Young Plan
In July 1929, Hugenberg decided that the best way of regaining popularity was to use the section of the Weimar constitution that allowed upon collecting a certain number of signatures a referendum to be held, in this case on the Young Plan. Hugenberg successfully collected enough signatures to initiate a referendum on his Freedom Law which called for cancelling the Young Plan together with all reparations. The fact that the Young Plan reduced reparations and committed the Allies to exiting the Rhineland in June 1930 (which was five years earlier than what Versailles had called for) was irrelevant to Hugenberg. He argued that a properly patriotic government would not pay any reparations at all and would force the Allies to leave the Rhineland at once. As such, Hugenberg drafted "A Bill against the Enslavement of the German People" which declared acceptance of the Young Plan to be high treason under the grounds that Germany should not have to pay any reparations, and that those ministers who signed the Young Plan on behalf of the "Reich" government and those who voted for the Young Plan in the "Reichstag" should be prosecuted for high treason. Hugenberg made much of the fact that Young Plan was not scheduled to end until 1988, which he portrayed in stark terms as forcing generations of Germans to live under a crushing burden of reparations for the next sixty years (Hugenberg did not mention the fact that the Young Plan was not scheduled to end until 1988 because the plan had greatly reduced annual reparation payments, which was why the payments had been spread out over sixty years).