 Hello and welcome to our video explaining Weimar Germany and the Weimar Republic. My name is Barbara and in this video I'll explain the Weimar Republic in-depth. We'll look at its formation, its early years of crisis, its golden years and ultimately its decline. This video is a second follow-up as it offers an in-depth revision summary, which is useful if you're studying this topic and you need to understand the specifics. However, if you're short on time, do check out our shorter Weimar Germany in a nutshell video. This other video gives a brief chronological account of key dates, events, politicians and revolts. It's useful if you're examining this topic last minute and you need a quick run-through. However, if you want to learn and understand the details of this period, do stay tuned in this video. Let's get started. So firstly, what is Weimar Germany? Weimar Germany or the Weimar Republic refers to a period after the First World War in 1918, when Germany underwent a revolution and shifted from being a monarchy to being a republic. This period ended when Adolf Hitler ascended through the Reichstag, which is essentially the German parliament. He became chancellor and ultimately by 1934 he was the de facto leader and dictator, the Fuhrer, and in this period an ushering in Nazi Germany, which is Germany under Hitler's rule. However, this video is examining the Weimar Republic and Weimar Germany, so let's start from its formation and the period 1918 to 1923, which is categorized and classified as Weimar Republic's years of change and crises. So firstly, remember, the First World War occurred in 1914 to 1918 and Germany under the Kaiser had entered to support Austria-Hungary. It had not started the war, but it had entered in support of Austria-Hungary and it was on the losing side. So in 1918, German generals in September during this period decided to propose an armistice to end the First World War. In October there was a kill mutiny in which the Kaiser tried to get the navy to continue waging war, but they rebelled. The Kaiser finally abdicated and fled in November. This therefore meant that Germany went from being a monarchy at the turn of the century to in 1918 the Kaiser fleeing and Germany becoming a republic. Abert, who was the leader of the SPD, which is the Social Democratic Party, declared a new republic and this was essentially the German Revolution. Then there was a national congress of German workers and soldiers council in December and SPD were officially elected as its leaders. The more extreme leftist group, the USPD, were really unhappy with this outcome and this essentially created a bit of a fraction on the left in Germany between the SPD who were the more moderate left and who were elected versus the USPD who were a little bit more extreme. In 1919, the SPD signed the Treaty of Versailles which ended the First World War. However, do bear in mind that the First World War's official dates are 1914 to 1918. 1919 was essentially just the paperwork which officially declared the end of the First World War. However, it technically had ended in 1918. Once the SPD had signed this treaty, they accepted all the treaty conditions leading many in the right wing, especially the Freikorps who were basically the demilitarized army and the Nazis to say that Germany was stabbed in the back and it could have won the war, which is untrue of course. Other terms of the Treaty of Versailles were that Germany's army was restricted to 100,000 men which therefore of course meant that a lot of army soldiers were out of work and of course this is why the Freikorps had swelled in its ranks. Another important event that happened in 1919 was the signing of the new Weimar Constitution. Within this constitution, there were a few important things that it contained which you need to be aware of. Firstly, everyone over 20 can vote. In other words, there was universal suffrage for people over 20 years of age in Germany. There was also a system of proportional representation meaning if a party has a seat in the Reichstag, no matter how small they are, they had a say in voting. Another important aspect of the constitution was Article 48. This is really important as it was exploited by Hitler and this is how he ultimately became the dictator. This article essentially states that the President can suspend the Reichstag in any time of crisis or emergency and rule as a dictator through the Chancellor. In other words, the President can basically use the Chancellor and ask the Chancellor to basically rule as a dictator until the crisis is over. Two other important things that the Weimar Constitution contained is the Chancellor is chosen by the President and it contained the notion of freedom of speech, assembly and association. In other words, it promoted democracy. Another important event in 1919 is the KPD tried to overthrow the government in what was called the Spartacist revolt. Now the KPD was a faction that formed within the USPD. So as we've mentioned before, the SPD and USPD were both left-wing groups. The SPD was far more moderate than the USPD. The USPD was very unhappy at losing its power in the election and the SPD being the leaders and so within the USPD a more extreme left-wing group called the KPD formed and they attempted to overthrow the government in order to have a communist revolution, somewhat reminiscent of Russia's Bolshevik Revolution. However, unlike in Russia, this revolt was unsuccessful and the SPD, which was in government, relied on help from the fire corps, the extreme right army, the demilitarized and demobilized army men, as well as the main army to put them down and of course this led the extreme left to be very angry at them and the SPD in many ways was not forgiven by the extreme left. Another important issue that the SPD faced was in Bavaria. In the same year in 1919, two radical communist leaders called Levion and Lebanese declared it a Soviet Republic. However, the fry corps were used to brutally put them down as well and so the extreme left, which is the USPD and KPD would really angry at the SPD, which is a moderate left and this caused the SPD to have weak support from the left going forward and of course this is another reason why ultimately the Weimar Germany did come to an end and the SPD had lost its support base by the end of the 1920s. In 1920, the SPD faced problems from the extreme right. So in 1920, the extreme right in Germany, which consists of the DVNP, NSDAP, the Nazis, who are the NSDAP as well, the SA, who are the stormtroopers in the fry corps, were becoming really popular. They used ideas of being patriotic, so loving and being loyal to Germany as the motherland and as the home country of Germans, as well as anger at losing the First World War and fear of a communist takeover as a way to gain support from lots of German people. They did successfully receive a lot of support from many people, including judges, rich elite people, the army and academic institutions. This led a man called Wolfgang Kapp, who was a very hard line right wing nationalist, to assemble the fry corps and attempt a military takeover, which was known as a cap putch. However, this was unsuccessful. In 1923, this was essentially the nadir of Weimar Germany, the worst time. And this is because, firstly, Germany found it really difficult to keep up with its expensive reparation payments, which are part of its obligations on the Treaty of Versailles. Do remember within the Treaty of Versailles, Germany not only had to accept the war guilt clause, i.e. that they had started the First World War, but as a result of this, they also had to accept that they would pay the allied countries around £6.6 billion in reparation payments, which is a huge amount of money. And hence Germany, which of course was also war torn, found this really, really difficult and it missed some payments. And firstly, as a way to try and keep up with these payments, the government in a panic printed more money, which ironically reduced the value of the currency, which at the time was called the German Papier Mark. Germany missed a payment, so France, which was very hard-line in its approach to Germany, decided to occupy the rule, which was a very industrious part of Germany. The businesses and workers in the rule had a strike, which was encouraged by the government, making things even worse economically, and this caused many Germans to become poor. Thus Hitler used this anger by normal Germans as an opportunity to try and stage a revolt, which was called the Munich Putsch. And essentially this Putsch, the Munich Putsch, was hatched in Munich by Gustav von Kar, who is the State Commissioner Otto von Lossow, who was a local Weichswehr commander, Colonel von Seisser, who was the Chief of Police, von Secht, who was the head of the Weichswehr, Ludendorff, former army commander, Hugo Steens, who is an industrialist and Hitler's own NSDAP party, which was of course renamed just the Nazi party. They were all involved in creating the Munich Plot. And the idea behind the Munich Putsch was to essentially seize control of Bavaria, starting from a beer hall in Munich where top officials were, and then march on to Berlin and take over the government. However, at the last minute von Kar, who was part of this plot, did lose his nerve. The revolt was also really badly organised. Many people ended up resisting to take over, and Hitler and the Nazis were stopped. Hitler was then jailed, and in jail he wrote the infamous Mein Kampf. Or, if you want to be really historically accurate, he dictated the Mein Kampf and somebody else wrote it for him. Mein Kampf is really important because it was used as the guiding document for the Nazis and the Nazi party, and of course it was used as a rallying point that Hitler was able to capitalise on in helping the Nazis rise in power. However, there was a turnaround within 1923 as well, after all of this happened. So Gustav Strassmann, who was actually a right-wing politician and the Foreign Minister, did step in to turn Germany's problems around, and he became Chancellor for 103 days. He managed to get the French out of the war and resolved hyperinflation by introducing a new German currency, which was called the Rentenmark. Therefore, this led to the beginning of Weimar Germany's golden years, which started technically in 1924 all the way through to 1929. So, as a result of Germany regaining its economic balance, political extremism appeared to have been pushed to the margins as centre, pro-Weimer parties acquired the greatest number of votes. Democracy appeared to have been accepted and Strassmann became the dominant face of the Weimar Republic, as he also became Foreign Secretary. Also in 1924, Strassmann managed to successfully negotiate the DOORS Plan, which reduced Germany's crushing reparation payments, and also allies like France promised that they would not invade German territory again. USA also loaned Germany $5 billion in order to help rebuild its economy and keep up with these reparation payments. In 1925, Strassmann negotiated the Carnot Pact, which was a series of agreements between Germany, France, Belgium, UK and Italy, not to fight each other and promote peace instead. Then in 1926, Germany was invited to join the League of Nations as a member state, meaning it was accepted back into the Concert of Allied Nations. In 1928, Germany signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, along with France and the US. This pact was a promise by all three countries not to fight each other and to settle disputes peacefully. That this therefore meant that a combination of all these factors led lots of German people to experience a lot of economic progression. There were a lot of advancements, not only economically, particularly for the working class and the middle classes in Germany, but of course, given that it was also a very democratic period, there was a huge advance in arts, culture. There were also a lot of artists who emerged at the time who were very critical of Weimar Germany, but they were also importantly allowed to be critical because there was democracy people could have this say, and they had freedom of speech. However, by 1929, there was another major turning point for Weimar Germany because although it had some successes, it also had huge setbacks. So firstly, Stracemen negotiated what was called the Young Plan, which agreed to reduce the Doors Plan, or rather to replace the Doors Plan and bring a final settlement to the reparations issued. It proposed to reduce the overall figure of reparations to 37 billion marks to be payable over 58 years. However, things started going bad. So in 1929, this was also the infamous year of the Wall Street Crash. In other words, the USA's stock market crashed, meaning the USA wanted all the money it had loaned to Germany back, but also USA could no longer afford to give Germany money and support it economically. This also meant that Germany, in consequence, had a depression. Another huge event that happened was that Gustav Straceman died. He was a key unifying political figure for both the left and the right, so this therefore of course led to political chaos. So now, it's important to be aware of what were the limitations of the Weimar Republic that inevitably led to its downfall and ultimately also led to the rise of the Nazis. So firstly, there was no loyalty to Weimar from the army, the judiciary, academic institutions, businesses and landowners. The army was really resentful of the Versailles Treaty. Don't forget that the Versailles Treaty had limited Germany's armed forces to just 100,000 men, meaning of course millions of army men were demilitarised and they were out of work, but also of course many in the army believed that Germany would have won had they not been betrayed by Weimar and the November criminals signing the Versailles Treaty, but of course this is untrue. However, this was a very toxic belief that continued to pervade within the army. Furthermore, judges showed that they supported the right because when it came to important revolts such as the Munich Putsch, they didn't punish people like Hitler very harshly. He was thrown in jail. However, this is obviously in contrast to say the Spartacist Revolt and even the Bavarian Republic in 1919 when they were crushed and a lot of these leaders were killed. So what this shows is that the judges did have a huge bias for right-wing politicians. In education, there were also lots of teachers and university professors who wanted a strong German dictator to lead the country. They missed the Kaiser. They missed strong leadership from a monarchy rather than having a constitution and a government whereby there were too many voices and ultimately laws took too long to be passed and too many people had to say and lots of people longed for this previous period of dictatorship and autocratic rule. Also big businesses disliked how much power the works were given by the government through trade unions and of course do remember that the leadership was the SPD, the Socialist Democratic Party and hence they had a real leaning to supporting the working class workers as opposed to big businesses and so big businesses resented this. Also, don't forget that one of the key tenets of very extreme left parties so for example very communist parties is this idea that the government should appropriate land so people should not privately own property. Of course the SPD was very moderate and they didn't implement this idea. That being said, there were still many German landowners who were afraid of a communist takeover which would rob them of their property so of course there were also lots of landowners who didn't support the SPD and would prefer to have a more right-wing government even if that meant having a very extreme right government. Overall these groups remained influential and when the golden years came to an end they turned their backs on the SPD and ultimately they turned more to support right-wing leaders and this is what fed into Hitler's rise and the end of the Weimar Republic. So finally and the most important thing is that the Constitution had a huge flaw that Hitler would use. This was Article 48 which gives the Chancellor the right to rule as a dictator if there's an emergency. Hitler ultimately not only managed to gain and garner lots of support once 1929 hit and there was a huge economic depression and the Nazis gained a lot of seats in the Reichstag but ultimately he managed to convince the president at the time to let him use Article 48 to rule by decree as a dictator essentially in order to try and turn Germany's fortunes around. However of course he manipulated this and out-maneuvered the president and the Reichstag and used this to make himself Fuhrer which is dictator. So that's all. If you found this video useful do give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel but also do head over to our website which is www.firstratetutors.com There you'll find lots of model answers, revision sheets that you can use as part of your studies. Thank you so much for your attention.