Weimar_Republic

eEvaluate the view that the Weimar Republic was doomed to fail It can be argued that since its very beginnings the Weimar Republic was destined to fail. The republic itself has serious structural weaknesses. With democracy unable to really hold legitimacy in Germany so when political and economical crises happened the Republic was unable to keep any public support, ultimately leading to its failure. Germany was a nation of power and strength bound together by a great sense of nationalism. Germany’s tradition was of dominant rulers, a strong military and conservative ruling elite, not one democracy. When democracy was forced onto Germany, the Germans interested in it and liked the way they had been previously ruled. Democracy became the peoples scapegoats, a way for them to blame the hardship that burdened them. When democracy came to power the first few things it had to do was sign the armistice and the Treaty of Versailles (TofV). For the people this was seen as a betrayal for they had believed that they were winning the war and for Germany, a proud nation, to lose a war and accept defeat was an ultimate betrayal. This lead to great hatred and distrust of the republic with people referring to the betrayal as “The Stab in the Back Legend”. Many flaws were put into the constitution when it was created. The first of these flaws was Article 48. Article 48 gave the president emergency powers allowing for the president to rule by decree, completely bypassing the Reichstag. This power was able to be easily abused and in later years of the Weimar Republic article 48 was abused to a point where it can be argued that democracy did not even exist. The second flaw was the method of voting, proportional representation. This was an issue as it allowed for smaller, extremist parties to get into the Reichstag which caused instability within the Reichstag. Proportional representation also meant that it became much harder for just one party to hold majority power in the Reichstag, this lead to the formation of coalitions, which meant deals had to be made between parties. The 1918-19 revolution failed to fix the flaws existing is German society. Instead of fully democratising Germany all the revolution did is make it appear democratised. Instead there was still a great deal of power remaining with the conservative elite as many in positions of power such as the judiciary system, educational system and the army. These people were very hostile to the democracy and prove to be rather powerful opponents to the government. Furthermore the revolution created chaos causing revolutions all over the country that were only stopped by violence. This left the left wing divided and unable to come to terms with each other, hindering the effectiveness of the Reichstag. The structural flaws left Germany unable to really deal with economic crises. German was unable to cope with the economic stress of paying back the reparations which lead to hyperinflation. The hyperinflation crises was one that Germany could have avoided had the Reichstag really thought about the consequences of what they were doing. This problem took a few years for Germany to fix and caused a great deal of pain and loss for many Germans. Another great flaw, which would come back to haunt the government was its lack of ability to deal with anti-democratic opposition. All through its early days when there were plenty of uprisings such as the Sparticist uprisings from the left and many political assassinations carried out by the extreme right. The governments only way to stop these uprisings and rebellions was through violence, which for a democratic government lead people to have even less faith in them if they were resorting to using violence to hold some semblance of power. These uprisings also lead to a division forming between the government and the army. The army saw itself as its own state and therefore the government had very little control of the army, making it much harder for them to follow the terms of the TofV. However the Weimar Republic did manage to get some control and recover to an extent. During the 1920’s the Weimar republic managed to prosper after the signings of the Dawes Plan and The Young Plan which allowed for reparation payments to be more manageable and for Germany to receive foreign loans. These foreign loans allowed for Germany to build a stronger economy and to modernise and become a great European power again. However there was a great weakness in that the money Germany had been using to do all these great things was loaned money on short terms with high interest. This would create great issues for Germany if money were to stop entering Germany and the economy would collapse all over again. There was also the fact that while Germany was modernising and becoming significantly culturally different, fitting in with many other western nations that many people didn’t like these changes. The older more conservative generations and people from smaller cities and rural areas didn’t like these changes and saw them as morally wrong which created a gap between generations and areas of Germany. In October 1929 Germany’s prosperity was about to end as the Great depression hit the New York stock market. The great depression lead to America calling in all their loans from Germany. For Germany this caused high amounts of unemployment that by 1932 over six million were unemployed, the living standard in Germany had gone from one of the best with welfare payments to one of the worst with absolutely nothing for the people and all business and industry had all but stopped. Politically, the great depression had essentially ended the democracy. No parties could come to an agreement and the Chancellors were put in power under the authority of the President, not by the number of seats. Article 48 was used constantly to get anything passed to an extent where the Reichstag may as well not have even existed because everything was done by presidential decree. These hard times allowed for extremist parties, most importantly the Nazi’s to gain power as people saw the extremist parties as the only ones who could sort out the issues. At one point at the July 1932 elections the Nazis held 230 seats whilst the KPD held 89. Both extremely large numbers from their more earlier days in democracy. In total the Weimar Republic from its early days had set itself up to fail. With very little support of the people there was very little chance of the Weimar Republic managing to hold power with all its structural weaknesses and when crises hit all hope was virtually lost for the Weimar Republic keeping power.