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Erin's Erfurt III Experience

The teal tide - 2022 Australian federal election
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OTL Weimar Republic: 1920 German federal election
I recently came into possession of data for the 1920 through March 1933 German federal elections, as well as other assorted data, at the level of Kreise and independent cities. Massive massive thank you to @Caprice for making this possible. For a long time I wanted to produce exactly these maps and I'm extremely happy that I'm able to. I think it turned out really well.

I'll start at the beginning with the 1920 federal election. I made both a vote strength map and a simple winner map for ease of reading.

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The 1920 election was the first held after the passage of the Weimar Constitution and the Treaty of Versailles, and the overall result were crushing losses for the parties of the Weimar coalition, particularly the SPD, and correspondingly strong results for opposition parties on both sides of politics: the Independent Social Democrats surged to second place, and the parties of the right, the DNVP and DVP, also recorded strong swings. It's also worth noting that elections were held late in East Prussia, Upper Silesia, and Schleswig-Holstein due to territorial referendums, so the results may be out of whack with the rest of the country. Still, the results were not at all uniform anywhere - almost every province had its own little ecosystem going on, a trend which continued throughout the republic, albeit not quite so strongly.

The USPD dominated large swathes of traditionally Social-Democratic heartland such as greater Berlin, Merseberg province, greater Leipzig, and Braunschweig state, while the SPD held on in Hanover, Hamburg, Silesia, Hesse, Schleswig-Holstein, and Magdeburg province. Results were more mixed in Saxony and the Ruhr, and varied from city to city. I was also surprised to find that the Communist Party, at this point barely more than the remnants of the Spartacists, managed to eke out pluralites in two places: Hanau in Hesse, and Hamborn, today part of the northern suburbs of Duisburg.

The DNVP began to solidify its heartland in East Prussia, Pomerania, Middle Franconia and parts of Thuringia, though its performance was patchier than what we see in later elections. Württemberg also had an unusual quirk this election - I'm not sure what the actual situation was with this electorally, but the data aggregates the DNVP vote with the agrarian WBWB, giving them a combined plurality and a strong presence on the map which doesn't necessarily reflect the true situation. Overall in Württemberg the DNVP won 9% and the WBWB 18%. From the outset the agrarian parties did well in the southern states, with the Bavarian Peasants' League also achieving pluralities in parts of Lower Bavaria and Swabia.

The regionalist and monarchist German-Hanoverian Party dominated the rural northern part of Hanover. Ultimately this was where their support peaked, and they slowly declined in the following elections due to competition from the DNVP and agrarian parties. You can also see a strong presence for the DVP in Oldenburg, Frisia, and Schleswig, as well as the Palatinate in the southwest. They too reached their zenith in 1920, though they remained one of the most important parties politically until the waning days of the republic.

The Centre Party's geography is, as ever, quite simple: they win where the Catholics are. There's nothing particularly interesting to note here, but there are trends to watch going forward. The BVP is in a similar boat, dominating the Catholic regions of Bavaria but being supplanted by the DNVP in conservative rural Protestant areas such as Middle Franconia, which had an interesting split between a deeply conservative Protestant west, a deeply socialist greater Nuremberg, and a deeply Catholic pocket in the south. The BVP also competed with the Zentrum in the Palatinate and did well in the eastern and southern parts of the province, particularly around Speyer on the Rhine.
 
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I recently came into possession of data for the 1920 through March 1933 German federal elections, as well as other assorted data, at the level of Kreise and independent cities. Massive massive thank you to @Caprice for making this possible. For a long time I wanted to produce exactly these maps and I'm extremely happy that I'm able to. I think it turned out really well.
Wait, where?
 
May 1924 German federal election
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A lot of things happened in Germany during 1920-24, and most of them were not very good. Opposition to the republic remained high and increasingly radicalised, with the nationalist right orchestrating assassinations of republican politicians such as Matthias Erzberger and Walther Rathenau. The left was increased divided between support for the republic as a bulwark against reaction or encouraging workers' uprisings in hopes of overthrowing it, which were then put down by the military with the sanction of the SPD. This already rough situation deteriorated into catastrophic territory in 1923 with the economic crisis, hyperinflation and the occupation of the Ruhr by France. By May of 1924 things had settled down just a little bit, with the currency stabilised, Hitler in prison, and the government championing the Dawes Plan as the solution to the nation's economic woes.

The putting down of the Spartacists in 1919 had created a wedge on the left which rapidly and messily grew in the following years. The Independent Social Democrats, who had never represented a coherent ideology to begin with, fell into chaos shortly after the 1920 election due to disputes over direction: a slim majority pushed for the party to join the Comintern while the remainder sought to reconcile with the SPD. This resulted in a full-on split with approximately half leaving to join the Communist Party, while the remainder, including the large majority of the Reichstag faction, continued under the USPD label. They formed a joint parliamentary group with the SPD in mid-1922, and by the end of the year the two parties had formally reunified.

There was one significant change to the administrative borders in this election: the Greater Berlin Act came into force in late 1920, greatly expanding the city's borders to encompass surrounding suburbs and countryside which were formerly part of Brandenburg. This doubled the city's population from two to four million. Berlin's administrative borders were also revised and it was split into twenty boroughs, which we'll see in the results from here on out.

After reunification with the Independents, the SPD could have reasonably expected something of a recovery from their 1920 disaster, but this couldn't have been further from the truth. They actually suffered a net loss of 180,000 votes and won just 100 seats, a far cry from the 170 they held at the dissolution of the Reichstag. The Communist Party surged to 13%, lower than USPD had achieved four years earlier but nonetheless a strong showing. This was a major blow to the power of the left-wing in the Reichstag, who were now irredeemly split between the republican Social Democrats and revolutionary Communists. The geography of the two parties differed markedly from the SPD/USPD contest in 1920, with the SPD reclaiming Saxony and Braunschweig while losing out to the Communists in the Ruhr. Berlin was split; Wedding and Friedrichshain both went to the KPD while the SPD held onto Spandau and Neukölln. The Communists also won Stuttgart and parts of the urban complex in Upper Silesia, including Tarnowitz and Zabrze.

A potentially more consequential change was the surge in support for the DNVP, which rose to second place with just five fewer seats than the SPD. This proved the closest margin of any national election in the Weimar Republic - in fact, during this short-lived term, the DNVP formed a joint parliamentary group with the Landbund and, with 106 seats, surpassed the SPD as the largest faction. This marked the only period between 1912 and 1932 when the SPD did not comprise the largest group in the Reichstag. Geographically, the DNVP dominated most of East Elbia, winning pluralities across Brandenburg, most of Silesia, and even Merseberg and Berlin, where the left vote was split between the SPD and KPD. They also made inroads in parts of the west where the DVP had performed strongly in 1920, such as the Weser-Ems, Palatinate, and Schleswig-Holstein.

Though Hitler was in prison during the May election, much of the völkisch movement united under the banner of the "Nationalist Socialist Freedom Party" headed by Erich Ludendorff, who had avoided repercussions for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch. They won 6.5%, with their best showing coming from the cities and towns of Bavaria - notably, they won a slim plurality in Munich itself. By 1924 the agrarian movement was becoming increasingly organised and the Landbund, a federation of various state and regional farmers' associations, put on a respectable performance. They secured pluralities in parts of Thuringia and dominated Oberhessen, but their strongest performance came from the WBWB in Württemberg.
 
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December 1924 German federal election
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The period between the May and December elections was dominated by debate over the Dawes Plan. It had the backing of the government - a coalition of the Zentrum, DVP, and DDP - as well as the SPD, but required a constitutional majority to pass the Reichstag, likely meaning at least part of the KPD or DNVP needed to vote in favour. Ultimately, it passed thanks to the support of about half the DNVP faction. In exchange for this, the bourgeois parties agreed to support the reintroduction of agricultural tariffs. However, the SPD were opposed and voted it down in parliament. The government now lacked a working majority and, as Chancellor Wilhelm Marx was unwilling to risk bringing the DNVP into government, the Reichstag was dissolved in October and new elections called.

The Dawes Plan went a long way to easing the economic pressures in Germany, and the extremist parties had a lot less ground to stand on than they had earlier in the year. Unemployment in particular had tumbled to manageable levels. While the situation was far from rosy, the country was moving past its worst years and entering the "golden age" of general recovery and prosperity.

This predictably benefited the moderate and mainstream parties - all the parties of the Weimar coalition, as well as the DVP and DNVP, made gains in this election. The SPD in particular appeared revitalised, rising to 26% - the swings of the other parties were more modest by comparison. The KPD lost about a quarter of their support and the NSFP over half; the latter fell into harsh infighting in the following years which left them ineffectual as a political force. Another notable event was the subtle rise of the Economic Party of the German Middle Class, usually just called the Wirtschaftspartei (WP), who took 2.3% and 12 seats. From here until 1930 they formed another plank in the bourgeois right camp, alongside the DVP and DNVP.

The main distinctions between the May and December maps include the widespread strengthening of the SPD, the weakening of the KPD, and and the disappearance of the NSFP. The latter only managed to hold on to one plurality, in Wittmund for some reason, which continued to vote for the Nazis in every subsequent Reichstag election. If anyone knows why Wittmund was so full of Nazis, let me know.

As noted, the SPD experienced a widespread swing pretty much everywhere, running up formiddable margins in their heartlands: southern Hanover, Magdeburg, Saxony and Hesse-Darmstadt; as well as securing their position in Berlin, Thuringia, and Mecklenburg, and winning Middle and Lower Silesia back from the DNVP. Much of this corresponded with losses for the KPD, particularly in the Ruhr, where they failed to hold on to first place anywhere on the Westphalian side of the border.

The DNVP fared reasonably well, though they lost ground to the SPD in Brandenburg and particularly to the DVP in the Palatinate, where they failed to win any districts. The decline of the NSFP enabled them to make inroads in Franconia; they also benefited from a slip in the DHP's performance in eastern Hanover, though the province overall voted SPD. Other than that, they maintained their good showings in Schleswig-Holstein, Hesse-Nassau, and Merseberg.

The Zentrum recorded a general strengthening of support in the Rhineland and Upper Silesia, though there's little else worth talking about. The BVP, though improving their result overall, continued to lose ground to the Peasants' League in the countryside. The Landbund also suffered a decline from ten seats to eight, although geographically they repeated their strong performance in rural Thuringia, Oberhessen, and Württemberg.
 
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1925 German presidential election (1st round)
Reich President Friedrich Ebert died in February 1925. While Ebert had been elected by the National Assembly in 1919, the Constitution they drafted specified that the President would henceforth be elected by "the whole German people", and thus a presidential election was quickly scheduled to take place at the end of the next month. An interesting tidbit: the Constitution didn't specify the succession of the President, and the Reichstag initially considered whether the Chancellor should take over the powers of the office while it was vacant. Ultimately they passed a bill designating the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Walter Simons, as acting president instead.

As I've discussed before, the electoral system of the Reich President was a peculiar one. It didn't operate like the two-round systems we see in places like France today, where the two most popular candidates face off in a very personal runoff contest. Instead, any candidate could compete in the runoff as they wished, even if they hadn't competed in the first round, and the runoff was decided by a simple plurality. The rationale for this came out the parliamentary arithmetic which Germany's political minds were intimately familiar with: the system was designed to facilitate cooperation between parties who would triumph not by putting forward a candidate who would sway the electorate, but by pooling their voters together to reach a majority. The first round was intended to let the parties gauge their strength so they could make more educated decisions when forming alliances and deciding on their candidates for the second round.

There were two main political camps who were interested in putting forward joint candidates in the first round: the Weimar coalition of the SPD, Centre, and DDP, and the bourgeois-national camp of the DNVP and DVP. The latter camp particularly wanted to sway the Centre and DDP to work with them, knowing that they were unlikely to be able to reach a majority alone. To put a long story short, all these talks failed. The SPD checked out first, primarily due to ongoing disputes with the Centre Party in the Prussian government which soured them on a deal. They also knew that they were by far the strongest party in the Weimar coalition and could afford to run alone and leave the alliance-building for the second round. They nominated Otto Braun, former Minister-President of Prussia. The DNVP and DVP agreed to run together but were unable to woo the the other bourgeois parties, and put forward Duisburg mayor and former interior minister Karl Jarres, a member of the DVP who had become popular for his steadfast opposition to the Franco-Belgian occupation during the Ruhr crisis. All the other parties also ran solo candidates: the Centre Party put forward former Chancellor and current Prussian premier Wilhelm Marx and the DDP nominated Baden premier Willy Hellpach. The Communist Party put forward vice-chairman Ernst Thälmann, who had recently triumphed in a factional struggle against the less pro-Moscow elements of the party and was on his way to becoming its foremost leader. The BVP even ran a candidate, Minister-President of Bavaria Heinrich Held. Last and least, the Erich Ludendorff ran for the DVFP.

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Jarres won a respectable 39%, far ahead of second-place Braun. The map paints a formiddable picture of the nationalist camp's performance: supporters of most smaller bourgeois and agrarian groups had flowed to Jarres, who dominated rural Württemberg, Hesse, and Hanover, and the combined strength of the rural DNVP and urban DVP enabled them to break the SPD's dominance in Saxony, Magdeburg, and parts of southern Hanover. Though this looked quite promising, a closer look at the numbers gave them cause for alarm: the Weimar coalition garnered a total of 49% of the vote between their three candidates, enough to easily trounce Jarres in the second round. They needed to change tack.

The Weimar coalition were pleased with their results - Braun's 29% was noticeably higher than the SPD had achieved in the Reichstag election in December. The Communists continued to lose momentum, winning 7% and only managing to claim Solingen in the Ruhr. The BVP won a wide-reaching victory in Bavaria, excluding the Protestant regions of Franconia, but failed to pick up support elsewhere (though Held did win a not-insubstantial amount of support in rural eastern Hanover, presumably from DHP voters). Hellpach and Ludendorff failed to win any districts.
 
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1925 German presidential election (2nd round)
Going into the second round, the main two camps regrouped to negotiate over joint candidates. Despite their difficulties ahead of the first round, the Weimar coalition had no trouble agreeing that Wilhelm Marx, not Otto Braun, would proceed to the runoff. This was for two main reasons: bourgeois voters were not expected to back an SPD candidate in sufficient numbers, and because they had come to an agreement over the dispute in Prussia. The Centre had agreed to support Braun replacing Marx as Minister-President in exchange for the SPD backing him in the presidential election. The DDP likewise agreed. The Weimar coalition branded their united front for the runoff der Volksblock - the People's Bloc.

The national-bourgeois camp, on the other hand, were worried. They judged that Jarres had probably hit his ceiling in the first round and didn't stand a chance against the united Volksblock. They began fishing around for a new candidate, considering a range of options: a Hohenzollern prince, the commander-in-chief of the army Hans von Seeckt, and prominent industrialists such as Gustav Krupp, but decided against all of them. Finally, they turned to the one man they thought suitable: Paul von Hindenburg. The former supreme commander of the army during the Great War was essentially the trump card of the German right. Hindenburg was revered by monarchists and nationalists, and admired and respected across German society. As a symbol of the Empire and German military prestige, he perfectly fit the image the nationalist camp sought to project, and was the literal embodiment of the stab in the back myth. There was only one problem: he was old, 77 at the time, which may be the median age of a US president today but was well past life expectancy in 1925. And actually, I lied, there was another problem: he didn't want the job. At all.

In fairness, this wasn't strictly true: a presidential election had originally been scheduled for 1920, and Hindenburg had agreed to run after consultation with the Kaiser, but nothing ever came of it since the election was canceled due to the Kapp Putsch. In 1925, though, Hindenburg firmly rebuffed the nationalists' offers to run. He was a committed monarchist and unlike the politicians, he put his money where his mouth was. He wanted nothing to do with republican politics. Besides, he said, his health wasn't up to it. He continued to refuse when they turned to begging. He only relented after receiving respected colleagues such as former navy commander Alfred von Tirpitz, who urged him to run, insisting it was his duty to the nation. Winning over Hindenburg was a massive boon for the nationalist camp who, mirroring the Volksblock, ran under the banner of the Reichsblock. Though the DVP and industrialists had hoped for a more business-friendly candidate, they too came on board. Hitler also instructed the Nazis to endorse Hindenburg, against Ludendorff's wishes to run again in the second round.

Another interesting tidbit: Hindenburg's candidacy was received very poorly internationally, which should come as no surprise. Gustav Stressemann, despite his party's backing for Hindenburg, feared that this could endanger all the delicate diplomatic work that had been done since 1919. Chancellor Hans Luther of the Centre was so concerned about the potential consequences that he asked acting president Walter Simons to run in the second round if Marx and Hindenburg could be persuaded to drop out, though Simons declined since he doubted Hindenburg would relent.

There were further complications to the second round, all of which benefited the Reichsblock. Firstly, the KPD announced that Thälmann would run again. The Comintern had specifically told them not to do this, but they politely ignored the advice. This threatened to compromise the Volksblock from the left, whose primarily working-class and socialist base were probably not overly enthusiastic about Wilhelm Marx, despite the name. The other complication was the Bavarian People's Party's decision to endorse Hindenburg rather than the candidate of their sister party. Their influence was relatively small and localised, but in a tight race it had the potential to prove crucial. This was symptomatic of a more general problem the Volksblock faced, which was that they were bleeding bourgeois voters to Hindenburg. Many saw Marx's candidacy as little more than a front for the SPD. Franz von Papen, standardbearer for the right wing of the Centre, put it: "If you want to pursue anti-socialist policy tomorrow, you can't put a Centre candidate in the saddle with millions of socialist votes today." Thus, the Volksblock was being eaten away from both the left and right. Still, ahead of election day, Marx was considered the frontrunner.

The campaign was deeply polarised, with the Volksblock and Reichsblock putting forward sharply opposed visions for Germany. The former championed the republic, parliamentary democracy, liberalism and progress. They emphasised unity against the forces of reaction and monarchism. They spoke of the dangers a Hindenburg presidency could bring - instability, renewed economic crisis, and even war. The Reichsblock framed Hindenburg as a non-partisan servant of the nation, a saviour who would unite Germany and deliver it from the chaos which had engulfed it since the end of the war. The man himself played a low-key role, staying aloof and making few appearances. Though they avoided emphasising it in the campaign, the nationalist camp hoped that a Hindenburg presidency would spell the end of the republic and the liberal order. One piece of Reichsblock material read: "Hindenburg is Germany itself, the national consciousness, both yearning and fulfillment. In a time of uncertainty and indecisiveness, senseless emasculation and ringing speeches, the name Hindenburg sounds to us almost like a fable from the pages of German glory." The KPD, meanwhile, insisted that the proletariat shouldn't have to choose between "the civil dictator Marx and the military dictator Hindenburg".

In a radio broadcast the day before the election, Hindenburg spoke of peace and unity: "The surest way for us to attain this goal [peace] is to show to other nations a picture of a people whom the struggles of the era have brought together in true and heartfelt unity, a picture of a people determined, through hard work, in honesty and trust to stand together, to help one another, to bear the burdens to the best of one's ability, to be united in devotion to the greater whole, to ask not only for rights but for duties first."

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Diving into the numbers, it becomes clearer what happened. Turnout soared from a paltry 69% in the first round to 78% in the second, similar to the December Reichstag election. Hindenburg defeated Marx by a margin of 900,000 votes. Compared to the first round, Thälmann gained 60,000 votes for a total 1.93 million, but his performance declined from 7% to 6.4%. Marx won 13.75 million votes, an improvement of about 600,000 from the Volksblock's initial tally. The Reichsblock, however, took almost 3 million more votes compared to Jarres, Held, and Ludendorff's combined performance in the first round - from 11.71 million to 14.66 million. Hindenburg's candidacy had mobilised a significant portion of the electorate in his favour, which the Volksblock was simply unable to match.

The BVP's endorsement saw him dominate Bavaria, with only a few small areas going to Marx, such as Augsburg and the strongly left-wing Nuremberg. There was also an interesting anomaly in Lower Franconia, where the more Rhenish-influenced Catholic areas near Hesse swung from Held to Marx. Similarly, by pooling the Social-Democratic and Catholic vote, the Volksblock were able to improve their performance in general region of southern Hesse, Baden, and the Palatinate. While Hindenburg did make some gains in traditional Centre territory, he was unsucessful in breaking their dominance. The rest of the country painted a different picture, though.

While parts of the SPD's heartland such as Berlin did hold out for the Volksblock, the Reichsblock made inroads in vast swathes of Protestant territory, where some first-round SPD voters refused to vote for Marx. In Saxony, the only region where Thälmann noticeably improved his vote share, the Volksblock claimed only a few districts; Leipzig, Dresden, and even Zwickau all swung to Hindenburg. Elsewhere, Hamburg and Lübeck fell to the Reichsblock, further inroads were made in southern Hanover and Magdeburg, and Hindenburg won convincingly in Württemberg.

The result was massively demoralising for the Weimar coalition. Many feared the destruction of the republic was imminent. Liberal publications lamented: "What should one do with a people who have learned nothing from their misfortune and continue to let themselves be led on halters by the same people again and again, even for the tenth or twelfth time?" The Frankfurter Zeitung concluded: "The romantic longing for bygone splendor and grandeur led these non-political strata to the ballot box and Hindenburg to victory." The SPD took aim at the KPD, accusing them of betrayal. The morning after the election, Vorwärts published the headline "Hindenburg by the grace of Thälmann!"

Things didn't unfold quite as people expected, however. Hindenburg confided to friends that he hadn't actually read the Weimar Constitution until after winning the election, and that he "didn't think it was that bad". A few months later, the SPD party conference spoke with cautious optimism about Hindenburg's oath to the constitution, suggesting that even the most ardent monarchists were giving up on restoration. Likewise, Stressemann and international observers took confidence from his commitment to peace and security. Many of his nationalist backers were disappointed that he hadn't used his powers to move against the Reichstag and elected government; to the contrary, they began to fear that his presidency lended legitimacy to the republic.

While the presidential election was a key turning point in the Weimar period, years passed before its true ramifications began to take shape. For now, the republic remained intact and marched uneasily onward.
 
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1926 German referendum (Expropriation of the princes)
The abolition of the various monarchies in 1918-19 was a very messy affair. There was no uniform policy for what to do with the royal estates and property. Rather, it was dealt with on an ad hoc basis by each state. Governments and noble houses struggled to come to agreements over compensation, and disputes were very often brought before the courts, where an unsatisfactory outcome was practically guaranteed. And this wasn't just a petty argument over a couple of old castles: in some places the royal estates were very significant indeed. The property dispute in Mecklenburg-Strelitz concerned a staggering 55% of the state's area. In larger states the estates were very small by percentage of total area, but the territory in question was still very large in absolute terms - in the case of Prussia, it totaled 159,000 hectares.

Frustration over the issue began to heat up in 1925 due to a series of unpopular rulings and agreements. In June, the supreme court struck down the 1919 confiscation of the royal demesne by the state government of Saxe-Gotha and ordered all property, totalling 37 billion gold marks, returned to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. This kind of ruling was far from unusual - the judiciary was still dominated by officials from the imperial era, who were frequently sympathetic to the nobility. A particularly contentious dispute concerned the House of Hohenzollern in Prussia, where the state and house had been arguing over a settlement for years. In October, the finance ministry published a draft agreement which would return three-quarters of the property to the Hohenzollerns. The SPD and DDP rejected the proposal; the latter instead submitted a bill to the Reichstag which would allow state parliaments the final say by regulating disputes through legislation. The SPD were prepared to support this solution, but before it could proceed, the Communist Party submitted their own bill.

The KPD's proposal was expropriation without compensation. Land was to be distributed to farmers and peasants, palaces converted for housing, and financial assets used to support war veterans. They didn't expect to actually pass the bill in the Reichstag, knowing it would never find support among the bourgeois and nationalist parties. Rather, they were playing to the electorate, who found it an appealing concept. Specifically, they planned to start a campaign for a referendum on the issue. The proposal and referendum campaign became known as the Fürstenenteignung - the expropriation of the princes.

Article 73 of the Weimar Constitution provided a number of circumstances under which referendums concerning legislation could take place. Clause three specified that a fully elaborated bill could be brought before the Reichstag at the petitioning of one-tenth of eligible voters; if it was rejected or amended in any way, it would go to referendum. A week after introducing their expropriation bill, the KPD approached the SPD to ask that they assist in campaigning for a referendum on it. The initial response was poor - the SPD saw it as an attempt to divide the party's parliamentary-oriented leadership and their base, who favoured direct action. The SPD faction favoured the DDP's bill and hoped that its passage could be secured, resolving the issue altogether. Further, they were not confident that the referendum could succeed in any case. While typical legislation would only require a simple majority at referendum, the KPD's proposal entailed amending Article 153 of the constitution which specified that expropriation of property required compensation. The passage of a constitutional referendum required support from an absolute majority of eligible voters. Such a contentious proposal was unlikely to clear this threshold.

By January 1926, however, the situation had changed a bit. The DDP's bill had been replaced by a counterproposal from the Reich government which would establish a special court to arbitrate property disputes. This body would not have retrospective powers, meaning that previous arrangements, most of which favoured the royal houses, would remain in place. This greatly dissatisfied the SPD. In addition, throughout December and January, the Communists had helped organise a committee bringing together dozens of groups of varying orientations to draft a bill for expropriation without compensation. The proposal was gaining serious momentum and, most importantly to the SPD leadership, had proved highly popular with the SPD grassroots and the trade unions. They were under great pressure to come on board. Finally, on the 19th, the SPD reluctantly agreed and began negotiating a draft bill. This took only a few days and it was submitted to the interior ministry on the 25th. The petition period ran for two weeks between 4 and 17 March.

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The 10% requirement was thoroughly smashed - the petition received support from 12.5 million voters, compared to 10.6 million votes for the SPD and KPD in the previous Reichstag election, totalling almost a third of all eligible voters. The left-wing parties and unions had been highly successful in mobilising workers in support of the proposal. While the geography of the vote corresponded closely with the SPD and KPD's strongest areas, it was also unexpectedly successful in regions like the Rhineland, Baden, and Württemberg, where support was well in excess of the left's combined election performance.

The expropriation bill was submitted to the Reichstag on 6 May and actually passed, but with amendment, meaning the referendum was triggered. The bill's passage was secured with the votes of some of the bourgeois parties, who were deeply divided over the issue of the royal estates. The Reichstag was seemingly unable to resolve the issue despite years of effort, and some thought the expropriation without compensation was worth supporting, if just to close the book on the whole thing once and for all. The DDP and Centre youth organisations both endorsed it and the DDP itself remained neutral. Associations representing victims of inflation also supported the referendum.

Shortly after the passage of the petition, opponents of expropriation began organising. These consisted of a now-familiar coalition of right-wing parties, agricultural groups, and industrial magnates, as well as of course the former nobility themselves. Both the Catholic and Evangelical churches also came out in opposition to the proposal. The primary message of the opposition was that the referendum was the first step in a plan by socialists and communists to abolish private property altogether. A huge amount of resources were poured into the referendum campaign - the DNVP dedicated more money to it than they had spent on the two 1924 elections. Some underhanded strategies were also deployed: most significantly, opponents called for a boycott of the referendum, effectively exposing anyone who went to the polls as a supporter of expropriation. Landowners in East Elbia also threatened workers and peasants if they participated.

The expropriation of the princes was also one of the rare instances until 1930 that President Hindenburg was seen to wade into politics. Though not stating his position publicly, he tacitly opposed the referendum by tolerating the publication of a letter in which he criticised expropriation without compensation as unjust and immoral. His comments were circulated by the referendum's opponents and utilised in propaganda.

The SPD framed the referendum as a battle between democracy and reaction, and more helpfully as a decision about whether state political power should be "a tool of domination in the hands of the upper class, or a tool of liberation in the hands of the working masses." The Communists, meanwhile, concurred with the referendum's opponents - damn right this is the first step toward abolishing private property! They hoped that widespread support for expropriation would grow into class-conscious opposition to capitalism at large. One piece of KPD propaganda featured this hilariously ominous line: "Russia gave its rulers five grams of lead. What does Germany give to its rulers?"

The referendum took place on 20 June.

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Compared to the petition, the referendum garnered support from two million additional voters for a total of 14.46 million. At 36% of the total electorate, this fell far short of the absolute majority requirement. 560,000 voted against. Despite partial support from the bourgeois parties and even some frustrated nationalist voters, the referendum was considered unlikely to pass, so the result was probably only a mild disappointment for supporters. It's unclear exactly how well they had hoped to perform, but the referendum proved a relatively small improvement compared to the petition.

The geographical trends of the referendum were largely the same as the petition, although support noticeably improved in rural areas in Bavaria and East Elbia. The lower Rhineland and Westphalia also saw a marked increase. Changes were less pronounced in left-wing heartland where they had relatively little room for improvement, although support surprisingly fell in the Chemnitz-Zwickau province of Saxony.

Despite speculation that the partial cooperation between the SPD and KPD could lead to longer-term friendly relations, the truce shattered almost immediately after the conclusion of the campaign. Within a few days, KPD publications began accusing the Social Democrats of sabotaging the referendum and collaborating with the nobility. It was back to business as usual.

The issue of royal estates had, after all this, still not been resolved. The SPD negotiated with the government over its proposed new court, but their amendments to the bill were rejected and the party faction in turn refused to support it. As the DNVP also expressed their intention to vote against, the government withdrew it without a vote. Ultimately, no wide-reaching resolution was ever achieved. The position of the states was somewhat protected by a clause preventing royal houses from appealing to the courts until mid-1927, leaving direct negotiation with governments as their only option. This enabled the Prussian government to settle with the House of Hohenzollern in October 1926, resulting in a 60-40 split in the latter's favour. Though it was better than the 1925 proposal, the SPD were still deeply dissatisfied with the arrangement and abstained in the Landtag vote - and only because Minister-President Braun threatened to resign if they voted it down.

Several disputes still stretched beyond the June 1927 deadline. By the end of the republic, 26 different agreements had been settled. In general, the states got the short end of the stick, acquiring assets which required expensive upkeep such as palaces, buildings, and gardens, as well as financial responsibility for the employees who worked them. Meanwhile, the royal houses maintained ownership of valuable land from which they could turn a neat profit.
 
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Just want to say this is all very cool, I don't have much more substantive to say than that. Also, on a more selfish level, I appreciate how your different colour schemes mean I still have the smallest fig-leaf excuse to make my own maps of these at some point.
Thank you!! And I definitely get that lol. When I was making 1928 I was thinking "should I even bother?" after seeing your map, but I decided to since we display results in different ways. It's nice that we can both co-exist lmao.
 
1928 German federal election
The Reichstag elected in December 1924 managed to last for just over three years, a reasonable performance all things considered. Wilhelm Marx returned as Chancellor in May 1926 and, after the collapse of his third cabinet in December, formed a firmly right-of-centre coalition with the Centre, DVP, BVP, and DNVP at the end of January 1927. This lasted just over a year before collapsing in February due to a dispute over proposed education reforms which were firmly opposed by the DVP. President Hindenburg dissolved the Reichstag and called fresh elections for May 1928. This election took place at the peak of the "golden age" of the republic. The country had overcome much of its international isolation and built firm financial and diplomatic links, the economy was growing and living standards rising, and the political system was more stable than it had ever been. By and large, things were looking up.

The SPD's traumatic experiences with governing responsibility in the first years of the republic had led them to stay outside cabinet since the end of 1923, and the prevailing attitude in the years since had been one of constructive opposition. By 1927, they were feeling comfortable enough to change tack - elections since late 1924 had shown a steady recovery in their support and the majority of the party believed that now was the time to seek a return to government. They also sought to oust the DNVP from cabinet, concerned about the right's influence over the bourgeois parties. The DDP and DVP favoured a return to the grand coalition with the SPD, though the Centre preferred the DNVP and BVP who shared many of their positions on moral and religious issues.

There were a few administrative reforms worth noting in this election, specifically a reorganisation on the Westphalian side of the Ruhrgebiet, which resulted in a major reshaping of Herne, the merger of the cities of Gelsenkirchen and Buer, the establishment of Wanne-Eickel, Wattenscheid, Castrop-Rauxel, and Lunen as independent cities, and the absorption of the urban core of Hörde into Dortmund. Elsewhere, the cities of Chemnitz, Fürth, and particularly Breslau grew their borders substantially. The city of Harburg in eastern Hanover, a satellite suburb of Hamburg, was also merged with the municipality of Wilhelmsburg to form Harburg-Wilhelmsburg.

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The result was a great success for the SPD and a crippling defeat for the DNVP - they achieved their best and worst results since 1919, respectively. The Centre, DVP, DDP, and BVP all recorded a small decline. The winners of the election were the SPD, KPD, the Wirtschaftspartei, and the agrarians.

As in December 1924, the SPD experienced a general improvement in their popularity across almost all regions. They reclaimed all three electoral districts in Brandenburg as well as Schleswig-Holstein from the DNVP, and managed to eke out pluralities in Franconia, Württemberg, and Westphalia South for the first time. They won every district in Saxony, dominated southern Hanover, Magdeburg, and Mecklenburg, and won comprehensively in Lower and Middle Silesia, as well as the Westphalian side of the Ruhrgebiet. They even made breakthroughs in western Pomerania and Oldenburg. One notable exception was Hesse-Darmstadt, where they actually declined, though why I'm not exactly sure.

The result was crushing for the DNVP. Though they remained the second largest party, it was a paltry showing, winning less than half as many votes as the SPD. Only Farther Pomerania, rural Middle Franconia, and the more peripheral areas of East Prussia remained stalwart for the party. They went sharply backwards in the rural areas of Hanover and Hesse. In Berlin, they lost both Charlottenburg and Schöneberg to the SPD.

The KPD were surely quite happy with their performance, winning pluralities in both Merseberg and Düsseldorf East constituencies. They expanded substantially in the latter, even claiming the city of Düsseldorf itself alongside Mettmann, Solingen, Remscheid and and their associated districts. On the other side of the provincial border they took Gelsenkirchen-Buer, Herne, and Wanne-Eickel. They consolidated particularly well in the core of Merseberg province. In Berlin, the Communists claimed Wedding and Friedrichshain despite an improvement in the SPD vote.

Among the bourgeois parties, the most notable trend was the general decline of the Centre vote. Their margins weakened particularly in the Rhineland and Upper Silesia. The DVP won only three districts, retaining Königsberg and Syke south of Bremen and reclaiming Flensburg-Land from the DNVP. They experienced a particularly sharp fall in the Palatinate, which turned into a contest between the SPD and combined Z/BVP. The steady decline of the DDP in Oldenburg finally saw them fall short of a plurality anywhere. The Wirtschaftspartei, though failing to win any districts, achieved a substantial swing and moved into seventh place with 4.5% and 23 seats. I haven't examined their geography very closely, but they performed best in Saxony, especially Chemnitz-Zwickau where they exceeded 10%.

The agrarian bloc overall grew, though this is somewhat obfuscated by the realignment of forces. The Landbund almost entirely collapsed, leaving the WBWB in Württemberg as effectively its only component. They remained practically static there. The BBB also formed an alliance with the German Farmers' Party (DBP), though they accomplished little outside Bavaria. Outside of these two states, the primary agrarian force was the Christian-National Farmers and Peasants' League (CNBL), which built on the agrarians' 1924 performance. They remained strong in Thuringia and Oberhessen and made gains in the southwest of Hesse-Nassau, as well as some of the less Catholic provinces at the edge of the the upper Rhineland. Notably, they dominated Waldeck, where no agrarians had run before, reducing the DNVP from well over 40% to just 11%. Further northwest, they picked up Lübbecke in Westphalia and Grafschaft Bentheim in the Emsland. The DHP declined to 12% of the vote in Hanover, with their geography retreating north as the SPD ate away at their periphery and the DHP reclaimed areas that previously voted DNVP. The BVP saw a general swing against them, particularly to the DBP in rural areas in old Bavaria. In Niederbayern province, they only narrowly eked out a plurality of 37% to 35%.

By this time, Hitler had firmly established himself as autocrat within his party and the Nazis were the major völkisch force right of the DNVP. In this election, however, they went backwards, losing two seats and claiming 2.4% of the vote. Interestingly, they expanded their number of pluralities from one to four - joining Wittmund were provinces around Oldenburg to the southeast. They seemingly established a strong regional presence here, though again I don't know any details.

The SPD succeeded in their goals, as the outgoing bourgeois-national cabinet lost its majority, and any coalition without the SPD became impractical. They reclaimed control of government for the first time in eight years under Chancellor Hermann Müller, leading a grand coalition with the Centre, DVP, and DDP.
 
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1929 German referendum (Young Plan)
Of all the articles of the Treaty of Versailles, few were as contentious as those concerning war reparations. Within Germany the reparations were frequently decried as excessive and outrageous, intended to allow the victors to plunder Germany and cripple the country economically. Disputes over payments had led to the Ruhr crisis in 1923 and a low in relations between Germany and the west. Diplomats like Gustav Stressemann had dedicated almost the entire interwar period to improving Germany's international standing and reducing the burden of its treaty obligations, and by and large they had been successful. A major breakthrough on this front was the Dawes Plan, which laid out a scheme for how exactly reparations would be paid, ended the occupation of the Ruhr, and established beneficial financial ties with the US, which proved a great boon to the German economy.

By 1929, Stressemann had enticed a committee of international experts to comb over the reparations agreement again. They finalised a new scheme in August, which was named after committee chair Owen D. Young. By almost any measure the Young Plan was fantastic for Germany - it substantially reduced the overall sum of reparations, reduced obligatory annual payments, and provided a huge amount of wiggle room which allowed them to pay less and on a more convenient schedule. Perhaps even more significantly, it dissolved the international panel which oversaw reparations, handed full control of payments to Germany, and promised to end the occupation of the Rhineland early. It was a huge win not only from an economic standpoint but for German sovereignty. Just about the only thing it didn't accomplish was a total cancelation of reparations, which of course nobody would have expected, and surely nobody would be mad enough about it to start a national campaign for a referendum to reject the Young Plan, renounce war guilt and make it illegal for the government to sign reparations agreements - right?

Alfred Hugenberg was a wealthy industrialist and media magnate who had become leader of the DNVP after its 1928 election defeat. A hardline reactionary, he hated the republic and what it represented, and had planned at least one coup aimed at establishing an authoritarian martial state. Since 1927 he had been fighting an internal struggle against the moderate faction under Kuno von Westarp, who favoured cooperation with bourgeois parties and had brought the DNVP into government during the 1924-28 period. Hugenberg took a strict opposition line and viewed destruction of the republic as the primary and sole aim of the party. After assuming the leadership, he began looking for ways to revitalise it after the 1928 debacle.

Hugenberg chose the Young Plan. He utilised his media influence to polemicise against the agreement, portraying it as an enslavement of the German people that would bury them in mountains of debt for generations. In June 1929 he organised a commitee which included leaders of the völkisch Pan-German League, the paramilitary nationalist Stahlhelm, and representatives of the agrarian and heavy industry lobbies. It also included Adolf Hitler. This was controversial even among the committee; the Nazis had been a black sheep of the German right ever since the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler's inclusion placed him in a position of significance for the first time.

The committee submitted its proposed bill to the interior ministry at the end of September. It contained four clauses. The first and second rejected the war guilt clause of the Versailles treaty. The third and fourth rejected war reparations and posited that any Reich ministers who signed reparations agreements, including the Chancellor, must be tried for treason. That last bit was proposed by Hitler and opposed even by Hugenberg. It was actually a watered-down version, though - the first draft covered not just ministers but the President himself. It may come as little surprise, then, that Hindenburg refused to associate himself with the referendum and forbade them from using his name or image.

The DNVP and its allies deployed an extensive and innovative propaganda campaign, heavy on rhetoric and imagery, and utilised new techniques such as advertising reels in cinemas. Publications spread misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding both the Young Plan and its supporters, which frequently leaned on antisemitism - for instance, they claimed that unnmarried former Chancellor Joseph Wirth had a secret Jewish wife. The petition period took place from 16 to 29 October.

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If Hugenberg had hoped to mobilise voters like the left had done during the expropriation of the princes, he failed. With 4.14 million signatures, the petition surpassed the 10% threshold by just over 9,000 votes. It's worth noting that this is fewer votes than the DNVP thelmselves had won in 1928. Its support was concentrated in traditional DNVP strongholds - Farther Pomerania, East Prussia, and Middle Franconia, primarily. It performed generally well across the north of the country, less so in left-wing regions, and had almost no presence in Catholic regions. It was a success by the barest of margins.

The bill was thus presented to the Reichstag at the end of November. Julius Curtius of the DVP spoke against it for the government. This was indicative of the united front that the SPD and bourgeois parties built against the initiative; such a hostile confrontation between DNVP and DVP would in previous years have been unthinkable. Hugenberg was a member of the Reichstag, but was deeply uninterested in its proceedings and had not given a speech since 1919. He thus did not address the Reichstag during the debate over his own initiative. The Nazis made clear that their intention was to undermine the republic and seek "abolition of the system by legal means". The next day, the Reichstag rejected the bill by an overwhelming majority; only 52 of the DNVP's 72 deputies supported it.

Hugenberg and his allies moved ahead with the referendum as planned. The government intentionally set it for the incredibly inconvenient date of 22 December, when few people would be interested in going out to vote. As with the 1926 referendum, the proposal entailed amending the constitution and thus required absolute majority support from the electorate to pass.

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The referendum received 5.84 million votes in favour, just 13.8% of eligible voters, and 338,000 against. While there was a general rise in support nationwide, it remained deeply unpopular in the Rhineland, Catholic Bavaria, and Baden. The campaign had also apparently dampened enthusiasm in Farther Pomerania, where support fell. The yes vote also grew notably in rural Hesse and Hanover. The failure of the referendum pretty much put the whole thing to bed. The Young Plan was ratified by the Reichstag in March 1930 without much fuss.

This isn't to say that they achieved nothing, though. The emotive and radical campaign kickstarted the DNVP's move away from its previous identity toward that of a deeply inflexible extremist party. Far from revitalising them, it greatly accelerated their decline by alienating most of their traditional capitalist backers. They were now seen first and foremost as the party of Hugenberg. The campaign ultimately destroyed the traditional right as it had existed up to that point, forcing moderates out of the DNVP, most of whom fell into irrelevance. A sharp divide emerged between the bourgeois parties and the nationalist right. Most importantly, the campaign opened the floodgates for the Nazis, greatly boosting their profile and influence and setting them up for future success. Various local and regional elections throughout late 1929 showed a modest but consistent rise in the Nazi Party's popularity, though the greater ramifications took a little longer to become clear.
 
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Of all the articles of the Treaty of Versailles, few were as contentious as those concerning war reparations. Within Germany the reparations were frequently decried as excessive and outrageous, intended to allow the victors to plunder Germany and cripple the country economically. Disputes over payments had led to the Ruhr crisis in 1923 and a low in relations between Germany and the west. Diplomats like Gustav Stressemann had dedicated almost the entire interwar period to improving Germany's international standing and reducing the burden of its treaty obligations, and by and large they had been successful. A major breakthrough on this front was the Dawes Plan, which laid out a scheme for how exactly reparations would be paid, ended the occupation of the Ruhr, and established beneficial financial ties with the US, which proved a great boon to the German economy.

By 1929, Stressemann had enticed a committee of international experts to comb over the reparations agreement again. They finalised a new scheme in August, which was named after committee chair Owen D. Young. By almost any measure the Young Plan was fantastic for Germany - it substantially reduced the overall sum of reparations, reduced obligatory annual payments, and provided a huge amount of wiggle room which allowed them to pay less and on a more convenient schedule. Perhaps even more significantly, it dissolved the international panel which oversaw reparations, handed full control of payments to Germany, and promised to end the occupation of the Rhineland early. It was a huge win not only from an economic standpoint but for German sovereignty. Just about the only thing it didn't accomplish was a total cancelation of reparations, which of course nobody would have expected, and surely nobody would be mad enough about it to start a national campaign for a referendum to reject the Young Plan, renounce war guilt and make it illegal for the government to sign reparations agreements - right?

Alfred Hugenberg was a wealthy industrialist and media magnate who had become leader of the DNVP after its 1928 election defeat. A hardline reactionary, he hated the republic and what it represented, and had planned at least one coup aimed at establishing an authoritarian martial state. Since 1927 he had been fighting an internal struggle against the moderate faction under Kuno von Westarp, who favoured cooperation with bourgeois parties and had brought the DNVP into government during the 1924-28 period. Hugenberg took a strict opposition line and viewed destruction of the republic as the primary and sole aim of the party. After assuming the leadership, he began looking for ways to revitalise it after the 1928 debacle.

Hugenberg chose the Young Plan. He utilised his media influence to polemicise against the agreement, portraying it as an enslavement of the German people that would bury them in mountains of debt for generations. In June 1929 he organised a commitee which included leaders of the völkisch Pan-German League, the paramilitary nationalist Stahlhelm, and representatives of the agrarian and heavy industry lobbies. It also included Adolf Hitler. This was controversial even among the committee; the Nazis had been a black sheep of the German right ever since the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler's inclusion placed him in a position of significance for the first time.

The committee submitted its proposed bill to the interior ministry at the end of September. It contained four clauses. The first and second rejected the war guilt clause of the Versailles treaty. The third and fourth rejected war reparations and posited that any Reich ministers who signed reparations agreements, including the Chancellor, must be tried for treason. That last bit was proposed by Hitler and opposed even by Hugenberg. It was actually a watered-down version, though - the first draft covered not just ministers but the President himself.

The DNVP and its allies deployed extensive and innovative propaganda campaign, heavy on rhetoric and imagery, and utilised new techniques such as advertising reels in cinemas. Publications spread misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding both the Young Plan and its supproters, which frequently leaned on antisemitism - for instance, they claimed that unnmarried former Chancellor Joseph Wirth had a secret Jewish wife. The petition period took place from 16 to 29 October.

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If Hugenberg had hoped to mobilise voters like the left had done during the expropriation of the princes, he failed. With 4.14 million signatures, the petition surpassed the 10% threshold by just over 9,000 votes. Its support was concentrated in traditional DNVP strongholds - further Pomerania, East Prussia, and Middle Franconia, primarily. It performed generally well across the north of the country, less so in left-wing regions, and had almost no presence in Catholic regions. It was a success by the barest of margins.

The bill was thus presented to the Reichstag at the end of November. Julius Curtius of the DVP spoke against it for the government. This was indicative of the united front that the SPD and bourgeois parties built against the initiative; such a hostile confrontation between DNVP and DVP would in previous years have been unthinkable. Hugenberg was a member of the Reichstag, but was deeply uninterested in its proceedings and had not given a speech since 1919. He thus did not address the Reichstag during the debate over his own initiative. The Nazis made clear that their intention was to undermine the republic and seek "abolition of the system by legal means". The next day, the Reichstag rejected the bill by an overwhelming majority; only 52 of the DNVP's 72 deputies supported it.

Hugenberg and his allies moved ahead with the referendum as planned. The government intentionally set it for the incredibly inconvenient date of 22 December, when few people would be interested in going out to vote. As with the 1926 referendum, the proposal entailed amending the constitution and thus required absolute majority support from the electorate to pass.

bicSpDq.png


The referendum received 5.84 million votes in favour, just 13.8% of eligible voters, and 338,000 against. While there was a general rise in support nationwide, it remained deeply unpopular in the Rhineland, Catholic Bavaria, and Baden. The campaign had also apparently dampened enthusiasm in further Pomerania, where support fell. The yes vote also grew notably in rural Hesse and Hanover. The failure of the referendum pretty much put the whole thing to bed. The Young Plan was ratified by the Reichstag in March 1930 without much fuss.

This isn't to say that they achieved nothing, though. The emotive and radical approach to the Young Plan kickstarted the DNVP's move away from its previous identity toward that of a deeply inflexible extremist party. Far from revitalising them, it greatly accelerated their decline by alienating most of its traditional capitalist backers. It was now seen first and foremost as the party of Hugenberg. The campaign ultimately destroyed the traditional right as it had existed up to that point, forcing moderates out of the DNVP, most of whom fell into irrelevance. A sharp divide emerged between the bourgeois parties and the nationalist right. Most importantly, the campaign opened the floodgates for the Nazis, greatly boosting their profile and influence and setting them up for future success. Various local and regional elections throughout late 1929 showed a modest but consistent rise in the Nazi Party's popularity, though the greater ramifications took a little longer to become clear.

Nuts how I feel like we spent at least two years at school talking about Hitler's rise to power and I've never heard of this before.
 
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