To what extent was the effective government of Germany in the years 1919-1933 handicapped by the nature of the Weimar

Constitution? Every Republic needs a constitution, and that of Weimar was no different from any of those the rest of the western Republics had at the time, yet none faced as many problems as Weimar did. Therefore, the Constitution, without implying that it could not have been improved, could not have been the only handicap faced by the German Republic. But to improve a constitution, one needs a functioning parliament - and perhaps the only function the Reichstag served flawlessly was that of a chickenhouse. As such, this made it even easier for Anti-Republican opposition to flourish in the Republic, both from the left and the right, however the righ was more resilient - as shown by Hitler's eventual rise to power. Not least was the lack of perceived legitimacy of the Republic and its humiliating background of defeat, added to the perceived humiliation and threat of the Treaty of Versailles. However, the catalyst which began its decline was the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The Constitution of the Weimar Republic was quite liberal and progressive for contemporary standards. It included continuity from the Second Reich with the presence of a strong executive, but reduced the power of the upper chamber of parliament, and instead gave power to the popular lower chamber. The problem with this, however, is that it gave large amounts of legislative power to a democratic institution with no democratic tradition or experience. The Reichstag, throughout the short life of the Republic was marred by petty arguments over ideals, such as those of the SPD. The SPD would refuse to join Coalitions in 1925-1928 so as to not compromise its ideals. Given that it was the largest party in the Reichstag, this would permanently paralyse the institution. One might thus argue that this was a shortcoming of the Constitution which embraced proportional representation - this would be false. A Republic with a first past the post system would collapse overnight due to the powerful elites refusing to be dominated by the SPD. As such, perhaps it is the party system which is to be blamed, as well as the parties themselves, and not the Constitution. The parties were exclusively sectional in Germany - the SPD represented the working class, the Centre Party represented Catholics, and the DVP, DNVP, DDP represented different strands of middle class liberals and industrialists. This prevented the parties from embracing a policy of compromise and consensus as it would be politically costly. This made the electorate vulnerable to attack by the NSDAP, which after 1929 and the Wall Street Crash was a catch-all party, which transcended sectional interests and boundaries, and represented the grievances of the wider population. However, the strong executive embraced by the Constitution was also a threat to the Republic. The president was vested with extensive powers, dubbed an

Ersatzkaiser, culminating in Article 48. Article 48 enabled the President to issue emergency decrees and thus rule the country by whim. However, this was again not a shortcoming of the Constitution. The problem was in application, not design. Ebert used Article 48 wisely, such as when he used it to give the army power to bring down the Munich Putsch. President Hindenburg, elected in 1925, did not. He also refused to allow the Ministry of Interior to propose a law that would define Article 48's use in 1926. Indicative of Hindenburg's part of the blame is that in the early 1930s he hoped to bring a more autocratic government in effect, and to this end he planned to use the NSDAP's mass appeal to confer popularity to his regime. This was the pedestal that literally allowed the NSDAP to step to power and rung the deathknell of the Republic. As such, it was not Article 48 that was to blame, for it is proven that it could be used constructively - it was Hindenburg, who abused it. The Constitution was designed by Hugo Preuss in the backgrund of a coalition of the SPD, the Centre and the DDP. These parties, however, were never to be as successful again as in the 1919 elections. It could thus be argued that the Constitution was unrepresentative of the electorate's opinion thereafter. This is a moot and ignorant point though; the Constitution could have been modified through proper political practice of the Reichstag - which never matured. There were real reasons behind the shift of the electorate's political opinion though. The January 1919 elections were a success for the parties supporting a Republic due to the optimism of the electorate for a more conciliatory treatment from the Allies towards a Republic. They were, however disappointed. The Treaty of Versailles was thus another handicap to the Republic's success. It commanded the cessation of Posen and Western Prussia, symbolically important provinces, to Poland which could have never have hoped to defeat Germany. It also ceded Alsace-Lorraine to France. Germany thus lost 20% of its coal production and 15% of its agricultural resources. Article 231 of the Treaty also garnered much resentment, as it passed all of the war guilt, and consequently the burden of reparations, to Germany. It also prohibited the Republic from joining the League of Nations. This humiliation led to public exasperation, and also conferred an inherent sense of shame and illegitimacy to the new Republic. However, the Treaty of Versailles still left Germany as the country most likely to dominate central and eastern Europe, both diplomatically, and economically. The Treaty of Rapallo and the Treaty of Berlin with the USSR in 1922 and 1926, respectively, as well as the Treaties of Locarno with the allies in 1925 are testament to this. The latter guaranteed the Franco-German and BelgiumGerman borders as well as the agreement to not use force to alter these borders. It also resulted in Germany's admission into the League of Nations. The Dawes Plan of 1924 also set the timeframe for reparations payment, as well as lowering the reparations payments until 1929, as well as the departure

of France from the Ruhr. As such, with the fact that the Treaty of Versailles not paralysing the economic or diplomatic status of Germany within Europe reiterated, the problem with the Treaty becomes evident. Being that it represented humiliation and defeat, it was easy for the enemies of the Republic on the right, and to a lesser extent the left, to exploit it. It was thus the perceptions of the Treaty that were a handicap to the Republic. The enemies on the right were more focused against the Versailles Treaty, as is seen in the Kapp-Luttwitz Putsch of 1920, in protest to the reduction of the number of soldiers in Germany. The Kapp-Luttwitz Putsch also revealed the reluctance of the Army to protect the Republic, with von Seeckt's famous "Reichswehr does not fire on the Reichswehr". The Munich Putsch of 1923 is also particularly revealing as it aimed to create a dictatorship with Ludendorff as President. The referendum for the Freedom Law, though it ultimately failed, is also revealing of the Anti-Republican sentiment on the right as it garnered enough petition signatures to be made into a referendum. It also granted visibility and legitimacy to then fringe figures such as Adolf Hitler with industrialists like Fritz Thyssen. The right was thus quite Anti-Republican and quite networked to be a real handicap to the Republic; it had money, military, and power. The left, on the other hand, had none of the three. While even the judiciary swung towards the right, as is seen by their handing out a sentence of 11 years to a leftist for a violation of the Press Law, and only 5 years to Adolf Hitler for high treason, the Left had nothing going for it. It was fractured between the USPD and SPD, and later the SPD and KPD. The latter also alienated Germans by aligning itself with the Soviet Comintern. Although they initially had shown revolutionary activity, such as the Spartacist Uprising and Red Bavaria movement of 1919, both were crushed promptly by the Reichswehr and Freikorps - in stark contrast to their treatment of right extremists. The left also refused to coalesce with 'bourgeois' parties, paralysing governments, and was later deliberately excluded by President Hindenburg from coalitions. Their stance of inaction to the Nazi rise to power, believing it to be the pinnacle of capitalist decadence that would then crush in itself and let them rise to power, was also a ludicrous failure. As such, the left's reluctant stance was also a handicap to the Republic. It is thus much more accurate to say that the Right was a far larger handicap to the Republic - 94% of the murders in 1920-1922 were committed by members of right-wing organisations. Karl Gareis - USPD leader, Matthias Erzberger - murdered in the black forest and a leading member of the Republic, and Foreign Minister Rathenau, who was Jewish and the architect of the Treaty of Rapallo, were all murdered by right-wing extremists and were all admirable republicans. However, the right was not illegitimate - it had, after 1930, the support of the people. The NSDAP polled 18.3% of the vote in 1930, 37.3% in

July 1932, 33.1% in November 1932, 43.9% in 1933. Therefore, the people also failed to develop a sense of republicanism - thus, the people themselves were a handicap to the Republic. This is made evident by the instructions of Hans Luther to the diplomatic corps to use the old Imperial flag - tradition still ran deep. The referendum for the confiscation of imperial property also failed to reach majority, depicting the lack of republican sentiment. The two parallel cultures that developed in the years of the Republic were both critical of the regime, if not the Republic itself. These were the Neue Sachlichkeit, such the revealing "Hoppla! Wir Leben" by Ernst Toller, with a man being released from an asylum and observing the stagnation of society since the many years during which he was absent from it. The other strand of culture revolved around escapism from the Republic and pre-war nostalgia, such as the comical escapism of Charlie Chaplin's comedies. Indeed, the Lambach Articles which urged the DNVP to renounce their monarchic nostalgia and reconciliate with the permanence of the Republic only pushed the DNVP even more to the Right. Therefore, the anti-republican sentiment of the people was also a handicap to the Republic, but it only arose out of the inefficiency of the Republic and its governments. Economic hardships also handicapped the Republic. Despite those of the early 1920s being overcome by Stresemann's measures, such as the introduction of the Rentenmark, and the revival of the currency as well as the Dawes Plan they did not fully recover the economy. They only brought financial and monetary stability, and even that relied on exogenous factors such as the American loans amounting up to 25.5 billions. However, the Wall Street Crash was a turning point to this superficial period of normality. With the American markets crashing, the loans were withdrawn, and this plummeted the German economy. Unemployment increased dramatically from 3.2 million in 1928 to 5.9 million in November 1933. The inability of the Republic to efficiently deal with the depression brought about by the Wall Street Crash was its point of failing. The discontent of the people only pushed them to more extreme measures and ideologies, such as that of Hitler and the NSDAP. However, discontent would have been impossible had the government been efficient. And it was not. On the matter of unemployment, the SPD proposed an increase in the contribution of employers, central and local governments to the unemployment benefits by 4%, while the DVP wanted to cut the benefits. The Centre party, the remaining member of the coalition of the Muller government at the time, proposed postponement. The SPD deputies thus brought down the Muller government in an action of political suicide, and government life was incredibly short - with the longest government hardly lasting more than two years. This constant change of governments and constant elections hardly allowed for any effective long term policy to be implemented. This was indicative of the constant political situation and

rampant inefficiency of the political parties in the Republic - therefore, there was no "effective government", as the question says to, speak of. Therefore, while the German government was praised to have one of the most liberal and progressive, flawless constitutions of the time, as historian William Shirer described it as "on paper, the most liberal and democratic document of its kind the twentieth century had ever seen ... full of ingenious and admirable devices which seemed to guarantee the working of an almost flawless democracy.", German tradition and the opposition from the conservative right handicapped it greatly, among its background of defeat. The inability of the political system to tackle issues and form effective government, or mature into proper parliamentarianism greatly aided its enemies. These enemies were the very ones it relied on sustaining it at one point, as is seen through the EbertGroener agreement for the army to quell uprisings, which only worked as intended for leftist uprisings. However, without the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that allowed its enemies to seize initiative and power progressively over the next three years, the Republic may have well survived.