Friedrich Ebert addressing the National Assembly at Weimar, February 6, 1919.

Adolf Hitler addressing the German Parliament in Berlin, March 23, 1933.

March 26, 2006

By OTTO

The events depicted in the above photographs mark the beginning and the end of the Weimar Republic. Prior to the establishment of the Republic, Germany was a Monarchy under Kaiser Wilhem II. The Monarchy ended because of the disastrous outcome of WW I, with which it was closely identified. It was deserted by its military-industrial ally out of opportunistic calculations and by the public because of the senseless personal suffering the war had cost it.

The war, which began in August of 1918, rapidly turned into a stalemate which the principal allies, France, England, and Russia couldn't lose and which the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, couldn't win. The weakening of Russia in the Alliance due to the February 1917 Revolution and its total withdrawal due to the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917, was compensated for by the US joining the Alliance as an Associated Power in April 1917.

The blockade of Germany by the English fleet, despite Germany's desperate resort to unrestricted submarine warfare, and the burden of the war on the home front led to civil unrest, strikes in the armaments industries, and breakdowns in military discipline in 1918.

On January 8, 1918, US President Wilson, capitalizing on the fact that the US was not yet in the now universally unpopular war, took the moral high ground and published his Fourteen Point Program for ending it. In its third paragraph from the end it says:

Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military party and the men whose creed is imperial domination.

The German military and industrial ruling elite read into this the presumption that if they ended the Monarchy and set up a Republic, they could extricate themselves from the war without actually losing it.

In the eyes of the people the Monarchy, having led them into a disaster, had forfeited its right to rule. Immediately behind the Monarchy in the sharing of the responsibility for the national disaster came the military establishment and the industrial ruling elite.

At the opposite end of this class divide stood two minority left-wing political parties who had opposed the war from the beginning, the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) and the Spartacist League. A large third political party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which had supported the war from the beginning, was to play a decisive role in the outcome of this revolutionary situation in Germany in November of 1918. The leader of the SPD was Friedrich Ebert.

Building commandeered for the Berlin Workers and Soldiers Council, November, 1918.

Based on the advice of the German military-industrial elite the Kaiser abdicated on November 9^th and the last Prime Minister appointed by the Monarchy Prince Max von Baden named Friedrich Ebert head of the new Republic. Simultaneously, an armed revolutionary struggle led primarily by the allied USPD and the Spartacists broke out and Workers and Soldiers Councils were formed spontaneously, creating a situation of dual power. At precisely this point the opportunism which had led the SPD to support the war now led Ebert to make an alliance with the military elite to destroy the so-called November Revolution (the Nazis referred to the November Revolutionaries as the "November Criminals").

In February of 1919, a constitutional convention was opened in Weimar, safely removed from the revolutionary sentiment which still existed in Berlin and the other major cities, from which issued the Weimar Consitution and the Republic of the same name.

Aside from its democratic aspects, which were grudgingly conceded by the military-industrial elite as the price for its continued existence as a class, this concession ultimately led to the downfall of the Republic.

The hoped-for graceful exit from the war did not occur. In the Versailles Treaty which formalized the terms by which the war was ended, Germany was treated as a militarily defeated State and the Republic was saddled with the reponsibility for the defeat rather than the military-industrial class. The Republic reeled from crisis to crisis with the military-industrial class regaining its power but not its popularity. The classless demagogue Adolf Hitler, at the head of the Nazi party since 1919, skillfully brought his party to popularity and it was this popular base which the military-industrial class bought in its alliance with the Nazis.

In the Parliamentary crisis of the winter of 1932-33 in which the political parties were unable to agree on a Chancellor, leading members of the military-industrial class reached agreement with the Nazis on a government and then prevailed on President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as the Chancellor under his emergency authority defined in Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. Hindenburg announced Hitler's appointment in the evening of January 30, 1933 with the proviso that the government would hold elections on March 5^th.

The Reichstag burning, February 27, 1933.

In the evening of February 27^th a fire broke out in the Reichstag (parliament) building. The government instantly claimed that it was the signal for a Communist uprising, Hindenburg issued an emergency decree for the protection of the country, and the Communist Party leadership, in the closing days of their electoral campaign, were rounded up. Despite this crimp in their campaign the Communists managed to get 12.3% of the popular vote and 81 seats in the parliament while the Nazis, the incumbent party, got 43.9% of the vote and 288 seats. With a total of 640 delegates, had the vote been taken with all delegates seated, the Nazis would have had only 45.0% of the delegates. As the incumbent party, the Nazis ordered the police to exclude the Communist deputies on the grounds that they were members of an illegal organization under the emergency decree. Out of a total of 559 seated delegates the Nazis' 288 seats gave them a 51.5% simple majority. Thus, by disenfranchising the millions who had voted for the Communist Party the Nazis legitimized their government.

On March 23^rd the government submitted its emergency decree, the so-called Enabling Law, to the Parliament for enactment. The photo above on the right shows Hitler justifying the need for the law before the Reichstag, which duly acted according to his request. Of the 538 delegates present, 444 delegates consisting of the 288 Nazi delegates, the delegates from the Catholic Center Party, the German National People's Party, and the minor center parties, voted in favor of the law. The only party voting solidly against were the 94 present delegates of the SPD.

Thus ended the Weimar Republic and began the Nazi dictatorship.

Not surprisingly the mechanism of the descent of Germany into Fascism as a marriage of convenience between the German military-industrial elite without a popular base and a popular classless demagogue is replaced, in Capitalist official historiography, by the astonishing assertion that Hitler was an evil genius gifted with the power of mass hypnotism.