Problems of the Weimar Government, 1919-1923 Quiz

Answer: Spartacists

In January 1919, 50,000 Spartacists rebelled in Berlin, led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were arrested on 15th January and murdered later the same night by counter-revolutionary volunteers on the pretence that they had attempted to escape.

Answer: 1920

The Kapp-Putsch occured when two Freikorps (that is, bands of mercenaries) refused to disband, as required byt the Treaty of Versailles. The putsch was named after Wolfgang Kapp, but was led by Jagow and Lüttwitz. The larger of the two, the Marine-Brigade Ehrhardt was formed January 1919 in Wilhelmshaven to fight the Spartacists.

The putsch failed because it lacked popular support and because the trade unions organised a general strike in support of Ebert's Government and brought Berlin to a standstill.

After just 100 hours this revolt collapsed. Indirectly, the putsch weakened the government as it fled from Berlin to Stuttgart, supposedly to avoid bloodshed. This made the government look cowardly and it was unable to take any credit for the failure of the putsch.

Answer: 1922

Walther Rathenau was assassinated by two right-wing army officers on 24th June, 1922. He was murdered because the right-wing extremists claimed he was part of a "Jewish-Communist conspiracy". Rathenau was a successful businessman. During WWI he had headed the government department responsible for harnessing the German economy to the war effort.

In the Weimar Republic he helped form the German Democratic Party (DDP) and negotiated the Treaty of Rapallo. This treaty between Germany and Soviet Russia involved mutual recognition, re-established diplomatic relations, renounced financial claims on each other and pledged future co-operation.

Moreover, a secret clause allowed Germany to station a large number of troops in Russia and avoid the provision in the Versailles Treaty that restricted the size of the German army to 100,000 men.

Answer: Article 231

Germany was ordered to pay £6,600 million in reparations to the allies.

Answer: Because it was dictated to them, without real consultation.

The Germans felt cheated by this treaty, because virtually none of Wilson's 'Fourteen Points' had been included in the treaty. The Weimar government, especially Ebert who had signed the treaty, was looked upon as traitorous. Many Germans claimed that the German army had not really been defeated at all and that Germany had been 'stabbed in the back' by socialist subversives on the home front. For people who took this legend seriously it is hard to imagine any peace treaty that would have satisfied them.

Answer: 1923

French and Belgium troops invaded the Ruhr because of the late delivery by Germany of 100,000 telegraph poles (as reparations in kind). The British government regarded the French occupation of the Ruhr as an part of a wider French plan to set up a puppet state in the Rhineland and the Ruhr and dissociated itself from the occupation.

Answer: Because German workers in the Ruhr went on strike and the government printed extra money to pay them.

The French choose to invade the Ruhr as it was Germany's most valuabe industrial area. There were also plans to try to separate the Ruhr (and the Rhineland) from Germany, under French "protection" in a "Rhenish Republic".

Answer: They were right-wing

Most judges were very right-wing and wanted to destroy the government. After the Kapp-Putsch, 700 rebels were tried for treason; only one (!) went to prison. After the Munich Putsch, Hitler was treated very leniently.

Answer: 1923

The putsch grew out of Hitler's attempt to exploit the crisis of 1923. At first, Hitler had prepared his stormtroopers to help in a wider Bavarian rebellion. When the Bavarian leaders (Kahr, Lossow and Seisser) threatened to call off the action, Hitler realised that he could not keep the stormtroopers waiting any longer. On the night of 8 November 1923 he took over the Beer Hall and forced Kahr, Lossow and Seisser to promise to support him.

A triumphal march into Munich was planned on 9 November, but the police easily dispersed the Nazis.

Although the Putsch failed, it - and the trial that followed - turned Hitler into something of a hero, and laid the foundation of his future success. (The judge allowed Hitler to make political speeches from the dock - something that was completely out of order).

Answer: Stresemann

Stresemann entered the Reichstag in 1907, and died in 1929. He called off the policy of passive resistance in the Ruhr, introduced the new German currency, the Rentenmark, in order to stabalise the Germany currency. (He was Chancellor for only a few months, but then a very successful Foreign Minister from 1923-29).