Was weimar germany really “doomed from the outset” ?
1337 mots
6 pages
Was Weimar Germany really “doomed from the outset” ? On the 9th of November 1918, the new democratic German Republic was initiated in order for the Allies to agree to an armistice of the First World War. It is argued by many historians that the years of the first German democratic regime were numbered from the outset due to the many limitations that worked against the Weimar Government and the various obstacles in the form of political hostility from both the left and right wing idealists and the inherited socio-economic problems. This essay will examine if and how factors into which the Weimar constitution was born would almost certainly not allow democracy to prosper. The reasons for the creation of the Republic alone would not act as the steadiest of foundations for the building of political success. The Emperor of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last ruler of the terminated Second Reich, was convinced to abdicate by General Ludendorff in accordance with the wishes of the allies. The militarists including General Ludendorff and Field-Marshal Hindenburg, who held considerable political power, agreed that Germany would receive a better peace deal if it were a democratic, de-militarised state. Those who conceived this idea rather more acrimoniously anticipated the blame of the new government for Germany’s defeat in the war, masking the generals for this responsibility. Ludendorff and Hindenburg would later use propaganda in the form of the ‘stab in the back’ myth, which claimed that the Socialists had not given their support to the army and the war effort thus condemning Germany to defeat. When Field-Marshal Hindenburg was called to give evidence to the Inter-Allied Commission, he refused to make a plea but instead stated;Hindenburg had twisted the words of the English Major-General Malcolm to his own benefit; this fabrication fuelled the fire of the ‘stab in the back’ myth. The loss of the Monarch and the Second Reich angered many, in