Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Was the Weimar Republic Doomed from the start? (What was the Impact of the…

- - - - First task was to restore order and hold democratic election.
      - Restoring law was not going to be easy as there was an extremist political group committed to the overthrow the new government. They were called the Spartacist League, later on, in Dec 1918 they changed names to the German Communist Party and made immediate plans to seize powers in 1919 (Spartacist Uprising).
      - As Berlin was a dangerous place the National Assembly met in the small town of Weimar which gave its name to the new constitution and republic which was finally approved at the end of July 1919.
  - - - Arguably, this gave the President too much power as it allowed him to discard the democratic system of government.
      - Between 1929 and 1933, Presidential Decrees were used with increasing regularity. This helped to undermine respect and confidence in the new parliamentary democracy.
      - This said that, in an emergency, the president did not need the agreement of the Reichstag, but could issue decrees. The problem with this was that it did not say what an emergency was, and in the end, it turned out to be a back door that Hitler used to take power legally.
    - - This system of the election meant that the proportion of votes received by a political party would be approximately equal to the proportion of seats allocated in the Reichstag.
      - Considered to be a fair system of representation
      - This sounds fair, but in practice, it was a disaster it resulted in dozens of tiny parties, with no party strong enough to get a majority, and, therefore, no government to get its laws passed in the Reichstag. This was a major weakness of the Weimar Republic.
    - - Granting of equal voting rights to all Germans; men and women were treated equally under the voting system.
      - The granting of human and civil rights such as the rights to free speech, free worship, and the holding of public meeting.
      - In some respects the Weimar Constitution was the most democratic and progressive in the world.