The Weimar Republic

Myriam The Weimar Republic

Barthe

3ème 7

Explain why the Weimar Republic collapsed.

In January 1919, the German voters, elected a national assembly to write a constitution. The assembly met in Weimar, and in August 1919, the constitution established a democratic republic known as the Weimar Republic. It provided for a parliament of two houses ; the Reichstag and the Reichsrat, and a president elected by the people. The chancellor and the cabinet members were appointed by the president, but they could be removed from office by the Reichstag. However, the Weimar Republic, like many new parliaments, was weak from the start and was faced with a lot of problems which by the end caused its failure.

Firstly, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were harsher than the Germans had thought. They were not expecting to be treated badly as they expected the treaty to follow the same lines as Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen points. Some of the clauses in the treaty included, the infamous War Guilt clause, the Reparations clause and the cutting down of Germany’s army to such a small number that it could hardly police itself. The German Navy scuttled their ships at Scapa Flow in protest. The whole of Germany felt betrayed by the allies and by their own politicians. Those who had signed the armistice were now dubbed the November Criminals who had ‘stabbed Germany in the back’.

Secondly, the parliamentary system laid down in the new Weimar constitution had weaknesses. The most serious of them was that as it was a democracy, a system of proportional representation was introduced so that all political groups would have a fair representation. Unfortunately, there were so many different groups that no party could ever win over a majority; this resulted inevitably to serious successions of coalition governments. The other weakness concerned the political parties which had very little experience of how to govern a democratic parliamentary system. This led to disagreements and every party organized its own private army ...

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Thirdly, outbreaks of violence started to appear, opposition grew between Nazis and communists, and series of political assassinations took place. Walter Rathenau and Gustav Erzberger were killed. The government took strong measures against such acts of terrorism but the right-wing parties immediately showed opposition to these measures.

In January 1919, the Spartacist Rising occurred in which the communists occupied almost every major city in Germany. However, the government managed to defeat them but only by accepting the help of the Freikorps; a sign which shows the weakness of the government.

On March 1920 the Kapp Putsch took place. This involved a group of troops capturing and installing , a right wing journalist, as Chancellor of a new government. With his one means of power and the Freikorps, revolting against him, Ebert could only withdraw his from and reconvene in . There, the government called for a which paralyzed the capital. Yet, he still succeeded in regaining control.

But on November 1923, Germany also saw an attack from the right in the shape of the , staged by in . On November the 8th, at a beer hall in Munich, Ludendorff and Hitler declared a new government and planned to take control of Munich the following day. The 3,000 revolters were suppressed by 100 policemen and Hitler was arrested and condamned to five years imprisonment but released one year later having support of the politicians.

Fourthly, the crucial cause of the collapse of the Weimar republic was the economy. The Weimar republic was constantly faced by economic problems which the government failed to solve permanently. Yet, if a country’s economy is weak, the political system is under threat.

By 1923, the Republic could no longer afford to maintain the reparations payments as stated in Versailles and the new government defaulted on payments. In response, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr region, Germany's most valuable industrial area at the time, taking control of the mining and manufacturing companies. In January, strikes were called for, and passive resistance was encouraged. The strikes had to last for eight months, which caused the German economy to suffer, and importing had to begin.

Since striking workers also had to be paid by the state, additional currency was printed, which fuelled a period of hyperinflation. The value of the Mark declined from 4.2 per US dollar to 4,200,000,000,000 per dollar on November 1923.

It was only when Stresemann in 1924 introduced a new currency known as the Rentenmark that the financial situation stabilized. Stresemann also asked the US to provide Germany money so as to help them pay what was asked by France and also to recover. They agreed and thanks to Stresemann, Germany was rebuilding itself and confidence was beginning to reappear. Unfortunatly, in October 1929, Stresemann died and the US were faced with a crisis: The Wall Street Crash. They immediatly asked Germany to pay back all the money lend, which was impossible and caused the collapse of the Weimar Republic.