Was the Weimar Republic doomed from the start?

Another reason why the Republic was set up to fail was the harsh opposition from Right and Left wing parties.  The Left wing was made up of Communists, and the main party on this side was the KPD.  It was this party that felt the most resentment to the main party in the coalition government, the SDP.  Two prominent leaders of the KPD, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, were murdered by the Freikorps men and the KPD blamed the SDP.  Therefore, once the SDP came to power the KPD tried to fight against them as much as possible.  Although they didn’t really make a difference, they did gain some more votes when it came to elections between 1919 and 1932.  The Right wing however, was much more active.  This side of politics also held the NSDAP party, otherwise more known as the Nazi Party.  The NSDAP gained a considerable amount of seats in the government during the elections of 1920 to 1933.  It was the NSDAP party that influenced the failure of the Weimar Republic the most, and this party that eventually stopped the Weimar Republic with the rise of Hitler.  Hence this being an important reason as to why the Republic was not to survive permanently.

A third reason that contributes to the failure of the Republic is the economic and social problems that appeared during and after the war.  Economically, Germany borrowed and printed a considerable amount of money to pay off the war and this caused sky-high inflation and huge national debts that had to be paid off by the new government.  This gave the new government a very difficult situation to deal with.  And even though it looked like things were looking up after 1923 with the establishment of the new Rentenmark in 1923 and the Dawes Plan in 1924, the economy was not stable enough to survive the 1929 Wall Street Crash which brought the German economy to its knees once more.  This shows how despite the best efforts of the politicians, the economy was just not stable enough to withstand the new administrative change that took place.  The social problems are therefore results from the economic problems.  With high inflation and huge debts, came mass unemployment and a very low standard of living.  And once the new Dawes Plan and currency came into play, the standard of living went up.  But once the Wall Street Crash hit, everything plummeted again and unemployment rose again.  The economic and social problems then led to the rise in votes for the NSDAP, which in turn shut down the Weimar Republic.  

One other reason is that the German public did not like the terms that were presented in the Treaty of Versailles.  The Germans had agreed to a peace settlement based on the Fourteen Points, but were given terms that were much harsher.  This then led to deep resentment towards the politicians that had signed the Treaty, who then set up the Weimar Republic.  When considering the failure of the Weimar Republic, it could be said that by the public already resenting the democracy and the terms of the Treaty, they were not willing to try to adapt to the new regime that Germany was made to follow.  

The Weimar Republic was set up to try and help Germany with post-war terms; however, it did not work out as planned.  Despite the success between 1924 and 1929, problems from the beginning of Weimar brought it to its knees in 1933.  All the problems mentioned above are linked in some way or another, and each contributed to the failure of the Weimar Republic.  What happened after Weimar could have been prevented, if only the Republic had been strong enough to survive.  

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