I am writing this at Christmas time and my granddaughters will be going to their pantos at some point, so I’m inspired to call this short piece on the three dominant figures from among the elite in the early 1930s: Paul von Hindenburg, Kurt von Schleicher and Franz von Papen, the Three Ugly Sisters. I think they deserve it, but I hope you’ll forgive me.
Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was the much-revered figurehead of Germany’s noble fight in the Great War. His status remained untarnished even though he did no better on the Western Front than anyone else (his reputation was largely earned on the Eastern Front where he faced the badly led, badly organised, Russians) and he took a giant step backwards, and away from blame, when it all went belly up.
He stood for everything that was traditional Germany: monarchy, authoritarianism, militarism, and in 1925 he became President of Germany on a seven-year term at the age of seventy-eight. So that when, in the early 1930s, Germany faced its greatest economic crisis since 1923, the President was of the opinion that democracy should be dropped in favour of a conservative dictatorship. Ultimately, the Republic and its democratic institutions were not going to be defended by its President. But he wasn’t a politician either so that when what became known as ‘presidential government’ failed, in 1932, he wasn’t able to protect the traditional elite either.
Kurt von Schleicher, the army’s political voice, became firmly entrenched in the circle around President Hindenburg. He is described by William L. Shirer as ‘the devious figure who, more than any other single individual, was destined to dig the grave of the Republic …’[1] Under General von Seeckt he had played an important role in setting up and organizing the Freikorps and the Black Reichswehr in Bavaria, and he played a key role in the negotiations with Moscow that enabled the German army to circumvent restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles on armaments. His aim, like so many of the elite, was to bring about the return of an authoritarian regime, and he saw in the Nazi’s the means by which this might be legitimised.
Franz von Papen was an old personal friend of Hindenburg. He was a landed aristocrat. He had joined the General Staff during WW1 having been expelled from America where he had been the German military attache, for ‘activities incompatible with his statues’ (spying). After the war he became a member of the Centre Party, the major share-holder of its newspaper, Germania, and had been a Centre Party delegate in the Prussian parliament, if a not very active one. However, he fell out with them when he supported Hindenburg’s candidacy for the presidency in 1925, and had handed in his party card. He was very much to the Right of German politics. He was to become the first Chancellor not to even have a seat in the Reichstag.
So, there you have them, the men who steered Germany away from democracy and towards the Nazi dictatorship: the Third Reich. I think they deserve the epitaph: the Three Ugly Sisters.