Franz von Papen (1879-1969) was a German military officer and politician, best remembered for his role in bringing Adolf Hitler to the chancellorship. Born to a family of Catholic aristocrats in Westphalia, Papen joined the military as a cadet, graduating with a commission in 1897. Elitist and militarist by nature, Papen was loyal to Wilhelm II and entirely supportive of the Kaiser’s war plans. Papen travelled to the United States as a military attaché in mid-1914 but was later expelled for planning and supplying acts of sabotage against American war industries. He returned to Germany and spent the rest of the war commanding combat battalions on the Western Front and in the Middle East. After the war, Papen joined the Catholic Centre Party and sat in the Prussian legislature. In the mid-1920s he broke with members of his own party, outraged by their coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and supported Paul von Hindenburg. Papen served as chancellor for five months in 1932 before convincing Hindenburg to appoint Hitler to the role. In these extracts from his memoirs, published in 1953, Papen offered his views on the problems and failures of the early Weimar Republic:

On the demise of Imperial Germany:

“The world I had known and understood had disappeared. The whole system of values into which I had integrated myself and for which my generation had fought and died had become meaningless. The Kaiser’s Empire and the Prussian monarchy, both of which we had regarded as permanent institutions, had been supplanted by a largely theoretical republic. Germany was defeated, ruined, her people and institutions a prey to chaos and disillusionment.”

On the Weimar Constitution:

“In the tumult of the post-war period, the duty of all conservative forces was to rally under the banner of Christianity, in order to sustain in the new republic the basic concepts of continuing traditions. The Constitution approved at Weimar in 1919 seemed to many a perfect synthesis of Western democratic ideas. But the second paragraph of its first article proclaimed the false philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: ‘All power derives from the people’. This thesis is diametrically opposed to the teachers and traditions of the Roman Catholic Church… Now we had to accept the proposition that the State was the ultimate factor in our affairs, and its institutions, both administrative and parliamentary, the final repository of authority.”

On the Allies and post-war Germany:

“The grave errors and injustices contained in the Versailles Treaty can only be explained by the state of hysteria engendered in the Allied powers by years of hate-filled and untrue propaganda. Wilson’s Fourteen Points were greeted with immense relief in Germany. We were all convinced that the United States, having proved the decisive factor in the victory of the Allies, would play the principal part in the peace negotiations… We wished for nothing better than to build a new world, as equal partners, conferring with other nations on our mutual difficulties. We still believed in Germany’s historic mission as the stabilising factor in Central Europe. The competition and rivalries… seemed a thing of the past. We no longer represented a danger to anyone.”

On voting and representation in the Weimar Republic:

“Both the Central and State governments suffered from the same constructional fault. Legislative powers were confined exclusively to a single chamber and there was no higher authority to provide for their correction and revision… There was also the problem of a highly artificial electoral law… I was particularly opposed to the list system of voting. It was praised as the most democratic in the world [but] under this system we finally had over 30 parties… Any eccentric, or group of eccentrics was almost sure of getting at least one member into Parliament on the reserve list of votes. The consequent splintering of representation amounted to the suicide of democracy.”

On the hyperinflation of 1923:

“People abroad have very little conception of the magnitude of this disaster. At the end of the inflation, I can remember how wages and salaries had to be paid daily because the money received retained only a fraction of its worth at the end of another 24 hours. The Central Bank was unable to print money fast enough and many cities issued their own currency so that it became impossible to continue any ordered financial policy. It took a billion marks to purchase what one mark had bought before, and this meant that all savings, mortgages, pensions and investment incomes were completely worthless, and those without material belongings lost their entire capital. Those who had contributed to the many war loans lost the most. The middle classes, the artisans, pensioners and officials were proletarianised in the process. The industrious workman who had acquired a little property and substance had the basis of his economic existence destroyed and became a recruit to class warfare. This revolution in the social order provides the clue to the attraction of Marxist ideologies and of Hitler’s programme, born in these difficult days.”

In January 1923, French and Belgian troops marched into western Germany and occupied industrial centres in the Ruhr Valley. According to Paris, the Ruhr occupation was a response to Berlin’s unwillingness to meet her reparations obligations. France’s military intervention caused outrage in Germany, where it disrupted the economy, unsettled the Weimar government, fuelled right-wing nationalist movements and contributed to the hyperinflation crisis of late 1923. The occupation of the Ruhr also drew criticism from abroad. One vociferous complainant was South African prime minister Jan Smuts (1870-1950), who at the peak of the crisis visited London for an imperial conference. In a speech delivered on October 23rd, Smuts called the Ruhr occupation an illegal action that would fail to extract reparation payments from Germany. He also claimed the occupation was not provided for in the Treaty of Versailles, which had been reduced to another “scrap of paper”:

“The Ruhr occupation… is a grave matter from whatever point of view it is considered… All the experts whom I have consulted are unanimously of opinion that as long as the Ruhr occupation continues, there can be no reparation payments by the German government. The occupation will not only yield no payments but will render the payment of reparations impossible. While the industrial heart is severed from the body of Germany, her government cannot restore their finances and cannot even prepare to pay reparations…

The least that should be done is that the Ruhr occupation should, without further delay, become an invisible occupation, and that all barriers between the Ruhr and the Rhineland on one hand and the rest of Germany on the other, should be removed, and that free and unhampered trade relations between the two should be restored. Unless that is done, all discussions and settlements of the reparation question will be in the air and have no relation to facts at all.

This is grave enough but there is more. The Ruhr occupation can also be considered… a productive pledge, to be worked by the occupying authorities in default of official reparation payments by the German government. This is the official French viewpoint. But see what it means. It is not merely a bare occupation to exercise pressure on the German government. It is a direct exploitation of German territory, entirely unprovided for in the Versailles treaty…

The French hate the word revision and yet they have actually begun the revision of the Versailles treaty! They are enforcing a settlement outside and different from that provided for in the treaty. They have the congratulations of all those who hate the treaty. They have begun a process which will go very far…

There is a far graver aspect from which the Ruhr occupation can be considered… The British government have stated their view that the occupation is illegal. With all their authority and responsibility, they have declared before the world that the Ruhr occupation is a breach of the Versailles treaty on the part of France and Belgium. They have asked that the question should be decided by the supreme court of appeal among the nations, by the high court of international justice…

If the action of France and Belgium is right and legal under the [Versailles] treaty, then any one signatory of the treaty can at any time allege a breach of the treaty by Germany and thereupon proceed to invade her territory. Such an interpretation of the peace treaty, on the face of it, is unfair and wrong…

The greatest issue in the international relations, not only of Europe but of the whole world, has once more come to the front. We are back in August 1914. It is again the scrap of paper. Once more a great instrument of European settlement has been broken. We entered the Great War to avenge such a breach. It bodes ill for the future peace of Europe that four years after the war, we should have to face the same sort of situation again.”

The election of Paul von Hindenburg as German president in 1925 was a pivotal moment in the history of the Weimar Republic. It was not Hindenburg’s first foray into politics. The former military chief had nominated as a candidate for the presidency in 1920 before the Reichstag cancelled elections in the wake of the Kapp Putsch. After this, Hindenburg slipped into retirement at his Hanover estate, offering occasional press commentary on political matters. The presidency opened up again after Friedrich Ebert’s death from appendicitis in February 1925. Hindenburg, now aged 78, was approached by right-wing parties and encouraged to stand as a candidate. After refusing initially, he changed his mind and submitted his candidature on April 9th. Two days later, Hindenburg delivered his only public address of the campaign. In this speech, dubbed his ‘Easter Message’, Hindenburg told listeners the president must stand above parties and party politics:

To the German people,

“Germans of all races and provinces, who have at heart the well-being of the Fatherland, have offered me the highest post in the state. I obey this call, after long reflection, in homage to the Fatherland.

My life is open before the whole world. I believe that even in difficult times, I have done my duty. If duty orders me now – without consideration of party, person, origin and profession – to act as President upon the basis of the constitution, I shall not fail.

As a soldier, I have always thought of the whole nation and not of parties. These are necessary in a state ruled by a parliament, but the head of state must stand above them and independently of them, and must rule for every subject.

I have never lost my faith in the German people and in the support of God. But I am no longer young enough to believe in sudden changes. No war, no inner insurrection can free our fettered and disunited nation. It needs long, quiet, peaceful work. It needs, above everything, to be delivered from those who have made a business of politics. No state can exist without order and purity in its public life.

The President is especially called upon to uphold the sacredness of justice. Just as the first President [Ebert]… never denied his origin from the Social Democratic working classes, so no one should ever presume that I have given up my political convictions…

I do not consider the form of government of principal importance but the spirit that pervades that form. I stretch out my hand to every German who thinks nationally, who protects the dignity of the German name at home and abroad, who desires freedom of worship and class understanding, and put to him the request: ‘Help me to work for the resurrection of the Fatherland!’.”

Hindenburg did almost no campaigning himself but he was vigorously supported by right-wing nationalist parties, particularly the German National People’s Party (DNVP). The elections were held on April 26th 1925. Hindenburg won the presidency, securing 900,000 more votes than Centre Party candidate Wilhelm Marx. The election of the former World War I commander-in-chief triggered shock and outrage around the world. Hindenburg was sworn in on May 12th 1925. After taking the oath of office, he made the following remarks to the Reichstag:

“Accept my most hearty thanks for the words of welcome you have just spoken in the name of the people’s representatives… The Reichstag and the President belong together because they are both directly chosen by the people. Upon this basis alone rests their power. Both together incorporate the sovereignty of the people, which forms the ground of our political and constitutional life. That is the deep meaning of the constitution to which I have just now most solemnly pledged myself.

But while the Reichstag is the place where differences of opinion and political conviction wrestle with each other, the President must serve all the working and creative powers of the people, outside party interests. So I wish once more to expressly state that I shall devote myself to the uniting of our people. This great task will certainly be made easier if… the parties are not concerned with the advantage of one party or profession, but with the question of who can most faithfully and successfully serve our heavily tried people.

I confidently hope that a noble rivalry in true fulfilment of this duty will form a sure basis upon which, after the strife of intellect and opinions, we shall find common ground in the work entrusted to us.”

Gustav Stresemann served as the Weimar Republic’s chancellor (August-November 1923) and foreign minister (August 1923 to October 1929). He was chancellor when Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) attempted to seize power in Bavaria on November 8th-9th. On November 11th, two days after the Munich Putsch, Stresemann addressed a large gathering in Halle. He urged them to reject demands for a nationalist dictatorship – not because he opposed the use of dictatorial powers but because Hitler and the Nazis were incapable of using them effectively:

“The desperate situation [in Germany] has induced many people to look for new forms, new personalities and new ideas.

We are now confronted with the demand for a dictatorship. The one element of justification in this is that the usual course of parliamentary procedure should not be allowed to hold up essential measures. Article 48 of the Constitution of the Reich does confer far-reaching powers on the President and on those he appoints, to act in certain circumstances without the Reichstag…

We are thoroughly determined to deal radically with the situation and we are well aware that in such extremities, nothing is achieved by party resolutions and party conflict. But anyone who thinks that the demand for a dictatorship will improve matters is making a great mistake, in so far as he is confusing form and content… The dictator will be equally confronted by economic necessities. With him, what counts is his personality, his purpose and all that stands before his mind.

‘National dictatorship’ is the new phrase. In the first place, one must inquire who is to exercise it. An appeal in a beer-cellar to Herr Adolf Hitler to come forth and guide the political destinies of Germany will bring no help to the German people… Without a programme and a personality, the cry for a dictatorship is an empty catchword…

No good will be done by events such as we have seen in Bavaria. Our critics in Bavaria urge us to use the authority of the government, to be prompt and stern, and to rid ourselves of party influence. It is alleged that we are under the spell of Marxism and dependent on its doctrine… I repudiate so shameless a slander…

The events in Bavaria may, as they turned out, seem grotesque, but they were in fact profoundly tragic. They showed that the most powerful enemy of the German people was always its own lack of unity. I was deeply shaken to observe a German commander, whose name was well-known through the world by reason of his achievements in the war [Ludendorff], allowing himself to be so far abused and led astray as to take up arms against the Reich…

Let me ask you one question: if you were called upon by these satellites of Hitler to join them in ejecting this ‘feeble’ government and reconstructing the Reich, do you really think that these merely destructive forces could provide competent dictators for Germany?”

Joseph Roth was an Austrian-born journalist of Jewish heritage and liberal political views. He lived in Berlin for much of the Weimar period, arriving in 1920 and leaving after the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Roth wrote prolifically about different aspects of life in the Berlin capital. In this extract, Roth describes visiting the Reichstag in mid-1924 – but he is less than impressed with the behaviour of its elected members:

“The great edifice will be 30 years old in December. It has irritated people of taste and democratic inclinations for the better part of three decades now. Over its entrance is inscribed the dedication ‘Dem Deutschen Volke’ (‘To the German people’). But on its dome, 75 metres above street level, is a huge golden crown, a massive weight, completely out of scale with the dome and utterly at variance with the dedication.

One could be forgiven for thinking this was the front entrance… for assuming the magnificent facade with the six great Corinthian pillars is there to greet the representatives of the German people… But this is not the front entrance. The great doors are kept locked. It’s to the side, through a small tradesmen’s entrance, that the representatives of the people take themselves to their work. It’s impossible not to see this as a symbolic leftover from the times of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Bronze casts of four German emperors stand in the entrance hall, as though to review the parade of delegates…

Today, on the opening day of the Reichstag, they have been packed since two o’clock… Here in the German Reichstag, each party has not only its own political convictions but also its own ritual. There is no sense of overall decorum. The 79-year-old veteran president, who has a weak voice, receives a call from the right to “Speak up!”… And where have I heard that whistling coming from the communist benches? It was in high school, wasn’t it, in my junior year? Is it that I’ve outgrown it because I’m apolitical?

Foreign ambassadors… are sitting in the box. The eyes of America, France, and Italy are directed at the representatives of the German people. And what do they see? The goose-stepping of the nationalists. Wrangling among the communists. Ludendorff in dark glasses. The apolitical observer cannot understand why, more than any other professional grouping in the world, German politicians are so driven to make asses of themselves before they’ve even embarked on their politics, which are a further reservoir of absurdity.

Now they’re singing ‘The Internationale’ on my left and ‘Deutschland über Alles’ on my right. Simultaneously, as if it didn’t make more sense to sing them consecutively. Why not have music, my friends? Why shouldn’t politicians sing? Why will the one side not hear the other out? Isn’t it possible that both songs have something to be said for them?”

Gerhard Scholem was a Jewish-German historian and philosopher who emigrated to Palestine in 1923. Scholem’s parents, Arthur and Betty, remained in Berlin. Arthur Scholem was a printer who accepted government contracts to print banknotes. In October 1923, Betty Scholem wrote her son these letters, describing how life and economic activity had deterioriated due to hyperinflation:

October 9th 1923

“So you had a lovely and interesting trip… Just be glad to be where you are. Here it has become simply terrible. I can imagine that outside Germany, people must have the strangest notions about this place. The reality is even stranger. When you left, the brand of sausage I gave you cost 12 million marks; today it’s up to 240 million. All prices have risen at this pace, often even faster. The collapse of the economy is complete. No one can buy a thing and the unemployment rate has thus been on the rise.”

October 15th 1923

“We have not yet received your second letter. Hopefully, it’ll arrive this week. Conditions have taken a catastrophic turn here. Notice that this letter cost 15 million cash. It will be 30 million beginning the day after tomorrow – and this price will most likely last a mere two days at most. Now you can get things done only with billions.

To ensure that next week’s payroll will keep its value, the boys bought [United States] dollars on Friday at the ridiculous exchange rate of 1.5 billion [marks per dollar]. They will re-sell them on Thursday in order to pay people. For the time being, this week’s pay will be eight billion, though we’ve had negotiations today because the workers are demanding twice that much.

The bread ration card has been done away with, and a normal loaf of bread now costs 540 million; tomorrow, surely twice as much. The streetcar fare is 20 million; tomorrow it’ll be 50 million! My God, you probably don’t have the faintest notion of this millionfold Witches’ Sabbath. You must know that we send women’s magazines to Frau Jacques Meyer. A few days ago her husband sent us a bank check for over five million [marks]. When we went to the bank here in Berlin to pick it up, it cost 40 million [marks] in transfer fees!

I ask myself if the neighbouring Swiss are indeed so ignorant of our circumstances or if they just act that way. This small anecdote can illuminate everything. If throughout the world there is such little understanding of our plight, how can we expect that anyone will come to our aid? It seems inevitable that we will lose the Rhine and the Ruhr, that Bavaria will break away and that Germany will once again fall apart into minuscule petty states.”

In late August 1923, Berlin journalist Friedrich Kroner wrote the following account of the difficulties of shopping amid rapidly rising prices caused by hyperinflation:

“It pounds daily on the nerves: the insanity of numbers, the uncertain future… An epidemic of fear, naked need: lines of shoppers once more form in front of shops, first in front of one, then in front of all. No disease as is contagious as this one. The lines have something suggestive about them: the women’s glances, their hastily donned kitchen dresses, their careworn, patient faces.

The lines always send the same signal: the city, the big stone city will be shopped empty again. Rice, 80,000 Marks a pound yesterday, costs 160,000 Marks today and tomorrow perhaps twice as much. The day after, the man behind the counter will shrug his shoulders: “No more rice”. Well then, noodles? “No more noodles.” Barley, groats, beans, lentils – always the same, buy, buy, buy. The piece of paper, the spanking brand new note, still moist from the printers, paid out today as a weekly wage, shrinks in value on the way to the grocer’s shop. The zeros, the multiplying zeros!

They rise with the Mark: hate, desperation and need – daily emotions like daily rates of exchange. The rising Mark brings mockery and laughter: “Cheaper butter! Instead of 1.6 million marks, just 1.4 million Mark.” This is no joke, this is reality, written seriously with a pencil, hung in the shop window and seriously read.

It rises with the Mark, the haste to turn that piece of paper into something one can swallow, something filling. The weekend markets overflow with people. City police regulate traffic. The lines consume the product stands. “I’ll have two dozen turnips.” “There’s only one dozen”… The next pushes forward from behind: “Two dozen turnips.” “There’s only one… next!”

Somewhere, patience explodes. Resignation breaks… “Come on, when am I going to get my butter?” screams a woman. “Your butter? It is not your butter by a long shot. By the time you get to the front of the line, your butter will be all gone.” And then comes the umbrella handle, a response crashing through the glass cover on the cream cheese. And the cop standing watch outside pulls a sobbing woman from the store and charges are filed.”

In November 1919, former chief of staff Paul von Hindenburg gave the following assessment of Germany’s defeat in World War I, giving weight to the stab in the back theory popular with right-wing nationalists:

“History will render the final judgment on that about which I may give no further details here. At the time we still hoped that the will to victory would dominate everything else. When we assumed our post we made a series of proposals to the Reich leadership which aimed at combining all forces at the nation’s disposal for a quick and favourable conclusion to the war; at the same time, they demonstrated to the government its enormous tasks. What finally became of our proposals, once again partially because of the influence of the parties, is known. I wanted forceful and cheerful cooperation and instead encountered failure and weakness.

The concern as to whether the homeland would remain resolute until the war was won, from this moment on, never left us. We often raised a warning voice to the Reich government. At this time, the secret intentional mutilation of the fleet and the army began…

The effects of these endeavours were not concealed from the supreme army command during the last year of the war. The obedient troops who remained immune to revolutionary attrition suffered greatly from the behaviour, in violation of duty, of their revolutionary comrades; they had to carry the battle the whole time. The intentions of the command could no longer be executed. Our repeated proposals for strict discipline and strict legislation were not adopted. Thus did our operations necessarily miscarry; the collapse was inevitable; the revolution only provided the keystone.

An English general said with justice: “The German army was stabbed in the back.” No guilt applies to the good core of the army. Its achievements are just as admirable as those of the officer corps. Where the guilt lies has clearly been demonstrated. If it needed more proof, then it would be found in the quoted statement of the English general and in the boundless astonishment of our enemies at their victory.

That is the general trajectory of the tragic development of the war for Germany, after a series of brilliant, unsurpassed successes on many fronts, following an accomplishment by the army and the people for which no praise is high enough. This trajectory had to be established so that the military measures for which we are responsible could be correctly evaluated.”

In 1922, German writer Thomas Mann spoke to a group of young students and urged them to support democracy and the Weimar Republic:

“War is romantic. No one has ever denied the mystic and poetic element residing in it. But today only the insensible would deny that it is utterly debased romanticism, an utter distortion of the poetic. To save our national feeling from falling into disrepute, to keep it from becoming a curse, we must learn to understand that a warlike and brawling spirit is not its whole content but more and more absolutely a cult of peace in accord with the mysticism and poetry in its nature.

I must beg you, young men, not to take this tone. I am no pacifist, of either the unctuous or the ecstatic school. Pacifism is not to my taste, whether as a soporific for the soul or as a middle-class rationalization of the good life… The side of peace is my side too, as being the side of culture, art, and thought, whereas in a war vulgarity triumphs… War is a lie, its issues are a lie; whatever honorable emotion the individual may bring to it, war itself is today stripped of all honor, and to any straight and clear-eyed vision reveals itself as the triumph of all that is brutal and vulgar in the soul of the race, as the archfoe of culture and thought, as a blood orgy of egoism, corruption, and vileness…

My aim, which I express quite candidly, is to win you—as far as that is needed—to the side of the republic, to the side of what is called democracy and what I call humanity… Our students, our student associations, by no means lack democratic tradition. There have been times when the national idea was at odds with the monarchical and dynastic; when they were in irreconcilable opposition. Patriotism and republic, so far from being opposed, have sometimes appeared as one and the same thing; and the cause of freedom and the fatherland had the passionate support of the noblest youth. Today the young, or at least considerable and important sections of them, seem to have sworn eternal hatred to the republic and forgotten what might have been once upon a time…

The republic is our fate… Freedom, so called, is no joke, I do not say that. Its other name is responsibility; the word makes it only too clear that freedom is truly a heavy burden, most of all for the intellectual. “We are not the republic,” these patriots tell me, averting their faces. “The republic is foreign domination—insofar as weakness is only the other side of foreign power…

Students and citizens, your resistance to the republic and the democracy is simply a fear of words. You shy at them like restive horses; you fall into unreasoning panic at the sound of them. But they are just words: relativities, time-conditioned forms, necessary instruments; to think they must refer to some outlandish kind of foreign humbug is mere childishness. The republic—as though it were not still and always Germany! Democracy! As though one could not be more at home in that home than in any flashing and dashing and crashing empire!”