The new Central Europe was comprised of ethnically defined and territorially insecure states. These states’ nationalism, reinforced by Wilson’s Fourteen Points, justified both outward hostility toward neighbors and inward oppression of ethnic minorities. The growing field of ethnic and racial science and eugenics threw fuel on the fire.
In the context of this heightened nationalism and competition between nations, democratic governing structures were difficult to maintain. Germany provides a good example of the radicalization of European politics in the 1920s. Germany lost the First World War on the battlefield, but never experienced foreign armies or fighting on its territory. As a result, the population was not psychologically prepared to accept unconditional surrender and the eventual terms of the peace imposed on it by the allies. These terms included Germany assuming full responsibility for starting the war (War Guilt Clause), huge reparation payments to the allies (primarily France) and countries like Belgium, major territorial loses, limitations to both its army and navy, and the demilitarization of borders. What’s more, the responsibility for signing the Versailles Treaty fell to a new democratic German government, the Weimar Republic, not to the military establishment or the former imperial regime. Added to this were many hardships. The German currency declined in value, wiping out billions of dollars of wealth. Vast agricultural destruction throughout Europe caused massive food shortages, especially among the defeated countries. A great influenza pandemic spread through Europe (Spanish Flu), taking millions of lives, especially of people already malnourished or weakened in some way by the war. Hundreds of thousands of German men returned home from war crippled, shell-shocked, unemployed, and/or still armed and loyal to their military units. It was in this
highly unfavorable context that the Weimar Republic, Germany’s new democratic government, tried to take root and grow.
The Weimar Republic survived until 1933 for two principle reasons, both of which were also weaknesses. First, it was able to cut deals with conservative elites in the government administration and the military. Weimar politicians placated the right wing by giving the judiciary freedom to punish those on the left (communists and socialists) while allowing right wing criminals to escape judgment. We see this quite clearly in the government's reaction to the para-military coup in 1920, the so-called Kapp Putsch. The putsch failed when it encountered massive labor opposition (general strikes), but most of the leaders and major participants in the coup against Weimar democracy were let off without (or with minor) punishment. We can contrast this with the state's reaction to leftist rebellions (Spartacist Uprising, Red Ruhr Uprising) was forceful and brutal, and depended on the participation of the conservative military establishment (or paramilitary Freikorps).
During the Weimar Republic, the military was permitted to establish itself as a force beyond government control and in the hands of old military elites from the war. This freedom convinced the military not to move to topple the government, but it also meant that the government would not (and could not) limit the force of the military in domestic life. Full civilian control of the military, a fundamental principle of modern democracies, was absent in Weimar Germany.
The second survival mechanism/weakness was the Weimar government's ability to establish a fluctuating coalition of center-left to center-right parties that were willing (at least for a time) to work within the structures of constitutional framework. At first, these parties sought to distance themselves from the extreme positions on either side and to build coalitions that could govern. When times improved after the crushing inflation of the early 1920s, it seemed like this centrist politics might win out over the politics of the extremes, though it should be said that the spectrum, in general, was shifting to the right even as, by the mid-1920s, Germany was witnessing swift economic recovery.
And yet, below the level of electoral politics opposition was brewing on both the right and left. The communist party (on the left) and the nationalist parties (on the right) were growing increasingly more hostile to the government. On the left, the main complaints were that the government was acting as a shield for right-wing interests, that these interests were co-opting the state and using it to oppress the workers. On the right, the arguments were many: the state had become a pawn of the Jews; the state was in danger of undergoing a communist revolution; the state had sold out Germany to the allies; the state was doing nothing to prevent German humiliations either in the economic or the military sector. What’s more, the right wing saw traditional values under threat: families were changing (women working); cities were growing and becoming the home of foreigners and Jews; crime was on the rise; traditional German family businesses were being pushed out by Americanized industries and an international marketplace stacked in favor of other countries. German folk culture and values were seen as under siege by the French, Jews, Americans, Slavs, and Bolsheviks, in other words by the principle enemies of the German right. Throughout the 1920s, however, this movement remained relatively small. Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, during which the Nazis tried to seize power in Munich, failed miserably. Hitler was arrested and jailed. The Nazi movement appeared weak. It is important to remember that there were two different types of right-wing movements at work in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s. The first was the more traditional right-wing, what we might call the imperial Wilhelmine right or conservative right. Here, we find old military, bureaucratic, and economic elites, those remaining from the Wilhelmine era and the war. In addition, we see the rise of what could be termed a "modern" right, a revolutionary nationalism that sought to mobilize the masses in new ways, through economic reforms, technological innovation, propaganda, racial fears, and visions of future nationalist glory.
What caused the governing coalition in the Weimar Republic to crumble? Why did Germany, experiencing steady recovery by 1926, fall to (or embrace) Nazism seven years later? Why did Germans overwhelmingly support this new type of radical racial nationalism? These are questions historians and critics have tried to answer since 1933, key questions for understanding the complicated interaction between culture and politics and the inherent fragility of all democratic political orders, including those of today. To keep things concise, I will emphasize two aspects, though one will be discussed more thoroughly in a subsequent chapter. The first was the global economic depression that began in 1929 and crippled the world economy, hitting Germany especially hard. The second aspect is more complicated and has to do with German culture and politics in the 1920s. During the late 1920s, Weimar Germany witnessed an erosion of the political center by the left and right wing fringes, but especially by forces on the right.
