Oh, I wasn't arguing that they weren't authoritarian - they definitely were. And yeah, you're right - I was more saying that they differed from a lot of other dictatorships of the era in that they kept up the pretence of the 'National Emergency'. But then again, they wanted to make sure they didn't get jumped on by France...
Though I can think of one notable exception to their
courting the hard-right... Well, I suppose it depends on whether you consider Ernst Rohm's '
Volkisches Freikorps' left-wing or right-wing. On the one hand they had a lot of socialist stuff in their manifesto, on the other hand they were hard-nationalistic and hardline-anti-Semitic, and they loathed Communists, so you could make an argument for them either being lefties who coopted rightist ideology or hard-rightists who wanted a bigger share of the pie... In either case, they were pretty much one of the first groups the
Reichswehr went after taking power. Though they didn't even bother arresting them - most of them, Rohm himself included, just ended up shot out of hand.
Branching off, I often think it's kind of ironic that while democracy in Germany had achieved a huge amount for the era in terms of women's rights, it was the
dictatorship that had women under arms during the Soviet War - as a matter of necessity, of course, but still. Of course, being Prussians, they tried to wind it back after the war - promotion became more difficult, many opportunities were closed off - but things opened out again gradually after democracy was restored. At the last count, something between 10% and 12% of the
Reichswehr are women*, and dedicated combat roles have been available again since the 1970s.
Looking at the topic, if the Alien Space Bats necessary for Hitler to take power had flapped their wings, that would never have happened - a Germany run by someone with
his views on women wouldn't have been one where Hanna Reitsch became the first woman pilot to become a combat ace.**
OOC: *Looking at proportions for other countries, figure that's realistic.
** I know IRL that woman was a die-hard Nazi, thought it'd be ironic ITTL for it to be thought 'yeah, she'd never have done well in a Hitler regime'