by Mark Hopkins

Created on: November 09, 2007

The period 1919-1923 was extremely turbulent for Germany, yet by 1924 it seemed to have weathered the storms and emerged into a period of relative stability and prosperity. This lasted until the Wall Street crash of 1929, which destabilized most of the World's industrialized nations and was to have catastrophic consequences for Germany.

In 1919 Germany had a new government and a new constitution, the 'Weimar Republic'. The military-led government of the Kaiser had run away from its responsibilities and left it to a new, civilian, government to face the consequences of defeat. The Kaiser himself fled into exile at Doorn in Holland. Left with no option but to accept the humiliating terms of the treaty of Versailles, this new government led by Friedrich Ebert was unpopular from the start. It faced rebellion from both left wing communist and right wing nationalists.

In January 1919 a Communist group known as the Spartacists rebelled and took control of the capital, Berlin. In other parts of Germany Workers' Councils seized control and Communists seized power in Bavaria. 'Frei Korps', private mercenary forces composed of ex servicemen, helped to defeat them, with considerable violence and ruthlessness.

In 1920 Dr Wolfgang Kapp led a right wing nationalist rebellion and took over Berlin. The Army declined to use force against him. Its leaders were sympathetic to his right wing ideas. In the end it was a general strike by the workers of Berlin which crushed his attempt to seize power. Later in 1920 a Communist group rebelled in the Ruhr. Nationalist terror gangs murdered politicians and officials of whom they disapproved. Walter Rathenau, the Foreign Minister and Matthias Erzberger, ex-Finance Minister died at their hands, along with 350 others. The sympathetic Judiciary consistently handed down light sentences to the perpetrators of this violence.

It was amid this milieu of chaos that ex- corporal Adolf Hitler took over as leader of the obscure German Workers' Party in Munich, renaming it the National Socialist German Workers' Party in an effort to attract more support.

With proportional representation enshrined in the new Weimar Constitution, the German Reichstag was a mish mash of parties unwilling to co-operate to build a strong and lasting coalition. Germany's problems went from bad to worse. In 1923 she missed a reparation payment due to the French and France responded by occupying the main industrial region, the Ruhr, to take what it was owed. German workers in

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