Doom of the Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic was born in the aftermath of the First World War.
The creators of the Republic were blamed, ridiculed and labelled for
the defeat of Germany during World War One and for accepting the
crippling terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Weimar Germany was to
have a short, turbulent history. Less than three months after the end
of World War One, on the 19th January 1919, 30 millions Germans voted
-in three parties, the Social Democrats, the Centre party and the
Democrats as the new parliament. They met in Weimar, south Germany,
because of the fighting in Berlin, and their first action was to elect
Friedrich Ebert as President of Germany.
In this essay I will try to explain whether this new parliament was
doomed from the start. There were good factors about it and there were
bad factors about it.
The new system meant that the public had many things they had many
things they did not have before the right to vote, and freedom of
speech and because of these factors and more, I do not believe it was
doomed from the start. However, a lot of things did go badly for the
new Parliament. Sparticist risings and the Kapp Putsch revolution. I
will now explain exactly what did happen, good things and bad, at the
beginning of the new Parliament
The new system of Parliament meant that the public had had a lot more
say in how Germany was run. There were two parliaments the Reichsrat,
and the Reichstag. The bigger of the two, the Reichstag was elected
directly by all the people. Also, the people elected the President,
rather than someone inherit the head of state. Many people praised
this new Democ...
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...unt of Democracy in Germany. The system of proportion
representation made it easy for anti-democratic parties such as the
KPD and the Nazi Party to gain seats in the Reichstag and the chances
for any party gaining a majority support in the Reichstag was minimal.
With a Republic run by the people who had 'betrayed´ the country and a
constitution that was flawed, a loyalty to the Republic had been
formed. This encouraged political instability and frequent elections.
The President had too much power; this could result into him becoming
a dictator. Another flaw with the constitution is that the states
could become hostile and attempt to overthrow the national government.
Article 48 was a sensible rule. But in the powers of the wrong person
could be very dangerous.
The Weimar Republic was not doomed to fail. But it did.
The Weimer Republic, is the democratic government established in Germany in 1918 that ruled for fifteen years after the collapse of the German empire after the First World War.The republic consisted of moderates from the Social Democratic Party as well as their liberal allies, which included the German Democratic Party, and the Catholic Center Party. The Weimer Republic sought political democracy, which they believed was attainable by the elimination of war, revolutionary terror, and capitalism. Despite their clear goal, the Weimer Republic faced backlash by the radicals of society, which included communists, National Socialists, and the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler. THESIS: The Weimer Republic’s instability in the period of 1918-1933 is
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.
The Weimar constitution was forced into creation by the German desire to sign an armistace with the Allied forces after significant defeats on the Western front. Not only were the Allies demanding a democratic governing style in Germany, but there was also a strong desire to move away from the autocratic state that had existed under the Kaiser. Although the new constitution outwardly appeared to be democratic, there were several internal factors that severely undermined the democratic integrity of the new constitution, and made it almost indistinguishable from its autocratic predecessor.
Alternatively, Germany could have become a presidential dictatorship backed by the army as von Schleicher or von Papen would have preferred. In order to do this, the authoritarian regime would have had to adapt slightly from what it was in 1932. The long-term use of Article 48, the emergency decree, would have been impractical and impossible. Perhaps the conservative elites were looking to Hitler for a new identity as they couldn't return to the days of the Second Reich as well as thinking they could control his power. A military regime would have meant that there was no dominance from the extreme right or left of politics. Judging by the situation of Germany at that time, it was quite possible that this may have resulted in civil war.
The first major reason that the Weimar republic failed was that it was extremely inefficient and did not have clear goals set within the government. All the different ideas coming from the parties in the republic, created a situation where the people of Germany were getting very unclear, vague messages. This problem can be seen in the struggle between the German Democratic Party and the Communist Party. Troeltsch, a theologian and leader of the German Democratic Party said, “The development will not stop at democracy, and a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ will assume the form of terrorist domination by a minority” (Doc 1). This statement is only somewhat reliable because Troeltsch was a politician, and he would benefit from over exaggerating what would happen if the opposing party were to gain control.
The Posing of Threats by the Political Right to the Weimar Republic in the Years 1919-25
The general public of Germany had never had any say in political matters; they allowed the Kaiser to make all the decisions regarding themselves and their once-prosperous country. The groups controlling Germany began to change during October and November 1918. More power began to fall into the hands of the people as they realised the blame for their involvement in the war was the Kaiser’s. People such as the armed soldiers, sailors and workers started protesting and going on strike. This was a far cry from before the war, when Germany was wealthy, proud and ambitious. So for a brief period, it seemed that a revolution would take place, with the people of Germany wanting a social and political revolution.
Richard Bessel’s article stresses the political structure of Weimar Germany as the cause of its failure. Its structure was flawed in numerous ways, all of which contributed to its inevitable failure. First of all, the problems within Germany due to the First World War were massive. This caused economic, political and social problems which first had to be dealt with by the new Weimar government. The loss of the war had left Germany with huge reparations to pay, and massive destruction to repair. In order to gain the capital needed to finance efforts to rebuild, and repay the Allies, the economy had to be brought back to its prewar levels. This was not an easy task.
'Nazi Germany ' represented the period from 1933s to 1945s, which played an important role in prosperous German history and the modern European history. After Germany participated in First World War in the first half of the 20th century, the whole society was glutted with unemployment, poverty, hunger, inflation and moral corruption. The public couldn’t feel the republican democracy benefits.
These included the aspect of German imperialism, the unresolved defeat of 1918, financial collapse and the forced struggle against the activities of the National party as well as inflation. Other factors which influenced the failure of Weimar were the structural weaknesses induced by the constitution and the basic lack of support for the Republic among the German people particularly amongst the elite. These aspects were the major causes which doomed the Weimar republic to ultimate failure and the eventual ascent of Hilter’s nationalist party to power.
The Weimar years were marked by extraordinary and unrivaled economic, political, and social struggles and crises. Its beginning was marked as being especially difficult in that Germany was wiped out and devastated after four years of the unprecedented warfare of World War I. By 1918 the world had been shocked with over 8.5 million killed on both Allies and Axis sides and many more severely mangled and scarred – body, mind and spirit. This is seen as German Soldier, Ernst Simmel, writes, “when I speak about the war as an event, as the cause of illness, I anticipate something has revealed...namely that it is not only the bloody war which leaves such devastating traces in those who took part in it. Rather, it is also the difficult conflict in which the individual finds himself in his fight against a world transformed by war. Either in the trenches or at home can befall a single organ, or it may encompass the entire person” (Simmel, 1918). For Ernst, and millions of other participants, the war had turned forever changed their world.
The German Weimar Republic was an attempt to make Germany a more democratic state. While this was a very good idea in theory, the Weimar Republic was ineffective due to the instability that came with it. Several factors contributed to the instability of Germany’s Weimar Republic, such as the new political ideals brought forward and the government’s hunger for war.
...After we consider all these points mentioned we begin to see how everything worked and connected to form one huge disaster for Germany. We start to see how all these things played a part, the reparations led to unemployment that led to no money that led to overprinting of money. How the huge consequence of the reparations led to the unsuccessful paying of it leading to the French invasion of the Ruhr which led to strikes and therefore no products to trade with. How the unstable Weimar government led to extremist parties that damaged the economy further and brought inflation to its highest. The effects were probably the worst, the starvation coupled with the disease epidemic that killed people off and the worthless tonnes of paper notes roaming around the nation. It all in all was a very bad time in Germany one that they always found it hard to recover from.
German people were unused to a democracy and blamed the government “November criminals”, for signing the Treaty of Versailles. From the very beginning, the new Weimar government faced opposition from both sides of the political spectrum. The Left wing Spartacist group, lead by Liebknecht and Luxemburg, looked up to the new Soviet councils in Russia, wanted to place Germany into a similar system.
I think that the Weimar Republic was doomed from the beginning as sooner or later someone who was against the system was going to become President and then they could destroy the system. Also, I think with the extremely large range of political views in Germany at the time meant that no one could please everyone.