Erin's Erfurt III Experience

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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.

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.

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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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.

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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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.

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.

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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The SPD-led grand coalition was quickly beset by internal conflicts, particularly between the DVP and SPD. They faced troubles on the domestic front, such as strikes in the Ruhr and the brutal police response to KPD-led May Day protests in Berlin which resulted in the deaths of 33 civilians. On the foreign affairs front, tensions were high with both Poland and Russia. The government did achieve some successes, particularly the Young Plan and the establishment of social programs including a national unemployment insurance scheme and the expansion of pension coverage. However, the Wall Street crash and resulting collapse of American capital flow into Germany abruptly ended the steady economic growth and began the onset of the Great Depression.

At the beginning of 1930, the SPD sought to increase government contributions to unemployment benefits as more and more people found themselves out of work. The cabinet struggled to agree on how it should be done, and the SPD parliamentary faction refused to accept a compromise put forth by Chancellor Müller and Centre leader Heinrich Brüning. Desperate, Müller attempted to get around this by requesting that President Hindenburg exercise his powers under Article 48 of the Constitution. Article 48 allowed the President to exercise extraordinary powers if he believed an emergency situation called for it, such as issuing emergency decrees bypassing normal constitutional procedure. In this case, Müller requested that he promulgate the government's proposed legislation without approval from the Reichstag. Hindenburg refused. Seeing no alternative, Müller resigned as Chancellor. Hindenburg appointed Brüning as his replacement and asked him to put together a government.

This event, and what ensued afterwards, was an extremely important turning point for the republic. The Brüning government was not formed on the basis of a parliamentary majority, but at the personal commission of Hindenburg. This kind of presidential government had been discussed as a theoretical for a number of years, particulary among conservative circles who favoured it as a way to undermine the power of the Reichstag.

The concept went as follows: the President has sole power to appoint the Chancellor, and thus control over the composition of government. Article 48 also allows him to bypass the Reichstag and govern via emergency decree. While the Reichstag has the ability to topple governments via motions of no confidence and to veto decrees made under Article 48, the President also has the power to dissolve the Reichstag. If exercised in tandom, the President could appoint a government of his preference, utilise Article 48 to enforce policy and, if challenged by the Reichstag, dissolve it and call fresh elections. Whether Hindenburg deliberately allowed the Müller government to fail in order to replace it with a presidential government or whether he simply believed it was the best solution for the moment remains a matter of debate. Nonetheless, the appointment of Brüning as Chancellor dramatically changed the power dynamic within the Weimar political system.

Brüning's key focus as Chancellor was to get the economic situation under control, which he planned to accomplish by enforcing a harsh austerity programme - freezing wage increases, slashing benefits, and raising taxes. This was as popular as you would expect it to be. Brüning's cabinet was not so much a coalition as a series of personal appointments, and comprised ministers from the Centre, DVP, DDP, BVP, and Wirtschaftspartei. It was well short of a parliamentary majority. Brüning's budget proposals were firmly rejected by the Reichstag, opposed by the SPD, KPD, DNVP, and Nazi Party. In response, Brüning requested that President Hindenburg enforce them via Article 48 instead, to which he agreed. The Reichstag then vetoed his decree on 18 July. Later that day, at Brüning's request, Hindenburg dissolved the Reichstag and schedule new elections for 14 September.

The 1929-30 period saw a lot of movement within and between parties, particularly on the bourgeois-conservative side of politics. The DNVP suffered a series of moderate splits: first the Christian-Social People's Service (CSVD) in late 1929, who aimed to become a Protestant equivalent to the Catholic Centre. They were followed by the wing around Kuno von Westarp in July 1930, who formed the Conservative People's Party (KVP); further defections took place in August. Meanwhile, the death of long-time DVP leader Gustav Stressemann in 1929 sent the party into a tailspin and sapped much of their popularity and profile. They attempted to form a common platform with likeminded bourgeois parties, but the Wirtschaftspartei and new KVP both declined. The DDP took a significant lurch to the right after merging with the paramilitary branch of the völkisch Young German Order, which led to an exodus of its progressive members. It subsequently rebranded as the German State Party (DStP).

On the administrative front, the pace of change to district borders picked up from 1929 onwards. Compared to 1929, they were changes in the Lower Rhineland, Westphalia, and Bavaria. The small, rural state of Waldeck was also abolished, merging into Hesse-Nassau. In Westphalia, Bielefeld grew its borders, and there was a general reorganisation of the area south of the Ruhr - Dortmund absorbed the remainder of Hörde, becoming a truly monstrous city, while Bochum, Witten, and Hagen were both expanded and their rural districts abolished, with the new Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis covering the area to the south and west. A similar reorganisation took place across the border: the cities of Elberfeld and Barmen were merged into Elberfeld-Barmen (later renamed Wuppertal), and Duisburg and Hamborn into Duisburg-Hamborn (later just Duisburg). Essen was greatly expanded to absorb most of its former rural district. Similarly, Krefeld, Neuss, and Remscheid were expanded and their rural districts abolished or reorganised; Remscheid's merged with Solingen's. Cologne-Land also merged with Mettmann. Münchengladbach to the west was reorganised and renamed Gladbach-Rheydt, while Viersen became an independent city. Finally, the cities of Sterkrade and Osterfeld became part of Oberhausen. In Bavaria, Würzburg city was greatly expanded, Nuremberg grew a little in the northwest, the Bamberg-Land districts were unified into one, the district of Stadtamhof surrounding Regensburg was absorbed into Regensburg-Land, Augsburg-Land absorsed Zusmarshausen district, the district of Berneck in Upper Franconia was divided between its neighbours, and Bad Reichenhall was separated from Berchtesgaden district.

The months leading up to the election were troubled and featured a marked increase in violence compared to past campaigns, especially between the Communists and Nazis. By this time, the latter were acknowledged as a significant political force and were expected to make substantial gains. Nazi rallies attracted thousands and appearances by Hitler were particularly well-attended. They capitalised on discontent over the economy, running a novel campaign emphasising national identity and workers' interests in opposition to both the socialist left and bourgeois right. The SPD focused their energy on fighting back against the bourgeois government and the Nazis.

The result was alarming. The exact movement between parties is difficult to estimate due to an increase in turnout - over five million more votes were registered compared to 1928 - but the biggest loser was the DNVP, who lost half their vote share and tumbled to fifth place with just 7%. The DVP, WP, and DStP recorded a decline and all finished around 4%. The SPD also suffered a blow, slipping by five percentage points, but they remained clear of their dismal 1920 and May 1924 results and lost only ten seats overall. This was especially encouraging given that the KPD experienced a surge in support to 13%, rising from 54 to 77 seats.

The biggest story of the election was, of course, the Nazi Party. They soared to second place on a swing of over fifteen percentage points and claimed 107 seats with 18.3% of the vote. This was above even the most generous predictions. Their geography correlated closely with that of the DNVP - particularly East Prussia, Brandenburg, and Silesia - but their support was more dispersed and they performed better in the west than the old nationalist parties. They also broke through in agrarian strongholds such as rural Hesse, Thuringia, and eastern Hanover. They also made inroads in areas the right had never previously breached, seeing success in towns across the country and, interestingly, the southwest of Saxony. In perhaps the greatest indication that they were not simply DNVP 2.0, their region of greatest dominance was Oldenburg. They also notably did not pick up the DNVP vote in rural Protestant areas of Franconia. The DNVP, for their part, were reduced to just their heartland of Farther Pomerania and East Prussia - they were almost erased elsewhere. Overall, East Prussia flipped to the Nazis and the DNVP took just 25% of the vote in Pomerania, barely coming out on top in a tight three-way race with the SPD and Nazis.

The SPD's losses were quite uniform. The only exception were their strongholds of the eastern Ruhr and in Berlin, where they faced a strong swing to the KPD. They were also able to expand modestly into former DNVP territory such as parts of Brandenburg, Silesia, Pomerania, and the districts around Nuremberg. The Communists bolstered their margins in Merseberg and Düsseldorf East, and secured a plurality in Berlin thanks to strong performances in the city centre, eastern boroughs, and Neukölln. In the Ruhr they also won Duisburg-Hamborn and Hagen from the SPD. The collapse in DNVP support in Thuringia saw them claim Erfurt and its surrounding district.

The Centre again continued its slow decline, particularly in the Rhineland and Baden. The BVP's performance was a mixed bag, strengthening in rural heartland while slipping in more marginal areas. It was also unable to capitalise on the collapse of the DNVP in Bavaria - that honour went to the agrarians, specifically the CNBL, which had been renamed to the Deutsche Landvolk (DLV). They swooped in and claimed almost all of the rural Protestant territory the DNVP had previously dominated. This more than compensated for the losses they suffered to the Nazis in other parts of the country, and they almost doubled their overall result to 3% and 19 seats. The DBP and DHP both suffered substantial losses while the WBWB recorded a marginal decline. Among the bourgeois parties, the DVP failed to win a district for the first time, notably losing their stronghold of Königsberg city to the Nazis. The DStP also fell short of a plurality for the second election running. The new CSVD, however, saw some success, replacing the DNVP in both the district and city of Siegen in southern Westphalia and winning Grafschaft Bentheim in the Emsland.

The events of 1929-30 were incredibly damaging to Weimar democracy. It was the beginning of the end for the republic. The parliamentary system was effectively abolished and the Reichstag, thoroughly divided between KPD, SPD, bourgeois, and Nazi, had no chance of asserting itself against the new presidential government. The relationship between the executive and legislature had become coercive, with the latter risking harsh punishment for acting out. The Weimar coalition was shattered as the Centre under Brüning became Hindenburg's go-to when forming policy, and the SPD became ever more isolated. The 1930 election result worsened the situation drastically. From this moment on, the Nazis were the defining political force in Germany. The other parties watched them carefully, and their actions and goals dictated the behaviour of the republicans, bourgeois, and communists alike.

The SPD in particular were paralysed by fear and indecision by their emergence. After the 1930 election they made the highly controversial decision to prop up the Brüning government in confidence motions and veto votes, believing this was the lesser of two evils compared to the risk of Nazi ascendancy in a snap election. In doing so they were burdened with responsibility for enabling the government's brutal anti-worker policies while still being completely excluded from power and the legislative process. It goes without saying that this was massively alienating for their base and deeply unpopular in the party itself. The leadership, though conflicted, insisted that there was simply no alternative.

 

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Brüning's approach to tackling the depression achieved two things: making him deeply, deeply unpopular, and failing to help to spiraling economy. The economic and political situation continued to deteriorate throughout 1931. Hindenburg and the cabinet governed almost exclusively by decree and the SPD continued its policy of propping them up in the Reichstag. During this time, Brüning approached the Nazis in hopes of securing more support in the Reichstag, but they insisted upon being included in government, which both Brüning and Hindenburg would not accept. Thus, they remained excluded from power.

State elections throughout the year showed a clear trend: a massive decline for the moderate parties, particularly on the right, and a dramatic increase in support for the Nazis and, to a much lesser degree, the Communists. In May, the Nazis stormed to victory in Oldenburg with 37% of the vote, followed by the SPD on 21%, the Centre on 17%, KPD on 7%, while the DNVP, DVP, and DDP won just 3-5% each. In the SPD stronghold of Hamburg, the September election proved a three-way race between the SPD (28%), Nazis (26%), and Communists (22%). The Nazis' popularity grew with alarming speed: a particularly tough blow came in November when they won decisively in the left-leaning state of Hesse. Each of these results produced an unworkable parliament, leaving the outgoing governments in caretaker mode until literally the end of the republic. The entire German political, legal, and administrative system was breaking down - not all at once, but steadily and surely. By now, it was only a matter of time.

As it turned out, the first federal electoral challenge post-1930 was not caused by the dissolution of the Reichstag, as due to the SPD's efforts it survived not only 1931 but well into 1932. Instead, it came from the scheduled expiration of Hindenburg's seven-year term. It was no secret that Hitler sought the presidency, and given the fragmented political system and developments of the last few years, Hindenburg's re-election was far from guaranteed. Brüning made efforts to corral the Reichstag into amending the constitution to extend his term, but the DNVP and Nazis refused to supply the two-thirds majority required. The parties thus began preparing for would undoubtedly be a brutal campaign.

Hindenburg had never planned to seek a second term. At this point he was 84, which is known in the biz as "old as shit", and wasn't as sharp as he used to be. But Brüning and his allies were of the belief that he was the only viable candidate to keep Hitler out. Hindenburg obviously knew well in advance that there would be a push for him to run again, but nonetheless he took some convincing. At the beginning of February an appeal was published extolling his virtues and calling for his re-election, which was signed by numerous figures from the moderate right. After this, Hindenburg acquiesced and agreed to stand again.

The Centre, DVP, BVP, and DStP all quickly endorsed him, but the DNVP and nationalist groups like the Young German Order refused to come aboard. With the right split, Brüning knew that Hindenburg would need support from all remaining republican forces to ensure victory. The Social Democrats were keenly aware that this included them, and in the lead-up to the election they announced that they would not stand a candidate and instead endorse Hindenburg. They pointed out that he had stayed loyal to the constitution during his term and stated that, in the current situation, their number one priority was the preservation of the democratic order and the defeat of fascism, whatever the cost. This was, as with everything the SPD had done since 1930, highly controversial within the party. Nonetheless they committed themselves to the task with surprising energy. The newly-formed Iron Front, a confederation comprising the SPD, its paramilitary wing the Reichsbanner, and the bulk of the trade union movement, was deployed to unite and rally the party. They proved a formiddable force, capable of mobilising millions of workers and activists to campaign and demonstrate during the election.

While the moderate parties united around Hindenburg with relative confidence, the nationalist right did not do the same for Hitler. The DNVP and Stahlhelm refused to subordinate themselves to him and instead put forward their own candidate, Theodor Duesterberg. He was positioned as a more moderate conservative who would appeal to industrialists and agrarians, in contrast to the demogogue Hitler. For perspective, Duesterberg was the chairman of the Stahlhelm and in the previous decade had been considered a radical within the already-extreme group, successfully pushing for the expulsion and banning of all Jewish members. In response to his candidacy, the Nazis did some digging and exposed that Duesterberg himself was of partial Jewish ancestry. Duesterberg was unaware of the fact and had a nervous breakdown, attempting to resign from the Stahlhelm, but his allies convinced him to carry on his campaign.

Let's step back a moment and consider the position that the country has now found itself in. Seven years ago, Paul von Hindenburg was the candidate of the anti-democratic, monarchist, völkisch right. He was opposed by a vibrant and powerful republican coalition, whom he only bested thanks to his unparalleled personal appeal. By 1932, having now de facto abolished parliamentary democracy and begun running the government on his own whim, he was considered the candidate of democracy and backed primarily by those who had fought tooth and nail against him in 1925. The nationalist right was split between two candidates, both leaders of violent extremist movements, whose campaign strategies revolved around trying to be more antisemitic than one another. The only other candidate was Ernst Thälmann, a committed Stalinist. All of these candidates were staunchly and vocally opposed to the republic.

Bleak would be putting it lightly. The first round of the election took place on 13 March.

Hindenburg fell just short of an absolute majority, enough to ensure he would win in the runoff, Thälmann or no Thälmann. Hitler placed a distant second with 30%; Duesterberg was a flop, winning just 7% of the vote. Thälmann recorded a respectable 13%. The geography of Hindenburg's result was stark compared to 1925, looking a lot more like Marx's performance than his own. Centre and BVP support saw him dominate Catholic regions, while the SPD delivered him their strongholds. Hitler won much traditional nationalist and agrarian territory, putting on particularly strong performances in northern Hanover and Oldenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, rural Hesse, and also Protestant parts of Franconia where the Nazis had failed to break through in the 1930 Reichstag election. He won overall pluralities in Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein, as well as Chemnitz-Zwickau, which actually proved one of his strongest regions. Duesterberg won two pluralities overall, both in rural Farther Pomerania. Thälmann took three, all KPD heartland: Solingen in the Ruhr, the Saalkreis in Merseberg, and Zella-Mehlis in Thuringia. He failed to overcome the united republican push in Berlin, even in strongholds such as Wedding. A fun historical tidbit: to this day a remnant of this election remains standing in the city of Weimar, in the form of a very faded sign reading "Wählt Thälmann" painted onto the side of a house.

Turnout was 86%, higher than the 1930 election and much higher than in the first round of the 1925 presidential election. In fact, with 18.65 million votes, Hindenburg beat his 1925 runoff performance by four million votes. Hitler won 11.34 million, five million more than the Nazis had garnered in 1930.

 

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Duesterberg withdrew after the first round, leaving the runoff to shape up as a Hindenburg v Hitler contest. Thälmann predictably refused to drop out, but his campaign had lost most of its energy. The most interesting developments in the time between rounds came from the camp who had backed Duesterberg - the DNVP and Stahlhelm refused to endorse anyone, with the latter calling for its members to abstain. Most industrialists and groups likewise remained neutral, though a few, including Fritz Thyssen and the Reichslandbund, announced their support for Hitler.

The second round took place on 10 April. Hindenburg issued a decree banning campaign activity over Easter, restricting it to the final week before the vote.

As expected, Hindenburg won by a wide margin, taking 53% of the vote. However, Hitler clearly gained more from Duesterberg's withdrawal. Compared to the first round, Hindenburg gained 700,000 votes while Hitler gained 2.08 million. Thälmann suffered a sharp loss of almost 1.3 million votes, a full quarter of his initial support. Looking at the map, Hitler was able to consolidate his performance in the areas where he broke thorugh during the first round. These include agrarian regions like eastern Hanover, where he secured an overall plurality, and Pomerania, but also industrial regions like Thuringia and Merseberg, which he won thanks to Thälmann's strong presence. He also managed to win one borough in Berlin, Steglitz. Demographically, women voted strongly for Hindenburg while Hitler and Thälmann were backed primarily by men.

 

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Though the republican and bourgeois camp celebrated the presidential election result, Hindenburg himself was unsettled. As a staunch conservative he resented having to rely on Catholic and socialist voters. His ire was directed primarily at Brüning, who had been the mastermind of the campaign and his key cheerleader. However, his dissatisfaction with Brüning and his policies had been growing for some time. A particularly disruptive episode came just a few days after the presidential runoff, when defence minister Wilhelm Groener issued a ban on the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. The SA were responsible for an enormous amount of violence by this time, particularly in clashes with the KPD and its paramilitary, which frequently ended with deaths. However, the German military leadership opposed a ban on the SA since they saw them as a potential ally and source of recruits.

Enter Kurt von Schleicher, chief of the defence ministry's office and one of Hindenburg's closest allies. He was a military man through and through, and a staunch reactionary; he had helped pioneer the concept of the presidential government. Schleicher was outraged by Groener's decision and worked to force him out. He resigned in mid-May. This was just one of several episodes in early 1932 that damaged Hindenburg's confidence in Brüning and his cabinet, whom he increasingly viewed as incompetent and unreliable. Throughout the early months of 1932 he constantly insisted he was on the verge of a breakthrough in regard to canceling Germany's obligation to pay reparations, but it never came.

Brüning's approach to the depression also became increasingly desperate. In a particularly boggling move, he began working on a new programme in which he essentially gave up on economic recovery and instead proposed regressing Germany to an agrarian economy by resettling unemployed workers from cities to the countryside. To do this, he planned to end subsidies to agricultural estates in the east of the country, most of which were deeply indebted and completely reliant on government support for survival. Ending subsidies would both free up a huge amount of public money for the national budget and precipitate the financial collapse of the estates, allowing the government to acquire the land for settlement.

This was utterly unthinkable for the conservatives. In both a symbolic and material sense, the estates represented the power, influence and heritage of the noble and landed classes who ruled in the Empire. To deliberately allow them to fail was a direct attack on the rights and privileges of the rightful ruling class and all the values conservatives and monarchists held most dear. Not to mention that many of them had interests directly tied up in these estates. It's really difficult to overstate how offensive this idea was to almost every person and group that Hindenburg had ever sought to align himself with. As far as they were concerned, the government had basically gone communist overnight. This is all without mentioning that the president himself lived on an estate at Neudeck which was reliant on subsidies to stay afloat. On 29 May, Hindenburg announced that he would no longer sign any decrees at Brüning's request, essentially issuing a one-man motion of no confidence in his cabinet. Brüning resigned the next day.

In his place, Hindenburg appointed Franz von Papen, outspoken leader of the Centre's right-wing and one of the party's staunchest arch-conservatives. Over the previous year he had become increasingly critical of Brüning's reliance on the SPD and advocated closer cooperation with the Nazis. The fall of the Brüning cabinet ultimately ended the involvement of the Centre with the presidential government, and Papen resigned his membership shortly after becoming Chancellor when the party announced plans to expel him. Papen's appointment had been recommended by Schleicher, who by this point guided many of the president's decisions; he was quickly appointed defence minister. The new cabinet was deeply conservative, comprising non-party and DNVP ministers. It was dubbed the "Cabinet of the Barons" as seven of its twelve members were from noble families.

Finally free from the influence of the liberal and bourgeois parties, Papen planned a wide-reaching constitutional reform which would formally abolish parliamentary democracy, solidifying the president as the supreme authority and reducing the Reichstag's influence even further by introducing a non-elected upper house. He proposed the establishment of a "President of Prussia" which would be merged with the office of Reich President - in a manner very similar to the Empire, in which the Hohenzollern monarch was simultaneously King of Prussia and German Emperor. It should come as little surprise that the final phase of his plan entailed the restoration of the monarchy.

The problem was that reforming the constitution still required a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag, something the government had absolutely no hope of achieving with only the DNVP on side. Papen and Schleicher turned to Hitler and the Nazis, who agreed to support the cabinet under two conditions: first, the ban on the SA should be lifted, which they were happy to do. Secondly, a new Reichstag election should be called. Since the DNVP and Nazis still commanded a relatively small minority in the current Reichstag, and the SPD were already preparing a motion of no confidence which was almost certain to pass, they readily agreed to this as well.

The election was scheduled for 31 July, allowing plenty of time for the newly re-legalised SA to unleash an unprecedented campaign of violence and intimidation against their opponents. In just one month, 99 people were killed and over a thousand injured, particularly during clashes with the KPD and its paramilitary. A particularly dark incident occurred on 17 July, when a brawl between SA and KPD demonstrators escalated into a shootout, resulting in the deaths of two SA men and a brutal response from the police, who opened fire on surrounding apartment windows where they believed the Communists had stationed sharpshooters. In the process they killed sixteen civilians and no Communists.

This incident ultimately precipitated one of the most dramatic events in Weimar political history, which is saying a lot. Back in April, a state election had taken place in Prussia, delivering a clear plurality for the Nazis. As with elections in other states, the Landtag was hopelessly divided between Communists, the SPD and republicans, and the Nazis. The outgoing Weimar coalition cabinet led by SPD veteran Otto Braun thus remained in office as caretaker. The results of this election were of particular interest and concern for Papen, who wanted to ensure that control of the largest and most powerful state did not remain in the hands of the Social Democrats. In particular, Braun and his cabinet controlled the state's 90,000-strong police force, which could theoretically be mobilised against the government and the SA. After unsuccessfully trying to compel a coalition between the Nazis, Centre, and DNVP during June, Papen resorted to the nuclear option on 20 July.

Papen requested that President Hindenburg exercise his powers under Article 48 to suspend the Prussian state government on the basis that, after the massacre on 17 July which took place in Altona, a satellite suburb of Hamburg in Prussia, "public safety and order in Prussia could no longer be guaranteed". Hindenburg then appointed Papen himself as Reich Commissioner for Prussia, allowing him to exercise full control over the state. A state of emergency was declared; the decree was to be enforced by the military.

The Social Democrats had seen a coup against the Prussian government coming for months, and Braun and his ministers reacted immediately and negatively. They announced that they would challenge the constitutionality of the decree and refused to step down. When Papen asked state interior minister Carl Severing in person for his resignation, he responded: "I will yield only to violence." Ultimately, however, they did nothing. Severing declined to deploy the police to resist the Reichswehr as they moved into Berlin. The SPD and Iron Front even refused to call for civil resistance or a general strike. A purge of government and administration ensued as the chiefs of police and members of the republican parties were suspended from their positions and replaced by conservatives aligned with the Reich government.

In a sign of how bad things had become, this entire situation had already been planned for by both sides ahead of time - the decree suspending the Prussian government was drafted on the 14th, three days before the events in Altona provided Papen his justification for doing it. On the 16th, the SPD leadership had privately decided not to resist a coup d'etat in Prussia, fearing it would spark a civil war. Appealing to the legal system proved utterly pointless; the Constitutional Court rejected the SPD's request for an injunction against the government's suspension, and in October formally upheld the legality of Papen and Hindenburg's actions.

The coup betrayed Papen's true intentions, namely replacing the democratic republic with an authoritarian state, but by this point things were too advanced for anyone to be particularly outraged. Most frustration within the SPD was directed at the leadership for their refusal to resist.

A final event worth discussing in the lead-up to the election is the Lausanne Conference, which took place from mid-June to early July to discuss German war reparations. In the context of the depression, US President Herbert Hoover had issued a moratorium on reparations payments a year earlier. The German government now hoped to cancel them altogether. Papen, however, was not a very adept negotiator and ultimately only came away with an informal understanding that reparations would come to an end afterwards - and only on the condition that a final payment of three billion marks was made. While this was still basically the end of reparations, it was widely expected that the government would be able to cancel payments outright, and Papen was slammed by all corners for his failure.

The result was unquestionably a victory for the Nazis. They fell just short of beating the SPD's 1919 result of 38%. The SPD suffered only a small swing against them and lost ten seats; all things considered, it was still not an awful result, though they obviously lost their position as the most popular party for the first time since 1887. The KPD recorded only a small swing to 14%. The Centre and BVP saw slight gains while the DNVP slid further to 5.9%. Most of the Nazis' gains apparently came from the smaller bourgeois and agrarian parties - the DDP, DStP, WP, and CSVD all collapsed into near-irrelevance with 1% of votes or less. The DLV in particular was annihilated, losing 90% of its votes.

This sharp decline in the more niche interest parties greatly simplified the geography of the election, with only six parties winning any pluralities. The Nazis found themselves dominant across almost all Protestant territory. Their strongest results came in rural areas like the periphery of East Prussia, northern Hanover, plus old DNVP stomping ground like rural Hesse and Lower Franconia. They destroyed SPD and KPD dominance in their traditional strongholds, and even in Berlin where they achieved a major breakthrough, narrowly winning the city overall in a very close three-way race. The SPD secured just forty pluralities in total, comprising a smattering of industrial cities and a few other provinces. Both Hamburg and Lübeck fell to the Nazis. The KPD held onto Saalkreis, but otherwise only claimed boroughs in the centre and east of Berlin and cities along the Ruhr. On the Rhineland side of the border they were overrun by the Nazis and only won Solingen, but on the Westphalian side they strengthened their vote share and claimed Dortmund for the first time.

The Centre and BVP managed to reverse their declining vote share thanks to a better showing in their heartland, though support in Baden and Upper Silesia continued to slip. The DBP were the only agrarian party who managed to keep hold of any provinces: they took just one, Landau in Lower Bavaria. Even in Württemberg, where the the WBWB had always held strong, they were overcome by the Nazis and only claimed 7%.

Comparing the Nazis' result to Hitler's performance in the second round of the presidential election a few months earlier, they only gained 327,000 votes for a total of 13.75 million. This clearly went against the trend of the previous couple of years which had seen precipitous growth in their popularity. Indeed, the general response to the result was surprise that the Nazis hadn't performed better; even Goebbels expressed disappointment. Looking more closely, with the minor bourgeois, agrarian, and conservative parties all but sucked clean and the four remaining major parties holding firm, it seemed that the Nazis may have hit their electoral ceiling. And given that the new Reichstag was short of a majority even for the Nazis and DNVP combined, that was a troubling development for them.

 

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Immediately after the July election, the Nazis reneged on their promise and withdrew support for Papen's government. Schleicher attempted to entice them back by offering to bring them into cabinet, but Hitler would accept nothing less than being appointed Chancellor, which Hindenburg among others would not accept. Against the wishes of the government, the Nazis began negotiations with the Centre for a coalition, conducted primarily by the labour-oriented wings of both parties who had an easier time finding common ground. These ended without success; in any case, the Nazi leadership did not truly intend to form a coalition and approached the Centre primarily as a way of pressuring Papen, Schleicher and Hindenburg.

The impasse had not been resolved by the time the new Reichstag convened on 30 August. Its first order of business was electing its presiding officer. The SPD put forward Paul Löbe, who had served in this role for almost the entire republic; the Nazis proposed Hermann Göring. The Centre supported Göring and he was elected on the first ballot. Both the SPD and KPD were denied any positions on the presidium - the three vice presidential spots went to the Centre, DNVP, and BVP.

The Reichstag met on 12 September for its first regular session. With little else on the agenda, the KPD requested motions to veto presidential decrees which had been issued the previous week, as well as a motion of no confidence in the government. Nobody objected and the motions were tabled. Göring then suspended the session for a half-hour to consult with Hitler, who instructed the party to support the no-confidence motion. Papen, meanwhile, had caught wind and urgently sent an aide to retrieve an order - already drafted and signed by Hindenburg - dissolving the Reichstag.

When the sitting recommenced, Papen entered the chamber with a red folder under his arm. Everyone in the room was quite aware of what was happening. However, Göring declared that the motion of no confidence would be voted upon as the immediate order of business. Papen protested and demanded he be given the floor, evidently planning to read the declaration of dissolution which would end the session and prevent the Reichstag from toppling the government. Despite the rules of procedure stating that the Chancellor could request the floor at any time, Göring ignored Papen, pretending not to notice his protests and literally looking the other way while the vote on the confidence motion proceeded. Papen threw the folder containing the dissolution order on Göring's desk and left the chamber. The motion of no confidence passed 513 votes to 42, supported by all parties except the DNVP and DVP.

However, since Göring had technically received the order before the motion was passed, it still had legal effect and the Reichstag was dissolved and the no-confidence motion nullified. The formal grounds for dissolution were "the risk that the Reichstag will demand that the emergency decree of 4 September be rescinded." The incident remained heavily damaging for Papen, who quickly took to radio to explain his platform and vision for the country. He proposed that an "impartial national leadership" dominated by professionals should take the place of democracy, with the influence of the general public limited to electing the president. He stated that Prussia should be administered alongside the Reich by the federal government. There was little mention of plans for economic recovery or reduction in unemployment.

In contrast to the previous election, the November campaign proceeded relatively without drama. There was still violence, of course, but not to the same degree as in June and July. Perhaps hoping to win over Nazi voters, the Communists put greater focus on nationalism in their propaganda and doubled down on targeting the Social Democrats, deriding them as "social fascists".

The main lesson of the result was that the Nazis had, seemingly, hit their peak in July. They fell to 33% and, combined with a decline in voter turnout, lost over two million votes and 34 seats. While they remained clearly the largest party, it was a pretty significant blow. The main winners of the election were the Communists and DNVP who both recorded swings of about 2.5%. The SPD continued to slip, losing another twelve seats, which left them just 21 seats ahead of the KPD. The DVP also made a slight recovery to 11 seats and a bit under 2% of the vote. Compared to the last election, the minor bourgoies and agrarian parties remained steady, and some even made small gains, including the CSVD, DBP, and DHP.

The Nazis' losses were felt strongly all across the country, but most sharply in the north and east, which can be attributed to the resurgence in DNVP support. They managed to hold strong in Schleswig, rural Hesse, and the rural parts of Middle Franconia.

The SPD and KPD recovered a substantial amount of territory from the Nazis, mainly in industrial and urban areas. The SPD's main triumphs were in Hamburg and Lübeck, as well as Dresden-Land. They also clawed back an overall plurality in Leipzig province. However, gains were most pronounced for the Communists. They surged on the Rhineland side of the Ruhr, flipping Remscheid, Duisburg-Hamborn, Düsseldorf, Rhein-Wupper-Kreis, and Mettmann, and the constituency overall. They strengthened their vote substantially in the Westphalian Ruhr and in Berlin. They also improved markedly in Württemberg and took Stuttgart and its surrounds, Nürtingen, and Göppingen.

The Centre and BVP recorded a slight decline. Geographically the only noteworthy features were a modest surge for the Centre in Upper Silesia and a general weakening for the BVP in old Bavaria. The latter probably owes to the minor recovery of the DBP, who managed to regain a second district in Lower Bavaria. The WBWB also won back three in Württemberg, though their vote share only recovered a little - from 7% to 8.2%.

The result was seen as an indication that Hitler's appeal was waning, either because voters were losing faith in his promises or losing patience after the politicking of past months. Likewise, the first signs of economic recovery provided hope that the forces of political radicalism might be starting to retreat overall. The Nazis faced internal strife between Hitler and the wing around Gregor Strasser, both because of the poor showing and because donors were beginning to turn their back on the party and they found themselves short on money.

 

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Despite the Nazis' decline, the new Reichstag did not help Papen's case. There was a broad expectation that the events of September would simply repeat, leading to yet another election. Papen suggested that the Reichstag could be dissolved, a state of emergency declared and the election postponed for at least six months, giving the Reich government a free hand. They would use this time to draft a constitutional reform and formalise it via a rubber-stamp referendum. This would be a clear breach of the constitution. Hindenburg initially supported the idea, but Schleicher was opposed, fearing that it could trigger a civil war. His ally Eugen Ott drafted a war game to simulate the scenario and concluded that, if the left and Nazis rose up in insurrection, the Reichswehr was unlikely to be able to put them down and the situation would deteriorate into an extended civil conflict, risking a breakdown in the supply of basic goods and possible Polish intervention. His findings were presented at a cabinet meeting on 2 December, which proved decisive in swaying Hindenburg to Schleicher's side. Papen had already resigned in mid-November in anticipation of forming a new cabinet, but Hindenburg instead appointed Schleicher Chancellor the next day.

Schleicher's strategy was to put pressure on the Nazis by exacerbating the conflict between Hitler and Strasser. He publicly proposed to build a Querfront (roughly "diagonal front") combining nationalistic and labour-oriented groups, with the Strasserite Nazis chief among them. He proposed that conservative elements of the SPD, socialist trade unions, and the Catholic labour movement could be won over to form a parliamentary majority. This was not a completely baseless concept - some Social Democrats had advocated rapprochement with the Nazis, such as the Hofgeismar Circle of the Young Socialists in the 20s. Similar sentiments could also be found among the unions. However, Schleicher was never seriously committed to this. He pursued it with the intention of pressuring Hitler into supporting his government or else risk a split in his party. To this end, he met with Gregor Strasser on 4 December and offered to restore the Prussian government and make him Minister-President in exchange for his participation in the Querfront.

Ultimately, Schleicher failed on both counts. Hitler outmaneuvered and isolated Strasser within the party, rendering the danger of a split negligible. The Querfront concept did garner some popularity, mostly among the trade unions and the Centre, but it was limited to the media sphere. His attempt to associate himself with socialism made him unpopular among the nationalist right, and his track record as a reactionary and his role in the Prussian coup made him unpopular on the left. To make matters worse, Papen began scheming immediately after his dismissal, hoping to topple Schleicher and regain his power. By the end of December, the new Chancellor's position was becoming precarious. Most of this politicking was happening behind the scenes, however, and the press generally interpreted the flailing situation of the Nazi Party as evidence that the republic was saved. On New Years 1933, the Frankfurter Zeitung boldly declared: "The immense nationalist attack on the state has been repulsed."

Papen met with Hitler on 4 January. Schleicher's allies caught wind and snapped photos of the meeting, which were published as front-page news the next day. Alarmed, Schleicher met with Hugenberg in hopes of securing the DNVP's support, but he refused - he was already on board with Papen. He spent the next few weeks scrambling to find a solution, but his allies were turning against him, particularly the military. Interestingly, he missed a crucial opportunity on 20 January which could have saved him. Leading Nazi Wilhelm Frick suggested to the agenda committee that the Reichstag take an extended recess until spring, which would have given the government much-needed breathing room. However, Schleicher had instructed his chief of staff that the recess should be kept as short as possible in the mistaken belief that the Nazis would not risk a potentially disastrous election by toppling him. He realised too late that this was not the case and that Papen and Hitler were about to move against him. Thus, the Reichstag was scheduled to reconvene on 31 January, and Schleicher's government would almost certainly be voted out. In a desperate and ironic final move, on 28 January he requested that Hindenburg dissolve the Reichstag and postpone the election indefinitely. His request was declined. He subsequently resigned and recommended that Hitler be appointed his successor.

Papen was ecstatic to have won the power struggle. After a second meeting with Hitler on 22 January, he became convinced he could co-opt his popularity while pulling the strings behind the scenes, just as Schleicher had done to him. Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30 January. His cabinet comprised two ministers from the Nazi Party (Wilhelm Frick as interior minister and Hermann Göring without portfolio) with the remainder being DNVP and non-partisan ministers. Papen became Vice-Chancellor, and Hugenberg was appointed minister for economics and agriculture. They believed that they would be able to control Hitler and dispose of him when he was no longer useful. Indeed, given the circumstances, many derided Hitler's new position as little more than symbolic. Liberal publications insisted that a dictatorship in Germany was impossible, both because of institutional barriers and because the masses would never accept it.

Events moved with blinding speed. Hitler's first move was to dissolve the Reichstag and call a new election for 5 March, in just five weeks' time. The government quickly built on the restrictions on civil liberties which had been implemented by the previous presidential governments, targeting the KPD and SPD. On 17 February, Hermann Göring, who had been appointed acting interior minister of Prussia, ordered the state police to use firearms without hesitation.

On the evening of 27 February, a fire was reported at the Reichstag building in the heart of Berlin. Despite the efforts of firefighters, the building was gutted. The Nazis immediately accused the Communist Party of orchestrating it as the first step in an imminent revolution. Marinus van der Lubbe, a young Dutch communist, was later indicted as the culprit and executed in January 1934. Significant debate remains concerning the circumstances of the fire, but there is great consensus among historians that Van der Lubbe was likely responsible, but was acting alone.

Regardless, Hitler was more than happy to seize on the event and accelerate his plans. The next day, Hindenburg issued a decree at his request which indefinitely suspended habeas corpus, freedom of the press and expression, freedom of association and assembly, and privacy of correspondence. The efforts of the government and police were directed chiefly at the Communist Party and "those who co-operate with the Communists and who support or encourage their criminal aims," which in practice meant anyone considered a potential threat or enemy to the government. Estimates suggest that around 10,000 arrests were made in the fortnight following the Reichstag fire decree. This included KPD chairman Ernst Thälmann, who spent the remainder of his life in solitary confinement and, later, Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was executed on Hitler's order in 1944. The dam had broken; the dictatorship was here. An exodus of Communists and Social Democrats ensued, first from Berlin and other cities where the Nazis held power, and then across the borders into neighbouring countries.

It was in this atmosphere that the election was held less than a week later. The KPD had been shattered and had little to no remaining organisational presence. The Nazis allowed them to remain on the ballot to prevent the SPD from benefitting in their absence. The Social Democrats were also severely hampered, with demonstrations and events harshly cracked down upon. The SA, SS, and Stahlhelm were declared auxiliary police, giving them free roam to attack and intimidate as they pleased. To give the greatest possible clarity: the March 1933 election was not free or fair, and the results should not be interpreted as a genuine expression of the will of the electorate.

In spite of this, the Nazis still failed to win a majority, taking just 43.9% of votes. This came even as turnout increased drastically to 89%. The parties of the left only suffered marginal losses considering the brutal repression they suffered - the SPD lost only a single seat, and the KPD about a fifth of its support. The Centre and BVP likewise remained steady, while the minor bourgeois and agrarian parties again experienced a decline. Rather, the result was characterised primarily by a surge in votes for the Nazis. Nonetheless they were forced to rely on the DNVP, in alliance with Papen and the Stahlhelm as the Kampffront Schwarz-Weiß-Rot, who won 8% and provided the numbers for Hitler's majority.

The Nazis claimed the vast majority of districts. The SPD was reduced to a handful of heartland towns, notably Burg in Magdeburg, Rüstringen in Oldenburg (comprising the working-class suburbs of Wilhelmshaven), and Heilbronn in Württemberg. The KPD clung on to Wedding, Friedrichshain, and Neukölln. Much of the Catholic heartland remained in the Centre column albeit by a reduced margin - they only won pluralities in the Köln-Aachen and Koblenz-Trier constituencies. The BVP was overcome outside of the Upper Palatinate and Lower Franconia.

Still sticking to their quasi-legal strategy, the Nazis' intention in calling the election was to win a majority to transfer total power into Hitler's hands via an Enabling Act, which would allow the Chancellor to pass laws without the involvement of the Reichstag. They were not satisfied by the arithmetic they had been left with, however. The passage of the Enabling Act required two-thirds support, meaning even the Nazis and DNVP together lacked the numbers to pass it. Hitler negotiated with Centre chairman Ludwig Kaas and secured his support in exchange for guaranteeing the party's continued existence and the preservation of rights and protections for Catholics. The party itself was split on the issue, with former Chancellor Brüning advocating against the Act. Kaas's argument ultimately prevailed, however, and his opponents agreed to vote with him to maintain party discipline.

The Nazis pulled out all the stops to ensure the Enabling Act would pass when the Reichstag met on 23 March. They annulled the election of the 81 Communist deputies, many of whom had already been arrested, reducing the overall size of parliament to 566 members. This artificially bolstered their numbers and reduced the quorum necessary to pass the Act. For the same purpose, Göring declared that any deputy who was absent "without excuse" would be counted as present. A number of SPD deputies were also arrested. Finally, numerous SA men were stationed both inside and outside the chamber to physically intimidate the members of the Reichstag into voting for the Act. SPD chairman Otto Wels was the only deputy to speak against it: "No Enabling Act can give you the power to destroy ideas which are eternal and indestructible ... You can take our lives and our freedom, but you cannot take our honour. We are defenseless but not honourless."

444 deputies voted in favour of the Act. Only the 94 SPD deputies present voted against. One Centre member and one DVP member were absent; both had been cleared by Göring ahead of time. Overall, 83% of those present supported the Act. As a percentage of the whole membership as elected on 5 March, however, the two-thirds hurdle was only narrowly cleared with 68.6% in favour. The Enabling Act was signed into law by President Hindenburg the same day.

Thus ended the last glimmer of Weimar democracy. The totalitarian regime rapidly imposed itself. The guarantees made to Ludwig Kaas never materialised, and newspapers, trade unions, and numerous other organisations were coerced into disbanding themselves. Jews who had not already fled the country were forced out of positions of prominence, their property confiscated, and risked violence or worse if they didn't keep their heads down. All political parties except the Nazi Party were formally banned in July. Papen and Hugenberg were both severely marginalised after just a few weeks in cabinet. Hugenberg resigned in June 1933, and Papen was eventually forced out after publicly criticising the Nazis in June 1934. Later that month, Schleicher was murdered during the Night of the Long Knives. The final vestige of the republic was snuffed out in August when President Paul von Hindenburg died. Adolf Hitler declared that the powers of President and Chancellor would be merged into his new office of "Führer and Chancellor".

The regime which had vanquished the Weimar republic was itself vanquished in May 1945 after Germany's defeat by the Allies in the Second World War. From the rubble, a ruined land grappling with horrors and atrocities previously unimaginable, rose a new generation of democrats committed to building a new republic, stronger and more tenacious than the last, with a new constitution expressly designed to ensure that what had happened could never happen again. The fingerprints of the Weimar experience can be found all over the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, etched deeply with scars and trauma that can never truly heal. Its first two clauses lay out the most essential, fundamental lesson that they took from the 1918-1945 period:

(1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.

(2) The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world.

 

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Thanks to my lovely girlfriend @Kanan I recently acquired a fantastic book titled How would the 1919 National Assembly elections have turned out if absolute majority voting had been retained? by Andreas Schulz (if you're interested, be aware it is in German). In it he models the scenario in question using data from the 1919 election. Included is a series of tables tallying the votes in each pre-1918 electoral constituency. It's not perfect, but it's a lot more granular than anything else I've been able to get my hands on, so of course I decided to map it.

The 1919 election was a strange one. The situation was really volatile, even by Weimar standards. The revolution had taken place just a few months earlier, the war was over but a peace had yet to be settled, and the government did not have effective control over substantial swathes of its territory due to foreign occupation, workers' uprisings, or insurgency. Less dramatically, but important to this story, the party system had undergone a complete shakeup during the past couple years and was still yet to sort itself out. The USPD was full of high-profile SPD dissidents and hammering them from the left, the liberal centre had tried and failed to reunify and in the process splintered again into the new DDP and DVP, the Fatherland Party had been founded and dissolved, and then combined with the old conservatives into the DNVP. The strength and influence of all of these forces had yet to be tested at the ballot box, especially in current circumstances. There was no way of telling what might happen.

The election to the National Assembly was called by the SPD, and it's important to contextualise why they did this and what they were hoping to achieve. By 1918, the SPD had not been a revolutionary workers' party for years, nor did they consider themselves one. Party orthodoxy, particularly among the leadership, was that their formiddable strength would, in time, allow them to achieve power within the system and peacefully reform it along the lines of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. When they were brought into the cabinet of Max von Baden in October, they felt that this was their moment: the Emperor was willingly handing them the reins and giving them the chance to pursue reform. When the November Revolution began knocking with the mutiny in Kiel, it was the last thing they wanted. With their own power more tied to the Imperial constitution than ever, they were not at all interested in a social revolution. Above all, they wanted to avoid "Russian conditions": the breakdown of state authority, the ascendancy of radical revolutionaries, and a descent into chaos and terror. Their chief goal was to keep the state intact.

All their actions during the revolutionary period were aimed at achieving this. When Friedrich Ebert urged the Emperor to abdicate on 8 November, his goal was not to transform the state but to ease the unrest caused by Wilhelm's unpopularity. When Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the end of the monarchy before a huge crowd on 9 November, he aimed not to advance the revolution but to stifle it by preempting the proclamation of a socialist republic by Karl Liebknecht. The crucial following days were characterised by a race between the SPD and revolutionary factions to win over the working masses. This race was decisively won by the Social Democrats, who outmaneuvered their opponents by calling for the election of workers' councils where they, as the established party of the workers and trade unions, won huge majorities and prevented further radicalisation. They then formed a coalition government with the USPD to prevent them from usurping power by declaring a government of their own.

Calling for elections to a constituent assembly was a strategic move with the same intention. The USPD did not want national elections - rather, most members called for power to be transferred to the workers' or other revolutionary councils, and the immediate restructuring of the economy. The SPD insisted that such matters should be left to the new national parliament. Of course, they planned to consolidate their own power by winning the election decisively and marginalising both the USPD and Spartacists to their left and conservatives to their right. Indeed, the coalition between the two socialist parties was only short-lived; the USPD quit in protest after realising they had been reduced almost to irrelevance.

The National Assembly didn't go as planned, however. In January, rather than winning a clear majority, the SPD won just 38% of the vote. Even the two socialist parties combined were short of a majority. The Social Democrats were forced to ally with the parties of moderate liberalism, the Centre Party and the new left-liberal German Democratic Party, who shared their desire for parliamentary liberal democracy but little else. Potentially crucial to this outcome was the SPD's decision to use a system of party-list proportional representation for the National Assembly. This was a major change from the Imperial Reichstag, which was elected using a two-round system in absurdly malapportioned single-member constituencies whose borders hadn't been updated since the 1870s. Or had they? As it turns out, a substantial reform to the electoral system was passed in August 1918. Andreas Schulz's book explores in great detail exactly how the 1919 election may have turned out if the reformed majority system had been used. And, as you may have seen coming, I mapped out that scenario too. Stay tuned.

 

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In Andreas Schulz's book How would the 1919 National Assembly elections have turned out if absolute majority voting had been retained?, he models the results of the 1919 election using the Reichstag electoral system as reformed in August 1918. The Imperial Reichstag was elected via single-member constituencies using the two-round system, with the top two candidates proceeding to a runoff. The electoral boundaries were first drawn up in the 1860s-70s and had remained almost completely unchanged since. The constituencies, which had never really been particularly equal in terms of population to begin with, became absurdly malapportioned in the following decades. By 1912, the smallest constituencies comprised around 60,000 residents while the largest, Teltow-Beeskow-Storkow-Charlottenburg south of Berlin, had over 1.3 million. A similar pattern was found across the country; in general, more urbanised areas were underrepresented compared to rural areas. This had a particular impact on the SPD, the party of the urban working class. As such, despite taking the largest share of votes in every election since 1890, it wasn't until 1912 when they finally won a plurality of seats in the Reichstag.

Reform to the electoral system had been discussed for many years, but disagreements over what should be done and opposition from the conservatives and Centre prevented action. By the time the Great War began, the critical importance of the government securing passage of its budgets allowed the Social Democrats and left-liberals, who were in a strong position after the 1912 election, to force a deal in exchange for their support. At the beginning of 1917 a draft reform bill was published. The fundamentals of the electoral system were to remain; most seats would still be elected via the two-round system, and the constituency boundaries were left almost untouched. However, in constituencies with over 300,000 residents, additional seats were to be added, elected via proportional representation using the largest remainder method. Large cities were also unified into single constituencies with multiple members. Berlin, previously comprising six constituencies which massively underrepresented the populous working-class suburbs, was to comprise a ten-member constituency. Meanwhile, the Teltow-Beeskow-Storkow-Charlottenburg constituency would have seven seats. A similar pattern followed across the country; a total of twenty-six multi-member constituencies were specified. The bill also provided for additional seats to be added automatically as constituencies grew beyond 300,000 people, and for every additional 200,000 residents.

This was not a radical change to the system - indeed, the vast majority of seats remained the exact same as they had been previously. Only affording additional seats to cities with over 300,000 residents, while most other constituencies contained half as many or fewer, still left urban areas severely underrepresented. Likewise, the use of proportional representation actually aided the non-socialist parties by giving them a chance to win seats in previously impregnable Social-Democratic strongholds. Nonetheless, the greater weight given to urban areas was a win for the SPD, and the mere fact that they had secured the reform was a significant concession from the liberal-conservative establishment. Proportional representation also gave them the security of guaranteed representation, whereas previously they were often frustrated by the runoff system which allowed the anti-socialist parties to unite behind an opposing candidate to deny them seats. The electoral reform bill was passed in August 1918 with strong support; it was opposed by the Conservatives, Poles, and USPD.

Of course, this system was never used. Only a few months later, the November Revolution saw the dissolution of the Empire and proclamation of a new republic. The provisional Council of People's Deputies legislated a new electoral system under which the entire parliament was to be elected via party-list proportional representation. The use of "pure PR" is often cited as a weakness of the Weimar Republic, leading to weak governments and instability, which contributed to its downfall. Andreas Schulz explores what would have happened if the reformed Imperial electoral system had been used for the 1919 election. Would the SPD have won an outright majority? Would a more stable government have been possible?

It's not easy to translate the results to a series of single-member constituencies, and there is a high degree of uncertainty about how things would have turned out. Factors such as individual candidate choices and joint nominations are impossible to account for. Likewise, predicting the results of runoffs proved extremely difficult. Schulz relies as much as possible on the actual results data, assuming for simplicity that the strongest and second-strongest party in each constituency sends a candidate to the runoff. He then projects the outcome based on the relative strength of the parties, leanings of the electorate, and history of the constituency. Due to the inherent uncertainty of the task, however, he puts forward two models for the election. Model A ssumes a high degree of success for the socialist parties in runoffs, with Social Democrats managing to win support from much of the left-liberal electorate as well as minority voters, and the SPD and USPD support one another. Model B is just the opposite: the socialist parties are marginalised, left-liberals are more likely to support nationalist and Centre candidates, or stay home. In practice, this means that whenever the outcome is at all in doubt, Model A predicts a victory for the more left-leaning candidate and Model B predicts a victory for the more right-leaning candidate. Lack of granularity in the data also means some multi-member constituencies have divergent results in the two models, following a similar logic.

 

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Since I gained access to so much data recently, as well as a good lot more knowledge, I decided to remake the scenario I did last year. To recap, this is an exploration of Weimar-era SPD activist Carlo Mierendorff's ideas about constitutional and electoral reform, namely instituting majority voting to encourage a more stable political system based on alliance-building.

The republic goes through a rocky period in the early 30s with the rise of the Nazi Party and ascendancy and reactionary nationalism, but ultimately survives by pure historical coincidence. The SPD does some soul-searching and seizes upon the ideas of the young radicals like Mierendorff, Haubach, and Leuschner. They hammer on the self-obsessed and power-hungry reactionary and Nazi parties, pledge an economic transformation to relieve the working classes, and a wide-reaching constitutional reform to repair and strengthen the republic. They reach out to form a broad front in defence of the republic, bringing together the socialist and trade union movement, liberals, Catholics, and dissident communists under the banner of the Iron Front. Mobilising their full strength to engage and energise citizens, they storm to victory and work to institute the promised reforms. Federalism is overhauled, the presidency weakened, civil service and judiciary purged, and the millitary brought under civilian control. A majority voting system is also instituted for the Reichstag, with 500 members elected via first past the post, supplemented by a very limited system of 50 leveling seats distributed on a regional level.

As the economic and political situation begins to ease, fresh elections in 1936 deliver a landslide for the Iron Front. The right-wing is hopelessly divided between the Nazis, DNVP, DVP, agrarian parties, and other minor factions, who suffer a crushing defeat. The Centre Party, working with its estranged sister the BVP, put on a strong performance. The Communists are weakened by the surge in grassroots support for the republic and suffer for their stance against it.

Ahead of the 1940 election, the right-wing work hard to put together a conservative coalition capable of challenging the Iron Front. Almost all forces agree to come on board, with the major exception of the Nazis. Around this time, both the Iron and newly-christened National Front coalesce around their central poles. The Iron Front comprises four primary groups. Foremost is the SPD, the classic party of the working-class and engine of the alliance, providing much of its leadership and organisation. The Republican Centre Union (RM-Bund) brings together the liberals and republicans of the centre and centre-left. The United Workers' Electoral League (VAWB) acts as a proxy of the trade union federation, allowing them to run candidate directly from the unions. Lastly is the "Left SPD", comprising dissident socialists and communists who agree to return to the fold for the sake of the republic.

The National Front's three main components represent its three pillars: nationalism, bourgeois conservatism, and agrarianism. The United National Party (VNPD) was formed by the merger of the DNVP with other right-wing nationalist groups such as the Pan-German League and Stahlhelm who were united by their distaste for Nazism and ties to the more traditionalist, aristocratic right. The DVP manages a comeback via merging with other bourgeois groups such as the Wirtschaftspartei. Their association with industrial magnates and conglomerates ensure the alliance is well-financed and well-connected. They also provide a competitive edge in regions such as the Rhineland and urban cities. Finally, numerous agrarian groups compete within the bloc. They largely operate on a local or regional level; the Landbund and Deutsches Landvolk (DLV) comprise the two largest federations. Together, these three groups are competitive across virtually all of Germany.

The 1940 election saw the mood of the country swing decisively away from Nazi populism and toward the two major alliances. Together they capture almost two-thirds of the votes and 70% of the seats. The National Front is a great success, capturing over 160 seats and substantially improving their vote share compared to 1936. The Iron Front also sees an upswing in support, but a substantial loss of seats due to the newfound consolidation of the right-wing. The Centre Party take a small hit as marginal seats, particularly in the Rhineland, fall to the National Front. The Communists also suffer from continued decline, though a strong showing in leveling seats somewhat stems the bleeding. The Nazis face a meltdown, however, losing half their voteshare and most of their seats.

The lesson seems clear: broad alliances bear fruit, while appeals to narrow interest groups and grievance politics are going out of style. A country once known for its political division and chaos seems to have successfully remade itself with, unity, preseverance, and stability taking centre stage.

 

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Shortly after his appointment as Chancellor in December 1932, Kurt von Schleicher met with Gregor Strasser and offered him a deal. Strasser was the most prominent Nazi behind Hitler, leader of the party's "left" camp and, for several years, a low-key rival. During the course of 1932, Hitler had stalwartly refused to join government unless he was made Chancellor, while Strasser advocated compromise with the moderate parties and accepting a junior role in government first. He had also fostered friendly connections with a number of industrialists who were key political players. Schleicher's motivation for approaching Strasser was two-fold: he hoped to build a "Querfront", a coalition of nationalist and corporatist/anti-capitalist forces, which could give him a stable majority for his government. If he couldn't, he hoped to pressure the Nazis into joining government anyway by stoking internal tensions. Somewhat to his surprise, Strasser accepted his offer, and the next day was sworn in as the third most powerful politician in the country behind only President Hindenburg and Schleicher.

This incited a full-on split in the Nazi Party, with 80 of its 200 Reichstag deputies defecting to Strasser. Numerous Gauleiter, the Nazi Party's provincial leaders, also followed. He quickly launched the Deutschsozialistische Reichspartei, DSR. Schleicher capitalised on this breakthrough and reached out to the socialist and Catholic trade unions, among other groups, in hopes of finding more allies. Nationalist or corporatist leanings were not uncommon even on the left, and a number of SPD and Centre deputies agreed to defect to the Querfront. Schleicher's Reichstag numbers swelled by more than half, and though it was significant, it wasn't enough for a clear majority. It quickly became clear that the opposition would imminently pass a motion of no confidence in the government. Schleicher persuaded President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and call the third election in just six months. He had not intended to face an electoral test so soon but was confident that a groundswell of popular support would put him in a good position. However, it didn't come to pass; the Querfront won less than 17% of votes and found itself even weaker than before the election.

Schleicher was a calculating and ruthless political operator. He could sense the walls closing in on him. There was no longer a path to a parliamentary majority: the Querfront had fallen flat, and there could certainly be no cooperation with Hitler, nor with the Centre Party. Worse still, Hindenburg was becoming more and more frustrated with him, while Schleicher's predecessor and bitter rival Franz von Papen was openly wooing Hitler and formulating an alliance which would see him returned to power. Following the election, Schleicher held a whirlwind of meetings and sent a mountain of correspodence to his allies in industry, politics, and the military to secure his position. But as the days passed, he watched them drift toward the Hitler-Papen camp, who were now obviously the more viable and attractive option. He was convinced that it was only a matter of time until he was dismissed by Hindenburg. However, there was one man he could still rely on: his close friend Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, supreme commander of the Reichswehr. A plan that had previously been unthinkable began to take shape between Schleicher, Hammerstein-Equord, and Strasser.

On the morning of 23 January, the Berlin police and local Wehrmacht division simultaneously mobilised and systematically occupied key buildings throughout the capital. At midday, the Chancellery announced that President Hindenburg had been placed in temporary protective custody and voluntarily offered his resignation. The reality was obvious and the reaction immediate: the Nazis rallied the SA in anticipation of a fight, while Papen and other anti-Schleicher leaders alerted their networks to the situation. Most significant among them was Werner von Blomberg, former chief of the military high command and a fierce enemy of Schleicher, who had stripped him of his office in 1929. He immediately contacted his allies in the army and ordered that all divisions move against the putschists. By the end of the day, most of the Reichswehr had been mobilised and were taking orders from two different command offices. It took only hours for the country to devolve into civil war.

Meanwhile, the forces of the political left watched on in fear. The threat of dictatorship had hung over their heads for years, and now that Schleicher had crossed the Rubicon, the Nazis would have no qualms doing the same. Once the conflict between the two reactionary camps was over, the left would undoubtedly be next. They had been preparing, reclutantly, for such a situation: the republican paramilitary the Reichsbanner boasted almost 250,000 elite "protection units" known as Schufo who immediately mobilised in anticipation of attacks from the SA or Reichswehr. In cities across the country, workers spontaneously took to the streets to erect barricades and defences. The Social Democratic and Communist leadership conferred and, two days after the coup, the KPD executive issued an extraordinary decree calling on all Communists to cooperate with the Iron Front and Reichsbanner to fight back against the reactionary forces. This unforeseen mobilisation spooked the Querfront and Nazis alike, and both sides withdrew from most of the cities in response. Throughout January and February most of the country was quiet: the left maintained a firmly defensive posture while the right-opposition focused on decapitating the Querfront in Berlin. During this time the large majority of fighting took place in the capital, where all three sides clashed regularly and bloodily. It wasn't until early March that the Reichswehr and SA gathered their forces and punched through the Querfront defences, capturing the political centres of the city and catching Schleicher and Strasser before they could flee. They were both summarily executed. It was at this point that news leaked out that Hindenburg, still detained by the putschists, had been killed a few days prior.

The right took a few days to mop up, regroup, and arrest or execute as many of the putschists and Querfront leaders as they could get their hands on. Then they turned their sights to the leftists. The previous six weeks had given them ample time to prepare defences, organise their forces, and stockpile weapons and supplies for the coming fight. But they simply couldn't beat the Reichswehr, especially given it was supplemented by a massive number of SA. Further, the republicans were uncoordinated, lacked leadership and suffered from low morale. They held out for an admirably long time - the final garrisons surrendered in June - but a combination of bombardment and ruthless siege tactics forced cities to their knees one by one. The firmer the resistance, the harsher the response; tens of thousands of civilians died due to blockades and the cutting of utilities, not to mention daily shelling. In Berlin, soldiers and militiamen fought a brutal campaign of room-to-room urban warfare which saw the defenders slowly but surely pushed back and eventually subdued.

 

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I've been covering a lot of local elections for cities in Germany in the last few months. There are far too many to post here, and I don't think most of them are quite worth it anyway, but you can find them on Wikipedia if you're interested. However, last month I got into the weeds of mapping by voting precinct and made some compelling finds, as well as maps I'm just generally proud of. So I'm gonna dump some of them here.

First off, here's a bunch of Berlin content. I spent a lot of time in this city (mentally, anyway). I made maps by constituency for every state election going back to reunification, and there's no huge revelations in there if you're familiar with the city's voting trends. The most interesting thing is probably that the Greens were winning constituencies as far as back 1995, and the SPD failed to win a single plurality anywhere in 1999. So I'll only post one.

So the state election held shortly after reunification was quite unique. Berlin was the only state comprising territory from both East and West (though that later changed thanks to the municipality of Neuhaus being transferred from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to Lower Saxony) and the election represented the fusion of two places which, despite being one, had sharply diverged in numerous ways over the past decades. Adding to this, both West and East Berliners had already voted for their city councils not long before: West Berlin's last city council election was less than two years prior, and the East held free local elections only a few months earlier in June. Both elections resulted in narrow victories for the SPD. In the West, they defeated the CDU after two terms in opposition, falling just short of a plurality but forming a coalition with the Greens - still a novel and often difficult arrangement at the time. In the East, the SPD triumphed over the PDS by a few percentage points in their stronghold, while the CDU placed a distant third. Based on this, you might have expected the SPD to be the favourites, but the federal election in October showed the CDU at a decisive advantage in Berlin. Further, the Greens withdrew from the coalition in November due to a dispute about squatters, dealing another blow to the SPD.

Mechanically, the state election was in many ways a microcosm of the federal election. The East was adopted into West Berlin's political system: the mixed-member proportional system was maintained and a new set of single-member constituencies added to represent the East. This boosted the number of single-member seats from 71 to 120, and the Abgeordnetenhaus's overall size to a very bloated 241 seats. The 5% threshold was also applied separately in East and West, though parties had to run statewide. Most had no trouble with this, but the Greens faced a sharp divide between the two parts of the city. The western Greens (actually called the Alternative List at the time) had a radically different history and experience to the eastern Alliance 90, which was made up of pro-democracy campaigners who set the Peaceful Revolution in motion only to be forgotten as the larger parties moved in. Moreover, there was an eastern Green Party which also ran independently, but forged a linked list with Alliance 90, meaning both parties' votes were pooled when determining seat distribution. The last thing worth mentioning is that The Republicans won 7.5% in the previous Western state election, but had been preemptively banned in the East during democratisation due to their radical right-wing orientation. They were able to run statewide this election.

The result was a smashing victory for the CDU, but there was an exceedingly clear geographic divide. They won a staggering 49% in the western part of the city while the SPD tumbled to 30%. In the east, however, the CDU took only 25%, and the SPD held onto their plurality with 32% - only a slight decline compared to June. The PDS placed third there with 24%, and won only 1% in the west. The Greens declined from their previous results but did better than in the federal election and comfortably surpassed the threshold in their respective parts of the city, though they each fell short of 5% statewide. The FDP surpassed 5% in both east and west; The Republicans fell to 3% overall (4% in the west and 2% in the east) and did not return to the Abgeordnetenhaus.

The sharpness of the geographic divide is particularly interesting. The SPD only claimed a single constituency in the west, and likewise the CDU only claimed one in the east. The PDS took a smattering of seats primarily in Mitte, Lichtenberg, Hohenschönhausen, and Marzahn. While the CDU and FDP won a clear majority in the west, they fell two seats short of a majority statewide. Given no alternative - a red-green coalition wasn't possible, and nobody was even remotely interested in touching the PDS - a grand coalition was formed.

Going forward, the size of the Abgeordnetenhaus was reduced significantly: the number of constituencies was slashed to 90 in 1995, and further to 78 in 1999, where it has remained ever since. Legally the chamber's minimum size is 130 seats, though due to the fractious nature of Berlin politics its actual size has fluctuated between 141 and 169 thanks to leveling seats. Compare and contrast this to the federal level, where the number of constituencies was only during cut down during the first Schröder government, and only by a measly 10% - from 328 to 299, compared to 248 pre-reunification.

 

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These maps are for the real Berlin Enjoyers among us who want a far too in-depth look at voting trends in the last few years. They were pretty brutal to make but worth it because this stuff is really fascinating to me. They got jpegd by Imgur because they're too large, but hopefully it's not a big issue.

I'll be brief for this lot, but you can see that the 2017 federal election marked a nadir in the popularity of the SPD and a strong result for The Left, especially in the west. In terms of party votes, they made a veritable stronghold out of the urban northern part of Neukölln, came out on top in Wedding and Gesundbrunnen, and made incursions into the Greens' home turf in Kreuzberg. At the same time, they suffered badly in Marzahn and Hellersdorf thanks to the rise of the AfD. Despite this, they marginally improved their overall vote share compared to 2013. The CDU, meanwhile, claimed comfortable pluralities across the west, particularly on the city periphery.

Looking at the constituency vote, the personal popularity of various candidates comes into play, as well as the advantage of incumbency. The SPD's paltry showing turned into victories in Spandau and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. They also managed to literally come through the middle in Neukölln as their more evenly distributed voter base beat the CDU, who were concentrated in the south, and The Left, who dropped off rapidly outside the inner urban north. Conversely, the CDU's strength in the south of Tempelhof-Schöneberg brought them victory over the SPD and Greens, who split the vote in the north. In the east, the personality factor primarily benefited The Left, especially in Treptow-Köpenick where Gregor Gysi remained unassailable. However, they were unsuccessful in claiming Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg-Prenzlauer Berg East despite the retirement of longtime representative Hans-Christian Ströbele, and the Greens held onto their only single-member constituency.

Now, a map nobody ever asked for but one that paints a very interesting picture of what Berlin looks like at Peak Green: basically they won almost the entire city, including large swaths of the east. There isn't a lot to say here that I won't also address in the next map, but it's worth noting how well the Greens were able to penetrate in more peripheral parts of boroughs like Treptow-Köpenick and Pankow, as well as CDU strongholds like Steglitz-Zehlendorf. I was also surprised that The Left was still able to eke out pluralities in Lichtenberg and Marzahn-Hellersdorf. And if you're struggling to locate the SPD, don't worry, you're not colourblind (or maybe you are, in which case solidarity). They won only a handful of precincts, mainly in Spandau.

Finally, last year's state election. I only have the party list vote for this one, and I don't have (satisfactory) maps for the federal election either - that's because the voting precincts for in-person votes (Wahlbezirke) and postal votes (Briefwahlbezirke) are different and thus reported separately, and are not aggregated below the constituency level. This wasn't really an issue for the previous elections, which I mapped using in-person preicincts, because results only differed to a small degree whether you included postal votes or not. This wasn't the case in 2021 since postal voting was much more widespread, accounting for almost half of all votes statewide, and the results differ a lot depending on which set you look at. Notably, the CDU performed significantly better among postal votes, likely due to their older voting base, while the AfD did far better in in-person votes because their voters are much less inclined to vote by mail. So I decided to map the postal vote precincts and manually aggregate in-person and postal votes myself. As a result, this map took much longer to make than the others. I spent several days working near-constantly on it before it was finally done. But it's accurate, so it's worth it! Right?

So the first things to notice are the broad trends: the Greens performed strongly in a ring of inner urban neighbourhoods around the city centre, with their highest support concentrated in Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, and Prenzlauer Berg. The CDU won much of the city periphery, such as Reinickendorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, and the southern parts of Spandau, Tempelhof, and Marzahn-Hellersdorf (they do well in the south everywhere, apparently). The Left won traditional inner urban areas in Lichtenberg, Treptow, and the border between Mitte and Friedrichshain. The AfD was limited to its strongholds of Marzahn and Hellersdorf. The SPD basically filled the gaps everywhere else: their general, broad popularity gave them wins in basically every area. This is particularly pronounced in the east, where you can see their lighter shades soaking up precincts all over the place, particularly in Treptow-Köpenick and Pankow. One notable divergence from normal voting patterns was the SPD's especially strong performance in the south of Neukölln, which historically votes similarly to the neighbouring areas in Tempelhof. This can be attributed to Franziska Giffey's personal appeal, since she was formerly mayor of Neukölln.

There are a lot of things that can be said about how wildly different these three elections turned out looking, but I'll address one that's particularly pressing: what happened to The Left? This is fun to answer because Berlin provides a very visible example of the party's voter dynamics. Since they're the successor to the PDS they traditionally live and die by the east, particularly its protest voters, and it's no surprise that they have suffered so dramatically since AfD's rise from 2015 onwards. However, you may note that the AfD actually declined from 2017 to 2021, and you would expect this to correspond with a swing to The Left, but they actually suffered even worse. This is because, sometime around the refugee crisis, they began to see a generational shift from eastern protest voters to young urban progressives. While they previously tended much older, their voter base and membership is now among the youngest of any party. As it stands, their key to success over the last five or six years has been to balance old and new: stem the loss of their traditional protest voters while attracting new young progressive voters.

In 2017, they struck that balance, and were able to offset their losses to AfD to such a degree that they improved their overall voteshare. This is where their strength in inner urban parts of the west such as Neukölln came from; a strength they had never previously had. In 2021, by contrast, they failed the balance on both counts: protest voters abandoned them in droves while young progressives turned back to the moderate left parties. Neukölln and Friedrichshain both flipped Green, while the socialists were overcome by red and blue in the east.

 

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Now, some other assorted eastern cities' local elections by voting precinct. These elections took place alongside the European election and saw major surges in support for the Greens, who achieved an unprecedented level of prominence and influence in numerous cities across the country, but especially in the eastern states, where they had long been marginalised.

The SPD, Greens, and Left each won 18-19% in this election, followed by the CDU on 12%. Andere, The Others, are a youth-oriented alternative left platform who won 10%; the AfD also won 10% but did not claim any pluralities. The Greens excelled in the city centre, while The Left's support was concentrated in the suburbs to the south and southeast, especially in the housing developments built in the 1970s. This is a trend you'll find all over the place, including in the maps to come. The Others had a local stronghold in Templiner Vorstadt, a neighbourhood opposite the city centre south of the Havel, but also eked out pluralities in a few other areas around the inner city.

The Left won 20% with the Greens hot on their heels at 19%, followed by the CDU and SPD on 14% each. The AfD won 10% but again failed to win any precincts. Here we see a similar pattern as in Potsdam: the Greens won the city centre while The Left found its strength in DDR-era housing developments in the northwest, as well as Südstadt south of the city centre, and the Dierkow and Toitenwinkel neighbourhoods across the estuary from the city proper. The surrounding provincial areas in the east were won by the CDU and the voter group Independent Citizens for Rostock (UFR).

Dresden, the third most populous city in the east, is a slightly different story. Located in eastern Saxony, the AfD has a particularly strong presence here - in the European election held alongside the local one, they won a narrow plurality of 20%. However, the Greens came out on top in the city council election with 20.5%. They were followed by the CDU with 18%, the AfD 17%, and Left 16%; the SPD won only 9%. The most prominent trends are that most of the area south of the Elbe is divided between the AfD and Greens. North of the river, though, the AfD is mostly supplanted by the CDU and FDP. The Greens also find their biggest stronghold here, in Neustadt opposite the old city. The CDU's dispersed support means that the only area they won solidly was Schönfeld-Weißig in the east. There results in the north were quite wacky - the CDU suffered massive swings to the FDP for some reason. The Left did best in the old city centre, though they didn't excel anywhere in particular.

Finally a map of last year's federal election. Much like Berlin, the difference between in-person and postal votes was quite significant, so I opted to map the lowest divisions where both were reported in aggregate (in this case, the Stadtteile). This map also excludes areas the parts of Dresden II-Bautzen II outside Dresden itself, but it's only really worth noting that those municipalities voted strongly for the AfD and to a lesser degree the CDU.

Both constituencies were heavily affected by tactical voting and split tickets, though the details varied from place to place. Tactical voting against the AfD gave wins to the CDU in both constituencies despite doing no better than third place in the party vote. Lars Rohwer in Dresden II-Bautzen II recorded the lowest vote share of any victorious candidate nationwide, as well as the narrowest margin of victory (35 votes of 189,000 cast). The Left's vote also diverged in Dresden I owing to their candidate Katja Kipping, popular former party leader, who came within striking distance of winning the seat thanks to support from the SPD and Greens voters. The SPD came out on top overall in this constituency, and their candidate Rasha Nasr was elected on the party list.

 

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And finally, party list vote results for Cologne in the recent North Rhine-Westphalia state election, by voting precinct.

I don't have much to say about this since it's a lot simpler than the eastern maps, but a lot of western cities look like this lately: a three-way contest between the CDU, SPD, and Greens. In this case, the Greens clearly triumphed with 30.6%, followed by the CDU on 24.6% and the SPD on 23.2%. You can see the Greens dominate the city centre, especially a ring on the edge of the old city west of the Rhine, while the SPD find their strength east of the river and the CDU on the less urban peripheries.

 

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Full spoilers ahead for seasons 1 and 2 of ABC (Australia)'s Total Control, which is a show I highly highly recommend for fellow political and election nerds, especially of the Australian persuasion.

You don't get to lecture me anymore. – to Rachel Anderson

I don't sit down with dogs. – to Damien Bauer

You'll never be Prime Minister. – to Laurie Martin

This is your only chance. Take it now, Paul, otherwise it won't happen. – to Paul Murphy

In-depth explanation of how I sourced everything:

Spoiler

UPDATE 4/4/23: after rewatching the show with my girlfriend I noticed a few details which led me to update the wikiboxes; changes are reflected here in bold.

To start with the basics: the two parties are never explicitly identified as the Liberal/National Coalition and the Labor Party, but it's obvious that they're meant to be. The government are regularly referred to as "the coalition", use blue in all their branding, have a conflict between moderates and the hard right, and the Nationals are even given a couple passing mentions. The other party is almost always referred to as "the opposition", but again they use red in all their branding. And, as an Australian, the tone and discussion around both of them is immediately familiar. The Greens are freely discussed, albeit without many details.

There is a surprising amount of detail about the timeframe of events, especially in the first season. Firstly, Marcie Maclean's death and Alex's appointment to the Senate happen at pretty much the same time, and Marcie's date of death is given as 16 February 2019. The whole plotline with the military base takes place in mid-April 2019 as indicated by a number of dates shown at the start of episode three, culminating in the spill against Anderson the next week (I've placed it on the 22nd.) Alex mentions in Season 2 that she was a Senator for six months; her mother's grave also gives her date of death as 25 August (albeit in 2021 - there are an annoying number of continuity errors.) For this reason I have moved the spill forward to August, which flows on to push back all other events by the same period. The climactic toppling of the PM takes place on 3 May (2 September), which can be seen on Alex's phone while she's in the chamber (true but invalidated). The time skip at the start of season two is given as three months, which for simplicity I interpreted literally, putting the start of events on 3 August (2 December). Approximately three days pass before the election is called, and the news report notes the campaign period will be 38 days, placing the election neatly on Saturday 14 September (Saturday 11 January). I skimmed through episodes four and five and found that approximately ten days pass between the election and the motion of confidence, hence 24 September (21 January).

I'll go through each graphic one by one and explain the terms in detail. The result of the leadership spill against Anderson is helpfully given as 45 to 38, so there's little to explain there. The tallies of the supply bill and motion of no confidence are also both stated. The latter is consistent with the government's one-seat Senate majority, given that Alex and three of Bauer's allies crossed the floor while Mortensen voted in favour. Apart from this, though, the state of the opposition and crossbench in the Senate isn't discussed in either season, so I just had to reason it out: I gave Labor and the Greens the same number of seats they held IOTL at the time, and threw in a United Christians Senator as well since they seem to fill the role of a significant minor party on the right-wing fringe.

The composition of the House in season one is never really discussed. Anderson mentions having a one-seat majority but it's ambiguous whether she's referring to the House or the Senate; nonetheless, with three Coalition MPs crossing the floor for the no-confidence motion and the result being 76 to 74, this implies they have 77 seats. However, since George and Shaun are both noted to be incumbents in season two, I decided to give the Coalition 76 seats and explain the extra vote by having George side with them. Naturally, Shaun votes for the motion, and with no evidence of any other crossbenchers, this leaves Labor with 72 seats.

The aftermath of Anderson's toppling is not actually explored, but it's obvious that she immediately resigned and was succeeded by Bauer, who probably won unopposed.

On to season two. No actual numbers are given for the federal election result beyond the seat tallies on election night, which ends as 72 Labor, 71 Coalition, one Green, five Independents, and two seats still unclear. Based on the government-forming arithmetic from episodes 5 and 6, those two ended up being split between the major parties. Since this is an election with a big surge in minor parties and independents, I used the 2022 election as a base and made some adjustments that seemed reasonable: boosting the Coalition vote and reducing the Greens vote, and retrospectively increasing Labor's 2016 vote a bit to reflect the higher seat tally they came in with. The TPP was pretty arbitrary, but naturally it had to be very close. Shaun Keogh is never said to be nor really implied to be leader of the Greens. However, since his position is obviously modeled after Adam Bandt - sole Green in the House, from inner-city Melbourne, etc - and there are no other Greens in the show, it was easier to make him leader.

For the map, I used 2019 as the base and adjusted as necessary. Firstly, locations are given for some of the crossbenchers' seats. The easiest is Anderson's seat of North Sydney, which exists in real life. After that, Freeman is also super easy since it's literally Maranoa - they used modified maps of it when showing the electorate in the show. Interestingly, they also changed the names of various local government areas (including Winton, for some reason) as well as the names of some surrounding electorates, which I also reflected on the map. George's seat of Illingworth is said to be in northern WA, and given that Durack covers literally all of northern WA, it can't be anything else. I placed Shaun's seat of Tucker in Bandt's electorate, Melbourne, for obvious reasons. Phillipa (Smithvale) and Justin (Foster) were a bit trickier. The only detail given was their state. I decided to put Smithvale in Mayo on the basis that Phillipa, at least to me, feels inspired by Rebekha Sharkie - a female independent from SA with a legal background - and I had nothing else to go off of. Justin is described as a "family values" guy, a religious conservative but not a loony, and a strong advocate for multicultural issues. After fishing around a bit I decided that Tangney in Perth was the best fit. It clearly leans right, but not excessively so, and is a diverse electorate with a sizable Chinese-Australian community (which, going by his name, Yang is a part of.) To get the major parties' seat tallies right, I just flipped the Coalition's four most marginal seats (Bass, Chisholm, Boothby, and Swan) to Labor. Timothy Knight is mentioned as the premier of Queensland and implied to be Coalition ("our colleague"), meaning he must be the LNP leader. John Doe is a placeholder.

Some tiny details I nonetheless put thought into: Lennox, Helena Rossi's seat, is said to be in Sydney. I didn't have a lot to go off there, but I placed it in Michell based on little more than vibes. I also headcanon Wran (the western Sydney seat Laurie parachutes Alex into) as Reid since it's both diverse and marginal. However, there's enough contradictory evidence that I didn't include it on the map. It seems to me that the writers intended it to be further west, given Alex's "because they're brown and I'm black?" quip; likewise, the scenes there appear to be filmed in Cabramatta, which is in Fowler. However, Fowler is a very safe Labor seat (until this year, anyway.) This is all at least a tiny bit relevant because Alex mentions that Wran is "next to" Paul's seat - based on that I placed him in Blaxland, which is positioned such that Wran could correspond to either Reid or Fowler, or another seat nearby. In S02E06, Paul's seat is specified to be Locke, which I reflected on the map. Finally, you may have noticed the picks I made for Bauer and Martin. Neither of them ever have their electorates specified, (Bauer's seat is given as Lester in S02E04) but there are some clues. Most concretely, the Labor office has a bunch of posters promoting "Laurie Martin for Gellibrand", which is a weird thing to have plastered around in Sydney, but it's useful for my purposes. The only clues about Bauer are that he's from Queensland and he's in a safe seat - Fadden was an arbitrary pick, but it works.

No specific numbers are mentioned for Alex or Rachel's results in their electorates, but I calculated based on my own reckoning and trends from this year's election, which had no shortage of independent challenges to look at. The previous result in Freeman is given as 57% Ramsay, 25% Labor, 15% United Christians, and independents no more than 4%. Probably not a coincidence that this corresponds pretty well with Maranoa's 2019 result (56% LNP, 16% Labor, 15% One Nation, 13% others.) It's also mentioned later in the campaign that Alex is level with Labor on primary polling. Since she won, she evidently drew ahead. There are also only four candidates on the ballot. I basically just extrapolated an educated guess at the result based on similar contests. North Sydney was easier in this respect since this exact teal-type challenge unfolded in real life earlier this year. While all the names in Freeman are canonical, only Rachel and Mima Scott are specified for North Sydney, everyone else is an extrapolation/speculation. The existence of a Greens candidate is implied at one point, obviously Labor will run, and I threw in the CDP and Sustainable Aus as parties you'd expect to see in a seat like this. I used the 2022 candidates for these (except the CDP who didn't run this year, so I used the 2019 candidate.) North Sydney is noted to be marginal, which is a divergence from real life where it's safe Liberal. Nonetheless I assumed that a decline in the Labor and Greens vote would prevent much of a swing in two-party-preferred terms.

Now the personal wikiboxes. All of them are styled "MP" for obvious reasons; all except Alex get "The Honourable" because they're PMs or former PMs. For the dates of birth I used those of the actors, and for the place of birth I just went with the places they represent in parliament (including Bauer in Brisbane/Gold Coast which is, again, a guess.) Hamish Gordon is the late Senator whose vacancy Alex is appointed to fill, while Mikayla Baines is a generated name - I figured Bauer might appoint a woman to replace her for optics' sake. Rachel mentions that Alex served three terms on the local shire council for the party, hence the join date of 2008. How and when Rachel became PM is never discussed; Marcus Campbell is a generated name, and I picked 15 September 2015 because it was the day Malcolm Turnbull rolled Abbott. If I'm going to pick an arbitrary past date, I might as well give it some significance. It also suggests that she came to power in a spill, which is on brand considering the first season is an utterly unsubtle allegory for the real-world factional feud in the Liberal Party. She mentions being in parliament for 17 years, hence incumbent since 2002. Joining the party in 1990 was an arbitrary pick but it gives the sense that she spent a long time working her way up. Bauer's predecessor and successor as immigration minister are generated names. Rachel, Bauer, and Paul's predecessors in their electorates are taken from reality.

For the table showing the crossbenchers, I already explained everything except their tenure. While Alex, Phillipa, and Justin are all newcomers, George and Shaun are both incumbents. George is obviously modeled on Bob Katter, who first ran as an independent in 2001, which I adjusted to 2002 to align with Rachel under the assumption there was a federal election that year. I made Shaun a member since 2010 because of the Bandt parallels.

Numbers are not given for the spill against Laurie. We also don't know how many seats Labor has in the Senate and thus how big the party room is, but I just stuck to the 26 which I used for the Senate vote table, giving them 99. I assumed the spill would be close but not super close and went with 56 to 43. For the final motion of confidence, the arithmetic is thoroughly explained in the show. That should be everything! Let me know if I missed anything. And yes, I absolutely thought about this far too much, but I had an absolute blast.

 

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German federalism is a curious thing. From a collection of tribes during Roman times to the haphazard feudalism of the Holy Roman Empire, the region has only very rarely been united under a single authority. After the Napoleonic wars, the dramatic simplification of the German Confederation and preeminence of Austria and Prussia eventually enabled Germany to unite as one country. Even then, beyond annexing some minor states in the north, Prussia was unable to assert itself totally over the other states, especially in the south. Thus the German Empire became a federation. After the 1918 revolution, the monarchies were abolished but the states remained, largely with the same geography. The question of federalism was discussed frequently during the Weimar Republic. What place did it have in a modern, republican Germany? Should Prussia be dismantled? What should be done about the differing attitudes towards autonomy in the north and south? All this fell to the wayside after the Nazi seizure of power. The president's powers were abused to depose the states and subjugate them to the Reich government. For the first time, Germany operated under a de facto unitary authority. After the war, the Allies opted to establish regional administrations in their occupation zones. In the west, these went onto to form the basis of the new Federal Republic of Germany, whose Basic Law provided for a strong and robust federal system. In the East, the states were abolished in 1952.

The defining feature of German federalism, therefore, is that it's kind of arbitrary. In the imperial era, the states reflected the holdings of various royal dynasties; in the post-war era, they mainly reflect administrative decisions made by the occupying nations. For this reason, reorganisation of the states has been discussed often. The first major move on this front was the unification of the southwestern states into Baden-Württemberg in 1952. The region had been arbitrarily divided between the US and France in 1945, and awkwardly split into three states afterwards. A referendum in 1951 saw a clear majority in favour of unifying all three into a single state, though the people of Baden were less enthusiastic (it was a whole ordeal.) During the Cold War, the question was mainly asked in relation to the two city-states, Bremen and Hamburg. The former retained its independence mainly because it had been a US-administered port during the occupation, enclaved within the British-administered Lower Saxony. Due to the legal complications of getting this off the ground, however, little was done to advance the idea of further reorganisation.

In 1990, Germany reunified. The legal process of doing this entailed the admission of new states to the Federal Republic. In addition to Berlin, five new eastern states were drawn up based on the pre-1952 states. The arbitrary nature of the division brought the question of federalism to the forefront once again, especially since those in the east had lived the last four decades under a unitary system.

Just a few months after reunification, in February 1991, the Berlin parliament endorsed unification with the surrounding state of Brandenburg. Of all proposed state reforms, this one made the most sense in the eyes of many. Both were newly-admitted states; Berlin in particular had been divided for decades and didn't hold a lot of sentimental value in its statehood. The two states shared a huge amount of infrastructure and media, and were reliant on one another economically. Hundreds of thousands of people lived in one state and worked in the other. A union between the two seemed logical.

At the beginning of 1992, the Berlin and Brandenburg state governments formed a joint commission to work out how to proceed. In December they presented a plan for unification to take place in 1999, with a treaty to be negotiated and ratified during 1993-94, culminating in a referendum to approve it. Things were proceeding smoothly and the drafting process took place throughout 1993. However, things came to a screeching halt at the end of the year as the states could not agree on issues of finance. This required the intervention of the federal parliament to approve a transitional model which would make both states happy. On top of this, constitutional issues were raised over the prospect of state mergers, necessitating an amendment to the Basic Law enabling them to unite via mutual consent. The first draft of the Berlin-Brandenburg treaty was presented in June 1994, well behind schedule. After some further hammering out, it was signed and ratified in mid-1995.

It's worth noting that, at this point, the overwhelming majority in politics and civic affairs supported unification of the two states. All parties except the PDS were officially in favour of the treaty - it passed the Berlin parliament 188 to 42, and Brandenburg's 64 to 24. However, there was dissent. A number of SPD associations in Brandenburg had issues, as did the Brandenburg Greens and some of the Berlin Greens. Arguments in favour of unification included the economic benefits to both states, greater influence in federal and European affairs, more efficient administration and planning, and the cultural unity of a region which had deep historic ties. On the other side, opponents insisted that bilateral agreements could resolve any conflicts or administrative issues. They also raised concerns over mutual mistrust between the two states, both of which feared the other would dominate a united state. They also noted the poor financial situation of Berlin, which would require special contribution from the rest of the state, as well as the excess pressure unification would place on a city which was already dealing with an influx of government institutions as the new federal capital.

Notably, both sides viewed unification as part of a wider rethinking of the federal system: supporters viewed it as a first step to kickstart the process, while opponents insisted that more fundamental reform should come first to ensure a satisfactory outcome for Berlin and Brandenburg.

Both states held joint referendums on 5 May 1996 to approve the merger. Given the delays in the treaty process, a second question was also asked: if approved, should unification take place in 1999 as originally planned, or be pushed back to 2002?

In an upset, the merger was harshly rejected. Every district in Brandenburg returned a clear majority against. East Berlin also voted against by a slimmer margin, while West Berlin comfortably approved. Overall turnout was 61.5% - higher in Brandenburg (66.4%) and lower in Berlin (57.7%). In post-analysis, a number of factors were identified for the result. Brandenburgers predominantly feared they would be overpowered by the more populous Berlin, and would be forced to subsidise the city while becoming little more than the forgotten hinterland of the federal capital. Berliners generally favoured the lower administrative costs of a united state, but the loss of city-state status gave many pause, as did the fact that Potsdam was to be the capital.

There were also clear demographic trends in the result: strong supporters included the self-employed (68% in Berlin, 52% in Brandenburg) and pensioners (69% in Berlin, 59% in Brandenburg), while opposition was found among workers (49% in Berlin, 70% in Brandenburg) and the unemployed (45% in Berlin, 65% in Brandenburg). This was reflected in the geography of the vote, with wealthier boroughs in West Berlin delivering strong "yes" votes. The starkest differences, however, were found in age. Younger people clearly opposed the merger - 76% of 18-24 year olds in Brandenburg voted against, as did 54% in Berlin. On the other end of the spectrum, 70% of over 60s in Berlin and 61% in Brandenburg voted in favour.

Responses to the second question were mixed. A huge number of "no" voters spoiled their ballots or left them blank. Overall, the 1999 option received 33.0% of votes compared to 29.7% for 2002, with the remaining 37.2% being invalid. This number rose to a staggering 45% in Brandenburg. For comparison, less than 1% of responses to the first question were invalid. Looking at valid votes, Berliners preferred the original year by a margin of 39.0% to 31.0%, while Brandenburg chose the later date 28.4% to 26.5%. The trends were similar to the first question, with the 1999 supported by "yes"-voting areas and most Berlin boroughs. 2002 won in most of Brandenburg, and did particularly well in Potsdam and Frankfurt an der Oder. However, a few districts containing suburbs around Berlin did deliver slim pluralities for 1999. Overall, though, every district in Brandenburg recorded more invalid votes than either 1999 or 2002 votes.

Despite the insistence of the "no" camp, the referendum's defeat brought an end to serious discussion of federal reform. No referendums for any federal reorganisation have taken place since, and the question of federalism has mostly remained closed. On the Berlin-Brandenburg front, the fears of the "yes" camp were realised as the governments struggled to coordinate their priorities over the following decade, to the detriment of citizens in both states. With time, though, the difficulties were ironed out. Thanks to numerous agreements and treaties signed since, they cooperate widely in areas such as planning, transport, judiciary, and communications. In fact, the locations of various joint courts were drawn directly from Article 47 of the failed state treaty.

Still, 1996 wasn't the end of the debate. After the 1999 elections, the parliaments of both states affirmed their commitment to a "second attempt". The SPD-PDS government formed in Berlin in 2002 planned to hold another referendum in 2006, which came to nothing thanks in part to Berlin's continued financial issues. The conversation remained active for some years, though, with the Brandenburg CDU expressing support for unification as late as its 2009 election programme. Party positions have also shifted with time: the Greens, who opposed the 1996 referendum, had changed their tune by 2004 and have since been among the strongest proponents of the idea. Faction leader for the Berlin Greens Antje Kapek called it a "great idea" in 2019, and the Brandenburg Greens expressed in-principle support in their 2019 election programme. For other parties, though, it's fallen by the wayside. The Brandenburg SPD abandoned it by the mid-2000s. Just this year, Berlin mayor Franziska Giffey dismissed the merger as a non-issue; Brandenburg premier Dietmar Woidke also spoke out against it in 2021. A lot has changed since the 1990s, and the prevailing attitude today seems to be that there is simply too much baggage and not enough benefit.

 

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Just a few months after reunification, in February 1991, the Berlin parliament endorsed unification with the surrounding state of Brandenburg. Of all proposed state reforms, this one made the most sense in the eyes of many. Both were newly-admitted states; Berlin in particular had been divided for decades and didn't hold a lot of sentimental value in its statehood. The two states shared a huge amount of infrastructure and media, and were reliant on one another economically. Hundreds of thousands of people lived in one state and worked in the other. A union between the two seemed logical.

At the beginning of 1992, the Berlin and Brandenburg state governments formed a joint commission to work out how to proceed. In December they presented a plan for unification to take place in 1999, with a treaty to be negotiated and ratified during 1993-94, culminating in a referendum to approve it.

Last year I looked into the Berlin-Brandenburg fusion attempt and made a map with the limited data I had at the time. I was recently able to find much more detailed information and after painstakingly piecing together a map of the municipalities at the time (there are only about a quarter as many today as there were in 1996), here's a more detailed map.