The Greatest Stupidity of My Life

On the day after Adolf Hitler's installation as chancellor, Alfred Hugenberg, the chairman of the German National People's Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei or DNVP) and a prominent member of the Hitler cabinet, supposedly remarked: 'I've just committed the greatest stupidity of my life; I have allied myself with the greatest demagogue in world history. Whether apocryphal or not, the remark attributed to Hugenberg nevertheless reflects the uneasiness that the Nationalist Party leader felt upon his entry into the Hitler cabinet on 30 January 1933. After all, Hugenberg had been repeatedly disappointed by his personal experiences with Hitler, first in 1929-30 in connection with the National Committee for the German Referendum against the Young Plan (Reichsausschuss fur das deutsche Volksbegehren gegen den Young Plan) and then more recently in 1931-32 as Hitler's confederate in the short-lived 'Harzburg Front'. Moreover, Hugenberg's party had waged a particularly vitriolic campaign against the Nazi Party in both the July and November 1932 Reichstag elections, and there was strong opposition within party ranks to an accommodation with the nazis that did not sufficiently secure the vital interests of those whom the DNVP purportedly represented. All of this suggests that Hugenberg's decision to enter the Hitler cabinet was not an easy one and that it took place in spite of strong personal reservations both on the part of Hugenberg and many of his most ardent supporters. While the secondary literature on the formation of the Hitler government is by now quite extensive, neither it nor the various studies of Hugenberg's political career have provided an altogether adequate explanation of Hugenberg's role in the negotiations that led to Hitler's installation as chancellor.2 The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to examine the factors that led Hugenberg to set aside his

Cabinet (room · German · Nazi Germany · Nazism · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · Stupidity · European history and politics · German History and Society · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Psychology

• Conservative Parties and the Birth of Modern Democracy in Europe

  Open Access•Daniel Ziblatt•Conservative Parties and the…•2017

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