A brief but well-done cartoon version of how Hitler became Chancellor of Germany 1933

How did Hitler rise to power? - Alex Gendler and Anthony Hazard TED-Ed 07/18/2016

For a five-minute video, this is remarkably good. It gets the Versailles Treaty, the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 and the Great Depression into the story, frames anti-Semitism in an accurate way, and presents Hitler as a skilled politician, which he was - very much to the detriment of the whole world including Germany.

I'm particularly impressed that it avoids completely one of my pet peeves in the accounts of Hitler's rise to power, the claim that the hyperinflation of 1923-24 led to Hitler seizing power in 1933. That argument only works if you pretty much ignore the Great Depression, which hit Germany very hard, the actual voting results from 1924-32, and the issues on which the Nazi Party campaigned. The Nazis did use parliamentary methods supplemented by street violence to come to power.

But their biggest vote total in clean elections came in summer 1932, after several years of Herbert-Hooverish economic polices that made the Depression much worse. And their vote total dropped in a second parliamentary election in 1932. There was another vote just after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 which was semi-free at best. And even then the Nazis failed to get a majority.

There's a history that is a classic from 1938 but is still a valuable sources on the politics of the Nazis takeover, Why Hitler Came Into Power by Theodore Abel.

More on Heinrich Brüning's disastrous austerity policies

I recently wrote about German historian Knut Borchardt's controversial defense of Heinrich Brüning's economic policies during his Chancellorship of 1930-32.

Geschichte und Gesellschaft 1985/3 did an issue on the controversy over Borchardt's argument, featuring four major articles.

Editor Heinrich August Winkler breaks Borchardt's argument into two main points: the German economy was dangerously wounded before Brüning's Chancellorship; and, Brüning basically had no alternatives to his deflationary policies.

Charles Maier in "Die Nicht-Determinirtheit ökonomische Modelle.Überlegungen zu Knut Borchardts These von der „kranken Wirtschaft“ makes a strong argument against Borchardt. He points out that Borchardt bases his argument about labor costs being the whole problem rests on using total production costs per employee rather than the more conventional measure of cost by hour (unit of labor). This understates productivity during the period in question (1924-1932) because starting in 1924, the hours per worker were progressively and substantially reduced to such an extent that so using headcount understates productivity; it doesn't pick up the very substantial decrease in hour worked. Maier gives figures of the metal industry that the percentage of workers that worked more than 48 hours per week was 64% in 1934, going down to 34% in 1928.

Maier also shows that the portion of national income going to labor rather than capital during the Weimar Republic after 1924 looks fairly normal in international comparison. Borchardt makes much of the fact that the percentage going to labor increased after 1924.

Maier also points out that Borchardt's argument about real wages after 1924 is misleading, because in the immediate aftermath of the hyperinflation of 1923-4, conditions were very unusual and showed an artificially low real wage level in Germany. A comparison between real wages from 1913 to 1929 had Germany at a similar or lower level than the US and Britain.

Maier describes that Borchardt's argument about Brüning having no real alternatives as essentially deterministic, i.e., Borchardt argues that what did happen had to happen.

Bernd Weisbrod in "Die Befreiung von den 'Tariffesseln'" explains how closely Borchardt's arguments reflect the general view being expressed by business lobbies during the Weimar Republic. And he gives examples of how determined some business leaders were to drive down wages. This doesn't mean that all business leaders were well-disposed toward Brüning regime. On the contrary, some wanted him to be even more partisan toward capital and against labor. Weisbord also stresses the exaggerated fears of inflation expressed by business leaders and Brüning.

Gottfried Plumpe in "Wirtschaftspolitik in der Weltwirtschaftskrise.Realität und Alternative" calls into question Borchardt's argument about excessive wages and their effects, showing that especially the chemical and electrotechnical industries were very competitive in exports despite rising prices. Wages clearly weren't pricing them out of the export market.

He observes that with a depression already pushing down wages and prices, even conservative, classical economics should have told Brüning and his government that their policy of actively pushing down wages and prices further was seriously misguided.He argues further that the onset of the financial crisis in Germany in the summer of 1931 should have been a signal to Brüning to change direction away from aggressive deflation. "Die Regierung hat mögliche Alternativen nicht einmal ernsthaft erwogen," he writes. ("The government never even seriously considered possible alternatives.")

Jürgen von Kruedener in "Die Überfordung der Weimarer Republik also Sozialstaat" makes an unconvincing argument in favor of blaming labor for Weimar's economic problem s by looking at benefits costs paid by businesses. He also takes a weak stab at making the case that public social expenditures had overwhelmed the Republic.

Tags: austerity economics, german history, heinrich brüning, knut borchardt, weimar republic

Did Heinrich Brüning have no other choice but austerity economics in the Great Depression?

German economic historian Knut Borchardt caused a stir in the late 1970s and 1980s when he offered a spirited defense of the austerity policies of the "Hunger Chancellor" Heinrich Brüning (1885-1970).

Brüning served as German Chancellor from March 30, 1930 to May 30, 1932, holding his office by Presidential decree rather than by normal Parliament electoral procedures. Unemployment and the human distress that came with it rose significantly during Brüning's Chancellorship, as did the votes for Hitler's NSDAP (Nazi Party) as they exploited the issue. The NSDAP's popular vote in parliamentary elections rose from 6.4 million in 1930 - already a huge increase in their support from 0.8 million in 1928 - to 13.7 million in 1932, for the first time getting more votes than the Social Democrats and Communists combined.

Heinrich Brüning (1885-1970)

Several things struck me in my first reading of Borchardt's argument. (Chapters 9-11 of his Wachstum, Krisen, Handlunsspielräume der Wirschaftspolitik. Studien zur Wirschafsgeschichte des 19. un 20. Jahrhunderts, 1982) One is that it sounded awfully like a dogmatic defense of Brüning's "Hunger Chancellor" policies. And he sounds like he basically wants to blame the whole economic problem of the Weimar Republic on greedy workers demanding too much in wages. Both of those inclined me to take a dim view of his argument.

And, like Brüning's other defenders, he also argues that the foreigners made him do, i.e., that the reparations demands of the First World War victor countries are largely to blame for the restricted scope of decision-making by Brüning's administration.

Between the greedy workers ruining the economy and the bad foreigners forcing him to do exactly what he did, what choice did poor Brüning have to pursue deflationary, pro-cyclical antilabor policies that exacerbated unemployment and gave the NSDAP (Nazi Party) their highest margin in Parliament in 1932?

Although he describes several possible alternatives, his descriptions are an odd mishmash of discussions of who advocated them, the fact that there were arguments against them, and suggestions that they weren't politically plausible anyway.

Doing "what if?" scenarios on historical events are tricky, and there is always an argument that what actually happened was the best of all feasible occurrences. But that method of looking at alternatives reduces history to a bare description of events. Which is why it is well suited to a polemical defense of whatever happened in the case being discussed.

The trickiness of it can be seen at the time of this writing in the January 1, 2013 tax bill that ended the phony "fiscal cliff crisis" in the US. Those who followed the disputes closely at this point could point to several feasible alternatives whose advocacy by key leaders might well have produced other results with other implications. But defenders of the deal do essentially what Borchardt does for Heinrich Brüning's entire record on economic policy as German Chancellor in 1930-32. They argue that the deal struck was the best of all possible worlds. Twenty years from now, it will be more of a challenge for an historian to make a case for alternatives, because what happened will be embedded in the various narratives of the whole period and the possible alternatives won't be so fresh in the minds even of those who followed the events closely at the time.

A more realistic way of looking at possible historical alternatives would be to state the alternatives clearly; look at who advocated those alternatives, who might have advocated them, and why those were either rejected or not seriously considered; and, examine the ways events might have developed if key decision-makers had taken an alternative approach.

Brüning's failures are most remembered now for their implications on the events that followed, which led to Adolf Hitler's appointment as Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Virtually everyone would agree that some alternative that would have avoided that eventuality could have produced a much better result for Germany and the world.

And the outlines of an alternative scenario to Hitler's actual selection as Chancellor are not that hard to produce. President von Hindenburg could have decided to keep Hitler out of the government. The key political figures in the decision like Kurt von Schleicher could have taken different positions. Hitler's Chancellorship wasn't a foreordained event of destiny. It was the result of concrete decisions taken by real people, people who could have decided differently. There are many other ways to approach that question, such as looking at the positions of the various political parties in the year before. And any "what if" scenario requires a certain amount of humility from the historian, a quality not always in abundant supply among academics. But there are more reasonable approaches than Borchardt's.

Borchardt was looking at a longer series of events than a discrete decision like Hitler's appointment as Chancellor. But he effectively eliminates any look at what might have happened if Brüning or other key figures had insisted on a very different course of action. If Brüning had refused to continue his austerity course and insisted to the Western Allies that the Weimar Republic would be destroyed if he did, France might have proved more accommodating than they actually were. Similarly, Borchardt seems oblivious to the fact that the NSDAP was benefiting mightily from the dire economic conditions Brüning's policies produced. If the Nazis could make an issue out of unemployment, why couldn't Brüning?

In history as it actually occurred, with Brüning's accession to the Chancellorship in 1930, the Weimar Republic degenerated into a semi-authoritarian state. And Brüning's Chancellorship represented a major step toward the Third Reich. On the other hand, Brüning was very much opposed to Hitler's participation in government, and he fled Germany when Hitler actually did take power. It's not a counter-factual to argue that he really didn't want Hitler to take over. Given that reality, it seems feasible on its face that Brüning could have decided on policies that would have combated unemployment, if only to deprive the Nazis of that issue. That didn't happen. But why it didn't happen is more complicated than Borchardt's steadfast defense of Brüning would suggest.

Tags: german history, heinrich brüning, hitler, knut borchardt, weimar republic

Italy and the fight against austerity economics in Europe

Like the Great Depression, the current one has brought some surprising developments in politics in Europe and the United States, hopefully none of which will turn out to have the sort of adverse military consequences that some of them in the Great Depression did.

The latest event to cause the eurozone house of cards constructed by German Chancellor Angela "Frau Fritz" Merkel was the announcement by crooked rightwing plutocrat Silvio Berlusconi that he wants to become Prime Minister of Italy again. He's ready to seize the opportunity offered by the damage being done to Italy by Frau Fritz' Heinrich Brüning economic menu,

Wolfgang Münchau explains in Willkommen zurück, Cavaliere! Spiegel Online 12.12.2012

Der Grund meiner Freude liegt darin, dass er im bevorstehenden Wahlkampf den hartnäckigen politischen Sparkonsens brechen wird. Durch seine Rückkehr in die Politik erleben wir jetzt zum ersten Mal, dass die Krisenpolitik zum Kernthema eines Wahlkampfs in einem großen Land wird. Das war bei den spanischen Wahlen 2011 nicht der Fall, auch nicht 2012 in Frankreich. Und Peer Steinbrück und Angela Merkel unterscheiden sich in ihrer Krisenpolitik eher durch rhetorische Nuancen.

[The basis of my happiness [at Berlusconi's attempted comeback] lies in the fact that in the forthcoming election campaign, the hard-necked political austerity consensus (Sparkonsens) will be broken. By his return to politics, we will now experience for the first time that the crisis policies will become the central theme of an electoral campaign in a large country. That was not the case by the Spanish election of 2011 and also not in 2012 in France.]

I would partially question his comparison to the French election. The Socialists' promises to push back on Frau Fritz' austerity madness and to force a renegotiaton of her fiscal suicide pact were prominent themes in that campaign and certainly were part of the program on which now-President François Hollande only to betray his voters and immediately embrace both. Not unlike what President Obama's is current doing with his trial balloon proposal for a major cut in Medicare benefits.

A chance for the Italian Social Democrats to exploit the situation and regain the political initiative for stimulus and a sensible solution to the euro problems, you say? Yes, that would make lots of sense. Except that, according to Münchau's account, social democratic leader Pier Luigi Bersani, whose party leads the polls and good pull well over 30% in the next election, pretty much aspires to be an Italian Heinrich Brüning: "Bersani verspricht noch mehr Härte, noch mehr Sparen, nur etwas gerechter." ("Bersani promises even more [fiscal] toughness, even more cuts, only somewhat more just ones.") Again, not unlike President Obama's sad and endlessly repeated call for our present-day American robber barons to just pay "a little bit more" in taxes.

Awesome. Like President Obama in the US, Europe's social democrats now aspire to become the largest conservative parties! It's not working very well so far, and it's likely to wind up with their losing their relevance and their ability to become ruling parties at all. Their current leaders may be well compensated for getting them to that point. But their base constituencies are being very poorly served by this process.

Italy actually has two official social democratic parties, i.e, members of the Socialist International: Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and Democrats of the Left (DS).

David Dayen explains in Berlusconi's Return Roils Italian Markets FDL News 12/10/2012 - his coverage of the euro crisis is also something I'll miss when David stops blogging at FDL News on the Mayan-calandar-not-really-the-end-of-the-world date of December 21 - that the austerity policies and the bullying by Germany that essentially forced Berlusconi out of government to be replaced as Prime Minister by a non-elected "technocrat" are issues that have to be taken into account, apart from Berlusconi's more unpleasant characteristics:

I hardly hold any brief for Berlusconi, a corrupt tyrant who has been bilking the Italian public for well over a decade now. Alexander Stille’s book The Sack of Rome details this expertly. However, the fact that he was basically overturned by international bureaucrats in favor of an unelected member of their posse should not be lost here. Especially because that unelected bureaucrat, Mario Monti, did not really do that great a job if you look at key indicators ...

While Monti – with a giant assist from Mario Draghi’s backstop at the ECB – did stabilize borrowing costs for a time, the economy suffered with the austerity measures, growth went negative and unemployment rose. This is not the pedigree of a saviour of Italy. And it risks a return to power for Berlusconi, who has a long list of indignities forced on the Italian people by the last government to call on. He can merely say that Italians deserve a voice in their nation’s future rather than a set of policies imposed from the outside.

Monti wasn’t able to deliver on growth because his prescriptions inhibited growth. His obsessions with “reform,” aligned with the European leadership, ended up sinking Italy deeper into recession and depression, without building a coalition of support. And so the slightest shift can and will cause chaos, as we’re seeing today.

And incidentally, Italy is the third-largest economy in the Eurozone. If it wobbles, so do the other member states, as we’re seeing today.

William Black has an interesting piece skewering the New York Times for their reporting on two contrasting political figures, one who conforms to the Washington Consensus (Italy's Mario Monti) and another who isn't completely sold on the neoliberal gospel (Ecaudor's Rafael Correa), Why Is the Failed Monti a 'Technocrat' and the Successful Correa a 'Left-Leaning Economist'? Huffington Post 12/09/2012

Here is a Spanish-languagen video of Rafael Correa discussing, among other things, the European crisis, El presidente de Ecuador en Buenos Aires: La crisis europea según Correa 12/08/2012:

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, brüning, eu, euro, european union, france, françois hollande, italy, rafael correa, weimar republic

Heinrich Brüning and Angie-nomics 1930-32

I'm trying to learn more about how the Great Depression played out, especially in Europe. I recently read a biography of the Angela Merkel of 1930-32, German Chancellor Heinrich Brüning(1885-1970), who rigidly enforced austerity at the early part of the Great Depression in Germany, a counter-cyclical policy that had famously unhappy results.

The biography is by Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (1891-1971), Das Ende von Weimar: Heinrich Brüning (1968). He was a close political associate of Brüning's and a minister in his cabinet. (There was also a famous biologist named Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus in the early eighteenth century.)

Heinrich Brüning (1885-1970)

Treviranus, a friend and close collaborator of Brüning's, wrote a sympathetic biography, at times obviously defensive over some of the more dubious aspects of Brüning's career. Treviranus is especially sensitive to charges that Brüning's government, which held power under Presidential decree from March 30, 1930 to May 30, 1932, damaged the Weimar democracy and paved the way for Hitler and the NSDAP (Nazi Party) to come to power. His argument is not convincing. In fact, President Hindenburg's extensive interference with parliamentary processes that made Weimar into a semi-democracy even before Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933 actually began with the appointment of Brüning as Chancellor. Treviranus even relates Brüning's hopes as Chancellor to bring back the Kaiser and re-establish monarchical government.

Weimar Germany was a democracy with a serious shortage of democrats among the political, business, military and governmental elites.

Treviranus, even writing the biography in the mid-1960s, was an unrepentant defender of austerity economics during a depression. He spends a chapter polemicizing against Keynesian economics. He refers to it as the "Keynes psychosis" at one point. Although to read Treviranus, Keynes economics pretty much came down to promoting inflation.

Then he follows it up with a chapter defending all the things Brüning's government did to promote public works, which of course Keynes would have approved as far as it went. But the overall effect of Brüning's enthusiastic budget-cutting was a pro-cyclical economic policy that made the depression worse. Treviranus defends Brüning's focus on balancing the budget in that critical period at the start of the Great Depression as having been an essential and totally justifiable policy. If he learned anything about the downside of austerity economics in a depression, it's not readily evident in this biography.

Trevinarus even writes, which no hint of reflection on what it means for the policy he's defending, that German unemployment "first went down under Hitler with the beginning of the armaments program." ("unter Hitler erst mit dem Anlaufen der Aufrüstung abgesunken.") Duh! If Brüning's government had provided an aggressive program to combat unemployment in the 2+ years it was in office, maybe Hitler wouldn't have had the chance to solve the problem his way, with a rearmament drive and displacement of Jews from many jobs and confiscation of the property of Jewish emigrants, that lead to a military catastrophe for Germany.

The result of rising unemployment and social distress was a big boost to the NSDAP, which reached it's height of electoral success in July 1932. (There was an election in March 1933 after the Reichstag Fire, but it could hardly be called a fair democratic election. Though it's notable that the NSDAP was unable to win a majority even under repression conditions controlled by them.)

Treviranus also makes a more plausible case that Allied reparations policy was forcing them to maintain a balanced budget. So was the gold standard, though he doesn't seem to recognize that the gold standard, which had proved a source of stability in ending the hyperinflation of 1923-4, had become a destructive factor by 1930 in depression conditions.

Speaking of hyperinflation, Treviranus claims that the German public generally was focused on that period as especially disruptive. I suspect that was especially true for the German economic elite and their allies. By 1930, unemployment and depression/deflation was clearly much more of a problem. German hyperinflation has become a favorite bogeyman for advocates of austerity economics. I'm particularly skeptical of claims that hyperinflation was a direct cause of the NSDAP gaining power; the argument just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. (See my posts, Krugman on European austerity and that German hyper-inflation thing 01/29/2012 and Again on hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic and Hitler's rise to power 05/07/2012.)

Brüning was from the Catholic Center Party, which along with the Social Democrats (SPD) and the small German Democratic Party (DDP) were the parties that had been genuinely committed to the Weimar Constitution. Brüning's government was a big turn away from normal democratic procedures and toward and more dictatorial kind of rule.

Brüning himself was an opponent of the Nazis and of bringing Hitler into the government. He wound up fleeing Germany in 1934, first to the Netherlands and then to the US, where he became a professor of political science at Harvard. Treviranus narrowly escaped being arrested during the infamous Night of the Long Knives purge, aka, the Röhm-Putsch, in 1934, when Hitler decided to eliminate a number of his internal enemies. Teviranus himself had never been associated with Ernst Röhm's SA, but Brüning's government had had some dealings with Gregor Strasser, who left the NSDAP and who Hitler considered a deadly enemy. Treviranus was able to escape Germany in 1934 and eventually wound up in the US, as well.

Gottfried Trevinarus (1891-1971)

Trevinarus identifies himself as having been the speaker in the Reichstag for the Stahlheim, the League of Front Soldiers (BdF) from 1924-29. (pp. 193-4) He sat in the Reichstag as a member of the Deutschnationalen Volkspartei (DNVP) headed by published Alfred Hugenburg. Treviranus broke with the DNVP in January 1930 and founded the Volkskonservativen Vereinigung (People's Conservative Union), and later that year it merged with another breakoff faction of the DNVP to become the Konservativen Volkspartei (KVP) (Conservative People's Party) heavily backed by German industry.(See Heinrich August Winkler, Der lange Weg nach Westen, Bd. 1; 2000) So he was no longer part of the DNVP when Hugenburg formed the Harzburg Front, an anti-Weimar-democracy alliance that included included the Alldeutschen Verband, the DNVP, Hitler's NSDAP and the Stahlhelm group. The inclusion of the Nazis in that alliance was a big boost in Hitler's rise to power.

Tags: austerity economics, brüning, trevinarus, weimar republic

Again on hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic and Hitler's rise to power

I posted back in January about Paul Krugman commenting on what has long been one of my pet peeves, the idea that the German hyperinflation of 1923 led directly to Hitler and his Nazi Party (NSDAP) taking power in 1933, nine years later.

M E Synon also posted on that same topic in February, Merkel forgets Germany's history: 'Austerity not inflation gave us Hitler' Daily Mail 02/07/2012:

... here are some lines from a letter to the editor in the Financial Times yesterday. It comes from Anthony Murray in Kingston-on-Thames.

Murray recommends that readers should study the record of Heinrich Bruning, a predecessor of Adolf Hitler as German chancellor. They could discover 'the real reason for Germany's descent into Nazism.'

'Monetarist fetishists have helped to circulate a pernicious falsehood that the Weimar uber-inflation caused the rise of Hitler.'

'The wild inflation storm occured in 1924. [sic; it was actually 1923 - Bruce] The Weimar economy recovered from it.'

'The Nazis came to power only in 1933, as an immediate consequence of the deflationary spiral that resulted from what Mr Wolf [commentator Martin Wolf, in an earlier article] refers to aptly as the "catastrophic austerity" introduced by Bruning.'

In my earlier post, I included this table from Peter Gay's The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein's Challenge to Marx (1952):

Repeating what I wrote in January:

The hyper-inflation incident was primarily a phenomenon of 1923. This is the period about which those stories are told about a loaf of bread costing a wheelbarrow full of money or whatever. A new currency was introduced late in 1923 and inflation stabilized.

This chart of election results shows the election results in millions of votes for the NSDAP (National Socialists, Nazi Party). In 1924, the year following the hyper-inflation, the NSDAP got 0.9 million votes. That fell to 0.8 million in 1928. Then in rose dramatically to 6.4 million in 1930 and 13.7 million in July of 1932. What else might have happened between 1924 and 1930? What could it have been?

Oh, yeah, that Great Depression thing. Economic crash, soaring unemployment. And Heinrich Brüning's Chancellorship of 1930-32.

None of this implies that the hyper-inflation of the early 1920s had no lasting effect. It's just that it's hard to match the notion that hyper-inflation brought the Nazis to power with the historical record as shown in election results.

While we're on the subject, it's worth noting that the NSDAP vote dropped significantly from the July 1932 election to November 1932. It's true that Hitler came to power mostly through electoral means. But Hitler's  feverish politicking that got him appointed Chancellor at the end of January 1933 was driven by his falling electoral support.

On the hyperinflation itself, see also Alexander Jung, Millions, Billions, Trillions: Germany in the Era of Hyperinflation Spiegel International 08/14/2009 14.08.2009

Tags: german history, hitler, hyperinflation, weimar republic

Krugman on European austerity and that German hyper-inflation thing

Paul Krugman has been looking at the lengths of the current depression in Britain and Italy compared with the Great Depression. In Britain, this one has gone on longer. (The Worse-than Club 01/28/2012) In Italy, it has gone on as long.

Heinrich Brüning (1885-1970)

And he makes an important historical point about the German economy in those days. Conservatives like to claim that the "hyper-inflation" in Germany in the 1920s resulted in bringing Hitler to power. Krugman writes:

France and Germany are doing much better than in the early 1930s - but then France and Germany had terrible, deflationist policies in the early 1930s. (It was the Brüning deflation, not the Weimar inflation, that brought you-know-who to power).

With two of Europe’s big four economies doing worse than they did in the Great Depression, at least in terms of GDP — and that’s three of five if you count Spain — do you think the austerity advocates might consider that maybe, possibly, they’re on the wrong track?

Peter Gay provided a helpful chart on this subjects in The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein's Challenge to Marx (1952):

The hyper-inflation incident was primarily a phenomenon of 1923. This is the period about which those stories are told about a loaf of bread costing a wheelbarrow full of money or whatever. A new currency was introduced late in 1923 and inflation stabilized.

This chart of election results shows the election results in millions of votes for the NSDAP (National Socialists, Nazi Party). In 1924, the year following the hyper-inflation, the NSDAP got 0.9 million votes. That fell to 0.8 million in 1928. Then in rose dramatically to 6.4 million in 1930 and 13.7 million in July of 1932. What else might have happened between 1924 and 1930? What could it have been?

Oh, yeah, that Great Depression thing. Economic crash, soaring unemployment. And Heinrich Brüning's Chancellorship of 1930-32.

None of this implies that the hyper-inflation of the early 1920s had no lasting effect. It's just that it's hard to match the notion that hyper-inflation brought the Nazis to power with the historical record as shown in election results.

While we're on the subject, it's worth noting that the NSDAP vote dropped significantly from the July 1932 election to November 1932. It's true that Hitler came to power mostly through electoral means. But Hitler's  feverish politicking that got him appointed Chancellor at the end of January 1933 was driven by his falling electoral support.

Tags: german history, hitler, paul krugman, weimar republic