Secrets of the Weimar Republic

In 1918 the first German democracy was founded - the Weimar Republic. She took her first steps under difficult circumstances, staggering like a toddler. A sinister principle ran like a red thread through the Weimar Republic: three steps forward, two backward. Progress was always followed by a step backwards. While after the end of the First World War there was still a struggle to find the right system of rule, the dispute began: Who was to blame for the lost war? Did the Supreme Army Command under Generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff have responsibility or the new SPD-led government under Friedrich Ebert? A struggle for the sovereignty of interpretation began by all means: It was veiled and lied from the beginning, and conspiracy theories with drastic consequences were spread.

From 1924 to 1929 the Weimar Republic was able to take another breath. The introduction of the Rentenmark drove away the specter of inflation. The reparations were reduced in the Dawes Plan. The economy flourished and politics was relatively stable despite the hostility of the opponents of the republic. Reich President Friedrich Ebert gave a speech in front of honorary formations of the Reichswehr in the Berlin Lustgarten and advocated tolerance. In 1925 Germany returned to the international stage. Foreign Minister Stresemann negotiated in Locarno. In the Treaties of Locarno, Germany and the Allies laid down the borders newly drawn up by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1926 Germany was admitted to the League of Nations. Gustav Stresemann and the French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand received the Nobel Peace Prize in the same year.

The phase of relative stability ended abruptly in 1929 with the crash on the New York Stock Exchange, which escalated into the Great Depression. American loans have been recalled. The bank crashed. Queues of excited people gathered in front of the banks and asked for their savings to be paid out. The economy collapsed and unemployment rose. The streets were teeming with people looking for work. One could say that the extremists shot the republic ready for storm until the majority of Germans were in favor of an authoritarian crackdown and the majority voted for the NSDAP and other extremist parties.