August 4, 2010 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • Page 21 with the German Nationalist Party of Alfred Hugenburg, and were somewhat more involved in Big Business and less in awe of the old Prussian nobility. The imperfect analogy would be to compare the Social Democrats and the Center to the U.S. Democrats and the Conservatives and Nationalists to the U.S. Republicans. There were also three originally smaller parties. The Bavarian People’s Party advanced the specific concerns of Bavaria, a South German state that had been an independent kingdom before 1871. Bavaria was somewhat Catholic, strongly anti-communist, and yearned for more independence, perhaps total independence from Prussian Berlin. This splinter party had no real clout on its own, but could contribute to coalitions. Last and most dangerous, there was the Communist Party of Germany, which was defeated in an outright takeover attempt in 1919 with several hundred anti-communist citizens and soldiers and several thousand communists killed in the fighting or executed afterwards. Incredibly, even after an armed uprising that briefly controlled a third of Germany, the German Communists were still a legal political party. Then there was the National Socialist German Workers Party – NAZI for short – a personal vehicle for the ambitions of Adolf Hitler. This upstart group had been marginalized after a failed takeover attempt of Munich, in Bavaria, in 1923, with eight policemen and 23 Nazi storm troopers killed in the street fighting. Again incredibly, Hitler’s rights were restored after a brief stint in prison and, like the communists, he took advantage of the Great Depression to build a constituency among the unemployed – toning down his vicious anti-Semitism for the time being to win wider support as an anti-communist. Presiding over the crazy quilt was Paul von Hindenburg, Germany’s military figurehead during World War I. When Hitler ran for president of Weimar Germany against Hindenburg, Hitler lost – but he was the second highest vote-getter, probably because he was the only visible anticommunist who was also willing to bring a radical perspective to economics. Throughout the history of German electoral politics before Hitler’s seizure of power, less than a third of the German electorate ever cast a single vote for him. The responsible parties and the communists and Bavarian separatists siphoned away a lot of the votes. Unfortunately, because no party had a clear majority, Weimar was ruled by coalition cabinets. The top vote-getter became president, a virtual constitutional monarch, while the runner-up usually got to be chancellor through presidential appointment, a medieval-based title that combined the roles of U.S. Secretary of State and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. The chancellor ran the country on a day-today basis, but the president could tell him to resign if he messed up or lost support. Hindenburg hated Hitler, thought him a vulgar upstart, found Hitler’s extreme anti-Semitism morally repugnant, and was offended at Hitler’s slurs on the aristocracy for losing World War I. Hindenburg refused to appoint Hitler as chancellor. Meanwhile, Hindenburg’s favorite chancellor, Franz von Papen, a superficial dandy and flatterer, but an aristocrat, Catholic, and gentleman, was bumped from the chancellorship for Kurt von Schleicher, a quirky World War I general who supported a mixture of conservatism – expand the Weimar Republic’s 100,000 man army – and liberalism – make-work jobs to the tune of two billion marks to put unemployed workers back to work. Schleicher had some personality problems. He offended Oskar von Hindenburg, the president’s son and trusted advisor, and he seriously offended Franz von Papen. This percolated up to Hindenburg, who was 86 and dying of lung cancer, and left him vulnerable for Papen’s devious plan. Papen wanted Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor but to help Papen, who would be appointed vice chancellor, and Schleicher as minister of defense, so he could control the vulgar upstart until it was time to discard him. Hindenburg didn’t like the idea but his seething son and the envious Papen pushed for it so hard that he knuckled under. Hitler, perhaps the most despised non-communist in German politics, was appointed to the nation’s top job based on invidious intrigue by politicians who despised and distrusted him, but were trying to use him. Hindenburg, senescent was he was, palliated Hitler’s impending horrors with one terminal act of patriotism: When Hitler demanded that Hindenburg dismiss all Jews from the German civil service, Hindenburg refused until he had amended the decree to protect the civil service jobs of Jewish veterans of World War I, the children of veterans, and any Jews who had served reliably through the war in government jobs. The decree stuck until the Holocaust started in 1941. Professor Turner argues that, if the Germans had opted for a military takeover by people like Hindenburg or Schleicher instead of Hitler, the Holocaust would not have happened. The next war would have ended as the Germans repossessed those parts of Poland that had once been German, and since Hindenburg was a Christian and part Polish, the occupation would have been more lenient than either the Nazi or Soviet incursions, which killed millions of Poles. The Prussian generals would have controlled Russia through investment rather than military occupation and mass murder, rather as the Germans are doing today. Japan would not have allied with Germany. The Prussians preferred Nationalist China and supported Chiang Kaishek, while the Japanese sheltered Jewish refugees. I think he could be right. The worst-case scenario came as seven sparring political parties handed power to the worst possible person. Maybe it’s time to stop bankrolling national politicians and just share the money with the poor, or put it in the bank. George Washington did not think much of political parties. As he knew, parties turn into factions that fight among themselves. In the end, politicians on both sides lie to get elected and then do whatever is good for themselves and their immediate entourage. Two-party systems have been challenged from time to time by third parties grouped around individuals who have made themselves unacceptable to the leaders of the quasiliberal or quasi-conservative elements because they were too extreme. A couple of their candidates were actually responsible people, but most were a little off-beam. The stodgy two-party system really does not give the voters much of a choice most of the time. Nobody with a really radical program from either the right or the left would be acceptable to 51 percent of the registered voters, so the eccentric geniuses and the outright nut cakes are nudged aside and we get to vote for people who are optimistically less than catastrophic and really cannot solve any of the old problems, and hopefully won’t create too many new ones. That is not how it has always worked in other places. I just read a book by Yale professor Henry Ashby Turner Jr., who offers his perspective on one of the worst political events of the past century: Hitler’s takeover of Germany and destruction of the Weimar Republic, which, coupled with Stalin’s perversion of Marx’s “worker’s paradise” into another brutal despotism, touched off World War II, many instances of genocide, the massive bombing for former U.S. allies, and a Cold War that kept the United States nervous for 40 years and pushed us into a long stumble toward bankruptcy. Professor Turner’s book is not a quick read, but it is an important one. He makes two extremely cogent points. The first is that “Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power: January 1933” were not an inevitable sweep to political control fueled by rampant anti-Semitism, fear of Soviet-backed communism, or even by the fact that none of the other parties offered an alternative to the Great Depression. Turner’s second point is that Germany and the world would have been better off if the former generals who controlled the troubled Weimar Republic had opted for a military takeover and sent Hitler, who was already an accessory to murder, back to prison for life. In 1933, Weimar Germany had seven significant political parties The Social Democrats were, at any economically normal time, the biggest party, representing the working-class demand for fair wages and health insurance. Members were anti-capitalist, but strongly opposed to control from Moscow. The Center, usually the second biggest party, represented political Catholics who were opposed to communism, wanted church property left under church control, and supported a decent life for working people without confiscation of private property from the rich. In good times, these two parties had generally formed a coalition against the Conservatives, who represented the interests of the manufacturers, the large land owners, and the German Army. The Conservatives were loosely affiliated The seven-party system did not work well either Mission at the Eastward volunteers (continued from page 4) Volunteers who travel and work together during the week long project tend to bond and grow as a group. For the residents of Maine, the outreach from New Jersey shows them that the larger church is connected to them and that people really do care. During the children’s sermon, Paul Jadick (center) discussed some of the tools that were used to repair the homes.