In fact, for the SPD, good economic policy meant being more orthodox than the liberals they argued against. As SPD member and one time vice president of the Reichstag Wilhelm Dittmann put it in a speech to the SPD faithful, "We want the current situation [the crisis] to develop further, and can only follow in the general direction that these tendencies show us." In response to this structuralist fatalism, the German trade unions began to agitate for an alternative "full-fledged Keynesian type assault on the depression" in direct opposition to SPD policies. This reflationary policy took form under the aegis of the so-called WTB plan (named after the formulators' initials), which the unions pressed hard upon the SPD and the government. Brüning ignored the plan and pressed on with austerity. But the SPD hierarchy set out to destroy it since it offended their faith.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 530