Key Question 1

• After it was formed in 1871, the German Empire was controlled by a powerful emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II. The country had a parliament, the Reichstag but those who had been elected as its members only had limited powers. Germany was under the firm control of the Kaiser and his ministers.
• In 1914, Germany went to war against Britain, France and Russia.
• By September 1918, leading German generals began to realise they had lost the war. This came as an enormous shock to the country. Weeks of violence followed as the Germans expressed their anger.
• On 11 November 1918, Germany signed an Armistice to bring World War One to an end. On 19 January 1919, elections were held for the new government.
• A new government met for the first time in Weimar on 6 February 1919. Friedrich Ebert became President and Philipp Scheidemann was appointed Chancellor. Germany was now a Democratic Republic. Democracy had been forced on the Germans.
• Many people felt that Germany had received a very harsh deal in the Treaty of Versailles and they resented the government for signing it and agreeing to its conditions.
• Blame: Accept full responsibility for the causing the war (article 231) and therefore the devastation and losses of the war.
• Money: Pay reparations of £6,600 million for the damage caused, and give the coal mines of the Saar area to France as compensation for destroying the coal mines of northern France.
• Land: Lose land. They had to give Alsace-Lorraine to France, and a Polish corridor was created to prevent Poland being landlocked but separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany. They lost control of all foreign colonies and Germany was forbidden to unite with Austria.
• Army: Limit their military power, with an army of no more than 100,000 members and only small ships in the Navy. The Rhineland was demilitarised.
• The Weimar Republic was created at a time of confusion and chaos after Germany had lost World War One. Berlin was in a state of unrest so politicians met in the town of Weimar to create a new constitution for Germany. The German parliament was called the Reichstag and the leading/majority party appointed the Chancellor. Every seven years, Germans also voted for a President. Fredrich Ebert was President 1918-1925 and Paul von Hindenburg 1925-1934.
• The Weimar Republic looked like the perfect democracy, but the constitution had two great weaknesses - proportional representation and Article 48.
• Instead of voting for an MP, as is done in Britain, Weimar Germans voted for a party. Each party was then allocated seats in the Reichstag exactly reflecting (proportional to) the number of people who had voted for it. This sounds fair but in practise it led to many parties gaining seats but no one party being strong enough to rule. Therefore the government had to be a coalition of parties and it was often difficult for them to agree and pass the laws that Germany needed. This was a major weakness of the Republic.
• 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.