Some notable events, 1932
January 1: The US Post Office releases a set of 12 stamps to celebrate the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth.
January 7 : Salgado, Barroso, and Boaventura meet in Rio de Janeiro in person for the first time. High on the “terrible tropical trio’s” minds is the formation of a new party, a genuinely Brazilian fascist movement.
January 9 : Sakuradamon Incident: an assassination attempt against Emperor Hirohito by a Korean independence activist Lee Bong-chang. Hirohito is severely injured, and Prime MInister Saito Makoto resigns to take responsibility for the lapse in security. Okada Keisuke becomes the Prime Minister and attempts to keep Japan on a democratic and moderate path while strengthening military capabilities.
January 10 : The Japanese officers invited to inspect and advise Emperor Haile Selassie give him a grim prognosis in the event of war with Britain, France, or Italy. Of particular concern is Ethiopia’s woefully inadequate stockpiles of artillery and machine guns as well as a nearly nonexistent air force and tank corps.
January 13: Specifications for a new five tonne light tank for the German Army are made in secret based off of data collected in under the table arrangements with the Soviet Union. Though technically forbidden by the treaty of Versailles, the German government is increasingly interested in rearmament.
January 20 : Siamese King Rama VII puts a timetable for the transition of Thailand into a constitutional liberal democratic state in the hopes of easing the tremendous tensions besetting a depression devastated Kingdom. His Supreme Council of the State however, rejects this as well as his constitution drafted with the aid of some of the Kingdom’s princes and American advisors.
January 21 : Japan announces the formation of the Imperial Japanese tank corps with the ambition to capitalise on the capabilities of the tank after having been impressed with the performance of a number of foreign bought vehicles against the Chinese National Revolutionary Army.
January 28 : After months of struggle, the strikes across South Africa are ended with a series of hard fought concessions, including promises to end the pay gap between black and white workers and to continue to provide work for South Africans; whether in the farms, mines, or dockyards, or in newer industries.
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February 1: Brave New World, the fifth novel by writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley, is published, a harsh satire and subversion of utopian fiction, particularly those of HG Wells.
February 4: The first Winter Olympics held in the United States opens in Lake Placid, New York.
February 15: House Internal Security Committee chairman Hamilton Fish announces he will run against incumbent Herbert Hoover for the Republican nomination, citing the increased threat of “foreign interference” and Hoover’s mismanagement of the Depression.
February 20 : Japanese general election leads to a consolidated majority for the Rikken Seiyukai and further repression of the Japanese Communist Party. The Rikken Seiyukai continues support for the independent Okada Keisuke in exchange for cabinet seats.
February 22: Douglas MacArthur is awarded the first Purple Heart, designated for soldiers wounded in battle, after personally advocating for such an award.
February 29: The Communist Party of El Salvador, the de facto party of the country’s peasantry, votes to delay any attempted uprising until after the United States general election in November. The difficult task of convincing peasant groups to wait begins.
March 5: In a meeting in Tokyo, numerous secret organizations such as the Sakurakai and the League of Blood combine to form the Showa Ishinkai (“Showa Restoration Society”). Prince Chichibu becomes its de facto leader
March 13: The first round of the German Presidential elections ends with no candidate achieving a convincing lead.
_March 20:_The New York Times leaks a list shared within the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America of individuals that are considered too “politically radical” for their films to be distributed or for studios to hire, confirming rumors of a “blacklist” since the induction of the “Breen Code”. Among the list are major stars including Charlie Chaplin and James Cagney, as well as those like writers Dashiell Hammett and Langston Hughes, as well as animator Walt Disney, mostly affiliated with the Workers’ Photo and Film League and other Hollywood based communist organizations..
March 24: Former actress and dancer Leni Riefenstahl makes her directorial debut with Das Blaue Licht , with herself in the lead role.
April 6 : The 150th anniversary of the Thai Chakri dynasty is held to significant fanfare, but is undercut by significant tensions between the feudal aristocracy and the western educated liberals and a young socialist movement.
April 10: With the Nazi vote shockingly high, and rumors of the reactionary right shifting their support to Hitler, the SPD/DDP joint-candidate Otto Braun withdraws from the second round as the parties swing their support behind the aging incumbent Hindenburg. The old general wins a narrow majority for his second term as Reichspräsident.
April 12: Scarface , a crime thriller based loosely off the life of Chicago mafia boss Johnny Torrio and his underling Al Capone, is a massive success, albeit with an ending imposed by the studios to avoid Breen Code censorship. Sergei Eisenstein (who had seen the original ending) heavily criticizes this, and invites director Howard Hawks to work with him as he completes a picture in Mexico for Paramount.
April 13 : The last pre-revolution volume of Aeon Lullaby ,Starfall , is published. The comic volume contains a rather frank discussion of sexuality from its protagonist Sophia as the Aeonic girl faces challenges both physical and emotional. It also contains words that become a slogan of some note in the election campaign in New York “If we make so much, why do so many have so little?”
April 17: Hamilton Fish’s campaign arouses controversy by producing a list of prominent “Soviet citizens or sympathizers”, which heavily implies a connection to the NKVD. The list, which includes Albert Einstein, Jay Lovestone, and even actor Douglas Fairbanks, is heavily criticized by Jewish organizations like the Jewish Labor Bund and the Anti-Defamation League for its focus on Jews. Hoover’s campaign seizes on this, also highlighting Fish’s distribution of the noted forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
April 23: On the 378th occasion of William Shakespeare’s birthday, the Folger Shakespeare Library (started as a pet project of Standard Oil executive and Shakespeare collector Henry Clay Folger and his wife Emily) opens in Washington DC, to hold various works and versions of works created by the Bard.
April 29 : Hindenburg has the Panzerschiffe Deutschland commissioned ahead of schedule. With the outfitting process having undergone no significant delays the prior year and its launching having gone without incident, the vessel is deemed ready for service as part of the German navy’s hopes to reclaim its status as the fleet of a great power.
May 5: In the midst of the controversy over Fish’s list, it emerges that his fellow Congressman on the HISC, Mississippi Democrat John Rankin, had purposely tried to slow and sabotage their investigations into the KKK and other right-wing groups. Rankin, while defiant, is ultimately forced to resign thanks to pressure from fellow Democrats.
May 6: A proposed study of untreated syphilis in a group of African American men in the South by the Venereal Disease division of the Public Health Service is quashed due to strong opposition from socialists within the PHS.
May 8 : Leonid Spartak and Samantha Waver evade a bombing of their synagogue in New York due to the sickness of their first daughter. Six people are killed and a dozen are injured in the anti-semitic attack driven by far rightists who blame the Jews for the current economic strife.
May 14: Hindenburg dismisses his cabinet, nominating the anti-democratic “Cabinet of Barons” irrespective of the situation in the Reichstag, selected on the advice of an old military comrade General Kurt von Schleicher.
May 17: To a much uproarious applause, New York congressman Norman Thomas and House Minority Leader Upton Sinclair are nominated as the Workers’ Party ticket to challenge President Hoover.
May 20: British physicist James Chadwick finds that a strange form of radiation detected from previous experiments is in fact a hitherto undiscovered neutrally charged particle the size of a proton. Chadwick’s “neutron” would earn him that year’s Nobel Prize.
May 23 : British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald arranges a settlement between the countries of Paraguay and Bolivia, averting a war over the Chaco region. Natural resource revenue sharing, arbitrated by the League of Nations and the establishment of a demilitarised zone pulls the two countries back from the brink.
May 25: At their national convention, the DFLP Minority Leader Floyd Olson successfully campaigns for the party to endorse Norman Thomas and Upton Sinclair for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency.
May 29: Twenty thousand Great War veterans assemble in Washington D.C. to demand the immediate payment of their “deferred compensation”, commonly known as “the Bonus”.
May 30: Sergei Eisenstein’s ¡Que viva México! causes astonishment and controversy, as a Hollywood film backed with studio money having a distinctly social realist and avante-garde tone (including the involvement of noted communist Diego Rivera)
June 4: Impetuously, President Hindenburg orders the dissolution of the Reichstag for new elections before his Cabinet can be sacked.
June 8: The Revenue Act of 1932 is ratified, substantially raising federal income and excise tax rates, with the aim of achieving a balanced budget.
June 12: Samantha Waver publishes her first nonfiction book, Sexual Justice and the Revolution on her outline for what she believes a revolutionary society will need to do regarding sexuality and the relation between the sexes. She most famously attacks the idea that sexual relationships are a chase to be won by the man pursuing a passive woman, rather than a bond to be built by both.
June 14: Food riots spread in the industrial cities of Ohio, as relief institutions run short. Among the hardest hit by the Depression, the exhaustion of breadlines and volxküchen supplies leads to the looting of stores and warehouses. For fear of inflaming the situation, Ohio Governor Charles H. Lewis (R) rejects mobilising the National Guard, believing them to be politically unreliable.
June 16: The Republican National Convention ends with Hoover winning renomination, beating the challenge from Hamilton Fish, who concedes and endorses him. However, Kansas Senator Charles Curtis replaces William Hearst as his running mate.
June 20 : Despite accusations of aid from China, Russia, or Japan, the Thai coup d’etat of the 20th of June is a largely internal and almost wholly bloodless affair as an alliance between disgruntled military officials, western educated liberals, and Thai nationalists occupies most of the places of military and civilian administration in the capital to force the implementation of the new constitution. Some foreign observers report fears of yet another revolution taking place in Thailand despite the thoroughly liberal character of the coup.
June 23 : Benito Mussolini places an order for at least five armoured fleet carriers for the Regia Marina in a bid to make it the dominant fleet in the Mediterranean and Red Sea.
July 2: After a hard-fought campaign against conservative stalwart John Nance Garner, Louisiana Governor Huey Long wins the Democratic nomination for President. Princeton University President Henry Jones Sr.* is tapped as his running mate.
July 9 : Alarmed by Italian military growth, the French Republic announces its own ambitious plans for a naval build up even in the face of harshly limited budgets. An emphasis on carriers and fast battleships is made.
July 17: Sammawal Hamidi publishes his next text On Religion and Socialism , which looks at not simply Christian, Islamic, or Jewish Socialism but also new religious movements such as Heathenism and Gnosticism and he comes to the conclusion that most of the faiths of significance in the western world are incompatible with Capitalism.
July 18: William Dudley Pelley once again is nominated by the “American First” coalition (sans the Prohibition Party, who have already nominated candidates Don Keyhote and Sam Chopanzo), after the failure of the Fish campaign (which Pelley had endorsed). Former Congressman John E. Rankin joins the ticket.
July 20: The Preußenschlag : at the behest of Chancellor von Papen, President Hindenburg issues an emergency decree under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. Citing widespread fighting, including gun battles, between the KPD and NSDAP as a pretext, von Papen uses the emergency decree to suspend the authority of the SPD-led government of the Free State of Prussia, investing ministerial responsibility in himself as Reichskommissar for Prussia.
July 30: The opening ceremony at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles is at a record low attendance, due to the ongoing Depression.
July 31: German federal elections: the NSDAP becomes the largest party in the Reichstag, resulting in a negative-majority in the parliament.
August 1: The second International Polar Year (a period of international scientific collaboration focusing on Arctic research) is held, 50 years after the first. To this end, a number of scientific stations are established throughout the Arctic, and new post-war technology is utilized to advance polar studies.
August 4: The Causes of Evolution, by British biologist JBS Haldane, creates a new consensus in evolutionary science by merging Darwinian natural selection with Mendelian genetics.
August 6: The Bonus Army marchers are evicted from Washington D.C. by hand-picked troops assembled by General MacArthur. Leaders of the Bonus Army regroup in Maryland, and decide to decamp to Pennsylvania, and bring their grievances again once a new government is elected.
August 8: President Hoover signs two pieces of emergency legislation, the Reconstruction Finance Act and the Central Bank Act. Together, they establish a broad system of emergency lending to shore up the financial system as well as provide direct lending to critical industry and agriculture.
August 17 : The construction of oil derricks and refineries in the Italian Empire is buoyed by a highly valuable contract with the Koch corporation. With Libya now turning into the “crown jewel” of Italy, extensive investment plans are being made, and the purchase of property in Libya is being subsidised by the government to encourage the settlement of skilled labour.
August 27 : The completion of further Dutch oil refineries and the threat of Italian oil entering the market leads to a noticeable drop in the price of oil, causing a financial upset in Standard Oil and throughout America.
September 1: Deputies from workers soviets, agricultural unions, unemployed groups and military soviets meet in the Chicago Symphony Center, forming the All-American Congress of Soviets.
September 5: Chancellor von Papen’s cabinet is deposed by a motion-of-no-confidence, supported by every part except the DNVP and the DVP.
September 22: With grain harvests projected to be up by four million tonnes from the previous year due to good weather and the positive impact of machinery, the Soviet government touts a major victory in the First Five Year Plan even as long-term weather forecasts warn of potential drought in the next year.
September 27: The Politburo of the VKP(b) rejects pressing charges of anti-Soviet activity against supporters of the “Ryutin Platform”, calling for a slowing of industrialisation and the reinstatement of expelled members of the Party.
October 4: The USS Gettysburg (CV-4) arrives under her own power in San Francisco Bay for final fitting. She is the largest aircraft carrier in the world, with an official standard displacement of 35,050 tonnes (she is actually closer to 39,000 tonnes under the metrics established by the Washington Naval Treaty).
October 8 : Conclusion of the Wuhan Conference, a meeting of the Chinese Communist Party. Mao Zedong is removed from leadership positions for ‘right-wing deviations’. Additionally, Wang Ming becomes General Secretary and Zhou Enlai becomes commissar of the army. This continues the strong KMT-CCP United Front, as well as strengthening of ideological orthodoxy.
October 17: The National Hunger March in London clashes with the blackshirts of the Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.
November 6: German general election: the right in general and the NSDAP in particular lose seats to the left and centre.
November 8 : US Presidential Election: Norman Thomas wins a landslide election over incumbent Herbert Hoover and Democrat Huey Long.
November 14: Cole Porter’s Broadway musical Gay Divorce introduces the hit song “Night and Day,” as sung by lead Fred Astaire.
November 16: The premier vaudeville venue, the Palace Theatre in New York, converts to a cinema, signalling the decline of vaudeville as the biggest source of entertainment in the country.
December 5: The lame-duck US Congress convenes to begin the process of certifying the votes of the Electoral College. The normally pro forma session begins instead with a number of cabinet resignations delivered by letter, and the appointment of a number of interim cabinet members.
December 10: Prime Minister MacDonald is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in arbitrating the Chaco Crisis.
December 19: SCOTUS issues its ruling in Sorrells v. United States , 287 U.S. 435 (1932). The opinion of the court, authored by Louis Brandeis, establishes the legal defense of entrapment, defined as “the conception and planning of an offense by an officer, and his procurement of its commission by one who would not have perpetrated it except for the trickery, persuasion, or fraud of the officer.”1
December 31: Over 1800 banks fail, representing a loss of $1.4 billion in deposits. Unemployment is at 25.1 percent, with a 14% contraction in real GDP.
German Presidential election
Candidate |
Party |
First round |
Second round
---|---|---|---
Votes |
% |
Votes |
%
Paul von Hindenburg (incumbent) |
Ind.(ZP/DNVP/DVP) |
12,451,357 |
33.33% |
19,359,983 |
52.34%
Adolf Hitler |
NSDAP |
10,839,150 |
29.02% |
13,118,601 |
35.46%
Otto Braun |
SPD/DDP |
8,811,459 |
23.59% | |
0.00%
Ernst Thälmann |
KPD/KAPD |
5,138,085 |
13.75% |
4,506,759 |
12.18%
Other candidates |
116,304 |
0.31% |
5,474 |
0.01%
Invalid/blank votes | |
– | |
–
Total |
37,356,355 |
100.00% |
36,990,817 |
100.00%
Registered voters/turnout |
43,949,681 |
85.00% |
44,063,958 |
83.95%
As well can see here, federal elections under the Weimar constitution are somewhat idiosyncratic. The constitution was, at least in its initial presentation, supposed to be somewhat typical of European republican constitutions with added innovations befitting the advance of political science. Power is balanced between a directly elected head of state, the Reichspräsident , and the parliament in a semi-presidential system.
This was similar in concept to the final expression of the 1787 US Constitution, which had formalised the previously customary division of powers between Congress and President with the Sixteenth Amendment. In both cases though emergency periods and political dysfunction led to the office of the presidency assuming a much greater executive function than anticipated. In other such constitutions, such as those of the French Third Republic or the Finnish Republic, the presidency’s de jure powers became vestigial, with parliament assuming a commanding role.
The Reichspräsident was elected a direct vote of the whole citizenry aged twenty years or older. The constitution protected the secret ballot and the equal right of franchise for all citizens. The term of office was unusually long, seven years, with a provision for one re-election, allowing a maximum of fourteen years in the office. Somewhat uniquely, the Reichspräsident could be removed by a plebiscite upon a 2/3rds vote of the Reichstag.
The 1932 election had an immense historic role because the immense powers the office could wield under Article 48 of the constitution, which allowed the president to take extraordinary measures such as the use of armed force or the suspension of civil liberties to restore law and order in the event of threats to public safety or the security of the Reich. Additionally, the office was not constitutionally bound to respect the confidence of the Reichstag in the appointment of the Chancellor and the Cabinet.
Paul von Hindenburg, an unreconstructed monarchist and military general, had been hemmed in by his oath to the Weimar constitution and unable to take any concrete measures to restore the monarchy, but the old general had bullishly used the powers of his office in the past seven years, frustrating attempts to let parliamentary democracy find its roots. He used the appointment powers to keep the civil service strongly tied to the Prussian aristocracy and military, forced through his own Chancellors to push through nationalist legislation, and during the Depression began to rule almost as an autocrat.
In particular, he forced through an Enabling Act at the behest of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, giving him plenipotentiary powers to to devalue the Reichsmark and thus evade reparations payments by inflicting a disastrous regime of deflation on the economy by tightening credit and forcing down wages and prices.
The disastrous shock to the economy and the very high un/underemployment of between 25 and 33 percent, depending on metrics facilitated the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Though the source of the malaise was different, the negative consequences were comparable to the effects the Depression had in the United States. In terms of the contraction of real GDP, the scale of bank and business failures, and the contraction of the workforce, and the desperation it produced, Germany was a major outlier in Europe.
Thus we find ourselves at the terminal phase of the Weimar Republic, beginning with the first round of the German presidential elections on 13 March 1932. Under the electoral law, any candidate that received an absolute majority of the vote would be elected.
The eighty-four year-old Hindenburg, already afflicted with age-related dementia, chose to run again at the behest of the lay Catholic Centre Party (Zentrumspartei , ZP). The nationalist right would be split between Hindenburg and Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Hindenburg despised “the Bohemian corporal” and was motivated to keep Hitler out of the office mostly out of personal animus.
With the “Weimar coalition” of republican parties broken by Zentrum ‘s defection, the reform socialist Social Democrats (SPD) and liberal German Democratic Party (DDP) chose to run Otto Braun, the popular and effective prime minister of Prussia, hoping to capitalise on the split in the nationalists. The SPD’s campaigning made little differentiation between Hitler and Hindenburg, considering both equal threats to the republic.
The other parties of the far-right, the German National People’s Party (DNVP) and the German People’s Party (DVP), had initially intended to run their own candidate as part of the Stahlhelm banner, but were successfully courted by allies of Hindenburg into supporting him.
The only other candidate of note was Ernst Thälmann, Chairman of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Thälmann had long considered the SPD to be the real enemy of the German working class, and now unmuzzled by the Third Period policy, led the charge against the centre-left. Condemning the SPD as “social fascists”, he hoped to demonstrate that the SPD were useless to German workers. Notably, the campaign also brought a partial healing in the German far-left, forging a united front with the ultraleft Communist Workers’ Party (KAPD).
First-round voting produced no majority for any candidate; even the incumbent Hindenburg was nearly seventeen points shy, and he was only four points up over Hitler in second-place. The outcome was a political disaster for everyone except for Hitler, the recently minted German citizen and convicted traitor.
The Weimar electoral system was idiosyncratic; while presidential elections were a multi-round system, it wasn’t a true runoff election. No one was automatically removed from running; instead this process would be negotiated among the various parties and candidates. A party could elect to substitute its candidate for another one, or withdraw from running, but otherwise new candidates were not allowed.
The Weimar parties made the bitter decision to withdraw and support Hindenburg once the Nazi vote totals became clear. Thälmann capitalized on this and went into the second-round swinging as only left candidate, blasting the SPD for its capitulation to Hindenburg. Hitler went into the second round still thinking he could win it, but otherwise the NSDAP was busy angling to force a no-confidence motion as soon as possible in Reichstag and expand their share of the seats.
Turnout in the second round on 10 April 1932 was down two points but still high. While Hitler increased his vote share, Hindenburg managed to close off the chance of a third round by eking out a 52 percent share. Thälmann and his party lost a small share from voters jittery at the thought of a Hitler presidency and preferring the devil they knew.
**German Reichstag elections
**July 1932
Party |
Votes |
% |
Seats |
Swing
---|---|---|---|---
National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) |
13,745,680 |
37.01% |
232 |
123
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) |
8,421,712 |
22.68% |
142 |
-12
Communist Party of Germany (KPD) |
5,282,636 |
14.22% |
89 |
12
German Centre Party (ZP) |
3,219,150 |
8.67% |
54 |
-7
German National People’s Party (DNVP) |
3,185,021 |
8.58% |
53 |
–4
German Democratic Party (DDP) |
1,392,614 |
3.75% |
23 |
-3
German People’s Party (DVP) |
436,002 |
1.17% |
7 |
–23
Black Front (SF) |
171,800 |
0.46% |
2 |
2
Christian Social People’s Service (CSV) |
164,543 |
0.44% |
2 |
–11
Reich Party of the German Middle Class (RDM) |
146,876 |
0.40% |
2 |
–21
German Farmers’ Party (DBP) |
137,133 |
0.37% |
2 |
–4
Imperial Agricultural League |
96,851 |
0.26% |
1 |
–1
Christian-National Peasants’ and Farmers’ Party (CNBL) |
90,554 |
0.24% |
1 |
–18
Other |
645,991 |
1.74% | |
Invalid/blank votes |
279,727 |
– |
– |
–
Total |
37,136,563 |
100.00% |
610 |
Registered voters/turnout |
44,211,216 |
84.00% |
– |
–
The Weimar constitution, unlike most of its contemporaries, did not have a bicameral parliament. While it had two separate parliamentary houses, the Reichstag which represented the German people, and the Reichsrat which represented the governments of the lander 2, they were not considered components of a single parliament. The Reichsrat could veto bills of the Reichstag, but had no say in the formation of a government. Consequently, this power mostly concerned the prerogatives of the lander versus the federal government, and the Reichstag rarely had the votes necessary to override this veto.
The Reichstag was further unique in that its members were not elected to represent geographic localities. Such a practice had been used to gerrymander voting outcomes in the German Empire and overrepresent the aristocratic conservative groups. Instead, each member of the Reichstag represented the whole of the nation, and was under the constitution beholden only to their conscience.
Elections occurred under a party-list proportional representation system. Each party’s share of the national vote determined its share of seats in the Reichstag. Additionally, unlike other parliaments the size of the Reichstag was not fixed by law. Instead the total vote count would determine the size of each Reichstag.
Reichstag terms were limited to four years, and could end early in the event of a dissolution of the Reichstag by the president or by a vote of no-confidence. 31 July’s election occurred as a result of the former.
Hindenburg resented owing his office to the intervention of Weimar republicans, especially the party of the “November Criminals”, the SPD.3 Hindenburg decided to dismiss Brüning and his cabinet in early May. On the advice of General Kurt von Schleicher, increasingly the man behind the throne, he instead appointed the relative political nobody Franz von Papen. Von Papen was an old friend of von Schliecher, and not regarded as much of an intellect. In accepting the nomination, von Papen was expelled from the Centre Party for being complicit in the game assaulting the institutions of the Weimar constitution. His preselected cabinet of old military men and Junkers was widely derided as the “Cabinet of Barons”, and only had support from the anti-democratic DNVP and DVP in the Reichstag.
As part of the “gentlemen’s agreement” that had elevated him to the office, von Papen’s cabinet lifted the ban on the SA and SS. Since he was governing by presidential decree, he had considerable ability to act unilaterally. But the authority under Article 48 was sharply limited; all acts by the presidential regime would be submitted to the Reichstag for approval after sixty days. The natural corollary to this would be to get a new Reichstag more amenable to the reactionary right.
While Hitler stubbornly resisted attempts to be co-opted, Hindenburg decided to break the stalemate by dissolving the Reichstag for early elections before his cabinet could be sacked. After the presidential election and a number of state elections, this could only benefit the NSDAP. The almost bankrupt party was rescued by a major infusion of cash from German industrialists, as rightists began to cluster around the Nazis.
The lightning campaign leading up to the 31 July election resulted in numerous clashes between the KPD and the NSDAP. Emboldened, the NSDAP believed this to be the final assault against Weimar democracy, as the SA increasingly flaunted its power in the streets.
The vote tallies were a victory for the extreme right, and to a lesser extent the extreme left, at the expense of the centre. The Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag and could now control its proceedings. The combination of the SPD and KPD could have thwarted this, but the battle over the leadership of the German working class was demoralising. Friedrich Ebert’s short-sighted Faustian deal with the reactionary nationalists would haunt the SPD in the present. Militant workers were not inclined to trust the party that sent reactionary death squads against them in 1919, and the kowtowing to Hindenburg had confirmed these fears.
Von Papen believed he had Hitler in his back pocket now based on his vague promises to overthrow the Weimar constitution and establish a nationalist dictatorship. But when the results were tabulated, Hitler was immediately hard at work undermining von Papen, and seeking appointment as Chancellor, which Hindenburg would not consent to.
November 1932
Party |
Votes |
% |
Seats |
Swing
---|---|---|---|---
National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) |
11,545,680 |
32.38% |
196 |
-36
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) |
8,283,651 |
23.23% |
140 |
-2
Communist Party of Germany (KPD) |
5,982,636 |
16.78% |
101 |
12
German Centre Party (ZP) |
3,001,850 |
8.42% |
64 |
10
German National People’s Party (DNVP) |
3,785,021 |
10.62% |
50 |
-3
German Democratic Party (DDP) |
1,242,313 |
3.48% |
21 |
-2
German People’s Party (DVP) |
448,002 |
1.26% |
7 |
0
Black Front (SF) |
192,037 |
0.54% |
3 |
1
Christian Social People’s Service (CSV) |
164,543 |
0.46% |
2 |
0
Reich Party of the German Middle Class (RDM) |
146,058 |
0.41% |
2 |
0
German Farmers’ Party (DBP) |
76,125 |
0.21% |
1 |
-1
Imperial Agricultural League |
96,851 |
0.27% |
1 |
0
Christian-National Peasants’ and Farmers’ Party (CNBL) |
45,325 |
0.13% |
0 |
-1
Other |
645,991 |
1.81% | |
0
Invalid/blank votes |
279,727 |
– |
– |
–
Total |
35,656,083 |
100.00% |
588 |
Registered voters/turnout |
44,211,216 |
80.65% |
– |
–
The new Reichstag was less of a legislature and more of an extravagant political theatre. The sum of the economic and political crises in Germany, all of which Hindenburg were ultimately responsible for their severity, was a negative majority in the Reichstag. Together, the NSDAP and the KPD held a majority of seats. And they had no fonder desire in the whole world than to murder the other.
The remaining balance of seats were held by parties that were irreconcilable with the two poles in the chamber. The SPD could not even make a tactical alliance with the KPD. Relations between the SPD and Zentrum were strained at best. The Stahlhelm parties resented the populism of the NSDAP, especially the national-socialism espoused by the paramilitary Sturmabteilung.
This was perhaps the only situation that presidential autocracy could last more than a few dying gasps. The lead up to the next dissolution of the Reichstag was a spiral of every increasing political violence and hamfisted reactions to it.
In the last weeks before the last election, von Papen had engineered a coup against the SPD government of the Free State of Prussia. Using the violence between the KPD and NSDAP as a pretext, and ridiculous rumors of an SPD/KPD merger to enact a Bolshevist revolution in Germany to grease the wheels, von Papen utilised Article 48 to arrange the Reichswehr to arrest the government of Prussia and suspend its constitutional authority.
The Preußenschlag had been a grievous assault on the constitution and its far-reaching effects were only beginning to be felt. The Reich itself had no police force; the enforcement of its laws required the compliance of the individual states. By installing himself as Reichskommissar of Prussia, von Papen put the police powers of the Prussian state answerable only to him. Thus his 8 August promulgation of a new emergency decree that established a new system of expedited tribunals and established a prescription for swift execution for political violence had the power to back it up.
But the first exercise of this law, to punish a group of SA paramilitaries for the rape and murder of Ilse Schulze*, a communist activist, caused von Papen to choke. The NSDAP denied the more unsavory aspects of the case as “Jewish libel” while celebrating the men as national heroes. Widespread protests by nationalist groups were held against the conviction and sentencing of the men. Von Papen commuted their sentences to life imprisonment.
Von Papen secured additional Article 48 decrees to dissolve the Reichstag and to suspend all future elections. Though these decrees pre-empted any of the acts of the Reichstag according to established procedure, von Papen was stupid enough to think he could get away with this. Hitler wanted von Papen’s job. The SPD, DDP and Zentrum wished to preserve the Republic. And the KPD wanted to have him before a revolutionary tribunal as soon as possible. Thus, all the parties in the Reichstag just ignored Hindenburg’s patently illegal decrees and voted for the KPD’s motion-of-no-confidence in the Cabinet.
Von Papen was shouted out of the Reichstag building, and attempted to block the ensuing elections in the courts. This bid was ultimately unsuccessful for obvious reasons, and Hindenburg was not inclined to go all in on attempting to enforce the nationalist counterrevolution.
Notably, the raised stakes had put the nationalists on the clock. After the motion-of-no-confidence, the first negotiations between the SPD and KPD since the split began. The move to reconciliation, coupled with the SPD’s own internal shift to the left, could reunite the largest political bloc in the country. Memories of the revolutions of 1919 returned. Either the Weimar Republic would be stabilised as the economy recovered, or the German working class would decide that its only hope was the replacement a liberal republic with a socialist republic.
Either would shut the door on the nationalists permanently. As the election grew closer, von Papen’s public contempt for democracy grew stronger. In his own radio addresses he outlined his vision of a return to a utopian ancien régime. His friend and ally von Schleicher grew more distant, disturbed by von Papen’s contempt for the ordinary people. Von Schleicher began cultivating ties with trade unionists with the hopes of building a red-brown coalition for his New State, a direct threat to Hitler’s dominance of the NSDAP.
Von Papen won a partial victory when the German courts issued a confused ruling. While it held the Preußenschlag to be illegal because the charges against law and order were not proven, the Supreme Court paradoxically ruled that von Papen was still Reichskommissar and that the Reich government could take over the government of the states if law and order were threatened.
With the socialist Eiserne Front now cooperating with the communist Rotfrontkämpferbund against the SA and Stahlhelm , the balance of paramilitary violence was swinging against the right. The results of the November election disappointed the right. The NSDAP lost seats, and the DNVP recovered moderately. The left’s share of the vote and seats increased. But still the Reichstag was ultimately ungovernable.
Von Schleicher used the results to outmaneuver von Papen, and had him deposed to the Interior Ministry. The old general tried to parlay the results of the election into a labor government. He emerged from the shadows to play the part of the “Socialist General”, trying to cultivate working relationships with the working class Nazis, the SPD and even the KPD. This was always going to be a fool’s errand, because Hitler could tolerate no dissension in his ranks, the socialists and communists deeply mistrusted him, and Hindenburg, in his moments of lucidity, was enraged at his insubordination.
As 1932 drew to a close, Germany was balancing on the edge of a razor.
- This was the holding made in the concurrence IOTL, which agreed with the ruling against entrapment, but based on a different reasoning.
- It’s actually way more complicated than that; in order to prevent the Free State of Prussia from dominating the others due to having the lion’s share of Germany’s population and industry, like it had in the German Empire, Prussia itself was not represented in the Reichsrat, but rather the semi-autonomous governments of its provinces.
- It must be noted that like IOTL, the whole notion of the “November Criminals” is an ahistorical myth and conspiracy theory advanced in bad faith by the nationalist right. The German military government had, in the final days of the Great War, maneuvered to ensure that the democratic parties would take the poisoned chalice of negotiating surrender. To put it bluntly, the German Army was collapsing and there was no possibility of effectively resisting the planned Entente offensives into Ruhr. The people were starving and industrial productions was grinding to a halt, and the military was beginning to mutiny. German military leaders informed the SPD of this, and then blamed them and other liberals and republicans for sabotaging the war effort and surrendering while the Army was still undefeated. This was a lie that everyone in the Army would have known, but managed to conveniently forget this in the tumultuous decade to follow.
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