Reichstag election July 1932
The Reichstag election of July 31, 1932 was the election for the 6th Reichstag of the Weimar Republic . It ended with strong growth for the NSDAP . This was by far the strongest party in the Reichstag, but without achieving an absolute majority . The camp of the “ Marxist parties” ( SPD and KPD ) together remained relatively stable. Within the camp, the SPD lost in favor of the KPD. The Catholic parties ( Zentrum and BVP ) recorded slight gains , while the bourgeois parties and various small and interest parties lost their approval. Political liberalism , in particular , was largely marginalized. Overall, the opponents of the republic were in the majority. There was no parliamentary majority, so the next Reichstag election took place on November 6, 1932 .
prehistory
Proposed by Kurt von Schleicher , Franz von Papen was commissioned by Reich President Paul von Hindenburg on May 31 with the formation of a Reich government of "national concentration". This was preceded by talks with Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring , among other things . They offered the support of the new government through the NSDAP. Conditions were early elections and the lifting of the ban on the SA . Hindenburg accepted these conditions, although he knew that the NSDAP would most likely emerge from the elections as the strongest force. In contrast, the center, Papen's previous party, refused to participate because of the overthrow of Heinrich Brüning . Papen formed a government ( Kabinett Papen ) on June 1, 1932 , which the SPD press referred to as the “Cabinet of the Barons”.
The government did not have a majority in the Reichstag. The SPD immediately prepared a vote of no confidence . But already on June 4, 1932, the Reich President dissolved the Reichstag, since after the previous state elections it supposedly no longer represented the majority of the people. In a government declaration, which the new Chancellor did not make in the Reichstag but read on the radio, von Papen sharply attacked party democracy. He subsequently ruled based on emergency ordinances . The reduction in support increased the plight of many people who had become unemployed as a result of the global economic crisis . The ban on the SA and SS was lifted in mid-June. Both demands of the NSDAP were thus fulfilled.
Election campaign
Before the election, the KPD vehemently opposed the agreements of the Reparations Conference in Lausanne , and fought the NSDAP and the government. However, it also clearly turned against the SPD and thus ended the short phase of a united front policy . Instead, the accusation of social fascism was strongly emphasized. This policy was only changed after 1935 after Josef Stalin changed his mind.
Before the Reichstag election, the International Socialist Combat League published an urgent appeal in the recently founded daily newspaper Der Funke , in which, supported by many well-known artists and scientists, called for the "SPD and KPD to join forces for this election campaign". The appeal, which was signed by Albert Einstein , Käthe Kollwitz and Heinrich Mann , among others , remained ineffective.
On June 16, 1932, the Papen government lifted the SA and SS ban issued by Heinrich Brüning in April 1932 in order to show its appreciation to the National Socialists for the tolerance of his minority cabinet . Considerable arguments were therefore to be expected in the election campaign for the Reichstag elections on July 31 in Germany. The election campaign in the summer of 1932 was the most violent the republic had ever known. Within one month there were 99 dead and 1,125 injured in Germany in clashes, mainly between National Socialists and Communists. In many places, but especially in the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area and in Berlin , both sides clashed. Even shootings were not uncommon. Preferred targets were the meeting bars on the other side ("Saalschlacht"). A high point of the violence was the Altona Bloody Sunday on July 17, 1932. Two SA men were shot; then the police moved in and shot 16 people from Altona.
The Reich government used the unrest as a reason for the Prussian strike of July 20, 1932. The executive government was replaced by a Reich Commissioner . The SPD and the trade unions accepted the coup d'état of the Reich government, which was supported by the Reichswehr , with passivity. In view of the mass unemployment, they considered a call for a general strike ineffective, and military resistance by the Prussian police was also hopeless because of the Reichswehr's approval of the "Prussian strike". Instead, the Prussian state government sued against the illegal disempowerment. A state of emergency was imposed in Berlin, which was lifted on July 26th.
In the meantime the election campaign had continued. The NSDAP relied on the attraction of Adolf Hitler and advertised with the effective slogan "Arbeit und Brot". She announced an immediate economic program and job creation measures . The SPD demanded a fundamental restructuring of the economy through nationalization and also neglected the demand for job creation .
Election results
In the Reichstag elections on July 31, 1932, despite continued violence - twelve more people lost their lives on election day - more voters took part than in any previous Reichstag election. The turnout was 84.1%. This is all the more remarkable since the voters had already been called to the ballot box several times this year ( Reich presidential election with two rounds and state elections, including in Prussia).
The clear winner of the Reichstag election was the NSDAP. It was able to increase its result from 1930 by 19 percentage points and thus more than double it. In terms of the absolute number of votes, the party even rose by 115%. Because of the high turnout, many other parties also gained votes; this relativizes the informative value of this percentage.
The NSDAP became the strongest party with 37.3%, so it did not receive an absolute majority. The number of mandates rose from 107 to 230. This was almost 100 more than the SPD, which had 133 seats. The KPD, on the other hand, at first glance could only benefit moderately from the global economic crisis. Their share rose from 13.1% to 14.5%. The absolute number of votes increased by 20%. The Catholic parties Zentrum and BVP also posted slight percentage gains. The other parties lost votes.
A large part of the voters of the bourgeois parties as well as those of the various interest and small parties had gone over to the camp of the NSDAP. Hitler was also able to win over numerous previous non-voters . The majority of the first-time voters also voted for the National Socialists. Hitler was successful among the self-employed ( farmers , craftsmen and merchants ). The party was more successful in the country than in the cities. There were clear differences between the Protestant and Catholic areas. In the latter, the NSDAP was much less represented. Nonetheless, there were not a few Catholic communities and districts across the empire and especially in southern Germany, in which the NSDAP achieved results - in some cases considerably - above the national average. Overall, the party was significantly stronger in northern and eastern Germany than in western and southern Germany . It was strongest in Schleswig-Holstein . More than half of the voters there voted for the NSDAP. However, there were deviations from this at the regional level. The NSDAP achieved the highest percentage of votes in Central Franconia . In Rothenburg ob der Tauber it came to 81%. On closer inspection, it became apparent that the NSDAP had largely exhausted its voter potential. Compared to the presidential election of April 10, 1932, and the election to the Prussian state parliament on April 24, the party was hardly able to gain any further.
The relative success of the Catholic parties can be explained by the fact that increasing radicalization brought the Catholic milieu together again, the process of erosion of political Catholicism in recent years was stopped and easily reversed. The SPD lost again slightly. This was exposed not only to attacks by the NSDAP, but also by the KPD. Then there was the party's course. The toleration of Brüning, the action against the left wing, the support of Hindenburg in the last presidential election and the renunciation of resistance during the Prussian strike contributed to the weakening. Still, the core of the following remained largely intact. If you look at the KPD and SPD camp together, it remained relatively stable overall. For the most part, an exchange of voters took place within this camp. Liberalism was largely marginalized. Basically, of the bourgeois parties, only the national conservative DNVP was able to assert itself to some extent.
consequences
After the elections, the violent clashes continued, especially between supporters of the KPD and the NSDAP. Most of the violence came from the National Socialists. Potempa's murder was particularly brutal . A parliamentary majority of any kind was not in sight even after the election. There was a negative anti-parliamentary majority: the NSDAP and KPD together had an absolute majority of the seats in the Reichstag. They could force any government to resign by voting on ministers individually on the basis of Article 54 of the Weimar Constitution .
Remarkably, newspapers critical of the NSDAP were not shocked by the high profits of the “movement”, but rather relief that the party had not achieved an absolute majority and that the “advance” seemed to have stopped. Even leading National Socialists like Joseph Goebbels weren't too euphoric about the result.
However, after the election victory, Hitler ended the toleration of Papen. The offer from Kurt von Schleicher , who was the real strong man in the cabinet, to involve the NSDAP in government, was rejected by Hitler. Instead, he called for the reorganization of the government under his leadership. The NSDAP would have had enough seats to form a government only with the help of the center and the BVP. It didn't come to that. After all, the center supported Hermann Göring as President of the Reichstag . Hindenburg did not agree to a Hitler government because he did not consider such a step to be justifiable. The newly elected Reichstag met on September 12th. Since the Reichstag elections again failed to bring a majority for the government, Hindenburg had already decided to dissolve the Reichstag - and thus again elections. Papen wanted to read this order to Hindenburg, but Göring, as the new President of the Reichstag, overlooked him and instead gave the floor to the parliamentary group leader of the KPD, Ernst Torgler , who immediately requested that the Reichstag express mistrust of the Reich government. The former President of the Reichstag, Paul Löbe of the SPD, also made a similar request. After that no more requests to speak were allowed and a vote was taken. The Reichstag expressed mistrust for Papen with 512 votes to 42. Both the government and the parliamentary majority were no longer in a position to carry out a constructive policy because the differences were too strong to form a new government with a majority in parliament. The Reichstag was dissolved and new elections were scheduled for November 6, 1932 .
Results overview
| Political party | Votes (absolute) | Votes (in percent) | modification | Sit in the Reichstag | modification |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| National Socialist German Workers' Party - Hitler Movement (NSDAP) | 13,745,680 | 37.3% | + 19.0% | 230 | +123 |
| Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) | 7,959,712 | 21.6% | −2.9% | 133 | −10 |
| Communist Party of Germany (KPD) | 5,282,636 | 14.3% | +1.2% | 89 | +12 |
| German Center Party (Center) | 4,589,430 | 12.4% | + 0.6% | 75 | +7 |
| German National People's Party (DNVP) | 2,178,024 | 5.9% | −1.1% | 37 | −4 |
| Bavarian People's Party (BVP) | 1,192,684 | 3.2% | + 0.2% | 22nd | +3 |
| German People's Party (DVP) | 436.002 | 1.2% | −3.3% | 7th | −23 |
| German State Party (DStP) | 373,339 | 1.0% | −2.8% | 4th | −16 |
| Christian Social People's Service (CSVD) | 364,543 | 1.0% | −1.5% | 3 | −11 |
| Reich Party of the German Mittelstand ("WP") | 146.876 | 0.4% | −3.5% | 2 | −21 |
| German Farmers Party (DBP) | 137.133 | 0.4% | −0.6% | 2 | −4 |
| Landbund | 96,851 | 0.3% | −0.3% | 2 | −1 |
| German country people | 90,554 | 0.3% | −2.8% | 1 | −18 |
| Reich Party for People's Law and Appreciation (People's Law Party) | 40,825 | 0.1% | −0.7% | 1 | +1 |
| Others | 248.065 | 0.7% | −0.2% | 0 | −7 |
| total | 36,882,354 | 100.0% | 608 | +31 |
Parties with the highest number of votes by constituency (the percentage of the strongest party is given)
See also
- List of members of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic (6th electoral term)
- List of constituencies and constituency associations of the Weimar Republic
Individual evidence
- ↑ The German Empire. Reichstag election July 1932 Andreas Gonschior.
- ↑ The German Empire. Reichstag election 1930 Andreas Gonschior.
- ^ Heinrich August Winkler : Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. Beck, Munich 1993, p. 478.
- ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. Beck, Munich 1993, pp. 480-484.
- ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. Beck, Munich 1993, p. 489.
- ↑ Eyck, Erich: History of the Weimar Republic. Volume Two: From the Locarno Conference to Hitler's takeover. 2nd edition, Erlenbach-Zurich / Stuttgart: Eugen Rentsch Verlag 1956, p. 502.
- ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. Beck, Munich 1993, pp. 490-493.
- ↑ LeMO The "Prussian Strike"
- ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. Beck, Munich 1993, p. 504.
- ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. Beck, Munich 1993, p. 504.
- ↑ Jürgen W. Falter: The elections of 1932/33 and the rise of the totalitarian parties Online version ( Memento of the original from October 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. P. 274.
- ↑ Jürgen W. Falter: The elections of 1932/33 and the rise of the totalitarian parties Online version ( Memento of the original from October 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. P. 274.
- ↑ Jürgen W. Falter: The elections of 1932/33 and the rise of the totalitarian parties Online version ( Memento of the original from October 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. P. 277.
- ↑ Jürgen W. Falter: The elections of 1932/33 and the rise of the totalitarian parties Online version ( Memento of the original from October 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. P. 274.
- ↑ Oded Heilbronner: "Hitler's voters in southern Germany." In: House of History Baden-Württemberg (ed.): Side by side - with each other - against each other? On the coexistence of Jews and Catholics in southern Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries. “Laupheim Talks”, Bleicher, Gerlingen 2002, pp. 183–198.
- ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. Beck, Munich 1993, p. 506.
- ↑ Jürgen W. Falter: The elections of 1932/33 and the rise of the totalitarian parties Online version ( Memento of the original from October 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. P. 274.
- ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. Beck, Munich 1993, p. 507.
- ↑ Reinhard Sturm: Destruction of Democracy 1930 - 1932 Dossier, Federal Agency for Civic Education , 2011.
- ↑ Jürgen W. Falter: The elections of 1932/33 and the rise of the totalitarian parties Online version ( Memento of the original from October 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. P. 274.
- ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. Beck, Munich 1993, p. 506f.
- ^ Heinrich August Winkler : Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. Beck, Munich 1993, p. 507f.
- ↑ Art. 54 Weimar Constitution, third section in full.
- ↑ Jürgen W. Falter: The elections of 1932/33 and the rise of the totalitarian parties Online version ( Memento of the original from October 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. P. 274.
- ^ Ludger Grevelhörster: Brief history of the Weimar Republic . Aschendorff, Münster 2003, p. 175.
- ^ DHM - German Historical Museum Foundation: Chronicle 1932 , section September - 12.09.
- ↑ Reinhard Sturm: Destruction of Democracy 1930 - 1932. bpb , section Reichstag elections 1932 - explanation of the vote of no confidence.
literature
- Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37646-0 .
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