You're expecting me to defend Tailgunner Joe? Pack a lunch.
Andem said that it was "disgusting" to compare a modern democracy to a prior tyranny. I pointed out that prior tyranny came from a democracy that was quite modern and progressive for its day. Seemed a relevant point to me.
Hell of a lot more relevant than McCarthy.
The Wiemar Republic with a deeply divided population was mostly dysfunctional for the first few years after the War and that could be expected and should have been foreseen by the Allies when imposing a treaty that beggared a Nation, impoverished its people. Relatively stable from 23-29 and downhill after the Depression - main reason was due to the treaty of Versailles. Jobs, hyperinflation, political will, then the seizure of power by Hindenburg.
Ignatieff in his lecture The Lesser of 2 Evils refers to this period.
Weimar Republic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
ears of crisis (1919–1923)
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50-million mark banknote issued in 1923. Worth approximately one US dollar when printed, this note would have been worth approximately 12 million US dollars nine years earlier. Continued inflation made it practically worthless within a few weeks.
The Republic was soon under attack from both left- and right-wing sources. The radical left accused the ruling Social Democrats of having betrayed the ideals of the workers' movement by preventing a communist revolution and sought to overthrow the Republic and do so themselves. Various right-wing sources opposed any democratic system, preferring an authoritarian, autocratic state like the 1871 Empire. To further undermine the Republic's credibility, some right-wingers (especially certain members of the former officer corps) also blamed an alleged conspiracy of Socialists and Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I.
In the next five years, the central government, assured of the support of the Reichswehr, dealt severely with the occasional outbreaks of violence in Germany's large cities. The left claimed that the Social Democrats had betrayed the ideals of the revolution, while the army and the government-financed Freikorps committed hundreds of acts of gratuitous violence against striking workers.
The first challenge to the Weimar Republic came when a group of communists and anarchists took over the Bavarian government in Munich and declared the creation of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. The uprising was brutally attacked by Freikorps, which consisted mainly of ex-soldiers dismissed from the army and who were well-paid to put down forces of the Far Left. The Freikorps was an army outside the control of the government, but they were in close contact with their allies in the Reichswehr.
The Kapp-Luttwitz Putsch took place on 13 March 1920: 5000 Freikorps soldiers occupied Berlin and installed Wolfgang Kapp (a right-wing journalist) as chancellor. The national government fled to Stuttgart and called for a general strike against the putsch. The strike meant that no "official" pronouncements could be published, and with the civil service out on strike, the Kapp government collapsed after only four days on 17 March.
Inspired by the general strikes, a workers' uprising began in the Ruhr region when 50,000 people formed a "Red Army" and took control of the province. The regular army and the Freikorps ended the uprising on their own authority. The rebels were campaigning for an extension of the plans to nationalise major industries and supported the national government, but the S.P.D. leaders did not want to lend support to the growing USPD, who favoured the establishment of a socialist regime. The repression of an uprising of S.P.D. supporters by the reactionary forces in the Freikorps on the instructions of the S.P.D. ministers was to become a major source of conflict within the socialist movement and thus contributed to the weakening of the only group which could have withstood the National Socialist movement. Other rebellions were put down in March 1921 in Saxony and Hamburg.
A disabled war veteran reduced to begging, Berlin, 1923.
In 1922, Germany signed the Treaty of Rapallo with the Soviet Union, which allowed Germany to train military personnel in exchange for giving Russia military technology. This was against the Treaty of Versailles, which limited Germany to 100,000 soldiers and no conscription, naval forces of 15,000 men, twelve destroyers, six battleships, and six cruisers, no submarines or aircraft. However, Russia had pulled out of World War I against the Germans as a result of the 1917 Russian Revolution, and was excluded from the League of Nations. Thus, Germany seized the chance to make an ally. Walther Rathenau, the Jewish Foreign Minister who signed the treaty, was assassinated two months later by two ultra-nationalist army officers.
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Gustav Stresemann was Reichskanzler for 100 days in 1923, and served as foreign minister from 1923–1929, a period of relative stability for the Weimar Republic, known in Germany as Goldene Zwanziger ("Golden Twenties"). Prominent features of this period were a growing economy and a consequent decrease in civil unrest.
Once civil stability had been restored, Stresemann began stabilising the German currency, which promoted confidence in the German economy and helped the recovery that was so ardently needed for the German nation to keep up with their reparation repayments, while at the same time feeding and supplying the nation.
Once the economic situation had stabilised, Stresemann could begin putting a permanent currency in place, called the Rentenmark (1924), which again contributed to the growing level of international confidence in the German economy.
Wilhelm Marx's Christmas broadcast, December 1923. Marx was the longest serving chancellor of the republic.
To help Germany meet reparation obligations, the Dawes Plan (1924) was created. This was an agreement between American banks and the German government in which the American banks lent money to German banks with German assets as collateral to help it pay reparations. The German railways, the National Bank and many industries were therefore mortgaged as securities for the stable currency and the loans.[14] Shortly after, the French and Germans agreed that the borders between their countries would not be changed by force, which meant that the Treaty of Versailles was being diluted by the signing countries.[14] Other foreign achievements were the evacuation of the Ruhr in 1925 and the 1925 Treaty of Berlin, which reinforced the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 and improved relations between the Soviet Union and Germany. In 1926, Germany was admitted to the League of Nations as a permanent member, improving her international standing and giving her the ability to veto League of Nations legislation. However, this progress was funded by overseas loans, increasing the nation's debts, while overall trade increased and unemployment fell. Stresemann's reforms did not relieve the underlying weaknesses of Weimar but gave the appearance of a stable democracy. The major weakness in constitutional terms was the inherent instability of the coalitions. The growing dependence on American finance was to prove dangerous, and Germany was one of the worst hit nations in the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
The Weimar Republic: 1919-1933!
