A referendum on the Young Plan was held in Germany on 22 December 1929. It was an attempt to use popular legislation to annul the Young Plan agreement between the German government and the World War I opponents of the German Empire regarding the amount and conditions of reparations payments. The referendum was the result of the initiative "Against the Enslavement of the German People (Freedom Act)" launched in 1929 by right-wing parties and organizations. It called for an overall revision of the Treaty of Versailles and stipulated that government officials who accepted new reparation obligations would be committing treason.
Eligible voters had from 16 to 29 October to sign the initiative and register their support for the draft Freedom Act. With just over 10% of those eligible to vote signing, the minimum requirement to pass the initiative was narrowly met. The German Reichstag debated the draft on 29 and 30 November, and it was rejected by a majority of deputies. The initiators then requested a referendum, which took place on 22 December. Since the Reich government had judged the Freedom Act to be unconstitutional, the decision required approval by a majority of all those eligible to vote instead of just the votes cast. Even though 94.5% of those voting supported the referendum, it failed due to the low turnout of just under 15% of eligible voters.
The initiative and referendum were nevertheless significant for the political development of the following years. The propaganda campaign led by the political right was one of the largest of its kind during the Weimar Republic, and the government responded with considerable counter-propaganda. For the first time the traditional right, such as the German National People's Party (DNVP), acted together with the Nazi Party (NSDAP). The significance that the referendum had for the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party is disputed historically.
Young Plan
One of the problems that weighed most heavily on the Weimar Republic's domestic politics was the reparations that the German Reich had to pay under Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles as a result of its defeat in World War I. There were repeated foreign policy disputes between Germany and the victorious powers over the amount of the payments, which had first been set at 132 billion gold marks in the London Payment Plan of 1921. When Germany failed to meet its payment obligations in 1923, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr, in part to take reparations payments in goods such as coal. In 1924 international commissions of experts examined Germany's economic strength and drew up proposals for the payment of reparations. The results were the Dawes Plan and the London Agreement of 1924, which for the first time led to regular German payments.
For what was intended to be a final settlement of the reparations question, another international commission of experts drafted the Young Plan (named after American industrialist Owen D. Young) in Paris between February and June 1929. At two government-level international conferences in The Hague in August 1929 and January 1930, the amount of German reparation debt was reduced to the equivalent of 36 billion Reichsmarks. The annual payments were lower than in the Dawes Plan, but they were to run until 1988. It was nevertheless to Germany's advantage that the reparations commission and all international economic controls were eliminated, giving the country back a large share of its sovereignty. In addition, acceptance of the plan meant that the Rhineland, occupied by Allied troops since 1920, would be vacated ahead of schedule. The government highlighted these advantages in its disputes with its opponents. Particular emphasis was placed on the lower payments and the resulting relief to the Reich budget. The Young Plan is considered the last success of the policy of rapprochement of Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann of the German People's Party (DVP), who died before its final adoption on 3 October 1929.
Domestic controversy Domestic political disputes about the Young Plan began in the summer of 1929. Much of the public was appalled by the long duration and the total amount of payments to which Germany had committed itself. The sum of all annual payments came to 115 billion Reichsmarks, and since total Reich revenue in the fiscal year 1929–30 was 7.73 billion Reichsmarks, the figure seemed very high. The political right was able to make use of the agreement for propaganda purposes. It conjured up the image of grandsons up to their necks in debt at birth. The fight against the Young Plan offered itself as a point around which the divided right wing could crystallize in order to be able to strike out at the hated system of the "November criminals" – the government leaders who had signed the Armistice of 11 November 1918.
Representatives of agriculture and heavy industry in particular opposed the plans. The Reich Committee of German Agriculture called them economically unacceptable. The Association for the Protection of Common Economic Interests in the Rhineland and Westphalia passed a resolution claiming that the Young Plan would impose "unbearable burdens" on the German economy. Industry's opposition was, however, by no means unanimous. It was primarily heavy industry that opposed the Young Plan. In the business community as a whole, approval tended to dominate since the plan was associated with financial relief.
Alfred Hugenberg, a media baron and chairman of the German National People's Party (DNVP), had led the party on a radical course against the Weimar Republic after the party's losses in the 1928 Reichstag elections. In January 1929 Hugenberg was seeking to rally the political right, and the fight against the Young Plan seemed a likely means to do so. At the same time he was leading an intra-party conflict to bring the German nationalist Reichstag faction under Kuno von Westarp under his control. Hugenberg controlled a large number of newspapers and news services, including Germany's most important film company, UFA. Through them he had a strong influence on the formation of public opinion.
Reich Committee for the initiative In June 1929 Hugenberg put together a "Reich Committee for the German People's Initiative against the Young Plan and the War Guilt Lie". The first meeting was attended by Heinrich Class of the Pan-German League, Franz Seldte of the Stahlhelm, a veterans' association closely associated with the DNVP, Martin Schiele (DNVP) and Karl Hepp (CNBLP/DVP) for the Agricultural League, and, thanks to Hugenberg's invitation, Adolf Hitler of the NSDAP. Hugenberg admired the Nazis' dynamism and youthful enthusiasm and hoped to use them as a 'drum' in the campaign against the Young Plan. The Reich Committee also included Fritz Thyssen of the Reich Association of German Industry, and the industrialist and co-founder of the German People's Party (DVP) Albert Vögler, who had participated in the expert consultations at the Paris conference but had resigned in protest.
At the first meeting, a working committee (presidium) of 16 people was elected, among them Adolf Hitler. In addition to the leading representatives mentioned above, the presidium included members of the participating political parties. The actual tone, however, was set by the two chairmen of the executive committee, Seldte and Hugenberg. The committee was financed primarily by businesses. The Reich Committee divided the funds among the parties and organizations involved. There is no evidence of favoritism towards the NSDAP as some have claimed.
The goal was not just to prevent the Young Plan's reparations clauses from being implemented. They believed that accepting the Young Plan meant confessing to the 'war guilt clause', which had not been modified under the Young Plan, and wanted to explicitly reject it. In addition they wished to topple the government led by Hermann Müller of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and to hold new elections. The course of action did not meet with everyone's approval even in the Reich Committee's more conservative camp. Paul Reusch, one of the leading figures in the , a group of twelve leading industries from the Ruhr area, called the initiative "profoundly stupid" because, like large sections of German industry, his association rejected the Young Plan and had no interest at the time in new elections or a political crisis.
Reich Committee and the NSDAP After Hitler's failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, the German National People's Party (DNVP) had severed its ties to the National Socialists until Hugenberg restored them by including the NSDAP in the Reich Referendum Committee. Although he was fundamentally opposed to democracy and against popular legislation, Hitler participated because he expected political advantages from it. Until then he had been regarded as a Bavarian beer hall bigwig () who headed a comparatively insignificant party with just twelve seats in the Reichstag and whose members were regarded as bullies. Now he sat with recognized leaders of the bourgeois right and played a role at the Reich level. Participation in the Reich Committee was for Hitler a great success.
In the NSDAP's own ranks, especially in the circles around Gregor and Otto Strasser, associating with the conservative right was controversial. Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary: "Under the appeal are names! Oh my God! In Hitler's case one can only say: it hurts my soul to see you in such society." He saw the collaboration as compromising. Hitler too had reservations. The cooperation, as the historian Otmar Jung points out, was not on Hitler's part based on sympathy with the conservative right but was rather purely tactical.
Freedom Act By means of the initiative and the subsequent referendum, the political right made use of the particularly progressive plebiscite elements of the Weimar Constitution. According to Article 73, an initiative was successful if at least 10% of those entitled to vote approved it. The Reich Committee's relationship to the people's legislative power was purely a means to pursue an aim. Franz Seldte made this clear in a speech on 26 October: "The initiative is only a means of struggle. Whether we get 3 million or 6 million [votes], we are ready and determined to continue the struggle with new weapons."
On 28 September 1929 the Reich Committee for the initiative against the Young plan submitted a bill to the Reich ministry of the interior that both the right wing of the DNVP around Hugenberg and the NSDAP had been involved in drafting. It stipulated that it was to be put to a popular vote if the Reichstag rejected it. Reich Minister of the Interior Carl Severing (SPD) allowed the proposal to go forward in spite of reservations from within his own party. He assumed that a refusal would only play into the hands of the right wing and that the initiative drive would likely fail. The draft was entitled: "Law Against the Enslavement of the German People". In its abbreviated form it was called propagandistically the "Freedom Law".
The draft was divided into four paragraphs and went beyond reparations issues in the narrow sense.
§1 rejected the recognition of war guilt.
§2 demanded the abrogation of the corresponding Article 231 in the Treaty of Versailles and the evacuation of the occupied territories.
§3 rejected accepting new reparation obligations.
§4 stated that "Reich Chancellors, Reich Ministers and their authorized representatives who sign treaties with foreign powers in contravention of the provisions of § 3, para. 1 shall be subject to the penalties provided for in § 92 No. 3 of the Criminal Code." The clause referred to treason, which was punishable by no less than two years in prison. Paragraph 4 in particular was included at Hitler's insistence.