Section A

• Terms of treaty

  • Ger reparations of 6.6 billion pounds
  • No colonies
  • Army limited to 100,000 men
  • Creation of LON (Jap, Fr, UK, Aus - no Ger or US)
  • No unite with Austria
• Impact of Treaty on German people:

  • People hated the War guilt clause - had to accept blame
  • Reluctantly signed - thought they were there to negotiate
  • Hated the whole idea, they were not presented
  • Also more insulted because they could not join LON
  • 100,000 men was very small
  • Loss of colonies = no pride :(
• Social Problems with Weimar Republic

  • Communists (left)
  • Everyone contributes
  • Fascists (right)
  • Gov control everything
  • Putsches (all no impact)
  • Spartacists (1919 Jan) + Raterepublik (1919 Apr) were left leaning
  • Communists who wanted to overthrow the gov
  • Kapp Putsch (1920 Mar) + Munich Putsches (1923 Nov) were right leaning
  • Military overthrow gov, also just overthrow in general 
• Economic

  • Hyperinflation 
  • Invasion of Ruhr was when France believed Ger could make but decided not to pay the reparations so they invaded Ruhr
  • Aim was to confiscate goods as reparations
  • So bad that gov printed more money for workers - contributed to hyperinflation
  • Farmers, people on wages benefitted
  • Fixed wages, students did not benefit from this
• Political

  • Branded unfairly - responsible for armistice and treaty new gov had to take the burden of responsibility despite being fragile
  • Proportional voting system = get a vote, get a seat
  • This was rigged, slow, some extreme parties
  • President could make laws w/o parliament
  • His view could be affected by parties
• Wall street crash (1929)

  • Led to world-wide depression
  • Affect Ger most bc of recall of US loans
  • Caused economy to collapse
  • US
  • Declines in industrial production
  • Unemployment
  • Poverty
  • Homelessness
• Nazi rise to power (1)

  • Weakness of other parties + leaders
  • Criticised gov failures
  • Propaganda
  • Designed emblem
  • Promises (Abolish TOV, jobs, deal with communist threats)
  • In elections - nazi intimidation 
• Nazi rise to power (2)

  • Enabling act
  • Act without approval of Reichstag (got it through rigged voting)
  • More power
  • Shut down other parties
  • Hitler had very powerful, passionate and moving speeches 
  • Main Nazi ideology
  • Anti-communist
  • Anti-Semitic (Jew) - they thought Jews were what was bring them down
  • Pro-German nationalism (devotion to one and outweighing all other groups)
• Reichstag fire (Feb 1933)

  • Some claimed that Nazi’s started it but blamed on communists
  • Communists ‘claimed’ they started it
  • Hitler had powers to ‘deal’ with communists
  • Also allowed them to get rid of all communists parties in political representations