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& History"] There is a further point about the oath to the Weimar constitution that ought to be remembered. There were officers who resigned at the beginning of the Weimar Republic because they felt bound by a prior oath to the ruler of their state and did not wish to replace it with the new one. Whatever one thinks of these men's judgement, one can surely admit that such conduct was honorable. Those of their fellow officers who then took the new oath while some of their comrades would rather resign than do so had made a choice that they might have done well to keep to. The comment on the 1923 Putsch must be seen in the context of a German army's earlier provision of funds for the Nazi purchase of their newspaper, the _Voelkische Beobachter_. The use of budgeted state money for the use of a political party opposed to the whole system of government to buy a newspaper to attack the government the army officers had sworn to protect hardly fits with what at the time most would have considered honorable conduct. If they really considered it honorable, why did they keep it secret? Gerhard Weinberg
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