The Weimar Republic : Germany

Power fell to the Social Democrats. Their majority had long since abandoned the revolutionary notions of earlier years and saw their mission in securing an orderly transition from the old to the new form of state. Private ownership of industry and agriculture remained untouched. The mostly anti-republican civil servants and judges were taken over without exception. The imperial officer corps retained command of the armed forces. Attempts by radical leftists to drive the revolution in a socialist direction were quelled by the army.

In the National Assembly elected in January 1919, which convened at Weimar and drew up a new Reich constitution, three unconditionally republican parties - the Social Democrats, the German Democratic Party and the Catholic Centre - had the majority. But through the 1920s the parliamentary parties and popular forces which were more or less hostile t° a democratic state went from strength to strength, he Weimar Republic was a “republic without repub-icans”, rabidly fought by its opponents and only half-eartedly defended by its supporters. Especially the Postwar economic misery and the oppressive terms of .^Treaty of Versailles which Germany had to sign hi mae trie people deeply skeptical of the re-b|ic. Growing domestic instability was the result.

n 1923 the confusion of the postwar era reached its peak (inflation, occupation of the Ruhr by France, Hitler’s coup, communist overthrow attempts). This was followed by economic recovery and with it some political pacification. The foreign policy of Custav Stresemann regained political equality for defeated Germany through the Locarno Pact (1925) and accession to the League of Nations (1926). The arts and sciences experienced a brief, intensive flowering in the “golden 20s”. After the death of the first Reich President, the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert, former Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was elected head of state in 1925 as the candidate of the right. Although he abided strictly by the constitution, he never developed a personal commitment to the republican
state.

The ultimate collapse of the Weimar Republic began with the world economic crisis in 1929. Left-wing and right-wing radicalism exploited unemployment and the general recession. No more majorities capable of government could be found in the Reichstag, the cabinet being dependent on the support of the Reich President. From 1930, the up to then insignificant National Socialist movement of Adolf Hitler, which fused extreme anti-democratic tendencies and a raging anti-Semitism with pseudo-revolutionary propaganda, grew from strength to strength and by 1932 had become the most powerful party. On 30January 1933, Hitler became Reich Chancellor. Apart from members of his own party, his cabinet included politicians of the right and non-partisan specialist ministers, so it was hoped that sole rule by the National Socialists could be prevented.