During the era of the
German Empire, before the
German Revolution of 1918–1919, politicians of the Centre Party and Social Democratic Party as well as the left liberals who would later form the German Democratic Party had cooperated when they censured Chancellor
Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg in 1913 for his handling of the
Zabern Affair and then later in 1917 with their support of the
Reichstag peace resolution which called for a peace with no annexations. To coordinate their cooperation they also formed an inter-party committee () that included members of all three parliamentary groups. The three parties had to deal with opposition from the right from 1912 on even though in the course of the war the SPD split with far left-groups like the
Spartacus League that were fundamentally opposed not just to the war but to all attempts at working within the political system of the Empire. The right wing, through the
stab in the back myth, would later pin the blame for Germany's loss in the war on the alleged "defeatist" parties of the Weimar Coalition and cited the peace resolution as well as the willingness of politicians like
Friedrich Ebert (SPD) to take power after the collapse of the Empire. They also blamed the Weimar Coalition-backed government for signing the
Treaty of Versailles after it had lodged no more than an ineffectual complaint. The
elections of 6 June 1920 resulted in severe decline in the Coalition's parliamentary strength, despite hopes that the dramatic failure of the right-wing
Kapp Putsch would lessen the political reorientation of the Reichstag parties. The SPD received 21.7% of the vote, a significant drop from the 37.9% it had in January 1919. The DDP suffered the greatest loss, dropping from 18.5% to 8.4%. The Centre Party received 13.6% of the vote, only a slight decline from the 15.1% it had previously held. The
swing shows the fundamental problem the Weimar Coalition parties faced throughout the Weimar Republic. The SPD lost most of its vote share to the
Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, a left wing splinter faction opposed to any cooperation between leftist and bourgeois parties while the democratic center-right parties lost to the monarchist and
revanchist right wing parties which capitalized on the widespread outrage at the Treaty of Versailles. Politics of pragmatism, comprise and moderation as espoused by the parties of the Weimar Coalition thus always faced attacks from strong anti-compromise forces on both the left and the right, which by
1930 formed a strong and growing share of the Reichstag, now mostly composed of the
Communist Party of Germany and the
Nazi Party, with the former rejecting any
popular front-style cooperation due to the
social fascism thesis. The communists and to a lesser extent the Nazis particularly attacked the
Heinrich Brüning government in office 1930–1932 due to the
austerity measures it enacted. Given that the communists rejected any cooperation with the Social Democratic Party, the SPD backed Brüning in any
motion of no confidence initiated against him by Nazis and/or communists in hope of preventing an even more right wing government. == Chronology ==