The Unstable Weimar Republic: Examining the Prospects

which was encouraging and even the workers were making modest gains.

However the economy was still in a very shabby state with unemployment high and rising and the currency looking unstable. The people were angry with the government for making the unwise decision of printing large quantities of money and this left the Weimar Republic looking unstable for the future. The Politics employed by The Weimar Republic were broken and sometimes difficult to understand. Between 1919 and 1928 there were 13 different coalition governments. That number of governments were never going to be healthy for a democratic regime.

Some governments only lasted three or four months.With all this change people are going to start to become irritated by the inability of the elite to hold government. This left the door open in 1929 for a dictatorship or a strong coalition to come into power however this door was beginning to close when some extremist right and left wing parties began to drum up support, most noticeably the NSDAP, the KPD and the DNVP. Most tragically and noticeable the NSDAP (nazi) party. Not only that the democratic parties were beginning to take a dive with the SPD losing about 20% of the vote and the DDP losing nearly that amount.

The aftermath of World War One was still widely felt in Germany. Great anger was shown at the reparations, the treaty and other settlements like the Locarno Pact. How much Germany paid in reparations is difficult to look at as the Young plan re-arranged the money to be paid and the Dawes plan was on the way to ironing out small details. However what they did pay was

still a great burden on the GNP (gross national product) by 1929 they had paid in the region of seven billion marks.Which in what they had to pay was not a great amount so the feeling from the allies towards the Germans was still very hostile, France especially were worried about a confrontation with the war.

The republic wasn't looking so healthy on the side of the people who wished for reparations to be scrapped but in European politics was looking stronger than ever trying to rearrange the reparations to suit themselves. The Locarno pact was a 'win' in a sense for Germany and showed strength in the republic but really it showed the strength of Stressemann as Foreign Minister.