Was Weimar Germany doomed from the start?
By Shadi paterson
When Germany emerged from WWI in 1918 it had a new leader and a new style of government. It also had many problems.
After WWI the leader of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and fled the country and a politician called Friedrich Ebert was elected to take power and Germany was declared a republic. Many Germans were not happy with this change and wanted the Kaiser to return because of this as they thought the war was not lost as they still had soldiers fighting, but the fact was that Germany had hit an economic disaster and was forced to back down. This led to the revolt of ex-soldiers. Soldiers who had fought in communist Russia had liked the thought of communism and fought for that, these were called Spartacists. Meanwhile other ex-soldiers called Freikorps, led by Wolfgang Kapp, wanted to take over Germany’s government. The two groups became rivals and fighting in the streets of Berlin, Germany’s capital city, meant that the government had to move to Weimar instead. The two groups were bought down in two different ways. The Spartacist leaders were arrested and killed by the German army and the Freikorps and the Freikorps had their plan ruined by a general strike. The government still had problems even though the Spartacists and Freikorps were abolished as they had used proportional representation to elect their new members of parliament. This led to a weak government consisting of many politicians that could not agree on anything. Germany was not very popular with other countries either as they were blamed for WWI by many of them and had to agree to this in the treaty of Versailles.
