The Coming of the Third Reich

Another major weakness of the Weimar Republic was that, in the early 1920s, it was “beset by economic failures of a dimension unprecedented in German history” (103). Germany was heavily indebted because of World War I. The war debts, the need to pay reparations, and the decline of Germany’s trade and industrial production wrecked the economy. After a short economic recovery, Germany was hit by “hyperinflation” (105), especially with the price of food. Inflation was worse in Germany than anywhere else in Europe. The German economy was saved by a payment plan for reparations, the Dawes Plan, and the introduction of a new currency, the Reichsmark.

One consequence of inflation was that the new currency contributed to the “economic and social cohesion of the middle class was shattered, as winners and losers confronted one another across new social divides” (110). This resulted in the political parties splitting and weakening. Crime and black markets spread. Culturally, films and novels reflected a fascination with criminals and gamblers. Confidence in the law declined, and political language focused on images of criminals and the “financially manipulative Jew” (112).

Bankers and industrialists benefited from the economic instability of the early 1920s. Still, wealthy capitalists had nostalgia for the German Empire, believing that then, labor unions had less power and businesses had more influence over the government. This was because, during World War I, unions were strengthened by the need of businesses to meet wartime production demands. Since inflation caused the collapse of a number of businesses, some businesses had to survive through mergers and monopolies. A number of industries also adopted American industrial production techniques, specifically Fordism (automatized, mechanical manufacturing) and Taylorism (standardizing work tasks), which caused workers to lose their jobs.

As unemployment rose, businesses had less reason to work with labor unions and became more hostile to government regulations that they believed favored labor unions. They also opposed taxes levied on businesses to provide worker and unemployment benefits during the time of economic crisis. Likewise, the banking scandals that came from the period of hyperinflation made business leaders unpopular among the general public. In particular, the far-right seized on banking scandals to attack Jewish financiers and the Social Democrats.

Even among the general populace, politics were highly contentious and polarized. A quarter of all newspapers were politically partisan (118), yet they had little influence over how people voted. Evans argues this is because the political newspapers had to compete with “boulevard papers” (120)—tabloids that depended on street sales versus subscriptions. By focusing on crime and financial scandals, these tabloids supported right-wing narratives about the failures of the republic.

German culture during the Weimar Republic also saw the emergence of “experimentalist literature” like modernist novels and Dadaist poetry, which many saw as “cultural Bolshevism” (120). At the same time, there were popular works like Oswald Spengler’s The Fall of the West, which claimed Germany was in a period of cultural decline but was also on the brink of national revival. Novels by right-wing writers detailed the masculine unity among World War I veterans and violence against those responsible for the revolts of 1918. However, “a widespread sense of cultural crisis” (122) that came after the relaxation of censorship laws after World War I was not limited to conservatives. A prominent architectural school, the Bauhaus, was one such institution targeted for cultural reasons. By 1924, it lost government funding and relocated several times.

There was also a sense of sexual liberation during the Weimar Republic that was opposed by both the left and the right. The German Empire had seen the “rise of a large and vociferous feminist movement” (126) that advocated for both voting rights and sexual freedom. Berlin became the center of a large gay subculture. The development of a large “service sector” (127) in the economy opened economic opportunities for women in retail and secretarial work, allowing them to live independent lives. Women also had some access to political office and prominent professions like higher education, medicine, and the law. This provoked a backlash over concerns about birth rate declines and women competing for men’s jobs, which deepened the split between more radical feminist activists and moderate feminists who tried to protect their cause by agreeing with several right-wing social issues like “family values” (129).

Conservatives also fought against gay rights by activists like the openly gay Magnus Hirschfield, who campaigned against Paragraph 175, a provision in the law code that banned sexual acts between men. With government support, Hirschfield founded the Institute for Sexual Science, which promoted contraceptives and sexual therapy. Both conservatives and leftists were concerned over a decline in birth rates along with greater access to contraceptives and abortions.

The Weimar Republic also had a powerful youth culture, centered around clubs that engaged in activities like hiking and in organizations run by the political parties. Many youth groups were militaristic, nationalist, antisemitic, and had rules for “moral purity” (130). While Evans argues that the influence of these youth groups and of right-wing teachers of primary schools may have been “exaggerated by historians” (130), there was a successful effort by the Weimar Republic to educate students in “democratic institutions” (131).

The right-wing presence was strongest in universities, which were “elite institutions” (131). While the General Student Unions established in 1919 began as pro-democracy organizations, they became increasingly dominated by the far-right. The radicalization of students increased as economic problems forced students to work during their education and kept them from finding jobs after graduation. Professors also tended to be right-wing and nationalist, opposing the admission of Jewish students and professors.

Culture under the Weimar Republic “was obsessed […] by deviance, murder, atrocity, and crime” (133), both in terms of fiction and media reports on the trials of serial killers like Fritz Haarman. The sense that crime was a crisis affected the judiciary, which, like the military, was politically independent and still shaped by “loyalty” to the “authoritarian” (136) ideals of the German Empire. Both political parties and judges themselves exploited verdicts for propagandistic ends. For example, judges and state prosecutors would be lenient toward right-wing activists guilty of violence. The Social Democrats attempted to stop the trend with the 1922 Law for the Protection of the Republic, but it only set precedents to use the death penalty for political offenses and to levy retroactive punishments.

The German welfare state began with Bismarck, who established pensions for the elderly and accident and health insurance to keep the working class from siding with socialists. The Weimar Republic expanded the Bismarckian welfare state with laws providing unemployment insurance, job training for disabled veterans, youth welfare, social housing, and state funding for medical care. However, the number of people left in need by World War I and the inflation and unemployment crises strained the system and increased the economic burden on the state. This caused bureaucratic gridlock, people receiving less in welfare payments than promised, scrutiny into the lives of recipients, and local officials demanding that recipients give up property and savings as a condition for receiving aid. “The huge gulf between the Weimar Republic’s very public promises of a genuinely universal welfare system based on need and entitlement, and the harsh reality of petty discrimination, intrusion and insults” (142) eroded support for the republic.

The social welfare bureaucracy also embraced “doctrines of racial hygiene and social biology” (143). Criminality and alcoholism were attributed to heredity; some criminals could be reintegrated into society, but others, like alcoholics, could not because of “inherited degeneracy” (144). Officials described criminals in terms like “pest” and “vermin” (144), and doctors collected family information on criminals. The lawyer Karl Binding and the forensic psychologist Alfred Hoche published a book coining the term “a life unworthy of life” (145), calling for the killing of the severely mentally handicapped and the terminally ill. Such views were balanced by the opposition of most medical professionals and the Catholic Church.

Next, Evans describes the extensive diaries left by Victor Klemperer, a middle-class Jewish professor of literature. They describe his conservative outlook that looked back with nostalgia at the era of the German Empire and also expressed “political pessimism” (149) at the extremism and antisemitism in the Weimar Republic.

The era of the Weimar Republic saw Jews obtain greater professional opportunities, including more prominent Jewish artists, writers, and musicians. Nonetheless, there was simultaneously a “broadening and deepening of the currents of antisemitism in German politics and society” (150). Although the majority of Jewish Germans were politically center-left, they were blamed for the political chaos of 1918-1919. The migration of Russian Jews into Germany from the pogroms in Russia also increased antisemitic sentiment. Violent rhetoric and conspiracy theories that the Jews manipulated major political events became more of a part of political and public discourse.