ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Pan-German League's role in these events during the key period between 1926 and 1928. The Pan-German campaign for Alfred Hugenberg and a purified radical German National People's Party (DNVP) proved disastrous for the overall course of right-wing politics in the Weimar Republic. Although Heinrich Cla and his political allies were notorious for their often far-fetched political schemes and paranoid conspiracy theories, in this particular case their assessment of the political motivation behind the Putsch affair had some merit. In an effort to reinforce the Republics political authority and undermine monarchist radicals, the law limited the ability of Germany's former ruling families from returning to Germany. By the end of 1927, Cla and his colleagues within and outside of the League had developed a strategy to help transform the DNVP completely as a political force. Party moderates decried the clearly political nature of the Pan-Germans distorted attacks and the impact of their campaign in favor of Hugenberg.
