AHC: Stop National Socialism Coming to Power in Germany

okay Adolf cant get the votes needed .. end of story.. NDSP remains a fringe party. but better bet is he servers his time and then decides to go do something less productive.

Germany was coming around after 26-27 .. sure it wasn't a glory train, but it was the post war early 20's.

OP says the economic situation remains the same in the 20s-30s as in OTL. The Depression would make the two fringe parties more mainstream.

January 1933, I think, is the critical point. The final "make or break" moment for the NSDAP and Hitler's leadership of it.
 
Hitler does better in school (decides to spite father with success, obsessed with studies to avoid abuse at home, etc.) and when he applies to architectural school he is admitted. Does he follow down the path of neo-classical or Bauhaus?
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Through social circles he meets, courts, and marries Winifred Wagner.
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Geon

Donor
Very interesting. I have to ask, given a discussion I had a while back, it was suggested that a militaristic regime could still want to have another round with France in revenge for the Kaiser's defeat. Do you think this would be likely?

With memories of the First War very much alive my thoughts would be yes and no.

Yes, the militarists would want revenge for Versailles and for the loss of German territory. Unlike Hitler however I think their aims would be much more limited - reoccupation of the Saar and retaking of Alsace Lorraine.

On the other hand the militarists would remember how devastated the country was by the last war. They would want to keep any struggle with France limited. And they would make very clear their goals were limited.
 
Hitler does better in school (decides to spite father with success, obsessed with studies to avoid abuse at home, etc.) and when he applies to architectural school he is admitted. Does he follow down the path of neo-classical or Bauhaus?
xadolf-hitler-sitting-on-desk-colorized.jpg.pagespeed.ic.pz5M4tjxU7.jpg
Through social circles he meets, courts, and marries Winifred Wagner.
wp1d1394ed_01_06.jpg

Why would Wagner marry Hitler in TTL? He is an architect and thus no one important.
 
A few possibilities:

- The DNVP does a little better in the election of 1928, so that Kuno Von Westarp remains their leader and continues his approach of reconciling the party with the Weimar Republic, instead of Hugenberg taking power and the party becoming more anti-democratic. I'm not sure if Hindenburg would have appointed Hitler if he hadn't thought that the DNVP would be able to impose some restraint upon the Nazis, and I'm guessing Westarp or another leader of his ilk would have refused to form a coalition with Hitler. (Also, could this have shifted the Overton Window such that the Nazis would have had a tougher time gaining a foothold?)

- The Nazis are less successful in manipulating the vote for the Enabling Act. Their claims of a Communist plot are treated with more skepticism, and the KPD deputies are able to attend and vote against it. Or the Centre/BVP faction opposes the act in the Reichstag vote (as, I believe, Bruening urged behind the scenes). Now, I gather that part of the deliberation within the Centre/BVP was that if they didn't vote for the Enabling Act, the Nazis would simply seize power via "other means." But even if that's true, maybe an armed coup would have produced a less stable and short-lived Nazi regime, because some of the mainstream conservatives would see it as Beer Hall Putsch II, and perhaps Hindenburg, the military, and the police wouldn't view it as legitimate. This doesn't exactly fit the OP's goal of preventing the Nazis from gaining power, but it might prevent them from keeping it long enough for things to get as bad as they eventually did.

- Somewhere along the line, the Communists form a temporary alliance with the SPD to combat the rising stature of the Nazis, giving the pro-Weimar parties more votes in the Reichstag to count on.

- I don't know if this violates the constraint on changes to the economic situation, but I remember hearing somewhere that Bruening had in mind a second reflationary stage for his economic plan but was dismissed by Hindenburg before he could attempt it. Whether it would have actually worked or not, I have no idea.
 

Geon

Donor
A few possibilities:

- The Nazis are less successful in manipulating the vote for the Enabling Act. Their claims of a Communist plot are treated with more skepticism, and the KPD deputies are able to attend and vote against it. Or the Centre/BVP faction opposes the act in the Reichstag vote (as, I believe, Bruening urged behind the scenes). Now, I gather that part of the deliberation within the Centre/BVP was that if they didn't vote for the Enabling Act, the Nazis would simply seize power via "other means." But even if that's true, maybe an armed coup would have produced a less stable and short-lived Nazi regime, because some of the mainstream conservatives would see it as Beer Hall Putsch II, and perhaps Hindenburg, the military, and the police wouldn't view it as legitimate. This doesn't exactly fit the OP's goal of preventing the Nazis from gaining power, but it might prevent them from keeping it long enough for things to get as bad as they eventually did.

- Somewhere along the line, the Communists form a temporary alliance with the SPD to combat the rising stature of the Nazis, giving the pro-Weimar parties more votes in the Reichstag to count on.

I could see the Nazis attempting a coup. I could also see the Centrist and Communist factions forming an alliance of convenience against them. From what I have heard the communist paramilitaries could match the brown shirts toe-to-toe in many a fight.
 
I could see the Reichswehr doing a military coup if the KPD reaches a majority or gets very close to one in the Reichstag elections. Between the last two German elections pre-Machtergreifung, the NSDAP's share of the vote declined while the KPD and the DNVP gained more support. It could probably look like Chile under Pinchet or Argentina during the Dirty Wars, with a conflict between a right-wing military junta and leftist parties.
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I could see the Reichswehr doing a military coup if the KPD reaches a majority or gets very close to one in the Reichstag elections. Between the last two German elections pre-Machtergreifung, the NSDAP's share of the vote declined while the KPD and the DNVP gained more support. It could probably look like Chile under Pinchet or Argentina during the Dirty Wars, with a conflict between a right-wing military junta and leftist parties.

It would have been difficult for the KPD to get an actual majority, or close to one, in the Weimar system - proportional representation tends to prevent single-party majorities unless you throw in something like the 50 "bonus seats" in Greece for the first-place party, or a high cutoff for entering parliament. The Nazis came closest with their 43.9% in March 1933. However, would an SPD-KPD coalition with cabinet seats for the KPD (which I suspect is the closest they'd have gotten) been enough to prompt a coup attempt?

I don't know a whole lot about the smaller parties in the Weimar Republic, but if you look at the large parties as broadly pro- or anti-Weimar Republic, here's the breakdown from the last five elections. So if at least some of the ones I'm not sure about were willing to support the Republic, then 1930 was the last election where a pro-Weimar, anti-Nazi coalition could have been formed without the support of the Communists.

1928
Pro-republic 301 (SPD 153, Centre 61, People's Party 45, State Party 25, BVP 17)
Anti-republic 139 (DNVP 73*, Communists 54, Nazis 12)
Not sure 51
(The DNVP was actually more moderate under the leader they had in this election, however.)

1930
Pro-republic 280 (SPD 143, Centre 68, People's Party 30, State Party 20, BVP 19)
Anti-republic 225 (Nazis 107, Communists 77, DNVP 41)
Not sure 72

July 1932
Pro-republic 241 (SPD 133, Centre 75, BVP 22, People's Party 7, State Party 4)
Anti-republic 356 (Nazis 230, Communists 89, DNVP 37)
Not sure 11

November 1932
Pro-republic 224 (SPD 121, Centre 70, BVP 20, People's Party 11, State Party 2)
Anti-republic 347 (Nazis 196, Communists 100, DNVP 51)
Not sure 13

March 1933
Pro-republic 219 (SPD 120, Centre 73, BVP 19, State Party 5, People's Party 2)
Anti-republic 421 (Nazis 288, Communists 81, DNVP 52)
Not sure 7
 
What if Poland goes to war with the Soviet Union and gets its butt handed to it? Communist support in Germany spikes and France and Britain decide to prop up the Weimar government. The Nazis are a fringe movement until Hitler is named Chancellor and it's unlikely he'd be France and Britain's choice.
 
After the fiasco of the 1923/24 Franco Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, the sense that the Versailles treaty has failed gains traction. Some Brit & Italian politicians run with it & between 1924 & 1928 it gets to the point where a portion of the former Entente nations offer the German leaders something they can work with. France is isolated on this & is abandoned by Belgium & the other nations of the Little Entente. Reparations are largely abandoned, some minor adjustments to the German borders, Germany allowed a army or reservists like its neighbors, some new economic agreements, ect... ect... This defuses in a large way the victim narrative in Germany. Tho the French will have their betrayal to blame every ill on.
 
I could see the Reichswehr doing a military coup if the KPD reaches a majority or gets very close to one in the Reichstag elections. Between the last two German elections pre-Machtergreifung, the NSDAP's share of the vote declined while the KPD and the DNVP gained more support. It could probably look like Chile under Pinchet or Argentina during the Dirty Wars, with a conflict between a right-wing military junta and leftist parties.
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And with a coup by Reichswehr/Freikorps, we would have a militarist reactionary government in power, but certainly no NSDAP and no Adolf Hitler.
 
Why would Wagner marry Hitler in TTL? He is an architect and thus no one important.
He's still a fan of Richard Wagner and who is to say Hitler isn't a leading architect, thus rich and known? He wasn't exactly more than a run of the mill radical when they met.
 
We have at least one thread a month about this topic, at least 30% of this site must be devoted to Germany 1870-1945. I'm starting to thinking we should have a separate thread area for German history like the containment area for threads about the unspeakable sea mammal.
 
My view, the simplest thing is to remove Goering from the equation by having him emigrate to United States to become a stunt flier for the films (as I had him do in my timeline below, *thumbs up, cheap pop*). Goering was absolutely crucial in making Hitler respectable enough for the conservatives and made a lot of initial introductions. Goering and his first wife were also quite important in hosting the early parties with industrialists/donors as Hitler was the absolute shits at social gatherings where he was not in charge and actually had to listen as well as speak. There was nobody else around Hitler who could provide that sort of "stable" image as well as have access to him that money men needed to feel important during the salad days of the Party.

Hitler's rise didn't need to be stopped with a bullet, or even the Communists getting their shit together, there were plenty of opportunities for the Nazis to implode or to be swamped by other right-wing parties. There were several frustrated attempts by the other far-right lunatic-fringe organizations to form an umbrella group to fight the Commies. Each time such a grouping was suggested to Hitler, he either out-right rejected it, or let the invitation go unanswered. But there were people around him who wanted to nudge him towards such a coalition as it was seen as the most pragmatic way to stop what they felt was the silly in-fighting between the various fascist groups and go after the real enemy - the Reds. Without Goering, the cash-strapped Nazis might not have had any choice, though in that scenario I see a Nazi split, with the Hitler faction staying on as a rump, and the others breaking off under perhaps Strasser brothers or someone else.
 
Schleicher or Papen hold out against cooperating with the Nazis for just a little bit longer. IIRC the Nazis were starting to slip in the polls in '32, and were on the verge of bankruptcy.
 
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