"Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic" by Sheri Berman, in World Politics (Apr. 1997), Bendheim Hall, Princeton, N.J. 08544–1022.

Whether pondering the prospects of democracy in Eastern Europe or fretting about the decline of league bowling in the United States, all latter-day Tocquevilles subscribe to this basic proposition: a vigorous civil society strengthens, and indeed is a crucial prerequisite for, democratic government. But that’s not necessarily so, argues Berman, a political scientist at Princeton University. Take the case of Weimar Germany.

Civil society flourished in 19th-century Germany and grew even stronger, Berman says, during the 1920s, under the democratic Weimar Republic. As middle-class Germans became frustrated with the failures of the national government and the liberal political parties, they "threw themselves into their clubs, voluntary associations, and professional organizations," Berman writes. This, she contends, not only deflected citizens’ energies from politics and government, further weakening the republic’s democratic institutions, but also provided the Nazis with "a golden opportunity."

Previously unable to build much popular support, the Nazis during the second half of the 1920s "concentrated on attracting bourgeois ‘joiners’ who had become disillusioned with traditional party politics," Berman writes. The Nazis reaped a large harvest of "activists who had the skills necessary to spread the party’s message and increase recruitment." They also used many of the civic associations, occupational organizations, and other social groups as a "fifth column." By the early 1930s, she says, the Nazis "had infiltrated and captured a wide range of national and local associations." The 5.6-millionmember Reichslandbund and other farm organizations, for instance, became efficient propaganda channels for reaching the rural population. From their base in Germany’s civil society, Hitler and the Nazis launched their Machtergreifung (seizure of power), beginning with their strong showing at the polls in 1930.

The Nazis’ success, Berman concludes, shows that without "strong and responsive political institutions," a vigorous civil society of the sort championed by neo-Tocquevilleans, far from promoting liberal democracy, can help undermine it.