Exploring the Reasons Behind Public's Discontent with the Weimar Government

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Exploring the Reasons Behind Public's Discontent with the Weimar Government

There were a number of reasons why the German people were unhappy with

the Weimar government.

One of the main reasons for this was the signing of the Treaty of

Versailles.

The result of this was that Germany has to take the war guilt, Germany

had to pay reparations of 6,600 million marks to the allies in

particular France, Germany lost its colonies, it lost its air force &

tanks, and its soldiers were restricted to 100,000. The Ruhr was

demilitarised. Also they lost their colonies and its land was cut up

such as the Polish Corridor and Alsace Lorraine.

This angered many Germans and the soldiers labelled the Weimar

Government the “November Criminals” because they couldn’t believe they

had lost and thought that the Government easily gave up. The German

people were also angry because after the signing the German economy

was bad as many wee unemployed, homeless and starving. We can see hear

that right from the start the people were unhappy as the Government

had done a terrible thing by the signing and it lead to consequences.

Many Germans who were opposition to the Government such as the left

and tight-wing parties were unhappy with the Ebert- Groener deal.

Ebert at this time was afraid that as the government was weak it could

have been overthrown. The deal meant that Ebert had the army on his

side as long as Groener still had his powers. Germans were unhappy

with this because this benefited Ebert rather than the people.

Now with the deal Ebert was able to suppress opposition. Example of

this would be the Spartacist Uprising being crushed in 1919 and the

death of the Communist leaders.

Many Germans would be unhappy because they could see that Ebert was

using the army and Freikorps to suppress opposition which meant they

weren’t allowed to demonstrate their ideas. Also the Freikorps methods

were very harsh and many Germans saw that this was wrong and wasn’t

democratic to which the Government was aiming to make Germany as.

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