The threats to the stability of the Weimar Republic

AS History Essay : About the threats to the stability of the Weimar Republic

I would suggest for revision going through this breifly and highlighting or bullet pointing the factors.

“The main threat to the stability of the Weimar Republic in the period 1919 to 1923 came from the political violence of the extreme right” Explain why you agree or disagree with this view

Georgia Hope

Curently not marked (will keep updated with improvements for top marks)/25

The Weimar Republic faced many problems. It is argued to be “doomed” to start with, and I agree. It had so many problems it faced, it seems almost impossible to overcome all of them put together. Perhaps the greatest danger was 'the weakness within' - the constitution gave the President, the states and the army too much power, whilst proportional voting meant that the Reichstag was divided and weak.  Another reason from 1919-23 is the extremists on both the Left (especially the Spartacist revolt) and the Right (especially the Kapp Putsch) who tried to overthrow the government. There was things far more powerful than the right-wing, such as the fear of Communism and what this fear led Ebert to do. For example the Ebert Groener pact where Ebert joined with the military leader Groener in fear of the Communists starting violent protests. There was also the fact that the Weimar Republic lacked support by the people as Hindenburg and Ludendorff put the blame of defeat on the war on the Kaiser. There was also the economic crisis (hyperinflation) which led to starvation and disease being spread due to the people not having the money to pay for the treatment they needed. Lingering throughout all this the idea of the”stab in the back myth” which made the German people resent the government for signing the Treaty of Versailles and the Armistice, especially the right wing demilitarized soldiers who couldn’t afford medical bills from being injured in the war. You also have the weak constitution which led to it having small parties and no decisions being made, and room for dictatorship to come into place and democracy to crumble.

A major issue and arguably the main threat to the stability of the Weimar Republic was ineffective constitution as the government did not create a strong government. For example article 48  of the constitution gave the President sole power in ‘times of emergency’ Germany was going through an emergency period of starvation and economic crisis so article 48 was used often. This meant the system wasn’t as democratic as it seemed and at times was more like a dictatorship, and it could easily be used to turn the system into a dictatorship, like Hitler did. It also had a system of proportional voting which led to 28 parties. This made it virtually impossible to establish a majority in the Reichstag, and led to frequent changes in the government. This caused no decisions to be made clear as no one could agree as there wasn’t…