The German Right, 1918–1930
Political Parties, Organized Interests, and Patriotic Associations in the Struggle against Weimar Democracy

Analyzes the role of the non-Nazi German Right in the destabilization and paralysis of Weimar democracy from 1918 to 1930.

Larry Eugene Jones (Author)

9781108494076, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 April 2020

640 pages, 16 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.8 x 3.5 cm, 1.12 kg

'… the broad contours of this story are well known to specialists, [but] the richness of Jones's research offers up new insights … a remarkable scholarly monograph.' Anthony McElligott, Journal of Modern History

The failure of the Weimar Republic and the rise of National Socialism remains one of the most challenging problems of twentieth-century European history. The German Right, 1918–1930 sheds new light on this problem by examining the role that the non-Nazi Right played in the destabilization of Weimar democracy in the period before the emergence of the Nazi Party as a mass party of middle-class protest. Larry Eugene Jones identifies a critical divide within the German Right between those prepared to work within the framework of Germany's new republican government and those irrevocably committed to its overthrow. This split was only exacerbated by the course of German economic development in the 1920s, leaving the various organizations that comprised the German Right defenceless against the challenge of National Socialism. At no point was the disunity of the non-Nazi Right in the face of Nazism more apparent than in the September 1930 Reichstag elections.

Introduction. Setting the context
1. Revolution and realignment
2. Infrastructure of the German right
3. Forging a conservative synthesis
4. Growth and consolidation
5. The radical right
6. 1923: a missed opportunity?
7. From triumph to schism
8. Stabilization from the right?
9. Paladins of the right
10. The forces of national revival
11. The road back to power
12. The burden of responsibility
13. From defeat to crisis
14. Reverberations and realignment
15. The chimera of right-wing unity
16. Schism and fragmentation
17. The Brüning gambit
18. The September earthquake
Conclusion. The price of disunity.

Subject Areas: Fascism & Nazism [JPFQ], Nationalism [JPFN], Conservatism & right-of-centre democratic ideologies [JPFM], Politics & government [JP], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]