How far was the collapse of the Weimar Republic inevitablein 1933?

Darren Harnett 12N

How far was the collapse of the Weimar Republic inevitable in 1933?

When the Kaiser fled Germany on the 9th November 1918 many parties emerged and a coalition government was formed. On the 19th January 1919 a national election was held and the coalition, consisting of the SPD, the DDP and the Centre party won the vote with 23.1million votes.

When the war was ended, on November 11th 1918, three men were responsible for ending the war. These three men became known as the “November Criminals” and became very unpopular with the soldiers and anybody else who thought Germany shouldn’t have been defeated. To end the war Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles. It was very harsh upon Germany and restricted its army and navy greatly and it took away much of Germany’s territorial gains. However, the most humiliating thing was the war-guilt clause, article 231.

The war-guilt clause meant that Germany accepted all responsibility for the war and damage caused during it. It also meant that Germany was forced to pay reparations to the allies. It wasn’t until May of 1921 that reparations were announced, at 20,000billion marks. This was very harsh upon Germany and meant that whoever was in charge was going to have an impossible task of bringing Germany out of debt.

On the 6th of February 1919, in a town called Weimar, the National Assembly met and declared Germany a Democratic Federal Republic. Two houses of Parliament were made, the Upper House called the Reichstag, and the Lower House called the Reichsrat. These two were always going to hinder Weimar’s progress. This was because when a law was passed in the Reichstag it had to be passed in the Reichsrat. If the Reichsrat refused to pass the law then, if two thirds of the Reichstag agreed, the Reichsrat’s rejection was overruled, and the law passed. This caused law making to be slow and the Reichsrat pointless. However, the proportional representation of the coalition governments made law making even slower, and it was rare if any unanimous decisions were made in the Reichstag. This meant that sometimes, if the Reichsrat rejected a law, then the law would not be passed, as two thirds of the Reichsrat, representing three different parties, would not vote in favour of passing the law.

Also Weimar, as a democracy, was immediately undermined by what became known as Article 48. This gave the President the power to take away individual rights and make necessary changes to restore order.

The first coalition government was never popular because of the “stab in the back” in signing the Treaty of Versailles. Also the SPD, that won the majority of the votes, didn’t want to become a coalition government and when it did there was going to be reluctance to agree with the other coalition members, so as to prove a point.

In July 1922, Germany asked to suspend ...

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In July 1922, Germany asked to suspend the reparation payments. This showed failure on the government’s side, as they were not succeeding in turning the country around. In December of that year Germany reported debts of 469,000million marks. Then, in 1923, France, joined by Belgium, invaded and occupied the Ruhr for Germany’s failure to keep up payments of timber and coal. The workers in the mines were told to resist passively and eventually they went on strike, showing that the government was unable to resolve the situation. When the workers went on strike, at a time where there was much inflation, the government offered the workers a pay rise. To pay the workers Germany had to print out more money and this led to “hyperinflation”. Hyperinflation made prices soar out of control and all middle and working classes lost their savings, as they had become worthless. Again, the government of the Weimar had only made matters worse instead of better.

In August 1923 Gustav Stresemann formed a new government. Immediately he tried to stabilise the German currency by introducing the Rentenmark. This did not help recover what had been lost by the people, but it was able to help industry back on its feet. He also attempted to reduce government spending to a minimum. However, his government only lasted until November 1923 when William Marx of the centre party replaced Stresemann. Stresemann was allowed to continue as Foreign Minister until 1929.

In October 1923 Stresemann had to deal with an uprising from the KPD. This showed that there was much hostility towards the Weimar Republic but the Republic had dealt with the uprising before it had really taken off.

In November 1923 was the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempted coup by the Nazi’s. This showed more discontentment and more worrying was that it was an extremist party which were getting more and more popular at that time, backed up by the results of the May 1924 election as Nationalist and Communist parties gained support.

Also in 1924 Stresemann persuaded the French, backed up by Belgium, to leave the Ruhr. Also he negotiated the Dawes Plan with America which allowed Germany to reschedule reparations upon what they could pay rather than being forced to pay back a certain amount at a certain time. This was seen as a quick fix to the problem but later on the Young Plan reduced the payments to £1,850million, one quarter of the original price of £6,600million. The plan also meant that payments would not be complete until 1988.

More hope for the country came when heavy industry reported that it was as good in 1927 as it was in 1913, before the war. This gave the German people hope and more faith in the Republic, as it seemed that things were slowly being turned around. Faith had also been increased when Von Hindenburg had become chancellor, to replace Ebert.

Von Hindenburg was a war hero who was associated with the good times before the war had broken out. To the people he and Stresemann represented the old Germany before economic crisis and the loss of the First World War.

In 1925 Germany signed the Locarno Treaties. These outlined Germany’s western borders and brought Germany closer to countries like France and Belgium, who had remained enemies until Stresemann came into power.

In 1928 the SPD, DDP and Centre Party coalition had 14.3million votes, this was the second highest and showed that people were having more faith in Weimar, yet some people were still not convinced.

In schools, civil services and universities there was little respect for the Republic shown. This could be seen by the children not being taught how to be good citizens as part of their education. As well as this many people were concerned about the lack of cohesion between the governments, this would become a major problem after 1929. Also there was no party that stood out as strong as there were too many parties representing too many different opinions.

For what was labelled as the “Golden Years”, 1924-29, with Stresemann as Foreign Minister the budget deficit was still 1.3billion Marks. This showed a lack of any real change in the five years and it sent a message to the people that, in what was seen as a time of change, nothing was really happening.

When in October 1929 Stresemann died Germany was facing an economic depression because of the Wall Street Crash in America. This ensured that Germany went into deep depression, as the USA had to recall loans made to Germany during the time of the Dawes and the Young Plans. This, for most people, was the final straw. Most people lost faith in the Weimar Republic and moved towards extremist groups like the Nazi party.

Over the three and a half years, as pointed out earlier, Germany would suffer from lack of cohesion in leadership. Bruning came in but made little impact. He used the Nationalists to form a minority Government. He also set in place a financial package but was unable to take it any further as he had no support from the Social Democrats.

Bruning was removed from office by Hindenburg and was replaced by Von Papen. This was the beginning of Hitler’s rise to power as he persuaded Von Papen to lift the ban Bruning had imposed on the SA. Then Von Papen dissolved the Reichstag on the 4th of June 1932 after Hitler had made him think it was the right thing to do.

By 1933 the fall of the Weimar Republic was obvious. The Republic’s last leaders had done nothing to improve the effects of the Wall Street Crash upon Germany, like the rapidly increasing unemployment levels. The lack of action by the government led to extremist parties becoming very popular. The bad start the Weimar Republic made always meant that there would be many parties struggling for power. If there had been a strong Government to begin with, then there would have been no need for a Nazi party or any other extremists, as they would feel that they had no chance of gaining the votes to come to power. A famous quote by H. Holborn, about the period 1918 to 1933, was:

“Normalcy was never quite achieved and even the period when it appeared close at hand proved only a brief interlude between the two disasters.”