Borderline Between France And Germany example essay topic

What problems did Germany face after WWI and how were they overcome? A 'crisis is strictly the point in a disease where the patient is finely balanced between recovery on one side and death on the other. The Weimar republic experienced two periods of crisis. The first was between 1919-1923, from which it recovered.

The second, between 1929 and 1933 killed it. The crisis of 1919-23 had three causes. One was an external cause, which was the treatment of Germany by the allies. The others were internal, economic collapse and the political putsches; all of these were interconnected.

Germany had surrended to the allies on 11 November 1918, two days after the formation of the republic. In June 1919 the terms of the treaty of Versailles were announced and Germany was held to be 'guilty' of causing the First World War and all of the damage resulting from it. Hence, the German nation was expected to pay compensation. The aim of this essay is to investigate the problems that Germany faced after world war one and how they were overcome between the years 1918-1920.

The Weimar republic was born out of Germanys defeat in the First World War. The German armies had failed to break through the western front against Britain and France. The German people had also suffered great hardship and starvation as a result of a blockade of their ports by the British navy. As a result it was inevitable of German failure and on 9 November the Kaiser abdicated and fled to the Netherlands. Due to the chaos of the collapsing Reich, a new government somehow had to be formed.

There were two main possibilities of a government. One, being a formation of a democracy advocated by the social democrats, which at that time were the largest political party in Germany. Another possibility was that Germany would become a communist State, this was the ambition of the Spartacus league led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. In January 1919 the spartacists tried to seize power with an armed uprising in Berlin. It was the freikorps units that suppressed the spartacist revolt in Berlin, they were seen as numerically weak and the task was not a demanding one in military terms. January 1919 showed the freikorps to be ruthless and vindictive by their actions.

Their principal victims were Liebknecht and Luxemburg, they were arrested on 14 January and both shot. Their murder had important political consequences. It had poisoned relations between the KPD and the SPD- on whose behalf the freikorps were acting. It also helped to create an atmosphere in which throughout the Weimar period collaboration of any kind between the two parties was out of the question.

The treaty was signed on June 28th 1919. Lloyd George of Britain, Clemenceau of France and Woodrow Wilson of America had conspired together to set the retributions to Germany. They had different arguments and views to put forward but Clemenceau of France had one simple belief, that the only way to gain satisfaction was to destroy Germany. He had seen the north east corner of France in devastation and was determined that Germany would never get the opportunity to do the same again. To the extreme right the peace settlement was a 'shameful peace', for which the Weimar republic was unquestionably to blame.

After 1919 democratic politicians who had agreed to the armistice in 1918 were constantly put down by the extreme right as the November criminals. When the allies' peace terms were published in May 1919, they were condemned not only by the extreme right, but by all political opinion in Germany. There was objection not only to the terms of the treaty but to the manner it was made. When Germany agreed to the armistice, it was assumed that were would be negotiations with the allies. It was further assumed that these negotiations would take place on the basis of Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points.

The Versailles treaty was branded a diktat- a dictated peace. The first of Germanys punishments was the guilt clause where they had to admit full responsibility for starting the war. This also leads onto stating responsibility for all of the war damage, which meant that Germany had to pay reparations. The bulk of which would go to France and Belgium to pay for the damage done to the infrastructure of both countries by the war. The figure was not set at Versailles, it was determined later. The figure was eventually put at lb 6,600 million, a huge sum of money well beyond Germanys ability to pay.

Germany had lost a large amount of territory. Alsace and Lorraine were given to France; Eugen and Malm edy to Belgium; and Posen and West Prussia to Poland. All of Germanys overseas colonies were given to the victors, especially Britain and France, as Mandates, held in trust until they were ready for independence. Germany was also cut back severely as a military power. It was allowed a navy of only six battleships, an army of no more than 100,000 volunteers and no airforce at all.

The Rhineland, which was the borderline between France and Germany, was demilitarised to protect France. The German people found these terms extremely difficult to accept. The Government complained that it had no choice but the popular press called for revenge, at first against the allies, but later against the Government which had signed the treaty. The outcome to this was predictable and in March 1920 Wolfgang Kapp marched on Berlin with 5,000 supporters intending to set up a right wing government. The Government withdrew to Dresden and called for a general strike of German workers. Without these Kapp could not hope to govern, and so gave up and fled abroad.

This was the first of many attempts to try to overthrow the Republic. He blamed it for the surrender of Germany and the Treaty of Versailles. Kapp spread the false accusation that the German army had been 'Stabbed in the back' by German politicians. By this they meant that the Government had surrended while the army was still willing to fight. The right however, did not succeed in destroying the Republic with this lie in the early 20's. There were two reasons why the Weimar republic survived in 1920.

First, the working class rallied to its defence and secondly Kapp had the support of only a minority of the extreme right. The outcome of the threat from the left parties, was a positive one for Germany as they were never in really serious danger of succumbing to communism in 1918-1919. One of the reasons for this is that the KPD lacked popular support. The highest share of the vote it received in the Reichstag elections of the 1920's was 12.6%. Another reason is that the KPD were poorly led.

Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg did not control or direct the Spartacist rising to any great effect in early 1919..