Weimar Republic Socialism

To start off this essay I will be discussing the conditions in the Weimar Republic that allowed for National Socialism to rise, these are the timber in the Bergen metaphor. One of the reasons that the Republic failed was the massive amount of debt that the country faced after World War 1 as referendums and loans. This crippled the German economy, which took a much larger hit from the Great Depression than the United States did. This economic trouble affected how the people of Germany viewed the Republic. The people had romanticized views on life per-World War 1 and wished to return to that state. By viewing the economic state of German before World War 1 as normal, it then made the economic state on the Weimar Republic abnormal and “therefore blameworthy and illegitimate.” (OR Bessel 101) This illegitimate moved to the

Weimar Republic as a whole with the inability to compromise within the many political groups. (OR Peukert 104) Between the economic and social crisis, the Republic was badly weakened.
Other factors that contributed to the weakness of the Weiner Republic was the continued existence of the old elites on the right and the chaotic nature of modernization that was condensed in a much shorter amount of time than anywhere else in the world.

When the German Empire fell, it was by a step down by the previous rulers not by the masses kicking them out. This meant that the pre-war elites still existed in the country and were trying to figure out where they belonged in the newly democratic nation. These elites were against social reform, a necessary element of modernization, and voted against it as often as they could. (OR Peuker 104) However, this was not the only thing that about the setback of German modernization, it was also “the peculiarly crisis-prone nature of the process of modernization itself”. (OR Peuker 104) Modernization takes time, something that the Weimar did not have in its favor. Even per-World War 1 the German Empire had attempted to modernize the nation at an alarming pace. All that resulted from this attempt at quick modernization was another piece of “timber” to add to the growing pile of Weimar

failures.
The “spark” to ignite the “timber” came on January 30th, 1933 with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. This came after that National Socialist party had almost been destroyed by finance problems and internal struggle. It was brought back by Paul von Hindenburg in an attempt to gather power within the Republic once more. The “hopeless 'power vacuum' of 1932” caused “the rise of the National Socialists possible in the first place.” (OR Bracher 96) Hindenburg had hoped that the appointment of Hitler would case the masses (who supported the National Socialists) to get behind the Republic. That they would be “capable of taming and exploiting the totalitarian mass movement” to work for the Republic. (OR Bracher 97) Instead the appointment of Hitler worked as the last piece need to bring about the end of the Wiemar Republic and bring about the rise of the Nazi state. One my favorite quotes in the Oxford Reader on Nazism is “Weimar democracy did not fail because of Hitler. Rather, Hitler was the final consequence of its failure.” (OX Mommsen 100) In terms of the Bergen metaphor, this quote means that the Weimar Republics failings were already piled high as timber, all that was needed was the “spark” which Hitler readily provided.