In a depression especially, people look for solutions and the republic was not offering any to the economic crisis. From onwards, Germany was governed under a presidential dictatorship because the political system was so fragmented that the Reichstag could not assemble or function in parliamentary majority. But I do want to underscore the fact that the Nazis never received a majority vote in a popular, freely contested election.
In the summer of , they received It's a significant jump to be sure but that's not a majority and the popular phrase that one hears so often in the United States, "the German people elected Hitler to power or elected the Nazis to power" -- that's wrong, it's inaccurate, it's untrue.
The Nazis were never elected to power. In the next election, in the fall of , they already lost a significant percentage of the support they had gained in the summer. The Nazi party was in disarray. At the very end, they came to power because the establishment conservative elite, a coterie of powerful men around President Hindenburg, handed power over to the Nazis.
That alliance is what ultimately killed the republic. What lessons can be drawn from the Weimar Republic? Implied throughout your book is the question of whether it is possible for contemporary democracies to succumb to neo-fascist forces in the same way that the Weimar Republic fell to the Nazis.
Present day Germany is a well-established democratic system. It gives me no worries whatsoever. To be sure there are some extreme right-wing groups that can be dangerous and the reaction against them is still a little slow sometimes.
But these groups are marginal and Berlin is not Weimar. My worries are more about my own country, the US, in the sense that the threats to democracy don't always come from abroad. The most dangerous threat may come from within. That was certainly the case in Weimar, especially in its last years. What worries me is when certain people or institutions mouth talk of democracy but in reality undermine the very practices of democracy.
Of course the Nazis were never committed to democracy but they used the populist rhetoric that resonated with people. When that kind of populist rhetoric masks undemocratic practices, that's where I think we truly need to be concerned. When establishment conservatives go beyond the bounds of legitimate democratic discourse and constitutional provisions and make the program, the individuals and ideas of radical conservatives acceptable -- that's when we're in trouble.
In recent months, there seems to be a revival of interest in the Weimar Republic in the United States, whether it's in fashion, art or music. How do you explain that? It's been most curious. And it's true especially in New York.
I think it has to do with the sense of fragility that comes out of the Sept. What people adopt is the Weimar Republic as portrayed in the American production of "Cabaret" for example -- there's a vision of Weimar as degenerate, as crisis-ridden all of which is true in part. Of course, if that's all you know, you think of Weimar as a period of only mutilated bodies and distorted features. But what that interpretation misses of course is the democratic promise, the cultural innovation.
But it is that sense of fragility that has given Weimar this glow in downtown as well as uptown New York culture. Germany's federal prosecutor has overturned the guilty verdict passed on Marinus van der Lubbe, the communist activist who claimed to have set fire to the Reichstag in to protest the Nazis' rising power. But, that didn't stop the German translation from cracking the bestseller lists.
He talked about Prussia's appeal. Sixty-two years after his death, Adolf Hitler risks being stripped of his German citizenship in what a politician said would be a "symbolic step" against the Nazi leader and the horrors he unleashed.
Do you agree that the Weimar Republic should not seen only as a forerunner to the Nazi rise to power? The drafters of this new constitution faced the difficult task of creating a government acceptable to both the political left and right without being too radical. They compromised to satisfy both groups. The basic format of the government was based around a president, a chancellor, and a parliament or Reichstag.
The President was elected by a popular vote to a seven year term and held real political power, controlling the military and having the ability to call for new Reichstag elections. In a nod to conservatives afraid of too much democracy, the framers also added elements such as Article 48 which allowed the President to assume emergency powers, suspend civil rights, and operate without the consent of the Reichstag for a limited period of time.
The chancellor was responsible for appointing a cabinet and running the day-to-day operations of the government. Ideally, the chancellor was to come from the majority party in the Reichstag or if no majority existed, from a coalition. The Reichstag, in turn, was also elected by a popular vote with its seats distributed proportionally.
This system ensured that Germans had a voice in government that they had never had before but it also allowed for a massive proliferation of parties that could make it difficult to gain a majority or form a governing coalition.
For example, the Bavarian Peasants' League, a party representing purely agricultural interests in Bavaria won 0. Proportional representation later allowed more extremist parties such as the Nazi Party to gain influence.
However, the Weimar Republic faced more immediate problems in early when a group of right-wing paramilitaries seized power in what became known as the Kapp Putsch. A highly effective general strike by the left saved Chancellor Ebert's government.
In this strike, the national bank refused to pay out currency, civil servants refused to follow orders, and workers refused to work. Political violence peaked in with Hitler's attempted coup, the Beer Hall Putsch, which was put down by the military.
Nevertheless, the leaders of the Weimar Republic still faced daunting challenges, mainly of the economic variety, particularly the burden placed upon them by the outgoing leadership of the Kaiser and the generals.
This took several forms. The first was the immense cost of the war itself and the damage it had done to Germany's civilian economy. The second was the Versailles Treaty. The Allies charged the Germans with paying staggering reparations for the cost of the war while simultaneously occupying some of the most productive regions of western Germany.
The high reparations payments and costs of war had devastating consequences. The cost of living in Germany rose twelve times between and compared to three in the United States.
When the government sought to pay reparations simply by printing more money, the value of German currency rapidly declined, leading to hyper-inflation. In January , the exchange rate was This economic disaster had social consequences as well. Many Germans who considered themselves middle class found themselves destitute.
However, one of the overlooked successes of the Weimar government was skillfully renegotiating and restructuring its debts and bringing the economy back under control. In fact, Article 48 was used frequently by liberal chancellors to take immediate action to stabilize the economy. Not everything about the Weimar period was impoverishment and political turmoil.
Cities burgeoned with new arrivals from the countryside in search of jobs, setting the stage for a vibrant urban life.
Urban centers like Berlin became some of the most socially liberal places in Europe, much to the chagrin of conservative elites. Berlin had a thriving nightlife full of bars and cabarets. There were between 65 and 80 gay bars and 50 lesbian bars in the capital alone. Sexual liberation was a very real phenomenon, complete with a gay and lesbian rights movement led by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld who ran an Institute for Sexual Science. Significant increases in women's rights were another achievement of the period.
The Weimar Constitution extended the right to vote to all men and women over the age of 20 in the United States did not adopt this standard until , Britain in German Jews as well experienced a period of increased social and economic freedom. Culturally, the period produced important and lasting results.
During hyperinflation, the German middle class bore the brunt of the economic chaos. When another financial crisis hit, they grew weary and distrustful of their government leaders. Searching for new leadership and fearing a Communist takeover, many people turned to extremist parties such as the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler , despite his unpopular and failed attempt to start a national revolution in In , the Nazi Party became the largest political party in Parliament.
After a brief struggle for power, Hitler was named Chancellor in January Within weeks, he invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to quash many civil rights and suppress members of the Communist party.
To make sure the Enabling Act was passed, Hitler forcibly prevented Communist Parliament members from voting.
Once it became law, Hitler was free to legislate as he saw fit and establish his dictatorship without any checks and balances. Facing History and Ourselves. Charles G. Dawes: Biographical. The Enabling Act. The Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. Wesleyan University. Volume 6. German History in Documents and Images.
Weimar Republic. New World Encyclopedia. Commanding Heights: The German Hyperinflation, War I Aftermath. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The Reichstag Fire was a dramatic arson attack occurring on February 27, , which burned the building that housed the Reichstag German parliament in Berlin.
Claiming the fire was part of a Communist attempt to overthrow the government, the newly named Reich Chancellor Adolf From November 8 to November 9, , Adolf Hitler and his followers staged the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, a failed takeover of the government in Bavaria, a state in southern Germany.
Since , Hitler had led the Nazi Party, a fledgling political group that Eugenics is the practice or advocacy of improving the human species by selectively mating people with specific desirable hereditary traits. Educated in the cadet corps, Ludendorff was named chief of staff to the Eighth Army after the outbreak of war and earned renown for the victory at the Battle of
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