alternatehistory.com

while back I did a TL about what would have happened if Germany had won the First World War. Unfortunately that has died a death, so I am going to do something different and a bit more modern (the PoD is in 1930, instead of 1917).

[FONT=&quot]PoD:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Hitler is assassinated in 1930 by a German communist. As a result, the NSDAP descends into chaos, with various different factions emerging. This leads to a very different type of regime taking power in Germany in the early 1930s...[/FONT]


Germany; 1932, was a nation on the brink of war with itself. Since the Wall Street Crash of 1929, rising domestic dissent had led to an upsurge in political violence. Multiple public figures including the industrialist, Ferdinand Porsche and the right-wing politician Adolf Hitler were assassinated by extremists on both ends of the political spectrum between 1929 and 1932.
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Above: Adolf Hitler (April 20th 1889-April 9th 1930), picture taken during the First Great War[/FONT]


The death of Hitler in April 1930 led to the break-up of the right-wing coalition Hitler had headed, known as the NSDAP. A rump party under Josef Goebbels managed to hold together but many of the more socialist leaning elements of the party drifted away. The most notable and significant of these was Ernest Rohm, who had just returned from South America (where he served as a military advisor), who headed the NSDAP’s main paramilitary force; the SA. With the death of Hitler and the breakdown of the NSDAP in the latter half of 1930, Rohm and the SA defected to the Communist KPD.
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The defection of the SA decisively swung the balance of power on the streets in favour of the KPD and the party made impressive gains in the September 1930 elections, where they gained twenty percent of the vote and gained over one hundred seats.

[FONT=&quot]For the time being however, the KPD was unable to capitalize on its success as Chancellor Heinrich Bruning used Article 48 of the constitution, which gave President Hindenburg the power to pass ‘emergency decrees’, to sustain his administration. His attempts to reboot the German economy simply worsened the deepening recession and led to widespread poverty. As a result, he was nicknamed the 'Hunger Chancellor'.
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[FONT=&quot]Above: Heinrich Bruning; the Hunger Chancellor[/FONT]

Tensions continued to mount in Germany throughout 1931, with hundreds being killed in clashes between the SA reinforced Red militia and the police and army. Despite the growing threat the KPD posed to law and order, Hindenburg did not move against it. The simple truth was that in a fight between the KPD and the Wehrmacht, there was no guarantee the Wehrmacht would come out on top.
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[FONT=&quot]Above: The German government was unable to cope with mass civil unrest between 1930 and 1932
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[FONT=&quot]To make matters worse, the presidential election of 1932 was coming up and it was becoming increasingly clear that the KPD could win the election. The KPD used a combination of mass intimidation in many areas and the promise of major reform, which following the breakup of the NSDAP, only they could provide, to drum up support for their candidate, Ernst Thalmann. This was in spite of efforts by the government to discredit Thalmann as a 'Moscovite puppet', due to Thalmann's commitment to a close relationship with the Soviet Union.
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[FONT=&quot]Above: Ernest Thalmann, the head of the German KPD. Was he a puppet of Moscow?
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Alarmed by the growing power of the KPD, the head of the army, Kurt von Hammerstein held a series of top-secret meetings with both President Hindenburg and other senior military officials to form a plan against the KPD. In its essence, the plan involved rigging the election and using the Wehrmacht to restore order if the KPD attempted to launch a coup. As worried as Hammerstein about the possibility of a KPD takeover, Hindenburg quickly agreed to the plan.


[FONT=&quot]Above: A few of the conspirators in Potsdam in late 1931[/FONT]
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In preparation for the expected trouble, Hindenburg also authorised the training of special Handlungstrupp, or action squads. They were units of plain-clothed men who were both loyal to the regime and trained like a normal soldier. Effectively they were a means to get around the Treaty of Versailles, which had formally limited the German army to just 100, 000 men. Training of the Handlungstrupp quickly gathered pace and by March 1932, it is estimated there were close to 50, 000 of them.


[FONT=&quot]Above: The Handlungstrupp gave many young German men the chance of work and with it some degree of economic security.[/FONT]
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On the day of the first round of the presidential ballot, March 10th, soldiers were stationed outside many polling stations in areas where the KPD was powerful. Soldiers frequently followed voters into the polling booths and there were several incidents of the ballots being ‘examined’ by Handlungstrupp and Wehrmacht officials they were sent off. By the evening of March 10th, there were riots in several German cities over what was considered a rigged election.
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Despite the massive fraud, Hindenburg ‘only’ gained 70% of the votes compared to Thalmann’s 22%. Enraged by the result, but not particularly surprised, Thalmann and other senior members of the KPD held a secret meeting in Essen in the early hours of March 11th. They agreed that the only viable option now was armed revolution against the Weimar Republic. With several major cities already in the hands of the Communists and the divided SPD in chaos, they were the only major left-wing organisation in Germany. Their logic followed they could rely on the support of a large portion of the German people.
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By March 12th 1932, Germany was on the brink of civil war.

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All critique is welcome, particuarly spelling as I am terrible at proof reading.

Enjoy

Edit: Is there any way to edit the pictures to make them less massive? I've already had to delete one I had planned to put in because it was too big.
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