foreign this is the first video um in a three-part series covering the Germany 1918 to 1945 depth study this is by far the most commonly taught depth study option so this felt like a good series to go along with the international relations videos that I've already made um so I'll be doing one about each of the three key questions that comprise this topic okay so the very first part of the topic is key question one was the vime Republic doomed from the start um so just really brief overview of the topic in terms of what you're expected to cover in what you typically get questions about it essentially comes in two parts where this Topic's essentially they're essentially divided into two key sections the first part of the topic and so the bulk of it is basically the problem side of the Varma Republic so um you get obviously a wide range of format questions six months six month questions and 10 Mark questions where you also get quite a lot of for those of you guys who are not doing coursework they're instead in the paper four option in the paper four for the Weimar topic the most common kind of question you'll get will be something about the main problem faced by the Mr public between 1918 to 20 or whatever kind of time frame decided to come up with so it's quite important to have a really good understanding of the various different issues that are facing the country throughout the early about the decade in particular um because you get a wide range of questions of relation to that um the second part of the topic is about the Weimar golden age and in particular um that's a really important topic or really common question that you get in the main paper wide when it comes to 10 Market is the most common 10 mark question is about um the extent to which there was a recovery the extent to which there was a golden age Etc so if you're doing paper four then you need to know both of those two bits in quite a lot of detail if you're just doing paper one and the first part is mainly just sort of four and six Mark questions but the second part is where you'd like to get quite a lot of 10 Mark questions okay so I'm going to go through both of these in quite a bit of detail because I'm assuming some people will be doing paper 4 option um so this topic basically Begins by looking at the legacy of the first world war so um the first world war is basically for those of you for international relations series and obviously you've covered that or you might have already covered that already um the first world war creates a wide range of problems that eventually end up triggering the second world war um and most of those problems are basically the legacy of the war within Germany itself okay so um you can get format questions in relation to this topic they're quite rare but they do occasionally come up um so to kind of summarize it really briefly the first obvious impact of the war in Germany is that Germany has significant death tolls as a consequence of the first world war um you go you have over half of the 11 million Germans who fight in the war um who are basic casualties that's either um dead or injured basically so you've got a large number of individuals have basically been killed they've Left Behind widows and families Etc they can't really Drive anyone to look after them you also have individuals who come back from the war and are basically injured unable to work and therefore are in are in need of government assistance to ensure they can basically come get by so they require like pensions and um benefits and assistance and things like that so that's the first impact which is quite a major one um the second impact is that the government debt triples so at the first world war now this is unique to Germany whether other countries also struggle their debts as a as a consequence of the first world war um but Germany like others when you also add in the Treaty of Versailles has significant debt issues as a consequence of the first world war and that's a particular issue soon after the war as well the third issue um if you know your first world war history remember that Germany throughout the first world war is basically under blockade it's part of the reason why Germany is forced to surrender at the end of the first world war so um as a consequence of the blockade that Germany is under they can't basically get enough food supplies into the country um that then creates sort of riots and civil unrest um you get something like 700 750 000 people dying due to food shortages um throughout the entirety of the first world war and so as a consequence of that you then get the way the first world war comes to an end which is with the German government losing complete control over the country um that leading to the Kaiser resigning and then fleeing the country and going into Exile so um by October 1918 you already had quite a lot of unrest in Germany it starts to escalate even further um and it really culminates at the end of October in the start of November with a few kind of key issues so there continue to be kind of riots and civil unrest you also have quite a lot of strikes and really important industries and sectors and then lastly um there's a big Navy new Mutiny where they try to order the Navy out to sea to go and fight and they basically refuse because the war's almost over militarily um and that then triggers further unrest throughout the country more sort of like mutiny's um sort of like unrest or spreads and then the Kaiser basically realizes the war is definitely now over even though Germany militarily has not been fully defeated but there's nothing back from this situation and so the Kaiser is basically forced to flee as a consequence of this revolution that happens in Germany um and so that's on the 9th of November you therefore get um a surrender two days later now the way this happens basically helps to explain why there's so much um Discord in Germany after the first world war so Germany as I said militarily is not defeated okay they're on the they're on the run and they will lose eventually but they can continue to fight for a little one longer if they if they choose to and they can sort of defend Germany Germany will get invaded and sort of like drag that war a little bit longer um the new government which takes charge after the Kaiser flees is led by um the various different political parties and politicians who are in the right stag before the first world war so before the first world war um the largest party in the reichstag was a sort of left-leaning somewhat Socialist Party called The Social Democrat Party the SPD their leader was a person called Frederick Friedrich Eber he then becomes the chancellor um as soon as um Kaiser Wilhelm flees and when it becomes a Chancellor he immediately enters into negotiations to bring about an end to the war because the war has to come to an end and just an effects having on Germany so he at those negotiations he signs the Armistice and crucially Germany signs unconditionally um which then has the follow-up impact of living to the Treaty of Versailles and they start when they run unconditionally it means they cannot have any say in the negotiations which take place after the first world war and they simply have to accept whatever happens to them afterwards now despite the fact that a book takes over pretty challenging circumstances so the Kaisers fled but that doesn't change the fact that there is still full of food shortages if you're still unhappy and so there are quite a lot of challenges he faces immediately after taking over there continues to be civil unrest however he's in charge long enough um to agree and draft and agree along with the rest of the politicians um in um their assembly that um they have enough time to agree a new constitution however this is kind of where the naming comes into it um because there was still quite a lot of civil unrest in Berlin after the first world war again because of how it came to an end um the new assembly which forms the Constitution does not meet in Berlin they instead meet in a small little town called Weimer um to basically go get their business done and so as a consequence when the new constitution is agreed on the 31st of July it later on picks up the nickname the Weimar Republic and no one calls it that at the time that's not his official name and actually it's more of a name that's popularized by Hitler at the end of the 1920s as a derogatory slur basically it's the Weimar Republic because it was made in that little time of Weimar but obviously we'll call it Weimar or and people will refer to it as by Martha distinguish it from pre-war Germany and also from Nazi Germany after Hitler takes over but it's not it's never its official name um so weimar's got some very important um by Madison very important aspects of it's Constitution that you need to be aware of in terms of the structure of the government now you don't have to have all these different things here but I'll just kind of briefly talk at the key points that you do to aware of either because they're important to explain problems in the Constitution or because they're important to understand later events which take place so you'll rarely get questions in relation to this but if you don't understand this it makes the rest of it quite tricky to follow so the key thing to understand is that Germany has a separation of powers um and there's and there's meant to be sort of what we call checks and balances so there's powers are given to various different institutions um or part aspects of the government and they're all meant to have powers and sort of checks over each other so you first of all have an elected head of state the president okay now the president isn't a ceremonial figurehead who's got very little power the president in the van Republic's actually quite a powerful individual so president-elected for seven years Weimar ends up having two presidents the first one is Aba and then the second one is Hindenburg who's the last president before Hitler then takes over um they don't have any say in the day-to-day running of the country however they've got two really important Powers firstly they can choose or appoint the chancellor and so they choose a chance there isn't a chance that then has to get approved by the racks that can command the majority in the rack stack but it's the president who decides who the chancellor is that's really important because later on when Hitler wants to become Chancellor he has this roadblock which is Hindenburg who refuses to make him Chancellor initially that's number one the second important aspect of the president's roles the president has as I mentioned it here but it has these emergency powers where he can basically um allow the chancellor to rule by decree in an emergency situation meaning they can bypass the reichstag now this might seem quite dictatorial but the idea is is that in a time of emergency if necessary laws have to be passed um this does not mean the president can do whatever he wants to because theoretically you can give those powers to the to the chance on the reichstag the reichstag can still vote out um or just um yeah because sort of like just vote out the chancellor and try to potentially trigger new elections as necessary so it's not he's not all powerful but that is an important aspect of Constitution you then get um the key part being the government itself which is made up of the chancellor and his cabinet okay which is in the UK we've called him the Prime Minister um but other countries I'm guessing from a different country might also have that same title as well and so the church was ahead of the government really um he's the person who can propose laws and try to kind of get lost to the reichstag he also chooses um who the other ministers in the government are as well um crucially however like you'd find anything from the UK with a similar system here um the chancellor can't actually get his laws through unless he has a majority in the reichstag OR can get and those laws passed through the reichstag so the reichstag is basically that Parliament and that's where laws have to go through um to be pass or whatnot um and typically the chance will be the head of a coalition that has a majority in the reichstag um there's also this group here called the reich's crap which you don't need to know much about all the reich's wrapped which is basically um these parliaments in the or so this other part which is basically representative of the regions of Germany um they've got a few other additional Powers but they're not particularly significant on the regular into much detail the key things you do aware of the president the rack stack and the chance to learn how those three sort by into Interlink with each other crucially last point is that in terms of the um system for electing the reichstag and the chance and the president um Germany was um a country that had after the first world war full suffrage for men and women so all the element of age 21 could vote and women had the exact same voting rights as men which is different to other countries for example in Britain where and women could vote but had slightly more strict regulations on that so um one of the first points you can often get or questions you can get in terms of 40 marker about um problems that that farmer generally had is the Constitution itself now the Constitution has some problems however it does have some key strengths the first one being that it was very Democratic so the Constitution number one and had individual freedoms for everybody they gave people freedom of speech right so equality they were like the right to worship um so my free religion um but crucial has already mentioned the main quite Advanced feature of the cross stitch in this stage of at this stage the fact that it gave full suffrage to both men and women so all women could vote um under the same rules that all men can vote as well or people of those 21. other than one the second thing is and this again means it's quite Democratic because that um it had a system for lectures proportional representation okay meaning that when it came to allocating seats in the reichstag it was roughly proportional to how many votes you received um nationally so if you received something like that so the vote it means you would get roughly only 30 percent of the seats in the reichstag which meant that smaller parties had a chance of getting a say in the reichstag that's gonna have some counter some other problems later on but for the time being that could be some distract because it gives a say to everybody lastly as I already mentioned we'll go over the Constitution is that no person or body within the government was too powerful and so um the checks and balances worked to ensure that um there were ways to keep a balance in terms of no not one of the people coming too powerful on or being thought in the government um however on the whole there were some major issues with the Constitution the biggest issue is that same problem of the proportion representation so because of that electoral system meaning that even small parties can get into the reichstag it meant that the reichstag had far too many parties at many points in time so throughout the 1920s 29 different parties were able to get seats in the reichstag not the same time but if you go through the decade and typically you have something like eight to nine parties at least in the reichstag with multiple parties having a couple dozen seats at least um what this meant is that no party was ever able to gain the majority in the rack stag or even be close to a majority meaning that whenever you had to form a government it had to be a coalition of multiple different parties so the entirety of Weimar Germany in terms of reichstag is a series of Coalition governments between parties that do have quite a lot of differences between them which means two things number one um they lack strong clear policies number two it means that the governments are constantly falling and having to be reshaped and reject with new color supporters coming in and out so between 1919 1923 there are nine different governments or coalitions because they can't agree or they keep collapsing after every few months even some of the governments which are thought of as being quite successful or some collapse I'll mention this later on so for example stressman you'll be aware of um that's an important reason to explain why he goes from being Chancellor to being um foreign minister I'll talk about that later on so you have these constant switch-ups in government that was a major problem in the country was quite unstable often the second thing is a consequence of that so I mentioned at the start of the Constitution was quite Democratic but because it had this instability this tool that I mentioned article 48 that basically meant that you could get things done if um there were sort of disagree with the reichstag met that they used that far more than it was intended to in its original Inception so the president as I mentioned beforehand could pass laws by decree without support of the reichstag in an emergency situation because there were so many um situations where that was the case it gets used quite a lot and that's something which we'll talk about when we look at the rise of Hitler as a consequence of the depression so when we look at in the next video we'll discuss um the overall it's logical 48 quite a lot in terms of specific examples so you basically end up undermining the Constitution from the outset because it's overlap it's an article 48. the third thing that again as a consequence at the end of the first World War is that um and again it's part of this kind of issue of abortion representation loads of parties to get into the reichstag many of whom themselves did not support the Weimar Constitution or the principles of the Weimar Republic um so the reichstag sorry often had parties limit both of the left and of the right and politically that is um who despised um the Verma Republic and or the Constitution who wants to see overthrown so as a consequence of the electoral system you have lots of parties getting seats in the reichstag who actually want to get rid of um the consultation and Obama democracy which kind of again undermines it from the very beginning so arguably the modern public is as the question asks for this topic doomed from the start just based upon the Constitution the second way in which Southern Republic is arguably due from the start is again just going back to the end of the first world war so there was the first world war ended in terms of Germany not being defeated in the military on the battlefield um meant that the government was despised by large sections of German society and there's two reasons for this the first reason is again the nature of how the war ended because Germany was never invaded because the soldiers some of the soldiers at least did not see themselves being totally disorderly and defeated unlike as I said second world war where clearly um generally it's invaded and taken over bit by bit and you know commit suicide um the festival does not end that way and so this starts to feed into a conspiracy theory where for most Germans Germany have been doing well for most of the first world war militarily they were often in the ascendancy additionally due to censorship which all countries had most people were not aware of some of the issues that were creeping beneath the surface at the start of 1918 Germany's actually making this big push with the ludendorff offensive they've also just forced a surrender from Russia and so it looks like Germany is perhaps going to win the war eight months later alignments later they lose the war and suddenly a lot of people are really confused and this feeds into this thing this this um idea of the stab in the back myth this is particularly popular amongst right-wing nationalists ex-soldiers Etc who then start to believe Germany was not defeated the military in the first world war at all Germany instead was betrayed by politicians um conspirators Jews Communists the long list of normal enemies which the right-wing nationalists often point so in Germany and that um they betrayed Germany surrendered because they wanted to you know bring about the Revolution and that's why Germany lost so actually Germany could have fought on and continued so we've lost because of betrayal and both traitors are currently at the head of the Weimar Republic's government so it makes them really unpopular and right-wing circles to add insult to injury they then are forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles several months later which as again you'll know from the tree to FSI video was seen as a dictat which was addicted they were basically forced to agree to those terms they had no say in the matter and the terms were seen to be particularly insulting on every level so Germany has blamed for the war generally after this size of their army their operations the economy afterwards from their perspective then lose territory and land there are Germans that are split off to go into a place like Czechoslovakia which again for writing nationalists is a big problem so the end of the first World War the song of the treaty makes the mother public extremely unpopular from the very beginning and at the outset now to add on to that as our invention with the economic terms of the treaty the treaty is also seen to have damaged the German economy and it therefore makes the the Republic week from the outset it's going to economy it's unpopular um and it's um you know in a difficult situation in terms of military but the biggest blow of the treaty to Germany without a doubt is the political damage it does to um from the Republic again if you've watched the truth of Versailles video I talked about how um there was a debate about whether or not Germany was that badly affected economically by the Treaty of Versailles what cannot be denied is the political damage to the Obama Republic um and the consequence is a lot of uprisings and instability and attempts of her government in the following years um so those uprisings come in two forms you broadly speaking have what you might refer to as the extreme left and the extreme right so the extreme left essentially Communists the extreme right um basically far-rat nationalists who want to overthrow democracy and bring back the Kaiser pretty much um so they're in two they're in two forms now the earliest challenges to the Verma Republic come from the extreme left that's partly because a lot of the Revolutionary activity happening at the end of the first world war was by workers industrial workers sort of members of the left in the first place so they basically pick up where they left off at the end of the first world war and continue with that um now the strongest challenge manifests itself almost immediately after the first world war that's in January 1919 with the spartacist Revolt um so you can get on both these two Uprising spot assist and they'll also with the cat punch later you can get four and six Mark questions about them so I'll go through both in a little bit of detail um so in terms of the basic events of the spots Uprising it's very simple um it's no surprising to buy an extreme socialist group called the hypothesis League they're led by two individuals uh Oman Club Rose and Luxembourg and a man called carliepnect um which I can't pronounce very well and it's basically a Revolt triggered by thousands of workers who go out protesting in Berlin as a consequence of the sacking of a popular police chief who has seen to the synthetic to their kind of goals and Ambitions um by abert um so as a consequence the Spartacus uses as an opportunity to try and trigger a large-scale rebellion Revolt over for the government so this path assist call for an uprising and a general strike and general strike is basically when all the different workers from every single industry go on strike and refused to work when you have one it paralyzes the country completely this then works you have a hundred thousand workers taking to the streets on January the 6th as a consequence the government very quickly uses control of Berlin um as workers start to seize key locations across the capital um and as a consequence of the first world war the Army is in no position to put down the Revolt so this is where Ebert makes a critical decision which ends up suppressing the Revolt but long term has some very problematic consequences so um although the Army had to be reduced in size and the soldiers had been disbanded some of those soldiers still carried weapons and obviously were battle hardened and you know knew how to you know to fight so Abel orders army officers who had been demobilized um or others to organize the demobilized soldiers from the first world war into what they call free calls in other words um these sort of like cause from the RB who were not officially part of the army and therefore it's not technically part of that hundred thousand restriction from the Treaty of Versailles they therefore get called in German the fry Corps so the fry core tend to be mostly these right-wing nationalists again who fought the first world war who despised communism um and so as a consequence you've basically got these battle hard and quite cruel and brutal um anti-communist soldiers um who basically are crushing unarmed workers who are basically no match for them so the fry Corps crushed them by the 13th of January um and they then follow that up by then arrested by finding and arresting um Luxembourg and leibnek who on January 16th um are both arrested and their author they're also then both eventually executed whereas Luxembourg of course famously um gets shot in the head and dumped into the river afterwards um which is obviously quite a famous event um and so in terms of the extent of threat of this bath assist because you can also those get 10 mark question that asks you to compare the extent to which um the hypothesis are more or who was more threatening the protesters or the fry core so the Spartacus clearly posed a significant threat to the weakened German government simply because they took over Berlin and forced the government out of Berlin um and sees key locations so clearly they were a significant threat and the government was unable to handle them without having to call in him caught in a militia and that was not part of the government um however ultimately the threat of the spartacist cannot be overstated because ultimately they were crushed with ease by the fry call once they were called in so they have on the one hand they're threatening because they force out the government and the government car dealing themselves on the flip side the fry core does deal the swathy easily once they're called in to do that um now you then get a year later the backfiring of that decision by Abba he had to do it ultimately but it had some severe consequences um that is because the fry core whilst they hated the Communists and scrapped or destroyed the Spartacus they also had no love for abert and they themselves as right-wing nationalists despised the government they thought were weak and again we're part of this betrayal large numbers in the middle Easter did so and so they start to cause quite a lot of trouble over the next year and so ABA then decides that he needs to disband the Fright core who by now um who buy the sort of the beginning of within a couple of crushing the hypothesis now number 250 000 men clearly much stronger than the German Army itself um and so they get disbanded in 1920 however in response to that the fry core has no intention of putting the weapons they decide to instead turn their weapons and their guns on the government so there's two reasons why this Uprising happened so you could get a six marker on this the first reason is the government decides to disband them because of their lack of control the second reason that you could talk about would be the general discontent that right-wing nationalists had for biomass so if you have this question as a six Market you could talk about the things that we mentioned at the start about the stab in the back methotreated Versailles Etc okay so you have this building long-term dislike of the government by the fry Corps they then tried to disband the fry Corps the frackle then decides you know what let's go for it let's have this go from go for a revolt Now problem here is that um the frackle then marches on Berlin and when they get there the Army refuses to fire on the fry Corps because they're effectively ex-soldiers there's a famous quote on the officers it basically says Reich swear do not fire on Reich swear that's the name of the army base or soldiers and German army um and so as a consequence the fry core very soon takes over all of Berlin and they then decide to declare a man called Wolfgang cap as their leader and then declare the formation of a new government whilst also inviting the Kaiser to return back to Germany to again re-establish tutorial rule basically the government is no match for the fried Corps they flee Berlin and they cannot deal with the uprising they've technically been overthrown now this is where you basically get an opposite um situation as what happened with um the spartacists so like we're like with this pathosis the government cannot deal with them themselves so they call upon the political opposites of the five quarter deal with them so this time around it's the workers of Berlin um who in many respect in many cases living themselves crushed by the fry Court a year earlier um the Weimar government urges the workers to refuse to cooperate with the fry Corps and to go on strike um so it's the same issue which which helped Force the Weimar government out of Berlin with responses Uprising so the workers who themselves have mostly socialist leanings as I mentioned despise the fry core um and despise any attempt to try to bring back the Kaiser who they themselves wanted to remove in the first place and they then despite their own dislike of the government oblige and go on general strike and this brings all essential services to Halt meaning that cap and the fried Corps could not govern um the country and so as a consequence and Cat realizes he can't govern he flees the country but then himself gets imprisoned um that then is to Rebellion collapsing and the Weimar government then gets restored um so again same as beforehand You could argue that um the fricle um are quite a threatening Rebellion because they over the government but same as you would do for the um smartest argument or the spot system question you can talk about how on the flip side they're then um overthrown quite comfortably by the workers so if you have that question as a 10 marker I would frame it that way one point but the threat of the um fry Corps being strong one point about them not being strong as a counter and then similarly for Spartacus one argument for an argument against and that gives you your two versus two um now in addition to the uprisings there was also a recurring problem of just general political violence and assassinations of quite a lot of figures across the country um this tended to be not always but it was typically left-wing or moderate politicians being assassinated by right-wing nationalists who obviously despise them now in terms of numbers you've got between 1919 1922 over 376 assassinations of politicians and various other officials uh the most significant of which is the assassination of the foreign minister Walter rattanell um he's murdered in June 1922. now to make matters worse not only are this quite of political violence and assassinations um and you'll see this exact same issue with the Munich puts with Hitler in the next video that talk when we went over this um the judges in Germany were typically right-wing nationalist judges who themselves had sympathies with some of the aims and beliefs of some of these assassins and various different um militias and groups and so as a consequence whenever a right-wing um nationalist was involved in assassination they typically were lit Off The Hook by the courts or the judges who didn't prosecute them so in total no right-wing assassin is ever convicted of an assassination of this entire period on the flip side you've got um 10 left-wing assassins who are convicted so 300 300 76 assassinations 10 convictions okay um this again can go as part of the issue of the 14th for the fourth question that this question of what was the main issue facing my Germany it had this weak judicial system or court system that in particular when it came to right-wing violence was really lenient and did not deal with them which then encouraged further violence so that was a problem um and so this that has a follow-up consequence as well and you'll see this so obviously aware of the essay as bodyguards for the Nazi so what most people not aware of is that most political parties in Germany and 1920s had their own malicious and armed guards so the SPD or the such Democrat Party the kapd the Communists both had their own armed guards and militias just like the Nazis did for the same reason okay which is private security protecting their meetings and sometimes even disrupting opposition meetings as well so as a consequence of this climate you have these armed guards and political party meetings which meant that party meetings and political events often turned to violence as well as marches because of the involvement of armed guards which again is a massive problem with them a situation after the first world war in Germany so yeah position political violence in the short time however the biggest problem with Germany faces in the post-war period is the crises or the crisis or the crises of 1923 so again if you've watched the Treaty of Versailles video already they'll be quite familiar with these so I won't go over into and go over in too much detail in terms of the events which is a really brief summary um in 1923 all Germany's issues come to a head with the occupation of the raw and then the hyperinflation crisis so Brighton 23 Germany argues that it um as well sorry Germany had long been arguing that it could not pay their operations that were imposed on it by the Allies now in 1921 Germany had paid its first installment of their operations at the end of 1922 Germany announces that it will not be able to pay the French are not impressed by this they think that Germany a is lying in can pay but secondly if Germany will not pay as part of the treaty's agreements France can go into the rule and they can take their payments in kind in other words they can take Goods um and they can take Goods like raw materials iron steel materials things like that you know minerals Etc um and that's what France does it goes into the rule and invaded their army to take their payment in kind by force and so as with the as with the revolts of the five coin others the German government clearly has no ability to resist the French invasion more it's in their interest to do that and so the German government does not physically resist but instead again goes back to that same method they use of the fry core um which is to urge the workers of the rule to passively resist the French refused to work and to basically go on strike now unlike the fry core um the French are very well trained Army you know a small region therefore strikes aren't a mess of issue the French responding to very simple way the number one arrest any workers who obstruct their work in the raw and they instead bring their own workers to replace them it does start to get protests and Strikes and clashes that break out in the rule and their French response is quite heavy-handed again if you watch the 375 video talk about it then the French basically deal with it with their own um heavy-handed methods that then leads to 137 civilians being killed in clashes with the French in the Raw so this again heavily weakens and hurts the German government um or the firewall government the Germans resent the French invasion of the rule but ultimately they blame the Weimar government for being too weak a to resist the French but also B this is a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles and therefore they blame the government once again for signing the treaty and therefore put in the situation to begin with the second consequence of the raw Invasion however is that it cripples the German economy which was it had already arguably been in a pretty difficult position uh this is because the raw contains all of the crucial um um key factors all the sort of the main factories in um or the main industrial and Industrial regions it's called key factories raw materials Etc that Germany obviously needs for a variety of reasons the crisis also ends up worsening Japanese debt problem and I'll talk about why in a second with the hyperinflation situation um it includes it increases unemployment because they obviously made these workers go out on strike and therefore they have to pay them and it also worsens the sort of goods that already existed for the war because again up for um this crisis because again they can't get materials from the rule which previously were going to as part of Germany but the most important consequence is the hyperinflation crisis so again remember this from the truth FSI video it's too many reasons why this followed why this takes place um the first reason is is that um Germany has to continue paying the workers who are going on strike to incentivize them to go on strike um and so as a consequence um they're basically having to print money to pay those workers because they haven't got enough money to do that um they also on a racking up further debts because there's now fewer workers working in the Raw they have a shrinking tax intake um and need to pay off those debts which they've got fewer taxes to pay for basically and so as a consequence again they start printing money to try and pay off those debts as well okay so long story short they put loads loads of money to basically pay for workers and pay for their debts and their loans and this leads to skyrocketing inflation um with the following consequence at the start of the year a loaf of sorry the start of the a loaf of bread costs roughly 100 marks by November 1923 um a loaf of bread costs 200 trillion marks okay so the value of the currency basically becomes completely worthless um so this has some complex effects so on the one hand there are obviously some groups that are very negatively affected but on the other hand there are some groups that do relatively well out of hyperinflation so um if you are somebody who had loans in particular if you're a big business the government or even just an average person with loans then the value of those loans went down significantly as a consequence of hyperinflation and you could pay those off quite easily however the bulk of people were negatively affected in particular if you are somebody that had a pension or if you had savings you're a middle class family those savings basically basically became worthless and so you therefore lost potentially everything you've worked for throughout your entire life but then even people's day-to-day living changed significantly as a consequence of hyperinflation now long term this wasn't a problem but during the hyperinflation crisis it made life much more difficult and again led to resentment so because the currency is increasing so rapidly workers are actually being paid twice daily so they can go out and buy their goods from shops before the prices can rise in further and actually in some cases you can't even buy Goods using the money because it's worthless and it will become worthless very soon afterwards and so loads of shops only actually accept payment in kind in other words exchange goods for the goods you're buying because from their perspective that's all a valuable exchange than taking up your worthless money so data living changes rapidly in the short term but in the long term um middle class people are people with savings all people are next and severely impacted um businesses people with large loads Etc tend to do quite well out for hyperinflation um and so that really is the high point or the the yeah the high point of um of difficulty or challenge other Republic in the possible period at the end of 1923 the hypervation crisis comes to an end and you get um the beginning of the period which is often referred to as the Golden Age of Weimar okay now this period is also often referred to as the stressman era or the stressman years because it's associated with the most prominent politician of the era a man called Gustav stressman okay so just before I go into the back and forth of how much it recovers or not I'll sort of briefly talk about who this guy is and just a little bit about the peering District clarify a few little points um the first thing is he is not the chancellor for the bulk of this period in time okay um stressman is the leader or one of the main conservative parties in um the reichstag a group called the DVP it's not the most it's not the largest conservative party but it's the second largest of the conservative parties it's the one which is most um agreeable to the Bible Constitution um so he gets uploaded chance on August 1923 we're mentioned the start of the video that you have these constant switch-ups in government and so in 1923 because of the hyperinflation crisis you get lots of changing of the government um and so he make he gets made charts in 1923 on August 23 rather and despite actually doing an okay-ish job um by November he's basically forced to resign because of again his inability to control the reichstag and just disputes other political parties so he resigns the position because of the just general difficulties of the rack stag um however he's then immediately um back in government as part of the ex Coalition where he's made the foreign minister instead so in terms of the changes that happen you'll notice in terms of the dates that some of the things we're going to talk about um or the points we talk about will be from certain years and they read it to stressman based on the roles that he's in okay I'll put that in a little bit in a second so he remains foreign minister which is one of the most significant positions within the German government um throughout the decade until he dies suddenly in October 1929 it's actually before the Wall Street Crash about ticks beforehand um which is an interesting sort of twist of fate um where had he lived a little bit longer he might have done a better job with the Wall Street Crash or he would have seen his hard work unravel quite quickly uh but crucially as prime minister he's able to make decisions and cut policies and um have some successes and achievements that helps Germany to recover quite quickly um in the second half of the decade so um you can often get as I mentioned especially for the paper one the most common Denmark question will be about the Golden Age and one of two things either the extent to which Germany recovers or what the main achievement was of the golden age so the first achievement is is that stressman is able to end the hyperinflation crisis and he does this whilst he is still Chancellor okay so he's Chancellor between August and November and so in November 1923 stressman sets up a new state-owned bag called the renten bank and this issues a new currency um in November um called the ren 10 Mark and the basic idea here is this new currency is tied to the price of gold so you can't simply start printing more of it off because you need to have more gold Supply which you don't have you can't do and secondly as a consequence it means that the supply of this currency is strictly limited which means in the future you can't have hyperinflation and it should be a currency that people are more confident in to actually keep its value this then does bring pretty much immediately the hyperinflation crisis to an end within Germany okay it's a much stronger currency and it's people have faith that it will work in the long term um now in terms of this recovery there's two things to bear in mind so on the one hand there is a recovery because um we don't businesses do well the economy will will do better with other consequence however what are the counters to the Golden Age argument is that any losses which took place under the hyperinflation crisis were permanent so if you lost your savings on the hyperinflation the government did not replace them for you it was gone for good so any losses were permanent any gains if you paid off your loans were also permanent so if you did well you did well if you did terribly sad times for you either terribly um so this is the main achievement he's got as Chancellor the rest of the achievements you'll notice are all related to um foreign treaties and this is why stressman despite being foreign minister is able to help Germany recover economically as well okay so as foreign minister he's in charge and he's responsible for negotiating agreements and Deals and treaties with other countries the first of which when it comes to economic recovery is the doors plan of 1924. okay so this is a few months into this world into his brought us prime minister he agrees this deal with um American negotiators hence why it's called the doors plan the American um diplomats called Charles doors um and so it's got a few kind of key agreements the first thing is reparations were temporarily reduced to 50 million pounds per year okay this would then go back up again after five years but in the short term their operation payments will be reduced to Germany so they can be more manageable the second thing is the key part of the doors plan is that German banks also Germany would be loaned by U.S banks 25 billion dollars between 1924 and 1930. now the plan does not specify that itself but as a consequence of the plan you get this taking place these loans are 25 billion dollars those loads of the German Industries to help Germany kind of build us up we'll recover create jobs Etc and prosperity the final part of the agreement is that Germany would agree to receive reparation payments um which then as a consequence later on then leads to the French leaving the rule this is something respects the doors plan quite unpopular amongst some groups that Germany basically agrees they're consuming reparations and but the consequence is that the French Leave the rule Strassman realizes that Germany has to end these crises if they're going to recover okay they have to base in each other well they basically are going to keep to their agreements they're going to be a responsible nation and if they can do that um they'll be treated more equally or get better treatment as a consequence and so the door plan works quite effectively as a consequence of these loans and you know being able to get the raw back and actually start producing things there and you know keeping your materials Etc industrial output in Germany doubles between 1923 and 1920 in other words what they're producing within their industrial regions physical production he also therefore as a consequence Gap because they're now actually getting folks to work higher employment you get increased trade with other parts of the world and as a consequence you also get increased income um from taxation so all these things all work together and it means that the doors plan has quite a wide range of long-term positive effects for Germany the main drawback however and there's sort of a long-term problem is that Germany's recovery is dependent upon U.S loans which if the Americans choose to recall those loans could start to hurt Germany and obviously looking forward to the future that is what happens so when the Wall Street Crash takes place American banks are desperate to recall their loans they do that to German banks that then severely impacts Germany after the Wall Street Crash the second consequence there's not a huge consequence but it is seen to be a problem um is that it's criticized heavily by the extreme right nationalists who are Furious that Germany has turned once again to the other powers effectively by agreeing to start operation payments this has seen as surrender with extreme right which obviously makes the government even more popular as a consequence the doors plan then gets followed up five years later by the young plumber young plan can be a little bit confusing just to kind of figure out exactly how it differs from the doors plan but the way to think about it very simply is the young plan aims to build more permanent Solutions on top of the temporary solutions that had been put forward by the endorse plan so the doors plan temporarily reduce operations payments but they were meant to go back up again in the long term so they open those two things number one the total this is the main outcome the total payments have been reduced from 6.6 billion to Just 2 billion which is a big victory for Germany the second thing is um they again um reduce the amounts that generally has to pay meaning that Germany has a payment period extended up until 1988 they are they are given an extra 59 years to pay out their operations as a consequence um the Final Consequence is that all remaining Allied troops also agreed to leave Germany this is in particular in the Rhineland so as a consequence of the doors plan um reparations France eventually agrees to leave the rule however there were parts of Germany that continued to be occupied by um the European powers in particular France and that was basically the Rhineland um as a consequence of the young plan all remaining Allied troops leave Germany and so Germany is now free of completely free of occupation by Foreign soldiers and troops now this like the doors plan was very unpopular it was very unpopular with amongst right-wing nationalists in particular the dnv people have not mentioned just as I get the dmvp is the largest right-wing nationalist party in Germany they're not quite as Extreme as the Nazis but they themselves are quite radical um and at various points in time opposed Weimar democracy um so the dmvp and the Nazis get together and organize opposition to the young plan and they're able to trigger a referendum um a vote basically to try and block the young plan um from going into effect however and this is this goes to show that actually the empire was quite successful 85 of Germans vote in favor of the young plan showing that it had massive public support it actually was a pretty good step forward for Germany despite the opposition so the opposition point is really overstated because ultimately most people just ignored it and thought it wasn't particularly convincing or a good argument to go along with now last but in terms of the economy in terms of the raw numbers as well it again it's quite clear that Germany standard of living and economic recovery in the 1920s is quite strong so unemployment Falls just 1.3 million by 1928 you also get a new policy being created by the government of unemployment insurance meaning that government workers pay into an insurance pot as part of their way as part of their wages every single month but as a consequence if there was a full sick or get unemployed they would get um a unemployment benefit of 60 marks a week to help them get by in case of that kind of difficult situation for them um you also get in terms of General living standards the length of a working week Falls from four sorry Falls to 46 hours on average whilst at the same time real wages in other words your wage compared to inflation um go up by 25 so the German Workers got more spending power whilst working less on average over the course of the 1920s um the government also uses a tax on rent to fund and the building of new homes now this is not as much as they still needed so they start a short form but essentially they were able to create 64 000 new homes which did slightly ease housing shortages after the first World War um lastly and I mentioned this at the very beginning of the video and I talked about the issue with death toll after the first world war and that should the veterans and the widows um throughout the 1920s you have 750 000 War veterans 400 000 widows and 200 000 parents of dead soldiers who are paid pensions throughout the entirety of that decade which again just maintains living standards um throughout the entire time period so on the whole economically it is a recovery or a golden age um as the course refers to it as always people refer to it the second aspect of Germany's recovery which again because of the fact that their physical these are foreign treaties comes back to stressman himself um is um the Lucano pact which has some very significant consequences so stressman wants to also improve Germany's image and reputation abroad um and his greatest success in achieving that is The meccano Pact of 1925. now the extreme rights are horrified by this because it's essentially again a betrayal and acceptance of Versailles and the surrender basically but Germany basically accept its 1919 born with France the Rhineland has agreed to be permanently demilitarized and as a consequence of this this is what shresthman gets out of it is they agree that talks will begin about germ membership of the League of Nations again if you're a call from the international relations videos Germany is initially not allowed to join the League of Nations because they're not seen to be peace loving yet they open up negotiations to bring Germany into the League of Nations and so that basically happens a year later so in September 1926 Germany gets accepted into the League of Nations as a consequence of locarno Pact not only the Germans on the League of Nations Germany in particular is invited and given a permanent seat on or is a permanent member of the League of Nations Council which again I'll remind you from the tax relations videos the League of Nations council is the main decision-making body of the league which um Can sanction people Etc and if you are a member of the council it means that you can veto any decision made by them so to be given a seat on the council now shows that Germany has is now being seen as an equal and has hence reputation restored and clearly is a much more significant player out in the peak going forward when it comes to International politics so this is a real massive success for stressman in terms of Germany's International standing now Netflix has already mentioned are still Furious because the surrender of you know the land from Versailles Etc you also get some anger amongst Communists because they hear a call from the international relations topic the USSR was not invited to join the League of Nations the League of Nations was seen to be a little bit of a capitalist Club basically that was conspiring against the USSR and so some Communists were also upset by the joining of the League of Nations by Germany which this will take place and they saw it as a as a way to try and marginalize the Assad even further basically but on the whole it's still pretty effective and a pretty significant gain um the final way in which um Germany could be seen to have recovered in the 1920s is they start to become much more politically stable now there is a drawback to this where it's not total stability but it clearly is a massive Improvement on the old system so the reasons why Germany in the first place already talked about was struggling politically in terms of the instability is because economically they're in trouble and secondly um people upset about Germany's kind of international status the way which they've been treated and so these two um improvements economically in their International standing mean that moderate political parties see a massive Improvement in their um popularity throughout the second half of the decade you also get some political parties increasingly becoming more moderate as well as a consequence okay so you get for example the Nazis losing popularity significantly over the course of the Decades the Nazis lose one million votes from their first election result in 1924 into their second one in 1928 okay because they're just they're no longer their policies aren't as attractive in a politically in a stable economic environment and that that boat share mainly goes to moderate parties you secondly also get as I mentioned in some political parties of the dmvp so the dmvp originally was an extreme right party which wanted to oppose um the Constitution and you know destroy family democracy um in the second half of the decade they kind of go back and forth a little bit and so for two or three years they become much more accepting of um so they think something begrudgingly accepted by my democracy and they actually support and back Paul Von Hindenburg in his presidential election campaign which also kind of further brings them on side so um ABA dies he's then replaced by Hindenburg who because he's this old military and he's he's a general from the first world war he's seen to be a very like nationalistic powerful figure who's quite a stable strong leader this brings more people on side who previously were skeptical of Obama Republic so moderate parties have a higher vote share some parties like the dmvp become more direct you also get more support for the further public because of the hindenburg's presidency and part of the Nazis lose support and on declining of the course of decades so politically things are more stable um now despite that there is still some of the old difficulty from the start of the decade the first thing is Germany continues to chop and change chancellors so there are four chancellors in this period so they're getting a new leader basically every single year which is better than nine coalitions in four years but it's still not what you call stable it's just less unstable if that makes sense the second thing is is that despite the increased support for um moderate parties you still get roughly 30 percent of the vote in elections going to parties that ultimately oppose the Obama Republic and want to see it removed or significantly altered um this includes the dmvp who despite the fact that um they become a moderate are still considered a more extreme party to an extent and that's shown with the fact that after 1928 the dmvp start to more closely work alongside the Nazis I mentioned on the previous slide that when it came to the young plan the national dmvp collaborate to organize opposition to the young plan so there is still political opposition to um Republic and lastly arguably the idea of the dmvp in Hindenburg becoming major aspects of the new government or you know for the presidency hindenburg's case Obama is the reichstag arguably undermines by my democracy because he basically got um the dmvp with large number of seats in the rack stack and Hindenburg who's president who himself did not ultimately support the fundamental principles of our Republic so you've got people who are in senior positions within the government who ultimately do not support the principles of the Constitution and the Obama Republic so in the long term that will be a problem and again you'll see this when it comes to um the situation after the Depression with Hitler and the Takeover a lot of the um decisions made by Hindenburg and others around him it's quite clear that this was somebody who ultimately didn't support the fundamental principles of the Prime Republic and therefore is happy to abuse things like article 48 Etc so they become more politically stable but they're not totally stable by the end of the decade so if you've got a question about how far it was a golden age or how far they recovered you definitely want to talk about as a counter argument the continued extremism in some circles the final effort of this topic is the cultural achievements and this is not a recovery point so if you had a question asking you about how far Germany recovered do not talk about cultural achievements if you had a question about Golden Age then you can talk about cultural achievements okay so just be really careful on the phrasing of questions um because this is basically something which was the case throughout the decades that's not necessarily A covery it's what it was always like out the period so um the first thing is in terms of cultural achievements is women's rights um your textbook's not going to talk about it much at all um but it is a key thing you can talk about in terms of cultural achievements or you know it being a golden age um women did very well in Weimar and Germany compared to other parts of the world so in particular I already talked about the Voting Rights um as a consequence of those voting rights you had over 90 turnout by women in elections going to vote and over the course of the entire period of Weimar Germany you have 112 women being elected um that's cumulatively so you add up every single Parliament together and by 1932 that number increased year by year so women had quite of representation politically within my Germany um article 109 of the Constitution also formerly gave women equal rights as men which again for the time was quite um was quite an advanced modern concept compared to other countries um and they also therefore as a consequence had much better employment opportunities and just individual Freedom so you had more women in professional occupations so for example the number of female doctors Rose from Two and a Half thousand to five thousand between 25 to 1932 um women in particular young women in urban locations so Berlin Etc in the cities tended to also have greater job opportunities and therefore as a consequence had more social Independence so you hadn't even basically going out um you know going out freely smoking dressing as they wanted to um which um for some was basically kind of yeah liberal of more liberal society that has some negative consequences in terms of social cohesion um but that could be seen as a way in which German was again more involved in other parts of the world um the second major cultural achievement um was that Germany had really Advanced an interesting art architecture Cinema and science okay so there's a couple of reasons behind this so after the first world war the battle will always had censorship that's quite strict and enforced quite um quite tightly you also had a log with the end of censorship at the end of the first world war the new Constitution that again gave people more freedoms and more rights and so that was a really ideal scenario and situation for artists and writers to more freely Express themselves and so between each of these different categories you've got quite a lot of ways in which Germany had quite a lot of interesting cultural achievements so in terms of art and literature all the old styles are basically abandoned and instead art and literature focused much more on representing people's everyday life and experiences and so this could look like um talking about you know the struggles that um that soul is coming up the festival face it could be things like criticizing Army leaders um and so the art style and the literature was seem to be much more culturally um developed and interesting as opposed to Old boring Styles just sort of you know painting Landscapes and and whatnot I've been spoken with architecture Etc so it was much more um sort of it sort of pushed the batteries much more in terms of what could be um achieved up portrayed secondly kind of linked to that as well you also have obviously these famous Bauhaus startup design that develops as well so you have the Bauhaus School design which is set up in Germany and they're able to kind of cope with these quite new and exciting new um styles of creating buildings objects Etc many of which today people recognize as being quite modern styles and so the Bauhaus architectural style design Styles very much quite influential when it comes to what we now think was a modern Design Star so modern design really originates from stems from my 1920s Germany uh in terms of their Cinema as well Germany's a world leading um has a welding Cinema industry um where they Pioneer quite a lot of new emerging genres so for example when it comes to horror there's a famous film in 1921 called nosferati The Vampire um which Pioneers quite a lot of new techniques in terms of horror movies even also have one of the most famous side section moves of all time Metropolis in 1929 I believe um or towards the end of the decade um I think it might be 1930 um where again it's considered as the first ever science fiction movie that really Pioneers quite a lot of interesting techniques in terms of how that how that's kind of carried out um these stars of German Cinema are also quite internationally famous so people like monina Dietrich you then kind of goes to Hollywood lateral becomes quite a very famous actress there so German Cinema is culturally very very influential which again suggests that Germany isn't as Golden Age basically as it comes to their cultural achievements lastly this is quite an objectively easy one to measure as well is that German Science And scientists continue to be world renowned so a very objective way of measuring it is very simple throughout the 1920s German scientists win more noble science prizes than any other Nation put together okay so Germany's doing pretty well um throughout the night so this when it comes to their side so culturally um if you had a question about Golden Age you definitely want to have at least one big paragraph talking about cultural achievements now the flip side to this is that there are some social and so there are some tensions that come about as a consequence of these social and cultural changes in particular when it comes to the women's rights situation many people felt threatened by the growing independence of women and believed that that was basically undermining German Society in particular um a lot of the behavior of young women in the city so sort of drinking smoking taking drugs um being quite um sexually very free um and yeah being being sort of pushing the boundaries in that in that regard um obviously upset and threatened a lot of people in German Society in particular people like the Nazism or people are hit on the Nazis will use that issue quite a lot to their own um for their own benefit to try and basically argue that Germany is in this morally decadent situation in state and that is quite a popular message in the late 1920s um there was also the criticism particularly by some socialists left in the in groups that actually um a lot of money was being used to finance the work of artists and that was which instead could be used to be supporting um working people who need basic help instead which they weren't getting but could be getting even further as a consequence the party should not have been supporting the Arts um Aloft has already mentioned would be a point about um the women situation the same thing also applied to the art style so right-wing nationalists believe that the new culture emerging in Germany where whether it's the behavior of women whether it's the films being produced the music people listening to was basically a side of moral Decline and they associated with foreigners bringing in again decadent degenerate culture from their perspective into Germany and again in particular Hitler is really upset by the new art style maybe because he himself um it kind of changed it means that's part of the reasons why he himself can't get into art school um he kind of is an artist who has this old style but he himself can't um he himself cannot use he can't produce work of the new style basically um his own personal dislike of it essentially but yeah writing machinists do seize upon this and it does create social tension within Germany um all right so just to make sure there's something really really briefly um as I mentioned um when it comes to 10 Mark questions um so it's 40 markers you're likely going to get a question about um the problems facing Vine mod Germany after the first world war when it comes to 10 markers the vast majority of questions will be about the Golden Age and or vimara recovery and essentially again if you've watched the truth of our side video it's quite similar to how the 10 mark question works for Treaty of Versailles so you're likely going to get a question asking you either the extent to which Germany did recover in this period or was it a golden age and those two questions are very similar the main difference is if it's asking about recovery don't talk about cultural achievements if it's talking about Golden Age you can mention cultural achievements but essentially it's for and against you know is it a golden age or is it a recovery arguments against that it's not so they're similar but subtle different questions the other question which you get quite a lot is what was the greatest achievement of this era so it might say to you for some cultural achievements and the main you know achievable strength of Weimar Germany or something like that and so this is basically a question where it's like the Treaty of Versailles was it fair or not or that question it says what was the main reason Germany was angry with the Treaty of Versailles basically for this question it's similar to the first one but you're only talking about improvements or achievements okay so if you're doing so if it's asking you know cultural achievements you do cultural achievements one two arguments in favor and the two arguments say actually it was economics and it was um Foreign Relations okay so you don't do arguments against cultural achievements you just do cultural achievements as the main one no actually something else is more important okay or if it's the economic recovery again you do a couple of points saying that was the main achievement as a counter argument actually no it was cultural achievements or it was um political stability or something like that okay and those are the main kinds of other questions you can get for that um topic um so um I hope that was really helpful and that kind of all made sense um if you've got any kind of further questions you'd like to ask about that um then just leave a comment or question in the comment section below and I'll normally go back to you whenever I see her get a chance um and hopefully look out for the next couple of videos which next couple of videos which I'll be posting um in the next week or so um so yeah foreign