Social Developments

Question 1

What were social attitudes like at the start of the war?

Answer 1

patriotic with a spirit of unity

Question 2

How did the positive pre-war attitudes bring change to society?

Answer 2

cut across the bitter class divisions that existed before 1914

Question 3

What were the different class motivations towards war?

Answer 3

elites = to confirm German superiority under the Kaiser Reich
working men = hope for better times ahead

Question 4

What caused the evaporation in the ‘spirit of 1914’?

Answer 4

war being dragged on & food shortages

Question 5

What were the economic differences in wages between classes?

Answer 5

working men’s wages generally held up but middle-class professionals increasingly lost out

Question 6

How did the roles of many women change?

Answer 6

many women sought out employment to compensate for the absence of their husbands & wage differences between sexes narrowed out

Question 7

What was the ratio of women in the workforce like by 1918?

Answer 7

1/3 of the workforce were women

Question 8

How were families effected by the war?

Answer 8

• working and absent parents left children neglected
• education interrupted due to teachers going to war
• lack of coal meant that schools could not be heated during the winter months
• poorer families suffered malnutrition

Question 9

What factors contributed to the years of turbulence and the condition of Germany?

Answer 9

• direction of resources to the war effort
• disruption of agriculture due to conscription
• British blockade

Question 10

How did living conditions worsen?

Answer 10

• many ordinary Germans reduced to starvation
• electricity supplies cut to conserve energy
• public transport no longer had a reliable schedule
• businesses could not function
• economy on the brink of collapse
• Spanish flu epidemic

Question 11

What event changed social attitudes on the same scale as war?

Answer 11

hyperinflation

Question 12

What type of people suffered the most due to hyperinflation?

Answer 12

those relying on savings, investments, fixed incomes, pensions, and welfare support

Question 13

What type of people benefitted the most due to hyperinflation?

Answer 13

people who had debts, loans, or mortgages could pay off the money they owed in a worthless currency

Question 14

What did the Republic wish to extend their involvement in?

Answer 14

social welfare

Question 15

What were some of the principles of a welfare state in the Republic’s constitution?

Answer 15

• promises to redistribute wealth
• provide for the working classes

Question 16

How was social welfare expanded after the war?

Answer 16

• workers granted an 8 hour work day
• war victims’ benefits added
• Youth Welfare Act
• accident insurance programme

Question 17

How did the expansion of social welfare impact the government?

Answer 17

when many became unemployed during the period of passive resistance the benefit system nearly collapsed

Question 18

How did the expansion of social welfare impact class interaction?

Answer 18

the schemes required higher taxation which lead to friction between elites and the working class
- elites = attack on wealth
- workers = development of raised expectations that could not be met in Germany’s difficult economic circumstances

Question 19

What were women given in the Republic?

Answer 19

formal equality + the right to vote

Question 20

How did opportunities for women develop during the war?

Answer 20

• employment rose
• numbers of women going to higher education increased
• large numbers of female doctors and teachers

Question 21

How did the position of women not change?

Answer 21

political parties on both the left and right still maintained the belief that a woman’s place was the home and assumed that women would stop working when they married
also active resistance to women in the workplace

Question 22

How were families effected?

Answer 22

became smaller due to cheaper methods of contraception becoming more widely available

Question 23

How were racial minorities treated by the Republic?

Answer 23

the rights of minorities were typically respected

Question 24

What are examples of minorities in Germany?

Answer 24

Poles, Danes, and German Jews

Question 25

How did German Jews begin to view themselves due to the social assimilation of minorities?

Answer 25

German first and Jewish second

Question 26

What is important to note about the pre-war Anti-Semitism and what group of people fuelled it?

Answer 26

it had not disappeared - and was fuelled by right wing nationalists who blamed the Jews for German defeat in WW1

Question 27

What groups sustained their anti-Semitic views?

Answer 27

• Pan-German League
• National Socialists
• members of DNVP and Zentrum

Question 28

What changes did war and the establishment of the Republic bring to the aristocracy?

Answer 28

• change of status
• titles and privileges removed
• Prussian military undermined by demilitarisation

Question 29

What remained stable throughout war and the Republic for the aristocracy?

Answer 29

• maintained hold on the land despite the agrarian crisis
• maintained to be an ‘exclusive’ class
• behavioural patterns remained shaped by privilege such as education

Question 30

What were many of the shared beliefs among the aristocracy about the new Republic?

Answer 30

fiercely anti: modernist, capitalist, and Americanist

Question 31

How did the aristocracy’s political views change?

Answer 31

initially unwaveringly supported the state however from 1918 they began to favour the radical right such as the DNVP

Question 32

What realistically should have happened to post-war military reputation?

Answer 32

should have downgraded their influence, due to the terms of the treaty, to negligible proportions

Question 33

Why did the military maintain their influence and power post-war?

Answer 33

the Republic’s need for a strong army to crush left wing revolts + the Ebert Groener Pact

Question 34

What is the Ebert-Groener 1918 pact?

Answer 34

President Ebert promised to maintain the military’s status and influence in return for crushing left wing revolts

Question 35

Why was military influence so difficult to downgrade?

Answer 35

the belief in military superiority became so entrenched during the Kaiser Reich it found very difficult to eradicate

Question 36

How did the military secretly disobey the terms of the treaty of Versailles?

Answer 36

set up German military schools which trained officers and carried out secret rearmament + perpetuated the influence of military elites

Question 37

How did military influence further increase under President Hindenburg?

Answer 37

republic veered more right = army influence increased

Question 38

How did society change for the better in 1924?

Answer 38

• years of apparent stability 1924-29
• greater domestic social stability
• overall living standards rose
• future looked brighter
• modern culture spread

Question 39

How did youth culture reflect America?

Answer 39

dress and social behaviour (manners, morals and attitudes) which reflected the spread of modernism

Question 40

How was there less social change in rural areas?

Answer 40

traditional attitudes persisted and much less change was visible

Question 41

How was the 1920s vital for German culure?

Answer 41

mass cultural expansion

Question 42

What factors allowed cultural change?

Answer 42

reaction to the end of war and the removal of censorship

Question 43

What are some examples of cultural change in Germany in the 1920s?

Answer 43

• expansion of media
• a desire to experiment
• art and theatre
• a new youth culture

Question 44

How did cultural expression shift?

Answer 44

• began to question the past
• look at the world with ‘new eyes’
• political and social criticism
• personal experiences
• expose hypocrisies

Question 45

How did the older generation view these cultural shifts?

Answer 45

as a moral decline of their ‘once-great nation’