Narrator: Let’s find out about despotism.
This man makes it his job to study these things.
Man: Well for one thing: avoid the comfortable
idea that the mere form of government can
safeguard a nation against despotism.
Nazis: Sieg Heil.
Sieg Heil.
Sieg Heil.
Man: When a competent observer looks for signs
of despotism in a community, he looks beyond
fine words and noble phrases.
People: for which it stands.
One nation, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.
This is a collaboration with Cypher, the Cynical
Historian.
To watch his piece on historical threats to
American democracy, click the card at the
end of this video.
Section 2 Article 37 of the Weimar Constitution
stipulated that without the approval of the
German Parliament, no member of that parliament
could be detained or arrested.
This wasn’t to absolve politicians of crimes.
They would be tried after the legislative
session ended.
But if no member of parliament could be detained,
no member could be removed for political reasons
to prevent them from voting.
It was a check against tyranny.
No member of the Reichstag would be limited
in their “personal liberty which might harm
the member’s ability to fulfil his mandate.”
In other words, to deprive the people of their
duly-elected representative-even if that representative
was accused of a crime- was to violate the
constitution of the Weimar Republic.
And yet, on March 23, 1933, several members
of the German Reichstag, Parliament, were
simply...gone.
I say several.
It was over 100.
Over 100 members were missing for the most
important vote of their career.
The legislation was profound, affecting the
control of budgeting, military, foreign relations,
even altering what could be considered against
the constitution.
The Reichstag was loud that day.
Not only were the members of the largest party
particularly rowdy, yelling for the immediate
passage of the legislation, but their supporters
were also ravenous and eager, standing both
outside and inside the chamber, patrolling
the doorways with German Shepherds.
Ready should anyone make the wrong decision.
The leader of the opposition rose to speak
against the measures.
The first sentence somewhat forced, as if
to exhale his nerves, but the rest delivered
deliberate and calm:
“We greet the persecuted and the oppressed.
We greet our friends in the Reich.
Your steadfastness and loyalty deserve admiration.
The courage of your convictions and your unbroken
optimism guarantee a brighter future.”
And so it ended.
Germany’s Weimar constitution was adopted
in 1919 after World War 1.
Section 2 Article 114 guaranteed deprivation
of liberty only based on law.
115 established the privacy in one’s own
home.
117- privacy in correspondence.
118- freedom of speech and the press.
123 & 124 freedom of assembly and association.
153- guarantee of property.
114,115,117,118,123,124,153- for fourteen
years the Weimar Republic tried to assure
these rights to its citizens.
The dismantling of those rights took only
hours.
Just after nightfall on February 27th, 1933,
nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels was with
the newly appointed Chancellor Adolf Hitler.
He wrote in his diary:
“In the evening I sit at home and work.
At 9, the führer comes for dinner.
We play music and have conversation.
Suddenly, a call from Dr. Hanfstaengl, ‘The
Reichstag is on fire!’.
I believe it to be a flight of fancy and refuse
to tell the führer…”
(2).
But it was no hallucination.
The Reichstag, the meeting place of the German
Parliament, was burning.
The dome standing above the words ‘to the
German people’ was hollowed.
The story in court went that at 9, the same
time Hitler arrived for his dinner with Goebbels,
a Dutch communist Marinus Van der Lubbe entered
the Reichstag building and went about setting
fires before being apprehended (3, p329).
After realizing the claims of fire in the
Reichstag weren’t fantasy, Goebbels claims
that he and Hitler raced there at 100 kilometers,
60 miles an hour.
There, before the burning building, outrages
were exchanged.
The officials were certain of a larger communist
plot; Bolsheviks were replicating their Russian
successes in Berlin.
Hitler is said to have exclaimed, “This
is a signal from God...If this fire, as I
believe, is the work of the Communists, then
we must crush out this murderous pest with
an iron fist.”
(4,5)
In terms of communists, subsequent trial and
historical documentation seem to prove that
Van der Lubbe acted alone.
The question of whether, in setting the fire,
Van der Lubbe was followed and unwittingly
aided by Nazis looking to take advantage of
the situation, is still a matter of historical
debate.
What no one questions is that the fire was
exactly what Hitler needed to consolidate
power before an election.
Within hours his cabinet sent off what came
to be known as the Reichstag Fire Decree.
It began with this: “On the basis of Article
48 paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the
German Reich, the following is ordered in
defense against Communist state-endangering
acts of violence: Articles 114, 115, 117,
118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution
of the German Reich are suspended until further
notice.”
Already in the streets of Berlin, Hitler’s
SA, the Sturmabteilung in their brown shirts,
were breaking down the doors of left-leaning
newspapers; 4,000 members of left political
opposition were arrested and carted away for
torture.
William L. Shirer, journalist and author of
the book, “The Rise and Fall of the Third
Reich” was present in Germany for the fire
and fallout in 1933, and I find his passage
here concise and poignant.
He writes:
“With all the resources of the national
and prussian governments at their disposal...the
Nazis carried on an election propaganda such
as Germany had never seen before.
For the first time the State-run radio carried
the voices of Hitler, Goering and Goebbels
to every corner of the land.
The streets, bedecked with swastika flags,
echoed to the tramp of the storm troopers.
There were mass rallies, torchlight parades,
the din of loudspeakers in the squares; The
billboards were plastered with flamboyant
Nazi posters and at night bonfires lit up
the hills.
The electorate was in turn cajoled with promises
of a German paradise, intimidated by the brown
terror in the streets, and frightened by ‘revelations’
about the communist ‘revolution,’” (6,
p194).
At this point you and I are left with profound
questions, ones that I, being perfectly honest,
don’t feel comfortable answering with authority.
What factors led to the fall of the German
republic, and was it inevitable?
What role did economics, institutions, and
individual leaders play in this?
There’s mythology here too.
There’s a Hitler-centric interpretation
of history that only Hitler and his dynamism
could lead to the Third Reich.
There’s German-centric interpretation, one
often espoused by the Nazis themselves, that
German history was pointing towards a savior,
a führer to lead them.
There were communists that saw the Third Reich
as a step towards capitalism’s collapse.
My goal in writing this video, and the goal
of Cypher the Cynical Historian in writing
his video for this collaboration, was not
to provide absolute answers, but rather to
facilitate a larger and more mature conversation
about authoritarianism.
So let’s go deeper with this topic.
By the time World War 1 ended in November
1918, roughly one fifth of Germany’s population
had served (7, p8).
As millions of malnourished men demobilized
from the front lines, they displaced female
workers who had taken up jobs in wartime factories.
Rationing and food shortages were the norm.
Fuel was short.
Veterans were isolated- many would carry physical
and psychological ailments for the rest of
their days.
But their government was preoccupied with
achieving better terms of surrender by appearing
more democratic and impressing the allied
powers.
Eric D. Weitz posits in his book about the
Weimar Republic that the pressure on the Kaiser
to abdicate at the end of the war, that the
push by generals for Germany’s democratization
after World War 1, it was all a cynical exploit-
an attempt to impress the allied powers, and
ultimately, to move blame for the war defeat
onto an elected body.
If civilian government negotiated peace, the
military could obfuscate incompetency onto
them (7, p15).
Indeed, many Germans came to believe that
the military hadn’t lost the war, but rather
the civilian government had stabbed the German
Army in the back.
And of course this myth often came seasoned
with antisemitism.
Germany skidded into a Republican system of
government.
In a hurry and without authorization, a Social
Democrat named Philipp Scheidemann interrupted
lunch in November 1918, stepped out onto a
balcony of the Reichstag overlooking a crowd,
and declared the German Republic.
Just down the road, the future founder of
the German Communist party made a rival declaration
of a “Free Socialist Republic” in the
Soviet model.
In his book “The Weimar Republic”, Detlev
Peukert asserts the chaos, the suffering of
the populace, the rival declarations of the
Republic- it all foreshadowed a “lack of
legitimacy”.
He says, “it suggests...a lack of active
commitment to the new order.”
(8, p49)
Despite democratization, the terms of the
treaty of Versailles were oppressive.
When the victorious allied powers convened
in France to determine a post-World War 1
order, Germany’s fate was prescribed: 15%
of its territory forfeit, its military disarmed,
and the reparations to be paid abstractly
large.
Lastly, Germany would assume all guilt for
the Great War, 100% of the carnage, 100% of
the inhumanity.
Germany’s.
The humiliation of taking full responsibility
for the entire war, along with the widespread
suspicion among the public that Germany’s
parliamentary leadership had forced the Kaiser
and his generals to surrender, left the German
Republic, with its progressive constitution,
damaged before the ink had dried.
There was immediate division.
The Social Democratic Party won the most votes
in the 1920 elections, but it was only about
22%, so they had to form a coalition with
moderate parties (9).
Because the vote threshold was so low to earn
a seat in the Reichstag, many small parties
had representation in the chamber; perhaps
this was a purer form of democracy, but this
particular distillation led to difficulties
in actual governance.
Weakness and political splintering became
the norm.
There were 14 coalition governments in 12
years, until 1932, and after that, subsequent
ballots failed to bring about governance until
Adolf Hitler was made Chancellor (7, p104).
One of the largest challenges for any Weimar
government was the payment of exorbitant war
reparations imposed by the allies, which amounted
to $33 billion, approaching a half-trillion
in today’s currency (10,11).
Rather than raise additional revenues from
the post-war population, the government took
out high-interest loans from the United States.
The mark had already lost a third of its value
by 1919, and the introduction of reparation
payments on devalued currency began a spiral
of inflation.
While initial inflation might have been beneficial
for debtors or employers offering higher wages,
hyperinflation kicked in over four years.
At its worst in November 1923, 1 American
dollar was worth 4.2 trillion marks.
Richard J. Evans in ‘The Coming of the Third
Reich’ writes: “A woman sitting down in
a cafe might order a cup of coffee for 5,000
marks and be asked to give the waiter 8,000
for it when she got up to pay,” (3, p106).
In December 1923, a new currency, tied to
gold, was issued, but the damage to the German
mindset was done.
Political splintering, national shame, and
economic suffering were boons to a growing
organization in Bavaria, the National Socialist
German Workers’ Party.
William Shirer described their first party
platform as a “hodgepodge”, a “catchall”
for “workers, the lower middle class”
and the poor (6, p41).
It called for a strong national government,
unification of all German people, the end
of the Versailles treaty, and radical nationalism.
Their charismatic leader, Adolf Hitler, first
blipped onto the national stage in 1923 after
a failed attempt to take over the Bavarian
government in Southern Germany.
He and his Nazi collaborators declared a ‘national
revolution’ in the Bürgerbräukeller, held
leading officials in the Bavarian government
hostage, and clashed with Munich police near
the center of town.
While the coup, known today as the Beer Hall
Putsch, failed resoundingly, Hitler’s subsequent
trial and imprisonment hoisted him onto the
national stage.
He used his media-covered trial as a platform
for Nazism, and his 8-month imprisonment as
time to work on his book, Mein Kampf (11).
The rambling pages required heavy editing
to maintain coherence, but broad goals were
clear:
A restoration of German honor through the
elimination of the Versailles Treaty, a race-based
state with a counter-centrifugal führer at
the top, a drive to secure more ‘living
space’, new ‘land and soil’ for the
German people, and a hatred of Jews and Marxists
whom Hitler often conflated.
It was of limited literary merit and it was
bigoted, but it wasn’t baseless, baseless
in the sense that it had no cultural underpinning,
it did.
Hitler took the idea from one of his very
early teachers that all German peoples, such
as Austrians, be united in a single Reich.
The idea that the German Army had been betrayed
during World War 1 by Jewish parliamentary
criminals was shared by many.
He wasn’t the first to espouse a scientific
racism which placed Aryan and Nordic races
above the rest.
And he wasn’t the only nationalist to be,
as he wrote, “captivated immediately”
by the Germanic heroes of operas by Richard
Wagner (12).
He encapsulated a feeling that German greatness
had been lost, the West itself, Oswald Spengler
wrote, had declined; Hitler promised not only
to restore it, but to go much further.
It was a magniloquent medley of pseudoscientific
ideas and cultural phenomena, soon to be boosted
by the political chaos of the age.
But not quite yet.
Mein Kampf’s initially printing in 1925
sold roughly 10,000 copies, and dipped to
only 3,000 by 1928 (6, 81).
Low sales weren’t just a product of Hitler’s
slog writing style; life in Germany’s republic
wasn’t all negative as he portrayed.
Particularly for women, who obtained full
voting rights through the constitution, and
who in principle, according to Article 109
“have the same rights and obligations”
as men.
Though they struggled for equal wages in the
workforce, they lived less restrictive private
lives, even held public office (17).
Such circumstances didn’t apply across the
board, particularly for rural and poor women,
but Helen Boak writes in “Women in the Weimar
Republic” that, “The rights granted to
women in the revolution and by the Constitution
blurred the pre-war gender order,” (17,297).
The remainder of the 20’s was a time of
cultural explosion, particularly in Berlin.
Weitz writes that “Weimar was Berlin, Berlin
Weimar,” (7,41), meaning that the nation’s
largest city was the center of its short-lived
dynamism.
It offered the best of Germany’s Republic:
countless museums, theaters, opera houses,
beautiful squares with cafes and aspiring
artists, architecture, American jazz, risque
nude shows, and esoteric spirituality.
The war haunts Berliners; there’s an awareness
that even the greatest wealth can evaporate
with inflation.
‘Life is terrible.
Live the moment’.
For this reason Berlin also displayed the
worst of Weimar: sprawling poverty, political
violence, sexual exploitation and disease.
And because of Berlin’s prominence, it became
the center of a political war, a war for the
soul 
of Germany.
In the mid 1920’s, Berlin contained the
largest communist movement outside Moscow
(13, 386).
‘Red Berlin’s’ Communist Party boasted
a quarter million members, and a cash flow
for party activities straight from the Kremlin.
Soviet leadership expected Berlin to be ground
zero of Germany’s own Bolshevik revolution.
When Hitler sent Joseph Goebbels to Berlin
in 1927 to win the red city for the Nazi cause,
he faced a highly organized communist establishment
equipped with two-dozen political newspapers
and a legacy solidified by the martyrdom of
Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in the
aftermath of World War 1.
Berlin was skeptical, nay, barely aware of
the Nazis.
They scraped 1.5% of Berlin’s vote in the
1928 elections (13, 389).
Berlin was on the move- who had time for the
apocalyptic hysteria of these Bavarian extremists?
The Weimar government of the late 1920’s
was on the move as well.
Inflation was back under control, and new
arrangements for extending reparation payments
were agreed.
Sure a lot of governing happened through emergency
decree when the Reichstag was deadlocked,
but there were glimmers of functionality.
The Reichstag voted overwhelmingly in favor
of unemployment insurance for workers, and
another law granted mothers 12 weeks of maternity
leave (7,108).
As long as Western Europe and America continued
to prosper, the Weimar Republic might have
repaired its social inequality and healed
its war wounds over time.
But it wasn’t to be.
In America, the Wall Street crash in October
1929, you can pick your cliche: ‘sent shockwaves
through the global economy’, ‘set off
a domino effect’.
When the global depression arrived in Germany
in 1929 it produced catastrophic collapse.
As writer Heinrich Hauser put it, “An almost
unbroken chain of homeless men extends the
whole length of the great Hamburg-Berlin highway.
There are so many of them that they could
shout a message from Hamburg to Berlin by
word of mouth.”
Unemployment numbers shot over 3 million by
the end of the year, a statistic that would
jump over 6 million, around 30%, by late 1932
(14)(15,216).
In sync with the global depression, foreign
capital ceased to arrive in Germany.
The national government was unable and unwilling
to take out more loans or pay reparations
in full.
Wages fell.
Businesses closed.
Banks failed (15,216).
And with the evaporation of the middle class,
so too dried the political middle.
Two parties benefited most from the economic
fallout.
First were the communists, whose official
numbers tripled between 1929 and 1932 (3,238).
As the depression took hold they mobilized
to the unemployed, recruiting the downtrodden
while marking territory in neighborhoods they
defended with force.
To meet their challenge came the Nazis.
Goebbels turned up the heat in Berlin.
He engaged the paramilitary wing of the party
in street brawls meant to show heroism against
what he called the communist hordes.
These weren’t mere scuffles: the SA brought
brass knuckles, clubs, and metal bludgeons
to the poor and middle class neighborhoods
of the capital.
They set things on fire.
People were being killed in street violence
everyday, and Goebbels portrayed any SA casualties
as martyrs for the cause of National Socialism.
Ultimately, though Nazis and Communists were
diametrically opposed to the point of murdering
each other on the streets, they did share
one common goal: the death of the Republic.
Not only was violence becoming normative,
but many preferred the Weimar constitution
burn-- that a new Germany be born of the ashes.
In the economic turmoil, the Weimar government
was barely functional, and so the SA and its
various cover organizations acted with impunity.
The nazis were setting themselves up as the
only saviors from the chaos to which they
themselves were contributing.
Nazism, which appealed to only a minority
of voters in early 1929, was now more salient.
The National Socialists pulled nearly 6% in
Berlin Council Elections in November of ‘29.
Then more than doubling- 14.7% of Berlin’s
vote in 1930 elections.
Hitler could now pull enormous crowds in so-called
‘Red Berlin’, a place he wouldn’t enter
just a few years prior.
Fighting intensified.
Before the July 1932 federal elections, the
clash between the SA and the communists reached
its zenith.
In Faust’s Metropolis, Alexandra Richie
says the SA came equipped with “rubber hoses,
brass knuckles, and iron rods,” with 400
street fights the month of the election, and
nine deaths on election day alone (13,400).
With bodies cleared from the street, the Nazis
emerged as the largest party, netting 37%
of the country’s vote.
Their closest competitors, the Social Democrats
led by Otto Wels, brought in 25%, followed
by the Communists at 14%.
Not only did Nazis win a plurality, but for
the first time a majority of the German electorate
cast ballots for parties (the Nazis and Communists)
that wanted to do away with the Weimar Republic
completely.
They participated in the system so they could
get rid of the system.
Though denied the chance to be Chancellor
directly after July’s election, Hitler wouldn’t
need to wait long for another chance.
Yet another election was called by embattled
Chancellor Franz von Papen for November 1932,
just four months later, and once again the
Nazis emerged as the largest party.
This time, after dramatic negotiation, Hitler
was able to form a government and emerge as
Chancellor.
Not eight weeks later, in February 1933, Goebbels
attended that dinner with his führer; the
Reichstag burned.
Optimists might have believed the political
repression as a result of that fire was only
temporary.
Sure, rights of privacy, speech, press, and
property were under assault, but various Weimar
governments had imposed censorship and banned
parties before.
The moderates in Hitler’s cabinet would
hold him back.
One such person who might have believed this
was Communist Party chairman, Ernst Torgler,
who showed up a day after the fire to a police
station to plead his case (13,411).
Naturally, the fact he was not involved in
the fire was of no consequence.
The SA threw him into one of Berlin’s prisons
now filling with Nazi opposition.
So flooded were the facilities that so-called
‘wild concentration camps’ were conceived
to house victims of nazi sadism; the camps
were the first of many to come (16).
With key provisions of the Weimar constitution
suspended, Hitler went about formally dismantling
the rest.
The Nazi Party proposed to the Reichstag,the
Ermächtigungsgesetz, the Enabling Act.
If passed, the Enabling Act would give Adolf
Hitler the power to pass laws without the
Reichstag.
It would be the final nail in the coffin of
the German Republic.
All he needed to legalize his dictatorship
was a ‘yes’ vote of the Reichstag to do
so.
The Reichstag had to pass the Enabling Act.
He needed the German parliament to effectively
vote itself out of existence by a two-thirds
majority (3,351).
They scheduled the vote for March 23rd, 1933
in the Kroll Opera House, the temporary meeting
place of the Reichstag after the fire.
Which brings you and me full circle.
Section 2 Article 37 of the Weimar Constitution
stipulated that without the approval of the
German Parliament, no member of that parliament
could be detained or arrested for political
reasons to prevent them from voting.
It was a check against tyranny.
But on the day of vote of the Enabling Act,
over 100 members of the Reichstag were gone.
As was the case with Ernst Torgler, the head
of the communist faction, other elected communists
were in prison, others were simply too frightened
to show up.
Over 100 members were missing for the most
important vote of their career.
The Kroll Opera House was loud that day.
The nazi members inside the chamber were yelling
for passage of the Enabling Act, but even
outside, members of the SA were patrolling
with German Shepards.
Hitler was present, and gave a speech in support
of his own legalized tyranny.
But not before a speech by the leader of the
opposition, Otto Wels.
A quarter of his elected Social Democrats
were in prison or stayed home.
The threat of his own arrest clearly amplified
by news of the torture the SA was inflicting
on political opponents.
But he stood- spoke against the law.
Wels promised that ‘unbroken optimism’
would ‘guarantee a brighter future’.
He gave what was to be the final opposition
speech in the Weimar Republic...with Adolf
Hitler looking on.
So I’m going to end this exploration with
some of the actual audio of that speech.
The applause is that of his fellow Social
Democrats.
In this section, he’s speaking of violence
to enforce peace, and equal protection under
the law.
“A dictated peace is followed by few blessings,
least of all at home.
A real national community cannot be based
on it.
Its first prerequisite is equal law.
The government may protect itself against
raw excesses of polemics; it may rigorously
prevent incitements to acts of violence and
acts of violence in and of themselves.
This may happen, if it is done toward all
sides evenly and impartially, and if one foregoes
treating defeated opponents as though they
were proscribed.
Freedom and life can be taken from us, but
not our honor.”
Hey, Cypher here, the Cynical Historian.
Democracies, both in the Weimar Republic and
the United States, have been subverted in
significant ways that we ought to consider.
Though we don’t want to draw direct parallels,
we hope these two episodes lend a particular
interpretation on the ways that democracies
can collapse.
Click the card to come check out the video
on my channel.
