Ebert gained the support of free corps who helped him fight off the spartacists, and on the 10th of January 2000 of them attacked the spartacists in Berlin. There was bitter street fighting for the next 3 days.
The Separacist’s revolution failed and Ebert held elections for his parliament. The new German republic was named the Weinmar Republic.
In March 1919 the Weinmar Republic was faced with violence when the communists organized strikes in Berlin in another attempt to seize power.
The next threat to the Weinmar Republic came form the southern province of Bavaria. The independent socialists in Bavaria had set up a republic in 1918 and their leader Kurt Eisner was shot dead in the street in February 1919 by a right wing student.
With Eisner dead, the moderate socialists and the communists argued about which of them should take his place. The communists soon got their own way and in March 1919 made Bavaria into a soviet republic on Russian lines. They made the lives of people in Munich hell and the government in Weinmar put Munich under siege.
With the help of the free corps the Weinmar government had put down the communists in both Berlin and Bavaria. It now faced an even bigger crisis because in the past four months the allies had been working out a peace treaty with Germany. This treaty was named the Treaty of Versailles.
The Treaty of Versailles caused great problems for Germany between 1919-24 because many Germans expected it to be a fair treaty and were deeply shocked by the announcement of its terms on May 7th.
Germany was to lose on tenth of her land, all her overseas colonies and most of her armed forces. She was blamed for starting the war and told she must pay for the damage done in fighting.
The Treaty of Versailles caused many problems for Germany because it resulted in the German’s blaming their politions for this action and they named them the ‘November Criminals’. The Germans believed that had they not signed the armistice this may never had happened, and Germany wouldn’t be in this position. As a result the Weinmar Republic faced large amounts of strikes, riots and shootings. Germans who feared communism and socialism stopped listening to reason and fought their fear with violence and bloodshed.
The Treat of Versailles also led to the Kapp Putsch on 13th March 1920. Ebert and the government had fled and so the free corps were under control. A man named Wolfgang Kapp took power on that day. Kapp was supported by the Berlin police, the Free Corps and some of the army but he did not have the workers in his side. They organised a strike in support of Ebert and the government and within a day Berlin was paralysed. There was no water, gas or coal. No trains or buses ran. The Government officials refused to provide Kapp with money. After 100 hours as Germany’s new leader Kapp fled to Sweden.
Although now there was a new danger; the workers stayed out on strike and in the Ruhr Valley the communists formed a red army, which consisted of 50,000 soldiers. Government troops managed to defeat the red army after hard fighting but new risings broke out in other areas.
By now Germany was deeply weakening and have already lost two leaders another murder arose. On the 24th June 1922 Walther Rathenau was murdered by four members of a killer group called organisation Consul.
The signing of the treaty of Versailles led to the invasion of the Ruhr. The treaty stated that Germany had to pay reparations. The first instalment took all Germany had and so she couldn’t afford the second and she failed to pay. The French thought she was bluffing and decided to take what she owed by force. They invaded Germany and occupied the richest industrial area, the Ruhr Valley.
Within 5 days there were five French divisions and one Belgian division in the Ruhr. They took over coalmines, railways, factories and steel works. They set up machine gun posts overlooking town squares. They took food supplies and put anyone who did not co-operate into prison.
The Government told the Ruhr workers not to work for the French. The French responded with tough measures death. Over the next 8 months 132 people died and 150,000 were expelled form their homes. Because of this hyperinflation began.
Passive resistance did the German government more harm than it did to the French; the richest part of Germany was no longer producing goods, so the rest of the country suffered as well. The people who had been expelled from their homes had to be fed by the government since it had ordered the passive resistance in the first place. Yet it had no money to do this.
To solve these problems, the government began printing large amounts of paper money, but this caused prices in the shops to rise. The more money the government printed the faster the prices went up until 1923 became a year of hyperinflation.
The faster prices went up the faster people spent their wages. Millions of people faced starvation as a result of hyperinflation. Pensioners who were fixed on incomes found that process rose faster than their earnings. They weren’t able to pay for gas, coal, lived in unheated houses and froze to death because they couldn’t afford clothes.
All this was more than Germany could bear and a new government led by Gustav Stresemann was formed in September 1923. Streseman called off the passive resistance in the Ruhr. In November he stopped the printing of paper money and abolished the mark, replacing it with a new currency called the Rentenmark.
By 1923 Hitler felt the time was right to take over. At this point hyperinflation was at its worst. On the 8th November he broke into a meeting been held by the three leaders of the Bavarian government, in a beer hall in Munich. He held a gun to the head of one of the Bavarian leaders and forced him to tell the audience that they would help him with his plan.
General Ludendorff, a German war hero who was also in on the plot, entered the hall and announced that he too supported Hitler. Although on the 9th November the Bavarian leaders went back on their promise and ordered the army to attack Röhm and the s.a.s.o. Hitler and Ludendorff went off to rescue them with 2000 nazi’s and marched towards Munich centre. In a narrow street they came up against armed police who opened fire. Hitler escaped with a dislocated shoulder but Ludendorff was unharmed. Later that day the two were arrested and charged with high treason.
The Treaty of Versailles caused problems for Germany between 1919-24 because it resulted in the abdication of the German Kaiser and led to Germany being run by a communist democratic party. It was the cause of many strikes, which took place in hundreds of German cities and lead to the deaths of innocent civilians through bloody fighting. The treaty of Versailles lead to the invasion of one of the richest towns in Germany, which therefore lead to hyperinflation and resulted in the once strong currency of the Dutch Mark, had been lost. The treaty of Versailles caused problems for the Germans between 1919-24 because it without it, some of the most tragic events talk about above may never have happened.
