Should the Weimar Republic have banned Adolf Hitler from becoming Chancellor in 1933?

[Meclazine for Israel]

I visited a trench in France operated by the Germans in WW1.

The tour guide said that Adolf Hitler's regiment had been at this trench and that Adolf had gone over the top.

I said "That's nothing, you should have see what he did in WW2".

I was not invited to the afternoon session.

[katelyn.a.paulie]

Thaelmann and his KPD were just as bad --  if  not, worse, given Thaelmann's metaphorical orgasming over Stalin -- and bear a big part of the blame for Hitler coming to power.

Terrifying the German middle class with threats of confiscating their property will do that.

Anyone who spends eleven years in solitary confinement interspersed with torture deserves some respect, but it does not remove him or his party from blame or their share of the responsibility.

[katelyn.a.paulie]

The Nazis didn’t actually have an election majority though. And in the last Reichstag election before Hitler was appointed Chancellor the Nazis had actually lost seats, though they remained the largest party (ie., they had a plurality of seats)

The NSDAP and KPD combined had the most seats in the Reichstag. A stable majority government committed to democracy was impossible.

[katelyn.a.paulie]

Franz von Papen had essentially ended democracy in Prussia in 1932 because he didn't like that a coalition was impossible without the support of at least one of the Nazis or Communists. This ended helping the Nazis quite a bit in the long run and Papen deserves a lot of the blame for Hitler becoming dictator.

At the federal level, an argument could be made for Brüning being the man who had ended Weimar democracy, who was the last Chancellor before Papen, Schleicher, and Hitler.

The idiots in the SPD bringing down Mueller in 1930, IMO.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Franz von Papen had essentially ended democracy in Prussia in 1932 because he didn't like that a coalition was impossible without the support of at least one of the Nazis or Communists. This ended helping the Nazis quite a bit in the long run and Papen deserves a lot of the blame for Hitler becoming dictator.

At the federal level, an argument could be made for Brüning being the man who had ended Weimar democracy, who was the last Chancellor before Papen, Schleicher, and Hitler.

The idiots in the SPD bringing down Mueller in 1930, IMO.

A bad move, yes. And they couldn't prevent the KPD's increased popularity in any case.

[katelyn.a.paulie]

Franz von Papen had essentially ended democracy in Prussia in 1932 because he didn't like that a coalition was impossible without the support of at least one of the Nazis or Communists. This ended helping the Nazis quite a bit in the long run and Papen deserves a lot of the blame for Hitler becoming dictator.

At the federal level, an argument could be made for Brüning being the man who had ended Weimar democracy, who was the last Chancellor before Papen, Schleicher, and Hitler.

The idiots in the SPD bringing down Mueller in 1930, IMO.

A bad move, yes. And they couldn't prevent the KPD's increased popularity in any case.

The KPD's Thaelmann deserves one such big black mark as well though he found out being a supplicant to Joe Stalin just means you get left to the horror of 11 years of solitary confinement interspersed with whatever the Nazis did to him that he didn't manage to smuggle out to the world about.

[All Along The Watchtower]

The KPD's Thaelmann deserves one such big black mark as well though he found out being a supplicant to Joe Stalin just means you get left to the horror of 11 years of solitary confinement interspersed with whatever the Nazis did to him that he didn't manage to smuggle out to the world about.

And it turns out that many years of calling the major left-wing party in Germany "social fascists" didn't exactly endear the KPD to the Social Democrats. Can't imagine why they didn't cooperate with the Communists!

[Obama24]

Would the NSDAP just have a stand in like Strasser or Goering be appointed in his place, and then smooth the way for Hitler once the regime was consolidated like Campora did for Peron in 1972?

Even if Hitler dissapeared, other nazi would take his place.

Perhaps a more competent, less egotistical, and less meth driven Nazi.

[Skill and Chance]

Maybe?  This would be extremely high risk because you-know-who's psychotic supporters would immediately take up arms, and they clearly had disproportionate military support by this time.  Without extreme Lend-Lease Act level economic/military aid from the future Allies (profoundly unlikely in those isolationist times), I don't see how the pro-democracy coalition could prevail.  So the German Civil War probably ends much like the Spanish Civil War and gives the fascist coalition a ~5 year head start in militarization, which could make the ultimate outcome of WWII even worse (even up to and including Germany getting the atomic bomb 1st).  However, there would still be a non-zero chance of killing the future Axis in the cradle.

[katelyn.a.paulie]

From what I've read, ALL the Weimar parties wanted to take land back from Poland and to be honest, Poles thinking that British and French will still rush to save them is, like their statements about FDR and Winnie stopping Stalin from doing what he wanted to, now that he was in control of the territory the Red Army occupied, pure fantasy.

It's not how the interwar French, especially the French military leaders, worked or thought. And, without the French, the British will not act.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Would the NSDAP just have a stand in like Strasser or Goering be appointed in his place, and then smooth the way for Hitler once the regime was consolidated like Campora did for Peron in 1972?

Even if Hitler dissapeared, other nazi would take his place.

Perhaps a more competent, less egotistical, and less meth driven Nazi.

So not a Nazi then.

[katelyn.a.paulie]

Ouch! Although after doing some reading about the interwar and world wars, i think ethnic greeks should be truthful and tell us all that the Megali Idea is way too similar to Lebensraum for comfort.

[Obama24]

Would the NSDAP just have a stand in like Strasser or Goering be appointed in his place, and then smooth the way for Hitler once the regime was consolidated like Campora did for Peron in 1972?

Even if Hitler dissapeared, other nazi would take his place.

Perhaps a more competent, less egotistical, and less meth driven Nazi.

So not a Nazi then.

?

I'm saying that there would've been a fascist that came to power regardless. Hitler wasn't a good leader even ignoring the genocide he perpetuated. He was insecure, ego-driven, and thought he knew more than his generals. He wasn't very competent. A competent fascistic leader in Germany would've made things much more difficult.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

It hitler's parliamentary aims had been stymied, would it have boosted the revolutionary wing of the Nazi Party, Strasser and Rohm?

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

They should have reinstalled the Hohenzollerns.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Would the NSDAP just have a stand in like Strasser or Goering be appointed in his place, and then smooth the way for Hitler once the regime was consolidated like Campora did for Peron in 1972?

Even if Hitler dissapeared, other nazi would take his place.

Perhaps a more competent, less egotistical, and less meth driven Nazi.

So not a Nazi then.

?

I'm saying that there would've been a fascist that came to power regardless. Hitler wasn't a good leader even ignoring the genocide he perpetuated. He was insecure, ego-driven, and thought he knew more than his generals. He wasn't very competent. A competent fascistic leader in Germany would've made things much more difficult.

And I'm saying that a competent Nazi or indeed, fascist (more broadly) leader is an oxymoron.

[The Mikado]

This is a pretty meaningless question in that Germany DID try ruling through decree and ignoring the Reichstag for about two years after 1930. Brüning's government resigning was a sign that with a majority for the "Coalition of No" in the Reichstag between the Commies and the Nazis, any government would be untenable without support for one or the other. both of Brüning's two successors spent their entire time in office throwing around for any sort of "how can we stay in power supported by the Nazis from the outside" or "how can we make the Nazis our junior coalition partners" and Hitler wouldn't stand for either because the Nazis were just larger than all the other parties.

Even in some sort of reality where the DNVP didn't lose its mind and become almost as right wing as the Nazis and it actually tried to form some sort of grand coalition with the SPD and Zentrum (which is basically a fantasy land anyway), that would STILL not be anywhere near a majority. A government like that would run into the same problem Brüning did plus the problem that it'd be internally impossible to keep together.

The way to avoid the Nazi takeover if you start as late as the end of Weimar Republic basically involves Brüning not being himself and taking aggressive actions about the Depression, and if he were the type of person who would do that he wouldn't be in Zentrum to begin with. The Depression was so unbelievably bad by 1932-1933 that the electorate was never going to return something that wasn't even worse every time voters wanted a new Reichstag.