The Treaty of Versailles was signed in June 1919. It was a peace settlement signed after World War One by France, Germany, Britain and America. Most of the terms of the Treaty were to punish Germany for supposedly starting the war. Germany had to admit full responsibility for starting the war and accept blame, Germans did not believe they were responsible for causing the war and resented having to accept responsibility. Germany also had to pay 6600 million in money or goods for compensation for the damaged caused to France and Belgium, this was a huge sum of money to be paid and Germany could not afford it. France forced Germany reduce their armed forces, the air force was disbanded and the army was limited to 100,000 soldiers. This caused great humility to Germany as they could no longer defend itself against invasion. Germany lost around 13% of its land containing 6 million German people. The German people resented the Weimar for agreeing to the Treaty of Versailles although they didn’t have a choice as they could not continue with the war. Many German citizens felt that they were being punished for the mistakes of the German government.
One aspect of the Weimar Constitution was Article 48 which said that the president can give himself absolute power in an emergency. Article 48 was used by Adolf Hitler in 1933 to establish a dictatorship, ending the Weimar Republic and ushering in the Third Reich. The year of Crisis was 1923, the Ruhr was Germany’s biggest industrial town. As Germany could not keep up with the reparation payments the French invaded the Ruhr and took over all the factories and industry. The workers in the Ruhr responded by refusing to work, called passive resistance. This seemed paitriotic but had disastorous consiquences for Germany The Ruhr was Germany’s richest economic area and produced a great deal of wealth for the country and Germany’s economy started to suffer. Hyperinflation hit Germany; the government did not have any money to pay the reparations so they simply printed more. The value of the mark went down and the cost of goods increased. The German mark had no value this lead to severe poverty. The last crisis to hit was The Munich Putsch; Streseman decided Germany would have to give in to France. Extremists didn’t like this and plotted a putsch. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis attempted a revolution against Weimar. But they were defeated and sent to jail. Germany could not afford to lose more money so Streseman called off the passive resistance and scrapped all the worthless marks and burned them. He introduced a new temporary currency the Rentenmark and America loaned Germany money to pay back to France. Many German didn’t like this as they felt as though they were giving in to their enemy, France and the Weimar Republic lost support from German citizens.
German citizens had to blame someone and they blamed the republic for everything, for loosing the war and the financial situation they were in now. The German people thought all the bad things that had happened to them and their country was a result of the Weimar republic. This made Hitler's rise to easy, he offered German people freedom from the Weimar rule and they gradually accepted it.
However, the Weimar Republic did have a lot of great achievements. They had the difficult task of making Germany strong again after the war. The Weimar constitution had advanced rules and a fair democracy but, some groups (army, civil service and judges) still wanted to live in a dictatorship where they were told what to do. The Weimar constitution was a set of rules which the government ruled by. It stated that everyone over 20 years could vote including women, each state had their own government and proportional representation. These were all strengths of the constitution as each person who votes had control over what happened in their area. The constitution was successful because it was the most democratic system in the world where no individual could gain too much power.
The League of Nations was set up in 1919 after the war to stop another one happening but, Germany was not allowed to join as it was still being punished according to the Treaty of Versailles. But in 1926 Germany was allowed to join this was the acceptance of Germany in Europe. Germany also signed the Locarno Pact with France, Britain, Belgium and Italy. This was an agreement not to invade one another if one country did invade another, the others would come to the invaded country’s aid. This helped Germany relax as it was safe from invasion.
Finally the Weimar Republic was a strong government and Germany was achieving levels of industry production. There was a cultural revival in Germany. Writers and poets flourished, especially in Berlin. Artists produced powerful famous paintings about everyday life wanting to be understood by ordinary people. Artists portrayed society in an objective way. The 1920’s was a golden age for Germany. Germany was finally wealthy and free this gave the German people confidence in the Weimar Republic.
The Weimar Republic had the very difficult task of making Germany rise to power after the First World War. The country was poor, depressed and had no main leader. I think that the Weimar Republic did a great job of helping Germany but scale of the work they had to do to get Germany how it was before the war was overwhelming.
