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The German National People's Party (German: Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP) was a national-conservative party in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. The party was formed in 1918 by a merger of the German Conservative Party, the Free Conservative Party and a section of the National Liberal Party of the old monarchic German Empire.
Generally hostile towards the republican Weimar constitution, the DNVP spent most of the inter-war period in opposition. Largely supported by landowners and wealthy industrialists, it favoured a monarchist platform and was strongly opposed to the Treaty of Versailles.
Between 1925 and 1928, the party slightly moderated its tone and actively cooperated in successive governments. However, after a disastrous showing at the polls, Alfred Hugenberg, leader of the party's hardliner wing, became chairman in 1928. Hugenberg returned the party to a course of fundamental opposition against the Republic, but abandoned its previous monarchism in favour of more hardline nationalism and reluctant co-operation with the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), better known as the Nazi Party. In 1929, this resulted in the former chairman Kuno Graf von Westarp and other members leaving the party and forming the more centrist Konservative Volkspartei (Conservative People's Party). The DNVP was declining rapidly as many workers began to support the more populist and less aristocratic NSDAP, leaving the party with mostly upper middle class and upper class support.
In 1931, the DNVP, the NSDAP and the Stahlhelm paramilitary organisation briefly formed an uneasy alliance known as the Harzburger Front. The DNVP hoped to control the NSDAP through this coalition and to curb the Nazis' extremism, but the pact only served to strengthen the NSDAP by giving it access to funding and political respectability while obscuring the DNVP's own less extreme platform.
The following year, the DNVP became the only significant party to support Franz von Papen in his short tenure as Chancellor. Performing badly in subsequent elections, the party ended up as junior coalition partners to the NSDAP in the so-called, short-lived Regierung der nationalen Konzentration on Adolf Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933, supporting the Enabling Act that authorised Hitler's government with legislative powers.
Hitler's patience with his conservative allies was limited, and the DNVP representatives in his first Cabinet were quickly bullied into resignation. Shortly thereafter, DNVP members were coerced into joining the NSDAP or retiring from political life altogether. The party dissolved itself and shortly after this the founding of political parties was outlawed in 1933.
In post-war Germany, no serious attempt was made to recreate the party as a political force when conservative and centrist forces united into bigger parties like the CDU and the CSU, its Bavarian branch. The DNVP was briefly revived in 1962, but the new DVNP soon afterwards was merged into the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). Today, there is no mainstream conservative-nationalist political party in Germany similar to the DNVP, as the CDU/CSU is more to the centre.
Chairmen
- 1918-1924 Oskar Hergt (1869-1967)
- 1924-1928 Kuno Graf von Westarp (1864-1945)
- 1928-1933 Alfred Hugenberg (1865-1951)
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- This page was last modified on 30 December 2008, at 10:18.
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