Karl Dietrich Bracher (13 March 1922 – 19 September 2016) was a German political scientist and historian of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, born in Stuttgart. During World War II, he served in the Wehrmacht and was captured by the Americans while serving in Tunisia in 1943. Bracher was awarded a Ph.D. in the classics by the University of Tübingen in 1948 and subsequently studied at Harvard University from 1949 to 1950. Bracher taught at the Free University of Berlin from 1950 to 1958 and at the University of Bonn since 1959.
Early life and education Karl Dietrich Bracher was born in Stuttgart in 1922. During World War II, he served in the Wehrmacht. He was captured by the Americans while serving in Tunisia in 1943. He was interned at Camp Concordia, Kansas until 1945. Bracher returned to Germany, studied at the University of Tübingen and was awarded a Ph.D. in the classics in 1948.
Career From 1949 to 1950 Bracher studied at Harvard University. Bracher taught at the Free University of Berlin from 1950 to 1958 and at the University of Bonn from 1959 to 1987. From 1978, he was the co-publisher of the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (Quarterly Journal of Contemporary History).
Personal life and death In 1951, Bracher married Dorothee Schleicher, the niece of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. They had two children.Ruud van Dijk, "Bracher, Karl Dietrich," in Kelly Boyd, ed., The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Vol. 1, London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999, pp. 111–112.
He died on 19 September 2016 at the age of 94.
Historical views Researching the collapse of Weimar Bracher was mainly concerned with the problems of preserving and developing democracy. Bracher was consistent in all his works in arguing for the value of human rights, pluralism and constitutional values, together with urging that Germans align themselves with the democratic values of the West. He saw democracy as a frail institution and has argued that only a concerned citizenry can guarantee it. This theme began with Bracher's first book in 1948, Verfall und Fortschritt im Denken der frühen römischen Kaiserzeit which concerned the downfall of the Roman Republic and the rise of Augustus. His 1955 book Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik (The Disintegration of the Weimar Republic) is his best known book, in which he ascribed the collapse of German democracy not to the Sonderweg ("special path" of German historical development) or other impersonal forces but to human action that followed conscious choice. In that book, Bracher rejected not only the Sonderweg thesis, but also the Marxist theory of National Socialism as the result of a capitalist "conspiracy", the theory that the Treaty of Versailles caused the collapse of the Weimar Republic, and the view that the Nazi dictatorship was simply the work of "fate". Bracher's methodology in Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik involving a mixture of political science and history was considered to be highly innovative and controversial in the 1950s. The German historian Eberhard Kolb wrote Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik was "still unsurpassed as a work of research" on the end of the Weimar Republic.Kolb, Eberhard The Weimar Republic, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 page 132. Bracher wrote that though almost all Germans rejected the Treaty of Versailles, this dislike of Versailles had nothing with do with the coming of presidential government in March 1930 or rise of the Nazi Party starting with the September 1930 Reichstag election.Kolb, Eberhard The Weimar Republic, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 page 169. Furthermore, Bracher wrote that under Weimar, the judicial system had already politicized as the judges, almost all of whom had begun their careers in the Imperial era, had a tendency to impose very lenient sentences for political crimes done in the name of the right.Kolb, Eberhard The Weimar Republic, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 page 36. In Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik, Bracher wrote the judiciary was in part responsible for the collapse of the Weimar republic, "contributing to its overthrow by authoritarian and totalitarian movements."
Bracher argued the beginning of the end of the Weimar Republic was the coming of presidential government in 1930. Starting with the government of Heinrich Brüning, chancellors sought not to govern via the Reichstag, instead using the "25/48/53 formula", referring to the constitutional articles that gave the Reich president the power to dissolve the Reichstag (25), issue emergency decrees (48) and appoint the chancellor (53). The practice was technically legal but violated the spirit of the constitution since article 54 explicitly stated the chancellor and his cabinet were responsible to the Reichstag. Bracher maintained that the end of German democracy was not inevitable, but instead was due to conscious choices coupled with "momentous errors and failures" made by Germany's leaders, especially President Paul von Hindenburg. In Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik, Bracher argued the "collapse" of the republic went through several stages: The "loss of power" with Brüning as the cabinet governed only with Article 48, instead of the Reichstag.Kolb, Eberhard The Weimar Republic, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 page 110. The "power vacuum" with Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher as democracy was gutted, but neither man could build a new system in his short time in office. The "seizure of power" by the National Socialists in 1933. Bracher in writing of a "loss of power" and a "power vacuum" was referring to the decay of the democratic system, not a weakening of the state.Kolb, Eberhard The Weimar Republic, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 page 111. Kolb noted in the years 1930–33, the Reichswehr, the bureaucracy, the police and above all President von Hindenburg all saw a dramatic increase in their power, and what was happening in Germany in that period was the gradual collapse of the democratic system with policy decisions increasingly being made by the Reichswehr and the Kamarilla of President Hindenburg instead of the Reichstag.
Bracher argued that the system of presidential government was intended to and had the effect of weakening democracy, and that in no way was presidential government forced on Hindenburg and his Chancellors by an unmanageable crisis.Kolb, Eberhard The Weimar Republic, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 pages 132–33. Bracher's thesis that Heinrich Brüning and even more so, his successor Franz von Papen had gutted German democracy involved him in a dispute with Werner Conze, a prominent Nazi historian during Nazi rule who emerged as a leading conservative historian in West Germany in the 1950s.Kolb, Eberhard The Weimar Republic, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 page 133. In a series of articles published in the 1950s–60s, Conze argued that by 1929–1930 that German politics had become so dysfunctional that Hindenburg had no other choice, but to reluctantly bring in presidential government as the only way to provide Germany with any sort of government, and that Brüning's governing via Article 48 was only a temporary measure intended to save democracy from the crisis caused by the Great Depression in Germany. In reply, Bracher wrote a series of articles documenting that the plans for presidential government went back much to 1926 at least, and argued that there was no unmanageable crisis with parliamentary government in 1930 that made presidential government unavoidable.Kolb, Eberhard The Weimar Republic, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 pages 179–180. Bracher forcefully argued that was no structural crisis in 1929–30 so severe that Hindenburg had to turn to presidential government as Conze was claiming, instead arguing that Hindenburg, his kamarilla, and the Reichswehr had been seeking long before the Great Depression to do away with democracy.Kolb, Eberhard The Weimar Republic, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 page 180. In this regard, Bracher pointed out that General Kurt von Schleicher and Heinrich Brüning had worked out the plan for a presidential government by April 1929, and it was only Hindenburg's desire to have the government of Hermann Müller pass the Young Plan, which its turn was delayed by the Young Plan referendum of November 1929, that gave Müller almost an extra year in office.
Bracher's thesis about the Brüning government as the first step towards dissolving democracy instead of an effort to save it as maintained by Conze, was greatly supported by the posthumous publication of Brüning's memoirs in 1970. Brüning, a conservative Catholic who never married and is not known to have had a relationship with any women during the course of his life, revealed himself in his memoirs to be a man with an unhealthy emotional dependence on Hindenburg, to whom he was slavishly devoted and whom he regarded in homoerotic terms as the epitome of German masculinity and strength. Brüning openly admitted in his memoirs that the purpose of the presidential government was to do away with democracy and restore the monarchy by bringing back the exiled Wilhelm II, and complained at much length about how unfair it was that Schleicher had turned Hindenburg against him in the spring of 1932, leading to the president to fire him and replace him with Papen. It is noteworthy that Brüning did not object to Papen's policies in his memoirs, but rather to the fact that he would have carried out the same policies if only his beloved Field Marshal Hindenburg had given him the chance, instead of firing him in May 1932. Although Bracher won the debate with Conze, as late as 1971 Bracher deplored the tendency to take "a conservative and all too benevolent view of the presidential regime" as an attempt to save democracy.Kolb, Eberhard The Weimar Republic, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 page 181. After the publication of Brüning's memoirs, which largely confirmed Bracher's thesis, Bracher wrote that the coming of presidential government was "not a move to save democracy, but part of a conscious plan to bring about a right-wing regime independent of party and parliament and to keep the Social Democrats out of power...Brüning's policy oscillated between the defense of a bureaucratic version of a state based on the rule of law, and paving the way for a dictatorship...He was not...the last chancellor before the break-up of the Weimar Republic, but the first chancellor in the process of destroying German democracy".Kolb, Eberhard The Weimar Republic, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 page 182. In a survey of the historiography of the Weimar republic, Kolb wrote that research since the 1970s has confirmed Bracher's damning picture of Brüning that he had first offered in 1955, when the evidence for it was weaker.
Bracher sharply criticized the Social Democrats for not resisting the 1932 Prussian coup d'état launched by Franz von Papen that saw the Social Democratic government of Otto Braun ousted by presidential decree. Bracher wrote that the Reichswehr would probably have crushed any resistance, but "there remained the possibility of a lasting demonstration, a manifestation of the unbroken will of democracy to assert itself against a temporarily superior force. This might, beyond all justified practical calculations, have make it possible to save the democratic consciousness from the psychological and moral collapse of the republican forces; it made have made the way harder for the new rulers; delayed future developments and lessened their effects."Kolb, Eberhard The Weimar Republic, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 pages 185.