The German Question, Part One Hundred Thirteen

The Rise of Hitler and The Nazis" Part Two/B-3
"The Depression Gives Hitler A Boost"

I hope parts of this article aren't too "dry" for some of you, but the first German attempt at democracy and their basic political system of those times is important, and this article provides some continuity leading to Hitler coming to power, and his time in power will help us to answer, at least up until the present, "the German Question;" that is, "Who is a German?"

Paul von Hindenburg, the elderly field marshal and World War One hero, was elected president of Germany in 1925.* The German constitution provided for a president elected directly by a vote of the people, who, as head of state, would direct foreign policy, be supreme commander of the military, appoint the chancellor and other government ministers (cabinet members), and call for new Reichstag elections in advance of a scheduled election by dissolving any sitting Reichstag, if stalemate existed. The presidential term was seven years. The cabinet, led by the chancellor, was to manage the various governmental affairs on a day-to-day basis. The Reichstag (parliament) was elected, on a proportional basis, by a vote of the people.** The Reichsrat (Reich Council) consisted of representatives from the various German states to give them a more direct voice in governance. The interaction of these various entities is far too complex to cover here, but for a few years things worked fairly smoothly. With a large number of political parties on the ballot, and an increasingly divided electorate, no party was able to receive a majority, and thus lead a government backed by the public. Coalition governments were formed, and by the time of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Weimar system was again on shaky ground, and about to get worse.

Hindenburg, an old time conservative, was never all that friendly toward Germany's newly found democracy. He had grown up and served at a time of authoritarian government, and his position as one of the landed aristocracy (the "Junkers") surely didn't make him want to democratize anything; rule by the nobility was just fine with him. The government's use of right wing militias to help subdue communist uprisings in the early years of the republic only served to reinforce in a substantial part of the middle and upper classes the perception that the political right, NOT the democratic government, had saved the country from Bolshevism. Government bureaucrats and members of the judiciary, many having served under the Kaiser's government (authoritarian), tended to favor the political right, no matter their tactics. In the previous article, remember that General Ludendorff, Hitler, and other Nazi leaders involved in the failed "Beer Hall Putsch," all either got off without serving prison time, or got light sentences more appropriate for petty theft than for treason (remember, they tried to overthrow the government!). This shows how the political right still had control of the legal system, and it was really an enemy of democracy.

With the beginnings of the Great Depression and mass unemployment, these factors began to come together to besiege the German republic and its attempts to bring democracy to the German people. In Reichstag elections in 1928 (pre-Depression), the Nazis won only 12 seats out of nearly 500, but in 1930 (the sitting Reichstag had been dissolved, so another election was required) they won 107 seats of 577, and in the 1932 election (the sitting Reichstag had again been dissolved) they won 230 seats out of just over 600.

Next... "The Nightmare Begins: Hitler Becomes Chancellor of Germany"

* The first president of the republic had been Friedrich Ebert (a member of the Social Democratic Party), but he had not actually been elected by a direct vote of the people, but rather he was elected in 1919 by the National Assembly (a forerunner of the parliament), whose delegates had been elected by a vote of the nation. Since the new democratic governmental system was just forming, it was intended that his term would be only temporary, and a true national election for president would be held in the early 1920s. The political shakiness of Germany in the early 1920s (the government literally feared the right wing extremist groups, which actually carried out the murders of government leaders and government supporters) caused the postponement of that election, and the extension of Ebert's term. The Reichstag (the parliament, elected by the people) voted in large numbers for this measure, although it actually went against the constitution, but the measure passed by the constitutional legal requirement to temporarily override provisions of the constitution by a two-thirds vote. The Reichstag set the election for summer, 1925, and just a couple of months prior to that, Ebert died in office.

** Delegates were not voted upon directly by name, but rather by political party, and each party had lists of members who would claim seats in numerical order. The country was divided into election districts and delegates were apportioned one for each 60,000 votes received by that political party within any given district, with the actual delegates receiving seats according to their numerical place on that party's list. Delegates were to serve four year terms, provided that new elections were not called before that time. The overall number of seats in any given Reichstag was determined by voter turnout; thus the total number of delegates varied from election to election. What all of this boils down to is this example: Party XYZ received 182,000 votes in Electoral District 1; therefore, the party is entitled to three seats from that district in the Reichstag, and candidates 1, 2, & 3 on that party's list take those seats. The same party gets 120,000 votes (to keep this simple) in District 2, thus earning two seats from that district, with names 1 & 2 getting the seats. This is how it went for each political party in each district, and there were 35 districts. Just to confuse things, the 35 districts also were grouped into 17 larger, regional election districts, and further seats were apportioned from those larger districts, based upon "excess" votes. By that I mean, if Party XYZ received 220,000 votes in District 3, it only got 3 seats (3 x 60,000=180,000), but its 40,000 "excess" votes (220,000 minus 180,000) were combined with, let's say, 25,000 excess votes from District 4 to give it another seat in the larger grouping. Obviously the two districts had to be combined into a regional district for such to take place.

WORD HISTORY:
Flag-You may find this surprising, but there are four words of this spelling in English, some with both noun and verb forms, although by far the most common usage is the noun for a "cloth banner, usually square or rectangular, with some sort of emblem, of a nation, governmental entity, or organization." I'll deal with this one first. The ultimate origins of "flag" are unknown, which is more than a little startling, as it is very common in the Germanic languages in its various forms, and some of the other "flag" words I'll be covering are likely related to "flag" with this meaning. "Flag" may have been an English invention, initially as "flagge," derived from a relative of English "flicker," as Old English had "flacor," which had the notion of "flutter" (German still has "flackern," meaning "to flicker"). The idea then was, forms of the word spread along the coastal areas of northwestern Europe where there was much trade with the English. Dutch of circa 1500 had "vlagghe," and it meant "flag," Old Norse, the ancestor of the modern North Germanic languages, had "flögra," "to flap or whip about." English later developed a verb form, with the meaning, "to signal with a flag," but later in common usage also "by hand," as in "flag someone down." Further, the verb also means "to mark something with a flag." As I noted, it is quite common in the other Germanic languages: modern Dutch has "vlag;" German has "Flagge;" Low German Saxon and Frisian have "flagg," and some other Low German dialects have "flag;" Swedish, Icelandic and Norwegian have "flagg;" Danish has "flag." I'll deal with the other forms of the word "flag" in the next article of "The German Question."