Collapse Of The Weimar Republic Quotes

In Germany, the Depression was the final nail in the coffin of the Weimar Republic. Germany needed loans to pay its reparations, but once the Depression hit, its funding dried up and hyperinflation ensued as the government printed more money in a desperate effort to come up with the funds to repay what it owed. The collapse of the Weimar Republic was a textbook case of what happens when democracy and capitalism fail; angry, desperate people became willing to go along with a suspension of the most basic civil liberties in the hope that order and prosperity would be restored. Parties and politicians embracing fascism—a philosophy animated by extreme nationalism that called for government control of virtually all aspects of political and economic life—gained ground in Germany, Italy, Austria, and Japan. By 1932, the Nazi Party had become the largest party in the German parliament; a year later, Adolf Hitler became chancellor. He quickly consolidated power, dismantled democratic protections, formalized harsh discrimination against Jews and others, and began rearming Germany. Hitler broke through the military constraints set by the Versailles Treaty. The absence of a French or British response taught Hitler the dangerous lesson that he could assert German rights as he saw them with little to fear.

created. They decided to impose impossible reparations payments on Germany, so ensuring the collapse of the post-war Weimar Republic amid unbearable economic conditions and thus create the very circumstances that enabled Hitler’s rise to power.

Ulbricht became one of Germany’s most controversial politicians, making inflammatory speeches and going head-to-head with the Nazi Gauleiter of Berlin, Josef Goebbels.4 The ‘limited civil war’ between Communists and Nazis in the streets of Berlin contributed powerfully to the collapse of the Weimar Republic. Ulbricht, a keen apostle of political violence, was as much responsible for this as Goebbels.

people. If Hindenburg ascends the throne, it won’t be as a philosopher, just as a representative symbol, a question mark, a zero. You could say: ‘Better a zero than a Nero.

Nero.’ Unfortunately, history shows that behind every zero there’s always a Nero.

The way you look and speak, people will laugh at you,” Pabst claims to have sneered to the beer-hall demagogue.92 Underestimating Hitler was a constant feature of his disastrous political career.

The unjust allocation of food, more than shortages per se, raised ire and left people embittered, and as of 1916 they began venting their pent-up frustration in strikes and protests.

The failure of the Weimar Republic remains a lesson of how fragile democracy is and how quickly freedom can be squandered, if democratic institutions cease to function and civil society is too weak to keep the anti-democratic wolves from the door.