A Gentleman's Agreement

The President was beyond frustrated and he vented to his old Chancellor.

“I’m tired, Franz. I’m 85 years old and you know I didn’t even want to be here. I’m missing my retirement and instead what am I dealing with? We’ve suffered to keep this land together since the end of the war and we’ve never been able to form a consensus in the government – not once! All I’ve done is use Article 48 to bypass the representatives in order enact the most basic of legislation. And when they manage to somehow find enough agreement to try and nullify the laws, I simply dismiss the government and call for new elections! What’s the point of even pretending that we have a Constitution?

“Since you were forced to resign the Chancellorship, I’ve been miserable. The American banks calling in their loans, hyperinflation, six million unemployed, spending cuts, higher taxes... The economy? I don’t remotely understand it and frankly I have no desire to!”

Franz consolingly frowned at his old friend.

“There is a way; a way to peace. I have secured a gentleman’s agreement with the leader of the majority party. But there is one condition...”

It has been said that a person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it. Paul von Hindenburg appointed a man to the Chancellorship in order to placate him and avoid the continued deterioration of the Weimar Republic. He inadvertently placed his nation on its fated path because a year later he was dead, and the man he legally appointed used his unique power to merge the office of Chancellor with the vacant office of President.

Neville Chamberlain also made a gentleman’s agreement with Adolf Hitler on September 29, 1938 naively intended, as before, to achieve a “peace for our time.”