The Weimar Republic governed Germany as a constitutional federal republic from the end of World War I until March 23, 1933, when the country officially became a one-party dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler. It effectively ended on January 30 of that year when the president of the republic (Paul von Hindenburg) appointed Hitler as chancellor.
The Grave Diggers by Rudiger Barth and Hauke Friederichs (first published in Germany in 2018 as Die Toten Gräber) is subtitled 1932, The Last Winter of the Weimar Republic. It depicts the death throes of the republic from 17 November 1932 until Hitler’s assumption of power. The Weimar Republic was officially known as the German Reich. Hitler was the first person to use the term. It did not come into general use until after he assumed office.
Its life can be divided into thirds. From 1918 to 1924 riot, revolution, and hyperinflation were its defining features. The ensuing five years were a mini golden age. Hyperinflation was licked by backing the mark with gold. The arts thrived, and general prosperity prevailed. From 1929 until 1933 Germany was gripped by the cold embrace of the depression.
Both the Nazis and communists had large followings. The authors of this volume declare at the end of the book that the descent into dictatorship was not inevitable without offering any supportive evidence; it’s hard to see how representative government could have survived the maelstrom that was German politics at the time just before Hitler’s dictatorship. There seemed only three possible outcomes for the period of German turmoil described in this book – a Stalinist regime, a military dictatorship, or the Nazi takeover which eventuated.
Barth’s and Friederich’s day-by-day description of the events that led to Hitler’s rise and eventually the industrialized murder of six million Jews and scores of millions of deaths from the European catastrophe that was World War II is riveting. Pettiness, the desire for power, and the disregard for the general good characterized the politicians of the period leading to Hitler’s appointment by the aged President Hindenburg. Hindenburg died the following year by which time Hitler had seized total power. He refused to concede he had done anything wrong.
In addition to the standard Nazi villains, Franz von Papen ( 1879-1969) is especially odious. He had been chancellor before the appointment of Kurt von Schleicher a general who also served as minister of defense. Schleicher was forced to resign after only 56 days in office. Papen surreptitiously plotted Schleicher’s replacement by Hitler and served as his vice-chancellor until 1934 when he was sent to Vienna as ambassador to Austria. He later was ambassador to Turkey. He was acquitted of war crimes by the Nuremberg Court. In 1947, a West German denazification court found Papen to have acted as a main culprit in crimes relating to the Nazi government. Papen was given a sentence of eight years imprisonment at hard labor but was released after serving only two.
As mentioned above, the rapid descent of a cultured country into barbarism (Churchill said Germany was proof that a country could be cultured without being civilized) will hold the reader’s interest and elicit wonder as to how Germany had decided to solve its problems with total dictatorship, pageantry, and finally mass murder. The general reader with an interest in history will find the book well worth reading. I can make only two minor criticisms. The translation, by Caroline Waight, is idiomatic and transparent save for a few awkward spots. The authors in their attempt to outline the daily activities of its characters frequently tell us what they were thinking or doing at a precise moment when there is no way they could know these details. Otherwise, the volume deserves considerable praise.
In addition to the text, there is a description of the fate of the key players in this gruesome story. For example, Schleicher and his wife were murdered by the SS along with the leadership of the SA on the Night of the Long Knives. The Nazis also destroyed his memoirs which deprived us of his view of the events leading to his fall and Hitler’s rise.
There are countless volumes dealing with the rise of Nazism. This one approaches the subject in a unique fashion which makes it worth choosing from the huge stack of books too numerous for even a scholar of the subject to read. Worth reading for a description of how easy it is to go horribly wrong.
