Hammond History-ESSAY, Weimar and Foreign Policy(Revisionworld)

How successful was the German Weimar Republic in Foreign Policy?

Paragraph One

• 2 objectives post 1919: restore German sovereignty lost at Versailles; selective recovery of land lost at Versailles
• 1924-32 Stresemann &successors recovered most of sovereignty lost in 1919
• But – no return of territory
• World depression post 1929 aided treaty changes
• But also assisted in destroying Weimar revisionists and brought Hitler to power
• His objectives went well beyond restoring 1914 borders

Paragraph Two

• Germans shocked by 1919 ‘diktat’
• Germany demilitarised (details)
• Lost her colonies (details)
• Article 231 – war guilt clause accepted by Germany
• By 1921 reparations fixed at £6,600 million
• Lost 1/8 of territory and 6 million people
• East Prussia separated from Germany - ethnic Germans under Polish rule
• Lost large reserves of coal, zinc, iron-ore to France and Poland
• This aggravated weakness of German economy

Paragraph Three

• German anger that 14 Points advocating peace without vindictiveness had not curbed French demands for reparations and annexations
• Conservatives vowed to regain eastern lands even though the Corridor and Posen had Polish majorities
• Reason – historic heart of Prussia and by extension Germany
• Some senior army officers ready to resume the war to this end
• Reluctantly had to accept that signing the treaty was unavoidable
• The Republic’s democrats were later vilified for accepting the ‘shameful peace’

Paragraph Four

• In fact the democrats were as determined to revise the settlement as were monarchists and other conservatives
• Wanted to restore German sovereignty and regain…