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 2 examines the infrastructure of the German Right with particular attention on the integration of industry, agriculture, Christian labor, and the different sectors of the German middle class into the organizational structure of the DNVP. It also deals with the way in which industry, agriculture, Christian labor, and the German middle classes organized themselves in order to represent their special interests within the framework of Germany’s new republican order. The high degree of interest articulation that this involved, however, subjected the DNVP to centrifugal pressures that were sometimes difficult contain and that posed a threat to the party’s unity and political effectiveness. Still, the DNVP was remarkably successful in anchoring itself in Germany’s conservative milieu since its founding a year and a half earlier and was well on its way to developing into a socially heterogeneous conservative Sammelpartei. Interest articulation that this involved, however, subjected the DNVP to centrifugal pressures that were sometimes difficult contain and that posed a threat to the party’s unity and political effectiveness. Still, the DNVP was remarkably successful in anchoring itself in Germany’s conservative milieu in the short period since its founding and was well on its way to developing into a socially heterogeneous conservative Sammelpartei.