Germany had to fight on two main fronts—the eastern and western. In the east, the war went well. A new communist government in Russia sued for peace in In the west, the Germans advanced quickly, but were stopped about 60 miles from Paris. The western front turned into a stalemate, with neither side able to advance.
In , however, the United States entered the war against Germany. Throughout the war, the kaiser and his generals had assured the German people of victory. In the fall of , however, with defeat certain, the German generals suddenly called for an armistice, a ceasefire until the signing of a peace treaty. Most Germans were shocked. As a condition of the armistice, U. President Woodrow Wilson demanded that Kaiser Wilhelm give up his monarchy.
The kaiser agreed and left Germany for exile in Holland. The German Reichstag assumed the responsibility of signing a peace treaty. Before the Reichstag politicians could act, mutinies by sailors, soldiers, and workers broke out all over Germany.
Many set up local governing councils and called for communism as in Russia. The German army and marauding bands of right-wing soldiers broke up these governing councils. Amid the pandemonium, the politicians in the Reichstag promised a new form of government—a democracy. Despite the chaos and a Communist Party boycott, 83 percent of German voters including women for the first time turned out in January to elect a National Assembly.
The purpose of this body was to write a new constitution and negotiate a peace treaty with the victorious Allied Powers. The National Assembly began its sessions on February 9, , in Weimar, a small German city about miles from Berlin. The city was considered safer from left- and right-wing extremists than Berlin, the capital. The delegates debated a constitution for several months and finally agreed to adopt a republic, a representative form of democracy.
The members of the upper house were appointed by regional governments. Each German state sent representatives to this body based on its population. The upper house approved or rejected laws passed by the lower house, the Reichstag.
Elected by the people, the Reichstag made the laws. After a Reichstag election, the political party winning the majority of seats formed a new government.
This was like other parliaments in Europe. But one party rarely won a majority in the Weimar Republic, so two or more parties had to agree to rule together. After a coalition formed, the president of the republic chose a chancellor to put the government together and lead it. Reichstag elections had to be held at least once every four years. But, like other parliamentary systems, whenever the chancellor failed to win a majority vote in the Reichstag, his government would fall.
The president would then call for new elections. In fact, Reichstag elections in the Weimar Republic took place frequently, sometimes twice in one year. Under the Weimar Constitution, the people elected the president for a seven-year term. In addition to appointing a chancellor and calling for Reichstag elections, he was the commander-in-chief of the German military. The Weimar Constitution granted citizens civil liberties like freedom of speech and press.
It also provided economic and social rights such as unemployment benefits and a ban against job discrimination because of sex, religion, or politics. In addition, the people had the right to put laws directly before the voters in a referendum. Meanwhile, the Allied Powers presented their terms of peace to a German delegation at Versailles, the magnificent palace of the old French kings near Paris.
The Allies had not invited Germany to the Versailles Treaty negotiations, so Germans were shocked at what they considered its harsh demands. The treaty:. A separate treaty authorized the Allies to occupy the Rhineland for 15 years. Even more humiliating, the treaty placed sole responsibility for the war on Germany. The German public strongly opposed the treaty. The National Assembly at Weimar at first refused to sign the Versailles Treaty, but finally did so in June under the threat of a renewed Allied attack.
The treaty incited the radical right. A campaign of political violence began. In the next three years, more than people were assassinated, most by right-wingers. The first Reichstag election under the new Weimar Constitution took place in January More than a dozen political parties competed for seats. The strongest of these parties, the moderate Social Democratic Party, won only 22 percent of the vote.
The Social Democrats thus had to put together a coalition government with other moderate parties. This set the pattern for the Weimar Republic. Between and , 14 coalition governments formed and fell. In , Britain, France, Belgium, and Italy settled on a reparation sum that would burden Germany with enormous payments for decades.
The United States did not participate in the reparation plan since the Senate had refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty. The moderate German government agreed to cooperate with the reparation schedule, hoping to persuade the Allies to reduce the payments in the future. Unwilling to increase taxes to make the reparation payments, the German government depended heavily on foreign, mainly American, short-term, high-interest loans.
The government began to pay for these loans by printing more marks, the German paper currency. The Allies complained that the Germans were paying their reparations with increasingly worthless currency.
The German people also suffered as prices spiraled upward. In , Germany was late in making reparation deliveries of coal and other products to France. The German government responded to the Ruhr occupation by ordering miners and railroad workers to stop digging coal and transporting it to France.
While the workers were idle, the government paid their wages. To pay the Ruhr workers, the German government again printed more paper money. This severely worsened inflation in the entire country as shown by these exchange rates:. Adolph Hitler hoped to take over the Bavarian government as a first step in a revolution against the Weimar Republic. But Hitler planned badly and was arrested, tried, and sentenced to prison.
In the meantime, a new German government worked to stop inflation. It abandoned the policy of paying the wages of Ruhr workers. It stabilized the mark, tying it to the value of grain and real estate. In addition, the Allied Powers agreed to reschedule reparation payments, encourage more foreign loans and investments, and end the Ruhr occupation.
Thus by , inflation was under control and the German economy was recovering. Even so, the hyperinflation of caused great damage to the German people, especially to the middle class, which had the most to gain in a democratic Germany. Pensions had been wiped out. A lifetime of savings accumulated before the crisis would not buy a loaf of bread. Extremists of the right and left gained influence. In , the moderate parties persuaded the old Prussian military hero Paul von Hindenburg to run for president.
Hindenburg, 78, won easily. In , an international conference assembled to review the German reparations issue. This time the Germans participated and argued that the remaining payments were far beyond what Germany could pay.
Chaired by an American corporation officer, Owen Young, the conference agreed on a plan of nearly 60 years of installments. The payments would be reduced at first and then gradually increase over time. He and other nationalists put these views before the voters in a referendum. The New York stock market crash signaled the worldwide Depression.
Foreign loans to the German government dried up. Without funds, the government could not pay its reparations or sustain its unemployment and other social-spending programs. Foreign investments in German businesses also stopped, causing many to go bankrupt. Another German government took over in with Heinrich Bruning as chancellor. Hindenburg called a new Reichstag election.
In the September election, the moderate parties lost seats, but still put together a weak coalition to form a government. The Nazis gained almost seats in the election to become the second strongest party in the Reichstag.
Bruning returned as chancellor and together with Hindenburg continued to rule by emergency decree. As German employers cut wages and laid off workers, Chancellor Bruning increased taxes and reduced unemployment benefits. In , U. President Herbert Hoover secured an agreement among the Allies to postpone all international war debts, including German reparations.
Political events in Germany soon made the reparations issue irrelevant, however, and Germany never made another payment. Hindenburg won, but Hitler got 37 percent of the vote. Continuing political turmoil resulted in yet another Reichstag election barely four months later. The Nazis lost some seats in the Reichstag, but the Communist Party gained seats, which drove a wide range of parties to back Hitler.
Finally, on January 30, , President Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to choose Hitler as the new chancellor. This resulted in the election of many small parties. It was difficult for one party to gain a majority so the country was run by a series of coalitions governments led by different parties working together. The result was:.
The German people had no tradition of parliamentary democracy — there was no general support for the new republic. The ruling Social Democrats were linked to Versailles and nicknamed the 'November criminals' the armistice to end the war which was signed in November As such, they were not trusted by the general public.
Article 48 of the Constitution was also problematic.
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