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 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 12 examines the DNVP’s record as a member of the Marx’s coalition government from its initial successes from the passage of the Work Hours Law and the Unemployment Insurance Act in the spring and summer of 1927 through its failure to develop an adequate legislative response to the increasingly desperate situation in which the German farmer found himself to its awkward embrace of The Law for the Protection of the Republic in May 1927. The DNVP’s situation in the Marx cabinet was further complicated by a virtual mutiny in the Stahlhelm against collaboration with the existing system of government and a revolt in the countryside spearheaded by regional RLB affiliates RLB that were no longer satisfied with the DNVP’s defense of agriculture’s economic welfare. Increasingly desperate to salvage something of its second experiment in governmental participation, the DNVP staked everything on the passage of a Reich School Law that encountered such strong opposition from the DVP that not only was the bill rejected but the governmental coalition collapsed.