Streseland: 1930s Germany with the Nazis Marginalised

 

This is my fourth novel published by Sea Lion Press: www.sealionpress.co.uk and is also available for sale via: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B093QHCXNH/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 

There have been a lot of alternate history novels and analysis books about the Nazi Regime in Germany being more successful than it proved to be. As early as 1937, Katharine Burdekin published 'Swastika Night' a science fiction novel envisaging a future in which the Nazis dominated the world. Other books followed while the war was on and then alternate history books appeared on this theme once the regime had fallen. What is far less common are books that look at what would have happened if Adolf Hitler had not been appointed Chancellor of Germany on 30th January 1933. While he headed the largest party in the Reichstag, the NSDAP, the Nazis had lost 35 seats at the November 1932 election and there was a sense that they had passed their peak.

We have to bear in mind that while they were elections in Germany, effectively democracy had been suspended in July 1930 with President Hindenburg effectively ruling through emergency decrees. He appointed the Chancellors which made it easy for him to simply put Hitler into the role. Hitler made great use of it, making use of the Reichstag Fire to pass the Enabling Act in March 1933 which began to dismantle the Weimar Republic as a political system. Even then, he required the support of the Z and DNVP parties in the Reichstag to get this legislation through. While he moved quickly to consolidate his position it was not until the death of the President in August 1934 that he could become a true dictator. An uprising let alone resistance by the military could have headed off that step even at this late stage.

As with so much in history, Hitler coming to power was never 'inevitable' in the way that popular accounts of the period often seem to portray it. Yes, Hitler and his party were popular. However, as the period July 1930 - January 1933 had shown, there were other options and in fact the installation of a military dictatorship might have been the more probable outcome.

My novel turns things back a few more steps to see what Germany would have needed not simply for Hitler to be left out of office in January 1933, but to dent support for the Nazi Party at an earlier stage. The party tapped into enduring complaints among the German population, especially around the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, but also the sustained support for anti-Semitism which was present right across Europe to a greater or lesser extent. However, the prime factor which had triggered rising support for the Nazis was mass unemployment. This had come about as a result of the global Depression which had begun as early as 1927 but was heightened by the Wall Street Crash of October 1929. By 1930 German unemployment was 2.8-3.2 million with figures being higher in the winter than the summer. It peaked in the winter of 1931/32 at over 6 million and was still at 5.4 million that summer. The figures for 1933 were a little better. Nazi policies such as expelling Jews and left-wingers from posts reduced the official figures for unemployment though it does appear that by 1934 there was also an improvement in the economy, one matched across Europe and elsewhere.

One example of a democratic country combating mass unemployment was the USA. Here President Roosevelt who came to power in March 1933, pursued what was termed the New Deal, a policy of state investment in numerous sectors of the economy in order to stimulate demand and increase employment. The USA had minimal official unemployment in 1929 but this rose to around 15 million by 1931, about 25% of the working age population and does not include those underemployed, e.g. put on short hours. As in Germany it began to decline by 1934, though there was a summer peak once more before continuing to decline to 9.9% by 1941. It is now argued that the New Deal did more to reduce wage inequality. However, it is clear that public works projects did create jobs and it is disingenuous now to argue that Hitler's policies such as building the autobahns reduced unemployment and yet Roosevelt's schemes run by WPA and especially the TVA dam projects somehow provided no benefit. What is clear is that not simply in the dictatorships but in democracies including the USA, UK and France there was an increasing acceptance that greater industrial planning and stimulus put into the economy by governments were an approach which can be used, though often in the face of opposition from bankers and civil servants.

So, what does this have to do with German history. Well, my novel starts from the basis of asking, what if Germany had seen New Deal and/or Keynesian style policies to reduce unemployment before the Nazis came to power? Would reducing German unemployment to 4 million in 1931/32, have taken the sting out of the Nazis' popularity? Of course, the policies would neither have eliminated unemployment, nor the Nazi Party, but it seems feasible using the policies of the style soon to be adopted in the USA, that they could have reduced both. In this situation one can envisage that while Germany would not have suddenly seen democracy reinvigorated, conversely there would not be the fall into the harshest dictatorship seen in the era outside of the USSR ultimately leading to the persecution and extermination of millions of Germans, let alone other nationalities across Europe and North Africa.

To oversee this stimulus policy, there seems to be only one man who could have successfully pulled this off, former Chancellor, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Foreign Minister, Gustav Stresemann. Unfortunately for our world he died in October 1929, aged only 51, three weeks to the day before the Wall Street Crash. Why was Stresemann so important? His prime claim to fame was reorganising German banking in 1923/24 to counter the hyperinflation in the wake of the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr which had wrecked the economy. Stresemann pulled the country back from the scenes of worthless money with many transactions being carried out by bartering. He used innovative methods such as the Rentenmark to move to a stable position.

Stresemann was part of all the governments from August 1923 until his death so was well known and trusted in Germany and indeed in Europe and North America. Stresemann importantly was a patriotic, even nationalist liberal, so did pursue policies that were supported by the nationalist DNVP and formed part of the NSDAP's demands and was certainly anti-Communist. However, he formed a 'hard centre' around which democratic parties could coalesce. One can easily envisage that, if he had lived, he would have seen the new economic challenge triggered by the Wall Street Crash that he would have to address to save Germany.

Thus, the point of divergence in my novel is that Gustav Stresemann did not die in 1929 but lived on another 7 years. Following the Wall Street Crash he has been appointed emergency Chancellor as in 1923 and has adopted public works and stimulus schemes, notably the building of the Autostraßen motorways to create jobs and demand. This is not a radical departure as there had already been plans, stimulated by the Italian projects, to build the German motorways which feature in the book. Stresemann's schemes do not 'cure' German unemployment but reduce it notably and this adds to the decline in the Nazis' fortunes anyway. Slowly a greater degree of democracy can be established once more and naturally, on the death of President Paul Hindenburg, Stresemann, the 'saviour' of Germany once more, would be elected.

In this alternative, Stresemann is still not as enduring as the old field marshal he replaced (who had lived until aged 86) and so soon after the book opens, the stroke which killed Stresemann in our world in 1929, hits seven years later. Still, the stability he has provided for Germany and the projects he has initiated have tided the country over into a period when across the World things were improving, yet without Germany fixed on a course to war. As noted above Stresemann was patriotic and disapproved of the Treaty of Versailles and so these trends continue in his Germany, this 'Streseland', but he had learnt in the early 1920s that steady negotiation achieved much more in terms of revision than precipitate threats.

So with Germany having stepped back from the brink and still facing challenges but not falling to dictatorship, what of the Nazis? Hitler and his followers believed they were destined to come to power. Hitler had moved from his 1923 assumption that he could seize control to seeing it coming through the ballot box. In our world while he did not fully achieve this, he did enough to get him simply appointed Chancellor. With Chancellor and then President Stresemann, instead, this step would have been denied to him and indeed the Nazis' popularity may have continued to decline. Still they were a dogged political movement with a strong paramilitary wing, the SA. This enduring threat to the peace of Germany forms the core of my novel.

We follow the adventures of Gotthard Nachtigall an undercover agent employed by the RfV an internal security body, modelled on the British MI5, established by Stresemann in 1930 to combat those seeking those trying to overthrow his government. Nachtigall is sent to infiltrate the Nazis and especially their front organisation which conceals their enduring paramilitaries. While it is increasingly clear that Hitler is planning something big, it remains unclear what it is and what the authorities can do to combat it. In such a risky deception, Nachtigall has to think fast and act ruthlessly to survive in order to remain best placed to see off Hitler's threat.