Hitler made the most of the trial, presenting his ideas to the court and the court letting him speak endlessly. Hitler became a celebrity. He accepted full responsibility while modestly putting himself second to the heroic Ludendorff. He described himself as having had a purity of purpose, as the destroyer of Marxism, seeking salvation for the fatherland. The conservative, nationalistic judges were impressed by what Hitler had to say. The court freed Ludendorff and sentenced Hitler to five years in prison, to be eligible for parole in six months. And Hitler was fined a mere 200 marks.

Hitler was sent to Landsberg Prison, where he was treated as an honored guest. There he read Treitschke, the racist writings of Housten Chamberlain, Karl Marx, Otto von Bismarck, and the memoirs of generals and statesmen. In prison he wrote his book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle) which he dictated to his visitor and worshipping friend, Rudolf Hess. Hitler was released after eight and a half months. And the German government's plans to deport Hitler after his release from prison came to nothing as Austria refused to take him.

Ludendorff got himself elected to parliament in May 1924. He split with the National Socialists, feeling they were insufficiently anti-Catholic, Ludendorff believing that the Catholics were a greater danger than the Jews. And he continued attacking the Jews and the Freemasons. He ran for the presidency in 1925, and he received only slightly more than one percent of the vote.

The National Socialist party had been outlawed in much of Germany, but it continued as before under other names. In 1925, with a rise in economic well-being and a relaxation of tensions, both the National Socialists and the Communist parties were legalized, except in Bavaria. Hitler continued as party Führer, usually more relaxed than he had been earlier in the twenties, becoming tense only occasionally when he detected what he thought was a challenge to his leadership within the National Socialist political party. He received contributions from a miniscule minority among Germany's wealthy, and some motherly women admirers of Hitler the heroic veteran and patriot were happy to feed him cakes. He was comfortable and recognized, in contrast to his insecurity in the years between the death of his mother and the Great War. One woman feeding him cakes was a widow in her sixties named Carola Hoffman, who lived in a Munich suburb and had been a sort of foster mother since 1920. Another was Frau Bechstein, the wife of a Berlin piano manufacturer, who supported and mothered him, and Frau Fictoria Kirksen who spent a fortune on his career.

In March 1927, Bavaria lifted its ban against Hitler speaking. And in his first speech in Munich he attacked the compromises made at Locarno, calling the agreements signed there as a "slave treaty." He told his audience that the nation wanted leadership, that it wanted a flag. He spoke of the ineptitude of parliaments. Germany, he said, had neither a flag nor anything that could be called a government. And he displayed an exaggerated sense of persecution, associating the persecutions of the National Socialists to the persecution of the early Christians.

Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, was selling about as well as could be expected. In it he described the world as a struggle for survival, as a clash between peoples and between races. He wrote of the state as being the instrument of preservation for the race. He stated that "Germany will either be a world power or not be at all." In Mein Kampf, Hitler rejected the idea of Germany competing for colonies. He described colonies as ill suited for settling Europeans on a large scale. He wrote that the only sound territorial policy for Germany was "the acquisition of new soil in Europe proper." He added that any notion that such acquisition could be gained other than by fighting was illusory and a symptom of a loss of the virtues that "form and preserve a state." The League of Nations, he wrote, embodied "fruitless hopes and illusions." Referring to gaining living space (lebensraum) in the form of territory, he wrote that "We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago" and "turn our gaze toward the land in the east."

Prosperity and Prospect for Peace

Germany benefited from Britain's coal strike in 1926, Germany moving into coal markets that had belonged to the British. And trade improved for Germany when the "Spirit of Locarno" spread to economic circles. Nevertheless - unlike before the war - Germany was an importer of capital, much of it from the United States in the form of loans and investments. Foreign investors bought German securities and deposited much money in German banks, helping supply Germany with capital for industrial expansion and local construction.

German industries were consolidating, eight of the principal chemical and dye firms merging into the famous I. G. Farben Corporation, which monopolized the chemical business in Germany, Central Europe and elsewhere. Iron, coal and steel companies merged with the great steel combine, United Steel Works. German industry's modernization of equipment was the envy of the world - a modernization that was to serve Germany in the thirties under Hitler.

The German mark became one of Europe's more stable currencies. Industrial output increased, along with exports. And wages rose for the average German. The German public began buying radios, electronic household goods, automobiles, and tickets to movies. Germany began building municipal swimming pools, stadiums, public squares, dance halls, convention centers, hotels, airports, theaters and museums.

Germany was now a nation "on the go," functioning well enough to earn the respect that it had not had since the time of Bismarck, with Germans seen from abroad not so much as "the Huns" of the Great War but more as hardworking, dependable people and as leaders in the world in art, the theater, cinema, literature and science. Abroad, historians and others were revising their opinions about World War I, while the Germans were recognized for their scholarship in the social and natural sciences, with Max Weber in sociology, Friedrich Meinecke in history, Albert Einstein in physics and Max Planck in mathematics.

A new law was passed in Germany, with help from conservatives, that set up a system of unemployment insurance, drawn from funds amassed by employers and employees - a program that would protect a person for six months after losing his job. A system of labor boards was created for the mediation of labor disputes.

And with the good times came hedonism, especially in Berlin. There, as in Britain and the United States, were flappers, women smoking and wearing shorter skirts. American jazz drove the waltz from the ballrooms. The Charleston and Black Bottom were danced. In the cabarets, comedians ridiculed everyone. There were transvestite balls, a few boy prostitutes and some women who were described as engaging in "every form of perversion." Again, conservatives and rural folks were appalled with the big city. They called Berlin a cesspool.

Many - but not all - National Socialists were also appalled by the immorality, the National Socialists referring to what was happening in Berlin as the Bolshevization of culture, while the Communists described it as capitalist decadence. Hitler was also appalled. He was opposed also to suggestive advertising and anything else that stimulated unclean thoughts and unhealthful living.

Meanwhile, the good times were not secure. The economic boom was built on less than a solid foundation. Despite the prosperity, Germany's middle class was making only limited recovery from its financial devastation by the hyperinflation of 1923. In 1928, German agriculture had only reached its prewar level and remained stagnate, despite protective tariffs. Too much of the boom was built on foreign capital, with German entrepreneurs not accumulating enough of their own working capital. Germans were accumulating debts. Labor unions were forcing up wage rates, and a spiraling rise in wages and prices appeared. Modernization of equipment was resulting in a decreased need of skilled workers. And by 1929 three million had lost their jobs.

The Prospect for Peace

The rise in prosperity had not diminished Germany's dislike for reparation payments. In 1928, Stresemann requested a revision of the Dawes Plan. And in 1929, a new plan was laid, called the Young Plan, named after the chair of the committee established to create the plan, Owen D. Young of the United States. In the Young Plan a date was set for the withdrawal of Allied forces from Germany, to begin in September 1929 and to be completed no later than June 30, 1930. Reparation payments were to be spread to 1988. However reasonable this may have seemed to those other than the Germans, any reminder or agreement concerning the reparations payments angered the most Germans, and this was a propaganda opportunity for the super-nationalists. Germany's wealthy Nationalist party politician and newspaper publisher, Alfred Hugenburg, formed a national committee to fight the plan. Among those he asked to join was Adolf Hitler, and this gave Hitler an opportunity for nationwide publicity.

With German industry modernizing and Hitler waiting in the wings, hope for peace in Europe depended upon the continuation of reasonably adequate well-being in Germany. And  peace would be served too by power in Germany being in the hands of moderates. But the presidency in Germany remained in the hands of Hindenburg, who was 82 in 1930 and even less creative in mind than he had been in 1918. And Hindenburg still hated those moderate socialists who might have served in maintaining the republic. Elections had reduced the number of National Socialists in parliament to twelve, and the Social Democrats held 152 seats in Parliament, making them the largest party. But not wanting to create a government with Socialists, Hindenburg would side with those who looked for leadership among the rightwing of Germany's politicians.

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