Gerald D. Feldman

Trade Associations and Economic Power: Interest Group Development in the German Iron and Steel and Machine Building Industries, 1900–1933

This study traces the evolution of several large and powerful trade associations in early twentieth-century Germany and seeks to place them in comparative perspective.

Big Business and the Kapp Putsch

The Kapp-Luttwitz Putsch, hastily begun on March 13, 1920, and ingloriusly ended with the resignation of Dr. Wolfgang Kapp on March 17, has already been the subject of significant study. The details of the putsch itself, the character of the conspirators, and their motives, the positions taken by the political parties and leaders, and the reasons for its failure are fairly Well known. It is generally agreed that the circle of conspirators had too narrow a social base and was too divided in its purposes to be successful. In essence, it was a revolt of unemployed reactionary East Elbian officials like Kapp himself and his “Minister of the Interior,” Traugott von Jagow, disgruntled conservative military officers, the most important of whom was Freiherr von Luttwitz, and military adventurers like Colonel Max Bauer, Major Pabst, and Captain Ehrhardt. Where Kapp sought far-reaching constitutional and political changes, Luttwitz strove for more short-term goals, i.e., reconstruction of the cabinet to give it an “expert” character, new elections, and a larger army. The Kapp regime was doomed because of the refusal of the government bureaucracy to serve it and because of the general strike called by the trade unions on March 14.

Civil commotion and riot insurance in fascist Europe, 1922 1941

Insurance for damage caused by public unrest became popular in post-1918 Central Europe and proved to be a profitable business, but one that became increasingly problematic because of the role of fascist regimes in promoting civil commotion. This article addresses some of the experiences of insurance companies, especially the Munich Reinsurance Company, when trying to manage policies covering political unrest and riot in Italy, Germany and Spain between 1922 and 1941. In the case of Italy in 1922, the new fascist regime forced the insurers to pay for damages caused by the Squadri. In Germany, the insurers were forced to assume a fictitious liability for damages done to the Jews in the Pogrom of November 1938. In Spain, Franco forced the insurance companies to treat Civil War damages as a civil commotion and make payouts despite their strenuous objections. These experiences demonstrated that civil commotion insurance was most safely marketed in democracies that provided enough unrest but also law and order to make it worthwhile.