Impact of WWI on Germany

• Before 1914:

  • Germans were proud
  • Kaiser (Dictator) was celebrated for his achievements
  • Army was considered the finest in the world
  • Prospering businesses
  • Well-educated and fed workforce
  • Great optimism about the power and strength of Germany
• After WWI

  Army was defeated People surviving on turnips and bread

  Even the flour for the bread was mixed with sawdust to make it go further

  Flu epidemic swept the country, killing thousands of people already weakened by lack of food
• Social impact (Deepened divisions in German society)

  Huge gaps between the standard of living of the rich and the poor

  1 and a half million demobilised soldiers returned to society, many disillusioned

  Many German workers were bitter at the restrictions placed on their earnings during the war whilst the factory owners made vast fortunes from the war

  Many Germans were angry about losing the war

  Wave of unrest, especially in cities like Berlin

  Law and order was breaking down in a country where people were used to order and discipline
• Economic impact (Virtually bankrupt)

  National income was about 1/3 of what it had been in 1913

  600,000 widows and 2 million children without fathers

  1925 - State was spending 1/3 of its budget in war pensions

  Acute shortages of food

  1918 - Germany was producing only 50% of the milk and 60% of the butter and meat it had produced before the war

  Fuel was short and people were cold

  Nearly 300,000 people died from starvation and hypothermia in 1918

  Industrial production was about 2/3s of what it had been in 1913
• Political (Had a revolution and became an unstable democratic republic, extremists tried to gain power)

  Stresses of war led to a revolution in October-November 1918

  Fighting between the Right and Left wings

  Many ex soldiers and civilians despised the new democratic leaders and came to believe that the heroic leader Field Marshall Hindenburg had been betrayed by weak politicians (Stab in the Back Myth)