Weimar Germany

Question 1

What did the Weimar Republic do first?

Answer 1

End WW1 on the 11th November 1918. The Armistice.

Question 2

What were three impacts of the First World War.

Answer 2

i. New government. People were unsure about it.
ii. Financial problems. $37billion had been spent.
iii. Social unrest. Friekorps - unemployed soldiers who were nationalists.

Question 3

Name three problems with the new Weimar Republic.

Answer 3

i. The voting system meant that every Political Party got a share in running the country, this led to lots of uneasy teaming up of Parties that had not much in common.
ii. There were 29 different Political Parties.
iii. Article 48 meant the President could take charge in an emergency, meaning the chance of a new Dictatorship was built into the constitution of the country.

Question 4

Why did Germans find the Treaty of Versailles humiliating?

Answer 4

i. The Germans were given no say in the Treaty. It was a Dikat - dictated peace. Germany had to accept all blame for WW1, when the reality of the causes was more complex.
ii. Germany felt weak and insecure because of the loss of armed forces and land.
iii. The amount they had to pay back was going to increase poverty and difficulty. The war had already cost Germany billions of pounds.

Question 5

Why was the Treaty of Versailles a challenge to the Weimar government?

Answer 5

i. People thought Ebert/the government were weak for signing it. They believed a strong government would have stood up to the Treaty.
ii. People began to view the armistice, signed in November 1918, differently. All of a sudden it seemed like a bad idea. The amount of people missing the Kaiser increased. The Weimar Government got a new nickname - “The November Criminals”. People felt they had been stabbed in the back by the government signing the Treaty.

Question 6

What were the biggest challenges faced by the Weimar Government between 1919 and 1923?

Answer 6

• A country ruined by war.
• Revolutionary mood in the country.
• Weak Constitution.
• Treaty of Versailles.
• Left and Right Wing Uprisings.
• Political murders.

Question 7

What happened in the 1919 Spartacist Uprising?

Answer 7

50,000 Communists rose up.

They attempted to capture the government newspaper.

SDP had to use right-wing Friekorps to put them down.

Question 8

What happened in the Kapp Putsch?

Answer 8

Right-wing groups hated the SDP.

Attempts to disband the freikorps was hated.

Wolfgang Kapp rose up but people supported the SDP not him.

Question 9

What political murders were there in the 1920s?

Answer 9

376 murders between 1919 and 1922.

Matthias Erzberger was killed in 1921. He was a “November Criminal”.

Question 10

Why was the Ruhr invaded by France in 1923?

Answer 10

Germany could not keep up with the money it owed France through reparations.

Question 11

What were the consequences of the invasion of the Ruhr?

Answer 11

Workers refused to cooperate with the French.

There was protest and the amount that Germany was producing fell dramatically. The government had to start printing money to pay wages.

Question 12

What did hyperinflation do to Germany?

Answer 12

There was a rush to the shops, as prices changed by the hour.

Savings became worthless. Every class of people was affected.

Question 13

What were the long-term causes of the Munich Putsch?

Answer 13

• Hitler admired Mussolini of Italy. Mussolini had moved Italy on from being a democratic country to an autocratic country. Hitler admired what Mussolini had achieved in overthrowing the government and believed he could do the same in Germany, beginning with a really nationalist part of the country, Bavaria.
• Anger building with the Treaty of Versailles and the general feeling that the Weimar Government was not fit for purpose.

Question 14

What were the short term causes of the Munich Putsch?

Answer 14

• All the problems with Hyperinflation created by the Invasion of the Ruhr increased the feeling that the Weimar Government was not very effective.
• Gustav Stresemann became Chancellor at the end of 1923 and ordered workers to stop striking against the French in the Ruhr in order to help bring the economy under control. This angered Nationalists like Hitler and General Ludendorff Ludendorff joined the Nazi Party in protest and then Hitler felt he had enough support to go ahead with his plan for the Munich Putsch.

Question 15

What does “recover” mean in this context?

Answer 15

Germany made a number of changes under the leadership of Gustav Stresemann that helped it move beyond the “dark days” of 1918 to 1923.

The German economy got better, better friendships with countries were created and new and interesting art and film was created, with Berlin becoming one of the most interesting cities on earth.

Question 16

What was on of the first things Stresemann did?

Helped the economy.

Answer 16

Recognised the need for Germany to be less confrontational. He ordered workers in the Ruhr to stop striking against the French. He wanted the French to begin to see Germany as less of a threat.

This meant that rich raw materials were being produced in the Ruhr once more.

Question 17

What was the Rentenmark?

Helped the economy.

Answer 17

It was a new form of money that Stresemann introduced to Germany to replace the old money that had lost all value because of hyperinflation.

It literally translates as “pension” mark to make it known to German people that it guaranteed people’s old age pensions were safe. This had the symbolic effect of making people begin to feel more confident that the Weimar government were capable of looking after them.

The value of the money was tightly linked to the actual value of goods - to let people know it was definitely worth the paper it was printed on.

Question 18

What was the Dawes Plan?

Helped the economy.

Answer 18

It was a plan to help the Germans rebuild their economy, set up by Charles Dawes - an American economist (an economist is someone who understands how money works).

It made the reparations that Germany was paying to France more “friendly” to Germany by making them manageable and limiting the amount of money Germany would have to pay back to France each year to only 2.5 billion German marks a year.

Dawes proposed loaning money to Germany in order to get them to invest money in their economy to open factories. This would create jobs, products and ultimately more money that could then be used to pay back American loans and Reparations and help Germany get richer.

Question 19

What was the Young Plan?

Helped the economy.

Answer 19

It was a plan created by Owen Young in 1929, which gave Germany longer to pay back the Reparations (until 1987/88) and structured payments so they that to pay back even less to France each year.

This meant Germany had even more money to spend on its own factories and people, helping the good times get even better!

Question 20

What was the Locarno Treaty?

Answer 20

An agreement made between Germany and France where Germany accepted the border that had been agreed as part of the Treaty of Versailles.

Soldiers were removed from the Rhineland (which had been taken off of Germany in the TOV) as a sign of friendship between Germany and France.

Question 21

How was the Locarno Treaty of 1925 different from the Treaty of Versailles?

Answer 21

Whereas the TOV had been forced on Germany (it was a dictated peace), Locarno was signed in a spirit of cooperation between Germany and France.

Question 22

When was Germany invited into the League of Nations?

Answer 22

1926.

February 1926.

Question 23

Why did some Germans hate the League of Nations?

Answer 23

It reminded them of the horrors of the Treaty of Versailles as it had been set up as part of the overall terms of the Treaty. They didn’t like the fact that Germany was participating in something to do with the TOV.