It is hard to think of a case when it did. But there is a situation when it nearly did.
The Weimer Republic (1919–1933) was a democracy, with the important qualification that, just as in the Kaiser’s day, the army had the last word. The elected (in 1925) president of the republic was the venerable Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, the incarnation of Prussian militarism.
At the end of January 1933, just before Hindenburg was about to appoint Hitler chancellor, there was a real possibility of an army coup to prevent that.
To quote from Henry Ashby Turner’s Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power: “In a climate of crisis, with wild rumours running rampant that Schleicher [pictured here] was moving troops into Berlin to depose Hindenburg, Papen convinced the president that there was not a moment to lose, and to appoint Hitler chancellor. The next day, he did.”
General Kurt von Schleicher, who was chancellor, had lost the president’s confidence and was being outmaneuvered by his predecessor Franz von Papen, who hated him.
A military regime headed by von Schleicher might well have preserved democracy. After all, the army had tolerated the Weimar Republic since November 1918. As it turned out, the worst things happened.
One of them:
On June 30, 1934, von Schleicher and his wife were among those Hitler had murdered during the “Night of the Long Knives.”
