There were several uprisings against this new government. In 1919 there was a spartacist uprising lead by Rosa Luxemburg but it was crushed by the military. Rosa and many others were killed in the conflict. In March 1920 Wolfgang Kapp assisted by General Luttwitz organised a direct threat to the Weimar government. The so-called Kapp putsch involved the men of the Freikorps (free army) who were lead by Luttwitz. Luttwitz marched on Berlin and seized government. Ebert had no choice but to flee, this left Kapp to declare a new government. It failed to get widespread support, and was widely regarded as a bad idea. The army did nothing although they did not support it, they were not prepared to fire upon their own troops. The left wing organised a general strike and Berlin ground to a halt. After 4 days in power Kapp and his supporters fled and Ebert returned to power. The people involved with the Kapp putsch were not as heavily reprimanded as those involved in the sparticist uprising they were merely told not to repeat the action.
In 1923 the mark collapsed because the German people had lost faith in it, there was hyperinflation and millions lost their savings and pensions. By this time France and Belgium had used this opportunity to occupy the Ruhr, this was Germany’s main producing land. Naturally the German people blamed the Weimar for this. But they did stage peaceful protest towards this by closing down manufacture. This inevitably caused industrial paralysis, which caused even more anger towards Ebert and so Gustav Stresemann replaced him as the leader of a broadly based coalition in August 1923. For a while he stabilised a tempestuous Germany. In the next year the allies made it easier to pay off the reparations by introducing the Dawes plan, this made for a more realistic payment schedule. There was resistance to this in the form of the Munich ‘Beer Hall’ Putsch this involved Adolf Hitler who won support from a group of right wing politicians, to march on Berlin. Unfortunately due to disorganisation they did not succeed in their plans. Hitler went to prison and many of the protestors were killed. In the October of 1925, Stresemann signed the treaty of Locarno, which prevented any further incursions on its western frontiers. The allies then withdrew their forces from occupation, and Germany was granted a place in the League of Nations in the following year. This meant an international alliance for the preservation of peace. As well as this a new currency was introduced called the ‘Reichsmark’ it had a much tighter monetary control, this lead to an impressive economic recovery.
However this was fatally flawed, owing to the economy being based on foreign loans, and the governments expenditure was very high. Also businesses were suffering from low profit margins. So in 1925 Paul Von Hindenburg was elected the second president of the republic. Four years later in 1929 Wall Street crashed, it took a while for its impact to reach Germany but when it did it threw the whole republic into chaos. The reason for this was, the people feared another economic breakdown like the one in 1923. So in March 1930 Chancellor Heinrich Brüning took over using emergency powers. He tried to stabilise the Country by cutting government spending and securing the end, effectively, to the reparations payments. His policies however were overall unpopular so in 1932,he was forced to resign. This lead to the rise in popularity of the Nazi Party, in 1930 they were the second largest, their support growing as the depression deepened. In 1932 the Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag. Hindenburg was persuaded to bring Hitler into the government, which lead to Hitler taking over completely and the end of the Weimar Republic.
In truth the Weimar was completely doomed from the start due to; its formation, the decisions made by its somewhat incompetent leaders and poor judgement on the behalf of Hindenburg almost letting Hitler come into dictatorship. Finally a series of unfortunate events that occurred almost at the will of the anti Weimar's, that finally lead to the demise of the flawed democracy that it had become. A brilliant idea implemented by an unjust plan to pass the responsibility onto someone else.
