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 6 deals with the crisis year of 1923 and examines the German Right’s response to the hyperinflation of 1922–23, the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, the increasingly palpable fear of Bolshevism, and threat of Bavaria’s secession from the Reich. After a discussion of the DNVP’s relationship to the Cuno government that assumed office in November 1922, the chapter takes a particularly close look at its opposition to the Stresemann cabinet that assumed power at the height of the crisis in August 1923. Following the termination of passive resistance in the Ruhr, many DNVP leaders began to embrace the idea of a “national dictatorship” under the tutelage of the army commander-in-chief Hans von Seeckt as the only way out of the crisis in which Germany found itself. But movement in this direction was cut short not only by Seeckt’s ambivalence but more importantly by Hitler’s abortive “Beer Hall Putsch” in Munich. As the Stresemann government moved to consolidate its position in the aftermath of the putsch, any chance of replacing the Weimar Republic with a more authoritarian system of government had vanished.

Chapter 7 examines the DNVP’s reaction to the stabilization of Germany’s republican system under the auspices of a new government formed by the Center Party’s Wilhelm Marx in January 1924. In the campaign for the May 1924 Reichstag elections, the DNVP not only did its best to dissociate itself from the anti-social consequences of stabilization, but moved racism and antisemitism to the forefront of its campaign in an attempt to preempt attacks from the racists that had bolted the party in 1922. The result was a stunning victory at the polls that made its delegation the largest in the Reichstag. But with success comes responsibility, and the DNVP was suddenly faced with the task of voting for the Dawes Plan, a plan that in the campaign it had denounced as a “second Versailles.” In the decisive vote in August 1924, the Nationalist delegation to the Reichstag split right down the middle in a dramatic turn of events that only highlighted how deeply divided the DNVP was as it faced the prospect of governmental responsibility.

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.