after country in the ensuing years: The Left wanted increased unemployment relief; the Right

argued for retrenchment and a balanced budget. In such a debate, the Conservatives initially
held the stronger cards. They had on their side the weight of economic the ory and the orthodox
maxim that reduced spending was the proper way to move the business cycle out of
depression. The Socialists were more hesitant. On problems such as these, Marxist theory was
of little help, and they were obliged to fall back on arguments of humanitarianism and
expediency. The new economics of John Maynard Keynes and the experience of the American
New Deal had not yet taught them to see virtue in deficit financing.
Thus it was a conservative government that came to power in Germany in March 1930.
It rested on that portion of the Reichstag Center and Rightstill the larger partwhich refused
to follow Hugenberg and Hitler in their propaganda of unbridled nationalism. But the government
had no majority in the Reichstag as a whole, nor did its chief inspire general devotion and
loyalty. The new chancellor, Heinrich Brning, was a man of rectitude and disciplined
intelligence. As the first to reach political power of the generation that had actually seen frontline service during the war, he might have been expected to appeal to younger voters. But for
this he was far too cold and rigid. Even in his own party, the Center, Brning was not popular.
Yet he managed to stay in office for more than two years. Month after month, he
doggedly stuck to his task, as the depression deepened, the army of the unemployed swelled to
frightening dimensions, and both the Communists and the National Socialists made steady
gains. In one sense, Brning's might be called Germany's last democratic government of the
interwar years; its leader did all in his power to resist the onslaught of nazism. In another sense,
this ministry marked the beginning of the end for German democracy. Lacking a parliamentary
majority, the Brning government felt obliged to resort to the emergency decree powers that the
constitution vested in the president, and beginning with the July budget of 1930, it enacted
measure after measure by Hindenburg's fiat.
Meantime, the electoral returns gave mounting evidence of the Nazis' rise. In September
1930, they increased their seats in the Reichstag from 12 to 107thus becoming the second
largest party in the country and making the Reichstag itself still more unmanageable than
before. Eighteen months later, when Hindenburg's term expired, the National Socialists decided
on the bold maneuver of running their own man, Adolf Hitler, against Germany's undisputed
father figure who, at eighty-five, was ready to do his soldier's duty by standing for reelection.
Hindenburg wonbut only because the Social Democrats felt driven to the paradoxical course
of voting for a military hero to save what was left of German democracy.
At this point the former understanding between chancellor and president which alone
had permitted the Weimar system to continue working at allbroke down in unexpected
fashion. Hindenburg, who was tied to the Prussian estate-owning class by origin and long
association, refused to enact a land-reform decree that Brning had laid before him. Brning
resigned. His successor was Franz von Papen, in name a member of the Center, but in fact a
reactionary aristocrat and schemer who thought himself clever enough to give Germany a
nationalist government without calling on Hitler for aid.
The advent of Papen in May 1932 began the eight-month agony of German democracy.
The new ministry of barons" did not pretend to have the confidence of the
The Great Depression, 19291935 197