A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #355 - The Irresponsible Ones - Who Brought Hitler to Power? (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

This is a book by Johann Chapoutot, and we offer a reading guide for it 
here. This historian, a specialist in interwar Germany and the Nazi 
regime, presents an original work that focuses on the parallels between 
Germany's past in the 1930s and the current French political landscape. 
This is a rare and committed choice, as historians often prefer to take 
a step back and exercise caution, because, as they say, "history never 
repeats itself exactly." Despite the significant differences he 
highlights between our two periods-the violence of the First World War, 
the severe economic crisis, the consequences of the Treaty of 
Versailles, etc.-Chapoutot lists striking similarities between the end 
of the Weimar Republic and "our" Republic. Finally, this book is a 
valuable history lesson, worth remembering, on Hitler's rise to power, 
which is poorly taught in schools with oversimplified explanations such 
as: Hitler won the elections, the Nazis benefited from the unemployed 
vote, etc. This is false! The Nazis never held a majority before 
establishing their dictatorship in 1933; it was the middle classes who 
voted for them, and they were put in power by conservatives and 
authoritarian liberals willing to do anything to defend their class 
interests.

An increasingly presidential regime with the use of Article 49.3 at the 
time!
The Weimar Republic-which emerged in the context of the German 
Revolution of 1918-1919-is often portrayed as a parliamentary regime, 
with the Reichstag as its central institution. This federal system is 
also often perceived as ill-suited to the exercise of centralized and 
authoritarian power, given the autonomy of the Länder (states). In 
reality, the Weimar Constitution contained the seeds of a strong central 
power capable of exerting coercion, notably through Article 48.2, which 
provided for the adoption of decree-laws in times of crisis. It is worth 
noting that the Weimar Constitution served as a major source of 
inspiration for the drafting of the current French Constitution. This 
version of Article 49.3 had already been used by Frank Ebert (SPD), the 
first president of the German Republic from 1919 to 1925, to suppress 
the Spartacist and council communist uprisings, as well as the attempted 
Kapp Putsch (1920) and Nazi Putsch (1923). However, once order was 
restored, bourgeois democracy resumed its course. This would change from 
March 1930 onward. In addition to the still-high political tensions and 
the reparations owed under the Treaty of Versailles, the 1929 stock 
market crash hit Germany hard, a country heavily reliant on American 
capital. The coalition government of the Social Democrats (SPD), the 
Centre Party (Zentrum), and liberals fell upon an attempt to reform 
unemployment insurance to help the unemployed, who already numbered over 
3 million. The elderly General Hindenburg (conservative right), who 
became president in 1925, appointed the centrist Bruning as chancellor, 
forming a coalition with the liberal right (DVP/BVP) and also the 
far-right DNVP (German National People's Party). Bruning presented 
himself as a technocrat who wanted to distance himself from politics and 
govern the country rationally, which he believed would involve austerity 
measures. This message failed to gain traction in the Reichstag, which 
was censored, and Hindenburg dissolved the assembly. The parliamentary 
elections of September 1930 saw the first major breakthrough for the 
NSDAP with 18.5% of the vote, but also a very strong showing for the KPD 
(Communist Party). Without a majority, Brüning remained chancellor and 
governed until May 1932, resorting, when necessary, to Article 48.2 in 
agreement with the presidential cabinet, nicknamed the "camarilla," 
which comprised military officers, large landowners, industrialists, and 
bankers. In short, the class interests of these groups were well 
protected while austerity plunged millions of Germans into poverty. For 
its part, the SPD adopted a policy of tolerance and did not censure the 
government, both in the name of the anti-fascist struggle against the 
Nazis and to undermine the KPD.

A right-wing alliance gradually siphoned off by the Nazis
Before the July 1930 parliamentary elections, the NSDAP was a marginal 
party. But in barely two years, it would manage to establish itself on 
both the far right and the right wing. This alliance of right-wing 
parties at the time began in 1929 with a joint campaign for a referendum 
on the Young Agreements-named after the American economist who advocated 
spreading out the reparations from the Treaty of Versailles. From 1930 
onward, following their initial electoral successes, the Nazis also 
began collaborating with other right-wing forces in some of the 
conquered Länder, forging new working practices. Before the summer of 
1932, the Nazis participated in five regional governments and even led 
two of them. Finally, in 1931, the NSDAP, the DNVP, and other 
conservative right-wing forces formed the Harzburg Front to present a 
joint candidate in the 1932 presidential election. After some power 
struggles, Hitler became their candidate, finding a new audience while 
broadening his rhetoric to include more right-wing themes such as the 
"people's community," which would later flourish with a strong racial 
emphasis. It's worth noting that Pan-Germanism, social Darwinism, and 
racism/anti-Semitism were already widely shared themes on the right (and 
not only in Germany). Only the methods of these "Nazi thugs" offended 
some sensibilities. And even then, the strength of the SA, which 
numbered 400,000 throughout the country, aroused envy. Among the 
right-wingers who helped the Nazis spread their ideas was Alfred 
Hugenberg, whom Chapoutot compares to a kind of Bolloré. But Hugenberg 
was first and foremost a politician before being a businessman. He 
founded the Pan-German League and the DNVP, an extreme-right party. 
Financially, he was the chairman of the board of Krupp but poured all 
his capital into the media. He bought up publications, standardized 
working methods, and used them to disseminate his ultra-nationalist, 
"völkisch" rhetoric. In total, he controlled more than 1,600 newspapers 
and also owned UFA, the largest German film company. But all these 
efforts were poorly rewarded. His DNVP party, as well as other small 
right-wing parties, were literally siphoned off by the NSDAP (see 
graph). In two years, they lost more than 30% of the vote. These 
election figures debunk a common misconception, unfortunately often 
taught: that workers and the unemployed voted overwhelmingly for the 
Nazis. In reality, it was primarily the middle class (employees) and 
small property owners who made up the Nazi electorate and who felt 
threatened by the economic crisis. There was also a strong Protestant 
element to the Nazi vote.

On the employers' side, the NSDAP reassured everyone by being 
fundamentally anti-Marxist, in favor of private property, the market 
economy, and social deregulation. National Socialist rhetoric was merely 
a trap to attract unemployed workers. It was in 1931-1932 that Hitler 
gained respectability in the eyes of big business. The Nazi party 
established an "economic" cabinet headed by Dr. Schacht, an economist, 
who offered a veritable handbook of the most authoritarian form of 
liberalism. Hitler and his clique were invited to clubs and fashionable 
salons. The high point of this tour of business leaders was Hitler's 
speech to the Düsseldorf Industry Club in January 1932. The company was 
presented as a model of social organization (the Nazis were not at all 
statist, contrary to popular belief), democracy was vilified, while the 
prospects of rearmament and colonial conquests in Eastern Europe offered 
lucrative economic opportunities. Chapoutot expresses some reservations 
about the overly Marxist interpretation of Hitler's rise to power. 
Indeed, he was not yet heavily financed by big business; there was a 
certain ideological support, but full commitment would come after the 
seizure of power, starting in February 1933. What truly propelled the 
Nazis to power was the extreme center...

The extreme center is in control
The term was coined by the historian Pierre Serna, a specialist in the 
French Revolution, to describe the period of the Directory (1794-1799), 
during which the revolutionary momentum was completely crushed, thanks 
in part to the intervention of General Bonaparte. More broadly, this 
concept designates a political stance that supposedly relies on reason, 
technology, and the rule of the best to govern a country while creating 
the illusion of detachment from the political arena-the famous "neither 
right nor left." However, this extreme center is prepared to do anything 
to achieve its goals, disregarding democracy or resorting to force. 
Chapoutot adopts this terminology to describe the period from 1931 to 
1932, when the Zentrum and its right-wing allies sought to retain power. 
This results in a complex chronology for 1932, with three federal 
elections-a presidential election won by Hindenburg and two legislative 
elections-not to mention the regional elections.

As we have seen, Bruning implemented a fairly classic austerity program 
based on deflation and budgetary discipline, but he was ultimately 
forced to resign in May 1932 because he wanted land reform in East 
Prussia to redistribute land to the poorest. Hindenburg, a large 
landowner, resented this and appointed his protégé, von Papen, in his 
place! This marked the beginning of the "cabinet of barons," a nickname 
given to a government composed of six nobles out of eight ministers, 
each representing a different segment of the elites of the time: 
patrimonial, industrial, banking, military, and aristocratic. Economic 
policy was much more liberal, aiming for a supply-side approach by 
massively subsidizing industry and further reducing labor costs. But 
this extreme center found itself attacked from both sides by the Marxist 
bloc (KPD-SPD) and the right-wing alliance (NSDAP, DNVP), leading to its 
censure in the Reichstag with over 90% of the vote. The party barons and 
the clique, unwilling to relinquish power, decided to resort to 
dissolution again. It was in this context that, in July 1932, the Nazi 
party won its greatest victory with 37.27% of the vote. Papen offered 
Hitler the position of vice-chancellor, which he refused. Papen was 
reappointed, but instability persisted, resulting in a second 
dissolution and the parliamentary elections of November 1932. It was 
then that the Nazi party lost more than 4 percentage points (see graph). 
This triggered an internal party crisis with a "left wing," embodied by 
Strasser, who declared himself ready to join a centrist government while 
tempering the maximalism of Hitler or Goebbels. Papen was sidelined, and 
the military man Schleicher attempted a daring "diagonal policy," trying 
to fracture the Nazi camp while also courting the right wing of the SPD. 
This failed, and Von Papen secretly maneuvered with the Nazis to regain 
power as vice-chancellor alongside Hitler. Papen was convinced he could 
control and contain the Nazis because he could buy them off cheaply due 
to their declining electoral support. Then came the fateful January 30, 
1933: Hitler became co-chancellor with only two other Nazis (Goring and 
Frick), who nevertheless took the strategic posts of Minister of the 
Interior and Chief of the Police. Within a few months, the matter would 
be settled. By force, the Nazis swept away all opposition while a good 
part of the extreme center was complacent with this end of democracy.

For the far center was not spared in terms of repression and violence, 
even before January 30, 1933. Under Papen, the Prussian coup took place, 
a coup d'état on the scale of the largest state in Germany (more than 
half the country). In April 1932, multiple elections were held for the 
Länder, and as elsewhere, the Nazis made significant gains. But in 
Prussia, the left/center bloc resisted. A wave of political violence 
then erupted, with street battles between communists and Nazis. The 
SA-temporarily suspended under Brüning and then reauthorized under 
Papen-were responsible for two-thirds of the deaths. For their part, 
Papen and Hindenburg decided by decree to depose the state ministers on 
July 20, 1932. Individual and collective freedoms were suspended until 
further notice. July 1932 remained a decisive month in the Nazis' 
control over the population, and especially the opposition, through 
street violence.

And what about the left wing in all of this?
Faced with these onslaughts from the far right and the extreme center, 
it is interesting to see how the left reacts. Unfortunately, Chapoutot 
says very little about this in his book. It's worth remembering that the 
SPD and the KPD have been bitter enemies since 1919 and the creation of 
the Communist Party. It was Ebert and his Minister of the Interior, 
Noske, who sent the Freikorps to suppress the Berlin/Spartacist uprising 
in January 1919 and in the following months. Officially, there were 160 
deaths in January, but more than 1,200 communist deaths in March 1919. 
There was also the repression of workers' councils and revolutionary 
movements up until 1923. The most recent act of repression at the time 
was the SPD's order to fire on the May Day crowd in Berlin in 1929 (33 
deaths). Thus, the grassroots workers' movement was annihilated even 
before the Nazi advance.

The KPD, for its part, was no longer the party founded by Luxemburg and 
Liebknecht. It was a Stalinist party that, like the other parties of the 
Third International, adopted the policy of class against class from 1928 
onward and branded the SPD as social traitors. Electorally speaking, the 
Left Bloc (KPD-SPD) held its own against the other two blocs and even 
regained a majority in November 1932 with 37% of the combined vote. But 
it was already too late; the right and center had chosen to eliminate 
"cultural Bolshevism," a fashionable term at the time for left-wing 
thought. It is worth noting that in Prussia, during the coup of July 
1932, the KPD proposed an alliance with the SPD, which the latter 
refused. The rest is history, with the imprisonment of working-class 
activists who attempted to resist in the first concentration camps.

Really irresponsible people? And what about today?
Chapoutot avoids using a question in his title and structures his book 
around a gallery of portraits of "irresponsible" figures-political, 
economic, and media-related. Indeed, some of them would find themselves 
in dire straits after the first six months of Hitler's rise to power, 
when the dictatorship truly took hold. Hugenberg lost his media empire, 
von Papen his power, and Schleicher was assassinated during the Night of 
the Long Knives in June 1934. However, many of these irresponsible 
individuals adapted quite well to the situation and blended seamlessly 
into the Nazi apparatus. Thus, ministers who had served under Papen were 
retained until 1945, while the business world adapted remarkably well 
and even saw new opportunities emerging with rearmament and the 
expansionist policy toward the East. Ultimately, Hitlerian fascism was a 
calculated choice by the bourgeoisie-in all its diversity and 
antagonisms-to respond to the crisis of capitalism. It was the choice of 
"better Hitler than the Popular Front." By extension, fascism always 
presents itself as a preferred solution for imposing class politics and 
settling accounts with the workers' movement. Bourgeois democracy is 
merely a veneer that can be peeled away depending on the context.

Regarding Chapoutot's past/present analogies, they are apt when 
observing current French political life. How can one fail to see 
striking similarities with the current media landscape, the endless 
legislative saga, the dissolutions (or dissolutions?), the decree-laws, 
the attitude of the left, and the Machiavellian calculations of the 
far-center in power? Following this line of reasoning, one logically 
expects to glimpse the shadows of fascism. It is clear that the 
"democratic regime" is becoming more rigid, but, all things considered, 
we are not on the verge of a Nazi takeover. There are not thousands of 
militiamen in the streets, so we can take the emotion out of the current 
anti-fascist narrative. The battle is not being fought in the streets 
but in the workplace and in the class conflict that fascism has 
historically sought to extinguish by using nationalism, racism, and, if 
necessary, violence. Reflections can also be made on the downwardly 
mobile "middle classes" who today constitute the bulk of the electorate 
for a party like the National Rally (RN), for example. Ultimately, 
Chapoutot's book helps to restore important historical truths, to better 
identify those who undermine democracy, and to rehabilitate the working 
class, which did not bring Hitler to power. Chapoutot's other works are 
also worth reading: "The Nazi World" with Ingrao and Pattin, and "The 
Freedom to Obey," which recalls the Nazi origins of management.

Margat, OCL Lille, November 2025.

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4579
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