Today In History, March 30, 1930: Appointment Of Heinrich Brüning, Failed Centrist German Chancellor Who Paved The Way For The Rise Of Hitler, And His Death on March 30, 1970,--- A History Lesson For Biden?
Today In History, Anniversary Of The Appointment of Heinrich Brüning as German Chancellor March 30, 1930, And Of His Death on March 30, 1970--
Several important events in history occurred on March 30, over many centuries. The passage of the 15th Amendment asserting the right to vote for men regardless of race in 1870. The end of the Crimean War in 1856. The purchase of Alaska in 1867. One might ask, "why is it that I've chosen to signify both the appointment and death of a German Chancellor who most have likely never heard of"?
Brüning's circumstances and political leadership role in many ways parallels the current situation facing President Joe Biden. Therefore, I believe that upon examination, Brüning's failure to mitigate against and prevent the fascist coup by Hitler in Germany is a cautionary tale for those of us who are currently politically engaged in the fight against Trumpism in the United States.
Some folks might object to a comparison of the rise of Nazism in Germany to the growth of Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) movement. I addressed this in previous articles in which I simply asserted reality, and will stand behind the arguments made back then. (link to one of them here):
https://therosenreport.blogspot.com/2022/01/its-not-semantics-words-mean-everything.html
--an excerpt
["For the most part, the supposed anti-Trump Liberal media and commentators that people rely upon continue their own pattern of lying, because they won't use the word "Nazi" and therefore lie by omission.
Why won't they use that word to describe someone who has said "Hitler did some good things," and who had a book with Hitler speeches on his nightable? Or who said the Nazis at Charlottesville were "fine people" in his deceitful attempt at "bothsidesism," equating torch burning Nazis with non-violent protesters. A person who launched an anti-semitic diatribe in his Jerusalem Post interview last month.
Because most people watching or reading these pundits are themselves afraid to use that word, because using it means having to do something about it that sits outside their comfort zone. They don't want to risk antagonizing friends, co-workers or family that should be confronted, because doing that and saying that scares them. In all seriousness, what more do we need in order to say what we know to be true? Oh, I know. Folks are still calmly trying to use gentle persuasion and rational argumentation to "convince" others that Trump is bad, and Fox News lies. Good luck with that waste of Oxygen."]
Heinrich Brüning was raised as a religious Roman Catholic, and was a decorated WW I veteran and academic, whose Master's thesis was on the subject of the British nationalization of their railroads. He was a "laissez faire capitalist" advocate of small government, and politically was aligned with the conservative "Junkers" who were the old landed aristocracy of his native Prussia. Simultaneously he maintained his relations with the "Christian" Labor Unions and Farmers who were not so wealthy.
Therefore he chose "centrism," as his path to power, and tried to straddle the road between the left and right, even becoming the head of the Christian oriented Center Party when he was in the Reichstag. (1924) It is difficult to read about his history and outlook and not think of US Senator Joe Manchin in this context.
After WW I, he opposed the October Revolution which led to the formation of the Weimar Republic, and avoided involvement in any of the paramilitaries which were vying for power in the chaos of post-war Germany. As with most Germans, he strongly opposed the harsh reparations and conditions of the Versailles Treaty, which took a horrible revenge upon Germany as solely responsible for the war. The result was economic chaos due to the unpayable reparations and war debt, which led to hyperinflation of the Reichsmark, along with large scale shortages, unemployment and starvation. This became the breeding ground for seemingly endless "left vs. right" paramilitary violence, which benefitted the rise of Hitler's Nazis as the movement which would "restore order," "Make Germany Great Again", and repudiate the unjust treaty.
Germany's political and economic crisis was worsened by the Great Depression which resulted from the US stock market crash, which in turn shortly thereafter became a global crisis.
Hitler's Nazis had been looked at by most Germans as a clownish gang of street thugs who were unqualified to govern. Hitler himself attempted a failed coup in Munich in 1924 for which he was prosecuted and jailed, during which time he wrote his memoirs and outlined his plans.
However, the Nazis appeal to popular rage, their upfront campaign to overturn the unjust treaty, their demand for "law and order" to put down "the radical left" terrorists, and their scapegoating of "Jewish Bankers" for the crisis, enabled them to expand their vote from 2% before the Depression to over 20% immediately thereafter.
Hitler expressed his intentions to do many things, including the destruction of the Social Democracy and Trade Union movement, and swore he intended to use the Weimar Constitution to come to power legally after which he would destroy it in favor of his "New Order." (Neue Ordnung)
It was during this time, year 1930, that President Paul von Hindenburg decided to choose Brüning for Chancellor and tasked him to bring about a national unity government to deal with the economic crisis. (not to be included were the Communists, who were then seen as tools of Moscow)
According to Wikipedia,
--As the editor of the union newspaper Der Deutsche (The German), he advocated a "social popular state" and "Christian democracy," based on the ideas of Christian corporatism.
His initial success in politics came in the Reichstag in 1924 with the passage of the so-called "Brüning Law" which set a limit on income taxes for workers during the difficult times of hyperinflation and shortages. From 1928 to 1929 he served in the Prussian Parliament, after which he was elected a second time to the Reichstag in 1930.
President von Hindenburg appointed Brüning Chancellor after the collapse of the Social Democratic government, and was specifically brought in to administer harsh economic austerity and budget cuts to deal with the economic crisis. In part, because of his centrist positions, the thought was that he could serve the interests of the wealthy aristocrats centered in Prussia, and sell austerity to his allies in the Labor movement. This occurred in the context of the adoption of "The Young Plan" by the victorious allies, who agreed to debt relief for Germany in exchange for allowing a coalition whose purpose was to bust Labor and cut off the poor. This was a prescription for disaster, reminiscent of Herbert Hoover's policies in the US after the '29 stock market crash which actually caused the Depression.
The horror show which ensued from these awful miscalculations led directly to the rise of Hitler and his consolidation of dictatorship.
First is that the beating down of Labor served to radicalize them, driving them into the arms of both the Communist Party (KPD) and the Nazis, splitting the Trade Union base of the Social Democrats apart. Many joined paramilitaries on both sides, with street fighting and chaos dominating the politics of the country.
This primarily benefitted the Nazis, who ran on a platform of "restoring order," much as the Republican Party did more recently in the aftermath of the George Floyd mass protests. The entire Social Democratic "left" was lumped in with the KPD by the Nazis as Jewish controlled terrorists run by "The Bolsheviks" to destroy Germany from within. Because the Social Democrats (SPD) were preoccupied with combatting the KPD takeover of their Labor base, and because they didn't take the Hitler threat seriously enough, soon enough, they did not effectively oppose Hitler until after it was too late.
The harsh economic austerity of the Brüning government undermined support for the ruling coalition parties, making them a certain lame duck until the next round of elections. Furthermore the Parliament was paralyzed by division and conflict, much like the US Congress of today, and consequently there was gridlock.
Therefore a fateful decision was made by von Hindenburg under pressure to have Brüning administer a "Presidential" government, in which the attempts to administer austerity would be carried out by executive decrees, known as the "notverordnung," a provision allowed for and legal under the Weimar Constitution to manage national emergencies. He used this power not only to ram through laws and policies, but to gag and shut down several free Press in Germany.
Those emergency powers would later be used by Hitler to destroy the Constitution itself. (This is yet another example in history of how demands for radical "free market" economic austerity are so destructive and unpopular, that it requires dictatorial methods to carry it out, as we have seen in many examples from Pinochet's Chile, to post-Soviet Russia--lfr).
The situation then in Germany is comparable to our crisis of today, in which the obstructionism of the Republicans combined with the sabotage of centrist Senators Manchin and Sinema have paralyzed Congress, and for all intents and purposes destroyed President Biden's program for the anti-austerity "Build Back Better," program, (BBB) which mandated trillions of dollars in spending for upgrading working families and the poor. To compensate for this defeat, President Biden, like Chancellor Brüning, is going to try to implement his programs piecemeal through executive orders, because we still have a national emergency due to the Pandemic. And like Germany, the potential solution to our crisis of inflation, which is real economic expansion benefitting all, not just corporations, is blocked by the GOP and the Centrists.
Instead of effectively countering the Nazis increasing support through an economic growth program, which would have deflated the Nazis gains in each subsequent election, Brüning unbelievably tried to achieve compromise and unity with the Nazis! This despite his abject hatred for what they stood for. He opened up channels of discussion with what he might have described as the more "moderate" Nazis, centered supposedly around Stormtrooper head (SA) Gregor Strasser, who was considered a factional adversary of Hitler and someone who could be dealt with. This is strikingly similar to President Biden's attempts to achieve "bipartisanship and unity" with the now completely "Trumpian" fascist GOP, including his old friends from the Senate, McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Grassley, etal.
Brüning refused to believe that his austerity policies, combined with his attempts to rule by decree, and his efforts to find a middle ground between his government and "moderate Nazis" was doomed to failure. His intellectual ego and academic identity were too invested in the beliefs he outlined in his Master's thesis, in favor of the "Free Market" instead of the dirigism of the Social Democratic/Labor centered idea of investing in working families. So he failed to help Germany recover, failed to neutralize Hitler, and was soon removed by Hindenburg to be replaced by military man Kurt von Schleicher who formed a caretaker government. (von Schleicher was assassinated by Hitler's SS during the Night of The Long Knives in July of 1934)
Hitler's Nazis did not do as well as he hoped in the 1932 election, nevertheless he succeeded in forcing his way into the Chancellorship with the help of a blackmail operation involving Hindenburg's son Oscar over corruption. (Targeting a president's son in service of a fascist coup attempt sounds a bit familiar, no? TRR has covered this in a previous article for those interested)
Once in power, Hitler used the "Genie let out of the bottle" of emergency decrees to govern, taken to the "Nth degree" after his thugs set fire to the Reichstag on February 27th of 1933, only days after being installed. This was blamed on the Communists and used as justification for the "Enabling Act," which gave Hitler the power to shut down Parliament, ban the KPD, conduct mass arrests, shut down the opposition Press, and rule by decree.
Brüning, to his credit opposed the Enabling Act, and actively opposed Hitler's government. However, it was he who opened the door to dictatorship through his destructive policies which were the death knell for the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic, and his use of executive orders to govern, a policy which came back to haunt Germany and the rest of the world.
Brüning himself was tipped off only days before the Night of the Long Knives, and fled Germany for the United States. After getting settled, he became ensconced at Harvard, wrote his memoirs, and unfortunately never really came to terms with how his ideological blindness led to the rise of Hitler and the crimes he committed.
Luckily President Biden is not committed ideologically to austerity or government by executive orders, but he has been forced into it by the fascist GOP and the "soft on fascism" centrists. President Biden has up until now admittedly deluded himself in his belief that there were "moderate Republicans," sufficient in numbers and wielding enough clout to counteract Trump. In order to mollify them he has been forced to make repeated concessions, budget cuts, and been held virtual hostage to the Democratic centrists on multiple issues. He has alluded to this in statements expressing disbelief that the GOP has gone so far down into the Rabbit hole of "Trumpism".
Hopefully, President Biden is no longer prisoner of such delusions. The endorsement by the Trumpians of Vladimir Putin's war of annihilation against Ukraine is certainly an axiom-busting wake up call, and represents a point of departure in exposing the GOP's alliance with Putinism. This could put President Biden on a different footing and end the age of delusion.
Unfortunately, the damage done by the Democratic Party "centrists," may be, like that of Brüning, irreversible. There is the great fear that because of the war related economic downturn, the inability to pass BBB and voting rights legislation, and his awful approval ratings in the polls, that the President may already be headed for lame duck status. As much as it pains me personally to say this, I think it must be said.
With my limited resources and reach I have tried to warn the responsible people of these outcomes. I tend to see these types of impending situations ahead of time because I have studied the rise of fascism in Germany and similar movements since then for the last 50 years, and I see the same failures of vision being repeated.
Delusion, denial, pragmatism, myopia, wishful thinking, corruption, passivity. Waiting until after a crisis hits to act upon it, after the damage is done, rather than anticipating and pre-empting it before it happens.
Again, it is my hope that what I am writing about is just a warning that might be heeded, and not an epitaph.
**sources, Wikipedia, "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by Shirer, "On This Day" In History.