And now we continue with how the restoration of the monarchy plays out in practice.
Chapter VII: German Empire Reborn, 1939-1940.
The new German Empire had to deal with the legacy of five years of National Socialism. This virulent ideology had turned the country into a totalitarian racist cult that had reduced an entire group of citizens (German Jews) to second rate citizens, sterilized people with mental or physical birth defects, threw people into concentration camps for having a dissenting opinion, indoctrinated millions, stifled freedom through its complete control of public life and the media, and had started a war the country could never have won. Had Hitler not been killed, no-one knows how the war would have progressed, but almost certainly it wouldn’t have ended as favourably as it had now.
Germany was free to maintain its military strength and could even keep Austria, but there were other decidedly domestic problems to be dealt with: what to do with the Nazi party, what of the regime’s victims, what of the wrongdoers, and what of those millions who had tacitly supported the regime? The young new Emperor, only 31 years old at the time, had his own pragmatic views on the matter, but would have to deal with the fact that even among anti-Nazi conservatives there were plenty of people who didn’t like Jews, believed in the value of eugenics and racial hygiene, and had little sympathy for or understanding of democracy. Louis was not going to support the authoritarian, militaristic and nationalist government they envisioned unconditionally.
Emperor Louis I was no traditional Prussian monarch as he hadn’t had a military career. During his extensive travels he had settled in Detroit for a while where he befriended car producer Henry Ford and became acquainted with then future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, among others. He’d picked up an interest in engineering, particularly in the field of aviation, though Hitler hadn’t allowed him any involvement in German military activities upon his return to Germany in 1933 after his older brother’s renunciation of the defunct throne to marry a commoner. He had no sympathy for the Nazis at all, but was also able to look at the Prussian aristocratic military junta that had replaced them as an outsider because he’d seen an actually functioning democracy in the United States as opposed to the continually troubled Weimar Republic.
The young Kaiser was able to gain popularity quickly as the abrupt end of the Nazi regime left people in search of a new messiah, and his success in playing the masses gave him influence in the ruling junta as well. Particularly influential was his speech broadcast live on radio during his formal coronation ceremony in February 1939, later also shown in cinema newsreels. He mentioned the occult influences of the Nazi regime and thanked God for still guiding the country through the brief and uncalled for war against Czechoslovakia launched by the misguided Hitler, signalling that most Germans fortunately were still good Christians. During the same address he also announced a conciliatory tone to those who’d actively participated in the Nazi regime, yet also denounced its cult of personality and racial ideology as idolatrous and misguided. Crimes committed in the name of the Nazi regime, however, would be persecuted to the letter of the law. He concluded by saying that all Germans should have a vote in how their country was run, but without the chaos of the Weimar years: a middle ground between the Weimar Republic and the pre-1914 Empire, while the short-lived Third Reich was relegated to the ash heap of history.
The young Emperor and a number of German as well as foreign experts on constitutional law began convening in January 1939 to draft a new constitution for the reborn German Empire, comparing the constitution of the Weimar Republic and the Second Reich and choosing elements from both as well as foreign examples that had merit. He envisaged a mixture of the old Wilhelmine system, Westminster style constitutional monarchy and the Weimar Republic.
The new regime was seen as a continuation of the German Empire that had ended in 1918, so it was never once referred to as a “Fourth Reich” since that would suggest continuity with Hitler’s regime. In terms of the liberties it granted German citizens and the duties it expected from them, the whole document differed very little from the Weimar constitution: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement, privacy of correspondence, the inviolability of the home, habeas corpus, free and secret elections, eligibility of all German citizens to public office, and equal rights to linguistic, religious, ethnic and racial minorities were all incorporated into it. In adopting this constitution and enforcing it, Germany would also directly restore the civil rights of its remaining Jews (i.e. those who hadn’t left the country yet) as discrimination against minorities on any grounds was explicitly forbidden. While that wouldn’t undo the last five years of oppression and the fact that plenty of Germans still entertained antisemitic opinions, life would become much easier for German Jews from now on. A separate decision was to declare the NSDAP and all its suborganizations to be criminal organizations, resulting in the burning of millions of party membership cards in 1939 and 1940.
By far the most significant changes were made in the political system. All men and women from the age of 18 would be able to vote for 500 representatives of the Reichstag in elections governed by the principles of proportional representation. Elections would be held once every four years. All men and women were eligible for office from the age of 25. The constitution said nothing about whether Germany’s constituent states should remain republics or become monarchies again, which resulted in several states restoring their own monarchies: chief among them was the still quite popular Bavarian royal house of Wittelsbach. Notable exception was Thuringia, which had been formed in 1920 out of the Ernestine Thuringian duchies. The elected parliaments of these states, rather than their returned monarchs, held legislative power just like the Reichstag did over all of Germany.
The various state parliaments would send representatives to the Bundesrat, the upper house of Germany’s parliament. Conservatives were not pleased with the restoration of the Weimar era Reichstag and even less that a once conservative bulwark, the Bundesrat, would now also be elected indirectly by the masses because democratically elected state parliaments would now vote for which representative(s) to send. As in the original Bundesrat Prussia sent seventeen representatives, Bavaria sent six, Saxony four, Württemberg four, Baden three, Hesse three, Mecklenburg-Schwerin two, Brunswick two, seven smaller states got one vote each, and the state of Thuringia created in 1920 got seven representatives as seven states with one vote each had merged into it. One question was whether Austria should be seen as one constituent state, merged with Bavaria, or if each of its nine federal states should be seen as separate constituent states: ultimately the decision was made to treat Austria as one state with four representatives and make it an Archduchy, making Otto von Habsburg its Archduke. Merging it with Bavaria would’ve made Bavaria too powerful for Prussia’s taste, and turning it into nine individual states would probably have the same effect as they would likely follow the lead of Bavaria as the dominant south German state. This made for a total of 59 representatives and, to assuage the concerns of conservatives, the number was doubled to 118 by adding another 59 representatives directly appointed by the Emperor for life, most of which were aristocrats, military officers, religious leaders and industrial barons. Because Prussia often had dominated the Bundesrat because its Minister President was usually also Chancellor of Germany, the two offices were split: no-one could hold the offices of Minister President of Prussia and Chancellor of Germany at the same time.
As to the powers of the Emperor himself, these were greater than those of the British monarch but less than those of the German Emperor pre-1918: besides the power to refuse royal assent (which no British monarch had done since 1708) foreign and defence policies were still the German Emperor’s virtually exclusive prerogative, except in the event of a declaration of war when a vote by the Reichstag and the Bundesrat would have to take place. In one way the new German constitution was more democratic than the Westminster system as a refusal of royal assent could be overridden by a sixty percent majority in both houses of parliament (a change to the constitution had to be passed by the same majority). Furthermore, the Chancellor and cabinet members had a dual responsibility: a vote of no confidence by the Reichstag would obligate them to resign, but so would a demand from the Emperor to do so.
Finally, the old Article 48 of the Weimar constitution was reformed. In its original form Article 48 gave the President the power to take measures by decree – including the use of the armed forces and/or the suspension of civil liberties – to restore law and order in the event of a major threat to public safety or Reich security, something which could theoretically be overruled by the Reichstag. In its new form, Article 48 could only be activated if the Emperor, the Chancellor and the Minister of the Interior agreed to it, making them the triumvirate that would rule in the event of a domestic emergency. A corollary was added that the Ministers of Defence and War would be added if Germany was at war. Explicit regulations were added that regulated in what situation the activation of this clause could take place, furthermore detailing that it could only be used in defence of German democracy and never to abolish it.
After the new constitution was officially implemented on Thursday June 1st 1939, the first truly democratic elections in seven years since November 1932 were held three months later on Tuesday September 5th (the elections from 1933 to 1938 were controlled by the Nazis and decidedly undemocratic). The political parties banned by the Nazis proved resilient as they all reconstituted themselves in a matter of weeks and launched electoral campaigns, this time with fair and impartial access to media like radio, cinema, newspapers, magazines, tabloids, weeklies and so on. The social-democratic SPD won 31% of the vote, the Catholic Centre Party 11%, the left-liberal DDP 7%, the right-liberal FDP 8%, the communist KPD 9%, and the conservative nationalist DNVP 8%. With the NSDAP forbidden, a successor party called the National Social Union (NSU) was formed under Hitler’s favourite architect Albert Speer and former aviation minister Hermann Goering. The NSU got 17% of the popular vote, making it the largest opposition party. A centre left SPD-Centre Party-DDP-FDP coalition was formed that was called the Grand Democratic Coalition as it had 57% of the popular vote.
Social Democratic chairman Otto Wels became the new Chancellor of Germany and he continued to make use of the services of Minister of Finance and Economics Hjalmar Schacht. Schacht had opposed Hitler’s “economic miracle” as it was based on debt spending on massive rearmament, which he saw as disruptive to the economy. He was the only cabinet member of the Third Reich to serve in the new government, again to perform an economic miracle, albeit of a completely different kind: getting the government’s finances back in order, ideally without crushing austerity policies that would send the country into the throes of recession.
The Wels government decided to economize on military expansion. Firstly, the Wehrmacht’s size would be frozen at 600.000 men for at least two years. As to construction for the Kriegsmarine, it was decided to complete only what was already under construction and nothing else, abandoning Plan Z as such a world class navy was deemed both unnecessary and a luxury the country couldn’t afford. Besides that Schacht managed to renegotiate much of Germany’s debts so it would have much more time to pay, reducing the strain on government finances and lessening the need for austerity seriously. Germany still experienced a period of about eighteen months of economic stagnation, a full-blown recession was avoided. By the end of 1940, the reborn German Empire was tentatively looking forward to a bright future.
