BTW
@Salvador79, got any thoughts on how the 1930 election could play out without Hitler?
Hm.
You know, I am always saying that the rise of the NSDAP happened in the void left behind by the collapse of the bourgeois parties. That void could have been averted / filled by many different options, from an earlier re-invention of Christian confessional parties into modern Christian Democracy over a renewed liberalism (like
@Hohensaufen is preparing it in his Stresemann SI TL) to various kinds of populism. Even an earlier moderating SPD could have absorbed a good share of it if it had a credible, inclusive national project for wealth for everyone going forward.
But if the only divergence is Hitler dying in WW1, then I think we will much rather see a real ideological void there for a while until modern solutions to the Great Depression will be introduced by someone, and that someone and his party will probably rule for a long time.
As others have noted before, I think the DNVP is the least likely to ever fill that role, Hugenberg or not. Not even Hugenberg and Strasser combined could pull it off, primarily because their approaches and agenda were not easily compatible. Without Hitler, Strasser might not become a party politician.. or if he does, he might try to follow the Italian Fascist model more directly. A corporatist party was something Germany didn't really have IOTL, but it could have, looking at how prominent the model was in Austria. Still, without Hitler's special talents, I doubt that this alternative would rise like the Nazis IOTL. It might steal a few percent, though.
If we assume that nothing would necessarily take on the role played by the Nazis immediately, which I think is the most plausible path, then what we have is a much slower electoral erosion of the ideologically spent bourgeois parties DVP and DDP and the similarly spent and splintering formerly aristocratic-conservative DNVP (and its splinter product DKP). Some of that erosion will go, like it did before the rise of the Nazis (and the Nazis fed on those parties), into regional or special-interest populist splinter parties, maybe increasing their share to something like 10-12 % combined. DVP and DDP would lose, but less than IOTL. 1930 losses of the SPD might go to the KPD, at least to some degree, but the KPD was too in-fighting and dogmatically Muscovite at its top to really attract a very broad electorate, either.
So, here is a sketch of how that 1930 election could go (numbers in round brackets 1928 IOTL elections, numbers in square brackets 1930 IOTL results):
SPD 26 % (29,8) [24,5]
Zentrum/BVP 15 % (15,1) ]14,8]
DNVP 11 % (14 ,3) [7,0]
KPD 15 % (10,6) [13,1]
DVP 7 % (8,7) [4,5]
DDP 4 % (4,8) [3,8]
some alternative fascist party 7 % (NSDAP: 2,6) [NSDAP: 18,3]
others 15 % (14 %) [14 %]
Hindenburg being Hindenburg, he might still let Brüning do his destructive work, but without the OTL fear of the Nazis gaining yet more ground, the Reichstag might dissolve earlier and new elections might come in 1931 already, at the peak of the economic crisis. It would see SPD and KPD make gains, and the splinter products and alt-fascists also gaining from the corpses of DNVP, DVP and DDP, but not as spectacularly as IOTL. Overall, it would be interpreted as a leftward slide, so now it would be the bourgeoisie fearing any further elections. Centre-right press (and Hugenberg, too, probably) would call of "technocratic government", but witout the intimidation of the SA, the trade unions would probably push mightily for a social-democratic government and a different, anti-Brüning approach to the crisis. All of these dilemmas would cause Hindenburg to certainly not run again in 1932. If a social democrat ran against someone from the centre-right plus, let's say for the heck of it, Strasser, with Hugenberg backing Strasser in spite of reservations, then the runoff would be that social democrat (let's say Wels) against Strasser. I would predict a victory for Wels, even though it might be a lot narrower than everyone had thought.
With a decent democratic president from 1932 onwards, the Republic never slides down into a dictatorship. Sooner or later, there would be SPD-led governments again, no stable ones, but continuations of what Weimar had been before, with chancellors changing rather frequently. And the fascist alternative would fare OK-ish in an election in 1934 or 1935. The big question is if and when and which of the bourgeois parties start their re-invention under the conditions of mass democracy first and most convincingly.
