Reichstag and relied solely on the support of President von Hindenburg. Its first acclearly suggested its authoritarian sympathies. It lifted the ban on Nazi Storm Troopera:tivities, which

had been imposed two months earlier by the Brüning government, and then, under the flimsy excuse that the constant street clashes between Communists and National Socialists made regular administration impossible, it went on to dissolve by plice action the Social Democratic government of the key state of Prussia. -

Now, if ever, was the time for Hitler's opponents to stand up and fight. From this point on it would be too late. But no one seemed prepared to take decisive action. The Democratic party had nearly vanished; the Center was paralyzed by its own internal divo sions. The nationalist Right was increasingly conniving with the Nazis. Perhaps most surprisingly, the Communists, too, made common cause with the Nazi party against the Social Democrats, whom they dismissed as “social fascists,” believing that a Hitler regime would pave the way for their own rise to power after the final collapse of capitalism. This split in the ranks of the Left made concerted opposition impossible. Even the Social Democrats, whose vigorous resistance had halted the Kapp putsch in 1920, found no similar fighting spirit with which to oppose von Papen in 1932. Electoral weakness, internecine struggles, opportunism, and weariness combined to reduce to mute impotence the Ger. man political forces that might have challenged Hitler's rise.

One consequence of the Great Depression was a rash of bank failures in Europe. Here, bank customers in Berlin wait to withdraw their savings in an atmosphere of tense expectation. (Courtesy AP/Wide World Photos)

198 The Great Depression, 1929–1935