Yet in retrospect this option was as unreal as was the prospect of stopping Hitler’s rise by a comprehensive anti-Fascist union. The fact is that no one, right, left or centre, got the true measure of Hitler’s National Socialism, a movement of a kind that had not been seen before and whose aims were rationally unimaginable. Not even his intended victims fully recognised the danger. After the summer election of 1932 which left the Nazis as much the largest party, but short of a majority, the (Jewish) editor of the Tagebuch, a left-liberal weekly we took at home, published an article whose headline struck me even then as suicidal. I still see it before me: ‘Lasst ihn heran!’ (‘Why not let him in!’) A few months later, with very different intentions, the reactionaries around the aged President Hindenburg manoeuvred Hitler into office thinking that he could be controlled.
All attempts to make the Weimar Republic look more firmly established and stable, even before the world economic cataclysm broke its back, are historical whistling in the dark. It moved briefly through the debris of a dead but unburied past towards a sudden but expected end and an unknown future. For our parents it promised only an unrecoverable past, while we dreamed of great tomorrows; my ‘Aryan’ schoolmates in the form of a national rebirth, Communists like myself, as the universal revolution initiated in October 1917. ********************************* Point of information:
The NSDAP lost seats in the 1932 election. The combined seat total of the SPD and KPD was greater than the Nazis. The KPD's seat total actually increased in the 1932 election. Make of it what you will from various perspectives; but usually, the impression given is that the NSDAP was increasing in popularity when Hindenburg gave State power to Hitler. This isn't so. Still, the author's point about the majority of the German being imbued with right-wing conservative notions and feelings in 1932 is true. Of course, it has to be remembered that the proportion of the German population living in rural areas, doing farm work was a far greater percentage in the 20s and 30s.
Mike B)
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>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The 8th German federal election of November 1932 (Weimar Republic) saw support for the Nazi Party drop significantly, due to increased support for the KPD and DNVP.
Party Vote percentage (change) Seats (change) National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) 33.1% -4.2% 196 -34 Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) 20.4% -1.2% 121 -12 Communist Party of Germany (KPD) 16.9% +2.6% 100 +11 Centre Party (Z) 11.9% -0.5% 70 -5 German National People's Party (DNVP) 8.5% +2.6% 52 +15 Bavarian People's Party (BVP) 3.1% -0.1% 20 -2 German People's Party (DVP) 1.9% -0.1% 11 +4 Christian Social People's Service 1.1% +0.1% 5 +2 German Farmers' Party (DBP) 0.4% +/-0 3 +1 German Democratic Party (DDP) 1.0% +/-0 2 -2 Agricultural League 0.3% +/-0 2 +/-0 Reich Party of the German Middle Class (WP) 0.3% -0.1% 1 -1 German-Hanoverian Party (DHP) 0.2% +0.1% 1 +1 Other 0.9% +0.3% 0 -2 Totals 100.0% 584 -24
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