The conclusion of World War I did not bring significant relief to the German population. Hunger, human loss, and a sense of despair were experienced throughout the Reich. During the negotiations leading up to the Armistice, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson advocated for the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II and the eradication of military autocracy in Germany. As a result of these efforts, not only did the Hohenzollern Kaiser abdicate and flee to Holland but all German monarchies and dynasties were dissolved.
The period was marked by fear and hatred, which manifested in the form of violence, including gun battles, assassinations, riots, massacres, and general civil unrest. Though an interim democratic government had been put in place in an effort to avoid the total breakdown of services and order, the existing environment was not conducive to the establishment and growth of the fragile German democracy. However, when faced with the imminent threat of the Communist-led Spartacist group proclaiming a soviet republic in Berlin, Philipp Scheidemann of the Majority Social Democratic Party ran to the window of the Reichstag building and to the masses assembled below proclaimed the forthcoming establishment of a republican government. This impromptu declaration led to the formation of a committee of prominent figures from the labor movement who convened in Weimar, a historical town closely associated with celebrated German writers Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. Far from the uprisings and crises plaguing the capital, this small town is where the founding group discussed and drafted Germany’s future constitution.
The elections held in January 1919 resulted in the formation of a Constituent Assembly that was controlled by a coalition comprising the Social Democrats, the left-liberal Democrats, and the Center Party. The resulting German constitution for the new state, later known as the Weimar Republic among the National Socialists, was regarded as one of the most progressive and democratic documents of its era. It included provisions that were seen as effective safeguards for the establishment and operation of an almost perfect democracy. The constitution was inspired by the constitutions of other countries, incorporating ideas such as the cabinet government from Britain and France, the concept of a powerful president elected by popular vote from the United States, and the notion of a referendum from Switzerland. Additionally, a sophisticated and comprehensive system of proportional representation and list voting was implemented, with the intention of avoiding wasted votes and providing representation for minority parties in parliament.1
The original German National Constitutional Assembly, as it was known, briefly united the two wings of the Social Democratic movement: the Majority faction, which had supported the war, and the Independents, who had opposed it. The council was led by Friedrich Ebert, a long-serving official of the Social Democratic Party. Ebert, the son of a master tailor, learned the saddler’s trade and traveled throughout Germany as a journeyman saddler. He subsequently became a Social Democrat and trade unionist, promoting revisionist and liberal trade-union socialism. However, he did not display a deep interest in the ideological disputes of Marxism, instead focusing on practical improvements in the living conditions as well as the social and moral betterment of the German working class. Ebert was not renowned for his oratory skills or charismatic leadership, but he demonstrated himself to be a calm and patient negotiator, able to bring opposing factions to a mutual agreement.2
It must be acknowledged that Ebert, as first president of the Weimar Republic, may have exercised his power excessively during the early years of the republic. The Reich president was granted the power to rule by decree, a clause intended for use only in the event of a national emergency. However, Ebert employed this special power on 136 separate occasions.3 It goes without saying that the task of leading Germany following its defeat in World War I and the acceptance of the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles would have been a formidable challenge for any government, and particularly difficult for a democratically focused government that was inexperienced in navigating such complex issues. The task of addressing the significant problems presented by the treaty and complying with its demands was a legacy that the idealistic yet inexperienced postwar government was forced to face.
Though Ebert throughout his six years as Reich president entertained a close rapport with the “old order” military leaders, this did nothing to immunize him from ongoing attacks from the far-right press. His opponents unsparingly depicted him as a squat and pudgy figurehead instead of a dignified and idealized leader, all the while attempting to dig up dirt by associating him with financial scandals. The unending onslaught of disapproval directed at Ebert not only contributed to undermining his political standing but wore him down both mentally and physically.4 A ruptured appendix for which he neglected to seek treatment led to his early death on February 28, 1925, at the age of fifty-four.
The elections for a new president revealed more than ever the government’s severe political fragmentation. As no single party gained sufficient support to legitimize a candidate, it was the right-wing groups that shone the spotlight on Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg. A perfect example of the archaic military and imperial Weltanschauung, Hindenburg cut a bulky, stoic, and larger-than-life figure. Awarded numerous medals and honors—many underserved—he came across as an aging military man of some experience and integrity now holding the nation’s future in his hands. To many, this Ersatz-Kaiser’s succession to power was a decisive step away from democracy and toward the reestablishment of the old monarchical order.
Nevertheless, to the surprise of many, the elderly military man stuck to the letter of the constitution, though once in his eighties he began to show his support for monarchical sovereign power. Like Ebert before him, Hindenburg began to make use of the constitution’s presidential emergency powers to exercise a conservative dictatorship and thereby demonstrated that he had no faith in democratic institutions and no intention of defending them from their enemies.5
In order to better grasp what Germany’s World War I children and youth—as well as the rest of the population—experienced following the war, we should briefly review the main international punitive measures imposed on the nation.
Germany was dependent on imports of food and raw materials, most of which had to be shipped across the Atlantic Ocean. The Blockade of Germany (1914–1919) was a naval operation implemented by the Allied Powers to prevent the supply of raw materials and foodstuffs from reaching the Central Powers. This blockade was not lifted until eight months after Germany ceased fighting. In December 1918, the German Board of Public Health stated that 763,000 German civilians had died during the Allied blockade, although an academic study in the same year put the death toll at 424,000 people.6 The terms of the November 11, 1918, Armistice allowed Allied troops—later, predominantly French—to occupy Germany’s Rhineland region and forced Germany to demilitarize the said zone.
During the first half of 1919, some seventy delegates from twenty-seven nations met in Paris to discuss the punitive measures that should be taken against Germany. Among them were the “Big Four”: French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson met in no less than 145 closed sessions to reach the most important decisions.7 Under threat of Allied invasion, Germany was forced to sign the so-called Versailles Treaty on June 28, 1919, at Versailles. Already viewed by economists at the time as excessively harsh and bordering on unrealistic, the treaty has sometimes been cited as one of the causes of World War II. Although the Versailles Treaty’s actual impact was not as severe as feared, its terms led to great resentment in Germany, which many historians believe powered the rise of Hitler and National Socialism.
The Versailles Treaty stripped Germany of twenty-five thousand square miles (65,000 km2) of territory and seven million inhabitants. Among these regions or protectorates were Alsace-Lorraine, German-speaking Moresnet and Eupen-Malmedy, the Saarland (for fifteen years), Czechoslovakia (actually controlled by Austria), parts of Upper Silesia, the province of Poznan, Eastern Pomerania, Danzig and parts of East Prussia, as well as the Memel. Germany’s prized colonies and possessions in Africa and Asia were likewise redistributed to members of the Allied nations.
At the end of World War I, Germany’s army still comprised six million men. The Versailles Treaty’s provisions allowed Germany an army of no more than one hundred thousand soldiers in a maximum of seven infantry and three cavalry divisions.8 Germany was prohibited from trading arms, limits were imposed on the type and quantity of weapons permitted, and the nation was barred from manufacturing or stockpiling chemical weapons, armored cars, tanks, and military aircraft.9 For defense purposes, the German navy was allowed six battleships, six light cruisers, twelve destroyers, and twelve torpedo boats but was forbidden the possession of submarines.10 The navy’s manpower was not to exceed fifteen thousand men, and Germany was not allowed to own an air force. Compared to the European pre–World War I efforts to balance the great powers’ respective armed forces, Germany’s postwar “puppet army” would be visibly insufficient to counter a potential enemy invasion and was, above all, an embarrassment to Germany’s strong military tradition.
The treaty obliged Germany to compensate the Allied Powers and also created an Allied Reparation Commission to establish the exact sum that Germany should pay in reparations and war damages and the form that such payment would take. The commission was required to “give to the German Government a just opportunity to be heard” and to submit its conclusions by May 1, 1921. In the interim, the treaty required Germany to pay the equivalent of twenty billion gold marks ($5 billion) in gold, commodities, ships, securities, or other forms.11 In hindsight, many experts agree that the astronomical sums that Germany was expected to hand over in the wake of an economically draining war were utterly exaggerated and that the “debt” could not be honored.
Rather than be forced to sign the Versailles Treaty, Germany’s first democratically elected head of state, Philipp Scheidemann, resigned. In an impassioned speech delivered to the National Assembly on May 12, 1919, he termed the treaty a “murderous plan” and exclaimed, “Which hand, trying to put us in chains like these, would not wither? The treaty is unacceptable.”12
A major turning point in World War I was the sailors’ rebellion of October 1918 and the ensuing revolution that gradually swept through Germany. As most of Germany’s old elite refused to concede that the German army had been defeated—which was facilitated by the lack of a decisive battle in the autumn of 1918—the “stabbed in the back” legend found widespread acceptance.13 This myth held that the German army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but, instead, was betrayed by the civilians on the home front, in particular by Jews and republicans who overthrew the Hohenzollern monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918–1919. Advocates of this opinion denounced the German leaders who signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918, as the “November criminals.” Myth or no myth, the Versailles Treaty, and in particular its War Guilt Clause, was viewed with quasi-universal rebuff. The main party, the Social Democrats, only admitted cautiously that the leadership of imperial Germany was to bear responsibility for the war to a limited extent.14
The first four years of the Weimar Republic’s existence were marked by severe food shortages, and the situation for Germany’s civilians remained dire. The economic burden imposed by the treaty, coupled with mass inflation, presented a dark and desperate future to the German population in the postwar years. As an example, in 1919, one loaf of bread cost about one mark, but by 1923 the same loaf cost one hundred billion marks.15
By 1923, the Weimar Republic claimed it could no longer afford the reparations payments demanded by the Versailles Treaty, and the government began defaulting on payments. As a result, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr area, Germany’s most productive industrial region and, in January 1923, seized control of most mining and manufacturing companies. Strikes were called, and passive resistance was encouraged. The strikes lasted eight months, further damaging both the economy and society. In November 1923, a new currency, the Rentenmark, was introduced at the rate of one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) paper marks for one Rentenmark, a correction known as redenomination. Reparation payments were resumed, and the Ruhr region was returned to Germany.
In 1924, in an effort to help Germany meet reparation obligations, the American Dawes Plan was put into effect. This agreement between U.S. banks and the German government allowed American banks to grant loans to German banks with German assets as collateral.16 This heralded the beginning of five years of economic stability known as Germany’s Golden Twenties. During this time, various international agreements were signed, and Germany joined the League of Nations.
When the New York Stock Exchange crashed in October 1929, U.S. loans dried up, and the severe decline of the German economy brought the Golden Twenties to an abrupt close. The Great Depression hit Germany just as hard as it did America. Unemployment in Germany soared, and the last years of the Weimar Republic were marred by even more systemic political instability than in the previous years, while political violence increased.
In retrospect, it is apparent that the Weimar Republic faced numerous challenges that contributed to general mistrust and skepticism toward its legitimacy. One such challenge was the instability of its leadership and representation. The republic experienced a high turnover of government officials, with a total of twenty different cabinets and thirteen chancellors appointed during its fourteen-year existence. This frequent change in structure further weakened the government and added to its instability.
Another major problem was the infighting and lack of cooperation among multiple political parties. Many of the prominent parties that had existed during the imperial and monarchical regime carried on into the Weimar Republic, but instead of merging with similarly minded parties, they tended to splinter and function independently. These parties were deeply entrenched in their own distinct milieux, which were both rigid and homogenous. They had their own newspapers, clubs, and social events, and even everyday social life became politicized. This mind-set of political activists, who were more interested in promoting their own ideology than in seeking compromise and cooperation with rival parties and officials, made it difficult to form larger and more operational political parties, further hindering the stability and effectiveness of the Weimar Republic.
The Weimar Republic also faced difficulties in its constitutional structure, which was inherited from the federal structure established by Bismarck during the formation of the Second Reich in 1871. Despite the removal of princes and kings during the 1918 revolution, their states were still intact and retained significant autonomy in key areas of domestic policy. These were now endowed with democratic and parliamentary governing bodies but managed to preserve significant autonomy in fundamental areas of domestic policy. Certain states, such as Bavaria, which held strong traditional identities, were often inclined to resist and obstruct the national government’s directives and policies. This presented another significant challenge to the successful functioning of the republic.
The Weimar government also struggled to gain the support of the army and the civil service, as both institutions found it difficult to adjust to the transition from an authoritarian regime under Kaiser Wilhelm to a democratic structure. Without the support of the army, it was unlikely that the government would also receive support from civil servants. The civil service, which maintained a significant presence in many areas of society, including the central administration, federal states, state enterprises such as the police, railway and postal service, and educational institutions, also provided little support to the Weimar government.
To sum it up, there are multiple causes for the malfunction of the Weimar Republic. To begin with, the state struggled with economic instability, including the economic crisis caused by the First World War and the hyperinflation of the early 1920s, which made it problematic for the government to pay for public services and led to widespread poverty. The Great Depression in 1929 led to a severe economic downturn and mass unemployment, famine, and general upheaval: by 1932, 10 percent of Germans were unemployed.
Another issue was the political instability as a result of frequent crises, as a number of succeeding governments and coalitions formed and fell apart. This made it most difficult for the government to pass any necessary reforms or implement effective policies. The Weimar Republic faced significant opposition from both the far right and the far left, with the rise of extremist groups such as the National Socialists and the Communist Party. These groups were able to exploit the state’s economic and political instability to gain support and destabilize the government.
The heavy reparations imposed on Germany, as well as the loss of territory and restrictions on the nation’s sovereignty and defense, led to resentment toward the Weimar Republic and the belief that the government had betrayed the German people. The republic also struggled to establish itself as a legitimate government, in part because it was seen as having been imposed by the victorious Allied Powers, and also because it was unable to provide effective governance. Furthermore, lack of support from the military, police, and employees of the civil service made it hard for the government to maintain order and control over the country.
By this time, the stage was set for a “savior” to enter the scene. The events that followed successively would bring an unprecedented turnaround to Germany’s political leadership, and Adolf Hitler would steer the nation first toward tangible hope, then to total disaster.
1. William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 89.
2. Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: Penguin, 2005), 78.
3. Ibid., 80.
4. Ibid., 81.
5. Andreas Dorpalen, Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964), cited in Evans, Coming of the Third Reich, 83.
6. Leo Grebler (1940): The Cost of the World War to Germany and Austria-Hungary p. 78
7. Antony Lentin, “Germany: A New Carthage?,” History Today, January 2012, 20–27.
8. Versailles Treaty, articles 159–63.
9. Ibid., articles 165, 179, 171, 172, and 198.
10. Ibid., articles 181 and 190.
11. Ibid., articles 232–35.
12. Wolfgang Lautemann, ed., Geschichte in Quellen, vol. 6 (Munich: Bayrischer Schulbuch-Verlag 1975), 129.
13. Boris Barth, Dolchstosslegenden und politische Desintegration: Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg, 1914–1933 (Dusseldorf: Droste Verlag, 2003).
14. Ulrich Heinemann, Die verdrängte Niederlage: Politische Öffentlichkeit und Kriegsschuldfrage in der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983).
15. Alan Farmer, Democracy and Nazism: Germany, 1918–1945 (London: Hodder Education, 2016), 27.
16. Martin Kitchen, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 241.