to undermine the committee's work, advocated a continuation of the fourth subcommittee's inquiries. Albrecht Philipp of the DNVP and chairman of the fourth subcommittee justified the request by stating that the result was partisan and had to be corrected. The Reich Ministry of the Armed Forces also filed an objection. Chancellor Wilhelm Marx (Centre Party) resorted to a legal argument: the decision to publish all material had been taken by the subcommittee after the Reichstag had been dissolved in March 1924 and was therefore null and void. The subcommittee accepted the decision without appeal. In 1925 Hindenburg became president of the Reich. Ludendorff was able to brusquely refuse the summons to appear before the subcommittee without fear of being punished or brought before it. In May 1925 the deputies of the subcommittee submitted a significantly amended majority report and two minority reports. Most deputies bowed to increasing pressure and watered down the results they had found earlier. On the military collapse of 1918, they formulated that "no finding [can be] made which justifies arriving at a verdict of guilt on any side". In 1928, in the case of the investigation complex "Homeland Policy and the Subversion Movement (Stab-in-the-back Question)", the deputies came to the conclusion that "the blame for the German collapse can only be found in the mutual interaction of numerous causes". Against the votes of the Social Democratic and Communist Party members, the subcommittee came out in favor of an acquittal of the Supreme Army Command. With respect to the Navy's actions, the final report did not contain any criticism of naval command. The military had withheld from the deputies the war diary of the naval warfare command and a memorandum by Adolf von Trotha (then chief of staff of the High Seas Fleet), which clearly proved their intentions. End of the committee of inquiry After the victory of the National Socialists in July 1932 elections, the investigative committee was not reinstated. The Nazis thus prevented the completion of the first subcommittee's work by the representatives of the people. The question of responsibility for the military escalation of the July Crisis in 1914 which led to the outbreak of World War I could not be conclusively addressed. The public, however, took virtually no notice of it. In the eyes of the parliamentarians too, the committee's work had outlived its usefulness. Heinemann blamed the situation mainly on the ongoing