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To be more exact and lib friendly they:

Basicaly supported the center-fascist Bruning government that arose after the collapse of the previous coalition they were part of in 1930 by refusing to attack him cause he was the "lesser evil" and basicaly never voting against him in any junction that mattered. He unopposed or with SDP support accelerated and normalized Germany's military build up, empowered nationalism domesticaly, shifted foreign policy narratives along chauvinist and imperialist lines, eroded whatever democratic and parliamentarian norms Weimar Germany had left (he ended up governing only by decree in his last year) and most importantly completely missmanaged the economic crises with immenselyt anti-worker measures and horrible results. Effectively pushed the political theater considerably to the right.

SPD's toleration policy went to such an extent that in order to save Bruning, the SPD abstained in the 20 March vote on the construction of 'pocket battleship B'. It seemed impossible for the Social Democrats not to vote against this project. Rejection would have been in line with that principle of anti- militarism which in autumn 1928 had inspired the party to rebel against its own Chancellor, Hermann Muller, in the vote on the new battleship's predecessor, 'pocket battleship A'. But as both Chancellor Bruning and Reichswehr minister Groener had threatened to resign if the battleship's construction was rejected, the SPD decided to go along with it, basicaly facilitating the shift towards more militarist and right wing politics and delegitimizing themselves among the people that would be willing to fight the Nazis later, surrendering any chance of SDP leadership in any anti-Nazi movement of mass support .

The next test of the policy of'toleration': the emergency law of 5 June 1931, which involved radical reductions of social welfare expenditure. Bruning threatened to serve notice on the Prussian coalition (SDP stronghold) if it wasnt passed. The blackmail worked. At a session of the Council of Elders on 16 June, the SPD withdrew any motion against the upcoming austerity or the budget committee. It defended its compliance on the grounds that the government had declared its readiness to 'begin at once negotiations for the alteration of the emergency decree"

. As a price for that tolaration the SDP delegitimized themseleves and lost both electoral and grassroots support, vital for any anti-nazi movement. The Social Democrats in autumn 1931 had had to resign themselves to the splintering off of their extreme left wing, which set up independently as the SAP, Socialist German Workers Party). Nor did they allow themselves to be too disconcerted by their heavy losses in the Hamburg and Hessen elections of September and November 1931. The party leadership considered the defence of the 'Prussian stronghold' worth all these sacrifices. Two weeks after Hindenburg's re-election, the stronghold began quake. At the regional elections of 26 April 1932, Prussia's ruling coalition lost its majority. On 20 July 1932, the Prussian stronghold fell with a coup d'etat by which Bruning's successor had the cabinet of Otto Braun dismissed. The SPD showed basicaly no resistance to that, basicaly bend over without a fight and missed its last chance to bar the way to catastrophe while millions of communists and grassroots sympsthisers were malding and screaming for action . As historians argue if the working class had risen at that juncture over that coup they could have succeeded still.