Lessons from Weimar Germany - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Inter-war period (1919-1938), Russian civil war (1917–1921) and other non World War topics (1914-1945).
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#14816292
I've recently been doing some reading on the political history of Weimar Germany (such histories are surprisingly hard to find--most history done on Weimar Germany is purely cultural). In any case, it piqued my interest because the recent election has gotten me interested in democratic backsliding and how authoritarians come to power. What are the specific reasons you think the Weimar Republic collapsed? For me, it's the following:

    1. The Reichwehr's commitment to advancing its own political agenda over the continued existence of the Republic, especially as manifested in its harsher treatment of leftist elements and gentler treatment of rightist elements.
    2. The existence of Article 48, which allowed for the suspension of the Reichstag.
    3. The collusion of center-right parties with far-right, antirepublican parties (see, e.g., von Papen).
    4. Infighting on the left, particularly between the KPD and the SPD.
    5. French aggression in attempting to enforce the Treaty of Versailles.
    6. The inaccurate perception by centrists that the left posed a greater threat to the Republic than the right.

To what extent do you see these elements playing out in the United States or other nations? Certainly we are seeing the rise of the far-right in the United States and elsewhere--for example, the Front National made it to the run-off election for the first time since 2002, the election of Donald Trump in the United States, Brexit and the rise of UKIP, and so on. Both in the United States and the UK, center-right elements have continued to cooperate with far-right elements. There is also substantial infighting on the left, particularly on the part of centrist elements which are trying to suppress the center-left and left.
#14816318
There is a certain amount of parallel.

On the left, the term, "late capitalism," is again making a third-period kind of argument on the one hand and a renewal in the criticism of capitalism on the other.

On the right, the term Weimerica is underlining their desire for increased paramiliterism and scary conspiracy theories about a small global class of people in banking and entertainment that are also secretly communists bent on destroying white people.

But history isn't a circle, but a spiral. It is not the exact same, any more than Weimar Germany was like the Second Republic in France.

I'm still spinning it in my head, but the temptation must not be to draw superficial parallels but what the structural issues are.
#14816319
The Immortal Goon wrote:There is a certain amount of parallel.

On the left, the term, "late capitalism," is again making a third-period kind of argument on the one hand and a renewal in the criticism of capitalism on the other.

On the right, the term Weimerica is underlining their desire for increased paramiliterism and scary conspiracy theories about a small global class of people in banking and entertainment that are also secretly communists bent on destroying white people.

But history isn't a circle, but a spiral. It is not the exact same, any more than Weimar Germany was like the Second Republic in France.

I'm still spinning it in my head, but the temptation must not be to draw superficial parallels but what the structural issues are.


Agreed--I think it's folly to pretend that the two periods are the same; but that's not to say that there is nothing to learn from it. We must look at discrete parallels, for example the growing polarization and infighting on the center-left, and consider how those parallels created a situation that enabled the crumbling of the republic.
#15299541
The Weimar Republic in many ways quickly became far too socially liberal, in some ways that became almost absurd. But there was a backlash against it, as many Germans perceived that social liberalism was being taken too far.

The fact there had been a push for social liberalisation was understandable, given the historic context. Germany had quickly modernised technologically and economically from 1845 to 1915, but in several ways socially and politically was still behind France, Britain and America. And then with the modern 1865-1890 German intellectual movement, embodied by Nietzsche, to abandon religious and conservative values that had traditionally bound the society together. So when the autocratic Kaiser was deposed (at the end of World War I) and Germany finally got a taste of democracy, and then all the Socialist elements at the time wanting to tear down the old structures of society began to be unleashed, there was a tension which had built up which suddenly sprung forth on the society.

The Weimar government seemed impotent to deal with the nation's economic problems. These economic problems came from three factors. The steep burden of reparations France had imposed on Germany to agree to peace after World War I, intended to punish the German people as a nation and economically cripple them in the hope that they would not be able to soon make war again. Then large amount of immigration the more advanced country of Germany was and had been taking in from Eastern European countries. And finally the worldwide economic Depression, which was focused in the United States but had reverberations in other developed countries as far away as Germany.
German people were economically suffering, desperate, and saw their identity as a nation deteriorating. They saw the liberal values of the Weimar government as not being the most conducive to their economic plight, and many worried that the more hard Left socialism that seemed to be just beyond the horizon would make things even worse. The Socialists held values that in several ways were even more totalitarian than life under the Kaiser.

The Weimar government began printing more money, which spiraled out of control, leading to hyperinflation. This must have had an impact in diminishing the people's faith in democracy, since many of the politicians just wanted to get elected and were willing to sell out their nation's future for cheap seeming economic improvements in the short term of time. I believe some of this simply comes down to the inclination on the Left to want to spend more money, not giving adequate consideration to the cost.

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