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 16 explores the tensions within the DNVP that culminated in the secession of twelve moderates from the DNVP Reichstag delegation in December 1929. It begins with an examination of Christian-Social dissent in the DNVP and moves from there to a discussion of Hugenberg’s efforts to unify a badly divided party behind the mantra of anti-Marxism at the annual party congress in Kassel in late November. These efforts were to little avail, and in the vote on the controversial imprisonment paragraph of the so-called “Freedom Law” twenty-three DNVP deputies either voted No or were absent for the vote. In the aftermath twelve DNVP deputies left the party. While the young conservatives around Treviranus struggled desperately to preserve a modicum of unity among the secessionists, they were foiled both by the CNBLP’s determination to effect a realignment of the German party system along vocational and corporatists lines and by the decision of the Christian-Socials to launch a new party of their own. In the meantime, Hugenberg continued to enjoy strong support at the local and regional levels of the DNVP party organization and experienced little difficulty in retaining control of the party.