"On the other hand, Patch's contention, following Harold James and Knut Borchardt, that Bruning had very little room to manoeuver in his economic policies seems to have found increasing acceptance amongst German historians. Even Bruning's critics have admitted that his strategy of balancing budgets and waiting until the Depression bottomed out before attempting remedial measures was an essentially reasonable pre-Keynesian response to a crisis of unprecedented severity. His sublimation of domestic issues to his campaign to dismantle the system of reparations payments set in place by the Versailles treaty, however, is more dubious. One of Patch's main conclusions echoes Conze in lamenting Bruning's resignation on 30 May 1931 after Hindenburg lost faith in him -- just three weeks before the momentous cancellation of German reparations by the Lausanne Conference. Patch asserts that, up to the time of his resignation, Bruning was running an extremely shaky ship as well as could be expected; in particular, the 13 April ban on the SA and SS appeared to be dealing effectively with the Nazis. If Bruning had managed to hang on until the Lausanne decision became public, Patch argues, his credit would undoubtedly have risen. The biggest difficulty in historically assessing Bruning and his government lies therefore in his being "prematurely" replaced in (in Bruning's words) "the last hundred metres before the finish line" (p. 255), just before his most critical project achieved success."