I mean, a lot of Germans had the choice of not being Nazis. Others had the choice of getting ready for civil war, I suppose.
Or are you just talking about the party of business elites? I suppose it depends when. Hold the government in deadlock as long as you could. By 1932 it was probably a bit too late. (I’ve no idea of the potency of the communists to take power. I might align with them if I thought they were in worse position, and then I’d get ready to arrest a lot of Nazis, though it probably wouldn’t have done much good)
Edit: there’s a good argument that setting up the government in 1932 was also just deck chairs on the titanic. That the country had dipped into lawlessness under threat of a massive army of thugs. At that point, I guess probably just prepare for Civil War.
I think by 1932 you are right, it was more-or-less deck chairs on the Titanic.
As far as the communist potency well, Germany had a series of elections because nobody could form a working government. Here are the results going back to 1928:
The March 1933 election was the last relatively free election.
The fundamental tipping point here was when the combination of Nazi's and Communists achieved a majority. That may seem silly since they hated each other but they had a mutual contempt for democracy and generally refused to work with others. When >1/2 of your Parliament refuses to work with others, you are screwed. Once that happened, Germany was impossible to govern.
Even before that, however, after the 1930 election the Nazis and Communists controlled a combined 31.9% of the seats. That only leaves 68.1% not controlled by them. The Nazis and Communists were the second and third largest parties respectively. It is REALLY hard to form a functioning majority without either the second or third largest party. To put this into perspective, a coalition of the Social Democrats, Centre, Monarchists would only get you to 43.7% of the seats. You'd have to add both the DVP and the DDP to get to an actual majority. A coalition of those five is bulky, unwieldy, unlikely, and didn't happen. Instead Germany had already become and simply remained a de-facto dictatorship with President simply assigning "Emergency Powers" to the temporary dictator.
Once the Nazi/Communist combination exceeded 50%, it was all over. At that point there is NO coalition that works because even a coalition of literally everyone else falls short. That was the case from the July, 1932 election forward.
The Nazis won mostly because they were more willing to deal than the Communists. The Communist leadership considered the SPD to be "Social Fascists" and their "real enemy" so they basically decided they'd rather have Germany become Nazi than to work with the SPD. By contrast, the Nazi's softened their "no coalition" stance somewhat and aligned with the DNVP and others.
The Nazis didn't actually win a majority until the most definitely NOT free, November, 1933 election.
I think the history is important to understand because exactly HOW this happened IS important.
My main takeaways:
- The Weimar Constitution and various amendments/interpretations had created a situation in which the President could grant "Emergency Powers" which effectively meant "Dictatorial Control". This effectively got the German population accustomed to the idea of a dictatorship. When Hitler took over and made himself "Fuhrer" which is German for "Leader" it didn't strike people as a major change because in a way it wasn't. Germany had already been governed by a series of temporary dictators for several years.
- From 1932 forward an outright majority of German voters effectively voted to abolish democracy. The Monarchists wanted to go back to the Kaiser, the Communists wanted to join the Comintern, and the Nazis wanted what they ultimately got. Those three parties got 58.6%, 59.4%, and 65.1% of the seats at the July, 1932, November, 1932, and March, 1933 elections respectively. Even before the worldwide economic collapse those three were pulling well over 1/4 of the German vote. Moreover, they weren't the only anti-democratic parties, just the three biggest so Democracy wasn't all that strongly supported even BEFORE the economy tanked.
