Chapter 15 covers the period from the fall of 1928 to the summer of 1929 with particular emphasis on the resurgence of the radical Right and the quest for right-wing unity culminating in the campaign against the Young Plan. What this reveals is a heated conflict between the DNVP and Stahlhelm for the leadership of the “national opposition” that was resolved only when the latter agreed to postpone its plans for a referendum to revise the Weimar Constitution so that Hugenberg could proceed with his own plans for a referendum against the Young Plan. But Hugenberg’s efforts to unify the German Right behind his crusade against the Young Plan ran into strong opposition from right-wing moderates who denounced a provision in the so-called “Freedom Law” that threatened government officials, including Hindenburg, who were responsible for negotiating the plan with imprisonment. Hugenberg’s refusal to drop the imprisonment paragraph reflected his determination to retain the support of Hitler and the NSDAP at the risk of alienating the RLB and more moderate elements in the referendum alliance. In the final analysis, the campaign against the Young Plan did not strengthen right-wing unity but only revealed how elusive that unity was.

Chapter 13 examines the period from the campaign for the May 1928 Reichstag elections to Alfred Hugenberg’s election as DNVP party chairman in October 1928. The DNVP went down to stunning defeat in the May elections that stemmed in large part from the success of middle-class and agrarian splinter parties to cannibalize the Nationalist electorate. The defeat was followed by a bitter internal crisis in which Westarp found himself such heavy attack from Hugenberg that he resigned his seat as DNVP party chairman. This was followed by a bitter fight for the DNVP party chairmanship that found Hugenberg’s opponents so badly organized that they were unable to block his election as Westarp’s successor in October 1928. Hugenberg’s election to the DNVP chairmanship represented a critical turning point in the history of the Weimar Republic and signaled the complete collapse of Stresemann’s efforts to stabilize Germany’s republican system of government from the Right.

Chapter 10 deals with the resurgence of nationalism on Germany’s patriotic Right in the second half of the 1920s. In many respects, this can be seen as a reaction against the increasingly prominent role that organized interests had played in Germany’s economic and political stabilization in the aftermath of Hitler’s ill-fated Beer Hall putsch. This chapter examines efforts on the part of the Ring Circle to foster a greater sense of unity within the ranks of the German Right as well as developments in the Stahlhelm, its increasing alienation from the Young German Order, and renewed activism on the part of the VVVD. All of this draws to a climax in the struggle against the Locarno Pact that Stresemann negotiated with the French, British, and Belgian governments in the spring and summer of 1925. At the epicenter of this struggle is the DNVP, which as a member of Chapter 11 covers the period from the DNVP’s resignation from the first Luther cabinet in October 1925 to its reentry into the fourth Marx cabinet 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 in January and entered into negotiations that ended with its entry into the fourth Marx cabinet in January 1927.

Chapter 12 examines the DNVP’s record as a member of the Marx’s coalition government from its initial successes from the passage of the Work Hours Law and the Unemployment Insurance Act in the spring and summer of 1927 through its failure to develop an adequate legislative response to the increasingly desperate situation in which the German farmer found himself to its awkward embrace of The Law for the Protection of the Republic in May 1927. The DNVP’s situation in the Marx cabinet was further complicated by a virtual mutiny in the Stahlhelm against collaboration with the existing system of government and a revolt in the countryside spearheaded by regional RLB affiliates RLB that were no longer satisfied with the DNVP’s defense of agriculture’s economic welfare. Increasingly desperate to salvage something of its second experiment in governmental participation, the DNVP staked everything on the passage of a Reich School Law that encountered such strong opposition from the DVP that not only was the bill rejected but the governmental coalition collapsed.

Chapter 5 focuses on the various patriotic associations that stood outside the orbit of organized political conservatism and that represented an important counter-point to the way in which organized economic interests sought to use the DNVP and other non-socialist parties to promote their own agenda. The most important of these organizations was the Pan-German League, which along with its client organization, the German National Racist Protection and Defense League, espoused a particularly virulent brand of racial antisemitism that found a warm reception in many quarters of the DNVP. The patriotic Right also included the civilian defense leagues, or Einwohnerwehren, that played an important role in the suppression of revolutionary Marxism in the immediate postwar period as well as veterans’ organizations like the Stahlhelm and Young German Order. Efforts to unite these organizations in an umbrella organization known as the United Patriotic Leagues of Germany (VVVD) were only partly successful.