2.1.1 Ebert and Control, 1918-25

avatar
Created by
Tommy

Cards (9)

  • Powers in the Weimar Constitution to Control Extremism:
    1. The President could use emergency powers
    2. The Reichstag could pass laws prohibiting extremist organisations
    3. The police, courts and judiciary could prosecute enemies of democracy
  • Ways Ebert Controlled the Left:
    1. The Ebert-Groener pact
    2. Ebert initiated negotiations between unions and employers to guarantee workers' rights
    3. His first cabinet was designed to appeal to people across the left, containing members of the SPD and more radical USPD
  • Ebert's deal with Groener made cooperation between moderate and radical socialists difficult. They blamed him for the death of Spartacist leaders
  • In order to consolidate the position of the new government and reassert control in a time of instability, in 1919 Ebert quickly called elections to the new National Constituent Assembly
  • The Kapp Putsch of 1920 demonstrated how the army was only willing to defend the new regime from the threat of a left-wing revolution. This is because senior officers had used the reduction in size of the army to remove officers who supported the republic
  • In response to the Kapp Putsch and Ruhr uprising, the government postponed the Reichstag elections from the autumn of 1920 to July 1921 in which moderate parties only gained 44.6% of the vote between them
  • In July 1922, the Reichstag passed the Law for the Protection of the Republic which increased the sentences for politically motivated violence and allowed some extremist organisations to be banned in certain states
  • Gustav Ritter von Kahr, leader of the local government of Bavaria, unconstitutionally passed an emergency law countering the new Law for the Protection of the Republic. Ebert threatened to use Article 48 until a compromise was reached whereby Ebert promised not to use the new law against right-wing groups
  • Ebert's Use of Article 48 Against Extremism in 1923:
    1. At the end of September, Ebert ordered the army to crush the Kustrin Putsch
    2. In late September, KPD activists in Saxony and Thuringia formed paramilitary units to organise a "German October Revolution". Ebert used Article 48 to dismiss the Communists from the local government and the army was brought in to deal with the militia
    3. In early November, Ebert used it to command the army and police to crush Hitler's Munich Putsch