Monarchism within the context of Weimar's right wing such as the DNVP or Reichwehr has a rather slippery definition. While there were genuine monarchists in the army who wanted a restoration of the Hohenzollerns, most self-proclaimed monarchists during Weimar had a more selective definition of monarchism. This monarchism was less about monarchy and more about drawing themselves in a fundamental opposition to the Republic. Weimar's monarchism was not so much championship of monarchical rule, but a rather motley assortment of illiberal politics that denied the legitimacy of the November Revolution.

The Reichswehr's officers were not above such a self-serving definition of monarchism. The chief of the early Weimar Reichswehr, General Hans von Seeckt, used and inculcated monarchism as a shield within the armed forces to prevent the "Republicanization" of the military. Monarchist sentiment within the officer corps helped to sustain an aristocratic ethos that looked on elected heads of the Republic with disdain. Likewise, von Seeckt also developed monarchism within the Reichswehr as a means to argue that it was the only major German institution uncorrupted by the events of November 1918. In this calculus, the military was loyal to their oaths, and Germany by extension, while grubby politicians like Ebert thought only of their own personal power. Emphasizing monarchy within the armed forces also strengthened the hand of the officer corps versus their troops. For all the self-serving memory of military loyalty in 1918, there were signs that much of the lower ranks were disgruntled with the war and while the fleet mutinied, it was not inconceivable that the Heer would have had the war continued.

Much of the monarchist hills the military fought for in Weimar were symbolic rather than pushing to bring the Hohenzollerns back. The Reichwehr was one of the larger state entities that fought against the black-red-gold flag of the Republic and von Seeckt was able to retain an ensign that recalled the old imperial colors. Shielding monarchist sentiments also gave the Reichswehr an issue with which it could protect its relative autonomy versus the Republican government.

One of the reasons why the Reichswehr's monarchism evolved into something more symbolic than actual restorationism was because the military soon found a figure who could act as a new monarch: Paul von Hindenburg. The Field Marshal was everything the Wilhelm II was not: a stolid national symbol of authority all Germans could unite behind. For all the self-proclaimed monarchism of the German right, there was remarkably little love for the Kaiser's wartime actions or his heirs. This was in strong contrast to the mythologizing of von Hindenburg's military victories that only grew under the Republic. The Reichswehr supported all the efforts to strengthen the central government with von Hindenburg at its head. Hitler astutely portrayed himself as an able servitor of von Hindenburg in the early days of his chancellorship. For the military, the advent of Hitler was a sign that Germany was being restored to a disciplined and authoritarian state, the antithesis of the long-nurtured vision of the Republic as a decadent, disordered democracy.

Rear-Admiral Wilhelm Canaris outlined the evolving politics of the military in an address to a graduating class of officers in 1938. "An officer must be unreservedly a National Socialist, just as once he had to be a monarchist," Canaris asserted. Although von Hindenburg's death had eliminated the ideal ersatz Kaiser for Germany's monarchists, Hitler was an acceptable substitute for most of them. Hitler developed a political mythology in which he was the mystical embodiment of a connection between the leadership of the nation and the nation itself. Some of the Wehrmacht's officer corps like Canaris might have been leery of Hitler's low-class origins, but they largely accepted Hitler as a replacement for their Weimar monarchism. More importantly, Hitler ushered in policies that the Reichswehr's monarchists often could only dream of during the Republic. Not only did Hitler trample over the Versailles Treaty, he also enlarged the military budget, ended all traces of democratic republicanism, suppressed the German left, and pushed all sorts of conservative cultural nationalism.

Hitler's crude parvenu status only really became a salient issue for Germany;s officers when Germany began to lose the war. The declining military fortunes and the postwar period saw a new iteration of the military's monarchism where it would contend that Germany's officers were patriots of an older order that only reluctantly went along with Hitler's madness. Postwar memoirs by German officers often stressed that their monarchism and attachment to older Germany stood in contrast to the crudeness of the NSDAP and the SS. Like Weimar era monarchism, this postwar politics was not about restoring the monarchy, but rather was a self-serving attempt to evade responsibility for aiding a government that lost its war. Most German officers were more than willing to jettison thoughts of a restoration of the Hohenzollerns as Hitler took power and they were content with Hitler so long as he was winning.

Sources

Carsten, F. L. The Reichswehr and Politics, 1918 to 1933. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.

Hanson, Stephen E. Post-Imperial Democracies: Ideology and Party Formation in Third Republic France, Weimar Germany and Post-Soviet Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Hertzman, Lewis. DNVP Right-Wing Opposition in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1924. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969.

Patch, Jr, William L. "Heinrich Brüning's Recollections of Monarchism: The Birth of a Red Herring." The Journal of Modern History 70, no. 2 (1998): 340-370.

Peukert, Detlev. The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity. New York: Hill and Wang, 2008.