Nazis and Nobles by Stephan Malinowski & Jonathan Andrews

Author:Stephan Malinowski & Jonathan Andrews [Malinowski, Stephan & Andrews, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192580160
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2020-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

Mavericks: Noble Republicans

A small minority of aristocrats resisted National Socialism as a result of their republican views. They included a handful of pacifists, socialists, and even a sprinkling of communists who diverged significantly from the predominant trend. Although they held a wide range of opinions, these aristocrats—who can aptly be described as ‘mavericks’—kept themselves at a distance from the political and social norms of their noble peers.

Examining the unusual lives of this small minority reveals two main things. Firstly, it demonstrates that, although the noble habitus generally expressed itself in astoundingly similar ways, there were no absolute rules and some scope was left open for individual choice. Secondly, it highlights the heavy price these ‘maverick’ aristocrats had to pay for going against the grain of their origins. The isolation these people experienced within the aristocracy as a whole once again underlines the fact that no major noble groups provided the democratic project with constructive support. Indeed, the only nobles who championed democracy at all were aristocratic individuals acting alone.

At least as far as the Prussian nobility were concerned, it is impossible to identify any politically relevant aristocratic groups that accepted the principles of the constitution and made a positive, collective effort to contribute to the development of the German Republic. In contrast, however, searching for aristocrats who influenced politics from the upper echelons of the Republic itself reveals a raft of prominent names. Broadly speaking, there were four types of nobles who acted from within the democratic corridors of power.

The first identifiable type of aristocrat that played a significant governmental role during the Weimar Republic is represented by nobles who served as party leaders, government ministers, army generals, diplomats, or—in the case of Paul von Hindenburg—held the highest political office in the land without harbouring democratic views or doing anything to advance the republican cause. Indeed, some of the most prominent aristocrats who were active at the state’s highest echelons—including Franz von Papen, Konstantin von Neurath, Kurt von Schleicher, and Hindenburg himself—are prime examples of noblemen who strove to bring the Republic down.153

A second archetype consisted of aristocratic members of Germany’s power elites who held equally headstrong views about rebuilding the Empire but never actually did anything in direct opposition to the Republic. Their ranks boasted a number of high-level diplomats, including Baron Ago von Maltzan—the head of the Foreign Ministry’s Eastern Office (Ostabteilung) who later served as the ambassador in Washington until his death by misadventure in 1927—and Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, a nephew of the erstwhile German Chancellor who rose to become the Foreign Ministry’s State Secretary in 1930. The group also featured a number of prominent political players, including Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, the ambassador to Moscow who died in 1928.154

A third archetype consisted of high-ranking civil servants and diplomats whose own engagement in politics considerably exceeded that of the ‘pragmatic republicans’ (Vernunftsrepublikaner) who did just enough to keep their careers afloat. A key example of such a conscientious figure is Count Albrecht von Bernstorff-Stintenburg (1890–1945), a

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.