Stresemann controlling inflation, was the main reason behind the success of the Weimar Republic in 1923-1928 do you agree?

One other factor to the success of the Weimar Republic was the social reforms that Gustav Stresemann took. Stresemann introduced reforms to help the working class which involved benefits for work and built 3 million affordable homes for the struggling German citizens. These reforms helped many people as the economic climate in Germany was very poor and a lot of people had nothing, this increased the support of the Weimar Republic as the majority of citizens were being helped out. However this is not the most important reason as although this did help people it also upset very important citizens – the rich. The rich people of Germany was unhappy that 26% of the GDP budget was being spent on the poor and felt it was unfair; this pushed the rich people to go against the Weimar republic, this results in the fact that social reforms weren’t the biggest success of the Weimar Republic.

On the other hand, people would argue the ‘dawes plan’ was the biggest reason for success. This is because this equally made the western powers worried as at the time of hyper-inflation they thought there would be a take over from extremists as many people in Germany were struggling which means they would be attracted to extremist groups; this put the powers in a position in which they needed to help Germany out to save it from extremists and because they wanted there reparations. Conclusively, in 1924 Charles Dawes an American banker signed the Dawes plan. This resulted in the French leaving the Rhur, Germany agreeing to pay 6.6billion in reparations and Germany would receive a loan of 800m US dollars. Fortunately for Germany this helped out a lot as industry output doubled, following by an increase imports, exports and employment. This was beneficial for Germany and the Weimar Republic however it still binded Germany to being in debt to the powers; this highlights the negatives of the ‘Dawes plan’ in accordance to the success of the Weimar republic.

Moreover, another contributing factor was the ‘Young Plan’; this was supposedly more successful than the Dawes Plan however still falls behind the steps taken by Stresemann within international affairs. The young plan reduced Germany’s reparations to 2billion US dollars and given 59 years to pay the debt off. This resulted in the German taxes being lowered and improved the recovery of Germany’s economy. Although these are all positives for the success of the Weimar Republic, the German citizens were still angry due to the fact that they were still agreeing to pay reparations, which the German citizens was unhappy about this they were an extremely nationalist country and it made them feel like their country was being betrayed.

The final action taken by Gustav Stresemann which contributed to the success of the Weimar Republic was controlling the inflation in Germany. This is arguably one of the biggest reasons due to it being the start of all the successes to follow from Stresemann, in essence it set the ball rolling. Firstly Stresemann created a new currency called the ‘Rentenmark’ which was worth 1000billion marks. This quickly bought inflation under control. However, this was not the most successful factor, this angered the middle and upper class citizens of Germany as due to the new currency being bought in, and it resulted in many of people’s savings being lost who were quickly blaming the Weimar Republic for these actions. This was probably the biggest factor that created anger and hatred towards the Weimar republic.

        To conclude, the biggest reason for the success of the Weimar Republic through the actions taken by Stresemann was the steps taken within international affairs. This gave Germany the biggest bargaining power over the western powers by signing the treaty of Berlin. Moreover, it was when Germany was accepted by the other countries as they were allowed to join the ‘League of Nations’. Overall this was a huge success for Germany as they were progressing to be an alliance with many of the countries that once went against them, this was a more important reason to controlling inflation.