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 4 explores the ways in which the DNVP tried to reach out to groups that had stood outside the orbit of the prewar conservative parties, namely Catholics, youth, and women at a time when it adopted an increasingly hard line against Germany’s republican system and the foreign policy of the Fehrenbach and Wirth governments. Under Helfferich’s leadership, the DNVP was able to exploit the inflationary spiral of the early 1920s and the distress that this created in diverse sectors of German society, but particularly among the German middle strata. It was also able to solidify its position in the German agricultural community by virtue of its outspoken opposition to the continuation of war-time controls over farm prices and production quotas. The DNVP was thus able to build upon the organizational growth of the previous year and a half and to consolidate its position as the political agent of Germany’s conservative milieu.