Was the Weimar Republic really meant to go down?

Submitted by DaslolligeLol t3_1045lx5 in history

Historical background:

Officially founded in 1919 the Weimar Republic (at the time called German Reich) was the first german parliamentary republic. The Foundation was overshadowed by the First World War that just ended and the treaty of Versailles, which was seen as a adhesion contract by many germans. This led to a very tight political situation: the German Reich had 12 differnent chancellors in the years from 1919 to 1933, not counting Adolf Hitler. Multiple times the german economy almost broke down due to the huge reparations Germany had to pay to the allies. These circumstances made the population very open for groups like the Nationalsocialists, who took power in 1933, leading to the "Third Reich".

Putting this inner instabilitiy aside, many people refer to the so called " suspectibility of the constitution". Actually the constitution of the Weimar Republic was not much different from a modern democracy except for one point: the "Reichspräsident" (president) could enact "emergency decrees" without permission of the parliament or chancellor, he was even able to completely dissolve the Reichstag (the parliament). Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934; president of the German Reich 1925-1934) made use of this power from 1930 on. In this time the chancellors wheren't elected by the germans, they were appointed by Hindenburg. The so called presidential dictatorship finally led to the takeover of power by the Nazis.

Now this seems pretty clear: the Weimar Republic had pretty much the same problem that ended the democracy in ancient Rome, so it had to fail. But I think that it's not so easy. The thesis that the first german republic was doomed to fail was mainly expressed by german historians of the first years after the fall of the Nazi-Regime. This was a time where many Germans tried to process as little as possible, mostly because they weren't innocent in the years from 1933 to 1945 either. I think that telling the Weimar Republic was unstable (not because of the constant riots but because of the constitution) is just a (maybe even unconscious) try to reject the own fault. A try that was carried out into the whole world by German historians and is now accepted by most people.

I got no one to discuss this with, that's why I'm posting this.

(Please excuse possible mistakes in my language, I'm no native speaker)

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ConsitutionalHistory t1_j341pp0 wrote

The Weimar was against the odds from the beginning. Germany was previously just a group of principalities followed by a short term monarchy. The Weimar was foisted upon the German people by the winners of WWI so it wasn't even a government of their own choosing. Still...it may have been successful had it not be for war reparations and the Great Depression. France in particular was still exacting their pound of flesh which made life difficult, manageable but difficult. But then the Depression more or less doomed the country and made German society ripe for extremism. An extremist, in the form of Hitler, who played on age long bigotries against jews...telling the German people what's wrong and who to blame for their lot in life. Mainly...the former allies holding back German nationalism and the 'jewish problem' which was rotting German society from within.

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Kurta_711 t1_j37srsv wrote

It didn't "fail", it was destroyed. It was not a foregone conclusion that it was going to collapse. If the nazis hadn't been let off so light after the Beer Hall Putsch it's possible the Weimar Republic would never have gone down or been overthrown.

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kermit_thegreen_frog t1_j4326id wrote

Id have to disagree. The weimar republic had inherint problems that meant it was inevitable that the weimar republic was either going to collapse or have to face huge reforms. The problem that the reforms scenario has is that any leader that takes power isnt going to want to make those reforms, and even if they wanted to they wouldnt be capable to. This is due to 2 factors. Artical 48 of the constitutions means that the chancellor can inact laws without the approval of the reichstag, this would be abused in the later years by people like von papen and brüning, this shows that the people in power wont stop the rise of dictatorship. But hypothetically if someone came to power and wanted to change things, theyd need to change the constitution. The problem with this is that in order to change the constitution you needed 2/3 support in the reichstag, which was hard to gain due to the fractured nature of the reichstag due to the proportional voting system that was used in the republic. The nazis only managed to alter the constitution with the 'enabling act' after the center party agreed to vote in favour for act because the nazis said theyd protect catholic interests. In few scenarios will 2/3 of the vote be found to alter the constitution. So it can be concluded that the weimar republic was doomed from the get go and that it would always either end up in a dictatorship or regime change

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Grandjehan t1_j4lxj9f wrote

This argument almost argues that the United States is destined to fail as well. Executive orders are able to be made by the President, and while they can't single-handedly dissolve the legislature, depending on the nature and purview of SCOTUS, executive orders can basically be whatever they want them to be. The American constitution also seems just as difficult if not more difficult to amend than in the Weimar Republic (given our own fractured nature and pluralistic voting system). Would you argue that the U.S. has inherent problems, making its collapse inherent in the absence of major reforms? And if not, what would you say are the main differences between the likelihood of the 2 democratic systems' odds of failure?

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debzmonkey t1_j36d7ec wrote

It didn't go down, it was put down through intimidation, violence and murder.

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TheLateHenry t1_j347vgk wrote

It also very much didn’t help that the SPD antagonised the far-left forces right from the get-go and used the military on them.

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PhD-Holder-Nordic t1_j36f188 wrote

Sure, everything would've been fine had Germany just allied with Stalin who were murdering millions way before Hitler got going.

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TheLateHenry t1_j36msm3 wrote

That’s not what I said at all. What I meant was that the SPD split up into two parties shortly before the Weimar Republic was created, the SPD and the USPD, who would later become the KPD. If the SPD would have at least managed to keep a working relationship with the USPD, the Reichstag could have continued to function and there would have been no need for the Notstandsgesetze.

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PhD-Holder-Nordic t1_j36nxlf wrote

>Under the leadership of Ernst Thälmann from 1925 the party became thoroughly Stalinist and loyal to the leadership of the Soviet Union, and from 1928 it was largely controlled and funded by the Comintern in Moscow. Under Thälmann's leadership the party directed most of its attacks against the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which it regarded as its main adversary and referred to as "social fascists"; the KPD considered all other parties in the Weimar Republic to be "fascists".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Germany

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TheLateHenry t1_j36swy3 wrote

Yes, but what I'm saying is that if the SPD would have acted differently in 1918/19, then the KPD might have either been an even smaller party because the SPD would have integrated more of their voters into itself, or not felt the need to simply become a Muscowian puppet party.

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PhD-Holder-Nordic t1_j36tdxc wrote

You can't act much differently than they did. It was an armed uprising attempting to overthrow the government and introduce a communist dictatorship in Germany.

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Gl0balCD t1_j37fby0 wrote

The Treaty of Versailles was meant to prevent the Germans from ever having the power to start another war of that scale again (mostly by the French). No one wanted the Weimar Republic to fail, as that would concentrate power with a few individuals.

The problem of reparations can be seen in two lights: willingness to pay, and ability to pay. Germany was one of the largest economies in the world, so the ability to pay shouldn't really be questioned. It was the willingness to pay that was the problem. Who are you going to tax to raise the reparation funds? No one was willing to pay a tax for the war that Germany had been winning right until the end. So they printed money and borrowed foreign currency in international markets.

It was in 1932 when the Americans called in those loans to Germany. This essentially crashed their economy again and made Hitler look like a prophet (he stated that the Americans were not their friends and would financially ruin Germany only months before). Hitler fully intended to do away with the republic if elected, and did it within weeks of becoming Chancellor. It wasn't a guaranteed failure, but it was an explicit goal of the Nazi party.

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DaslolligeLol OP t1_j37o0tp wrote

Germany indeed was one of the largest economies in the world but the reparations where so high that it was almost impossible to pay them while this trouble was going on especially in the early years. Germany paid the last installment in 1989, so it wasn't only the willingness that lacked.

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Gl0balCD t1_j3851yh wrote

It was equivalent to about $270 b USD today (history.com). They had the ability to pay this, but the logistics were another thing. It was not easy to pay out quickly without crashing the German economy, thus the Dawes and Young plans were established.

The fact that they did pay it off after 70 years does indicate the abilities to pay, just not all at once. No one ever expected to receive reparations in one lump sum

The reparations were the same as Germany imposed on France in 1871, matched by inflation. The 1871 reparations were the same as the Napoleonic reparations, adjusted for inflation. You really can't understate the tit-for-tat of Franco-German relations during this time.

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RavenRakeRook t1_j4cmu1o wrote

Using a CPI or GDP deflator index doesn't really work well over such a long time frame. There's been different monetary regimes both in the US and in Germany at that time. You have to look at it as an underwriting of whether the govt could pay and the economy could be taxed. CPI in the US is corrupted a long time ago for political minimization. So whenever I see John D Rockefeller was worth $x billion in today's dollars or a 1890 house was cost $y in 2022 dollars it doesn't really compute. You have to look at average wages and average product prices to get proper proportionality.

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Gl0balCD t1_j4cxwlu wrote

I agree. I just threw in an estimate from a source that has honestly no validity as a reliable source. I totally agree about the problems with using CPI, you should always use a variety of measures such as proportion to GDP or purchasing power. Any historical estimate is going to be questioned because all methods produce different results and each have both advantages and disadvantages. I've seen graphics that have put Mansa Musa or Julius Caesar as the richest person in history, but you can't ever make an apples to apples comparison

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RavenRakeRook t1_j4d6ypl wrote

Economist Keynes's book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919 (haven't read it) is my go-to as the hyperinflation didn't set in until 1920-23. Quoting Keynes per Wiki:

>I cannot leave this subject as though its just treatment wholly depended either on our pledges or on economic facts. The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable, – abhorrent and detestable, even if it was possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe.

When Money Dies mentions that the Nazis rose during the hyperinflation, but once a new Rentenmark in Nov 1923 stabilized the currency, the Nazi's appeal faded away --- until the Great Depression destabilized Germany again.

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calijnaar t1_j38gtn4 wrote

The Weimar Republic certainly had some issues right from its foundation, and there are some serious failure points that contributed to its demise, but claiminbg that it was doomed to end the way it did really seems like an attempt to deflect blame.

The Weimar Republic did not fall prey to an inevitable doom, it was overthrown by a fascist coup when the nazis managed to persudade/coerce non-fascist right wing and centre parties to support them.

The desire to create a kind of Ersatzkaiser in the person of the president certainly played a role in the rise of the nazis. Hindenburg had far reaching powers and was persudaded to wield them in the nazi's interest. Given that the nazis were not reluctant to actually break the constitution it's not entirely clear that having more checks and balances in place to prevent abuses of power by the president would ultimately have prevented Hitler's dictatoship, but there would probably not have been as clear a path, especially without an absolute majority in the Reichstag which the nazis failed to achieve again and again.

But there were problems long before the nazi's rise ever began: the military kept a prominent role in post-World War I Germany, starting with the fact that Hindenburg did become president, but also apparent in the establishment of the stab-in-the-back legend which shifted the blame for the lost war from the military to civilian politicians (and was later used to great effect by the nazis), and the leniency towards the Freikorps, even after attempted coups and assassinations of prominent politicians. The militant right was allowed to establish itself in the new state.

Yes, there were also militants on the left, and coup attempts like the Spartakus rising and the uprising of the Red Ruhr Army, but those were suppressed more vigorously, including the killing of prominent leaders like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Not only was there an imbalance from the beginning, but this also lead to rifts between the more moderate SPD and the more radical left which did not happen at the other end of the spectrum. This later allowed the nazis the find allies in the moderate right and also prevented the moderate and radical left from forming a united front against the fascist takeover.

So there were potential breaking points from the start, and growing economic problems did not help to alleviate the situation, but saying that the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the nazi dictatorship were already inevitable in 1918 seems like gross oversimplification at best

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Pure_Feed5102 t1_j3knvef wrote

I agree that it was never a stable government to start with, as it was built to keep Germany weak after the treaty of Versailles. Mixed with the economic affects of the treaty that were placed on Germany and the global economic depression that came years later, it was doomed to fail. Inflation was so insane that kids would play with German marks and build stacks of them into pyramids! All of that along with a populous feeling humiliated and angry after WWI, the only thing that would have made it easier for the nazis would be simply offering them the reigns of the government.

Yes, the nazis weren’t popular at first, but to ordinary Germans, they seemed to have ideas to fix their broken world. They were the classic snake oil salesman, because what they offered seemed to fix everything, but in reality, they were only going to cater to the people they liked (which was a small portion of the population). The Weimar Republic, to a German at the time, was out of touch and doing nothing to help them.

So while it wasn’t necessarily set up to fail, it never had a chance. Similar to the Duma in post-Tsar Russia before Lenin.

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Double_Geologist_400 t1_j36h10s wrote

Sure the Weimar Republic had huge problems from the get go. Mostly due to the Versailles treaty demands they had no say on this at all. Every German felt backstabbed. But the first years up till 1923 the republic was blooming right until the Beurskrach though in 1929. After that it went downhill and became a rich soil for extreme parties. The money they where borrowing from the United-States just stopped.

1924 is a good example of how the Weimar was modestly solid in the earlier years. Hitler’s first grab for power completely failed in that year, due to misjudging the whole situation.

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DarkTreader t1_j37tst3 wrote

I would like to point out that you did point out that Hindenberg appointed Hitler as Chancellor. He also gave the Chancellor emergency powers soon after in the Enabling Act. These were actions he was allowed under the Weimar constitution.

As with anything, causes are complex and numerous. The economic crisis was causing lots of instability, but Hindenberg did not have to do either of these things. It could be said that because the Republic was set up with the President with some certain powers, the Republic was "doomed" because if that person made one bad decision with no checks or balances, the whole thing would most certainly collapse.

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calijnaar t1_j38cqpn wrote

The Enabling Act was passed by the Reichstag, that was not the president's doing. And while one could argue that the Enabling Act was not in itself a breach of the Weimar constitution, the actual circumstances under which the Act was passed were highly dubious, and almost certainly illegal and a breach of the Weimar constitution. To achieve the necessary two thords majority while also maintaining the necessary quorum of two thirds of the representatives, the nazis had all communist representatives and quite a few SPD representatives arrested, then changed the quorum rules so that only those absent with an excuse counted as absent and then illegally had armed SA present during the actual vote. While the Weimar constituion could certainly had weaknesses that made the establishment of a dictatorship easier, in the end even the somewhat feeble rules that were in place were breached and it seems unlikely that stronger constitutional safeguards would have been much use once Hitler had become chancellor.

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IamSauerKraut t1_j3m8770 wrote

There are a number of decent books about the Weimar Republic, most of which appear on "best of" lists. None of the lists, however, include the 2-volume set written by Erick Eyck.

Find that set and start there.

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Egon88 t1_j3x8yjb wrote

>Multiple times the german economy almost broke down due to the huge reparations Germany had to pay to the allies.

I thought this pov was not considered valid anymore. Wasn't the inflation more a result of the German gov't deliberately devaluing the currency as a way around reparations and didn't the German gov't just outright stop paying what they were supposed to for long periods of time.

edit: For example here's what Margret MacMillan says about it.

https://artsfile.ca/margaret-macmillan-on-the-truths-and-consequences-of-history/

>“There has been a lot more research on the 1920s. For so long the decade was seen as a prelude to the 1930s and we all know what happened then.

>“Historians looking at the 1920s are now concluding that it wasn’t so clear cut as that. There were some hopeful signs and the League of Nations was actually working in a way. Germany, too, was becoming part of the community of nations again.”

>In fact it did in the end join the league.

>Even the crushing burden of reparation payments imposed on Germany was being brought under control, she said.

>“They were negotiated down. It looked as if the world was going to get back on an even keel. I think lot of historians, and I tend to agree with them, now feel there wasn’t enough time for the roots of constitutional and democratic government to be established before the Great Depression came along.”

>That calamity turned the nations of the world inward and it crushed trust in governing elites. Germany had been previously battered by a hyper-inflation that, she said, was basically the fault of the German government which in fact had encouraged inflation because it diminished the reparations bill.

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