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103. I think a Zentrum led by Joos/Wirth might have handled the Depression and the Nazis better than the Zentrum led by Kaas/Brüning. Of course Hindenburg and the DVP might not allow them to have any power though...

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102. The left-wing Catholics in Zentrum were a pretty cool group. I'm a fan of Erzberger, Wirth, and Joos. It's unfortunate that they got overtaken by the clerical faction.

101. Somewhat tangentially, in France, the same Chamber of Deputies that voted in the Popular Front government in 1936 voted in the Vichy regime in 1940. The SFIO had the highest opposition percentage (the PCF were banned) but even a majority of its deputies voted for Vichy.

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100. Except when the centrists and "liberals" (all 5 of them) sided with the far-right in 1933 (voting for the Enabling Act), the far-left was the weakest it had ever been. Zentrum and DStP were cowards in the face of Nazi coercion but they were also not immune to Nazi propaganda

99. "Liberals prefer fascists to socialists" isn't generally true but "when faced with a conflict between the far right and far left, centrists will side with the far right" is true based on Weimar experiences, imo

98. The SPD mostly thought the Nazis and KPD were equally bad (although many in the SPD favored some sort of cooperation with the KPD).

97. Basically the entire Weimar political spectrum to the right of the SPD preferred the Nazis to the KPD, and the parties to the right of the Weimar Coalition generally preferred the Nazis to the SPD.

96. Hugo Haase deserved better (Can you tell that I'm a fan of the USPD reformists lol)

95. One of the many mistakes that the MSPD leadership made in 1918-1919 was freezing out the USPD reformists from actual decision-making in the Council of People's Deputies. This had the effect of marginalizing the moderates in the USPD and radicalizing others into putschism.

94. After 1929, basically the entire liberal voter base (i.e. the Protestant middle class) defected to the Nazis. But the liberal bloc was continuously declining in vote share since 1919; their base increasingly turned to the anti-republican right.

93. The coalition between Catholics and socialists (SPD+Z) is kind of counterintuitive; iirc it originated in the Kulturkampf happening together with the anti-socialist laws leading to them uniting in opposition to Bismarck...

92. The DVP was the favorite party of university professors (at least prior to the rise of the NSDAP; maybe the Nazis took that segment too).

91. Southern Democrats were the equivalent of the BVP, or something like that

90. Conversely, the Protestant rural + petite-bourgeois composition of the Republican base was basically the same as the right-wing coalition's (DVP + DNVP and later NSDAP) base (although, there were more right-wing intellectuals in Germany)

89. It is interesting how the US Democrats in the 5th party system had the exact same base as the Weimar Coalition (urban working class + religious/ethnic minorities + progressive intellectuals)

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88. A modern American analogy for what happened to the USPD is if most of the 100k+ DSA members left to join the CPUSA while most of their elected officials and leadership merged with the Working Families Party.

87. A difference is that while the DSA base is mostly reformist/democratic socialist and the leadership more left, the USPD base was won over by the KPD while the leadership was still centrist or reformist and later joined the MSPD.

86. There is really no equivalent to the KPD in modern US politics. The best analogue for the DSA is probably the USPD in 1918. Like the DSA, the USPD in 1918 was an extremely fractious and broad left-wing grouping spanning from revisionists and reformists to center Marxists to revolutionaries.

85. For the last comparison, the predecessors of the NSDAP included the "National Socialist Freedom Movement" and the "German Racist Freedom Party" (I've seen "völkisch" sometimes translated as "racist" for some reason...)

Posted this earlier but extremely approximate modern US analogues of Weimar parties: SPD - Congressional Progressive Caucus DDP - New Democrats Zentrum - CBC/CHC DVP - Problem Solvers Caucus WP - Republican Governance Group DNVP - Republican Study Committee NSDAP - Freedom Caucus

KPD Max von Sydnow @mpdeejay.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Reposted by Autumn Chen

I hope that @red-autumn.itch.io knows that this is one of the most satisfying parts of the game.

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Reposted by Autumn Chen

Bill McKay @mckay4senate.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

The DDP votes against the Treaty of Versailles, in a bizarre move where it defends the other parties of the "Weimar Coalition" for voting for it and also defends the SPD in its official journal from accusations of communism.

On 22 June, the government received the formal permission from the
National Assembly to sign the treaty conditionally—less articles 227-
231. The Center party insisted on this step.2* The Allies, however,
brushed aside this request and demanded unconditional acceptance within
twenty-four hours. Several hours later, the National Assembly voted to
accept the treaty unconditionally by a majority of 237 to 138, with five
abstentions. The DDP voted against it, an action explained in a formal
statement.”> It was convinced that Germany could have secured a better
peace had the government parties remained united in their opposition to
the treaty. As had been agreed with the SPD and the Z, the DDP issued a
statement saying that it knew that the SPD and the Z also realized that the
treaty was “unbearable and unfulfillable” and that they voted for the treaty
only because they feared that the consequences of rejection would be more
harmful than those of acceptance. The DDP also took the occasion to
defend the work of the Weimar Coalition and to indicate that it would
continue to cooperate with the government. An article in the party’s official journal, Das demokratische Deutschland, emphasized the desire and
need to remain close to the SPD, which it characterized, for those who
still may have been confused, as a democratic party with no ties to Lenin
or Trotsky!?¢

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Reposted by Autumn Chen

Datura Lacroye @daturalacroye.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

The great part of the history of the SPD in the Weimar Republic is that you can literally play a video game about it: red-autumn.itch.io/social-democ...

red-autumn.itch.io

Social Democracy: An Alternate History by Autumn Chen

You are the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1928. Can you stop the Nazis from taking power?

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Autumn Chen @red-autumn.itch.io · 01/08/2026

The SPD was absolutely "better" than the Nazis, and they weren't really "authoritarian" at all (also they're not among the liberal parties I was talking about)

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Autumn Chen @red-autumn.itch.io · 01/08/2026

I feel like the kernel of truth to the "liberals prefer fascists" claim is that most of the old voter base for the Weimar/Wilhelmine liberal parties (the Protestant middle class) ended up voting for the Nazis by 1932. Obviously a different situation from modern US politics but still discomfiting...

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83. I can see myself voting for Thälmann in at least the first round of the 1932 presidential election (as a protest vote against the SPD's endorsement of Hindenburg; for better or for worse "vote Hindenburg to stop Hitler" might've been persuasive to me in the second round)

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82. Fun fact, I actually lowered the threshold for the "High Inflation" event in SDaAH because of the 2024 election lol, and increased the negative popularity effects of high inflation.

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81. So two lessons from 2024 that are relevant to SDaAH were: 1) people hate welfare cuts more than they like welfare increases, and 2) people hate inflation more than I expected.

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80. And of course America is constantly building panzerkreuzers all the time lol (obviously the political valence is rather different from Weimar)

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79. An SDaAH analogy for the Biden administration might be that they raised welfare, then later accepted the DVP ultimatum on unemployment insurance, cut welfare, and then passed the reformist plan. And that ignores the pandemic-related inflation

78. Modern analogies to Weimar: I overestimated the IRA here - it's not like the WTB; it's more like the reformist plan, or more precisely the industrial subsidies in Popular Front. A low-salience economic stimulus that doesn't directly move a lot of votes.

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77. Modern comparisons to Weimar: I wrote this before the 2024 US election, and I no longer agree with the idea behind this post.

I am invested in this for the obvious reasons, but also because if fascism wins in America, the basic political-economic thesis of Social Democracy: An Alternate History would be wrong. (Carrying the analogy: it might be too late for judicial reform, but it is not too late for IRA rallies.)

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76. There were genuine leftists in Zentrum; Joseph Wirth was probably to the left of Ebert in some respects (and the SPD loved him). And on the other side there was Franz von Papen!

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75. A modern US analogy for Zentrum is like if AOC and JD Vance were in the same party because they were both Catholics, and the party leader was either Joe Biden or Joe Manchin.

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74. Hot take: Friedrich Ebert bad

Autumn Chen @red-autumn.itch.io · 23/07/2026

73. The Weimar Constitution was just a big hodgepodge of compromises, as many such documents are. Really cold take but the strong president aspect of the constitution was the worst part.

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I'd guess that reducing the influence of Hilferding and Wels would be at least as important...

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72. Contrary to how it's portrayed in SDaAH, the ADGB opposed works councils because they were afraid that works councils would reduce the power of the unions.

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71. There was this weird dynamic in the SPD where both the left and right (neorevisionist) sides of the party opposed the toleration policy supported by the center. Both ends of the party called for more action.

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The Rape Of The Masses The Psychology Of Totalitarian Political Propoganda : Serge Chakotin : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

70. On the other hand the neorevisionists' propaganda work was more productive. Chakhotin's work was very interesting in this regard even if he's not always right. Not a fan of the title but it's a remarkable book archive.org/details/dli....

archive.org

Source: Digital Library of IndiaScanning Centre: C-DAC, NoidaSource Library: Central Library, Bits- PilaniDate Accessioned: 6/23/2015 5:35The Digital Library...

69. The neorevisionists were cool but many of their proposals were too late or counterproductive. Moving to single-member plurality districts as Mierendorff suggested would've made the Nazis win more (although if it were enacted earlier, maybe things would've been different).