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History in an Off Key: David Abraham's Second Collapse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Peter Hayes
Peter Hayes
Affiliation:
Peter Hayes is associate professor of history atNorthwestern University.
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Review Article
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Business History Review , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1987 , pp. 452 - 472
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Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1987

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References

1 Abraham, David. “A Reply to Gerald Feldman.” Central European History 17 (1984): 183–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For these and other similarly distracting claims, see the essays collected in “The David Abraham Case: Ten Comments from Historians,” Radical History Review 32 (1985): 75–96Google Scholar.

3 Mathews did so in an essay entitled “Objections to ‘The David Abraham Case,’” which he submitted to Radical History Review shortly after it published the commentaries cited in note 2, but which that journal declined to publish. See also James, Harold. The German Slump (Oxford, 1986), 81Google Scholar; Nocken, Ulrich, “Weimarer Geschichte(n),” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 71 (1984): 505–27Google Scholar; Hayes, Peter, “German Businessmen and the Crisis of the Empire,” in Imperial Germany, ed. Durr, V., Harms, K., and Hayes, P. (Madison, Wis., 1985), 53Google Scholar, 60; and Hayes, , Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era (New York, 1987), 45–46Google Scholar, 55, 57, 213.

4 For the characterization, see Geary, Dick, “Labor's Way: A Response to David Abraham,” International Labor and Working Class History 28 (1985): 41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Abraham provides the following indices for real hourly wage rates (1913 = 100):

The source for Table 3 is Bry, Gerhard, Wages in Germany 1871–1945 (Princeton. N.J., 1960), 467Google Scholar, and for Table 31, ibid., 362. The tables are identical in Bry's book: they match all of the numbers in Abraham's Table 31 and none of those in his Table 3. Geary goes too far, however, in saving that “Abraham's figures for real wage movements bear no resemblance to any others 1 have seen” (p. 42), since one set of Abraham's numbers does match Bry's and does correspond to those (if recalculated with 1913 as the base year) in Petzina, Dietmar et al. , Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch (Munich, 1978), 98Google Scholar, though not to those in Petzina's Die deutsche Wirtschaft in der Zwischenkriegszeit (Wiesbaden, 1977), 122Google Scholar, all of Which Geary cites.

All parenthetical citations in the text to The Collapse of the Weimar Republic refer to the second edition unless otherwise noted.

5 The error concerning Piatscheck seems to result from Abraham's difficulties with the German Konjunktiv verb form. The same infirmity recently led him into an unwarranted accusation of mistranslation against Henry Turner; see Abraham, David, “Big Business, Nazis and German Politics at the End of Weimar”, European History Quarterly 17 (1987): 241Google Scholar, on Erich von Gilsa's letter to Paul Reusch of 19 September 1932.

6 See. above all. Mommsen, Hans et al. eds., Industrielles System und politische Entwicklung in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1974)Google Scholar. and, for an early exposition of interest group gridlock at the end of the republic. Petzina, Dieter, “Hauptprobleme der deutschen Wirtschaftspolitik 1932/33,” Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschiclite 15 (1967): 18–38Google Scholar. Also pertinent in this connection are Petzina's Zwischenkriegszeit, 86–107. and the surveys of the literature in Gessner, Dieter. Das Ende der Weimarer Republik (Darmstadt, 1978), 18–30Google Scholar, 46–61.

7 The handiest guides to the pedigree of Abraham's theses are as follows: Ayçoberry, Pierre, The Nazi Question (New York, 1981), 47–68Google Scholar, 150–61; Saage, Richard, Faschismustheorien (Munich, 1981), 41–53Google Scholar, 66–84: Rabinbach, Anson G., “Toward a Marxist Theory of Fascism and National Socialism: A Report on Developments in West Germany” New German Critique 3 (1974): 127 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the same author's “Poulantzas and the Problem of Fascism.” ibid. 8 (1976): 157-70. See also the two effective historiographieal critiques from quite different perspectives in Heinrich August Winkler, Revolution, Staat, Faschismus (Göttingen, 1978), 65–117Google Scholar, and Hallgarten, George W. F. and Radkau, Joachim, Deutsche Industrie und Politik (Reinbek, 1981), 281–300Google Scholar.

8 Maier, Charles, “The Vulnerabilities of Interwar Germany”, Journal of Modern History 56 (1984): 92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Winkler, Heinrich August, Der Schein der Normalität (Berlin and Bonn, 1985), 517–18Google Scholar.

9 James, The German Slump. 110–89.

10 Abraham gives 17 million marks as the net earnings of the chemicals industry in 1927. Farben's dividend payments came to 100.8 million, according to the concern's own I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft Frankfurt am Main. 1939). 70. or to 95.6 million. according to United States National Archives, Record Group 238, M892. Defense Basic Information Document Book II, Document 4. p. 30. Similarly. Arbraham's Table 18. p. 138. is suspect inlight of the statistics for IC Farben. He says labor costs for all employees came to 15 percent of total costs in the chenncal industry during 1927, wheras IG Farben's record reval a share of 34.6 percent: see the last cited source, Document 4, p. 29.

11 Sweezy, Maxine Yaple, “German Corporate Profits, 1926–1938”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 54 (1940): 384–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar When challenged previously about the inferiority of his data to Sweezy's, Abraham quoted the authors of his source to tile effect that their research was conclusive, then pronounced that he simply “found [their] figures more persuasive” than Sweezy's. without troubling to say why see Abraham, David, “Business Wars: On Contributions to Weimar Scholarship”, Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 72 (1985): 348Google Scholar. On p. 347 of the same article. Abraham explains the composition of Ins “metal finishing” category, which I have followed in making Sweezy's statistics comparable.

12 Table 15 lumps textiles with leather and clothing, industries that do not figure otherwise in Abraham's analysis, into a “borderline” category that does not appear elsewhere in the book. Sweezy's figures show, however, that this description, even had Abraham adhered to it, is only slightly more accurate than the label “dynamic.”

13 Had Abraham consulted Maschke, Erich, Es entsteht ein Konzern (Tübingen, 1969)Google Scholar. he would have had some idea of the breadth of Reusch's firm, the Gutehoffnungshütte. Though uncritical, the book provides a wealth of basic detail. Harold James reports that between mid-1925 and mid-1932, Reusch's companies earned a low of 25 percent of annual sales from exports (1927–28) and a high of 49 percent (1930–31). I calculate an annual average export share of 36 percent; see The German Slump, Table IX, p. 122. It is striking that information of this sort is almost entirely absent from a book that makes so much of putative export orientation. At only one place in Abraham's account can I find figures for the share of returns from foreign sales received by either the industrial branches he confidently parses or the major corporations whose leaders he fractionalizes. This occurs on p. 146, where a paragraph beginning “by mid-1931 the iron and steel producers had lost all interest in the export market” goes on to point out that “by late 1931” 75 percent of German iron and steel was being “ultimately exported.” To resolve the patent contradiction. Abraham writes as if only an insignificant part of this percentage were still being directly exported by steel makers or their subsidiaries (which is false), and hence relegates exports to the basis of an argument over rebates by domestic-oriented heavy industry to export-oriented metals processors. Abraham's general omission of data on foreign sales is masked in his Table 20 (p. 140) by the substitution of numbers for the German share of the worldwide exports of particular industries in place of more pertinent data on the exported share of German output. Since James provides such statistics from readily available sources (pp. 121–23), it appears that Abraham should have had no trouble producing appropriate figures. But presenting them would have done further damage to his theses and confirmed the applicability to the Weimar years of Michael Geyer's conclusion concerning the Nazi period that “it is time to give up the identification of heavy industry with the domestic and armaments markets” “Zum Einfluss der nationalsozialistischen Rüstungspolitik auf das Ruhrgebiet”. Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 45 (1981): 245Google Scholar.

14 Weisbrod, Bernd. Schwerindustrie in der Weimarer Republik (Wuppertal, 1978), 225–26Google Scholar.

15 Ibid. 220.

16 USNA. RC238 M892. Def. Basic Information Doc. Bk. II, Document 8. p. 38. The lowest share of sales from exports for IG Karbcn between 1926 and 1932 was 50 percent in 1930, the highest 57.2 percent in 1927: the average for the period was 54.1 percent.

17 On Duisberg, see Hayes, Industry and Ideology, 55–56; on Kastl, lor example, Weisbrod, Schwerindustrie. 472–73. On the overall agreement among industrialists on the points mentioned above, see James, The German Slump, 176.

18 Abraham apparently visited only the Gutehoffnungshütte archive in Oberhausen. Lest barriers to access be considered the explanation, note that Turner, Henry, German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (New York, 1985Google Scholar) made use of nine industrial archives; Weisbrod's Schwerindustrie employed seven (eight, if one counts the largely industrial holdings of the Westfälisehes Wirtschaftsarchiv in Dortmund); Neebe, Reinhard, Großindustrie, Staat und NSDAP 1930–1933 (Göttingen, 1981)Google Scholar consulted six; and my Industry and Ideology utilized ten. Among the numerous informative books that Abraham does not cite are the following representative examples: Hagemann, Wilhelm, Das Verhältnis der deutschen Großbanken zur Industrie (Berlin, 1931)Google Scholar, Warriner, D., Combines and Rationalization in Germany, 1924–1928 (London, 1931)Google Scholar; Achinger, Hans, Richard Merton (Frankfurt, 1970)Google Scholar; Tanimen, Hellmuth, Die I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft (1925–1933) (Berlin, 1978)Google Scholar; and Maschke's history of Reusch and the Gutehoffnungshütte, mentioned in note 13.

19 See Schwarzbach, Helmut, “Die Differenzen zwischen dem Verband Sächsischer Industrieller und dem Reichsverband der deutschen Industrie 1931,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 12, pt. 3 (1971): 75–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which also does not appear in Abraham's bibliography.

20 Schröter, Verena, Die deutsche Industrie auf dem Weltmarkt 1929 bis 1933 (Frankfurt, 1984), esp. 506–12Google Scholar. For the equally unsubstantiated views of a scholar who agrees with Abraham, see Volkmann, Hans-Erich, “Das außenwirtschaftliche Programm der NSDAP, 1930–1933,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 17 (1977): 251–74Google Scholar, and “Die NS-Wirtschaft in Vorbereitung des Krieges,” in Ursachen und Voraussetzungen der deutschen Kriegspolitik, ed. Deist, W. and Messerschmidt, M. (Stuttgart, 1979), 177–368Google Scholar.

21 See Hayes, Industry and Ideology, 45, note 59, and the sources listed there.

22 Frommelt, Reinhard, Paneuropa oder Mitteleuropa (Stuttgart, 1977), 85–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the quotation appears on p. 89.

23 See Tammen, Die I.G. Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft (1925–1933), 229–37, 241–45. Against the MWT's importance, see also Neebe, Großindustrie, 260–61, note 3.

24 James, The German Slump, 267–68, 279–81; Hallgarten and Radkau, Deutsche Industrie, 286–87. See also the figures on heavy industry's export dependence that James provides, 121–22.

25 See Hayes, Industry and Ideology, 54–55. on the journal and the author in question. Karl Anton Prinz Rohan.

26 Even the recent literature on this subject is vast. In my view the best contributions are Turner, Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, Hentschel, Volker, Weimars letzte Monate (Düsseldorf, 1978), 102–38Google Scholar; Trumpp, Thomas. “Zur Finanzierung der NSDAP durch die deutsche Großindustrie: Versuch einer Bilanz,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 32 (1981): 223–41Google Scholar; Wengst, Udo, “Großindustrie und Machtergreifung,” Politische Studien 34 (1983): 37–17Google Scholar; and the works of Heinhard Neebe discussed below. On the political weakness of business, see also James, The German Slump, 177–78, 188.

27 It is hard to know what Abraham has in mind when he refers to “industrial opposition” to Papen. Perhaps he is thinking of the famous petition to Hindenburg of 19 November 1932 urging Hitler's appointment as chancellor. If so, these recent findings, all based on long-known evidence, are worth repeating: only a handful of businessmen signed it, all of them “were well known followers of National Socialism,” and “it is doubtful that Hindenburg ever even saw the petition [die Eingabe überhaupt zu Gesicht bekommen hat].” See Muth, Heinrich, “Das Kölner Gespräch am 4. Januar 1933”, Geschichtc in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 37 (1986): 476–77Google Scholar. But Abraham, like most leading industrialists of the day, could not have known of Muth's sensational revelation, on the basis of new sources, that Papen had a hand in preparing the petition: see ibid., 172–75.

28 See Hayes, Peter, “A Question Mark with Epaulettes? Kurt von Schleicher and Weimar Politics,” Journal of Modern History 52 (1980): 35–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the literature cited there.

29 See Turner, Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, 252. That Abraham knew of Turner's evidence while revising his Collapse is clear from note 27, p. xxvii: “Indeed, Turner argues, 252, for example, that at crucial moments in 1932 major industrialists vigorously opposed Nazi anti-Semitism. …” For support and extension of Turner's position, see Neebe, Großindustrie, 194.

30 See Turner, Henry Ashby Jr., “Hitler's Secret Pamphlet for Industrialists, 1927,” Journal of Modern History 40 (1968): 348–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, the report of Hitler's speech to the Nationalklub von 1919 in Hamburg on 1 December 1930 in Nationalsozialismus und Revolution, ed. Joehmann, Werner (Frankfurt, 1963)Google Scholar, Document 99. pp. 309–14; Hitler, Adolf, Vortrag Adolf Hitlers tor westdeutschen Wirischaftlern im Industrie-Klub Düsseldorf (Munich, 1932)Google Scholar, excerpted in Reden des Führers, ed. Kloss, Erhard (Cologne, 1967), 55–74Google Scholar; and the discussion of Hitler's speech of 20 February 1933 in Hayes, Industry and Ideology, 82–84.

31 The document, from the archives of the Gutehoffnungshütte, is reprinted in Stegmann, Dirk, “Zum Verhältnis von Großindustrie und Nationalsozialismus 1930–1933,” Archiv für Sozidlgeschichte 13 (1973): 468–75Google Scholar.

32 Quoted in Turner, Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, 291.

33 Neebe, Reinhard, “Die Industrieverbände und das Ende der Weimarer Republik,” in Rheinland-Westfalen im Industriezeitalter, ed. Düwell, K. and Köllmann, W. (Wuppertal, 1984), 2: 389–93Google Scholar; and Neebe, Großindustrie, 127–39, 150–51. On agrarian-industrial relations, see also Hallgarten and Radkau, Deutsche Industrie, 286–87. On the increasing defection particularly of upper middle class voters from Nazism in the fall of 1932, see now Childers, Thomas, “The Limits of National Socialist Mobilisation: The Elections of 6 November 1932 and the Fragmentation of the Nazi Constituency,” in The Formation of the Nazi Constituency, 1919–1933, ed. Childers, Thomas (Totowa, N.J., 1986), 232–59Google Scholar, especially 244–45.

34 Neebe, Großindustrie, 159.

35 Ibid., 154–55; Turner, Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, 298–99.

36 Neebe, Großindustrie, 173.

37 Ibid., 152.

38 See ibid., 121–22, 133–35, 260; Turner, Big Business and the Rise of Hitler. 272–91. See also the eonelusions of Heinrich Muth that in January 1933 heavy industry still stood “on the side of the DNYP [the Nationalist Party] and not of the NSDAP”, and that the government formed on 30 January “was in reality a defeat for Papen and his industrial friends”; Muth, “Das ‘Kölner Gespräch,’” 537, 539.

39 See Warriner, Combines and Rationalization in Germany, 11; Schwarzbach, “Die Differenzen zwischen dem Verband Sächsischer Industrieller und dem Reichsverband,” 75–93; James, The German Slump, 110–61; and Turner. Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, 191–203.

40 On the importance of age and status, see Turner, Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, 191–203; James, The German Slump, 167–68; Hallgarten and Radkau, Deutsche Industrie, 285–86; and the example of Wilhelm Rudolf Mann, Jr., who was both the only member of IG Farben's managing board to join the NSDAP prior to 1933 and the sales leader of the concern's heavily export-dependent pharmaceuticals sector; Hayes, Industry and Ideology, 46, 62. On the primacy of economic interests in shaping accommodation between business and the Third Reich, see that book, passim. The best general statement about these issues is Henry A. Turner, “Das Verhältnis des Großunternehmertums zur NSDAP,” in Industrielles System und politische Entwicklung, ed. Mommsen et al., 919–31.

41 For the point about interests, see Hamilton, Richard F., Who Voted for Hitler? (Princeton, 1982), 451Google Scholar. On the importance of an industry's particular culture or mentality, see Hayes, Industry and Ideology, 1–5; and Gillingham, John R., Industry and Politics in the Third Reich: Ruhr Coal, Hitler and Europe (New York, 1985)Google Scholar.

42 Even when industry stood united and exercised undeniable political influence, as in the destruction of the Great Coalition government of 1928–30, it would be hard to demonstrate that its object could have been achieved without the contributions of the army leaders and the trade unions. See Turner, Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, 100–104.

43 “The Origins of Economic Instability in Germany. 1924–30,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 69 (1982): 488–514Google Scholar; and “The Beginning of the Depression in Germany, 1927–30: Investment and the Capital Market,” Economic History Review 36 (1983): 395–415Google Scholar.

44 See especially Borchardt's “Zwangslagen und Handlungsspielräume in der großen Wirtschaftskrise der frühen dreißiger Jahre”, reprinted in Die Weimarer Republik—Belagerte Civitas, ed. Stürmer, M. (Königstein, 1980), 318–39Google Scholar, and “Wirtschaftliche Ursachen des Scheiterns der Weimarer Republik,” in Weimar: Selbstpreisgabe einer Demokratie, ed. Erdmann, K.D. and Schulze, H. (Düsseldorf, 1980), 211–49Google Scholar, as well as the critical evaluations in Geschichte und Gesellschaft 11 (1985): 275–376Google Scholar.

45 See especially “The Dying Middle: Weimar Germany and the Fragmentation of Bourgeois Politics”, Central European History 5 (1972): 23–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Sammlung oder Zersplittung? Die Bestrebungen zur Bildung einer neuen Mittelpartei in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik 1930–1933,” Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25 (1977): 265–304Google Scholar. For a different sort of effort to show how a businessman with anti-Nazi intentions could end up serving Nazi purposes, see Hayes, Peter, “Carl Bosch and Carl Krauch: Chemistry and the Political Economy of Germany, 1925–1945,” Journal of Economic History 47 (1987): 353–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Among Feldman and Turner's numerous publications, see, for the former, in particular, Iron and Steel in the German Inflation, 1916–1923 (Princeton, N.J., 1977)Google Scholar, and for the latter, Big Business and the Rise of Hitler. Gillingham's noteworthy study of the coal industry is cited in note 41.

47 Abraham. “Business Wars: On Contributions to Weimar Scholarship,” 352.

48 The same tendency to find in documents only what he wants apparently accounts for another of Abraham's recent unjustified accusations against Henry Turner, in which Abraham charged that a document does not say what Turner claimed, quoted its fourth paragraph at length to prove the point, and passed over in silence the third paragraph, containing precisely what Turner had asserted. See Abraham, “Big Business, Nazis and German Politics,” 240, concerning Erich von Gilsa's letter to Paul Reusch of 17 July 1930.