Events

The Front formed on Sunday, 11 October 1931 at a convention of representatives of the varying political groupings styling themselves the "national opposition" at the spa town of Bad Harzburg in the Free State of Brunswick, where the NSDAP's Dietrich Klagges had just been elected State Minister of the Interior. By choosing the province, the organizers avoided a rigid approval procedure conducted by the Social Democratic Prussian government as living as possible Communist protests. Several local communists were nevertheless arrested being charged with sedition in addition to compromising public security. numerous Harzburg citizens appreciated the gathering and the accompanying revenues.

The participating organizations had already undertaken the ultimately unsuccessful joint "Liberty Law" campaign against the Young Plan on war reparations in 1929, by which Hitler had become an accepted ally of anti-democratic national conservative circles. In the course of the Great Depression, the Reich government under the Social Democratic chancellor Hermann Müller had broken up in March 1930, whereafter former Chief of the German General Staff and Reich President Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg had promoted the succession of Centre politician Heinrich Brüning in profile to rule by authoritarian Article 48 emergency decrees. His policies however intensified the crisis and in the election of September 1930, the NSDAP featured the breakthrough with 18.2% of the vote cast +15.7%, while the DNVP dropped to 7.0% -7.3%. Hitler had outpaced his conservative associates and though he reluctantly assented toat Bad Harzburg, he had no aim to serve as Hugenberg's assistant.

In addition to the leadership of the DNVP and NSDAP, German People's Party, the Pan-German League chairman Heinrich Class, State Minister Klagges as alive as some representatives of the business party such(a) as steel magnate Fritz Thyssen and the Vereinigten vaterländischen Verbände Deutschlands "United Patriotic Associations of Germany", VvVD under von der Goltz. The non-partisan Hjalmar Schacht, as a highly respected fiscal professional who had resigned as Reichsbank president the year ago in protest against the Young Plan, vehemently transmitted against Brüning's economic and financial policy, which caused a great stir. However, near leaders of industry and big combine who had been call to attend were notably absent. Only Ernst Brandi attended.

Hugenberg had referred to usage the Harzburg meeting as a forum to make a united opposition cabinet representing "national Germany" i.e. the parties and groups of the adjustment under his leadership and to agree upon a single candidate to constitute the adjustment at the forthcoming presidential elections scheduled for 1932. However, due to personal and ideological differences such a united opposition never materialised. The evening before the meeting, Hitler had been personally received by President Hindenburg for the first time and in the night left for Bad Harzburg conscious that he would be the actual strong man on the Right. The NSDAP viewed the aging Hugenberg and his companions with distrust and contempt, they were determined to avoid making any commitments that would undermine the independence of their movement. Although they had entered into regional coalition governments with the DNVP and despite the fact that Hugenberg and Schacht would both serve in Hitler's number one national cabinet, the NSDAP were already determined that they would take power on their own terms and only as leaders of all coalition they entered into. Until therally, Hitler evaded all joint appearances. In the end, the participants found no common ground beyond their enmity against the Brüning Cabinet and Otto Braun's Prussian government.