Читать книгу A History of Germany 1918 - 2020 - Mary Fulbrook - Страница 11

The Weimar Republic was Germany’s first attempt at parliamentary democracy. Born in 1918 of military defeat and domestic revolution, it was riddled with compromises and burdened with difficulties. After turbulent beginnings, from 1924 to 1928 there was a period of at least apparent stabilization, yet between 1929 and 1933, concerted attacks on democracy in the context of mounting economic difficulties culminated in the collapse of the regime and the appointment of Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party), as Germany’s Chancellor.

The ultimate demise of the Weimar Republic has inevitably overshadowed interpretations of its course. Some commentators have drawn such a stark and gloomy picture of its early difficulties that the Republic seems foredoomed to failure from the outset; other scholars have placed greater weight on problems arising from the Depression after 1929; and some historians have emphasized the importance of particular decisions and actions made by key political figures in the closing months of the Republic’s existence, in 1932–3. It is important to bear in mind, when exploring the complex paths of Weimar history, the constant interplay of structure and action, context and personality; it is important also to bear in mind that under certain circumstances the scope for human intervention in the course of events may be more limited or constrained than at other times. The conditions in which Weimar democracy was born were certainly not such as to help it flourish, and as it unfolded it was clearly saddled with a burden of problems, in a range of areas that would render Weimar democracy peculiarly susceptible to antidemocratic forces in the end.