Lessons of the Weimar Republic, an obstacle career
Unified at the end of the 19th century thanks to the political genius of Foreign Minister Bismarck, Germany soon became a great power that rivaled England for hegemony.World War I, the result of that struggle for supremacy, stopped its expansionist ambitions.What seemed like a rapid conflict was extended for four years (1914-18), with human and material losses never seen until then.
The German people, influenced by propaganda, trusted until the last moment in victory.But the military, headed by Marshal Ludendorff, knew that the war was lost.The allies were too strong.How could the Army, at that time at the head of the country, prevent defeat from sinking its prestige?And how to avoid the responsibilities that civilians would demand?The solution: deliver power to the socialists.It was the left, therefore, the one that ended up asking for the cessation of hostilities.Ludendorff, in a demonstration of cynicism, then advocated the continuity of the struggle.
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Julián ElliotSigned La Paz and suffocated the revolution, the new regime had to endow a legal framework.That same year, the Constituent Assembly met to write a constitutional text in Weimar, so the newly proclaimed republic would be known as this city.The Magna Carta granted the right to vote to women for the first time in the history of Germany.
Republic without Republicans
However, the defenders of legality did not abound.For the extreme left, the Republic was an instrument at the service of the capitalists.The extreme right, meanwhile, identified it with the defeat in World War I.With their exacerbated nationalism, the ultraconservative converted the protest against the conditions imposed on the axis of their speech.According to them, Germany did not overcome on the battlefield, but in the rear.The revolutionaries had assaulted a "stabbing in the back".
In the early twenties, ultra -nationalist groups starred in failed coup d'etat.For extremists, Rathenou was a traitor who had accepted dishonorable peace conditions.The truth was that he had managed to soften them.
Facing a blunt popular support, supporters of democracy (socialists, liberal and central-catholic) were faced with a painful dilemma: govern with a minority in Parliament or agree with an anti-system force.As the historian Hagen Schulze pointed out, these circumstances “not only ruled out the possibility of making a determined democratic policy [...], but also limited the normal validity of a government ”.Validity, in effect, very limited: just over eight months on average.
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Cloud prices
The international situation also did not help the consolidation of the Republic.France and Belgium, resentful of the last war, invaded the Ruhr basin.They wanted to exploit their carboniferous riches to charge by force the German compensation that Berlin insisted on renegotiating.
The inhabitants of the occupied areas reacted with the strike.The Government resorted to an excessive issuance of currency that did not respond to the Royal Reserve to support them financially and recover the income that the State ceased to receive for taxes.Result: hyperinflation.The devaluation of the frame was so brutal that it lost all value.The children played with huge bundles of bills and there are those who used them to wallpaper the walls of their house.Salaries were paid overnight because prices rose in a matter of hours.Only between 1921 and 1922 its increase reached 1800%.
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Jaume PiIn 1930 the Nazi party obtained great success in the legislative elections (130 deputies).Financed by the business sectors, which saw in them a brake on the rise of communism and a stimulus to economic recovery, they could afford to maintain a paramilitary force, the SAs, destined to intimidate their political enemies.The State seemed unable to stop the wave of street violence.
The left, far from joining to stop this advance, was more divided than ever: the communists reproached the Socialists for their role in crushing the 1919 revolution;Socialists saw in the communists a dictatorial force at the service of the USSR.
Sinking
The political situation degenerated more and more.The successive governments of Central-Right systematically resorted to article 48 of the Constitution, which allowed them to legislate without going through Parliament in exceptional circumstances.
When, in 1933, the President of the Republic appointed Hitler Chancellor, the Germans were already accustomed to authoritarian methods.However, the traditional right hoped to control the new head of government.Those who knew their totalitarian ideology did not believe that it put it into practice because, until then, all parties said one thing in the opposition and another in the government.
Soon the tragic consequences of this error would be evident.With the destruction of the rule of law, the blackest period of contemporary Germany began.
This text is part of an article published in number 455 of the magazine Historia y Vida.Do you have something to contribute?Write us to writinghyv@historyyvida.com.
