Underlying Values in Center Party Decision Making

During the years of the Weimar Republic, the German Center Party (Deutsche Zentrumspartei) played an important role in government.  Party members served in almost every cabinet and party members led fourteen of the nineteen Weimar cabinets.  The party’s support was crucial in such crisis moments as the acceptance of the Versailles Treaty, the reparations ultimatum of 1921, the Dawes Plan negotiations, accepting the Young Plan, and, catastrophically, the Enabling Act of 1933.             The Center Party, whose members were often deeply divided by socio-economic or regional background as well as placement on the political spectrum, frequently used rhetoric of Catholic values and Catholic imperatives to justify political decisions and to shore up support among party members and voters for its actions.  Was this “merely” rhetoric or did Catholic values underlie the decision-making?  By analyzing party and party-related publications, public and private statements of party leaders, as well as documents on church teachings, a hierarchy of values in Center Party politics becomes apparent that sub-ordinates a strong sense of nationalism and much Catholic social teaching to the basic principles of preserving people as individuals and groups and of averting chaos in the form of foreign occupation or civil war.   This hierarchy of values served the party’s political needs to justify otherwise unpalatable decisions, but also reflected sincerely held beliefs and values that help explain the party’s ability to compromise and find solutions in matters foreign and domestic.            Unfortunately, by 1933, the pattern of compromise and the need to avoid chaos led the Center Party’s deputies to overcome their own scruples about the nature of National Socialism and vote for the Enabling Act, not out of narrow party interest, but out of a sincere desire to serve their fellow Germans in a difficult moment of crisis.