Homework on the Weimar Republic

Homework on The Weimar Republic

Question 1. The Nazi regime has also been named "The Third Reich" (empire). Which time period is covered by the so called First and Second Reich (empire)?

Answer 1

Year : In 1871

Second Reich was formed after the war with France. The Prussian (Bismark) won the war. the Prussian monarch was crowned as emperor (Kaiser). The new empire was a federal system. 

• State governments were represented in the upper legislative house,
• the Bundesrat the public was represented in the lower house(Reichstag). 

Citizens had three responsibilities: to pay taxes, to serve in the army, and to keep their mouths shut. (Second Reich).

2. Describe the characteristics of the Weimar constitution.

• Guaranteed basic citizen rights,
• Granted universal suffrage (including women for the first time),
• Gave more power to the Reichstag, and lessened the political influence of the state governments.

 Lost in first world war and people couldn’t accept this and many allies stabbed on the back there by led to ]the formation of Weimer Republic.

a) To what extent was it extremely modern and democratic?

The electoral procedures of referendums and proportional representation were significant democratic innovations, but they eventually put heavy strains on a political system that lacked a popular consensus. The federal system of Weimar also failed to solved the continuing problems of reconciling differences between the state and national governments. And finally, the constitution included a provision, Article 48, that granted "emergency" powers to the government; powers that were greatly abused during the later years of the Republic.

b) What were its problematic points?

               Billion currency in EUROs became worthless as because potatoes costed around some billion euros instead of few marks and workers were paid only twice a day, many self-employed workers were forced to work. Retirement savings became worthless due to currency issues and on the other hand due to hyperinflation there was also increase in crime rates. Thousands of people suffer from hunger.

3. Why did the Weimar Republic fail? Collect and list some of the main reasons from Dalton’s text.

              From its birth, the Republic lacked a popular consensus behind the democratic institutions and procedures of the new political system. The elite class of the Empire retained control of the military, the judiciary, and the civil service. Democracy depended on an administrative elite that often longed for a return to a more traditional political order.

The fledgling democratic state then faced a series of major crises: repeated leftist and rightist coup attempts, political assassinations and violence, the inflation of the 1920s and the Depression of the 1930s. Such strains might have overloaded the ability of any system to govern effectively.