weimar germany

• Weimar Germany was deeply unstable - there were two separate Putsches in the space between the establishment of Weimar Germany and its first elections. One of these was the Kapp Putsch, the uprising of the Freikorps in March 1920. The Freikorps were mainly made up of soldiers from the recently disbanded German army. They were angry about the demilitarisation of Germany and lead by the rightwing leader Wolfgang Kapp. They were only stopped when workers in Belrin refused to cooperate with them and went on strike after the small German army refused to fight them.
• Another Putsch was the Spartacists uprising in January 1919. It was lead by communists in Germany and ordinary Germans were terrified of the consequences of them winning as it would mean their wealth would be taken away. It was eventually crushed by the Freikorps.
• Weimar Germany was in a state of instability and began to enter a sort of death spiral.
• In January 1923, the German government announced it couldn't afford to pay the crushing debt of reparations.
• France and Belgian armies invaded the Ruhr in January 1923, paralysing industry and making ordinary Germans angry that their "great" country was being invaded.
• The German government told the workers to go on strike and they would still pay them.
• As there was no money from the Ruhr, the German government printed more money, leading to hyperinflation.
• Stresemen decided to launch a new currency, the Retenmark, which reduced the potency of hyperinflation and secured huge loans from the US called the Dawes plan to stabilise the economy and which provided money for business.
• He also restarted reparations payments to France and Belgium, so they withdrew their armies from the Ruhr and accepted the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, cooperating with neighbouring countries and joining the League of Nations etc.
• After 1923, this lead to a "Golden Age" of Weimar, with huge culture - there was acceptance, and movies such as Metropolis by Fritz Lang being produced there. Homosexuality and things like women's rights were accepted in society however some people outside of the big cities thought that Germany was becoming more Americanised and disconnecting with traditional German values, especially nationalists.
• However, the country was still quite unstable, there were too many small parties in the Reichstag because of proportional representation. But this wasn't much of an issue becuase many of these parties were centrists as times were good.
• But then the Great Depression hit and Germans tried to take their money out of the banks, leading to banks closing, and the Americans called in their loans, leading to the German economy, which was reliant on these loans, collapsing. The government also seemed to be making things worse for ordinary Germans, by raising taxes, cutting salaries and unemployment. Because of the Great Depression, desparate Germans voted more nationalist as these parties promised to feed and clothe them.