With this My Favorite Wargame Cards Series, I hope to take a look at a specific card from the various wargames that I have played and share how it is used in the game. I am not a strategist and frankly I am not that good at games but I do understand how things should work and be used in games. With that being said, here is the next entry in this series.
#99: Truman Doctrine from Twilight Struggle: The Cold War, 1945-1989 from GMT Games
Twilight Struggle is a 2-player game simulating the forty-five year ideological struggle known as the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States which can be played in 2-3 hours. The entire world is the stage on which these two countries “fight” to make the world safe for their own ideologies and way of life. The game starts right after the end of World War II in the midst of the ruins of Europe as the two new “superpowers” of the world squabble over what is left and ends in 1989, when only the United States remained standing.
The map is a world map of the period, where players abstractly move units and exert influence through the placing of Influence Markers in an attempt to build local support and gain allies and control for their superpower. The beauty of the CDG system used here is that each decision of whether to use a card for the event or the operations value is a struggle as if it is the other side’s event, it might go off hurting you very badly. There are mechanics to allow for the ignoring or cancelling of some of the best cards for your opponent in a side game within the game called The Space Race as well as nuclear tensions, with the possibility of game-ending global thermonuclear war (Shall we play a game, anyone?). I have played TS about 30 times and love it more and more with each sitting. The game makes me sweat, cringe, jump with joy and bite my fingernails. To me, a game that can do all of that in one sitting is worth the price.
The Truman Doctrine is an Early War U.S. 1 Op Event Card that removes all Soviet Influence from a single country in Europe where the U.S. has presence. This means that the U.S. at least has 1 Influence in a space and the space must be uncontrolled. I think that players should be judicious and patient with this card and do not rush to play early in the game on Turn 1 or Turn 2 if Europe is stable and the USSR has minimal presence there. The best way to use the card is to wait for a window where you can do the most damage in a key Battleground space where each side has been fighting for control by placing Influence there such as in France or West Germany on the last action round of a turn or playing the card during the Headline Phase to wipe out stacked Soviet Influence as a precursor to bumping up your own Influence there for control. The Truman Doctrine card is such a nice booby trap in many ways and the proper use of it can be very efficient and give you a leg up in Europe.
The Truman Doctrine was a United States foreign policy established by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947, which pledged that the U.S. would provide political, military, and economic assistance to democratic nations threatened by external or internal authoritarian forces. President Harry S. Truman asked for $400 million in military and economic assistance for Greece and Turkey. “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures,” Truman declared. “If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world — and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.”
In asserting that the U.S. would intervene in faraway conflicts, President Truman dramatically reoriented U.S. foreign policy. The writing of this ground-breaking message went through multiple stages. In his memoir, Truman noted that the State Department’s first draft of the speech “was not at all to my liking.” Rather than asserting a new foreign policy doctrine, the State Department writers had “made the whole thing sound like an investment prospectus.” Truman returned the draft to Secretary of State Dean Acheson “with a note asking for more emphasis on a declaration of general policy.”
The State Department complied, and included a general policy statement in the next draft. But Truman was not satisfied. “It seemed to me half-hearted,” he recalled. President Truman “scratched out” what he deemed equivocations. For example, Truman replaced “should” with “must” in a key sentence that read “I believe that it should be the policy of the United States…” According to Truman, “I wanted no hedging in this speech.” Because this speech “was America’s answer to the surge of expansion of Communist tyranny,” it “had to be clear and free of hesitation or double talk.” A total of eight drafts of Truman’s speech to Congress are featured on the Truman Library’s website. Many include handwritten comments and corrections. Combined, they give readers a sense of the tremendous effort that went into drafting the Truman Doctrine as well as the importance a single word can make when crafting foreign policy.
Truman delivered his address on March 12, 1947. Over the next several weeks, Congress debated the merits of Truman’s proposed foreign policy. On April 22nd, the Senate approved the legislation to provide assistance to Greece and Turkey. The House followed suit, approving the bill on May 9th. On May 22, 1947, Truman signed the bill into law. According to President Truman, the enactment of his bill “served notice that the march of Communists would not be allowed to succeed by default.”
Ukrainian board game studio Boardova has broken into US hobby distribution through ACD, four years after being launched by two volunteers who met while supporting refugees and Ukraine’s army in the wake of Russia’s invasion.
The move into US distribution continues a unique success story for Boardova, whose co-founder Volodymyr Kuznietsov told Wargamer earlier this year he had been forced to flee his home city of Sievierodonetsk for the second time amid Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Kuznietsov relocated more than 1,000km away to Lviv in western Ukraine, leaving behind possessions including his entire board game collection – which he described to Wargamer as being “occupied by Russia”.
He added that while volunteering to support refugees and the Ukrainian army he decided to change the status of those games on BoardGameGeek to “pre-owned” – a joke spotted by fellow volunteer and board game enthusiast Zholud “Acorn” Dobrovolskyy, sparking a conversation which led to the pair founding Boardova the same year.
The company’s first game, Aridnyk, draws on the mythology and traditions of the Hutsul people of the Carpathian Mountains. Boardova released the game in Ukraine in January 2024, before raising more than $132,000 from almost 1,600 backers – almost half from the US – via a Kickstarter campaign the following year.
1984: Unperson, meanwhile, is a semi-cooperative card game designed by Kuznietsov and Yaroslav Kifor inspired by George Orwell’s dystopian novel. The game sees players trying to fulfill collective directives handed down by a totalitarian regime, while also trying to achieve their own secret ambitions.
Directive cards from 1984: Unperson || Photo Credit: Boardova
Kuznietsov told Wargamer the subject had an unavoidable resonance for a Ukrainian studio, describing the dangers of blindly following government orders as a “painful and obvious topic while we are under attack from Russia”.
Boardova has also previously expanded into Germany, signing a localisation deal for Aridnyk with Koalla Spiele shortly after Spiel Essen last year.
ACD said it had separately added five titles from Los Angeles party game publisher McMiLLER to its catalogue, including Jolt, Dummeez and Fish Fight.
With this My Favorite Wargame Cards Series, I hope to take a look at a specific card from the various wargames that I have played and share how it is used in the game. I am not a strategist and frankly I am not that good at games but I do understand how things should work and be used in games. With that being said, here is the next entry in this series.
#93: German Home Card Otto von Bismarck from Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 from VUCA Simulations
Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 is a massive card driven game that blends diplomacy, warfare, and statecraft and feels a bit akin to games like Here I Stand and Virgin Queen from GMT Games, which are both grand scale sweeping epics that play multiplayers and take a day to play. Players play as 1 of 6 major powers in the game including Germany/Prussia, the United Kingdom, France, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The game is quite grand and ambitious as it covers 70 years near the end of the Victorian Era and the Progressive Ear and sees quite a lot of global change and competition between the great powers of the time. The game is a Card Driven Game and uses Action Cards as a type of currency to spend for their Command Points or the printed event to take actions such as recruiting armies and navies, industrialize, moving fleets and armies around the globe, influencing minor powers and establish colonies in Africa, India and the Pacific Ocean. The cards are all tied to the history of the period but the game can be played very much as a sandbox allowing players to explore strategies by trailblazing new horizons or following history.
In Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920, the Otto von Bismarck Card is a powerful and extremely important German Home Card. Rather than being shuffled into the common Action Card Deck, it belongs exclusively to the Prussian/German player’s unique toolkit to represent the historical trajectory of German state-building. The card is mechanically tied to the first few turns of the grand 7-decade timeline and acts as a get started quickly card for the German player as they begin the long and somewhat difficult task of attempting to unify the Germanic peoples under one banner. The German player can choose to execute it on Turn 1 to abstractly simulate Bismarck’s rapid real-world rise to power and kickstart early diplomatic maneuvers or wars. Playing as Germany, the player should be focused on attempting the Unification of Germany and will most likely choose the Unification National Goal card as a standard at the beginning of games. The Bismarck Home Card is the primary historical vehicle used to achieve this unification and simulates driving the annexations or alliances needed to claim crucial minor regions including Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Denmark and Alsace Lorraine. And like standard Action Cards in Imperial Elegy, the card presents a choice. The German player can either choose between using its high Command Point (CP) Value of 3 for a massive push focusing on industrial development or military actions, or using the card for its printed Event text. One of the really nice parts of the card is the way that it effects Stability in the game. Stability is a core national resource and rating that measures a major power’s internal political health, structural integrity and capacity to wage war or absorb setbacks such as economic downtown and social upheaval. Typically, when you declare war, your Stability will degrade but not in the case of a War of Unification. And with Bismarck, Germany will gain 1 Stability when they declare a War of Unification. This is such a powerful effect for the early game as it will allow the German state to build up their capacity and increase Stability to be able to perform later in the game.
1871 portrait of Otto von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of the German Empire. He is depicted wearing his signature Prussian military uniform, including the distinct Pickelhaube (spiked helmet).
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, known as Otto von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman who masterminded the unification of Germany in 1871 and served as its first chancellor until 1890, in which capacity he dominated European affairs for two decades. He had previously been Minister President of Prussia from 1862–1890 and Chancellor of the North German Confederation from 1867–1871. He provoked three short, decisive wars, against Denmark, Austria, and France.
Following the victory against Austria, he abolished the supranational German Confederation and instead formed the North German Confederation as the first German national state, aligning the smaller North German states behind Prussia, and excluding Austria. Receiving the support of the independent South German states in the Confederation’s defeat of France, he formed the German Empire – which also excluded Austria – and united Germany.
With Prussian dominance accomplished by 1871, Bismarck skillfully used balance of power diplomacy to maintain Germany’s position in a peaceful Europe. To historian Eric Hobsbawm, Bismarck “remained undisputed world champion at the game of multilateral diplomatic chess for almost twenty years after 1871, and devoted himself exclusively, and successfully, to maintaining peace between the powers”. However, his annexation of Alsace-Lorraine (Elsaß-Lothringen) gave new fuel to French nationalism and Germanophobia. Bismarck’s diplomacy of Realpolitik and powerful rule at home gained him the nickname the “Iron Chancellor”. German unification and its rapid economic growth was the foundation to his foreign policy. He disliked colonialism but reluctantly built an overseas empire when it was demanded by both elite and mass opinion. Juggling a very complex interlocking series of conferences, negotiations and alliances, he used his diplomatic skills to maintain Germany’s position.
A master of complex politics at home, Bismarck created the first welfare state in the modern world, with the goal of gaining working-class support that might otherwise go to his Socialist opponents. In the 1870s, he allied himself with the low-tariff, anti-Catholic Liberals and fought the Catholic Church in what was called the Kulturkampf (“culture struggle”). He lost that battle as the Catholics responded by forming the powerful German Centre Party and using universal male suffrage to gain a bloc of seats. Bismarck then reversed himself, ended the Kulturkampf, broke with the Liberals, imposed protective tariffs, and formed a political alliance with the Centre Party to fight the Socialists. A devout Lutheran, he was loyal to his king, Wilhelm I, who argued with Bismarck but in the end supported him against the advice of his wife Queen Augusta and his heir Crown Prince Frederick William. While Germany’s parliament was elected by universal male suffrage, it did not have much control of government policy. Bismarck distrusted democracy and ruled through a strong, well-trained bureaucracy with power in the hands of a traditional Junker elite that consisted of the landed nobility in eastern Prussia. He largely controlled domestic and foreign affairs, until he was removed by the young new headstrong Kaiser Wilhelm II. He retired to write his memoirs.
This historic image shows Chancellor Prince Otto von Bismarck (center) with diplomatic envoys and plenipotentiaries of the Federal Council (Bundesrat) inside the Berliner Reichstag in 1889.
We have put out several pieces of content covering Imperial Elegy and find it to be a fantastic game. These include written posts and videos. You can visit those by following the links below:
Unboxing Video:
Video Review:
Summary of Solitaire Bots presented by our friend James:
The Ukrainian publisher of board games including Catan and Exploding Kittens is fighting for its existence after a Russian missile strike destroyed its warehouse, wiping out its entire stock of about 200,000 games.
Rozum, which started as an educational board game maker in 2018 before expanding to localisations, said there were no casualties at its warehouse amid the attack on a logistics centre in Vyshneve, just outside the capital Kyiv, on August 1.
Factor said the destroyed games included Ukrainian editions of Catan and Exploding Kittens, alongside locally developed games including Who’s on Top? and The Amateurs’ Club, as well as the publisher’s entire stock of releases planned for the autumn.
A statement from Factor Group said, “This blow is not only to cardboard boxes, but also to a cultural product that promotes the Ukrainian language, fosters a culture of shared leisure, brings people together in such difficult times, and educates children through play.
“Rozum Publishing is currently assessing the damage and planning its next steps. The company’s management assure us that they will definitely resume operations and continue to create popular board games for Ukrainians.
“Everyone can support the publisher right now: buy their games and give them as gifts to friends and children. This will be the best gesture of solidarity and gratitude to Rozum for their work.”
Rozum – whose name translates as ‘mind’ or ‘intellect’ – opened its first showroom in Kharkiv in 2018, before expanding to other Ukrainian cities including Kyiv and Odessa.
The company had barely any time to recover from the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, which has also seen its showroom in Kherson bombed and a warehouse in Kharkiv damaged by fire.
Anyone who would like to donate to Rozum’s recovery can do so here.
We’ve been assessing the merits of political leaders in (more or less) democratic countries on this blog for a few years now. Today, we’re looking at the longest-serving chancellor of the Weimar Republic, Germany’s first attempt at parliamentary government – Wilhelm Marx. And which game could be more appropriate for him than Weimar (Matthias Cramer, Capstone Games/Skellig Games/Spielworxx)?
If you want to read more ratings of historical leaders like this, I strongly recommend you subscribe to the blog – all new posts in your inbox right when they go live!
Some caveats ahead: The chancellors will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as chancellor.
Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A chancellor can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the chancellor is assessed as follows:
Foreign policy: Did the chancellor increase German influence in the world and the security of Germans at home? Did the chancellor wield German power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected?
Domestic policy: Did the chancellor increase the liberty of Germans to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the chancellor promote domestic security and shape the framework for fair justice dealing with offenses?
Economic policy: Did the chancellor facilitate the prosperity and economic security of Germans (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the chancellor’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?
Vision: Did the chancellor have an idea of what Germany and Europe (the latter counting for more in times of German influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the chancellor’s policies steer Germany (and, if applicable, Europe) in this direction?
Pragmatism: Did the chancellor succeed in seeing their policy through from inception to completion? How well did the chancellor manage the support from parliament, society, the administration, the media?
Integrity: Did the chancellor understand the office as a means to benefit themselves, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the chancellor respect the boundaries of the office?
Note: If you have read my UK prime minister or US president ratings, you will remember that I rated them on the global impacts of their vision as well. As the rating system is only really applicable to democratic leaders and no democratic German leader ever had the chance to conduct a truly global policy, I only assess their vision on national and European grounds.
Early Life: The Catholic Man of Duty
Wilhelm Marx was born in 1863 in Cologne, then a part of the Rhine Province of the Kingdom of Prussia, soon to be part of the united Germany. No one could have foreseen in his boyhood that he would rise to the chancellorship – he was the son of a mere schoolteacher, and a part of the Catholic minority which was always suspected of possibly disloyalty by the Protestant Prussian state. The young Wilhelm Marx was one of many who set out to prove that he could be just as patriotic as any Protestant: He studied law and entered public service. His Catholic faith, however, would always be the guiding star in his life.
He was first elected to the Prussian parliament in 1899 on the ticket of the Catholic Zentrum (Center) party – one of the four player factions in Weimar. By the time Marx was elected, he had been active for nine years in the Volksverein für das katholische Deutschland (People’s Association for Catholic Germany), an organization dedicated to improving the social conditions especially of the poorer Catholics. Social and cultural issues, especially the expansion of Catholic schooling, would remain close to his heart: In 1910, he founded the Katholische Schulorganisation (Catholic School Organization), a grassroots lobbying organization dedicated to the matter.
The same year, he was elected to the German parliament – his first electoral success on the national level after two campaigns in hopeless districts with very few organized Catholics which he had only undertaken out of duty to the party. In parliament as well as in his electoral campaigns, he aimed to form an alliance with the Protestant bourgeois parties against the burgeoning SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, Social Democratic Party of Germany), the second player faction of Weimar. However, this strategy failed when cross-confessional bourgeois solidarity eroded in the more confrontational cultural climate from 1911 on.
World War and Revolution
These divisions faded into the background with the beginning of World War I. Despite the pre-eminence of military and diplomatic action then, Marx’s political activity remained limited to domestic issues. From his papers, we cannot discern if he even formed an opinion on many of the pressing issues in those other realms (say, unrestricted u-boat warfare). He did, however, change his mind about cooperation with the SPD, with whom the Zentrum (and the liberal parties) partnered from 1917 on in their quest to place the imperial government on a more parliamentary basis.
The revolution of 1918/1919 took Marx by surprise. Once more, he placed his powers at the disposal of his party, and was elected to both the Prussian and the German constitutional assemblies. The National Assembly in Weimar developed a constitution which included many long-held dreams of his, as the Catholic church, Catholic associations, and individual Catholics finally had their rights guaranteed. The short period of cooperation with the Social Democrats (and, to a lesser degree, the progressive liberals of the DDP (Deutsche Demokratische Partei, German Democratic Party) had achieved what years of negotiation with the Protestant conservatives of the Empire had not. This early alliance between Zentrum and SPD is the starting point of any Weimar game.
Yet the new German republic was unpopular with the numerous conservative, monarchist Zentrum members, and cooperation with the Social Democrats doubly so. Marx thus spent much of his political energy advocating for the constitution among his fellow Catholics.
At the time, Marx considered leaving politics altogether in favor of focusing on social work: From 1919 to 1921, he acted as director for the Volksverein (but proved unsuited to implement the sweeping changes necessary to improve the Volksverein’s faltering popularity in the Catholic milieu).
Yet once more duty called: As many of the old Zentrum parliamentary leaders died, Marx was one of the most experienced politicians his party could field. And his conciliatory, even-handed manner was just what the Zentrum needed when the party was so deeply divided against itself on the question of supporting the republic or restoring the monarchy as well as if to cooperate with the Social Democrats or the Protestant nationalists of the DNVP (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, German Nationalist People’s Party), the third Weimar player faction.
Marx was thus called on to hold the diverging wings together: He was elected head of the parliamentary group of the Zentrum and then also party chairman in late 1921. As the Zentrum’s governing partner SPD merged with the more left-leaning USPD (Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany), Marx advanced a closer cooperation with the two liberal parties DDP (in government) and DVP (Deutsche Volkspartei, German People’s Party, in opposition) – the two minor parties which the Zentrum can control in Weimar. Yet Chancellor Joseph Wirth’s attempt to entice the DVP into a government of all democratic parties (a Grand Coalition) failed in late 1922. As a consequence, the SPD left the government as well. The parliamentary basis for the government shrunk.
The following year, Germany was shaken by the French occupation of the Ruhr which exacerbated the already galloping inflation. Under these circumstances, the Grand Coalition of all democratic parties became reality, led by DVP chancellor Gustav Stresemann. While it tackled these huge tasks rather successfully, the government could not maintain its internal cohesion: The right wing of the DVP (under its parliamentary leader Ernst Scholz) wanted to use the crisis to abolish the eight-hour workday and expand the government to the right by including the DNVP. The SPD refused and left the government. Marx’s conciliating manner helped with bringing both of them back to the negotiating table and a new Grand Coalition was formed.
This one was even shorter-lived: When federal forces broke up the socialist state governments of Saxony and Bavaria, but (doubting the loyalty of the army) refused to act against the right-wing coup in Bavaria, the SPD once more went into opposition. Without a parliamentary majority, Stresemann was soon unseated as chancellor. As the SPD’s appetite for government responsibility was sated, a bourgeois minority cabinet would be formed. That would be straight-up impossible in Weimar – unlike left-wing or right-wing coalitions, the Weimar Coalition (with SPD and Zentrum as the player factions and the DDP as a minor party which is always attached to one of the two) cannot refuse to govern, and so SPD and Zentrum are often stuck with each other if they want it or not. Historically, the SPD was not quite as keen on governing as the party is in Weimar.
To get anything done without a parliamentary majority would require special skills at winning friends and not making enemies. Marx, the skilled mediator, was just the right man for the time. He was elected chancellor on November 30, 1923. The weighty issues facing him were Bavaria’s continued insurrection, the implementation of the measures against hyperinflation, and an agreement with the Allies on the reparations issue which had set off the entire crisis of 1923.
A full hand of cards, leading the government (chancellor token in the top left), both liberal minor parties aligned (bottom right) – a comfortable situation for the Zentrum in Weimar, but not so much in history.
The First and Second Chancellorships
Marx’s cabinet nominations sent a signal to Bavaria that he was willing to improve the relationship between the fractious state and the Reich: He made the Bavarian Eduard Hamm (DDP) Minister for the Economy, and, for the first time in the history of the republic, included a member of the BVP (Bayerische Volkspartei, Bavarian People’s Party) whose more radical members had been behind the coup in Bavaria (Erich Emminger as Minister of Justice). His discreet negotiations with the Bavarian coupists would come to fruition in spring 1924: They resigned and opened the way for parliamentary government again. Bavaria, however, would retain some special privileges and be exempt from federal oversight.
The BVP had played an ambiguous role in the anti-republican insurrection in Bavaria. While the party cooperated with the Zentrum in national politics, its leader Gustav von Kahr had also been behind the coup of September 1923. This playtest version of the “Bayerische Volkspartei” card strengthens the Zentrum in parliament, but also allows the DNVP to recruit a dissolved unit – the latter effect was removed in the final version of the game.
Both the reparations negotiations with the Allies and the massive financial and economic reform package which would solidify the end of inflation required Marx to gather parliamentary support far beyond his minority coalition’s meager base. As there were constitutional changes involved (for example, in merging the various state railway companies into a federal railway), he even needed a two-thirds majority. Marx’s parliamentary skills and his reputation as an honest broker who would not abuse his power came together in securing an Enabling Act which would allow his government to gain the respective legislative powers despite their parliamentary minority. Equipped with such power, Marx set out to do the necessary, but unpopular steps forward. The cuts to public expenses which were to flank the currency reform massively reduced the number and salary of public employees and all but expropriated most pensioners.
The bitter taste of Marx’s domestic reforms was lessened by the negotiations with the Allies. Not even France had the stomach to force another confrontation after the chaos of 1923. They were thus inclined to negotiate a payment schedule which suited both sides. American bankers were to provide the loans with which Germany would cover a large part of the payments.
The electorate, however, was unimpressed. In the May 1924 parliamentary elections, Marx’s Zentrum held firm, but his DDP and DVP partners collapsed, as did the SPD. The right-wing parties were triumphant. Yet with no viable alternative to the bourgeois minority coalition, Marx was soon confirmed for his second chancellorship.
In the second tenure, he concluded the negotiations with the Allies. The final agreement would become known as the Dawes Plan after the chief Allied negotiator, American banker Charles G. Dawes. Once more, Marx needed a broad parliamentary majority. In addition to his government coalition, the SPD was sure to support the plan. The DNVP publicly railed against the Dawes Plan (which confirmed the infamous war guilt clause of the Treaty of Versailles), but DNVP chairman Oskar Hergt offered his support in return for policy concessions and the DNVP’s inclusion in government. Otherwise, he threatened that the Dawes Plan would fail in parliament. Marx, however, knew that the DNVP was internally divided on the matter and that a large number of DNVP members of parliament either saw the necessity of the plan for German economic revival or at least did not want to take the blame for the failure. Thus, he called the parliamentary vote without giving in to Hergt’s demands. The motion passed, as most DNVP members abstained.
Marx’s policy successes had not broadened his parliamentary base. As he kept refusing the DNVP’s inclusion in government in favor of a more centrist approach, new elections were called for December 1924. These did not change the parliamentary balance of power much. Marx resigned and was succeeded by Hans Luther, who formed a technocratic government based on the centrist and right-wing parties including the DNVP.
Parliament includes a lot of Zentrum members… but not enough for a majority.
Prussian Intermezzo, Presidential Election
Marx could not enjoy being relieved of his duties for long. When the Prussian DVP, as much a loose cannon as its federal counterpart, forced the end of the Grand Coalition in Prussia, Germany’s largest state, and demanded a right-wing government including the DNVP like in the Reich, Marx was called on to solve the government crisis. He was elected Prussian Prime Minister with the votes of the Weimar Coalition (SPD, Zentrum, DDP) on February 18, 1925, yet just two days after was toppled when renegades in his own party refused to support him in a parliamentary vote of confidence. Marx resigned, his appetite for politics lessened and his trust in the party damaged.
Still, Marx was one of the few Zentrum politicians who were well-known and had a good enough reputation to field in national elections. When President Friedrich Ebert (SPD) died, he was thus the natural candidate for the next presidential elections. The death of Ebert is a turning point in many Weimar games: The office allows its holder to play one card per round for two uses instead of just one. So, it is in essence a one-card bonus. As you normally only hold five cards, this is a huge boon. The presidential elections will thus be hotly contested and usually also serve as a check on who seems to be in the lead and must be reined in… sometimes in surprising coalitions.
In the first round, Marx gained 14% of the vote, the third-best showing after Duisburg mayor Karl Jarres (DVP, 39%) and the new Prussian prime minister Otto Braun (SPD, 29%). Now the coalition-building began. The SPD withdrew Braun, knowing that bourgeois voters almost never supported a working-class candidate in runoff elections. Instead, Marx was nominated as the joint candidate of the Weimar Coalition parties (People’s Bloc). Together, their candidates had received 49% of the vote in the first round. The right-leaning parties knew that Jarres, a man with no national standing, stood no chance in the second round. However, it was legal to field a candidate in the second round who had not stood in the first. They produced the old imperial field marshal Paul von Hindenburg – the “Victor of Tannenberg”.
Now the bickering for support in the second round begins! Unlike in history, parties in Weimar may support candidates which are ideologically opposed to them (usually to prevent a runaway leader or as part of a bigger political deal).
Marx might have been a more attractive candidate for centrist and bourgeois voters than Braun, but he still failed to attract votes beyond the Weimar Coalition. Conservative Protestants did not vote for him, and even his more conservative Catholic brothers and sisters in faith deserted him in favor of Hindenburg. Despite their Catholic fundament and Bavarian particularism, the BVP supported the Protestant Prussian marshal. Hindenburg was elected on April 26, 1925, with 48% of the vote (Marx carried 45%).
The Third and Fourth Chancellorships
The centrifugal forces within the Zentrum intensified. The party’s right wing blamed the defeat at the presidential election on Marx’s refusal as chancellor to form a coalition with the DNVP. The existing coalition under Luther fell apart when the DNVP refused to consider an agreement with the Allies which would confirm the post-Versailles borders in Western Europe. In December 1925, Luther formed a bourgeois minority coalition supported by Zentrum, DVP, DDP, and BVP in which Marx headed both the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry for the Occupied Territories.
The next inevitable call of duty came when Chancellor Luther resigned in May 1926. When the Zentrum once more turned to Marx to fill the post, he wrote to his wife, “Now they’ve found their idiot again”. Like the first two times, Marx’s cabinet based on Zentrum, DVP, DDP, and BVP had no parliamentary majority, so he had to look for outside support. While the SPD bumbled in the Princes’ Expropriation campaign, it could be relied upon to continue the foreign policy of rapprochement with the Allies, and thus Marx was able to negotiate the admittance of Germany into the League of Nations in 1926 – in Weimar, one of the most difficult, but also most valuable foreign policy successes of a government.
Marx’s government was toppled by a vote of no confidence over the military’s secret cooperation with the Soviet Union in February 1927. By now, the right wing of the Zentrum was clearly ascendant, and the party pushed for a coalition with the DNVP. Marx opposed the notion, but felt compelled to give in to his party’s wishes. Thus, his fourth cabinet included DNVP ministers for the first time – no fewer than four of them. Despite this new right-wing bent, the new government implemented a major piece of social security with the introduction of unemployment insurance.
Marx’s special ability in Weimar allows him to swap two issues on the debate track: He might, for example, bring the attractive Unemployment Insurance issue to the Zentrum area of the track – and instead give the SPD the Stab in the Back issue which would have them face the dilemma between either weakening their own position or strengthening the DNVP.
However, infighting increased both in the Zentrum (between its republican and its conservative wings) and the government coalition at large. Marx attempted to pacify the former by pushing for legislation which would please both by appealing to their shared Catholicism – and which was dear to his own heart: A federal school law should codify the equality of confessional schools (with religious instruction only in the corresponding faith) with “simultaneous schools” (with both Protestant and Catholic religious instruction on offer). While that improved cohesion in the Zentrum, it put a strain on the coalition: The liberal parties DVP and DDP opposed the measure. Marx was unable to find a compromise. As the coalition disintegrated and the Zentrum’s right-wing gained ever more traction, the subsequent electoral defeat of May 1928 was almost a relief for Marx. A new Grand Coalition, led by chancellor Hermann Müller (SPD), was formed.
After Politics
After the election, Marx withdrew from politics. His centrist course was abandoned by his ever more right-leaning party which ended the Grand Coalition in 1930, operated a minority cabinet without parliamentary support strictly via presidential emergency decrees, and finally even voted in favor of the Enabling Act of 1933 which transferred the legislative power on the freshly elected Nazi government.
Marx himself limited his public activities to umbrella organization of Catholic student associations which he chaired. When the organization was to be Nazified in 1933, he let himself be pushed aside without a fight.
Marx’s old acquaintances shunned him after the Nazi takeover, as nobody wanted to be perceived to be close to an exponent of the democratic system. He lived a private life on very limited means and was fortunate to be left alone by the Nazis. When the post-war political system was formed in Germany, Marx joined the CDU (Christlich-Demokratische Union, Christian Democratic Union), the new cross-confessional Christian party. Soon after, Wilhelm Marx died on August 5, 1946.
Weimar Germany’s longest-serving chancellor is today all but forgotten.
The Rating
Foreign Policy
Marx’s foreign policy was neither original – Hermann Müller had outlined it as foreign minister and chancellor in the early 1920s – nor entirely his own – Gustav Stresemann, who served as foreign minister in all of Marx’s cabinets, carried out a good deal of it. It was, however, successful, as both the Dawes Plan and the admittance to the League of Nations show. Sometimes, the soft-spoken, conciliatory Marx also enjoyed advantages over the brash Stresemann – tough talk would not have finalized the Dawes Plan.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Domestic Policy
Marx had been reared to champion the cause of Catholic cultural equality from his early years on. His tragedy is that most of the disadvantages Catholics faced in the Protestant German Empire were removed by the Weimar Constitution, and those which remained – for example, that Catholic civil servants were less likely to be promoted – had no simple legislative solutions. Yet such solutions Marx kept pursuing, as with his ill-fated school law (despite the fact that 85% of Catholic schoolchildren already attended Catholic confessional schools). This practical non-issue has not even made it into the Weimar game – neither as an event card nor as a debate issue. Marx squandered political capital in the pursuit of an object which was neither useful nor attainable.
Rating: 1 out of 5.
Economic Policy
The ambitious anti-inflation reforms of 1923 and 1924 had been initiated by Stresemann, a friend of decisive action. Yet their actual implementation fell to the more measured Marx – probably a lucky stroke. Neither of them attempted to curtail the social effects of the reforms, and thus many pensioners and former as well as current civil servants fell into poverty, often alienating them from the republic.
Similarly, the introduction of unemployment insurance was a great step forward for social security – but it was underfunded in the relatively prosperous years of the beginning, and when unemployment and thus costs exploded after the crash of 1929, the system proved to be both a burden on the national budget and insufficient to alleviate the hardship of the many.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Vision
Marx was content to be placed wherever his party or the country needed him and do what he thought was required of him. He did not shape politics as much as answer to calls of duty.
Rating: 1 out of 5.
Pragmatism
Considerable parliamentary skill and his negotiation as an honest broker allowed Marx to gain him the majorities for his Enabling Act (1923) as well as the ratification of the Dawes Plan (1924). His mastery in that mere year contrasts unfavorably with his constant inability (despite his best attentions and efforts) to control the direction of his party (or at least keep the renegades under control), most markedly in the Prussian fiasco of 1925. His willingness to go along with any situation and answer any call of duty weakened his negotiating power, and forced him to repeatedly carry out political operations with whose premises he did not agree.
Marx was personally incorruptible. He managed to be both a committed party man, but govern with all of his country in mind. However, the Enabling Act set a dangerous precedent for the erosion of the constitution.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Overall
In his first and second chancellorship, Wilhelm Marx rose to the challenge of implementing the solutions to the great crisis of the republic. In his later tenures, he performed markedly worse despite the much-improved situation. His biggest successes are holding the course in foreign and economic policy in 1924, his biggest failure his inability to develop and implement a long-term plan for his party and the republic.
How would you rate Marx? Let me know in the comments!
Further Reading
For short overview essays on all German chancellors from Bismarck on, see Sternburg, Wilhelm von: Die deutschen Kanzler.Von Bismarck bis Merkel[The German Chancellors. From Bismarck to Merkel], Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2006 (in German).
The only full-length biography of Marx is Hehl, Ulrich von Wilhelm Marx: 1863—1946.Eine politische Biographie [Wilhelm Marx: 1863—1946. A Political Biography], Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, Mainz 1987. Its somewhat dry style is made up for by its detailed, source-rich research.
For the broader context, see: Herbert, Ulrich: A History of Twentieth-Century Germany, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2019.
Frederick the Great. A Military Life was published in 1985 by Routledge. It is a biography of Prussian king Frederick II (the Great, 1712—1786) dedicated to the military dimension of his life – not only his wars (on a tactical, operational, and strategic level), but also his activities as a military administrator and organizer.
Friedrich was published in 2004. Richard Sivél’s first published board game is a highly abstracted operational treatment of the Seven Years’ War in central Europe, focusing on Prussia’s desperate struggle for survival against the overwhelming odds of the Austrian-Russian-French alliance, personified by the eponymous king (Friedrich is the German form of Frederick). Five years later, a prequel on the War of the Austrian succession was published which uses the same basic system: Maria (Richard Sivél, Histogame).
Connections & Conclusions
My first contact with Duffy’s book was via Friedrich – it is one of the books referenced in the bibliography contained in the rulebook. A good choice, as it is the first treatment of the military dimension of Frederick’s life since imperial German times (and remains the definitive work on the subject until today).
Obviously, the book is more encompassing – after all, it treats not only the Seven Years’ War, but the entire 74-year life of Frederick. Yet the chapter on the Seven Years’ War makes up almost half of the book – testament to the importance of the war for Frederick (whom it turned from an energetic man in his prime into a hollowed out, aged king who had lost most of his pleasures along with many personal friends). The toll the war took on Frederick is showcased in many anecdotes both in the book and in the “small events” in the game.
Glum times for Frederick! Other event cards show him as energetic and decisive, but this one embodies his worst impulses.
Frederick represents a watershed in history. On the one hand, he expanded and modernized the Prussian bureaucracy which is so symbolic for the modern, often impersonal state. On the other, he was a roi-connétable, a king-warlord, one of the last monarchs to personally lead his troops into battle – those after him who did so had usually used their military success to also take political power which was then based on their continued martial prowess (like Napoleon). Yet in an age when the kings of Britain, France, or Russia remained at court and sent their generals to fight whichever war needed fighting, Frederick rode at the head of his main army, entrusting detachments to his generals only because he could not be everywhere at once.
And Frederick did his best to be everywhere. One of the most striking characteristics of Frederick’s campaigns is his masterful use of the interior lines, on which he performed sweeping forced marches from one theater of the war to another. The most impressive example is found late in the campaign of 1757: After Frederick’s offensive in Bohemia had failed, and France’s victory over the Hanoverian army in northwestern Germany opened the way for a French invasion of Prussia. Frederick marched his army to western Saxony, where he beat a combined French/Imperial army at Roßbach on November 5. The Austrians had used the opportunity to invade Silesia which had only been held by secondary Prussian detachments and were in the possession of almost the entire province… until Frederick’s army showed up, having marched 400 kilometers in a month, and expelled the Austrians from Silesia at Leuthen, the site of his greatest tactical victory.
Frederick’s forced march from Roßbach (battle on November 5, 1757) to Leuthen (December 5, 1757) on the Friedrich map.
These sweeping operational and tactical maneuvers are detailed by around 50 maps in Duffy’s book. Whoever is interested in the wars of Frederick will pore over them for a long time during the read and probably flick back and forth between the map section and the text to follow a battle description. While Friedrich prizes maneuver, it has to scale down the distances covered – the march from Roßbach to Leuthen would take five turns on the map (an entire game typically takes around 20 turns).
Operational map of the forced march from Roßbach to Leuthen (top) and tactical map of the battle of Roßbach (bottom right) in Frederick the Great. A Military Life. I’d love to say the book is in this slightly banged up condition because I read it so often, but the unromantic fact is that I bought it used at a library sale (at the bargain price of four bucks).
Thus, there is a certain disconnect between general Friedrich [the pieces are all named in the German fashion] moving on the map and the player role of Frederick: The general Friedrich is much less important than the historical Frederick-the-general. His piece starts in Saxony, which makes it likely that he will only ever do battle with Austria and their minor ally, the Imperial Army, but never venture far enough to fight against France or even Russia and its ally Sweden. If he remains in Saxony and Prussia elects to focus its defense against Austria in Silesia, Frederick might command only a small detachment, avoiding battle while pinning down Austrian forces and taking unglamorous retreats if he is engaged.
Friedrich (Frederick) is keeping Karl von Lothringen (Charles Alexander of Lorraine) busy in Saxony while the main forces of Prussia and Austria, stacked to impressive height, face off in Silesia.
The player role of Frederick, however, oversees the entirety of the Prussian war effort (as well as that of Prussia’s minor ally Hanover, ruled in personal union by the king of Britain). The player has control over the maneuver of their generals of which Frederick could only have dreamt: News of a victory or defeat in East Prussia would have reached his army camp in Bohemia only weeks after the event, whereas in Friedrich the player can position the general in charge of defending East Prussia exactly where they want and have him surrender, retreat, or fight for his life according to the overall strategic plan.
Maximilian Ulysses von Browne has moved boldly in the first turn… and might face Friedrich/Frederick’s wrath (and superior power) in the second.
Nonetheless, the game is very effective at conveying Friedrich’s psychological state: In the early game, the player might be elated by their power and success. As Frederick moves and draws cards first in the round, an aggressive player can attack their foes with overwhelming force – for example, a second-round attack on Austria means that Prussia has drawn its seven cards per round twice already (so, fourteen in total), whereas Austria has only drawn its five cards per turn once. This corresponds with the quality advantage of the Prussian troops early in the war which Duffy notes frequently. Yet Duffy also argues that this advantage was lost by the heavy casualties the Prussian army endured in 1757 and would never be regained. (Duffy contends that Frederick inherited the finest military force in Europe upon his accession to the throne, but left his own successor a mediocre army – this long-term criticism of Frederick is, of course, beyond the scope of the game.)
Correspondingly, the Frederick player will soon find that the time to play defense has come (if it hasn’t been from the beginning of the game). And as their once-impressive card hand dwindles under the repeated attacks from all foes, elation will give way to gloom. Whenever an anecdote is read as the end-of-round event, showing the historical Frederick at turns defiant, melancholy, or self-pitying, the Frederick player will be able to relate – as they will as Austria’s allies, one after another, falter and peace is made. Frederick might have won the game, but it will surely have taken a toll.
Prussia barely holds on to the last Austrian and Russian objectives… let’s hope for Frederick that the Tsarina dies soon!
In that sense, Frederick the Great. A Military Life and Friedrich are a perfect match – the analytic and the immersive, the intellectual and the emotional. Give both a try!
Three years ago, I have inaugurated a new irregular series on my blog assessing the merits of UK prime ministers (illustrated through the lens of a single board game each). The rating system seemed robust enough to apply it to other countries/leaders (at least if they are more or less democratic). Thus, we branched out to American presidents and German chancellors. Today’s subject is the rare German president with political power – Paul von Hindenburg, the second and last president of the Weimar Republic. And which game could be more appropriate for him than Weimar (Matthias Cramer, Capstone Games/Skellig Games/Spielworxx)?
The Rating System
Some caveats ahead: The presidents will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as president.
Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A president can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the president is assessed as follows:
Foreign policy: Did the president increase German influence in the world and the security of Germans at home? Did the president wield German power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected?
Domestic policy: Did the president increase the liberty of Germans to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the president promote domestic security and shape the framework for fair justice dealing with offenses?
Economic policy: Did the president facilitate the prosperity and economic security of Germans (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the president’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?
Vision: Did the president have an idea of what Germany and Europe (the latter counting for more in times of German influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the president’s policies steer Germany (and, if applicable, Europe) in this direction?
Pragmatism: Did the president succeed in seeing their policy through from inception to completion? How well did the president manage the support from parliament, society, the administration, the media?
Integrity: Did the president understand the office as a means to benefit themselves, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the president respect the boundaries of the office?
Note: If you have read my UK prime minister or US president ratings, you will remember that I rated them on the global impacts of their vision as well. As the rating system is only really applicable to democratic leaders and no democratic German leader ever had the chance to conduct a truly global policy, I only assess their vision on national and European grounds.
In all other ratings (UK prime ministers, US presidents, German chancellors) the subject’s life after holding the office is also assessed (for they are still seen as ex-office holders, but as a secondary consideration). This does not apply here, as – spoiler! – both Weimar Republic presidents died in office.
Hindenburg’s Life
Paul von Beneckendorff und Hindenburg was born in 1847, when Prussia was still an absolute monarchy. Like most men in his family, he opted for a military career and had his baptism of fire in Prussia’s wars of unification: He fought at Königgrätz (Sadowa) against the Austrians at age 18, at Sedan against the French three years later. The socialist Paris Commune which had been formed against both the Prussian siege of Paris and the liberal French government filled him with a horror of civil war and revolution which would influence him all his life. Back from the wars, Hindenburg enjoyed a successful career as an officer, culminating in his promotion to (full) general in 1905. In the forty years between the victory over France in 1871 and his retirement (aged 63) in 1911 he would not fight another war.
Hindenburg was recalled into active service shortly after the outbreak of World War I and placed at the head of the 8th Army, the only German force dealing with Russia’s invasion of East Prussia. At the advice of his energetic chief of staff Erich Ludendorff, Hindenburg opted for a daring counter-attack which annihilated one of the two Russian invasion armies. The actual execution of the plan was left to Ludendorff. Hindenburg’s main contribution was to remain steadfast when Ludendorff wanted to abandon the plan in the middle of the operation during one of his nervous fits – a pattern which would become characteristic for the rest of the war. Hindenburg and Ludendorff had won the most significant German victory of the early weeks of the war, and they had done so on German soil. The fundament for the myth of Hindenburg was in place.
While Hindenburg, now the commander-in-chief of the German forces on the Eastern Front, had suddenly become the most admired and revered German, the ambitious Ludendorff also urged him to demand greater influence over the course of the entire war. That embroiled the duo Hindenburg-Ludendorff in a continued rivalry with the OHL (Oberste Heeresleitung, Supreme Army Command) under Erich von Falkenhayn. Hindenburg, brought up with the values of a Prussian officer, was now routinely insubordinate to his military superior Falkenhayn, until Emperor Wilhelm II sacked Falkenhayn in August 1916 and replaced him with Hindenburg. Of course, it was once more Ludendorff, who (now as First Quartermaster General) pulled the strings.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff widely sidelined the emperor and ran Germany as a quasi-military dictatorship. However, their double role of political and military decision-makers did not come with increased effectiveness: What the politicians Hindenburg and Ludendorff demanded (a victorious peace, vast annexations, a German hegemony over Europe), the generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff could not deliver. And while the military leadership of the German armies remained strong, the political decisions lacked judgment – unlimited submarine warfare drew the United States into the conflict on the Allied side in 1917; the mishandling of relations with post-revolutionary Russia tied down German forces in the east. Hindenburg and Ludendorff gambled on a last offensive in the west in 1918 – and lost. The reserves were spent now. As the Allied armies pressed forward in a counter-offensive, making peace seemed like the best option to Germany’s military dictators.
They applied to US President Woodrow Wilson for peace – in the hope that a lenient peace based on the Fourteen Points could be obtained. Wilson, however, remained firm: On the one hand, he insisted on parliamentary government for Germany (and thus the end of the OHL dictatorship); on the other, the territorial losses and military restrictions to be applied to Germany seemed dishonorable to Hindenburg and Ludendorff. One way or the other, their desire to remain responsible for the country waned – they complained in bitter terms how they had been “stabbed in the back” by a non-supportive home front. In the end, Ludendorff resigned, but Hindenburg stayed on as the head of the OHL – but complemented with a chancellor whose power base was the German parliament. Their attempt to save the German monarchy with an orderly transition out of the war was quickly swept away by the revolting masses in the revolution of November 1918.
Now Hindenburg showed remarkable pragmatism. While the revolution was made by the Social Democrats, pariahs under the monarchy to which Hindenburg was so attached, his dislike for them was outweighed by his horror of civil war. Together with Ludendorff’s successor, general Wilhelm Groener, he placed the German army at the disposal of the new government led by Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert… with the understanding that it would be used to quell any Bolshevik unrest. The (Majority) Social Democrats thus were able to complement their political dominance over the more left-leaning Independent Social Democrats with the hard power of the army and usher in a parliamentary republic.
The pact between Ebert and Groener allowed them to put down socialist revolutionaries. Note that the game event (which is a SPD card) could also be used against a right wing uprising!
As with Ludendorff, Hindenburg let Groener fill the active role in their partnership while providing the myth surrounding his person. Groener and he made sure that the army, still spread out from France to Ukraine, returned in an orderly fashion. When the Treaty of Versailles was offered to the German government, Hindenburg personally understood that there was no alternative to it – Germany could not have renewed the war with the Allies. As he felt the Treaty was humiliating, though, he left it to Groener to advise the government to accept.
The “stab-in-the-back myth” contributed to the re-legitimation of the German right wing after World War I.
Once the Treaty was signed, Hindenburg retired to private life, but remained immensely popular, a beacon of the anti-republican Germany. When he stated at the parliamentary committee of inquiry dealing with the end of the war that the German army, “undefeated in the field” had been “stabbed in the back,” (by whom exactly, he did not specify – listeners felt free to fill in the blank with their preferred choice of enemy, usually “the Jews” or “the Socialists”) it gave the myth a quasi-official sanctioning.
His relationship with the German right, however, was rather complicated. Hindenburg was close with some members of the DNVP (Deutschnationale Volkspartei – German National People’s Party), but never became a party member. He did join the ideologically similarly inclined Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet) association of former soldiers, though. He condemned both major right-wing coup attempts of the early Weimar Republic – reluctantly in the case of Kapp and Lüttwitz, forcefully in the case of his former partner Ludendorff with the upstart demagogue Adolf Hitler.
When president Friedrich Ebert died in 1925, lesser men had to fill his shoes. None of the various candidates running in the first round of the presidential election came close to a majority by themselves. Coalition building was the order of the day now. The pillars of the republican order (Social Democrats, (Catholic) Center, and left-leaning Liberals) would put the Center candidate Wilhelm Marx forward as a joint candidate. While the right-leaning Liberal candidate Karl Jarres had received the most votes in the first round, the parties of the right feared that he would not be able to stand against a united republican camp. The constitution, however, allowed for candidates to be entered in the second round who had not been running in the first. And which candidate would, on merit of his personality, have a better chance than the old war hero, the victor of Tannenberg?
Hindenburg electrified a certain part of the electorate. Others criticized his closeness to the old monarchy (Hindenburg had sought approval from the exiled Wilhelm II before running, but denied this), his lack of experience with parliamentary politics, and his age (he was 77 already, and would be 84 by the end of his term). Hindenburg was elected in the second round with a plurality of the votes.
Hindenburg has the best chances to be elected president in Weimar – and will give the slow-starting DNVP a great boost when in office.
The election of a Reichspräsident is one of the turning points in a game of Weimar: The winner receives the very powerful Reichspräsident card which allows the player to use one of their cards twice every turn. As you only hold five cards each turn, being president thus guarantees you to be 20% more effective! In the game, Hindenburg acts as the candidate for the DNVP (which is an amalgam of various nationalist groups extending beyond the DNVP proper). His chances to win are typically pretty good, as the DNVP has many opportunities to place more party bases early in the game… and, as the DNVP typically does not score a lot of points in the early game, other players might also be more likely to cast their votes for Hindenburg in the second round of the election.
Early in his term, Hindenburg surprised many of his critics: Despite his background, he kept within the confines of the republican constitution (and declared publicly that he did not seek a return to monarchy), despite his inexperience, he immediately found a role in the political process (for example, it was his stern intervention that brought the quarrelling parties to form a government in 1926), and despite his age, he did not seem to lack vigor.
Hindenburg even showed his trademark pragmatism: When Hans von Seeckt, the chief of the German army, invited a Prussian prince to an army exercise, Hindenburg promptly sacked him to avoid tensions with the Allies. And when the Social Democrats won the 1928 parliamentary elections and formed a “grand coalition” government with the Center and the Liberals, Hindenburg worked well with them.
Yet his old networks persisted, and in the eyes of the monarchists, the military men, the aristocratic magnates of the old Prussia, it was clear that the Social Democrats, no, the whole parliamentary system needed to go. As Hindenburg grew older and relied more on his advisers (chief of them his son Oskar and Kurt von Schleicher from the Army Ministry), his attachment to the parliamentary, constitutional system lessened. When the Social Democratic Chancellor Hermann Müller opposed an agricultural aid package from which the aristocratic magnates would benefit most, Hindenburg decided it was time for a change in government. Together with Oskar and Schleicher, he sounded out the parties on the political right to form a minority government which would not act through parliament, but through presidential emergency decrees. They were intrigued.
The last Weimar Republic government which had a parliamentary majority broke apart in 1930 – ostensibly over a rather minor disagreement regarding the budget for unemployment insurance (by then, Germany was in the throes of the Great Depression). The schemers behind the scenes quickly put up a new minority government led by Heinrich Brüning from the right wing of the Center. Brüning would spend the next two ears trying to combat the crisis with a deflationary policy exacerbating the economic woes of the country. The Social Democrats opposed Brüning and, when he couldn’t get a majority for his budget, forced new elections in September 1930. Neither they nor the government succeeded at the polls, though – instead, the Nazi Party leaped from a fringe group to the second-strongest force in parliament (behind the Social Democrats). Brüning continued his minority government based on presidential executive orders.
Hindenburg and Schleicher regarded the Brüning experiment with ever less enthusiasm, and sought to push the government to the right – but they could not find the partners for such an enterprise yet: The DNVP refused to join the government coalition, and Hindenburg dismissed the Nazi Party because of his assessment of Hitler as too vulgar (understandable) and socialist (confusing his positions with those of the “national revolutionaries” in the Nazi Party). Hindenburg even gave in to Brüning’s and Groener’s (now Army Minister) pressure to outlaw the SS and SA Nazi paramilitary forces to stop the ever-increasing political violence in the streets.
After the seven years of his first term ended, Hindenburg, now aged 84, stood for re-election 1932. His main opponent would be Hitler. The parties who had supported Marx in his failed bid of 1925 had no candidate who could match the charisma of the other two – and so the left-leaning and centrist democratic parties rallied around Hindenburg. One would suppose that this would ensure a blowout victory – yet most of Hindenburg’s old supporters on the political right, concentrated in the rural, Protestant areas of Germany, defected to Hitler. Hindenburg won 53% of the vote in the second round and remained president.
Schleicher then pushed for a new, entirely non-parliamentary government, and when Brüning proposed a plan to settle derelict agricultural land in the east with the unemployed (to the detriment of the aristocratic owners), Hindenburg agreed that it was time for change. He dismissed Brüning, and, advised by Schleicher, appointed Franz von Papen (no party affiliation) chancellor. Papen was to govern with a cabinet of aristocrats which had no parliamentary basis whatsoever – the Cabinet of Barons.
Papen and Schleicher both courted the Nazis, but disagreed on the methods: Schleicher wanted to split the Nazis by allying with its “national revolutionary” wing; Papen (supported by Hindenburg) lifted the ban on SS and SA, ostensibly to decrease political tensions. The opposite happened: Nazi paramilitaries started a riot with Communist supporters in the working-class Hamburg suburb of Altona in which several people were killed. The fear of political violence provided a pretext for forceful government action: When there was no government majority after the state elections in Prussia, Hindenburg authorized Papen by executive order to depose the acting state government of the democratic parties (an open breach of the constitution).
Papen, however, had maneuvered himself into a dead end. His attempt of governing detached from parliament ignored the political will of the German people: Some of them might prefer the Nazis, others the Social Democrats, the Communists, or the Center – but barely anyone supported Papen, as the parliamentary election of November 1932 showed. Hindenburg sounded out all parties from the Nazis to the Liberals (but not the Social Democrats or the Communists), but failed to find a workable government.
Another solution had to be found. Schleicher convinced Hindenburg to sack Papen and took over as chancellor himself. His attempt to form a cross-ideological front of the army, the trade unions, and the “national revolutionary” Nazis made the established elites uneasy. Papen took his revenge by agreeing with Hitler on a coalition government – headed by Hitler, but with only a few Nazi ministers. Papen convinced Hindenburg that this was the way to tame the Nazis: Use their popular support while demystifying them as they got bogged down in the minutiae of government. On January 30, 1933, Hindenburg swore Hitler in as chancellor.
In Weimar, Nazi parliamentary rule would end the game – with all players losing. Hindenburg, playing with people of flesh and blood, rather than with wooden meeples, also seemed defeated after the Nazi takeover. He ceased resistance to Hitler and stood by him at the old church of the Potsdam Garrison in a symbolic merger of the old and the new national movement. In the meantime, the Nazis dismantled the democratic order. Paul von Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934. No new president was elected. Instead, Hitler acted as joint head of state and government – Führer und Reichskanzler.
The Rating
Foreign Policy
Hindenburg generally supported the government position on foreign policy, which aimed at shedding the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty and re-admittance of Germany as a fully equal great power. He did misjudge at times how to achieve these goals – for example, he thought that the League of Nations would put additional shackles on Germany (unlike foreign minister Stresemann, who realized the League’s potential to adjudicate conflicts which were before handled directly between Germany and the Allies).
Hindenburg was not particularly interested in domestic policy and left it largely to the chancellors and their ministers. Whenever he did get involved, however, it was to detriment of the freedom of the German people: His initial refusal to outlaw SS and SA contributed to the rise of political violence, as did his speedy cancellation of the ban after only three months. The subsequent Strike on Prussia was the most obscene breach of the constitution before the Nazis dismantled it altogether – without encountering resistance from Hindenburg, whose credibility with the military, administrative, and business elites might have prevented their walkover.
Once more, Hindenburg largely went along with the policies of his chancellors. In the case of Brüning’s attempt to combat the recession with the tightening of spending, that was catastrophic. Whenever Hindenburg attempted to leave his own mark, it was in favor propping up the failing system of East Elbian agriculture in a lucrative way for the old aristocratic elites.
What did Hindenburg eventually want? – He favored monarchy over republic, but did not seek a return to it in office. He swore an oath to the constitution, but treated it ever more casually the longer he ruled. His preferences for governing with, against, or beside parliament shifted according to his chancellors and advisors. He attempted to include or exclude the Nazis at times, and eventually was swallowed by them.
Hindenburg started strong in this regard: He was instrumental in the formation of governments and got along well with parties as different as the Social Democrats and the German National People’s Party. He also got his way in the change of governments from 1930 on (even though a good deal of this was conceived rather by his son and Schleicher). Yet these tactical strokes did not lead to strategic gains, and in the end, Hindenburg outmaneuvered himself with the Nazi-led coalition government.
Hindenburg attached great importance to be regarded as above the parties, as a representative of all Germans. Yet in practice, he played favorites, most notably in his economic policy which was shaped by his close connection with the East Elbian agricultural magnates. Hindenburg could also be petty, as when he refused to visit the Rhineland and Westphalia in 1930 because the Stahlhelm had been outlawed there for their breaches of the Versailles Treaty. On a grander scale, Hindenburg tested the limits of the constitution from 1930 on with his various non-parliamentary governments… and in the end, attacked the constitution frontally in the Strike on Prussia.
Overall: Hindenburg played a complex role in the Weimar Republic. While his age and his tendency to let others plot the course of action excuse him from some of the blame, he crucially contributed to the extension of the economic woes and political violence which engulfed the republic, and directly aided the steady erosion of parliamentary rule from 1930 on. Hindenburg enters the list at the very bottom.
How would you rate Hindenburg? Let me know in the comments!
Further Reading
Hindenburg has found surprisingly little attention in recent English-language scholarship. The standard scholarly biography in German is Pyta, Wolfram: Hindenburg. Herrschaft zwischen Hohenzollern und Hitler [Hindenburg. Rule between the Hohenzollern and Hitler], Siedler, Munich 2007.
A shorter, more accessible treatment is Rauscher, Walter: Hindenburg. Feldmarschall und Reichspräsident [Hindenburg. Field Marshal and Reich President], Ueberreuter, Vienna 1997.
For the broader context, see: Herbert, Ulrich: Herbert, Ulrich: A History of Twentieth-Century Germany, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2019.
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