Scholarly Reception
The significance of the Harzburg Front is assessed differently in historical scholarship. Political scientist Karl Dietrich Bracher calls the conference of October 1931 "much more the end of an exciting and exhausting collaboration than the beginning of a final triumphal march of the united 'National Opposition'."[56] According to Herbert Michaelis and Ernst Schraepler, the Harzburg conference merely proved "that an action initiated by Hugenberg to strengthen his own political position was exploited by Hitler for a propaganda success for his own purposes."[57] According to historian Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen, it was "a fiction from its very inception due to the rivalry between its leaders."[58] Similarly, Joachim Fest concludes that the Harzburg Front is more a concept of political mythology than one of actual history. It was seen as a self-revelation of the conspiracy between Hitler and big business, that conspiracy theory which sees a “chain of sinister machinations” in the prehistory of the Third Reich.[59] Hans Mommsen described the event as a “demonstration of disunity.”[60] For Gerhard Schulz, it was merely an “attempt to form the National Opposition.”[61] For him, the most important aspect of Harzburg was not the cooperation between the two large anti-republican parties, but rather that the smaller right-wing parties, which used to channel the interests of business associations into parliament, were now beginning to slowly distance themselves from Brüning.[62] Larry Eugene Jones states as a result of the conference that “a unity of the right proved to be short-lived, if not illusory.” This division of the right in Germany continued until the establishment of the Nazi regime and beyond.[63] Historian Michael Schellhorn describes the Harzburg meeting as an “unsuccessful and pathetic” attempt by Hugenberg “to present a unity of the national opposition […]”, a “declaration of bankruptcy for Hugenberg’s policy of incorporating Hitler into his own power ambitions.”[64] Hitler biographer Brendan Simms describes the conference as a “complete failure, as each party tried to dominate and marginalize the others.”[65]
Others see the meeting as a continuation of the Nazi seizure of power on January 30, 1933. For Friedrich-Wilhelm Henning, it was “the first step towards the recognition of the NSDAP as a possible leading force in a right-wing Reich government.”[66] According to Hans-Ulrich Wehler, even though there was no further cooperation with the National Socialists until January 1933, the bourgeois right, through the Harzburg meeting, nevertheless contributed to making Hitler socially acceptable, so to speak.[67] The historian Joachim Perels summarizes that, even though there were "certain differences" between the National Socialists and their allies at the conference, the "Harzburg attack on the Republic," led by both, reached its goal a year and a half later with the formation of Hitler's government: "The positions of Harzburg form the cornerstones of the governmental power established by Hindenburg on January 30."[68] According to the historian Peter Schyga, the alliance of "mob and elite" (Hannah Arendt) was already forming in Harzburg, which from 1931 onward gained "daily in destructive energy and mass effectiveness": "The Bad Harzburg resolution formed the score for the march to dictatorship."[6]