It is generally agreed that rural unrest in the Weimar Republic peaked in 1928 with the onset of the agricultural crisis that preceded the Great Depression. Nevertheless, it would be more accurate to argue that while 1928 witnessed the most extensive mobilisation in the countryside, the degree of militancy was considerably greater in 1929. Certainly this was the case in northern Germany where the mass rallies of January and February 1928 were followed by direct action to prevent the compulsory collection of outstanding taxes and interest payments, culminating in increasingly violent conflict with the police and bombings in 1929. However, largely forgotten in discussions of rural unrest and militancy in the Weimar Republic is a second wave of activist agricultural protest, civil disobedience and direct action that swept across northern Germany from the autumn of 1931.

The creation in late 1931 of organisations to prevent confiscations and compulsory auctions, first in the northern province of Schleswig-Holstein and then in other regions of Germany, has been documented. Yet, remarkably, the surge of direct actions and conflict with the authorities that accompanied the formation of the committees has been almost entirely overlooked. With few exceptions, this applies even to the regional literature, including the most authoritative studies on rural Schleswig-Holstein.Footnote ² Indeed, even Bergmann and Megerle's quantification of rural protest across Germany from 1924 to 1933, based on a search of press reports, uncovered just eight instances of direct action from late 1931, and led them to the mistaken conclusion that the level of rural protest in the Weimar period steadily declined from 1928.Footnote ³ The extent of unrest in the countryside in 1931 and 1932 has, in fact, been greatly underestimated. Focussing on Schleswig-Holstein, Germany's northernmost province, but with some reference to other regions, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the extent of rural protest requires reassessment and that its magnitude needs recognition. It must be acknowledged that this unrest was closely linked with the more general rise in political violence at the close of the Weimar Republic. Moreover, the renewal of rural unrest from the autumn of 1931 was significant in that it involved political parties of both extremes in their pursuit of support in the countryside.

The origins of the first wave of rural unrest are clear.Footnote ⁴ The agricultural sector plunged into crisis towards the end of 1927 when high levels of debt and high rates of interest combined with declining profitability. This decline was caused by increasing production costs, falling prices for farm produce and taxes many times higher than before the First World War. Farmers’ deteriorating financial circumstances, underscored by a growing number of foreclosures, led to numerous appeals to the Reich and Prussian governments for emergency relief and for fundamental change to tariff and tax policy. These climaxed in mass demonstrations in northern Germany with crowds of 60,000 in Oldenburg on 26th January 1928 and up to 140,000 people at various towns in Schleswig-Holstein two days later. Yet promises of assistance did not meet expectations and in Schleswig-Holstein the farmers were unable to fuse their disparate associations into a more effective, unified agricultural lobby. On the contrary, endeavours to compel the associations to unify from below destabilised the structures of the agricultural organisations and dislodged their established leaders. When government relief measures, in particular the postponement of tax payments, came to end and compulsory tax collection resumed, a new protest movement developed under the leadership of more radical farmers.

The role of the Landvolkbewegung (Rural People's Movement) in creating rural protest has been comparatively well documented.Footnote ⁵ From the autumn of 1928 it blocked confiscations and compulsory auctions by marshalling crowds which physically obstructed the removal or sale of items on the farm inventory and intimidated bidders and bailiffs. The most publicised instance involved the prevention of the confiscation of two oxen at Beidenfleth in County Steinburg, at which two hundred farmers set fire to hay bales piled on the road and ambushed the bailiff and his assistants, threatening them with sticks and pitch forks. Support for the Landvolkbewegung remained strongest on Schleswig-Holstein's west coast marsh plains, where falling prices had placed great pressure on the capital-intensive livestock sector. But the movement soon spread to other parts of the province as further actions followed, and at countless meetings and in their own newspaper, the movement's leaders stirred feelings of animosity toward the authorities, promoted civil disobedience and propagated nationalist, anti-Semitic and anti-Weimar sentiment. Protests at the trials and the imprisonment of some of the leaders led to violent clashes with the police, and a small group within the movement planted bombs in public buildings, some of which caused significant damage. The Landvolkbewegung developed in other areas of Germany too, in the province of Hanover, in Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia, but, from early 1930, support for the movement declined. This was a result of the arrest and conviction of the bombers, discord among the movement's leaders, financial difficulties, bans on the newspaper and the defection of supporters to the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP), but also because of a more promising economic outlook in 1930 and a resurgent agricultural lobby in the form of the united Rural and Farmers’ League (Land- und Bauernbund).

The role of the Rural and Farmers’ League in the revival of rural unrest during the final years of the Weimar Republic has not been properly evaluated. The Rural and Farmers’ League was a new organisation which encompassed the vast majority of Schleswig-Holstein's farmers, and soon became the central force behind rural protest in the province. It judged 1930 as a relatively good year, economically and politically. It was satisfied that the worst of the crash in world agricultural prices had been prevented in Germany and, because of the Nazi's success, the rightwing parties had made substantial gains at the Reichstag elections of September.Footnote ⁶ Yet the Rural and Farmers’ League soon expressed alarm that the progress made towards protecting agriculture had come to a standstill before profitability had been restored, particularly in the livestock sector, which was the backbone of the province's agriculture. As the agricultural crisis was compounded by the general economic depression, in the spring of 1931, prices for livestock crashed below their pre-war levels.Footnote ⁷ Making matters worse, floods then destroyed forty per cent of the harvest. By autumn, cattle graziers were reported to be losing up to 200 Reichsmark per animal. As farmers struggled to find the means to pay for investments for the coming year, they also found it increasingly difficult to meet their financial obligations. Debt levels continued to worsen and so too did the number of compulsory auctions.Footnote ⁸ According to an investigation of farm debt in the counties of Steinburg and South Dithmarschen published in October 1932, farms smaller than ten hectares were servicing average debts exceeding their entire projected annual income, whilst even the larger farms averaged debts of over seventy per cent.Footnote ⁹ It is little wonder then that Schleswig-Holstein's farmers were angered when their province was not included in the Eastern Aid Program (Osthilfe), which provided protection from compulsory debt collection and access to reductions in interest and even capital burdens.Footnote ¹⁰

Inspired not only by the Landvolkbewegung, whose remaining leaders had been trying since the spring to revive the struggle against the payment of taxes from farming capital, but also enthused by calls for tax strikes from across the border in Denmark, farmers began a new wave of rural unrest.Footnote ¹¹ In mid-September, the Rural and Farmers’ League issued a ‘final’ public warning to the Reich government to undertake all measures necessary to restore agricultural profitability. Indeed, it suggested that the government was obliged to do so by blaming the crisis on faulty social, monetary and economic policy. At the same time, the League demanded a moratorium on tax and interest payments and their compulsory collection for one year. Arguing that farmers could only be expected to pay interest and taxes from their income, not by the sale of the goods on the inventory or property essential to their farms’ operation, it directed its members to prevent bids at compulsory auctions and to ostracise socially and economically those who failed to comply.Footnote ¹²

Next, the Rural and Farmers’ League took up local calls for the formation of a new organisation for coordinating the prevention of confiscations and compulsory auctions. Supported by the NSDAP and the Stahlhelm veteran organisation, the Rural and Farmers’ League called for meetings to be held across the province on 10th October.Footnote ¹³ When they got wind of the plans, police raided the League's headquarters in Kiel and the Regierungspräsident (district president) issued a ban on the meetings.Footnote ¹⁴ Yet these measures had little effect. The police raid came too late to have any bearing on the League dispatching instructions to its subordinate organisations and, in any case, the farmers circumvented the Regierungspräsident's ban by gathering in their own homes and barns. At hundreds of meetings across the province, they heard speeches directing them to sign as members of the ‘Crisis and Shared Fate Community’ in order to protect their farms’ capital. The central component of these meetings was a pledge taken by all the farmers in attendance:

The meetings and collection of signatures continued over the following weeks. By the beginning of November, the Crisis and Shared Fate Community had 65,000 members. At the end of the month it had no less than 70,000. From the livestock graziers on the west coast marsh plains to grain-growing estate owners in the hilly east of the province, this figure included not only the majority of Schleswig-Holstein's farmers, but also many rural labourers and tradesmen.Footnote ¹⁶ In fact, in some of the province's towns, the trade associations followed the agricultural sector's example, establishing their own Crisis Communities (Notgemeinschaften des Mittelstandes) of which there were as many as twenty-two by the end of January 1932.Footnote ¹⁷

In many respects, the Crisis and Shared Fate Community constituted a reactivation of the Landvolkbewegung. Its essence was the protection of agricultural capital by preventing confiscations and compulsory auctions, an undertaking the Landvolk itself had euphemistically termed ‘self-help’. Much of the Rural and Farmers’ League's rhetoric was also taken from the Landvolk, including the Three Musketeers’ motto used in its pledge, as well as the derogative labelling of community chairmen who continued to collect taxes as ‘lackeys of the system’ (Büttel des Systems).Footnote ¹⁸ Like the Landvolk, the Rural and Farmers’ League, in seeking to avoid trouble with the law, also made use of covert calls for tax strikes through exaggerated exhortations to those still able to pay taxes to continue doing so. Moreover, the Rural and Farmers’ League imitated the Landvolk in adopting as its symbol a black flag, inspired by the peasant war standard of the sixteenth century.Footnote ¹⁹

As one newspaper reported, the Rural and Farmers’ League's course meant that Landvolk tactics became ‘official’.Footnote ²⁰ It acted with the authority of a registered association and was by far the largest agricultural representative body in the province. The Landvolkbewegung, by contrast, had always avoided membership and traditional organisational structures. Further, the Crisis and Shared Fate Community's pledge and signatures added a new dimension, placing its members under obligation to assist one another, something the Landvolk had not demanded of its followers. There was another important difference, however. The Landvolkbewegung had glorified its civil disobedience as part of a broader struggle and as a means of destabilising the Weimar system. The Rural and Farmers’ League, on the other hand, concentrated exclusively on preserving farmers’ property. While its leaders stated that improvement could only come as a result of fundamental political change from the right, they also claimed that the objective of the Crisis and Shared Fate Community was to form a bridge to better times, to help farmers hold out until profitability was re-established.Footnote ²¹

The Crisis and Shared Fate Communities quickly spread across Schleswig-Holstein and soon found wider popularity beyond the province's borders. It was not long before the Reich Rural League (Reichslandbund) expressed its approval of the Crisis and Shared Fate Communities’ activities and, in November and early December, the Rural Leagues in Pomerania, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Hanover, Oldenburg, Brandenburg, Silesia, Posen-West Prussia, Westphalia, Rheinland, Hesse and Baden also adopted the black flag as their symbol and undertook similar measures. They issued declarations of the agricultural sector's inability to meet its financial obligations and called on their members to resist compulsory auctions and to ostracise bidders.Footnote ²² Although the movement did not catch on among the more moderate farmers’ associations in southern Germany, other Rural Leagues followed during the course of 1932.Footnote ²³ Soon the movement covered almost all northern, central and eastern Germany. Most associations were content to follow Schleswig-Holstein's example, but there were variations in some regions. In East Prussia and Mecklenburg-Schwerin, for example, the Rural Leagues also rejected the payment of social security contributions, which in practice led to many estate owners reducing their contributions to their labourers’ health care insurance.Footnote ²⁴

Particular to Schleswig-Holstein, however, was the Rural and Farmers’ League exploration of a novel, additional strategy: the ‘Property Protection Cooperative’ (Besitzschutzgenossenschaft). Arguing that continued agricultural production was imperative for the nation, and that Schleswig-Holstein's omission from the Eastern Aid program necessitated further means of protection, the League founded the cooperative as a public limited company based in Kiel on 24th November, 1931.Footnote ²⁵ Its purpose was to keep farming property in family hands by negotiating with creditors and the authorities on behalf of its members and by providing them with financial guidance and assistance.Footnote ²⁶ To this end, it required members to purchase shares to an amount staggered according to the rateable value of their properties. Where the cooperative could not facilitate an agreement between debtor and creditor, for instance by organising payment by instalments at a level a farmer could afford, it drew on its funds to support members in need and, if necessary, to enable the cooperative itself to bid at compulsory auctions.Footnote ²⁷ In December 1932 the cooperative claimed that none of the properties under its protection had changed hands. In its first year, it managed to arrange postponements of payments in more than 500 instances and intervened in forty-two compulsory auctions, including eight at which it purchased properties for family members.Footnote ²⁸

The Crisis and Shared Fate communities nevertheless remained the essence of the new movement. It was not long after their formation that farmers began to put their vows of solidarity into practice, banding together and undertaking direct action in order to prevent the compulsory removal and sale of their property. In fact, this revival of rural activism was quite as extensive as the Landvolk's earlier activities upon which it was modelled, and the unrest continued throughout Schleswig-Holstein from autumn 1931 until early 1933.

The compulsory auction of a farm in County Steinburg on 19th October marked the beginning of the new wave of actions. Although the auction had actually been postponed shortly beforehand at the creditor's behest, the news came too late to prevent two thousand farmers gathering at the property. Several farmers made speeches and the crowd heckled, pushed and shoved a representative of the Agricultural Credit Institute who made his escape out of a window.Footnote ²⁹ Echoing the mood, a sympathetic local newspaper described the protestors as ‘despairing, resolute men, suffering hardship that is no fault of their own, who will not allow their patrimony to be stolen from them’.Footnote ³⁰

Dozens of actions followed at confiscations and compulsory auctions of properties, items on the farm inventory and other belongings. It was of little consequence whether these were occasioned by outstanding taxes or private debt.Footnote ³¹ Usually, the presence of crowds at confiscations and auctions frightened and intimidated bailiffs, transport companies and prospective buyers, so that items were not confiscated nor bids made.Footnote ³² Individuals who dared to bid at these auctions provoked the collective wrath of their neighbours. When a cabbage dealer in Plön put in a bid for a property, a crowd of six hundred farmers, who had gathered outside the courthouse where the auction was taking place, marched to his house shouting threats and abuse.Footnote ³³ Often crowds did not stop at verbal threats, but turned to force. Varying widely in form and intensity, actions included removing and concealing purchased items, throwing rocks through windows and deflating the tyres of a bailiff's vehicle during an auction.Footnote ³⁴ On several occasions, creditors, bidders and bailiffs suffered beatings, and invariably experienced ostracism when sales did succeed.Footnote ³⁵ After a citizen of Großensee in County Stormarn assisted the bailiff in confiscating a neighbour's cow, his windows were broken, the dairy stopped taking his milk, and his wife was refused service in the local shops.Footnote ³⁶

Poor organisation of police protection at confiscations and auctions did not aid the authorities’ endeavours to prevent these actions particularly when the courts were negligent in notifying the county administrators of forthcoming confiscations and auctions.Footnote ³⁷ Closer cooperation between the judiciary, police and county and provincial administration was required but, as the Regierungspräsident pointed out, even the most effective police measures could not ensure that bidding occurred at compulsory auctions.Footnote ³⁸ Nor could the presence of police at auctions prevent farmers from seeking other opportunities to frighten creditors and their lawyers into agreeing to postponements.Footnote ³⁹ Moreover, trouble did not come to an end even if authorities managed to auction properties. Sometimes tenants refused to leave their farms or returned using force after an eviction, while new owners faced boycott and ostracism.Footnote ⁴⁰ The authorities hoped that legal action would discourage the resistance and, on a number of occasions, charges were successfully brought against participants for intimidating public servants or for resisting public authority. In the case of Großensee already discussed, two of the participants were sentenced to jail terms of six months, while another received a fine.Footnote ⁴¹ Yet for the most part, legal proceedings against those who obstructed compulsory auctions bore little prospect of success because crowds employed legal methods. Largely, it was their presence alone that intimidated bidders. The code of civil procedure further limited the authorities’ options. They were unable to prevent the attendance of participants and potential bidders whom they suspected would use intimidatory tactics because such intervention would have placed the legal validity of the auctions in jeopardy. Moreover, only creditors, not the provincial authorities, could request the transference of auctions elsewhere.Footnote ⁴²

Not only were the farmers convinced that their actions were successful, they also considered them doubly effective because they served as a deterrent against further compulsory debt collection. As early as December 1931, at one farmers’ meeting it was declared that the government was taking notice, auctions were being suspended and financial institutions were willing to negotiate and to make concessions.Footnote ⁴³ By December 1931, sending the bailiff to collect outstanding sums had become futile. All over the province, compulsory auctions failed as a result of the boycott measures against bidders.Footnote ⁴⁴ What is more, the actions against debt collection led to spiralling difficulties in tax collection. When farmers saw their neighbours refusing to pay outstanding taxes, they too refused to pay.Footnote ⁴⁵ To counter the problem, the president of Schleswig-Holstein's finance office sought a means to distinguish between those farmers whose circumstances were so hopeless that they had to be granted remission, those who were eligible for postponements because they were temporarily unable to meet their obligations and those who simply did not wish to pay.Footnote ⁴⁶ These endeavours had little effect. By mid-1932, the province's thirteen finance offices estimated that there were no less than 15,000 cases requiring immediate enforced payment of “state taxes.”Footnote ⁴⁷ The farmers’ determination to block tax and debt collection and the authorities’ despondency over their inability to counter them was so severe that on two occasions county administrators proposed negotiations with the Rural and Farmers’ League and the NSDAP Gau leadership as the only method of ensuring that creditors’ interests be taken into account.Footnote ⁴⁸ Such was the hold the farmers’ movement had gained in the countryside.

A particularly significant aspect of the second wave of rural unrest was the accompanying, more general spread of terror and violence in the countryside. It appears that the use of direct intervention at confiscations and auctions led to further related and unrelated acts of aggression. Viewed within the context of the escalating political conflicts and terror in the final phase of the Weimar Republic, these incidents could be seen as a consequence of growing tolerance, if not trivialisation, of violent behaviour. In November 1931, for example, farmers on their way to impede an auction in Bramstedt attacked two workers from Elmshorn. The farmers assumed their victims were also heading to the auction and intending to bid. In fact, the workers had simply gone into the countryside to hunt for rabbits, while the farmers, it seems, had acted on little but impulse.Footnote ⁴⁹ Considerably more calculated were acts of terror against perceived political opponents, including members of the Farmers’ Association (Bauernverein). Like the Rural and Farmers’ League, the Farmers’ Association was a political agricultural organisation, but it had retained its independence and pursued a more moderate line. In Wiemersdorf in County Segeberg, members of the Rural and Farmers’ League turned on a Farmers’ Association member, a former community chairman, who refused to cooperate with them. Not only did they defame him in a flyer, they also conspired to have his hunting tenancy terminated. The authorities suspected that a long-standing neighbourhood quarrel may also have played a role in this case. The atmosphere of crisis and the frequent practice of direct action accommodated such acts of malevolence. A further illustration of this increasing acceptance of violence is a report in the Rural and Farmers’ League newspaper on a brutal assault on the Farmer's Association secretary that treated the incident as if it were merely a comic story.Footnote ⁵⁰

While violence and terror served to stamp out resistance to the new movement, it also regulated behaviour within the Crisis and Shared Fate Community's own ranks. Farmers were openly encouraged to employ brutal tactics against their colleagues if they did not conform.Footnote ⁵¹ When young farmers smashed the windows of three inhabitants in Delve and Hollingstedt in North Dithmarschen, police conjectured that the victims had either refused to join the Crisis and Shared Fate Community or continued to pay taxes contrary to the Community's resolve. Significantly, these acts of intimidation had the desired effect. No charges were laid because all three victims declined to make police statements.Footnote ⁵² Those who dared to act against the Community's resolve were quickly isolated. When two community chairmen from Nordstrand took over the leases on the land of two struggling colleagues, they were publically vilified and expelled from the Community. A notice published in the press called on all ‘members and friends’ to draw the ‘known’ conclusions, meaning boycott and ostracism. After the two community chairmen failed to attend a meeting to explain their conduct, they were also called upon to relinquish their public offices.Footnote ⁵³ The provincial authorities responded by threatening to ban newspapers that printed notices which called for boycotts or brought individuals into disrepute.Footnote ⁵⁴ However, they could not initiate legal action against those responsible for intimidation or libel; only the victims could do so.Footnote ⁵⁵ In September 1932, one farmer put this recourse to the test, taking two of his fellows to court for libel in their accusation that he had taken advantage of an unfortunate family which had lost its farm by purchasing their cattle and then selling them at a profit.Footnote ⁵⁶ His dealings had particularly incensed the neighbourhood because a year earlier the son of the proprietor had committed suicide upon learning that the farm was to be auctioned.Footnote ⁵⁷ The two accused men were acquitted of the charge of libel because sympathetic lay judges (Schöffen) found their accusations legitimate. The National Socialist and the Rural and Farmers’ League newspapers lauded the verdict as upholding the honour of the Crisis and Shared Fate Community, while the Regierungspräsident feared it might set a precedent and endorse the use of public vilification as a tactic of intimidation.Footnote ⁵⁸ As no further instances of legal action against libel are to be found in the files, it seems his fears were justified.

As well as the Rural and Farmers’ League, a number of other groups created unrest in the countryside in this period. These included the remnants of the old Landvolkbewegung. From the spring of 1931, Landvolk leaders sought to revive their movement's campaign against compulsory tax payments, and in the autumn, at the same time as the Rural and Farmers’ League initiated its Crisis and Shared Fate Community, they established their own equivalent local bodies to aid farmers in their dealings with creditors and the authorities.Footnote ⁵⁹ The Landvolk managed to set up numerous ‘village communities’ (Dorfgemeinschaften) in the north of the province and some were strong enough to prevent confiscations and compulsory auctions.Footnote ⁶⁰ The Landvolk's activities, however, soon antagonised the much larger Crisis and Shared Fate Communities. Both the Rural and Farmers’ League and NSDAP discouraged their members from cooperating with the Landvolk and even disrupted Landvolk meetings on a number of occasions. By early 1932, the few Landvolk leaders who remained were isolated and they came to the decision that further rivalry with the Rural and Farmers’ League and its Crisis and Shared Fate Community was pointless.Footnote ⁶¹

Communist participation was a new feature of the second wave of rural protest in 1931. Communists were prepared to collaborate with other groups, including the National Socialists, and they assisted farmers in preventing a number of confiscations and auctions of agricultural property not only in Schleswig-Holstein but also in the neighbouring province of Hanover. Sometimes coming from the towns to take part, they embraced the same methods employed by the Rural and Farmers’ League and, with the approval of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) leadership in Berlin, distributed flyers, including a threat of boycott against anyone who purchased a farm at compulsory auction.Footnote ⁶² Their exertions were not merely token. In February 1932, three communists received prison sentences for their part in creating a disturbance at a compulsory auction in County Pinneberg.Footnote ⁶³

These efforts were part of a communist campaign to gain greater support in the countryside, and the initiative did earn the praise of some farmers.Footnote ⁶⁴ Additionally, the KPD generated publicity at meetings and in flyers and brochures, calling for a common front between workers and farmers against ‘big capitalist syndicates’ and the Weimar ‘system’. The party played to rural grievances, such as condemning the tax burden and extortionate rates of interest. Due to widespread suspicion of communism in the countryside, the KPD went by the name of Reich Farmers’ League (Reichsbauernbund), referred to its activists as Landvolk rather than party leaders, and avoided discussion of its more general aims. In particular, it sought to allay fears that communism meant the appropriation of farmers’ land, claiming that only estate owners’ land was to be seized.Footnote ⁶⁵

The KPD's rural campaign reached a climax in January 1932 at the Reich Farmers’ Congress in Berlin. This was preceded by a farmers’ delegation to Russia and was followed by efforts to set up its own local rural committees. These attracted the support of many small farmers, especially in the south-west of Schleswig-Holstein, and no doubt contributed to the KPD's success in the Kremperheide area where it gained as much as 33.8 per cent of the vote in the first Reichstag elections of 1932.Footnote ⁶⁶ Yet the continued resistance of the farmers’ organisations and right-wing political parties quickly put an end to the KPD's progress. It did not help that one of the party's most prominent rural recruits returned disillusioned from the delegation to Russia and began to speak out against the Soviet system. The Rural and Farmers’ League and the DNVP dismissed the KPD's promises as merely an attempt to take advantage of the agricultural crisis. They branded the KPD's adoption of the black flag as well as its calls for the release from prison of Landvolk leader, Claus Heim, as opportunistic and they warned that collective farming was what the farmers could expect from communism.Footnote ⁶⁷

To a much greater degree than the communists and the Landvolk, National Socialist involvement gave further momentum to the second wave of rural unrest at the close of the Weimar Republic. For the NSDAP this involvement represented an additional step in its efforts to secure farmers’ loyalties. In 1930 the party had already intensified efforts to win support in rural areas. Most importantly, it had published its agricultural program and appointed an agricultural expert, Richard Walther Darré, to advise the Reich leadership. He established an Agricultural Political Apparatus to coordinate the party's rural propaganda and infiltrate other agricultural organisations.Footnote ⁶⁸ It should be noted, however, that some regional party leaders, including Schleswig-Holstein's Gauleiter, Hinrich Lohse, had long begun to appeal to farmers and establish local organisation in rural areas.Footnote ⁶⁹ Hitler had rewarded Lohse's efforts by appearing at a meeting in Hamburg in December 1927 specifically for farmers, and rigorous rural campaigning had led to promising election results in some west coast counties in Schleswig-Holstein at the Reichstag elections of May 1928.Footnote ⁷⁰ Greatly aided by the agricultural crisis and the unrest created by the Landvolkbewegung, the party's persistent efforts in the countryside bore fruit at the Reichstag elections of 1930 at which it became the second strongest party behind the SPD, polling 18.3 per cent of the vote nationwide, including 35.1 per cent in Schleswig-Holstein's rural areas.Footnote ⁷¹

Darré's plan to secure rural allegiances by infiltrating agricultural organisations, specifically the Rural Leagues, was bolstered in Schleswig-Holstein when Lohse urged party members to join the Rural and Farmers’ League at the end of 1930 and again when Hitler repeated the call in March the following year. At the same time, the Rural and Farmers’ League was also gravitating toward the party. A number of prominent farmers, including the Rural and Farmers’ League chairmen, became party members.Footnote ⁷² The success of National Socialist approved candidates at the half-elections for Prussia's agricultural chambers in October 1931 offered confirmation of the NSDAP's growing strength. Darré subsequently exploited this success to ensure that the party's agricultural spokesman, Werner Willikens, joined the board of the Reich Rural League.Footnote ⁷³ By 1932, the Rural and Farmers’ League in Schleswig-Holstein backed the National Opposition in elections for the Reich President, Prussian Landtag and Reichstag.Footnote ⁷⁴ Initially this meant it supported both Duesterberg and Hitler, the DNVP and the NSDAP. In the case of the Reich President elections, however, it meant that by the second ballot, the Rural and Farmers’ League gave its full support to Hitler against Hindenburg. By 1932, therefore, the party's influence in the countryside was growing ever stronger. Still, it was not yet complete. Despite railing against Marxism and Bolshevism and calling for Germany's liberation through a strong nationalist leadership, the Rural and Farmers’ League refused to commit to one single political group.Footnote ⁷⁵ The NSDAP's cooperation with farmers in their efforts to block confiscations and compulsory auctions should be viewed, therefore, as a further endeavour to gain farmers’ approval. The party played an increasing role in the farmers’ actions in 1932, which helped to consolidate its support in the countryside and promote its dynamic and activist profile.

Previously, the NSDAP had carefully avoided any involvement in disturbances at confiscations and compulsory auctions. From the autumn of 1928, it had refused to participate in the actions organised by the Landvolkbewegung. Party leaders had feared that association with the Landvolk, and especially with the Landvolk bombings, would damage the party's chances at the ballot box and provide authorities with a pretext for its banning. Hitler, in fact, expressly prohibited members from any involvement in the Landvolk movement.Footnote ⁷⁶ By the autumn of 1931, however, the party was in an entirely different position. As a major political party, it no longer needed to differentiate itself from the rival movement which, in any case, was swiftly fading into insignificance.

Nevertheless, the Gau leadership had at first been wary of involvement in reviving tactics previously used by the Landvolkbewegung. The party only supported the Crisis and Shared Fate Community after it became clear that its establishment would meet with widespread approval, that is, after the Rural and Farmers’ League canvassed the idea. Largely a local initiative, it was in fact a former speaker for the party, Henry Pötter, who was behind the concept of the Crisis and Shared Fate Community. Pötter had left the party with Lohse's consent in order to pursue his more activist ambitions.Footnote ⁷⁷ Acting autonomously, Pötter quickly promoted the concept to the Rural and Farmers’ League leaders. On discovering Pötter's initiative, Lohse first consulted Munich. Hitler withheld his judgment, insisting only that involvement should not bring the party into disrepute. Consequently, Lohse gave the plan his blessing and confirmed that the party would cooperate.Footnote ⁷⁸

The NSDAP, therefore, worked with the Crisis and Shared Fate Community from its founding meetings. From the autumn of 1931, and with increasing audacity in 1932, the party was regularly involved in its actions. The authorities had little difficulty identifying National Socialists in any action, of course, on account of their distinctive flags and uniforms, although occasionally they assumed that National Socialists were behind an action simply because of the overwhelming electoral support for the party in certain rural localities at this time.Footnote ⁷⁹ Working with the Rural and Farmers’ League, National Socialists were prominent at three of the most spectacular actions in Schleswig-Holstein in 1932. These actions deserve individual attention here, for not only do they underline the extent of the party's involvement, but, just as importantly, they also clearly illustrate the dwindling respect for authority and the breakdown of law and order in the countryside.

At demonstrations against the eviction of a farmer in Groß Bremsberg in April 1932, National Socialists were predominant in crowds up to five hundred strong. They gathered at the property to prevent the bailiff from removing the family and their furniture. Felled trees, piles of dirt, an earth wall and a ditch blocked the driveways. The employees of the transport company in the bailiff's service found the neighbours unwilling to lend them the tools with which to remove these obstacles. Police pushed the protestors back but they continued to regroup and, as more and more demonstrators arrived, they began to throw rocks. Again the police repelled the crowd by force. Some days later, the bailiff succeeded in removing the furniture despite further scuffles with the police, but that night the farmer attempted to return to the property.Footnote ⁸⁰ Consequently, a continual police presence was maintained at the farm. Further pressure was brought to bear on the eviction process when neighbours and local shops boycotted the farm's new administrator and the sergeant of the local constabulary, who had assisted in restraining the protesters, had rocks thrown through his apartment windows and received death threats.Footnote ⁸¹

The auction of a farm in Diekshörn in South Dithmarschen on 21st September, 1932 provides further evidence of the assurance with which the party operated, the forthrightness of its involvement in unlawful business and the considerable influence it wielded in rural Schleswig-Holstein by 1932. At the courthouse in Eddelak, the National Socialist Reichstag Member Matthiessen frightened the creditors into withdrawing their application to auction the property by threatening that the crowd of 800 National Socialists gathered outside the courthouse would storm the building and raze it to the ground should they not comply.Footnote ⁸² The most notable incident, however, was the disturbance at a compulsory auction in Kellinghusen on 12th September, 1932. Together, the Crisis and Shared Fate Community, the SA and SS mobilised two thousand people to rally at Kellinghusen's county courthouse. Hastily assembled because the judiciary had failed to notify the county administration of the auction, the local police force was hard pressed to control the crowd. Seventeen officers from the town and neighbouring areas managed to remove demonstrators from the building so that proceedings could commence but they could not quieten the large crowd outside, a portion of which sought to break down the gate and force its way in. On learning that the property had been lost, the angry protesters retreated to hear speeches at a riding hall nearby, but they soon returned to the courthouse, ignored police orders and charged their line. A melee ensued in which a number of policemen were struck down. In response, the officers fired warning shots dispersing the crowd.Footnote ⁸³ The incident caused a furore at the time, the question of accountability for the clash making its way into the Prussian Landtag.Footnote ⁸⁴ Legal proceedings, taken against some of the principal demonstrators, led to three convictions. This incensed the National Socialist press which blamed the police for attacking the protesters.Footnote ⁸⁵

The second wave of rural protest at the close of the Weimar Republic subsided toward the end of 1932 as support for the Crisis and Shared Fate Community as well as for the Property Protection Cooperative waned. Evidence of their dwindling attraction included repeated warnings of decreasing involvement as well as calls for solidarity to the farmers issued by the Rural and Farmers’ League.Footnote ⁸⁶ To some extent, the Crisis and Shared Fate Community and the Property Protection Cooperative were victims of their own success. Many farmers no longer saw the need to take part in their activities when the authorities had grown reluctant to conduct confiscations and auctions.Footnote ⁸⁷ Government policy, however, was unquestionably a more significant factor in the decline in protest action.

Although not all of Germany's farmers received the same amount of debt reduction assistance and subsidies as those enjoyed by farmers east of the Elbe under the Eastern Aid Programme, the Emergency Decree of 8th December, 1931 granted all farmers some alleviation from creditors’ pressures. The decree, which also included interest rate reductions, allowed farmers to postpone compulsory auctions for up to six months.Footnote ⁸⁸ The Rural and Farmers’ League viewed the decree as a submission to its demands and acknowledged that it led to the suspension of the great majority of compulsory auctions. At the same time, the authorities noted that fewer disturbances occurred in the spring of 1932.Footnote ⁸⁹

The protection measures were amended and extended in June 1932, in September and again in January 1933.Footnote ⁹⁰ However, although the measures were increasingly generous, they did not bring an unconditional halt to foreclosures. In order to obtain protection, farmers were required to apply to the district courts and then reapply for suspension renewals. Moreover, they had to demonstrate that they were running their farms taking the usual care, that items on the inventory designated for confiscation were indispensable for their farms’ successful operation, that they had been affected by significant price falls for their principal products, or that they had suffered as a result of weather or disease. Limitations on the period during which farmers could remain in arrears meant that protection could expire. Furthermore, the fact that the Rural and Farmers’ League newspaper was obliged to remind readers to lodge applications for suspensions within the stipulated fourteen days prior to confiscations or auctions, suggests that some farmers failed to do so.Footnote ⁹¹ The emergency decrees, therefore, granted most farmers safety, but the conditions that applied meant that auctions of farm property continued. In January 1933, seventy-eight farms faced liquidation proceedings in County Segeberg alone. Of these properties, forty-eight were considered likely to be auctioned.Footnote ⁹² Ultimately, however, intervention on the part of the Crisis and Shared Fate Community proved unnecessary. A further decree, instigated by Hugenberg, on 14th February effectively made the Crisis and Shared Fate Community redundant.Footnote ⁹³ Ignoring creditors’ interests, Hugenberg, the new minister of agriculture in Hitler's cabinet, fulfilled the agricultural sector's wish for a moratorium by freezing all farm foreclosures until October 1933, a decree subsequently extended by Darré.Footnote ⁹⁴

It is unclear whether other rural regions of Germany were subject to the same level of unrest as Schleswig-Holstein in this period. Given that the newspapers inspected by Bergmann and Megerle in their research revealed only a fraction of the disturbances in Schleswig-Holstein, the question at least must be asked whether protest might have also occurred to a greater extent in other regions. Outside Schleswig-Holstein, Bergmann and Megerle noted obstruction at confiscations and compulsory auctions in the counties of Pyritz (Pommerania), Prignitz, and Neustettin in November and December 1931. For 1932, they noted actions in Fedderwarden near Wilhelmshaven in April, Göbrichen near Pforzheim in June and Frankfurt (Oder) in September. In Göbrichen, the arrest of seven farmers who had threatened a bailiff led to the storming of the town hall in which they were imprisoned. In Frankfurt, the form of protest was unusual. Farmers dumped left over produce from the market at the Finance Office, requesting that it be taken in lieu of outstanding taxes.Footnote ⁹⁵ These examples show that actions took place in diverse regions of Germany. Yet it is probable that they represent a considerably larger number of disturbances than has previously been acknowledged. Material found elsewhere suggests that this is the case. A report in the Rural and Farmers’ League's newspaper in December 1931, for example, described farmers’ intervention at two compulsory auctions in Gosen and Niederbarnim, south east of Berlin.Footnote ⁹⁶ A report compiled at the request of the Prussian Interior Ministry, which covered developments in Schleswig-Holstein and beyond, contained specific references to six actions in the Lüneburg and Stade regions. Footnote ⁹⁷ Police and Regierungspräsident reports published by Dirk Stegmann also reveal at least four other incidents in those districts.Footnote ⁹⁸ Most of the actions in Stade and Lüneburg were no different in their implementation from those in Schleswig-Holstein. Variations were in Wiegboldsbur in County Aurich in January 1932, where a crowd of fifty people armed with sticks and pitchforks barricaded themselves in a pigsty and threw buckets of water over the bailiff and accompanying police officers, and also in Kirchweyhe in August 1932, where farmers burned containers of rye which had been sold at a compulsory auction.Footnote ⁹⁹ It is also worth noting that, in these districts, sometimes the old Landvolkbewegung was responsible for the actions, and sometimes the National Socialists, while the KPD and its Reich Farmers’ League were happy to work with either group. There, as in Schleswig-Holstein, communist efforts were geared towards winning rural support, but, despite rousing some initial curiosity, farmers grew increasingly wary from early 1932.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ These actions, initiated by various groups, clearly suggest it was not just in Schleswig-Holstein that the level of rural unrest in 1931 and 1932 has been underestimated.

Contrary to Bergmann and Megerle's findings, the level of rural unrest in the Weimar Republic did not steadily decline after peaking in 1928. It did ease briefly, largely due to a more promising economic outlook in 1930. However, a second wave of civil disobedience and direct action followed in 1931 and 1932 as the general economic crisis compounded the agricultural sector's difficulties. In fact in Schleswig-Holstein, these actions were quite as extensive as those in the era of the Landvolkbewegung in 1928 and 1929. This reassessment, furthermore, raises the question of whether the level of unrest has also been underestimated in other regions of Germany. It is known that farmers from Silesia to Baden soon created their own Crisis and Shared Fate Communities like those established in Schleswig-Holstein in October 1931. Further research is necessary, however, to ascertain the extent to which they too were accompanied by actions at confiscations and compulsory auctions. Those regions under the Eastern Aid program, which provided higher levels of assistance for agriculture, would provide interesting analysis as the program may have helped to stem unrest. Nevertheless, evidence of actions especially in the districts of Lüneburg and Harburg in East Hanover, strengthen the ground for concluding that Schleswig-Holstein was not alone in its experience of rural unrest and suggest that other areas of Germany also require reconsideration.

In seeking an explanation for the scant scholarly attention paid to the second wave of rural unrest at the close of the Weimar Republic, it should be remembered that protest actions were not accompanied by bombings nor the farmers’ own radical political agitation that had no doubt created immense publicity for the Landvolkbewegung and subsequently helped to keep it alive in historical memory. Apparently, Bergmann and Megerle misjudged the level of unrest in the countryside in the final years of the Republic because the particular newspapers they chose for their research failed to report many rural actions. This suggests that the level of public interest and newsworthiness of rural unrest declined in a period in which political violence was becoming increasingly commonplace. The actions in the countryside were overshadowed by the spiralling political violence between the left and right extremes which peaked in the summer of 1932, most notably in Schleswig-Holstein with the ‘Bloody Sunday’ riot in Altona in which eighteen people died.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Though subsequently forgotten, the rural unrest in this period is significant in a number of ways. Certainly its effectiveness was striking. Through unity, farmers managed to defer further financial losses and even induced creditors and authorities to show greater leniency in pursuit of outstanding debts and taxes. More importantly, however, the farmers’ unrest must be seen in the context of the breakdown of authority, law and order in the final years of the Republic. With their steadfast solidarity and through the nature of their tactics including collective singing or menacing silences at auctions, implicit threats of boycott, ostracism and violence, the farmers thwarted bailiffs and the police and undermined Weimar's authorities and institutions. Even on those few occasions when charges were laid, the subsequent legal proceedings posed next to no deterrent since they were directed against a mere handful of participants who enjoyed not only the sympathy of their colleagues but also the leniency of judges.

Finally, it is important to acknowledge the endeavours of political parties, in particular the communists and National Socialists, to secure rural support by joining the farmers’ protests. The second wave of rural unrest marked the beginning of the KPD's attempts to appeal to the agricultural community. For the most part, it managed only to arouse fleeting interest and localised electoral support. The involvement of the NSDAP, on the other hand, must be seen as part of a longer and more determined rural campaign which had already begun to translate into electoral gains. By participating and increasingly organising actions, and by cementing its ties to the Rural and Farmers’ League in Schleswig-Holstein, the NSDAP exploited the second wave of rural unrest to consolidate its influence in the countryside. Ultimately, the NSDAP also benefited from the growing acceptance of intimidation and violence that accompanied the farmers’ actions. These were part of a widespread increase in the use of terror tactics in the countryside that accompanied the escalation of political violence at the end of the Weimar Republic. Intimidation and violence proved effective means of opposing perceived injustice in the form of confiscations and compulsory auctions and of enforcing solidarity. Subsequently, in the hands of the National Socialists, these same tactics were to prove brutal tools in crushing any remaining dissent and opposition to Nazi rule in the countryside.