may 30, 1932 - Bruning resigns

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Bruning had been the chancellor and leader of the Centre Party. He had tried to raise taxes and cut unemployment benefit in order to revive the economy, which pleased nobody. He had had to rely on presidential decrees which bypassed the Reichstag, but they were useless. The crisis was beyond governmental control, and people resented Weimar for the useless decrees.

The last straw for Bruning was when he banned the SA and SS and announced a plan to buy land from large landowners and use it to house the unemployed. The right-wing parties and Hindenburg himself were furious.

As people lost trust in the moderate parties, they turned to extremist parties such as the Communists, and even more so to the Nazis. Fear of communism became another reason people would vote for the Nazis, particularly in the middle and upper classes.

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