Weimar Republic: Gone But Not Forgotten

The Weimar Republic has been on people’s minds with the results of the U.S. presidential election and rise of the radical right in Europe. Is there a lesson to be learned from the Weimar experience?  Any answer to that question has to be grounded in the chaotic history of the republic that barely held Germany together from 1919 to 1933.

 

Weimar is notorious for its ending. In 1933, leaders of the last of Weimar’s always shaky coalition governments offered the Chancellorship to Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s National Socialist German Worker’s Party had won 51 percent of the electorate in March; the right-wing members of the Weimar coalition thought they could use and control the upstart Hitler and his street-brawlers. Before the end of the year, however, the Nazis were firmly in control of the state. The resulting catastrophe has reduced the Weimar Republic to the status of symbol, warning, even parable, of the fragility of democracy.

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