The revolution, which had begun in the naval shipyards in Kiel and Wilhelmshafen on 4th November 1918 and had spread to Hamburg, Bremen and Munich as well as the army barracks at Frankfurt, Cologne, Stuttgart and Leipzig, did not end with the ‘peaceful revolution’ and the proclamation of the republic by the Social Democrats from a balcony of the Reichstag on 9th November. On that same day, in Berlin, the revolutionary leader of the Bolshevik Spartacist movement proclaimed a ‘Socialist Republic’ and called for ‘World Revolution’ from the balcony of the Imperial Palace, which his revolutionary forces had occupied and ransacked.(1)
Germany now had two revolutions with the forces of the left ranging against one another for control of the republic. A civil war loomed for the heart and soul of Germany, which would decide if she became a modern constitutional parliamentary democracy or a revolutionary Bolshevik state, along the lines of the one established by Lenin in Russia a year earlier. Friedrich Ebert, the leader of the Social Democrats, was determined to stop a Bolshevik revolution in Germany in its tracks and was prepared to reach out to anyone in the attempt to do so. He reached out across the aisle to his former left-wing opponents the USPD (Independent Socialists) and brought them into a governing coalition. On 10th November 1918 he held his first meeting with the head of the army, General Groener, to seek the support of the German military in restoring ‘calm and order’. Those who argue that this was a fatal flaw that helped bring down the Weimar Republic also play down the threat of Bolshevik revolution in Germany. Hindsight has twenty-twenty vision, but in the chaotic times of defeat and the spread of bloody revolution, it is not so easy to foretell the future. The Bolsheviks in Russia had certainly never enjoyed overwhelming popular support, but their revolution still succeeded. Ebert was not willing to chance a similar outcome for Germany. The army said it would stand by Ebert’s republic on one condition; that the republic respected the internal autonomy of the German army. At the time it seemed to Ebert a reasonable price to pay for restoring order and stability, and staving off a full-scale civil war. Only with time would it become clear that this step insulated the military from a process of democratisation and left a powerful force within Germany, a force that, under the leadership of Generaloberst Hans von Seeckt, remained loyal to the old ‘imperishable Reich’, its monarchy, and the Obrigkeitsstaat (state based on the arbitary use of power), and continued to regard the republic as a temporary aberration in German history.clxv (2)
By early December 1918, the Spartacists and a large part of the membership of the USPD merged to form the German Communist Party (KPD), and on 6th December bloody battles ensued as they marched on the centre of Berlin. Revolutionary sailors who had begun the revolt in the naval shipyards occupied the Berlin telephone exchange and kidnapped the military commander of the city. The army brought up cannons outside the Imperial Palace to blow the revolutionaries out of the building. Germany now stood on the abyss of civil war. While the Allies were pushing around maps and contemplating the future of Europe in Versailles, the real fate of Europe was being decided on the streets of Germany’s cities. In January 1919, the Red Army invaded the newly-proclaimed independent republic of Belarus and began fighting the newly-formed Polish military. This soon escalated into a full-scale Polish-Soviet war. Bela Kun’s communists were shortly to seize control of the government in Hungary, and in Germany the KPD called for revolution against the ruling Social Democrats proclaiming, ‘We must fight to the last, use your weapons against our deadly foe.’ The call went out for a general strike and revolutionary units now occupied police headquarters and the offices of major newspapers in Berlin. On 15th January, the Social Democrats ordered the army and paramilitary units of the Freikorpsclxvi to launch the counter-offensive. A bloody conflict ensued which ended in lynch mob justice for the captured communists.
On 19th January, in the midst of the chaos, an election took place. For the first time women had the right to vote and turnout was high. The SPD (Social Democrats) gained 37.9 per cent, and what remained of the USPD (Independent Social Democrats) only 7.9 per cent. The Social Democrats went on to form a broad coalition government between themselves, the Catholic Centre Party (9.1 per cent), the Liberal German Democratic Party (DDP, 18.6 per cent), and the conservative nationalist German People’s Party (DVP, 4.4 per cent). An important step along the road to parliamentary democracy and stability had been taken, but the revolutionary era was far from over. Communist uprisings continued in Bavaria (where a Socialist Republic was proclaimed), Bremen, Hamburg, Erfurt, Saxony and the Ruhr.(3) The new republic was reviled by both the extreme left and the extreme right, and revolutionary uprisings and putsches continued against the government across Germany from both sides until 1923. President Ebert and the Social Democrats were determined to avert a communist revolutionary overthrow of the young republic’s democracy. They intended to do so, not only by means of the use of military force, but by creating the most democratic constitution in the world, underpinned by a massive expansion of social welfare, with the aim of taking the wind out of the sails of their communist opponents.clxvii
The Weimar Republic was named after the town in which its constitution was drawn up. The constitution, drawn up after the election, embodied key elements from the American Constitution and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, based on, ‘Universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage by men and women over twenty years of age, according to the principle of proportional representation,’ with one Reichstag seat roughly equivalent to 60,000 votes. The anachronisms of Germany’s first democracy — of the Bismarckian and Wilhelmian eras — were removed. In the past, the Chancellor had been the appointment of the Kaiser and was not drawn from the largest political party nor was he accountable to parliament. Now the Chancellor became akin to the role of prime minister, drawn from the largest party, formally appointed by the president, and fully accountable to the Reichstag. The power of the state of Prussia, which had held the majority of seats in the old Bundesrat (Federal Council/Upper House), was reined in. The army was accountable to the Reichstag, and the president’s powers were not comparable to those once held by the Kaiser. What was not foreseen was that in times of dire crisis a popularly elected president, as with the American model, could overshadow the Reichstag and become a real focal point for power in his own right. The Achilles heel of the constitution was Article 48, which was envisaged as a safeguard to democracy, allowing the president to use emergency powers in times of national crisis. Although the young republic initially had broad support from the centre left, liberals and the Centre Party, its list of enemies was long and not insubstantial. Monarchists yearned for the return of the Kaiser; communists wanted the fulfilment of a Soviet-style revolution; extreme nationalists wanted a return to more authoritarian rule, the military hierarchy wanted the restraints imposed by Versailles broken; East Elbian landed estates and farmers saw the socialists as having little or no interest in the future of private agriculture; and business/industrial elites wanted more public money spent on infrastructure and armaments and less on the burgeoning welfare budget.
The republic stumbled from one crisis, of either internal or external causes, to the next, never truly finding its feet, or the affections of its people. It was cursed by the legacy that it had inherited and by Article 48, which, although it had been designed to be used as an aberration, became an ever more tempting tool to resolve the mounting crises. In 1920, President Fredrich Ebert used Article 48 to save democracy and suspend the constitutional process to govern by decree, during the right-wing paramilitary Kapp putsch attempt. When Ebert died in 1925 and was replaced by former Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, the use of Article 48 became increasingly common until, by 1931, parliamentary sovereignty had been almost completely replaced by presidential authoritarianism.(5)
The constitution was further undermined by the fact that there was no minimum threshold to prevent small extremist parties from gaining seats. This led to a proliferation of quack parties, with over thirty parties in all
contesting elections. The political parties largely served narrow sectional interests. Only the Catholic Centre Party, and later the Nazis, garnered cross-party and cross-class support. The left and the right were represented, not by two, but by six, main parties.(6) The inherent weakness of the Weimar Republic, however, was not in its parliamentary system, nor even in the number of political parties; it was the inability of these parties to work together effectively to overcome the crises that enveloped the republic.clxviii (7)
The Weimar Republic began its life in the shadow of defeat. It was saddled with a vindictive peace, crippling reparations and an unstable economy (which was utterly dependent on short-term loans from the US); and it was vilified, not only by elements of the extreme left and right, but by large sections of the establishment. When revolution, near civil war conditions, foreign occupations, hyperinflation, mass unemployment and the greatest economic depression in history converged violently over Germany, her citizens found themselves in the grip of the perfect storm.
THE THREE PHASES OF WEIMAR
Phase One: 1919–1923 (The Revolutionary Era)
First among the external factors to undermine the German economy and democracy during the first years of the Weimar Republic was the issue of reparations, which contributed to spiralling inflation and then hyperinflation from 1921–23.(9) The Allies had postponed setting the final reparations bill at Versailles because they could not agree on the amount. The total was not agreed upon until April 1921. The London Ultimatum set the reparations bill at 132,000 billion gold marks (specifically not paper money), insisting that twelve billion be paid upfront. In addition, they wanted a further 26 per cent of the value of Germany’s exports to be handed over on an annual basis. Shipping out such vast sums of capital played a major role in the collapse of the German currency. It has been argued that the German government could have alleviated the crisis by further raising taxation, but tax rates had already risen substantially and further increases at this juncture would not only have choked off the prospects for growth but have been political suicide for any government. It would have been seen as a further humiliation for Germany if she had to hand over the value of her reserves and the profits of her labours in the form of exports, but also had to tax her citizens for the benefit of their former adversaries. To keep the German economy moving and enable the Social Democrats to make good on their promises of improved welfare benefits for the working people of Germany, the German government had to secure loans, to grease the wheels of the economy and to substitute the money she was having to pay out in reparations. But this only massively increased her dependence on these foreign loans. The problem was aggravated by the fact that these largely US loans were short-term and repayable on demand, yet they were being used to finance long-term investments that would not mature for years to come.(10)
German industry used the loans to invest in modern plants and equipment. As a result, Germany’s productivity soared, soon outstripping the German consumer’s ability to buy what was being produced. Thus Germany became doubly dependent on foreign loans and foreign markets for exports. The connection between hyperinflation and the enforcement of reparations payments is too obvious to ignore: inflation became hyperinflation immediately after the final amount was decided upon by the Reparations Commission in 1921. The German government’s efforts to secure the foreign exchange required to make the payments depressed the value of the Mark. In November 1921, the value of the German currency fell dramatically when the government tried to repay a £50 million loan with which it had financed the first instalment payment. The Weimar government was literally ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’. They started printing more paper money in order to be able to buy the foreign currency they needed to keep up the reparations payments, which depressed the value of the Mark even further, making each such purchase more expensive. A vicious circle had begun which led to hyperinflation, the massive devaluation of the German currency, which in turn undermined Germany’s ability to pay. When the Reparations Commission declared Germany in default of her payments, the French government decided to take its share of reparations by force and invaded the Ruhr (Germany’s largest industrial region). The French occupation of the Ruhr cost her more than she gained, but the effect on the German economy was catastrophic. German industry was crippled by passive resistance and the general strike that was called in the Ruhr in protest at the French occupation. And this came after German industry had already lost control over two of its most important industrial regionals; the Saar to France and Upper Silesia to Poland. Employers were now paying wages and salaries to workers in factories that stood idle. There was a massive dislocation of energy supplies to the rest of Germany, which necessitated the import of vast amounts of coal from abroad, again financed by paper money. The value of the German currency now proceeded to collapse. At the outset of the First World War, the Mark had been worth 4.2 Marks to 1 USD and in 1918 was worth 8.9 Marks to 1 USD. By early 1923, it had spiralled out of control to 18,000 Marks to 1 USD and by November of that year was stood at 4,600,000 to 1 USD. Only a month later, in December 1923, it had sunk to a simply unimaginable 1,261,000,000,000 Marks to 1 USD.(11) This hyperinflation made people’s savings worthless. It wiped out large sections of the middle class who, in their despair, blamed war reparations, the French and their own government for failing to avert their financial ruin. Fear and panic led to riots and mass strikes across the country.clxix (12)
Simon Winder’s book Germania paints a vivid picture of the way this period reshaped Germany, arguing that:
The links between reparations and the hyper-inflation of 1921–23 are confused, but the twin pressures of having to pay… a quarter of all export earnings to the Allied commission and trying to stabilize a country ravaged by layer upon layer of economic headaches combined to generate a two year horror movie which overlaid the war dead, the influenza and the revolutionary fighting to sever for many Germans any sense of belonging to a coherent political entity. Like a layer of iridium which marks the boundary between the Cretaceous and the Tertiary eras, the hyper-inflation marks perhaps a change even more fundamental than the war itself. If defeat had shown that Germany’s leaders were worthless and if the failed revolutions had given the country’s social fabric a disturbingly provisional pattern, then hyper-inflation trashed the bases on which families and individuals planned their lives — pensions disappeared, savings became a mockery, an entire German tradition of thrift and the authority of the country’s banks dissolved. Behind the famous photos of people keeping themselves warm with stoves burning banknotes, as a cheaper alternative to wood… lay an absolutely traumatic event that scars Germany even today.
[This added to the] … merciless quest for reparations… and the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr… (an) occupation, which had been successfully fended off in 1918, was a humiliation which both radicalised a generally liberal part of Germany and reawakened historical nightmares of German weakness in the face of French predation.
Nevertheless, in this period of supreme national crisis, the democratic parties of the Weimar Republic briefly rose to the challenge and formed the Great Coalition, which consisted of the Catholic Centre, Democratic Nationalists, Liberals and Socialists. The unenviable task of taking the reigns of power as Chancellor in such dire circumstances fell to Gustav Stresemann, the son of a former Berlin innkeeper; humble beginnings for a man who would have to shoulder the gargantuan task of resurrecting the German economy, whilst recommencing reparations payments and trying to rid the Ruhr of the French occupation. But by the time the currency and inflation crisis were finally brought to heel, the damage had already been done.
Phase Two: 1923–1929, The Stresemann Era
The new Chancellor, Gustav Stresemann, started by trying to gain concessions from the French, who in return refused to give an inch until reparations payments were resumed and the arrears paid. Stresemann then did the unthinkable and told German workers to end their campaign of passive resistance. It was a hugely un
popular move, incurring him the lasting wrath of both the extreme left and the extreme right, and helped precipitate Hitler’s failed putsch attempt in Munich a little over a month later. With a right-wing putsch attempt in Bavaria, the French in control of the Rhineland, the Ruhr and the Saar, and communist militias allied to left-wing socialists in power in Saxony and Thuringia, Germany appeared to be on the brink of breaking apart. Stresemann declared a state of emergency in Germany and the Reichswehr moved into Saxony to disband the militias. His firm stand gained him the respect of leading conservatives, but ultimately cost him the support of the socialists when he failed to move with equal vigour against the right-wing paramilitaries in Bavaria. The coalition which he had led as Chancellor then collapsed.
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