As a losing country, Germany experienced a severe economic and social crisis after the First World War. The monarchy was overthrown in the country, and in its place came the republic, called Weimar. This political regime lasted until 1933, when the Nazis led by Adolf Hitler came to power.
November Revolution
In the fall of 1918, Kaiser's Germany was on the brink of defeat in the First World War. The country was exhausted by bloodshed. Dissatisfaction with the power of Wilhelm II has long matured in society. It resulted in the November Revolution, which began on November 4 with an uprising of sailors in the city of Kiel. More recently, similar events have taken place in Russia, where the centuries-old monarchy has already collapsed. The same thing eventually happened in Germany.
November 9 Prime Minister Maximilian of Baden announced the end of the reign of Wilhelm II, who had already lost control over what was happening in the country. The Reich Chancellor handed over his powers to the politician Friedrich Ebert and left Berlin. The new head of government was one of the leaders of the popular social democratic movement in Germany andSPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany). On the same day, the establishment of the republic was announced.
The conflict with the Entente has actually stopped. On November 11, an armistice was signed in the Compiègne forest in Picardy, which finally ended the bloodshed. Now the future of Europe is in the hands of diplomats. Began behind-the-scenes negotiations and preparations for a large conference. The result of all these actions was the Treaty of Versailles, signed in the summer of 1919. In the months leading up to the agreement, post-World War I Germany experienced many domestic dramas.
Spartacist uprising
Any revolution leads to a power vacuum, which is trying to fill a variety of forces, and the November Revolution in this sense was no exception. Two months after the fall of the monarchy and the end of the war, an armed confrontation broke out in Berlin between forces loyal to the government and supporters of the Communist Party. The latter wanted to build a Soviet republic in their native country. The key force in this movement was the Spartacus League and its most famous members: Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg.
On January 5, 1919, the communists organized a strike that swept the whole of Berlin. It soon developed into an armed uprising. Germany after the First World War was a flaming cauldron in which a variety of currents and ideologies clashed. The uprising of the Spartacists was a vivid episode of this confrontation. A week later, the performance was crushedtroops that remained loyal to the Provisional Government. On January 15, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were killed.
Bavarian Soviet Republic
The political crisis in Germany after the First World War resulted in another major uprising of supporters of Marxism. In April 1919, power in Bavaria belonged to the Bavarian Soviet Republic, opposed to the central government. The government in it was headed by the communist Yevgeny Levine.
The Soviet Republic organized its own Red Army. For some time she managed to hold back the pressure of government troops, but after a few weeks she was defeated and retreated to Munich. The last centers of the uprising were crushed on May 5. The events in Bavaria led to mass hatred of leftist ideology and supporters of another revolution. The fact that Jews were at the head of the Soviet Republic resulted in a wave of anti-Semitism. Radical nationalists, including Hitler's supporters, began to play on these popular feelings.
Weimar Constitution
A few days after the end of the Spartacist uprising, in early 1919, a general election was held in which the composition of the Weimar Constituent Assembly was elected. It is noteworthy that it was then that German women first received the right to vote. The Constituent Assembly met for the first time on 6 February. The whole country closely followed what was happening in the small Thuringian city of Weimar.
The key task of the people's deputies was the adoption of a new constitution. ChiefGerman law was led by the left-liberal Hugo Preuss, who later became the Reich Minister of the Interior. The constitution received a democratic basis and was very different from the Kaiser's. The document became a compromise between different political forces of the left and right.
The law established a parliamentary democracy with social and liberal rights for its citizens. The main legislative body, the Reichstag, was elected for four years. He adopted the state budget and could dismiss the head of government (Reich Chancellor), as well as any minister.
The recovery of Germany after the First World War could not be carried out without a well-functioning and balanced political system. Therefore, the constitution introduced a new position of the head of state - the Reich President. It was he who appointed the head of government and received the right to dissolve parliament. The Reich President was elected in a general election for a 7-year term.
The first head of the new Germany was Friedrich Ebert. He held this position from 1919-1925. The Weimar constitution, which laid the foundation for the new country, was adopted by the constituent assembly on 31 July. The Reich President signed it on 11 August. This day was declared a national holiday in Germany. The new political regime was named the Weimar Republic in honor of the city where the epochal constituent assembly was held and the constitution appeared. This democratic government lasted from 1919 to 1933. It started with the November Revolution in Germany after the First World War, and it was swept away by the Nazis.
Versaillesagreement
Meanwhile, in the summer of 1919, diplomats from all over the world gathered in France. They met to discuss and decide what Germany would be like after World War I. The Treaty of Versailles, which was the result of a long negotiation process, was signed on June 28.
The main theses of the document were as follows. France received from Germany the disputed provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which she had lost after the war with Prussia in 1870. Belgium got the border districts of Eupen and Malmedy. Poland received lands in Pomerania and Poznan. Danzig became a neutral free city. The victorious powers gained control over the B altic Memel region. In 1923, it was transferred to the newly independent Lithuania.
In 1920, as a result of popular plebiscites, Denmark received part of Schleswig, and Poland - a piece of Upper Silesia. A small part of it was also transferred to neighboring Czechoslovakia. At the same time, as a result of the vote, Germany retained the south of East Prussia. The losing country guaranteed the independence of Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia. The territory of Germany after the First World War also changed in the sense that the republic lost all the Kaiser colonies in other parts of the world.
Restrictions and reparations
The German-owned left bank of the Rhine was subject to demilitarization. The country's armed forces could no longer exceed the mark of 100 thousand people. Compulsory military service was abolished. Many not yet sunk warships were handed over to the victorious countries. AlsoGermany could no longer have modern armored vehicles and combat aircraft.
Reparations from Germany after the First World War amounted to 269 billion marks, which equaled approximately 100,000 tons of gold. So she had to compensate for the losses that the Entente countries suffered as a result of a four-year campaign. A special commission was organized to determine the required amount.
The German economy after World War I was hit hard by reparations. Payments exhausted the ruined country. She was not helped even by the fact that in 1922 Soviet Russia refused reparations, exchanging them for agreement with the nationalization of German property in the newly formed USSR. For all the time of its existence, the Weimar Republic never paid the agreed amount. When Hitler came to power, he completely stopped money transfers. The payment of reparations resumed in 1953, and then again in 1990, after the unification of the country. Finally, reparations from Germany after the First World War were paid only in 2010.
Internal conflicts
There was no peace after the end of the war in Germany. Society was embittered by its plight; left and right radical forces constantly arose in it, looking for traitors and those responsible for the crisis. The German economy after the First World War could not recover due to the constant strikes of workers.
In March 1920, the Kapp putsch took place. An attempted coup almost led to the liquidation of the Weimar Republic in just a secondyear of its existence. Part of the army disbanded under the Treaty of Versailles rebelled and seized government buildings in Berlin. The society has split. The legitimate authorities evacuated to Stuttgart, from where they urged people not to support the putschists and to go on strike. In the end, the conspirators were defeated, but the economic and infrastructural development of Germany after the First World War again received a serious blow.
Then in the Ruhr region, where there were many mines, there was an uprising of workers. Troops were brought into the demilitarized region, which contradicted the decisions of the Treaty of Versailles. In response to the violation of the agreement, the French army entered Darmstadt, Frankfurt am Main, Hanau, Homburg, Duisburg and some other western cities.
Foreign troops again left Germany only in the summer of 1920. However, tensions with the victorious countries persisted. It was caused by the financial policy of Germany after the First World War. The government did not have enough money to pay reparations. In response to delays in payments, France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr area. Their armies stayed there from 1923-1926
Economic crisis
Germany's foreign policy after the First World War was focused on the task of finding at least some beneficial cooperation. Guided by these considerations, in 1922 the Weimar Republic signed the Treaty of Rapallo with Soviet Russia. The document provided for the beginning of diplomatic contacts between isolated rogue states. Rapprochement between Germany and the RSFSR(and later the USSR) caused discontent among the European capitalist countries that ignored the Bolsheviks, and especially in France. In 1922, terrorists killed W alter Rathenau, the foreign minister who organized the signing of the treaty in Rapallo.
Germany's external problems after the First World War paled before the internal ones. Due to armed uprisings, strikes and reparations, the country's economy was sliding further and further into the abyss. The government tried to save the day by increasing the issuance of money.
The logical result of such a policy was inflation and mass impoverishment of the population. The value of the national currency (paper mark) was constantly declining. Inflation turned into hyperinflation. The salaries of petty officials and teachers were paid in kilograms of paper money, but there was nothing to buy with these millions. Furnaces were stoked with currency. Poverty led to bitterness. Many historians later noted that it was social upheavals that allowed the nationalists who used populist slogans to come to power.
In 1923, the Comintern tried to take advantage of the crisis and organized an attempt at a new revolution. She failed. Hamburg became the center of confrontation between the communists and the government. Troops entered the city. However, the threat came not only from the left. After the abolition of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, Munich became a stronghold of nationalists and conservatives. In November 1923, a putsch took place in the city, organized by the young politician Adolf Hitler. In response to another rebellion, Reich President Ebert declared a state of emergency. The beer putsch was suppressed, and histhe initiators were judged. Hitler spent only 9 months in prison. Returning to freedom, he began to rise to power with renewed vigor.
Golden Twenties
The hyperinflation that rocked the young Weimar Republic was h alted by the introduction of a new currency, the rent mark. Monetary reform and the arrival of foreign investment gradually brought the country to its senses, despite the abundance of internal conflicts.
Money that came from abroad in the form of American loans under the Charles Dawes plan had a particularly beneficial effect. Within a few years, the economic development of Germany after the First World War led to the long-awaited stabilization of the situation. The period of relative prosperity in 1924-1929. called the "golden twenties".
Germany's foreign policy after the First World War of those years was also successful. In 1926, she joined the League of Nations and became a full member of the world community created after the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. Maintained friendly relations with the USSR. In 1926, Soviet and German diplomats signed a new Berlin Treaty of Neutrality and Non-Aggression.
Another important diplomatic agreement was the Briand-Kellogg Pact. This treaty, signed in 1926 by the key world powers (including Germany), declared the rejection of war as a political instrument. Thus began the process of creating a system of European collective security.
In 1925, elections were held for a new Reich President. The head of state was General Paul von Hindenburg, who also worerank of field marshal. He was one of the key commanders of the Kaiser's army during the First World War, including directing operations at the front in East Prussia, where there were battles with the army of tsarist Russia. Hindenburg's rhetoric differed markedly from that of his predecessor Ebert. The old military man actively used populist slogans of an anti-socialist and nationalist nature. The seven-year political development of Germany after the First World War led to such mixed results. There were several other signs of instability. For example, there was no leading party force in the parliament, and compromise coalitions were constantly on the verge of collapse. The deputies clashed with the government on almost every issue.
Great Depression
In 1929, Wall Street crashed in the USA. Because of this, foreign lending to Germany stopped. The economic crisis, soon called the Great Depression, affected the whole world, but it was the Weimar Republic that suffered the most from it. And this is not surprising, because the country has achieved relative, but not at all lasting stability. The Great Depression quickly led to the collapse of the German economy, disruption of exports, massive unemployment and many other crises.
The new democratic Germany after the First World War, in short, was swept away by circumstances that it could not change. The country was highly dependent on the United States, and the American crisis could not but deal a fatal blow to it. However, locals also added fuel to the fire.politicians. The government, parliament and the head of state constantly clashed and could not establish much-needed interaction.
Growth of radicals became a logical result of the population's dissatisfaction with the current situation. Led by the energetic Hitler, the NSDAP (National Socialist German Party) received more and more votes in different elections year after year. Discourses about a stab in the back, betrayals and a Jewish conspiracy became popular in society. Young people who grew up after the war and did not recognize its horrors experienced especially acute hatred for unknown enemies.
The rise of the Nazis
The popularity of the NSDAP led its leader Adolf Hitler into big politics. Members of the government and parliament began to view the ambitious nationalist as a participant in internal power combinations. The democratic parties never formed a united front against the increasingly popular Nazis. Many centrists looked for an ally in Hitler. Others considered him a short-lived pawn. In fact, Hitler, of course, was never a controlled figure, but deftly used every convenient opportunity to increase his popularity, whether it was an economic crisis or criticism of the communists.
In March 1932, the next election of the Reich President took place. Hitler decided to participate in the election campaign. The barrier for him was his own Austrian citizenship. On the eve of the elections, the Minister of the Interior of the province of Braunschweig appointed the politician an attaché in the Berlin government. This formality allowed Hitlerget German citizenship. In the elections in the first and second rounds, he took second place, losing only to Hindenburg.
The Reich President treated the leader of the NSDAP with caution. However, the vigilance of the elderly head of state was lulled by his numerous advisers, who believed that Hitler should not be feared. On January 30, 1930, the popular nationalist was appointed Reich Chancellor - head of government. Hindenburg's associates thought that they could control the minion of fate, but they were wrong.
In fact, January 30, 1933 marked the end of the democratic Weimar Republic. Soon the laws "On emergency powers" and "On the protection of the people and the state" were adopted, which established the dictatorship of the Third Reich. In August 1934, following the death of the elderly Hindenburg, Hitler became the Fuhrer (leader) of Germany. The NSDAP was declared the only legal party. Not taking into account the recent historical lesson, Germany after the First World War again embarked on the path of militarism. Revanchism became an important part of the ideology of the new state. Defeated in the last war, the Germans began to prepare for even more terrible bloodshed.
