History Notes
Aug. 22nd, 2003 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ithikaI discovered a way to use my journal for good! I'm going to put my history notes in here so I don't have to send any emails or whatever... So yea
Weimar Republic
May 1928 ; Nazis won 2.6% of the votes (Reichstag)
1928 Reichstag Election: Distribution of Votes
Party May 1928 Vote Share
Communists 11.7%
Social Democrats 33.0%
Democrats 5.4%
Center 13.4%
German People 5.2%
German National People 15.8%
Bavarian People 3.4%
Nazi 2.6%
Landbund 0.6%
Economics Party 5.0%
Landvolk 2.2%
Farmers’ Party 1.7%
Communists
Devoted to overthrowing Weimar Republc & social revolution
Got 11.7% of votes in May 1928 but this wasn't enough to influence the Reichstag their way. It actually caused it to go in the opposite direction, because the other parties were terrified by their ability to get votes
Focused on undermining social democrats (Social Fascists - they called them). They hated them because the Social Democrats murdered Karl Leibknecht & Red Rosa Luxemburg after teh Spartakist Uprising (1919)
One of the causes of the collapse of the Weimar Republic :
Internal conflicts - Nazis VS everyone (especially Communists)
Communists VS everyone
so on & so forth
German people's anger at the outcome of WWI - didn't like Democracy, didn't see it had done anything good/was working
Resistance of the Treaty of Versailes
Had always had Dictator before - wanted strong leader like Hitler who seemed to know what whas best for Germany
This could come in handy :
Test thing
Gah. Can't be bothered summarising anymore....
Ugh. This is sooo tedious
The belief was that if the Nazis should come to power they would not be able to maintain themselves for long. They would quickly alienate the people, radicalize the masses, and set the stage for a Communist revolution in Germany. Or so was the justification for making tactical alliances with the Nazis against the Social Democrats in the hope of bringing down the Weimar Republic. Not until the end of 1934 would Moscow and the Comintern give their blessing to the idea of the "Popular Front"--the general alliance of all forces in the center and on the left against fascism. And by the end of 1937 the Popular Front would be losing support inside the Kremlin once again, although Stalin would not formally ally with Hitler until the middle of 1939.
On the near left were the Social Democrats, with 33% of the vote. The Weimar Republic had been their creation. The Social Democrats, as the major parliamentary opposition to the Imperial regime, had seized power with the fall of the German Imperial government in November 1918. They had quickly reached an agreement with the army: the army would support the Social Democratic provisional government if the Social Democrats would refrain from large-scale expropriations, confiscations, and executions and would set up a genuinely democratic, rather than a socialist, republic. To Friedrich Ebert and his colleagues, this had seemed like a good deal: universal suffrage would lead to large socialist majorities in the Reichstag as workers, peasants, and small shopkeepers realized their common interest in social democracy. Thus they would be the natural party of government.
They were wrong, in the 151 months between the first elections for the Reichstag and the fall of the Weimar Republic, a Social Democrat was Chancellor--Prime Minister--for only twenty-one of them. Three things kept the Social Democrats from being the natural center of the Weimar government. First, the Communists would not support them under any circumstances. Second, the farmers, paper-shufflers, and small shopkeepers of Germany were scared by the Marxist class-struggle-and-nationalization rhetoric of the Social Democrats. Third, the Social Democrats had signed the Treaty of Versailles and accepted the reparations burden imposed on Germany by the victorious Allies: they were thus seen as the servants of foreign domination, and were anathema to any interested in German national reassertion.
Further to the right were the Democratic Party, the Catholic Center Party, the German Peopl'’s Party, the German National People’s Party, and the Bavarian People’s Party, all with varying degrees of fear of the Social Democrats and the Communists, nostalgia for the old order, desire to reverse the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles, and--among the rightmost--contempt for a democracy that gave Social Democrats and Communists more than forty percent of the seats in the legislature. For most of the 1920s, these parties to the right of the Social Democrats made up a shifting coalition government, with Gustav Stresemann (of the German People’s Party), Wilhelm Marx (of the Center Party), or Hans Luther (who claimed to have no party at all) as the dominant player in the government.
It is traditional to blame the German Social Democratic Party of Ebert and Hilferding and company for having failed to have any plan for the transformation of the economy when they took power upon the collapse of the Kaiserreich at the end of World War I. Instead of socializing the means of production and concentrating on economic transformation, the Social Democratic Party focused on building a solid political democracy. Thus it found itself the creator and the principal bulwark of the Weimar Republic in a political climate in which most parties to its right would have been happier with a somewhat more authoritarian and less democratic state.
Such criticisms of German social democracy seem to me to be wrongheaded. A political party with a base of 30 percent of the vote has no business undertaking radical social and economic transformation unless it wants to transform itself into a dictatorship--or into martyrs at the hands of some general staging a military coup. No one today has any idea today of how to create a "socialist" economy that is an improvement over the mixed economies that we have.
Thus the German social democrats' strategy of being first in defense of the republic--defending democracy above all, because democracy is the ultimate sine qua non to social and economic progress--seems to me to have been the right one to follow up until the beginning of the Great Depression. And it almost worked. For Quigley and Clark are correct when they write that up until 1928 the story of post-World War I Germany is the story of the triumpth of democracy: the consolidation of the Weimar Republic.
But no one expected the Great Depression...
That is all. I will go now. Goodbye, rabbit
While we're here, I think you will all benefeit from visiting this site:
Portal Evil
Someone help me decide whether to write my essay on the Collapse of the Weimar Republic or on the effects of the Great Depression on Germany....
Weimar Republic
May 1928 ; Nazis won 2.6% of the votes (Reichstag)
1928 Reichstag Election: Distribution of Votes
Party May 1928 Vote Share
Communists 11.7%
Social Democrats 33.0%
Democrats 5.4%
Center 13.4%
German People 5.2%
German National People 15.8%
Bavarian People 3.4%
Nazi 2.6%
Landbund 0.6%
Economics Party 5.0%
Landvolk 2.2%
Farmers’ Party 1.7%
Communists
Devoted to overthrowing Weimar Republc & social revolution
Got 11.7% of votes in May 1928 but this wasn't enough to influence the Reichstag their way. It actually caused it to go in the opposite direction, because the other parties were terrified by their ability to get votes
Focused on undermining social democrats (Social Fascists - they called them). They hated them because the Social Democrats murdered Karl Leibknecht & Red Rosa Luxemburg after teh Spartakist Uprising (1919)
One of the causes of the collapse of the Weimar Republic :
Internal conflicts - Nazis VS everyone (especially Communists)
Communists VS everyone
so on & so forth
German people's anger at the outcome of WWI - didn't like Democracy, didn't see it had done anything good/was working
Resistance of the Treaty of Versailes
Had always had Dictator before - wanted strong leader like Hitler who seemed to know what whas best for Germany
This could come in handy :
Test thing
Gah. Can't be bothered summarising anymore....
Ugh. This is sooo tedious
The belief was that if the Nazis should come to power they would not be able to maintain themselves for long. They would quickly alienate the people, radicalize the masses, and set the stage for a Communist revolution in Germany. Or so was the justification for making tactical alliances with the Nazis against the Social Democrats in the hope of bringing down the Weimar Republic. Not until the end of 1934 would Moscow and the Comintern give their blessing to the idea of the "Popular Front"--the general alliance of all forces in the center and on the left against fascism. And by the end of 1937 the Popular Front would be losing support inside the Kremlin once again, although Stalin would not formally ally with Hitler until the middle of 1939.
On the near left were the Social Democrats, with 33% of the vote. The Weimar Republic had been their creation. The Social Democrats, as the major parliamentary opposition to the Imperial regime, had seized power with the fall of the German Imperial government in November 1918. They had quickly reached an agreement with the army: the army would support the Social Democratic provisional government if the Social Democrats would refrain from large-scale expropriations, confiscations, and executions and would set up a genuinely democratic, rather than a socialist, republic. To Friedrich Ebert and his colleagues, this had seemed like a good deal: universal suffrage would lead to large socialist majorities in the Reichstag as workers, peasants, and small shopkeepers realized their common interest in social democracy. Thus they would be the natural party of government.
They were wrong, in the 151 months between the first elections for the Reichstag and the fall of the Weimar Republic, a Social Democrat was Chancellor--Prime Minister--for only twenty-one of them. Three things kept the Social Democrats from being the natural center of the Weimar government. First, the Communists would not support them under any circumstances. Second, the farmers, paper-shufflers, and small shopkeepers of Germany were scared by the Marxist class-struggle-and-nationalization rhetoric of the Social Democrats. Third, the Social Democrats had signed the Treaty of Versailles and accepted the reparations burden imposed on Germany by the victorious Allies: they were thus seen as the servants of foreign domination, and were anathema to any interested in German national reassertion.
Further to the right were the Democratic Party, the Catholic Center Party, the German Peopl'’s Party, the German National People’s Party, and the Bavarian People’s Party, all with varying degrees of fear of the Social Democrats and the Communists, nostalgia for the old order, desire to reverse the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles, and--among the rightmost--contempt for a democracy that gave Social Democrats and Communists more than forty percent of the seats in the legislature. For most of the 1920s, these parties to the right of the Social Democrats made up a shifting coalition government, with Gustav Stresemann (of the German People’s Party), Wilhelm Marx (of the Center Party), or Hans Luther (who claimed to have no party at all) as the dominant player in the government.
It is traditional to blame the German Social Democratic Party of Ebert and Hilferding and company for having failed to have any plan for the transformation of the economy when they took power upon the collapse of the Kaiserreich at the end of World War I. Instead of socializing the means of production and concentrating on economic transformation, the Social Democratic Party focused on building a solid political democracy. Thus it found itself the creator and the principal bulwark of the Weimar Republic in a political climate in which most parties to its right would have been happier with a somewhat more authoritarian and less democratic state.
Such criticisms of German social democracy seem to me to be wrongheaded. A political party with a base of 30 percent of the vote has no business undertaking radical social and economic transformation unless it wants to transform itself into a dictatorship--or into martyrs at the hands of some general staging a military coup. No one today has any idea today of how to create a "socialist" economy that is an improvement over the mixed economies that we have.
Thus the German social democrats' strategy of being first in defense of the republic--defending democracy above all, because democracy is the ultimate sine qua non to social and economic progress--seems to me to have been the right one to follow up until the beginning of the Great Depression. And it almost worked. For Quigley and Clark are correct when they write that up until 1928 the story of post-World War I Germany is the story of the triumpth of democracy: the consolidation of the Weimar Republic.
But no one expected the Great Depression...
That is all. I will go now. Goodbye, rabbit
While we're here, I think you will all benefeit from visiting this site:
Portal Evil
Someone help me decide whether to write my essay on the Collapse of the Weimar Republic or on the effects of the Great Depression on Germany....
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-21 08:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-26 05:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-26 05:04 am (UTC)You're welcome
(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-26 05:06 am (UTC)So I say the other one.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-26 05:07 am (UTC)*gasp*