The Founding of the Weimar Republic
The time immediately after the war was characterized by socio-political chaos throughout Germany, which slowly dissipated with the creation of the Weimar Republic. Elections were held on January 19, 1919, and the socialists emerged as the biggest party amidst a plethora of smaller ones. The socialist Friedrich Ebert was declared president of the Reich (Reichspräsident) and hence had to represent Germany on the international scene. The Treaty of Versailles, which Germany was not invited to draft but had to sign in totoin June of 1919, led to a significant reduction of Germany’s territory and the demilitarization of the Rhineland. Allied troops were to occupy many areas. Since Germany was considered solely responsible for the war, it had to pay enormous war reparations to the winning parties (thirty-three billion dollars in war reparations and indemnities over a period of seventy years). The treaty was enormously unpopular in Germany, in no small part because it impinged extensively on internal German sovereignty. Moreover, it was drafted and signed in the same Hall of Mirrors in Versailles (France) where several decades earlier the Second German Reich had been pronounced after the successful war against France in 1871. This symbolic humiliation of Germany remained a considerable burden of the newly founded republic throughout its short existence (until 1933), particularly because the military, having been solely responsible for losing the war, was quick to blame the republic for what they called Germany’s “dishonor.”
In his famous “stab-in-the-back” theory (Dolchstosslegende), General Ludendorff claimed that the German army had been defeated not by the enemy but by the revolutionary forces inside Germany who crept up and killed them from behind. (One must not forget that at the time of Germany’s surrender, its troops were still stationed in Belgium and France; none of the fighting had taken place on German soil.) Although this was a complete fabrication, it proved to be an enormously powerful myth that allowed Germans to maintain their illusions of grandeur by blaming the disliked republic for all that had gone wrong with the war and its aftermath.
Because the Weimar Republic was born out of chaos, it remained an emergency solution rather than a desired political development. It represented an impossible compromise between reactionary and revolutionary forces in Germany, between those who criticized private ownership and those who defended it, between detractors and advocates of the church, between forces who argued for a strong central government and those who supported the federalist tradition of Germany. There simply had not been enough time to work out a compromise and to allow the population to identify with the democratic principles of the new republic. Rather, Germany remained steeped in undemocratic traditions and structures in the areas of administration, economy, and education.
Given this constellation of forces, it was hardly surprising to see the Weimar Republic attacked from all sides. When the communist Spartacus movement rose up again in Berlin in January of 1919, President Ebert did not hesitate to crush the revolt with the help of the official German army, a policy he repeated again later in April of that year against the proclamation of a communist government in Bavaria. One year later, Ebert had to defend the republic again, this time against forces from the right during the so-called Kapp-Putsch in March 1920. The East Prussian landowner Wolfgang Kapp, founder of the Vaterlandspartei (Homeland-Party), and his associates Hermann Ehrhardt, leader of the powerful Ehrhard Freicorps (“marine brigade”—a quasi-private, para-military group), and General Ludendorff, who had returned from his Swedish exile, marched together into Berlin, demanding new elections and resistance against the Versailles Treaty. The putsch ultimately failed because of the refusal of the Reichswehr to cooperate and because of a general labor strike called by German trade unions and the government.
Things continued to deteriorate in the early years of the republic. Several members of the government were murdered by reactionary forces (Erzberger in 1921 and Rathenau in 1922), and although Germany had been able to stop paying reparations to Russia after signing the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922, it could not keep up its payments to France and Great Britain. In January of 1923, French forces occupied the Ruhrgebiet (the mineral-rich western area of Germany) in an effort to control production and increase payments. Although the French did not succeed because of the passive resistance and non-cooperation policy of German workers, they remained in the Rhineland until July of 1925. Due to reparations, the devaluation of German currency started in 1922 and increased drastically until a new currency was introduced in November of 1923.
The years between 1924 and 1929, by contrast, inaugurated a time of economic and political recovery and led to what has become known as the period of “the roaring twenties.” This period was marked by a cultural blossoming in literature and the arts along with the advance of American culture, above all in the areas of music (jazz) and sports. Economically, this stabilization was made possible by the Dawes Plan brokered by the American finance expert Charles Dawes. The plan both lowered German payments and provided significant credits so that Germany could pay its war reparations. The Treaty of Locarno, in 1925, secured the western borders of Germany, and the gradual process of reintegrating Germany into the world community led to the withdrawal of the international occupation forces in the Rhine area and to Germany’s admission into the newly founded League of Nations (the equivalent of today’s United Nations) in 1926. However, this time of relative stability did not last long. It ended abruptly with the stock-market crash of 1929 and the increasing internal destabilization of Germany until Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933.