Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic was a historical period of the German state from 9 November 1918 to 23 March 1933, during which it was a constitutional republic for the first time in history. The state was officially named the German Reich; it is also referred to, and unofficially proclaimed itself, as the German Republic. The period's informal name is derived from the city of Weimar,
where the republic's constituent assembly took place. In English, the republic was usually simply called "Germany", with "Weimar Republic" not commonly used until the 1930s. The Weimar Republic had a semi-presidential system.
At the end of the First World War, the German Empire was economically and militarily exhausted and sued the Allies for peace. Awareness of an imminent defeat sparked the German revolution, the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the collapse of the Empire and the proclamation of the Weimar Republic. Hostilities in the war formally ceased with the Armistice of 11 November 1918.
In its initial years, grave problems beset the Republic, such as hyperinflation and political extremism, including political murders and two attempted coups d'état by contending paramilitaries; internationally, it suffered isolation, reduced diplomatic standing and contentious relationships with the great powers. By 1924, a great deal of monetary and political stability was restored, and the republic enjoyed relative prosperity for the next five years; this period, sometimes known as the Golden Twenties, was characterized by significant cultural flourishing, social progress, and gradual improvement in foreign relations. Under the Locarno Treaties of 1925, Germany moved toward normalizing relations with its neighbors, recognizing most territorial changes under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and committing never to go to war. The following year, it joined the League of Nations, which marked its reintegration into the international community. Nevertheless, especially on the political far-right, there remained strong and widespread resentment against the treaty and those who had signed and supported it.
The Great Depression of October 1929 severely affected Germany's tenuous progress; high unemployment and subsequent social and political unrest led to the collapse of Chancellor Hermann Müller's grand coalition and the beginning of the presidential cabinets. From March 1930 onwards, President Paul von Hindenburg used emergency powers to back chancellors Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher. The Great Depression, exacerbated by Brüning's policy of deflation, led to a surge in unemployment. On 30 January 1933, Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as chancellor to head a coalition government; his Nazi Party held two out of ten cabinet seats. Von Papen, as vice-chancellor and Hindenburg's confidant, was to serve as the éminence grise who would keep Hitler under control; these intentions severely underestimated Hitler's political ambitions. By the end of March 1933, the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 were used in the perceived state of emergency to effectively grant the new chancellor broad power to act outside parliamentary control. Hitler promptly used these powers to thwart constitutional governance and suspend civil liberties, which brought about the swift collapse of democracy at the federal and state level, and the creation of a one-party dictatorship under his leadership.
Until the end of World War II in Europe in 1945, the Nazis governed Germany under the pretense that all the extraordinary measures and laws they implemented were constitutional; notably, there was never an attempt to replace or substantially amend the Weimar Constitution. Nevertheless, Hitler's seizure of power had effectively ended the republic, replacing its constitutional framework with Führerprinzip, the principle that "the Führer's word is above all written law".
Name and symbols
The Weimar Republic is so called because the Weimar National Assembly that adopted its constitution met in Weimar from 6 February to 11 August 1919.Terminology
Even though the National Assembly chose to retain the old name German Reich, hardly anyone used it during the Weimar period, and no single name for the new state gained widespread acceptance. To the right of the spectrum, the politically engaged rejected the new democratic model and were appalled to see the honor of the traditional word Reich associated with it. The Catholic Centre Party favored the term Deutscher Volksstaat, while on the moderate left, Chancellor Friedrich Ebert's Social Democratic Party of Germany preferred Deutsche Republik. By the mid-1920s, most Germans referred to their government informally as the Deutsche Republik, but for many, especially on the right, the word "Republik" was a painful reminder of a government structure that they believed had been imposed by foreign statesmen and of the expulsion of Emperor Wilhelm II in the wake of a massive national humiliation.The first recorded mention of the term Republik von Weimar came during a speech delivered by Adolf Hitler at a Nazi Party rally in Munich on 24 February 1929. A few weeks later, the term Weimarer Republik was first used, again by Hitler in a newspaper article. Only during the 1950s did the term become mainstream, both within and outside Germany.
According to historian Richard J. Evans:
The continued use of the term 'German Empire', Deutsches Reich, by the Weimar Republic... conjured up an image among educated Germans that resonated far beyond the institutional structures Bismarck created: the successor to the Roman Empire; the vision of God's Empire here on earth; the universality of its claim to suzerainty; and a more prosaic but no less powerful sense, the concept of a German state that would include all German speakers in Central Europe'one People, one Reich, one Leader', as the Nazi slogan was to put it.
Flag and coat of arms
The black-red-gold tricolour of the 1848 German revolutions was named as the national flag in the Weimar Constitution of 1919. It was abolished after the entry into force of the Enabling Act of 1933 when the Nazi Party gained total power, in favour of two co-official national flags: the old black-white-red imperial tricolour and the flag of the Nazi Party. From 1935, the Nazi flag with the symbol offset became the sole national flag of the Third Reich, and after World War II, both the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic readopted the black-red-gold flag. The coat of arms was initially based on the Reichsadler introduced by the Paulskirche Constitution of 1849, and announced in November 1919. In 1928, a new design by Karl-Tobias Schwab was adopted as national coat of arms, which was used until being replaced by the Nazi Reichsadler in 1935, and readopted by the Federal Republic of Germany in 1950.Armed forces
Following Germany's defeat in World War I, several million soldiers of the Imperial German Army either simply dispersed on their own or were formally demobilized. The provisional civilian government and the Supreme Army Command planned to transfer the remaining units to a peacetime army. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the new army, the Reichswehr, was limited to 100,000 men and the Reichsmarine, to 15,000. The treaty prohibited an air force, submarines, large warships and armored vehicles.The official formation of the Reichswehr took place on 1 January 1921, after the limitations had been met. The soldiers of the Reichswehr took their oath to the Weimar Constitution. The commander-in-chief was the Reich president, while the Reich minister of the armed forces exercised command authority. Military right of command was in the hands of the OHL. The resulting dualism between civilian power and military command was to become a heavy burden on the Republic. Whereas Reichswehr Minister Otto Gessler was content with limited political and administrative duties during his tenure, Colonel General Hans von Seeckt, Chief of Army Command from 1920 to 1926, succeeded in largely removing the Reichswehr from the control of the Reichstag. Under Seeckt the Reichswehr developed into what many historians consider a "state within the state".
During the 1920 Kapp Putsch, Seeckt refused to deploy the Reichswehr against the Freikorps involved in the putsch, but immediately afterwards had the Ruhr Red Army brutally suppressed during the Ruhr uprising. In 1921, the Reichswehr organized the Black Reichswehr, a secret reserve networked within the Reichswehr and organized as labor battalions to circumvent the Treaty of Versailles' 100,000 man limit on the German army. The Black Reichswehr was never involved in direct military action and was dissolved in 1923 after a group of its members attempted to overthrow the government in the Küstrin Putsch. The Reichswehr also developed far-reaching cooperation with the Soviet Red Army, leading among other things to the secret training of German military pilots in clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
With Seeckt's fall in 1926, the Reichswehr made a change in course for which Colonel Kurt von Schleicher was primarily responsible. The goal was to arouse broad social support for rearmament and to militarize society itself for the purpose of future warfare. Under Paul von Hindenburg's Reich presidency, Reichswehr leadership gained increasing political influence and eventually helped determine the composition of the Reich governments. As a result, the Reichswehr contributed significantly to the development of an authoritarian presidential system during the final phase of the Weimar Republic.
After Adolf Hitler announced the "regaining of military sovereignty" in 1935, two years after his rise to power, the Reichswehr was absorbed into the new Wehrmacht. It was the unified armed forces of the Nazi regime.