This chapter analyzes why the SPD failed to stop the collapse of the Weimar Republic and whether it could have averted this outcome, discusses the lessons that German Social Democrats drew from this failure, and assesses to what extent the history of Weimar democracy and its collapse is relevant for analyzing the threat or reality of democratic breakdown in the contemporary world. The SPD leadership decided not to initiate any direct protest action to oppose the Nazi takeover. The chapter argues that any such action, if it had been undertaken, would very likely have been crushed and proven ineffective. There is no imminent threat of democratic breakdown in contemporary Germany or Western Europe. However, the Nazi takeover was the culmination of a process of executive aggrandizement that characterizes many contemporary cases of democratic decline and breakdown. Champions of democracy must combat this process from the outset – before it is too late.

The final chapter examines the impact that the intense struggle over secularism had on German politics in the years 1930 to 1933. This chapter examines the many camps involved in this struggle. In particular it aims to demonstrate that antisecularism became a key binding agent for formations on the right that were promoting authoritarian solutions to the deepening political crisis. It looks at the role of church leaders in elaborating the slogan of “cultural Bolshevism” and promoting church militancy and calling for a “Christian front” to battle godlessness. It will make an original contribution to the significant recent scholarship on the collaboration of the Christian churches and National Socialism but bringing to the table not the religious, but rather a confessional basis of collusion. The affirmation of “positive Christianity” in the 1920 program of the NSDAP reflected the party’s commitment to an ecumenical struggle against secularism and Judaism. Hitler repeatedly placed his party’s position on religion in a quasi-confessional context.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century and lasting well into the Cold War, socialism represented the most powerful and sustained force of political and social dissent in Europe. Prior to the First World War, this dissent operated largely outside of the dominant order. Socialist political parties were excluded from participation in government and the industrial actions undertaken by labor unions were often met with violence and state repression. After the war, the socialist movement split into rival Social Democratic and Communist parties. The former entered government in many countries, while the latter contributed substantially to the political polarization that fed the emergence of authoritarian regimes across much of Europe.