Young Plan
Taking advantage of a clause in the Weimar constitution that allowed a referendum to be called if enough people signed a petition demanding it, Hugenberg decided in June 1929 to collect signatures for a referendum on the Young Plan, which was intended to discredit the "Grand Coalition" government led by the Social Democratic chancellor Hermann Müller. Using highly emotional, visceral language, Hugenberg and his newspapers presented the Young Plan-which actually reduced reparations-in the most starkest demands possible as a form of "financial slavery" for "our children's children" which would reduce living standards in Germany down to an "Asiatic" level of poverty (the term "Asiatic" poverty referred to at the time what today would be called a Third World living standard). By pushing for a referendum on the Young Plan, Hugenberg as intended forced the Müller "Grand Coalition" government to defend the Young Plan while Hugenberg as an opposition leader felt free to make extravagant promises about what he would done if he was Chancellor, claiming that the "Reich" would pay no reparations at all if he were in charge. Even at the time, it was widely recognized that Hugenberg's status as an opposition leader free from the burdens of office allowed him the luxury of not suggesting a "realistic alternative" to the Young Plan. This was especially the case as the French government had agreed that in exchange for German acceptance of the Young Plan that France would end its occupation of the Rhineland in the summer of 1930, which was five years earlier than what the Treaty of Versailles had called for. At the time, Hugenberg's critics pointed out that if the Young Plan was rejected, then the French occupation of the Rhineland would continue on until the summer of 1935, an aspect of Hugenberg's rejectionist strategy that he never dwelled on. Hugenberg's strategy was a negative one as to create the "national bloc" that he envisioned meant there could be little discussion of what the "national bloc" intended to achieve as there were too many divisions on the German right for a positive programme, and instead the "national bloc" was to be united by what it was "against" instead of what it was "for".