Negative and Positive Impacts on the German People
After World War One there were many conflicts that arose in Germany. The most influential conflict that left many people in awe was the ruling of the Weimar Government. Could you imagine living a society where your old government was wiped away and now under new rule? German people had the right to question the actions that the Weimar Government were implementing and how society was changing because of these actions which caused many people to question their belief with the republic government.
Many people who had returned home from the war felt confused like Ernst von Salomon who stated “Now in this confusing moment when all was going into pieces, when the way that had been mapped out for me was suddenly blocked, I uncomprehendingly stood face to face with a new and changed situation” 1. Although many soldiers returned feeling conflicted and many joined different parties that opposed the Weimar Government views there were also many German youth who felt opposed of how this Second Reich was impacting people. Many “found themselves divided between being supports of the new culture and defenders of an embattled traditional one” 2. People were impacted by the New Objectivity Culture of music, arts, and literature during this time. Many people believed that Weimar was also establishing new norms of modernism in pop culture through nude dancers, anti-war novels, and filmography that many people believed was immoral causing conflicting opinions on the ideal of the Weimar Government.
Even though there was high unemployment during the Weimar years there was also a positive social impact on women through the Weimar Constitution women were given the right to vote, earn a higher education, and the “number of women in the workforce rose only slightly during the Weimar years there was a decline in what was considered traditional women’s work and a rise in modern jobs” 3. If you were living in the Germany during this time, would you accept or oppose the new culture and ruling of the Weimar Government?
- Dieter Kuntz and Benjamin Sax. Inside Hitler’s Germany: A Documentary History of Life in the Third Reich (Canada, D.C. Heath and Company Publication, 1992), 29.
- David Redless Jackson J. Spievogel. Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History (United States: Pearson Education Publications, 2014), 25.
- Ibid.
- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Wappen_Deutsches_Reich_%28Weimarer_Republik%29.svg
I really think that I would have been one of the people that was awestruck but what transpired and did not really know what to think. I probably would not have gotten involved in politics because they were such a mess and then regretted it later when the Nazi Party came into power. As a woman I would want to accept the culture because of the rights that women were getting but it still probably would be very difficult to accept.
On the first page of chapter one of Sax and Kuntz, the authors assert that the Wiemar Republic was not doomed to failure from its very beginning. I disagree. The proportional form of government allowed every fringe party a seat at the table which eventually lead to parliamentary paralysis. In addition, the humiliation over the war and the onerous reparations exacted by the Allies placed the Republic in a deep psychological and economic hole right from the beginning.