Liberty Law

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The Liberty Law was a legal initiative proposed in 1929 by a coalition of German conservative groups in opposition to war reparations.

As a result of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had to pay reparations to Britain and France for damages caused by World War I. These payments were greatly resented in Germany. An international conference in 1924 had rescheduled the terms of the payments under the Dawes Plan. The ongoing problems led to another international conference in 1929 which resulted in a new schedule known as the Young Plan.

Objectively, the Young Plan had worked in Germany's favor. It had reduced the overall amount of the reparations, spread them out over a longer period, and set a maximum ceiling on the reparations. However many German people had been harboring the unrealistic hope that the conference would simply eliminate all reparations and were upset with the actual outcome.

Conservative groups in Germany had been most outspoken in opposition to reparations and seized on opposition to the Young Plan as an issue. A coalition was formed of various conservative groups under the leadership of Alfred Hugenberg, the head of the German National People's Party. One of the groups that joined this coalition was Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party, a group which had previously been dismissed as an extremist fringe by the more mainstream conservative parties.

The coalition's goal was the enactment of the Liberty Law. This law would renounce all reparations and make it a criminal offense for any German official to cooperate in their collection. It would also renounce the German acknowledgement of "war guilt" and the occupation of German territory which were also terms of the Versailles treaty.

Under the terms of the German constitution, if ten percent of the eligible voters in the country signed a petition in favor of a proposed law, the Reichstag had to put the matter to a vote. If the Reichstag voted against the law, the proposal would automatically be put to a national referendum. If fifty percent of the people voted in favor of it, it would become a law.

The Liberty Law proposal was officially put forth on October 16 1929. The Nazis and other groups held large public rallies to collect signatures. The government opposed the Liberty Law and staged demonstrations against it. However, the coalition succeeded in collecting enough names to put the proposal before the Reichstag. The Reichstag voted the bill down by a 318-82 margin. In the subsequent popular vote on December 22, the Liberty Law referendum only received fourteen percent of the votes in its favor.

While the Liberty Law was not enacted in 1929, the campaign for it was a major factor in bringing Hitler and the Nazis into the political mainstream. Following the defeat, Hitler denounced Hugenberg and said the loss was a result of his poor leadership. Hugenberg and many other conservatives soon found themselves being eclipsed by the Nazis. Hitler would later enact by decree most of the proposals of the Liberty Law after achieving power.