Schwarz-Rot-Gold! - A Weimar Germany TL
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Chapter 6: Long Live the Weimar Republic
Chapter 6: Long Live the Weimar Republic
“The ‘Republik von Weimar’ or alternatively ‘Weimarer Republik’ was a term first coined in reference to the German Republic by Adolf Hitler at a speech in Münich in February of 1929. It was not necessarily an instant classic; at that point, the NSDAP had still yet to reach its peak in popularity. But it caught on soon enough.
Every party in Germany came to use their own terminology when referencing the Republic. The National Assembly, who had first declared the Republic all the way back in 1919, had it referred to as ‘Deutsches Reich’ in the first article of the new constitution. The term ‘Reich’ became widely used by many on the conservative right, with the exception of the Centre party, who often referred to it as ‘Deutscher Volksstaat’ or the ‘German People’s State’. Finally, the SPD, the most dominant party in Germany by far often called it ‘Deutsche Republik’ or the German Republic, which continues to be used quite often today. However, arguably the most popular term for Germany has been that of the ‘Weimar Republic,’ a term that, from its inception, was dripping with vitriol for its very subject. It has since then become a clever play on dialogue in the toolbox of every major German political party along the far right. From the contemporary DNVP to more modern examples like the ‘Nationalsozialistische Aktionsfront Deutschlands’ (NSAD).
The name denoted a belief promoted by many on the German far-right, and one especially popular amongst your average German during the difficult times of the Great Depression. That the Republic had been declared and born not of popular revolt but instead had come to be as a result of a punishment imposed upon the German people. Decided on by a group of bureaucrats and bourgeois intellectuals in a smoky room in a city far from the centers of government administration in Berlin. To the German people, the term ‘Weimar Republic’ was meant to represent every hardship they had been subject to in the last decade.
So it’s remarkable, then, that a term such as ‘Weimar Republic’, which was intended so clearly to be a slap in the face to the Republic and its constitution, did not become shunned by the mainstream parties but instead adopted and worn as a badge of honor by Germany's democratic proponents.”
- The Etymology of Weimar, Franklin McAdoo, University of St Andrews
“Today, we cast off the failures of bygone eras, and we will walk into a brighter future for all of Germany; long live the Weimar Republic!”
- Excerpt from the inauguration speech of German President Otto Braun, August 3rd, 1932
“The post office was a mess by the end of the battle. I still remember coming out after all the shootings had stopped. A group of soldiers escorted many of us down the road, still fearful of Nazi retaliatory strikes. But if the rats were waiting for us, hiding in the gutters, then we never saw snout nor tail of them.
When I arrived at the post office I thought my coworkers and Jan especially would be at least somewhat confused or upset as to where I was on my own birthday. There were plates out, and a cake half-eaten on the table when I walked in. But rather than bombard me with questions my friends gathered around and hugged me tightly. Jan must’ve thanked the soldiers with me about a hundred times before he was satisfied and we sat down for cake. They’d gone out and bought gifts for me too. I got new socks and a photograph of us in our first group photo in front of the building in an exquisite frame; Jan had even gone through the trouble of procuring a new suit for me. I was simply glad that my friends were still alive after that mess. But the best birthday gift wasn’t the physical gifts they gave me.
No, the best gift was when we had settled down with our festivities, and came to the realization of just how ransacked the post office had become. The Nazis had tossed firebombs, rocks, and all manner of garbage through windows, and graffitied walls. From what Jan said, a couple of them had taken upon themselves the challenge of attempting to shoot a roosted Pidgeon somewhere near the top floor and had riddled the side with bullets in the process when some genius had decided to try using the machine gun they’d brought with them. But as we began winding down our celebration of life, and began attempting to clean up around the place, one of the men with me earlier tapped me on the shoulder. He tried to communicate in extremely botched Polish, which I couldn’t understand at all, but after a few minutes of trying to explain, he simply set his gun down and snatched up a broom from the corner. Then his friend did the same, none of us quite knew what to make of it at first. So we didn’t say anything, and we all got to work tidying up the post office. Then more soldiers passed by, and the two helping us barked something at them in German, they dashed off and returned with an extremely important-looking officer. The two soldiers saluted the man as he approached, he was a hard-looking old fellow, with eyes chiseled out of stainless steel. He scanned us for a good long while, gave the building a once-over, turned on his heel, and marched back down the road. Ten minutes later, he returned with some soldiers and a few civilians, most of them poles who could speak German. They came with panes of glass, and buckets of paint, one of the men walked right up to us, smiled, and asked,
“May we help?”
Of course, we said yes. When we had finished, one of the Germans ran to the top floor of the building and hoisted the Danzig flag. We cheered him from below. One of the soldiers was a photographer in his free time, we took one together in front of the post office, all of us posing like we were in some kind of special unit or battalion. The post office battalion. The very next day, I went down to the store and bought myself another picture frame. It has sat on my desk for the last 19 years.”
- A Postman’s Journal, by Alfons Flisykowski
“In contrast with the events of its past twelve years of existence, the rest of the 1930s were perhaps the closest thing to a second gilded era for Weimar Germany. The trial of the ultranationalists was quickly settled in court, and each and every one of them was given very lengthy sentences. Despite Hitler's attempts, and an albeit extremely credible defense, the court still sentenced him to ten years of jail time and dissolved his party and paramilitary force.
Danzig was far more of a tough pill to swallow. While the population was extremely happy to see German troops in its streets, they were not to stay there for very long. The risk the government had taken by moving troops into a neutral country, against the wills of the neighboring poles, for the purpose of shutting down Forster and his putsch was an extremely calculated one. It was thus always the intention of Jarres’ government to, in the end, withdraw from the territory. Though many, especially the German population, were sad to see them go. The military high command in charge of the operations in Danzig was especially displeased, both German and Polish, and over the next five years, Poland would sponsor a migration of ethnic Poles to the area to prevent a similar situation from ever again developing. This arguably would continue to create tensions in the area, but these concerns would largely be swept away during the 1940s, and while there was still a significant shift to the conservative parties, with the main nationalist parties rounded up, there was little else to be done.
Then things came to the German government itself. Though they had successfully survived the ordeal, Jarres would not be recognized for many of his accomplishments. In fact, many more liberal Germans at the time would see him as a spark that almost burned down the Republic. On the other hand, conservatives saw Jarres as both too close to the left and center, as well as not as willing to uphold the principles of liberal democracy. The death of Gustav Streseman just 3 years earlier also accelerated his party’s waning popularity crisis. As a result, Jarres would overwhelmingly lose the presidential election of 1932, vacating his position to Otto Braun of the SPD.
Brauns next 7 years in office would be marked by an era of quiet times for the average German. A steady recovery after the Depression and a policy of disinvolvement in greater European politics. Germany, for the next few years, would face inward, step back, and enjoy an era of blissful peace. It wasn't quite the Golden Era of the Republic like in the 20s, and there were many not-insignificant shifts in German politics. Such as, for example, the shift of the German Centre Party to the much more conservative right under Franz von Papen. However, from the end of the depression to the beginning of the 1940s, Germany would regain its footing, rebuild, and restructure, and when eventually the time did come, and the Republic would again be tested by its enemies, this time they would be ready.”
- The Years of Anarchy: Germany from 1929-1932, by David Schmidt
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SPD better be getting some economic policy done or this isn't gonna last long.
I'm glad you picked up on that! And just as forewarning, don't count your chickens before they've hatched.
It wouldn’t have been that simple. One of the long-standing problems of the Weimar Republic was that the civil service and judiciary still held to past loyalties, and thus tended to be very lenient towards the right while being harsh to the left. It’s no coincidence that Hitler received a joke of a sentence after 1923 while Ebert had to deal with mock trials.
I'll tell you this, this is them being lenient. And we haven't seen the last of moustache man yet.
I mean why is the population pro Weimer after this? Marching in and putting down Germans, to give Danzig back to Poland, which only redoubles its discrimination in a 'free state', would be catnip for rightist forces across Germany.
Nationalist demands were popular across the German political spectrum. The way to hold off the Nazis, or a rightist strongman of some kind, is for the mainstream to be seen as able to achieve political wins.
Nationalist demands were popular across the German political spectrum. The way to hold off the Nazis, or a rightist strongman of some kind, is for the mainstream to be seen as able to achieve political wins.
It would be if there were any ultranationalist mainstream parties left. The most reasonable outcome is also a large increase in the rest of the conservative parties. Like the Conservative Peoples Party that rose after the DNVP collapsed, and Zentrum (which is increasingly turning towards Franz Von Papen). However, the SPD is still able to form a semblance of a coalition, and continued economic prosperity means it LARGELY stays that way.
Chapter 7: The Match Struck
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Chapter 7: The Match Struck
“The early years of the Fascist government of the Italian Empire were marked by the widespread suppression and assassinations of leaders of the Italian left-wing, such as Giacomo Matteotti. Over the course of their dominance in the Italian parliament, the fascists forced out other parties and elected officials, replacing them with appointed positions subservient to Mussolini. By the 1930s Italy was a fully autocratized state, rife with militant nationalism and a fervent hatred of liberal democracy and communism alike.
So it came as somewhat of a surprise on September 2nd, 1933, when the Italian ‘Duce’ Benito Mussolini, met in Moscow with the General Secretary of the Communist Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, and between them signed the ‘Pact of Friendship, Neutrality, and Nonaggression between Italy and the Soviet Union’. Internally, the respective authoritarians were able to largely hand-wave the treaty under their own pretenses, be it the greater threat of the Bourgeois democracies or the socialist origins of the Fascist movement itself. However, from the outside, the two totalitarian powers of Europe signing an alliance was not only confusing but incredibly worrisome.
Mussolini had been espousing irridentist rhetoric since before his rise to power and continued to eye the much-desired Dalmatian coast. Stalin likewise expressed a desire to reclaim lost land from the civil war, especially in neighboring Poland, with whom it still had a score to settle. Together, the two could and would very easily dismantle the entire system that had kept Europe at peace for the last decade.
Britain and France especially feared the Communists who had been European pariahs since even well before their rise in the 1920s. However, it was still believed that the differences between Italy and the Soviets would eventually prove too great and the alliance would break apart over time. They would be proven terribly incorrect.”
- The Spectres, by Michelle Boyd
“Erich Ludendorff was once one of the most revered and respected figures in Germany. He had led the German army in numerous victories across the Western front. Though, as fate would have it, seeking the same credit as his partner, Hindenburg, he would instead receive the blame for Germany’s failures in the closing hours of the war. He was removed from his position, and suffering from a cantankerous attitude brought on by 5 years of battle fatigue, Ludendorff withdrew from public life.
Perhaps as a result of feeling wrongfully blamed for German failures, perhaps because he had no other scapegoat than the missing Kaiser, Ludendorff became a founding espouser of what the Germans called ‘Dolchstosslegende’, or ‘Stab-in-the-Back Myth’. The failures of the war that shattered Germany as they had known it was no longer the fault of an extremely erratic general, but instead of the Jews, the Communists, and the Republicans. Ludendorff very quickly became a figure for the German far-right and was openly supportive of numerous attempts to overthrow the Republic. From the Kapp Putsch in 1920, to the German Constitutional Crisis in 1930. Ironically after that last attempt at revolution, the German general would be forced to leave the country altogether, to never again return home.
However, unlike many of his compatriots, who sought refuge in Austria or Italy, Ludendorff and many of those loyal and associated with him, would flee to the unlikely nation of the Empire of Japan. There, the retired general would publish his most divisive and nationalistic work, ‘Der totale Krieg’. This book, which would be banned in Germany shortly after its publishing, became extremely popular in Japan, especially among the developing far-right cliques within the military and officer corps of the empire. Ludendorff, for the next seven years of his life, would travel across Japan, meeting with extremists in the Japanese military. Including Kanji Ishiwara, Seishirō Itagaki, and Tetsuzan Nagata, all of whom would become the ringleaders of the Mukden Incident, which would ignite the burning fire of militarism in Japan. A force that, given time, would eventually burn its own nation to the ground.”
- The Death of Japanese Democracy, by Katayama Goro
“The Italo-Soviet Axis, as it would eventually come to be known, got off to an extremely rocky start. The Italians and Soviets would repeatedly end up on opposite ends of conflicts. The Soviets would openly oppose the Italian conquest in the Horn of Africa, and when Spain exploded into civil war in 1936, the two supported opposite sides, with the Italians ‘Corpo Truppe Volontarie’ forming to support the Nationalists, and thousands of Soviet men joined the international brigades to fight for the Republicans. The civil war especially became a massive sore spot for the alliance, and during the course of the war, it seemed to the rest of Europe that the two came to the closest they ever were of breaking off their detente.
However, despite outward appearances, throughout the 1930s, Italo-Soviet cooperation only deepened further. The Italians sent hundreds of planes and bombs which the Soviets would weaponize against the Basmachi rebels in Central Asia and the population of Xinjiang. When Italy invaded Ethiopia, the Soviets publicly decried the move yet continued to trade secretly with the Italians and even supplied Soviet helmets to their army. Even during the height of tensions, the Soviets and Italians maintained a correspondence and the Italian volunteers outright tried to avoid battles with Soviet brigades. Soviet captains of the Red Fleet even met with Mussolini, who graciously received and treated the Soviets to a lunch in Naples.
But the Great Powers of Britain and France, continued to anticipate a looming breakup between the Italo-Soviet pact. Chief among them was Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, who in popular history is often regarded as approaching the entire situation without any sort of prudence, ignoring the rising tensions until they finally could not be ignored. Many forget, however, that Chamberlain consistently tried to break up the alliance in a number of ways, attempting to play into Mussolini's anti-communism and appealing to his virulent irridentism with offers of land. In other ways too, the British and French did make real and tangible efforts to defang the Axis before it rose to prominence and enforce their ‘peace in Europe’. All efforts that we know with hindsight failed. And there was no more spectacular of a failure of this peace than on April 26th, 1939, during the events that would eventually become known as the Little War.”
- The Spectres, by Michelle Boyd
“The aftermath of the Mukden Incident of 1931, and Japan's subsequent invasion and occupation of Manchuria were marked by a massive rise of Japanese militarism. The 10,000-strong occupational force directly disobeyed the Japanese government and even the orders of the Emperor himself, refusing to stand down. Despite the Japanese government complying as best they could with the League of Nations and the Chinese government led by the ‘Guómíndǎng’ (KMT), the ministers of government were faced with the difficult truth that they had lost credibility and control of their military force. Quickly, the public fell into hysteria and war fever, which was exacerbated and exploited by reactionaries across Japan. Prolific speakers, sometimes non-Japanese, such as Erich Ludendorff or Werner von Blomberg, voiced their complaints of the complacency and pacifism of weak constitutional governments and their belief that Japan was destined to overthrow these shambling governments and establish a pure military government.
The situation deteriorated quickly, and on the night of the 15th of May in 1932, a group of officers stormed the residence of the Japanese prime minister and murdered him. It would be the first of many politically-motivated assassinations. The trial meant to shun and condemn the murderers became a soap box upon which they were able to stand and voice their criticisms to all of Japan. In the years following a series of more political murders and attempts at intimidation would arise. The nationalist groups at play in Japan, most importantly the radical ‘Kōdōha’ and the more moderate but still extremist ‘Tōseiha’, fought not only against the constitutional government but with one another as well. The ‘Kōdōha’ despised modernity and wished to wage a national war against the corrupting ideologies of Bolshevism and the West. Meanwhile, the ‘Tōseiha’ wished to make use of Western modernization as a weapon to improve Japan under the plans of ‘Total Mobilization’ to claim dominance over all of Asia. These two groups grew in size and strength throughout their campaign of terror in Japan and made use of what common ground united their movement to, in turn, divide Japan against itself and force the change they wished to see. Despite this, the 1936 general elections were a major defeat for them, with the pacifistic and constitutional government being upheld by the democratic process, and yet all that was about to change.
On the 26th of February, 1936. Young officers of the Kōdōha faction again tried to commit to a violent overthrow of the government. Calling themselves; ‘The Righteous Army’ led by Jinzaburō Mazaki, occupied key government areas and murdered multiple government ministers, demanding the formation of a military cabinet centered around Mazaki. The ‘Supreme Military Council’ (SMC) issued an official response, one heavily influenced by the Kōdōha minister of war; Sadao Araki. The public recognition of the movement led to another uproar of support for the nationalists among pro-Kōdōha units, especially in the Japanese client states and occupied nations like Korea and Manchuria, whose garrisons mutinied in support of the rebels. Meanwhile, the emperor and his cabinet sat on the verge of a war. The court ministers and the Emperor himself were in agreement that they could absolutely not tolerate the actions of the Kōdōha any longer but were in no position to shut them down. A stalemate settled in over that afternoon, with an air of tension settling like smog over Tokyo. As evening settled, the tension would finally snap with the sound of gunshots in the street. In response to the rebels' actions, those loyal to the Tōseiha attempted to shut down any neutral or non-acting parties of the Kōdōha that were on the fence, the ruthless Kempeitai, under the orders of Hideki Tojo, a prominent Tōseiha supporter, they arrested and executed hundreds of officers. In response, and as all negotiations broke down, fighting exploded in the streets, ignoring calls from the government to cease; the military moved in and occupied the city. With the Tōseiha largely seizing control of the parliament and court cabinet. As night fell, ferocious fires rose like pillars over cities all across the Japanese Empire. The Japanese Civil War had officially begun.”
- Fires in the East: East Asias Civil Wars 1936-1954, by Allen Burnes
I HAVE RETURNED! Sorry for the delay on this chapter. I've been in crunch time for my tests in school, so I haven't been able to write much. Updates will still be slow, and I'm also working a lot on my other TL, "Kingdom of Kowloon," so this has taken a bit of a backseat lately. Worry not; I'm still working on it, and Chapter 8 is already in the works! Thank you all so so much for your support for this TL so far! I hope to deliver more chapters soon!
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Thank you! Sorry for the late reply. If I get anything wrong send it in replies and I can correct it!
Lol, indeed it is. But don't worry, there is still fun to be had in China!
I should probably clarify that the civil war breaking out, despite similar conditions to our own TL, is here meant to largely be attributed to Ludendorff and several other ejected Nazis influencing Japanese militarists. It is not PURELY them, but it is a push in the more extreme direction having him there to actually voice his opinions with a large audience rather than write them in a book which is then adapted to Japanese.