Was Weimar doomed from the start?

Germany's Kaiser abdicated on 9 November 1918 and the armistice followed two days later. The new republic, led by Friedrich Ebert, was born out of defeat — and blamed for it.

• The "stab in the back" myth: nationalists claimed the army had been betrayed by the politicians who signed the armistice — the "November Criminals".
• Versailles: war guilt, reparations and lost territory were pinned on the republic.
• The constitution: democratic, with proportional representation — but that produced many small parties and unstable coalitions. Article 48 let the President rule by decree in an emergency.

Early violence: the Spartacist rising (January 1919) from the left was crushed with the help of the Freikorps; the Kapp Putsch (1920) from the right was defeated by a general strike. The republic survived — but its enemies were on both flanks.

Why was Weimar politics unstable?

1923 — and the Stresemann years

When Germany fell behind with reparations, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr in 1923. The government backed passive resistance and printed money to pay strikers — producing hyperinflation: savings were wiped out and money became worthless. In November 1923 Hitler's Munich Putsch failed and he was imprisoned.

Under Gustav Stresemann Germany recovered:

• A new currency (the Rentenmark) ended hyperinflation.
• The Dawes Plan (1924) rescheduled reparations and brought US loans; the Young Plan (1929) reduced them.
• Locarno (1925) settled Germany's western borders; Germany joined the League of Nations in 1926.

The "Golden Twenties" were fragile: recovery rested on American loans. When the Wall Street Crash came in 1929, those loans were recalled — and the extremes surged.

Why 1929 mattered

Why was Hitler able to dominate Germany by 1934?

In 1928 the Nazis held just 12 Reichstag seats. Depression changed everything: 107 seats in September 1930, 230 in July 1932 — the largest party. Yet Hitler was not voted into power. He was appointed Chancellor on 30 January 1933 by President Hindenburg, in a deal cooked up by conservatives who thought they could control him.

He then dismantled democracy in months:

• Reichstag Fire, 27 February 1933 → emergency decree suspending civil rights; communists arrested.
• Enabling Act, 23 March 1933 → Hitler could make laws without the Reichstag.
• Gleichschaltung — trade unions banned, other parties banned; Germany became a one-party state.
• Night of the Long Knives, 30 June 1934 → Röhm and the SA leadership murdered, reassuring the army and big business.
• 2 August 1934 — Hindenburg died; Hitler merged Chancellor and President as Führer, and the army swore an oath to him personally.

How did the Nazis rule?

Tap a method, then tap what it was mainly used for.

Terror, propaganda and opposition

Terror: Himmler's SS, the Gestapo (secret police), compliant law courts and concentration camps (the first opened at Dachau in 1933) made opposition dangerous. Ordinary Germans informed on one another.

Propaganda: Goebbels controlled newspapers, radio (cheap "People's Receivers"), film, rallies at Nuremberg and the 1936 Olympics. Books were burned; modern art was branded "degenerate".

Opposition existed — and was punished:

• Churches: Pastor Martin Niemöller and the Confessing Church.
• Young people: the Edelweiss Pirates and the Swing Youth rejected Nazi conformity.
• Students: the White Rose group in Munich (1943); the leaders were executed.
• The army: the July Bomb Plot of 1944, led by Stauffenberg, failed.

When did Hitler become Chancellor?

Workers, women and young people

Workers: unemployment fell sharply through public works (the autobahns), the National Labour Service (RAD), conscription and rearmament. Trade unions were replaced by the German Labour Front (DAF); Strength Through Joy (KdF) offered cheap holidays and the promised People's Car. But workers lost the right to strike or bargain, and hours grew longer.

Women: the Nazi ideal was Kinder, Küche, Kirche — children, kitchen, church. Women were pushed out of professions, encouraged to marry and have large families, and rewarded with the Mother's Cross. In wartime, that policy reversed as female labour was needed.

Young people: the Hitler Youth and the League of German Maidens trained boys for soldiering and girls for motherhood; school lessons — history, "race studies", PE — were rewritten around Nazi racial ideas.

Nazi economic policy

The Jewish community and racial policy

Nazi racial ideology drove escalating persecution:

• 1 April 1933 — national boycott of Jewish shops and businesses.
• September 1935 — the Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of German citizenship and banned marriage between Jews and non-Jews.
• 9–10 November 1938 — Kristallnacht: synagogues burned, shops smashed, tens of thousands of Jewish men sent to camps.
• During the war — ghettos in occupied Poland, mass shootings by the Einsatzgruppen, and then the Final Solution: industrialised murder in death camps. Roma, disabled people, homosexuals and political prisoners were also persecuted and killed.

Exam point: persecution was not one sudden act. Trace the escalation — legal exclusion (1933–35), organised violence (1938), then genocide during the war.

Match the event to its significance

Tap an event on the left, then what it achieved for the Nazis on the right.

The home front, 1939–45

Early victories brought loot and food from occupied Europe, so rationing bit slowly. From 1942–43 that changed:

• Total war was declared after Stalingrad; consumer production was cut and women were drafted into factories.
• Allied bombing devastated German cities (Hamburg in 1943, Dresden in 1945); civilians were evacuated and morale strained.
• Labour shortages were filled with millions of foreign and forced labourers.
• Repression intensified — the White Rose students and the July 1944 plotters were executed.

Germany surrendered in May 1945; Hitler had taken his own life in Berlin in April.

Opposition in Nazi Germany

Judging "how effectively did the Nazis control Germany?"

Balance the argument:

• Very effective: a one-party state, the SS and Gestapo, total control of media and schools, and genuine popularity from jobs, order and foreign policy successes.
• Limits: opposition never disappeared — churches, youth subcultures, students, army officers; and support often rested on fear or on results (work, national pride) rather than belief.
• Conclusion: control was overwhelming, but it depended on a mixture of terror, propaganda and consent — and consent weakened as the war turned against Germany.

When did Hitler become Führer?

The Nuremberg Laws

The through-line of Depth Study B

Three linked judgements to be able to argue:

• Weimar was not doomed — it survived 1919–23 and recovered under Stresemann — but it was fragile, and the Depression exposed that fragility.
• Hitler's rise combined economic crisis, Nazi appeal and organisation (propaganda, the SA, Hitler's oratory), and the miscalculation of conservative politicians.
• Nazi rule reshaped every part of life — and ended in war, genocide and total defeat.

The Enabling Act

The big ideas to know

That is Depth Study B: Germany, 1918–45. Press Finish to see your score.