152 The Weimar Republic
30.1.2: The Weimar Republic
In its 14 years in existence, the Weimar Republic faced numerous problems, including hyperinflation, political extremism, and contentious relationships with the victors of the First World War, leading to its collapse during the rise of Adolf Hitler.
Learning Objective
Describe the Weimar Republic and the challenges it faced
Key Points
- The Weimar Republic came into existence during the final stages of World War I, during the German Revolution of 1918–19.
- From its beginnings and throughout its 14 years of existence, the Weimar Republic experienced numerous problems, most notably hyperinflation and unemployment.
- In 1919, one loaf of bread cost 1 mark; by 1923, the same loaf of bread cost 100 billion marks.
- With its currency and economy in ruin, Germany failed to pay its heavy war reparations, which were resented by Germans to begin with.
- Many people in Germany blamed the Weimar Republic rather than their wartime leaders for the country’s defeat and for the humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles, a belief that came to be known as the “stab-in-the-back myth,” which was heavily propagated during the rise of the Nazi party.
- The passage of the Enabling Act of 1933 is widely considered to mark the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of the Nazi era.
Key Terms
- Stab-in-the-back myth
- The notion, widely believed in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918, that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by the civilians on the home front, especially the republicans who overthrew the monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918–19. Advocates denounced the German government leaders who signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918, as the “November Criminals.” When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they made the legend an integral part of their official history of the 1920s, portraying the Weimar Republic as the work of the “November Criminals” who seized power while betraying the nation.
- Enabling Act of 1933
- A 1933 Weimar Constitution amendment that gave the German Cabinet – in effect, Chancellor Adolf Hitler – the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag.
- hyperinflation
- This occurs when a country experiences very high and usually accelerating rates of inflation, rapidly eroding the real value of the local currency and causing the population to minimize their holdings of local money by switching to relatively stable foreign currencies. Under such conditions, the general price level within an economy increases rapidly as the official currency loses real value.
Weimar Republic is an unofficial historical designation for the German state between 1919 and 1933. The name derives from the city of Weimar, where its constitutional assembly first took place. The official name of the state was still Deutsches Reich; it had remained unchanged since 1871. In English the country was usually known simply as Germany. A national ass