8. Impact Of Brüning's Economic Policies

Question 1

What were the negative impacts of Brüning’s policies and how did they damage Weimar? (7)

Answer 1

• fearing another inflation crisis, Brüning brought in unpopular spending cuts to deal with the depression (cutting public spending and unemployment benefits)
• He made the government more unpopular by raising taxes
• 100,000 German civil servants lost their jobs and there was a large increase in the number of unemployed (mocked w/ title Hunger Chancellor)
• Brüning relied heavily on Article 48 to rule by decree. Between 1930 and 1932, 100 laws were passed by presidential decree
• in 1930 Brüning had the Reichstag dissolved after it rejected his budget proposals. This led to street violence from both Nazis and communists. This benefitted the Nazis who won control of the streets.
• Brüning’s decision to ask Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag led to an election for September 1930 to be called. The Nazis were the prime beneficiary of this election in which their vote increased from 810,000 to 6,409,600
• Brüning used the emergency decree to turn some Junker estates in East Prussia into 600,000 allotments for unemployed workers and this lost him Von Hindenburg’s support since he was a landowner

Question 2

Positive impacts of Brüning’s economic policies (3)

Answer 2

• He succeeded in getting reparations stopped
• To Balance the budget
• to prevent the chance of restarting inflation