8mm to the Left: A World Without Hitler
"...and so it was with an earth-shattering roar that the guns of Europe began their song of destruction and death, plunging the civilised world into its second such conflict in a generation. At its head sat the tyrant Hauptmann Ernst Thälmann, leader of the German Volksreich, the most feared man on the continent. It would not be long before the boots of German Communists would march on the great cities of the world; Paris, Rome, Warsaw. From the ashes of the Old World, the terrifying New System would rise…" - Excerpt from the alternate history novel 'On a Warm Day in 1929: The Rise of Communist Germany', published 1972
We All Fall Down
The wind blowing in from the North Sea was a cool, refreshing thing in contrast to the warm, stale air of the Berlin evening. The lanterns lining the cobblestone streets were beginning to flicker on, the noise of the gas whooshing in a comfort to those who had spent their lifetimes around it.
Sir Horace Rumbold, British Ambassador to the German Republic, sipped his tea and listened to the sounds of people walking past outside the ivy-covered gates of his townhouse. He liked Berlin, truly; it might not match London for size, but it had a grandeur and a quiet dignity to it which never ceased to make him feel at home.
Across the table, President von Lettow-Vorbeck sipped his own drink, a strong black coffee imported from Ethiopia. Apparently the man had developed an affinity for the beverage during his time in Africa.
Disgusting stuff, Rumbold thought with a hidden grimace. “I passed on your request to the Prime Minister,” the British diplomat spoke up, breaking the gentle silence. “No answer yet, but I remain hopeful.”
Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s lined face creased into a smile. “That would be appreciated,” he answered in accented English. It had been one of the main topics of the very first meeting that the two of them had held: The request of the former General to allow his old troops, the East African Askari, to migrate to Germany.
“I have not been to Tanganyika myself, but I have heard the stories from others,” Rumbold continued. “Most were stunned by Dar es Salaam upon arrival. They said that it was like entering Algeria, almost European. The same cannot be said for many of our own colonies.”
The President nodded slowly. “We did not have many colonies, so we worked hard on those we did. I wish we had done more, especially in Cameroon, but alas…”
The gentle probing went politely ignored. Regardless of Rumbold’s personal preference for the new German government over the old, it would take a great deal before Parliament would even consider selling (never giving, heavens no!) one of their colonies to Berlin. After all, after the Great War that the Germans had begun, it had been their right! “And how are you liking your new
Reichspolizei?” he queried, hiding his smile behind the teacup. Two could play the probing game.
London was not blind to the workings of Germany, though they often sought to appear otherwise. The formation of the paramilitary group into the new state police was impossible to hide, after all, and while it obeyed the letter of Versailles, it was a clear attempt to circumvent it. Upon mentioning it to Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, he was told to turn a blind eye. “
The Germans have waited 15 years to pull such a trick. Frankly, we should be grateful that they waited this long.” After all, instability in Central Europe was the last thing that any of them wanted, and the new regime seemed to be a largely stabilising force if nothing else.
Von Lettow-Vorbeck made no attempt to hide his own grin, though he said nothing. It was something of a game they played, pretending to ignore the layers of political intrigue which simmered beneath the surface. The web of alliances which had governed Europe for the past decade were beginning to shift, forces of stability like France giving way to rising powers in Italy and Poland. Spain remained a spot of turmoil, and disputes between the Balkan nations remained a powder keg as Bismarck had once foreseen. It was Germany which sat in the middle of this web and it was her choices which grew increasingly defining. Britain had not yet decided upon the side she wanted to stand on, and only time would tell. But personally, Ambassador Rumbold hoped that Germany and Britain could at last stand together.
“President Lettow-Vorbeck is a complex man, sharply intelligent and often frustratingly direct in that manner so typical of Germans… Despite disagreements in policy between His Majesty’s Government and that of the Reichstag, I truly believe that Lettow-Vorbeck will be a force for stability in Germany, though I question the effect it will have on Europe… Questions will need to be answered soon regarding British policy on German claims. Lettow-Vorbeck desires a reclamation of what was lost, and though his touch may be soft, it remains in focus that such goals may bring rise to conflict with the Empire or our strategic interests on the Continent…”
-Report on President von Lettow-Vorbeck by British Ambassador Sir Horace Rumbold (August, 1932) (2)
Prior to the Great War which had seen Germany’s overseas holdings ripped from her grasp, the eyes of Berlin had been fixed squarely on Central Africa, dreams of unifying their disconnected colonies into a hegemonic bloc––
Mittelafrika, a force to rival British India—contributing heavily to policy during the Great War. The Treaty of Versailles had put an end to this dream, forcing Germany to focus on Europe proper, but this would be a blessing in disguise; in the wake of the war both old and new nations were looking for friends and Berlin was more than happy to stretch out a hand.
For the moment union with Austria was an impossibility, both the conditions of Versailles as well as a lack of German military and economic strength to support such a bold action preventing it. Brüning had taken steps towards
Anschluss with a customs union between the two in 1931, an attempt to mitigate the blow of the Great Depression as well as set the stage for full union, but had been halted by the French. Though pro-German sentiment remained high, political uncertainty and financial problems had forced the Austrians to abandon German exclusivity and search out new markets to their South and East.
The question of German claims in the West—Alsace-Lorraine in France and Eupen-Malmedy in Belgium—had been solved with Gustav Stresemann’s signing of the Locarno Pact in 1925 which had fixed the Western border as inviolable. Despite being unpopular with many Germans, the Pact had given rise to favourable trade agreements and had helped Germany absolve her image as an international pariah, and adjacent to the Pact had been negotiations with France which laid the groundwork for a potential “revision” of the German border in the East, namely against Poland.
Former German lands in France and Belgium
(https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:German_territorial_losses_1919_and_1945.svg)
After a century of partition between the powers of Prussia, Russia, and Austria, the reborn Polish state in the form of the Second Polish Republic had a singular goal: Assert its right to exist against those who thought otherwise. A successful revolt against the German Empire had brought Greater Poland (
Provinz Posen to the Germans) back to the fold, followed soon after by a war against the Soviets which extended their border deep into the former Russian Empire. Combined with smaller wars, border skirmishes, and uprisings against Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, and the German Republic, Poland eventually settled on 388,634 square kilometres of firmly, freely, Poland. It was a far cry from the vast Commonwealth which had dominated Eastern Europe two centuries earlier and it became a question of national importance in the coming years on how to tackle their new statehood. The lands ripped from their neighbours were not uniformly Polish, and held a minority, if not majority, of non-Polish citizens, many of whom were not happy to be part of an independent Poland. Fear of internal collapse or external invasion saw an increasing militarisation until, by 1930, Poland held an army comparable to that in mainland France, and far above that of the demilitarised Germany. German claims on Western Poland had dominated discussion between the two nations since its inception and since 1925 had resulted in an undeclared customs war wherein Germany blocked investment and trade with the young state in hopes of forcing a resolution. Though groups on both sides retained hope of cooperation against shared threats, incompatible views on such a relationship kept Poland and Germany locked in a state of bitter rivalry which was not due to change anytime soon.
Second Polish Republic with German claims, 1932
(https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https://i.redd.it/5pus8m8svzy71.jpg)
All of this is to say that the inheritance of the Presidency by von Lettow-Vorbeck came with a significant amount of baggage associated. Germany was certainly not without friends, especially among her smaller neighbours, but unfriendly and suspicious regimes dominated her direct vicinity. These neighbours did not look optimistically upon the rise of another Nationalist to the upper echelons of German power and German strategic interests in the area did not make it easier.
Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s views on foreign policy in 1932 are difficult to define, overshadowed as they are by actions taken in the years soon to follow. What is known is that he had two long-term goals: Assert German economic independence and reclaim lands ripped from Germany’s grasp. The difference between von Lettow-Vorbeck and his more extremist detractors in the Reichstag was that he saw the former as a prerequisite to the latter rather than a parallel goal. In simpler terms, von Lettow-Vorbeck felt that Germany could not begin an aggressive foreign policy until she had been fully freed from the shackles of Versailles and the Great Depression.
This was, surprisingly, a point which he shared with more liberal supporters of the Weimar Republic as a whole. Though advocates of peaceful solutions and greater international cooperation with their former enemies of France and Britain, few outside of the most pacifistic branches of the SPD accepted the 1918 borders as set. Politicians like Gustav Stresemann had spent years building a relationship between Paris and Berlin with a goal of one day forcing a revision of the Polish border, and no one took seriously the notion of a perpetually-independant Austria. It had been the politicians of 1925, after all, who had begun the customs war against the Second Polish Republic, which the 1932 regime simply continued. Von Lettow-Vorbeck was not an anomaly forcing a complete one-eighty of the direction, he simply took what had been prepared for him and steered it slightly more to the Right.
Steps in this direction were being taken from the day of his arrival at the Wilhelmstraße, begun under his predecessor and reaching their peak in July of 1932 with the Lausanne Conference. Under the influence of the Americans, the Hoover Moratorium of 1931 had placed a one-year hold on reparation payments owed to Germany under the Treaty of Versailles, in particular to the nations of Belgium and France upon whose soil the majority of the fighting on the Western Front had taken place. The Lausanne Conference had been intended as a negotiation about the scope and scale to which reparations would resume, but it quickly became apparent to all that Germany simply did not have the money to send. Under British pressure, and understanding that an economically-crippled Germany would only be bad for Europe as a whole in the long-run, the French and Belgians were forced to back down. Germany would make a one-time bond payment of three million Marks, after the cashing of which their debt would be effectively erased. A “Gentlemen’s Agreement” was made which stipulated that these changes would only be ratified following American willingness to renegotiate the debts owed by the ex-Entente. America, as it turned out, was very unwilling to see the debts renegotiated, but by this point it was too late and the system had collapsed, leaving Germany at last free from the reparations.
The propaganda boon of this victory cannot be understated and it was exactly what von Lettow-Vorbeck and his government needed after the increasing discontent being stirred up in Prussia by the SPD. There was not a soul within the Reich’s borders who had found the payments fair and their abandonment—credited disproportionately to von Lettow-Vorbeck despite really having had very little to do with it—saw public support for him skyrocket.
Chancellor Heinrich Brüning would become an unfortunate casualty of this. Directing the victory towards the new President had the unavoidable consequence of placing greater scrutiny and criticism on the previous regime which had been unable to achieve this despite years of work in that direction. (It was not common knowledge how deeply the Young and Dawes Plans had built to this moment, and opponents of Brüning would contribute to its suppression.) Von Hindenburg was largely spared due to his retirement and so Brüning, as the most prominent figure of the Great Depression’s government, became the scapegoat. Rumours would swirl about embezzlement and corruption and, though they were untrue, they would trigger a domino effect and a series of investigations which would bring down Brüning’s entire government.
President von Lettow-Vorbeck looked at Chancellor Heinrich Brüning across steepled hands, feeling very much like he had when he had caught his son skipping class. That same feeling of frustration, of disappointment, of being let down by one in whom you had great expectations.
On the desk in front of him were half a dozen newspapers from across the political spectrum. Most were using the same picture and all had the same title:
Osthilfeskandal! (Eastern Aid Scandal!).
It had been a very rude awakening for the von Lettow-Vorbeck family when one of the presidential aides woke them up just past the crack of dawn with frantic knocking on the front door. Any anger which the President had towards the man had swiftly evaporated upon reading the headline and the story under it. No one knew where it had begun, but by midday the story had reached all major corners of the Reich.
The story had revealed that, during the advent of the Great Depression, the Weimar government had approved the diverting of large sums of money into ex-nobility Junker estates in the Eastern regions of Germany, in particular East Prussia (whose economy had been badly hurt by its separation from the core German lands). This usage of funds would have raised eyebrows regardless but it had been further revealed that these funds had been frequently, if not overwhelmingly misused, spent on vacations and luxury goods rather than on the land or the workers. Most galling of the whole affair was the former President von Hindenburg’s part. It had been discovered that a cabal of industrialists had purchased the deeply indebted von Hindenburg ancestral estate and proceeded to "gift" it back to the President to curry favours, even registering it in his son Oskar's name to avoid the estate taxes.
Embezzlement, misuse of government funds, bribery… and the affair was only just beginning. Everyone from the previous government was being scrutinised. Oskar von Hindenburg had gone on sudden leave to his family's properties to avoid the media swarm and the former President had sequestered himself behind gated walls. Chancellor Brüning was not guilty of receiving funds but the length of his term made it clear that he was at the very least aware of their movement and had done nothing to prevent it.
"You understand why I did it," Brüning said finally, breaking the fragile silence. "You would have done the same."
"It does not matter what I
would have done, it matters what you
did," von Lettow-Vorbeck stressed. "And now I am the one who is left dealing with the consequences. My secretary has been receiving irate calls all day. The Junkers are beyond furious and are demanding explanations. How did this happen? Were you not careful?"
"Of course I was careful," Brüning snapped harshly, "but I was dealing with a situation beyond anyone's capacity. I did what I felt was necessary, but I had nothing to do with the von Hindenburg estate fiasco."
"Do you not see that, whether you were or weren't, it no longer matters? Von Hindenburg has retired and you are all that remains of that government."
"It began before I even became Chancellor!"
"And you became part of it by your failure to prevent the misuse of the funding."
Brüning fell back in his chair, face twisting in a scowl. "You are going to make me take the fall for this, aren't you?" It was a statement rather than a question.
"I am. I have no other choice."
"It solves your problems rather nicely, though." The scowl turned to a bitter smile. "I know your friends—" He spat the word. "—wanted me replaced. Now you can remove me and look like a hero for doing it."
Von Lettow-Vorbeck glared at the Chancellor. "Do you think so little of me to believe that I enjoy this?"
Brüning deflated a little. "Perhaps not. But this scandal will ruin any future I had hoped for. The Zentrum will never accept me as their leader now, the public backlash would be enormous."
"If it is any consolation, I will do my best to minimise the fallout on your end. Former Chancellor Müller is a preferable option to me, as the policy was begun under his tenure and he is no longer alive to defend himself." The general ran a hand over his mouth, gaze darkening. The idea of slandering a dead man was… dishonourable, to say the least, but he had done far more dishonourable things during the Great War for far smaller benefit. He consoled himself with the knowledge that, while slated to endure more of the blame than was perhaps appropriate, Müller was certainly not innocent, given that the policy began during his time as Chancellor.
"The Junkers will seek compensation for the humiliation," Brüning warned, a fact which had already occurred to von Lettow-Vorbeck. "They will seek greater influence as repayment."
Von Lettow-Vorbeck ground his teeth in frustration. He had a deeply-ingrained respect for the noble class of men whose ancestors had settled the wild lands of the Baltic coast, but that respect was being surely tested by this series of events. Paul von Hindenburg had already refused to take the President's calls and there were stories making the rounds of ex-nobles gathering in their estates to plot the overthrow of the government. Stuff of nonsense, but telling as to the public mood and trust in the Junkers. The Junkers wanted greater influence as well as a return of their steady flow of funds; the people wanted a limitation on Junker influence and a restriction on the funding. The two ideas were simply irreconcilable.
If this affair was showing him anything, it was that he had grossly overestimated the willingness of the entrenched elites to put aside their petty squabbles in order to create a better, grander Germany for all, and a traitorous little part of him had a sudden flash of sympathy for the Left-wing fanatics who called for property seizure and redistribution of the estates. The Junkers had already proved resistant to von Schleicher's infrastructural plans in the East and now, with this scandal in their back pocket, there was an actual risk of them opposing the President whom they had helped boost into power.
Despite his growing frustration with their recalcitrance, von Lettow-Vorbeck was not willing to alienate them. They were to provide the foundation of the system he wanted to build, they simply did not know it yet, and their sway over the East helped keep the Reds at bay. He needed their aid in restoring Prussia to its proper glory and to do that he would have to make some concessions.
Though he was loath to even consider it, he could perhaps turn to Germany's old foes for inspiration. German debts had been handled by way of a bank designed for the needs of collecting and distributing reparations; perhaps something similar could be established for the purpose of overseeing investment in the East. Such an institution could be used to circumvent more direct budgetary redistribution and might even provide the oversight on fund usage which this whole fiasco had shown was clearly lacking.
Christmas of 1932 was the most hopeful German economists had felt in a very long time. The crushing reparation payments had been dropped, the economy was beginning to improve, and a glaring misuse of government funds had been curtailed. December 1932 also included the christening of the
Preußische Staatsbank (Credit Bank of Prussia), established in the city of Allenstein in East Prussia, whose job it was to facilitate and oversee investment in the underdeveloped regions of the East and the vast Junker estates which controlled the region. The Junkers themselves would be relieved at the restoration of the flow of funds, though more than a few would be in for rude awakenings in the coming months when accountants showed up demanding explanations for expensive unauthorised purchases. The replacement of a blank check with a regulated system netted the President many friends among the traditional enemies of the Junkers, at the cost of alienating a segment of the latter who saw this as a betrayal by one of their own. For many, though, the alternative—dissolution of their holdings as proposed by more radical politicians—made this option palatable.
This event was significant only to those who understood it. Far more pressing to the politicians and common folk was the removal of Chancellor Brüning by President von Lettow-Vorbeck, a frankly unavoidable and predictable response which had been building since before even 1932, and the calling for new elections scheduled for the second week of January, 1933. In the interim, Kurt von Schleicher would be elevated to the role of "
Stellvertreter" (Deputy) and would assume many of the functions of Chancellor.
To say that Franz von Papen was angered by this perceived slight is an understatement. He had believed himself to be next in line as Vice Chancellor, despite the German Constitution not even mentioning this role, and seeing the power he so craved be passed on to his friend without so much as a glance in his direction would stir a deep, festering resentment inside of him, compounded when Father Ludwig Kaas dismissed von Papen's request to be the Zentrum's next candidate for the Chancellorship. This resentment would grow to affect even his friendship with von Schleicher.
Franz von Papen held the newspaper up in Kurt von Schleicher’s face as soon as the door opened, his own face flushed from how quickly he had driven to the other man’s home. The headline of the article—“
Schleicher wird Stellvertreter” (Schleicher becomes deputy)—all but blaring from the front page.
“How did this happen!?” von Papen demanded, breathing heavily as he shook the paper. "How could he do this to me? How could you!?"
Von Schleicher blinked in surprise, coffee steaming in his hand. “Won’t you come in?” he finally said, more than a bit taken-aback by this 7:38 house call.
Von Papen scowled and pushed past his friend and into the house. He had been to visit countless times and so made his way directly to the kitchen, not so much as giving a nod to Mrs. von Schleicher before he began pouring himself a cup of coffee. “It is an insult!” he bellowed loud enough for the neighbours to hear.
Von Schleicher shooed his wife from the room with a gesture and dropped into the seat at the head of the table. “Please, make yourself comfortable,” he offered sarcastically, wrinkling his nose as he watched von Papen grab a handful of biscuits from the tin beside the stove, forgoing the crystal tongs (bought by von Schleicher for his wife as a gift) in favour of his hand.
“This should have been me! How dare he! How dare
you!” The biscuits were dropped atop the opened newspaper on the table, half of them reduced to so many crumbs from the aggressiveness of his grip. Von Papen nabbed the largest chunk and stuffed it his mouth, still muttering unkind things and glaring across the table at von Schleicher.
Von Schleicher rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. It was far too early for this. "Franz, you must understand the reality. As deputy, I will be unable to do anything without appearing the President's puppet. I have no true power. I am just a placeholder until a real Chancellor can be found. It is not an enviable position."
"You are being primed to be a future Chancellor," von Papen countered angrily. "You are being given the public eye, the President's public support. I am a member of the Zentrum; I am the ideal replacement for that fool Brüning!"
“You knew that Kaas would never support you, though.”
The other man’s scowl deepened, if that was possible. “Vile old man,” he spat out, eating another cookie shard. “He has never forgiven me for supporting von Hindenburg in 1925.”
I rather suspect he simply dislikes you, von Schleicher thought, though wisely kept this to himself. Kaas and von Papen were at two very different ends of the Zentrum tree; Kaas representing the Conservative regionalist Papists, von Papen the Nationalistic pan-German modernists. It had always been a mystery to von Schleicher why his old friend remained in the Zentrum when his political views would have been far more at home in the old DNVP, though in the end it had been a boon to his career. "I am sorry that you were overlooked," he offered as an olive branch, the lie slipping out easily. "I understand your frustration and empathise with it. You deserve more than the mere Vice-Presidency."
It seemed that this was what his friend had been wanting this whole time and the anger slowly drained out of him, returning him to the calm, collected politician whom von Schleicher had always respected. "You are right. You are right," he said, seemingly more to himself, taking another sip of coffee. "My time will come."
The two sat in silence, becoming wrapped up in their own thoughts. While von Papen stewed on his ambitions, von Schleicher worried about his friend. There was a savagery to von Papen today, a hunger which had been useful in the past but which he did not enjoy having turned on himself. In truth, von Schleicher had been quite proud of being chosen to temporarily occupy the office of Chancellor, because, like von Papen, he suspected that it was in preparation for a future Chancellorship alongside von Lettow-Vorbeck. Oh, the things that the two of them could achieve together… but if this tantrum had shown him anything, it was that von Papen had his own ambitions and ideas for their new government, ideas which did not seem entirely in-line with previous discussion.
Sipping his coffee, von Schleicher thought about the future and began to plan.
Von Schleicher's stint as Chancellor is a mere blip in the long line of German Chancellors, but its brief month-long tenure was highly significant in how it affected the relationships of those surrounding von Lettow-Vorbeck and marked the beginning of the Kamarilla's end. Von Schleicher was informally raised to von Lettow-Vorbeck's second-in-command, elevating him above the other members of the Kamarilla, and in the months to follow he would slowly forsake the makeshift council in favour of dealing with the President directly. This followed the informal removal of Oskar von Hindenburg from the group and his isolation from politics from 1933 onwards; with the scandal surrounding his family and his own complacency in the purchase and gifting of his family estate, he no longer had any political clout and his usefulness was nearly nonexistent.
The causes of the Kamarilla's end are widely debated by scholars given how influential the group was in von Lettow-Vorbeck's ascendancy. The refusal to include the increasingly-influential Göring, the personal ambitions of von Papen, and the distancing of Meissner were all surely contributing factors, but the greatest one is likely their failure to pick a candidate capable of fulfilling their shared goals. Von Lettow-Vorbeck was not the docile, moldable puppet that they had sought out for, and he would quickly grow to eclipse their combined ability to control. Some, like von Schleicher, admired this, while others, like von Papen, resented it.
Von Schleicher's brief Chancellorship would come to an end the second week of January, as planned, when the federal election was carried out, the first since von Lettow-Vorbeck's elimination of the KPD as a viable threat. A month had not been enough time for extensive campaigning so it had largely fallen to the clout of the leaders and the ever-changing tide of public opinion, something which worried all candidates equally. Few had much trust in the average individual's ability to choose what was right.
With the former seats of the KPD now redistributed among other parties, the SPD had ballooned significantly and now held more than a third of all seats in the Reichstag, a bloc of power not seen since the Republic first was created. The other parties, in particular the
Deutsche Volkspartei (German People’s Party), or DVP, the former party of Gustav Stresemann, had also benefited from former Communist exiles, but the SPD had overwhelmingly come out on top.
Reichstag following the 1933 election
Were he to follow the spirit of the German Constitution, rather than its literal law, von Lettow-Vorbeck would be obliged to select a Chancellor from the SPD, most likely their leading candidate for the Presidency and now the Chancellorship, Paul Löbe. Few truly believed this to be what would happen, and those suspicions were confirmed when President von Lettow-Vorbeck reached out to Father Kaas, leader of the Zentrum, and requested his aid in determining a replacement for Chancellor Brüning.
Despite President von Lettow-Vorbeck’s inability to carry out his promise to create a Free Rhenish State, Father Kaas continued to back him. Kaas had been a vocal advocate throughout the process and it was largely his assurances which kept the Rhinelanders fixated on the SPD as their enemy rather than turning on von Lettow-Vorbeck for failing to fulfil his promise. Of course, that was not to say that his failure had not damaged his credibility at all, because it certainly had. It was for this reason that Father Kaas proposed a Rhinelander as a replacement for the disgraced Brüning, and not just any Rhinelander: Konrad Adenauer, Lord Mayor of Cologne.
Konrad Adenauer, Lord Mayor of Cologne
(https://www.planet-wissen.de/geschichte/persoenlichkeiten/konrad_adenauer/index.html)
Konrad Adenauer was a devout Catholic, an experienced politician, and a hardcore pragmatist, not to mention a man with many enemies. His prioritisation of the Rhineland over all other questions had brought him into conflict with Gustav Stresemann in the early days of the Republic, first during his attempt to create a Free Rhenish State within the Republic and then later, during the economic crisis in the early 1920’s, broaching the topic of an independent Rhenish Republic with the French, something which had not earned him many friends in the German government.
Adenauer was a contentious figure to many in Germany, including President von Lettow-Vorbeck who was by all accounts disappointed in Kaas’s choice of candidate. Pragmatism won out over his personal feelings in the end; Adenauer’s Chancellorship would firmly cement the loyalty of the Rhineland, giving them concrete proof that von Lettow-Vorbeck valued Rhenish interests and further hope in a future Free Rhenish State once the SPD could be brought to heel.
The SPD protested this blatant defiance of their parliamentary majority, as one might expect, but they were yelling into the wind; beyond the Zentrum, Adenauer’s Chancellorship was supported by the KCVP, the CNBL, the BVP, and even portions of the DVP. The DNVP and NSFB both opposed another Catholic Chancellor, in particular one who had supported secessionist tendencies in the Rhineland, but their refusal to work with the SPD rendered this opposition irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Adenauer himself was also uncertain about taking the role of Chancellor, and would only accept under pressure from the rest of the Zentrum. He had once refused running for Chancellor due to his distaste for having to work with Stresemann, considering the man “too Prussian”, and von Lettow-Vorbeck was arguably a far more extreme example of this. In the end, however, he accepted the nomination and soon after was named Chancellor of Germany by President von Lettow-Vorbeck.
The relationship between the President and Chancellor would be, at least initially, quite rocky, as despite largely harmonious views on domestic and foreign policy, their natures as men were starkly in contrast. Despite these differences, they would commit to cooperation and a shared hope that 1933 would be the beginning of Germany’s return to preeminence on the global stage.
Author's Note: On the train to Straßburg for a few days of vacation and wanted to get this one out before I arrived. This chapter and the previous were originally one but it grew far too long so I split it. Like the last one, I am not entirely happy with it, but it accomplishes the job.
The Junkers won't be entirely happy with this solution but given the scope of the scandal, and that they are not losing all their privileges, they are willing to accept some oversight, for now at least. Von Lettow-Vorbeck's willingness to oppose the entrenched elites just like he did the Communists is a big part in his growing popularity with the moderates.
