Chapter 18 discusses the fateful elections of 14 September 1930 from the perspective of the German Right and the various factions on the Right that were vying for power. It focuses first of all on the efforts of the young conservatives who reorganized themselves into the Conservative People’s Party in the hopes of uniting those who had left the DNVP into a single political front. But these efforts, which enjoyed strong support from Paul Reusch and the German industrial establishment, evoked little interest from the leaders of the CNBLP and CSVD, both of whom were determined not to compromise the uniqueness of their own political appeal by entering into close ties with other political parties. In the meantime, Hugenberg and the DNVP leadership tried to organize their campaign around the mantra of anti-Marxism but misread, as did most of the other parties in the middle and moderate Right, the threat that National Socialism posed to their party’s electoral prospects. As a result, the Nazis were able to capitalize upon the disunity of the non-Nazi Right to score a victory of epic proportions that gave the NSDAP fourteen percent of the popular vote and 107 Reichstag mandates.

Chapter 15 covers the period from the fall of 1928 to the summer of 1929 with particular emphasis on the resurgence of the radical Right and the quest for right-wing unity culminating in the campaign against the Young Plan. What this reveals is a heated conflict between the DNVP and Stahlhelm for the leadership of the “national opposition” that was resolved only when the latter agreed to postpone its plans for a referendum to revise the Weimar Constitution so that Hugenberg could proceed with his own plans for a referendum against the Young Plan. But Hugenberg’s efforts to unify the German Right behind his crusade against the Young Plan ran into strong opposition from right-wing moderates who denounced a provision in the so-called “Freedom Law” that threatened government officials, including Hindenburg, who were responsible for negotiating the plan with imprisonment. Hugenberg’s refusal to drop the imprisonment paragraph reflected his determination to retain the support of Hitler and the NSDAP at the risk of alienating the RLB and more moderate elements in the referendum alliance. In the final analysis, the campaign against the Young Plan did not strengthen right-wing unity but only revealed how elusive that unity was.

Chapter 13 examines the period from the campaign for the May 1928 Reichstag elections to Alfred Hugenberg’s election as DNVP party chairman in October 1928. The DNVP went down to stunning defeat in the May elections that stemmed in large part from the success of middle-class and agrarian splinter parties to cannibalize the Nationalist electorate. The defeat was followed by a bitter internal crisis in which Westarp found himself such heavy attack from Hugenberg that he resigned his seat as DNVP party chairman. This was followed by a bitter fight for the DNVP party chairmanship that found Hugenberg’s opponents so badly organized that they were unable to block his election as Westarp’s successor in October 1928. Hugenberg’s election to the DNVP chairmanship represented a critical turning point in the history of the Weimar Republic and signaled the complete collapse of Stresemann’s efforts to stabilize Germany’s republican system of government from the Right.

Chapter 9 analyzes Germany’s conservative intelligentsia as it has developed by the middle of the 1920s and the various institutions it has established in pursuit of a young conservative political agenda. Most of the individuals discussed in this chapter – Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Oswald Spengler, Heinz Brauweiler, Heinrich von Gleichen, and Wilhelm Stapel among others – define themselves as “conservative revolutionaries” who do not to wish to return to the way things were before World War I but who espouse an apocalyptic view of the political and envision a revolutionary transformation of the world in which they live through direct political action. Some like Martin Spahn and Eduard Stadtler are connected to the DNVP, but for the most part they are politically unaffiliated and in most cases opposed to the German party system as it has developed since the founding of the Second Empire. But they are united in a pedagogic mission to educate the younger generation and to instill in it the values and virtues they believe necessary for Germany’s national rebirth.

Chapter 12 examines the DNVP’s record as a member of the Marx’s coalition government from its initial successes from the passage of the Work Hours Law and the Unemployment Insurance Act in the spring and summer of 1927 through its failure to develop an adequate legislative response to the increasingly desperate situation in which the German farmer found himself to its awkward embrace of The Law for the Protection of the Republic in May 1927. The DNVP’s situation in the Marx cabinet was further complicated by a virtual mutiny in the Stahlhelm against collaboration with the existing system of government and a revolt in the countryside spearheaded by regional RLB affiliates RLB that were no longer satisfied with the DNVP’s defense of agriculture’s economic welfare. Increasingly desperate to salvage something of its second experiment in governmental participation, the DNVP staked everything on the passage of a Reich School Law that encountered such strong opposition from the DVP that not only was the bill rejected but the governmental coalition collapsed.

Chapter 16 explores the tensions within the DNVP that culminated in the secession of twelve moderates from the DNVP Reichstag delegation in December 1929. It begins with an examination of Christian-Social dissent in the DNVP and moves from there to a discussion of Hugenberg’s efforts to unify a badly divided party behind the mantra of anti-Marxism at the annual party congress in Kassel in late November. These efforts were to little avail, and in the vote on the controversial imprisonment paragraph of the so-called “Freedom Law” twenty-three DNVP deputies either voted No or were absent for the vote. In the aftermath twelve DNVP deputies left the party. While the young conservatives around Treviranus struggled desperately to preserve a modicum of unity among the secessionists, they were foiled both by the CNBLP’s determination to effect a realignment of the German party system along vocational and corporatists lines and by the decision of the Christian-Socials to launch a new party of their own. In the meantime, Hugenberg continued to enjoy strong support at the local and regional levels of the DNVP party organization and experienced little difficulty in retaining control of the party.

Chapter 17 examines the repercussions of the December secession from the DNVP Reichstag delegation upon the fate of the Müller cabinet and the decision to appoint Heinrich Brüning as the head of a new government based upon the parties of the middle and moderate Right. The architect of the Brüning cabinet was military strategist Kurt von Schleicher, who hoped either to force Hugenberg’s resignation as DNVP party chairman or trigger a second secession on the party’s left wing that was more extensive than the one that had taken place the preceding December. But the support that Hugenberg enjoyed at the base of the DNVP organization was unassailable, with the result that the dissidents within the DNVP Reichstag delegation found themselves increasingly isolated within the party. Consequently, when Hugenberg decided to support Social Democratic efforts to force the dissolution of the Reichstag in July 1930, their only recourse was to leave the party in a second secession that was, to be sure, more extensive than the first but failed to shake Hugenberg’s control of the party.