JUSTICE - No. 66

51 Spring 2021 extremists into rulers of much of Europe was the failure of Weimar’s governing elites and institutions to deal with the crises facing German society during the interwar years. Nazism had its roots in the late 19th century in nationalist movements that appeared across Europe during the interwar period. Although they varied from place to place, nationalists during this time shared a virulent opposition to democracy and liberalism and a belief that the nation — often defined in religious or racial terms — represented the most important source of identity for all true citizens, and that leaders and states must therefore protect it. Such movements became disruptive forces in some European countries during the fin de siècle , but they did not fundamentally challenge existing political orders before 1914. Their appeals and policies alone, in other words, did not make them truly dangerous or revolutionary. It would take World War I to do that. World War I killed, maimed, and traumatized millions of Europeans, and it physically and economically devastated much of the continent. Making matters worse, the end of the war, rather than ushering in a period of peace and reconstruction, brought an unending stream of social and economic problems. Despite these and other problems, fascists at first remained marginal forces. In Italy, the fascists received almost no votes in the country’s first postwar elections. In Germany, a variety of right-wing insurrections, including Hitler’s 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, failed. As time passed, the Weimar Republic and other interwar democratic regimes proved unable to deal with the continuing and escalating problems. Hyperinflation hit Germany in the early 1920s, wiping out the savings of much of the German middle class. The Weimar Republic had barely recovered from this trauma when the Great Depression hit in the early 1930s. By the time the Great Depression occurred, faith in democracy had already seriously diminished because of hyperinflation and other problems plaguing the Weimar Republic. Nonetheless, the Nazis had not yet benefited from growing democratic dissatisfaction: in 1928, the last election before the Depression, the NSDAP won less than 3% of the vote in national elections. When the Depression hit, dissatisfaction with democracy exploded. What proved so catastrophic about the Depression was not merely the economic suffering it caused, but also the failure of democratic elites, parties, and institutions to respond to it. One can see this via a comparison between Germany and the United States — the two countries hit the hardest by the Depression (with the highest levels of unemployment, rates of business collapse, drops in production, and so on). In the United States, this suffering did promote the popularity of pseudo-fascist leaders such as the Louisiana politician Huey Long and the radio preacher Father Coughlin. While democracy in the United States had a longer history and was more robust than in Germany, it is still crucial to explain why anti-democratic figures and movements did not achieve greater success in the United States. The reason was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pivotal recognition that if the Depression was not forcefully addressed, threats to democracy would increase. Accordingly, he promised“a new deal for the American people” that would address the economic suffering ravaging the country that threatened social stability. By showing citizens that government could address their immediate suffering and pull the country out of the Depression, the New Deal was designed to restore faith in democracy. In Germany, on the other hand, Weimar governments did little to address either immediate suffering or the long-term causes of the Depression. In fact, German governments in the early 1930s pursued austerity policies that exacerbated the economic downswing in general and the horrifically high rates of unemployment in particular. Even the main opposition party, the Social Democrats, meekly sat by, offering little in the way of an attractive alternative program. This left the field open for the Nazis, who were able to take advantage of the declining faith in democracy that accompanied the Depression. The NSDAP criticized democracy as inefficient, unresponsive, and weak. The party promised to replace it with a new system that would end unemployment and use the state to protect citizens from capitalism’s most destructive effects by creating jobs, expanding the welfare state (for “true” citizens only), eliminating “unscrupulous”capitalists (primarily Jews) who exploited “the people,” and instead funnel resources to those businesses that served the“national interest.” The party also promised to end the divisions and conflicts that had weakened Germany, and it pledged to restore to society a sense of pride and purpose. The Nazi vote exploded: from 2.6% in 1928 to 18% in 1930 to 33% in 1932. Despite this, Nazis still could not seize power on their own; they needed the support of conservatives who worked behind the scenes to get President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. The lesson that we learn from the Weimar Republic is that it is more helpful to understand extremism as a