The Harzburg Front (German: Harzburger Front) was a short-lived right-wing political alliance in Weimar Germany, formed in 1931 as an attempt to present a unified opposition to the government of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning. It was a coalition of the conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) under millionaire press-baron Alfred Hugenberg with Adolf Hitler's NSDAP Nazi Party, the leadership of the Stahlhelm ("Steel Helmet", a hawkish, paramilitary veterans' association) under Franz Seldte and the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German League) organization.
The Front formed on 11 October 1931 at a meeting of representatives of the varying political groupings styling themselves the "national opposition" at the spa town of Bad Harzburg in the Free State of Brunswick. The participating organizations had already undertaken the - unsuccessful - joint "Liberty Law" campaign against the Young Plan on war reparations in 1929. In addition to the leaderships of the DNVP and NSDAP the meeting was attended by numerous representatives on the right of German politics including the Hohenzollern princes Eitel Friedrich of Prussia and his brother August Wilhelm (sons of the exiled Emperor Wilhelm II), former general Walther von Lüttwitz, former Reichswehr Chief of Staff Hans von Seeckt (then a member of the national liberal German People's Party (DVP)), prominent members of the Prussian aristocracy and representatives of the Business Party, the Alldeutscher Verband (ADV), the Reichslandbund ("National Rural League", RLB) and the Vereinigten vaterländischen Verbände Deutschlands ("United Patriotic Associations of Germany", VvVD) under Rüdiger von der Goltz. The non-partisan Hjalmar Schacht, who had resigned as Reichsbank president the year before in protest against the Young Plan, also participated in the Front, which caused a great stir. However, leaders of industry and big business who had been invited to attend were notably absent.
Hugenberg had intended to use the Harzburg meeting as a forum to form a united opposition cabinet representing "national Germany" (i.e. the parties and groups of the Right) under his leadership and to agree upon a single candidate to represent the Right at the forthcoming presidential elections scheduled for 1932. However, due to personal and ideological differences such a united opposition never materialised. Hitler and the Nazis in particular viewed Hugenberg and his companions with distrust and were determined to avoid making any commitments that would undermine the independence of the National Socialist movement. Although they had entered into regional coalition governments with the DNVP and despite the fact that Hugenburg and Schacht both served in Hitler's first national cabinet after the Machtergreifung on 30 January 1933, the Nazis were determined that they would take power on their own terms and only as leaders of any coalition they entered into.
In reaction to the events in Bad Harzburg, the left-wing Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Free Trade Unions forged the Iron Front alliance on 16 December 1931. Ultimately the Harzburg Front failed to produce an effective or united right-wing opposition to the Weimar Republic, mainly due to the intransigence of the Nazis and the differences in political aims and opinions of the varying groups approached by Hugenberg. A motion of no confidence against Chancellor Brüning in the Reichstag parliament failed. Negotiations between the Nazis, the DNVP and Stahlhelm over a shared presidential candidate broke down in February 1932, with Hitler accusing Hugenburg of pursuing "socially reactionary policies", and eventually Hitler himself stood as the NSDAP candidate for President of the Republic, while Hugenburg and his conservative allies backed former Chief of the German General Staff and incumbent President, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg.[1]