FOURTH YEAR GCSE

POLITICAL PARTIES IN GERMANY IN THE 1920s

The minority political parties were quiet during this time. People were content with the way Germany was being run, so why turn to extremist parties? Despite having 108,000 members in 1928, the Nazi Party only won 12 seats to the Reichstag in the election of that year. It was also in 1928, that the Nazi Party nearly went bankrupt. The Communists won 54 seats at this election. Moderate parties like the Centre Party and the Social Democrats easily won the 1928 election. In fact, the elections of the Golden Age of Weimar seem to indicate that extreme parties only flourished when an extreme situation occurred:

Election year Communist
Party

Social
Democrats

Democratic party

Centre Conservatives Nationalists Nazis
1919 0 187 75 91 19 44 0
1920 4 186 39 64 65 71 0
May '24 62 100 28 65 45 95 32
Dec '24 45 131 32 69 51 103 14
1928 54 153 25 62 45 73 12