Failure Of The Weimar Republic Essay

Around the time, he was trying to gain support for the Nazi party the mood of Germany was not too particularly great. The depression's effects had hit Germany and its people hard with millions of people losing their jobs. Still fresh in the German people’s minds was the humiliating loss of WWI. Also, people did not like the Weimar Republic government because it agreed to the terms of The Treaty of Versailles. Due to this, the German people lacked confidence in the Weimar Republic. These conditions provided the chance for the rise of a new leader, Adolf Hitler, and his party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or the Nazi party. Due to Hitler’s extravagant speeches, he was able to attract many followers to the Nazi party. In the article, it states “Hitler was a powerful and spellbinding speaker who attracted a wide following of Germans desperate for change”, but this quote doesn’t even show how impactful the speeches really were. The article later states that “The party's rise to power was rapid... the Nazis were practically unknown, winning only 3 percent of the vote to the Reichstag (German parliament) in elections in 1924. In the 1932 elections, the Nazis won 33 percent of the votes, more than any other

The Weimar Republic would have continued to be a functional government far longer than achieved if not for the defeat of WWI, the economic burdens imposed by the Versailles Treaty, and the flawed Article 48 which all contributed to the down fall of Germany’s first attempt at a legitimate Democracy. This paper will argue that the societal, economical, and constitutional aspects all played a role in the hopeless Democracy Germany attempted which ultimately lead Germany into a totalitarian state that would further shake the world with the rise of the NSDAP and Adolf Hitler.

After the Golden Years, which brought great prosperity back to the economy and saw the middle class turn away from the extremists, the Wall Street Crash in 1929 occurred. The middle class turned back to the Nazi’s, especially in the industrial north of Germany. The German

With incompetent leadership and an unhappy nation, the German people began to realize that their country was in a vulnerable situation and began to look for stable alternatives to democracy. Hitler’s

1) Germany before the Fuhrer. Germany’s defeat at the end of World War I left the nation socially, politically, and economically shattered. The reparation agreements inflicted upon Germany without its’ consent at the end of the war meant that the nation was in complete financial ruin. In the wake of Germany’s defeat, public decent climaxed on the 9th November 1918 during the revolution that took place on Berlin’s Postdamer Platz. This revolution transpired as a result of the public’s culminating discontent towards the imperial monarchy, and lasted up until August 1919, which saw the establishment of the Weimar Republic. In attempts to guide Germany out of economic

The collapsement of the Weimar Republic was due to many social, political and economical issues within. From its birth it faced numerous political problems, for which the causes were many and varied. These problems included political instability, deep divisions within society and economic crisis; problems were constantly appearing for the new government. The Weimar Republic never really had a stable political party, having a whole six different parties between 1924-1928 does not create stability. Many of these parties were also narrowly sectioned, with messed up

In Germany the economy was especially vulnerable since it was built out of foreign capital, mostly loans from America and was very dependent on foreign trade. When those loans suddenly came due and when the world market for German exports dried up, the well-oiled German industrial machine quickly ground to a halt. As production levels fell, German workers were laid off. Along with this, banks failed throughout Germany. Savings accounts, the result of years of hard work, were instantly wiped out. Inflation soon followed making it hard for families to purchase expensive necessities with devalued money. Overnight, the middle class standard of living so many German families enjoyed was ruined by events outside of Germany, beyond their control. The Great Depression began and they were cast into poverty and deep misery and began looking for a solution, any solution. By mid-1930, amid the economic pressures of the Great Depression, the German democratic government was beginning to unravel. The crisis of the Great Depression

The Weimar Constitution was a genuine attempt to create a perfect democratic country. In his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), American historian William L. Shirer described the Weimar Constitution as "on paper, the most liberal and democratic document of its kind the twentieth century had ever seen ... full of ingenious and admirable devices which seemed to guarantee the working of an almost flawless democracy.” The constitution guaranteed equal rights to the German people, yet also contained the fundamental structural flaws that would play a major part in the Republic 's downfall (and thus the Nazi Party’s rise). Two clear examples of such weaknesses were the use of an excessively proportional electoral system and the

On the other hand, if this were to have existed in a dictatorship, one would merely get used to how something went because that was how life would be from now on if there was a dictator present. With all the mess and distress already present, the body of laws present in a democracy is much slower to be established, while it usually took much less time with a dictator. Rather than one person having to agree on a law or come up with one, a democracy requires the whole body instead to ratify or accept it. This is due to the fact that your own personal needs must be given up in a dictatorship, while they are respected and valued on the other hand in a democracy. Therefore, seeing from all these changes, the alteration in government that the German government faced must have produced overwhelming challenges for Germany as a whole. They must completely abandon the norm for them and accustom themselves once again to a new way of life. Not only will these bring upon conflicts within the human population, but in all aspects including political, social, and economic qualities. In specificity to all these problems, it was many problems that accumulated and grew through time that presented a chance for Hitler to rise to power. Adolf Hitler was not only a strong and powerful leader that could have rose to power completely on his own, yet many of the inhabitants in Germany was tired of everything and needed a changed

Since the Weimar Republic was established in the aftermath of World War One, it was almost inevitable that it would be blamed for Germanys surrender and the Treaty of Versailles. The supposed surrender was even harder to accept since in 1918 Germany had signed an armistice with Russia. Weimar was in essence ‘brought about by defeat’ . The ‘November Criminals’ who signed the armistice were always associated with Weimar, thus making it difficult for Weimar to be associated with anything but defeat and humiliation. The war guilt clause was also difficult to accept because it lay all the blame on Germany for starting the First World War. This along with reparations were crippling not only the economy but German society itself

Imagine that after a lifelong of hard work and saving, you find that your lifesavings will not buy more than one cup of coffee. For a majority of the middle class living in Germany during the early 1920’s this was precisely their experience. Of course, not all suffered during this period of hyperinflation. Those who owed money encouraged their government’s expansionary monetary policies, knowing the resulting inflation would effectively cancel their debt. In fact, it was the Reich itself who had the most to gain from inflation, for it was the biggest debtor of them all.

The collapse of the Weimar Republic can not be seen as solely indebted to the severe economic problems faced during the period of its rule, but consequently it was the economic issues that became a footstep to the ultimate demise of the Republic. Subsequent to Germany’s defeat in the First World War and German Emperor Kaiser’s abdication from power, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed. The Republic that had emerged from the German Revolution of November 1918 would inevitably fall as a result of numerous issues. However, the extent of which economic problems had in the dissolution of the republic, and how these issues caused or came about due to separate concerns faced by the new democratic system became a major contributing factor.

There were various factors that contributed to the failure of the Weimar Republic of Germany and the ascent of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party into power on January 30, 1933. Various conflicting problems were concurrent with the eventuation of the Republic that, from the outset, its first governing body the socialist party (SPD) was forced to contend with.

In 1933, Germany had begun to fall under the power of a deceptive leader with strong intentions whose popularity and support almost aided him to achieve his goal of world domination. As this man orchestrated his way through his sovereignty, he managed to catch the eye of nearly every German in Germany as well as many other people in the world. This man’s name is Adolf Hitler. Hitler was seen as an enemy to others, but came off as a dependable leader to Germans as he helped with the major hyperinflation which caused them to grow desperate for a change. While his enemies may have believed his leadership was unorthodox, he still managed to not only take over a whole country, but carry out one of history’s largest genocides ever recorded in human history. He also managed to rise through the Weimar Republic in order to establish the Third Reich as the new government for Germany, which was made possible by the substantial support gained from the German population.

The Weimar republic from 1919 to 1929 had many successes and failures, starting in chaos and ending in relative stability. However, due to individual perspective these successes and failures were often viewed as both successes and failures- not either. Class, political leanings and other moralistic beliefs, primarily influenced the individual's perspectives. Overall, due to the relative stability, (the aim of any government) primarily achieved by Streseman's influence, the successes outweighed the failures by 1929.