11 - The Road Back to Power

Summary

Chapter 11 covers the period from the DNVP’s resignation from the first Luther cabinet in October 1925 to its reentry into the national government in January 1927. In particular, this chapter examines the deteriorating situation in the German countryside and increased pressure from organized agriculture for the DNVP to rejoin the national government in order to protect the domestic market against agricultural imports from abroad. Industry, too, had become frustrated with the DNVP’s absence in the national government and intensified its pressure on the party for a reassessment of its coalition strategy. But the patriotic Right – and particularly the Stahlhelm, which had fallen more and more under the influence of Theodor Duesterberg and the militantly anti-Weimar elements on its right wing – strongly resisted any move that might presage the DNVP’s return to the government. Shocked by the impressive showing of middle-class splinter parties in the Saxon state elections in late October 1926, the DNVP responded to overtures from the DVP and Center to explore the possibility of reorganizing the government and entered into negotiations that ended with its entry into the fourth Marx cabinet in January 1927.