PHASES IN THE HISTORY OF THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

1. PHASES IN THE HISTORY OFTHE WEIMAR REPUBLIC • 1918/19: Founding the republic (suppression of the radical Left, constitution writing, disappointment at Versailles) • 1920/23: Inflation turns into hyper-inflation (shortages, windfall profits, the Ruhr Struggle of 1923, uprisings by the radical Left and Right) • 1924/29: Economic stabilization and apparent normalcy —the “golden twenties” • 1930/33: The Great Depression and political polarization

2. “The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28 June 1919:”Woodrow Wilson, Georges Clemenceau, and David Lloyd George imposed terms on the German delegates.

3. Delegation of French wounded at the signing ceremony

4. The impact of the Treaty of Versailles

5. TREATY PROVISIONS THAT PROVOKED OUTRAGE IN GERMANY • Germany lost the “Polish Corridor” to the new Republic of Poland (but Woodrow Wilson had demanded that). • Germany lost Alsace-Lorraine (again, demanded in Wilson’s 14 Points). • Germany was declared “guilty” for the war. • Because it was “guilty”, Germany was obliged to pay for the total costs of the war (Wilson had promised a “peace without annexations or indemnities”). • Germany was disarmed: Its army could have no more than 100,000 troops, and it was forbidden to possess an air force, battleships, or tanks.

6. On the 9th of November1919(DNVP)

7. Kapp Putschists unfurl the Imperial war flag in Berlin, March 1920

8. General Hans von Seeckt, “Reichswehr does not shoot at Reichswehr” (but a general strike defeated the Putsch)

9. In the Ruhr Industrial District, Communists brieflyseized power after the Kapp Putsch collapsed

10. IN 1920 BAVARIAN CATHOLICS LEFT THE CENTER PARTY Christians! Will Spartakus be allowed to tear down your churches?” “Save the Homeland: Vote for the Bavarian People’s Party”

11. THE WEIMAR COALITION SUFFERED MASSIVEELECTORAL LOSSES IN JUNE 1920

12. From 1918-22 leftists committed 22 political murders, of which 17 were rigorously punished, 10 with death. Rightists committed 354 murders, of which only one was rigorously prosecuted (with no death penalty). Matthias Erzberger (August 1921) Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau (June 1922)

13. George Grosz, “Nobody Gives a Damn” (1920) Grosz, “What the State Tribunal Really Should Look Like” (1919)

14. Opening of the First Dada Exhibition, Berlin, June 5, 1920:Raoul Hausmann, Hannah Höch, Johannes Baader, Wieland Herzfelde & wife, George Grosz, & John Heartfield Reconstruction in 2004 of the “Prussian Archangel,” “From Heaven High, I Came Down”

15. Otto Dix,“Prague Street” (Dresden, 1920):“Jews Out!”

16. Gains for the moderate camp came in 1922 when the DVP chairman, Gustav Stresemann, and shipping magnate Wilhelm Cuno became Vernunftrepublikaner(republicans in the head, although monarchists at heart)

17. Otto Braun & Carl Severing (SPD), leaders of the Prussian state government, 1922-1932

18. THE EDUCATION OF A DICTATOR:ADOLF HITLER’S YOUTH, CHARACTER,AND START IN POLITICS 1889: Born in Braunau, where his father collects tolls on the border between Bavaria and Austria. 1898: Move to Linz (where Adolf struggles in high school). 1905: Earns a “small diploma” at age 16 and persuades his widowed mother that his health does not permit further study; lounges about Linz with friend August Kubizek. 1907-13: VIENNA YEARS—Hitler twice fails the entrance exam to the Vienna Art Academy and then scrapes by, painting watercolors for tourists. 1914-20: SOLDIER YEARS—German Army recruits Hitler as a political agent at the end of WW I

19. Klara Hitler (1860-1907), the third wife of Alois and his second cousin Alois Hitler (1837-1903):This illegitimate son of a maid achieved respectability as an Austrian civil servant “I had honored my father, but my mother I had loved.” (Mein Kampf, end of chap. 1)

20. The Hitlers came from the borderland between Lower Austria & Bohemia, in an Austrian Empire wracked by ethnic tension Austria granted Home Rule to Hungary in 1867 but no such rights to Czechs, Croats, etc.

21. Where’s Adolf? (School photo at age 10.)

22. TWO YEARS LATER HITLER WAS STRUGGLING IN HIGH SCHOOL IN LINZ AND FLUNKED HIS FIRST YEAR

23. WHILE WRITING MEIN KAMPF IN 1924,HITLER INSISTED ON THE FOLLOWING POINTS: • He had become a militant pan-German nationalist already in high school in Linz [perhaps true]. • In Vienna he had learned about the “Social Question” and sympathized with the grievances of workers [?]. • In Vienna he had also learned on a construction site that the socialist labor movement was a “pestilential whore” after Marxist trade unionists dragged the Fatherland, religion, and morality through the mud [???]. • “Wherever I went [in Vienna] I began to see Jews, and the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity.” Jews accounted for “nine-tenths of all literary filth, artistic trash, and theatrical idiocy.” • He had formed his complete Weltanschauung in Vienna and never learned anything important thereafter [???].

24. “Carriage Shafts” (Austria, 1900):“Schmul’s Patented Automobile. Cheapest operation!Completely safe!” The Vienna of Hitler’s youth was saturated with anti-Semitic propa-ganda...

25. But Hitler displayed NO political activism or work ethic before World War I:(watercolor by Hitler, Munich, early 1914)

26. Munich’s Odeon Square, August 2, 1914 “To me those hours seemed like a release from the painful feelings of my youth. Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time” (M.K., p. 161)

27. Adolf Hitler with two fellow dispatch runners and his dog, Foxl, in Fournes, France (1915).Soldiering was the first job he ever took seriously, and he won the Iron Cross, Second and First Class.

28. “The Stab in the Back”(Nazi magazine cover, 1924)