The Weimar Republic

The republic got off to a bad start. He was in a military hospital recovering from gas poisoning when the armistice was signed; the effect of the event appears to have produced a kind of emotional crisis that strengthened his fanaticism and released his libido. Lawlessness was rife and took such extreme forms as frequent assassinations of political leaders. Although the almost miraculous economic recovery and prosperity left in the body politic and social, they festered all the more for being hidden.

At the beginning of February, 1919, the constituent assembly convened in Weimar, the city of Goethe and Schiller, in order to avoid intimidation by the army and the mobs of Berlin, still in a state of anarchy.

THE STRUCTURE OF GOVERNMENT

The constitution borrowed freely from American, British, French, and Swiss precedent and practice, but all of these democratic shoots were grafted onto a solidly Germanic trunk. The government called on elements of the old imperial army to suppress the revolt and executed its leaders without trial, both of which were bad precedents for a new democracy. They were the largest party but fell far short of an absolute majority. In the presidential election soon afterward, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, the Nationalist candidate, won with a mere plurality—not a majority— as a result of Communist inroads on the moderate vote. Unemployed workers joined the brown-shined storm troopers (SA), for which they received a pittance plus indoctrination in loyalty to their leaders and hate for "the others," whomever they might be: communists or capitalists, Jews or the beneficiaries of the Diktat of Versailles. In fact it was used in 1933 by Adolf Hitler, after he had acquired power by legal means, to dispose of the republic itself. Originally entitled "Four and a Half Years' Struggle against Lying, Stupidity, and Cowardice," it is a rambling, confused account of Hitler's early life and political activities to the time of his imprisonment, as well as a turgid exposition of his hates, prejudices, and visions of a Germany dominated by himself. Although the name was suspect, he soon discovered that its small membership consisted principally of fanatical nationalists like himself.