Chapter 14 explores the reverberations of Hugenberg’s election and the realignment of political forces that it set in motion. It begins with a discussion of the situation in the DVP, where Stresemann found himself forced on the defensive by the increased assertiveness of the industrial interests on the party’s right bring and where the Stahlhelm’s “hate declaration” against the Weimar Republic led to a rupture of its relationship with the DVP. The chapter then switches to the Center, where an effort to block Stegerwald’s election to the party chairmanship led to the installation of prelate Ludwig Kaas as the new party chairman in a development widely interpreted as a swing to the right on the part of the Center. It also focuses on Hugenberg’s efforts to consolidate power over the DNVP party organization and to curtail the autonomy of the DNVP Reichstag delegation under Westarp. Hugenberg’s determination to transform the DNVP into an instrument of his own political agenda not only placed a strain on his relations with the leaders of the German agricultural community but triggered a bitter conflict with the DNVP’s Reich Catholic Committee over the Concordat the Prussian government had signed with the Vatican.

Chapter 18 discusses the fateful elections of 14 September 1930 from the perspective of the German Right and the various factions on the Right that were vying for power. It focuses first of all on the efforts of the young conservatives who reorganized themselves into the Conservative People’s Party in the hopes of uniting those who had left the DNVP into a single political front. But these efforts, which enjoyed strong support from Paul Reusch and the German industrial establishment, evoked little interest from the leaders of the CNBLP and CSVD, both of whom were determined not to compromise the uniqueness of their own political appeal by entering into close ties with other political parties. In the meantime, Hugenberg and the DNVP leadership tried to organize their campaign around the mantra of anti-Marxism but misread, as did most of the other parties in the middle and moderate Right, the threat that National Socialism posed to their party’s electoral prospects. As a result, the Nazis were able to capitalize upon the disunity of the non-Nazi Right to score a victory of epic proportions that gave the NSDAP fourteen percent of the popular vote and 107 Reichstag mandates.

Chapter 15 covers the period from the fall of 1928 to the summer of 1929 with particular emphasis on the resurgence of the radical Right and the quest for right-wing unity culminating in the campaign against the Young Plan. What this reveals is a heated conflict between the DNVP and Stahlhelm for the leadership of the “national opposition” that was resolved only when the latter agreed to postpone its plans for a referendum to revise the Weimar Constitution so that Hugenberg could proceed with his own plans for a referendum against the Young Plan. But Hugenberg’s efforts to unify the German Right behind his crusade against the Young Plan ran into strong opposition from right-wing moderates who denounced a provision in the so-called “Freedom Law” that threatened government officials, including Hindenburg, who were responsible for negotiating the plan with imprisonment. Hugenberg’s refusal to drop the imprisonment paragraph reflected his determination to retain the support of Hitler and the NSDAP at the risk of alienating the RLB and more moderate elements in the referendum alliance. In the final analysis, the campaign against the Young Plan did not strengthen right-wing unity but only revealed how elusive that unity was.

Chapter 13 examines the period from the campaign for the May 1928 Reichstag elections to Alfred Hugenberg’s election as DNVP party chairman in October 1928. The DNVP went down to stunning defeat in the May elections that stemmed in large part from the success of middle-class and agrarian splinter parties to cannibalize the Nationalist electorate. The defeat was followed by a bitter internal crisis in which Westarp found himself such heavy attack from Hugenberg that he resigned his seat as DNVP party chairman. This was followed by a bitter fight for the DNVP party chairmanship that found Hugenberg’s opponents so badly organized that they were unable to block his election as Westarp’s successor in October 1928. Hugenberg’s election to the DNVP chairmanship represented a critical turning point in the history of the Weimar Republic and signaled the complete collapse of Stresemann’s efforts to stabilize Germany’s republican system of government from the Right.

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.

The chapter explains how and why the EU has intervened with both standards and procedural regulations in the case of organic agriculture, first in 1991 and again in 2007. The chapter begins with analyzing the development of private organic agriculture governance since the late-1960s. It shows how attempts at private governance harmonization, the expectation of EU intervention providing new productive opportunities for farmers, and active lobbying by the organic agriculture movement (especially IFOAM) resulted in the 1991 EU Organic Agriculture Regulation. The Regulation offered an organic production standard and modest procedural rules for private governance schemes. Continued problems due to a fragmented private governance market led the Commission to propose severe limitations on private schemes’ governance space in the early-2000s. Opposition to these proposals by private governance schemes, the organic movement, and key Member States prevented significant public intervention. Nonetheless, both standards and procedural regulations were strengthened in an updated Regulation in 2007 by the introduction of a mandatory EU organic logo and mandatory accreditation of private auditors.

Chapter 9 analyzes Germany’s conservative intelligentsia as it has developed by the middle of the 1920s and the various institutions it has established in pursuit of a young conservative political agenda. Most of the individuals discussed in this chapter – Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Oswald Spengler, Heinz Brauweiler, Heinrich von Gleichen, and Wilhelm Stapel among others – define themselves as “conservative revolutionaries” who do not to wish to return to the way things were before World War I but who espouse an apocalyptic view of the political and envision a revolutionary transformation of the world in which they live through direct political action. Some like Martin Spahn and Eduard Stadtler are connected to the DNVP, but for the most part they are politically unaffiliated and in most cases opposed to the German party system as it has developed since the founding of the Second Empire. But they are united in a pedagogic mission to educate the younger generation and to instill in it the values and virtues they believe necessary for Germany’s national rebirth.

Chapter 3 focuses on the history of the DNVP from the elections to the Weimar National Assembly to the Reichstag elections of June 1920. It deals in particular with the way in which the DNVP established itself as a party of “national opposition” at the National Assembly with particular attention to its positions on the Weimar Constitution and the Versailles Peace Treaty. It also examines the success with which hard-line conservatives around Count Westarp were able to assert themselves in the deliberations over the party program and in pushing back against efforts of the young conservatives around Ulrich von Hassell to shape the DNVP into a progressive conservative party free from the follies of the past. The chapter ends with the Kapp putsch in March 1920, the adoption of the party program a month later, and the Reichstag elections of June 1920 in which the DNVP improves upon its performance at the polls in the elections to the National Assembly.

The epilogue examines the implications of right-wing disunity upon the course of German political development from 1930 to 1933. The progressive disintegration of the DNVP from 1924 to 1930 left the non-Nazi German Right deeply divided and incapable of holding the more radical elements on the German Right that found a home in the NSDAP in check. This was a fact of German political life that became increasingly clear in the period from the September 1930 elections through the end of the Weimar Republic. The disunity and impotence of the traditional German Right left conservative strategists like Westarp, Schleicher, and Reusch with no alternative but to embrace the “taming strategy” as the best way of addressing Nazism and the threat that it posed to the status of Germany’s conservative elites. But the very success of this strategy presupposed the existence of a force capable of holding the NSDAP in check and in subjecting the Nazis to its own political agenda. The absence of such a force doomed the “taming strategy” to failure and greatly facilitated the Nazi seizure of power in 1932–33.

Chapter 8 examines the efforts of Stresemann to stabilize Germany’s republican system by coopting the support of influential special interest organizations like the National Federation of German Industry (RDI) and the National Rural League (RLB) in the hope that they can influence the DNVP to adopt a more responsible posture toward the existing system of government. The fact that the DNVP improved upon its performance in the May 1924 Reichstag elections in a new round of voting in December means that the DNVP can no longer be ignored as a potential coalition partner. The DNVP’s subsequent entry into the first Luther cabinet in January 1925 is to be seen as part of a larger stabilization strategy that also includes the election of retired war hero Paul von Hindenburg as Reich president in April 1925 and changes in the leadership of the RDI and RLB that reflect an increased willingness to work within the framework of the existing system of government.