The 1920s: Part of a “Thirty Years’ War”or the “Recovery of Europe”?

1919: Germans establish the Weimar Republic.

April 1921: German reparations bill set at 132 billion gold marks (52% for France, 22% for Britain, 10% for Italy)

1922: Germany recognizes USSR in Treaty of Rapallo.

Jan-Nov 1923: Germany defaults on war reparations, and France occupies the Ruhr Industrial District.

1924: The Dawes Plan creates a system to pay war reparations and encourages U.S. loans to Germany.

1925/26: The Treaty of Locarno leads to German entry into the League of Nations.

1929/30: The Young Plan lightens the reparations burden, and France evacuates the Rhineland.

In early November 1918, Prince Max of Baden appealed to Friedrich Ebert of the SPD to become Chancellor, prevent a Communist revolution, and

safeguard national unity.

Communist insurgents in Berlin, January 1919

The “Free Corps” crushed the Reds in the name of Ebert

League for Combating Bolshevism:

“BOLSHEVISM BRINGS WAR,

UNEMPLOYMENT, AND HUNGER,” January 1919

“Workers, burghers, farmers, soldiers of every German tribe: Unite in the National Assembly!”

Parties supporting the Weimar Republic won over 75% of the vote in January 1919

The first women elected to a German parliament (Weimar, 1919)

THE WEIMAR COALITION SUFFERED MASSIVEELECTORAL LOSSES IN JUNE 1920

Year KPD USPDSPDSoc. Dem.

DDPDemo-cratic

Center(RC)

DVP (Nat. Lib.)

DNVP (nation-alist)

1919 --- 7.7 37.9 18.6 19.7 4.4 10.3

1920 2.1 17.9 21.7 8.3 17.8 13.9 15.1

German Chancellor Joseph Wirth confers with Soviet Foreign Minister Georgy Chicherin at Rapallo, April 1922

German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, after

signing the Treaty of Rapallo

A shy Soviet observer (on left) at the German Reichswehr summer maneuvers of 1927

“The Stab in the Back”

(Nazi magazine cover, 1924):

Radical nationalists assassinated

Rathenau in July 1922

The Boulevards of Paris, 11 November 1918

French troops enter Strasbourg, 29 November 1918

French Military Cemetery at Verdun,with “Ossuary” built from 1920 to 1932

The Ossuary of Verdun

In December 1920 a majority of French Socialists affiliated with the Comintern

“How can I vote against Bolshevism?”

(French nationalist campaign poster, 1919

In January 1923 Premier Raymond Poincaré ordered the occupation of the Ruhr

The French seized coal and steel in lieu of war

reparations

President Ebert visits the Ruhr to encourage “passive resistance”

Germany’s hyper-inflation:A small businessman picks up cash for his weekly payroll, early summer, 1923

Weighing currency to

determine its value, late

summer, 1923

Target used by “Black

Reichswehr” volunteers

in 1923 who engaged in

“active resistance”

Alfred Rosenberg and Adolf Hitler review marching Stormtroopers in Munich, 4 November 1923

Nazi Stormtroopers outside Munich City Hall, 9 November 1923

Postcard of Hitler in

Landsberg Prison (1924),

where he dictated

Mein Kampf

Gustav Stresemann made peace with France as Chancellor (Aug.-Nov. 1923) and Foreign Minister (1923-

29). The U.S. banker Charles Dawes devised a new reparations plan in 1924….

Charles Dawes founded the largest bank in Illinois, served several Republican Presidents, and won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1925

Opel was the first German company to mass produce

cars on an assembly line. GM bought it in

1929

INTER-ALLIED WAR DEBTS IN 1919(in millions of dollars, see P.M.H. Bell, p. 22)

John Maynard Keynes proposed in 1920 that all war debts and reparations be cancelled, but the U.S. government did not even consider debt forgiveness until 1931.

When Ebert died in 1925, Germans elected Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg as President of the

Weimar Republic

Gustav Stresemann & Aristide Briand,Co-Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for signing the

Treaty of Locarno in 1925

Stresemann addresses the General Assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva, September

1926

French Communists & nationalists both rejected Locarno(pro- and anti-communist posters from 1927 target

Briand)

The Young Plan, signed in Paris in June 1929, inspired a referendum campaign by German

rightists

“You must slave away unto the third

generation!”

Stresemann defends the Young Plan in a turbulent Reichstag session, 1929

“The Rhine is Free!”(1930)

“The Steel Helmet on the Rhine” (October

1930)

UNEMPLOYMENT RATES, 1928-1933: The DVP and SPD clashed over whether to raise taxes or slash jobless

benefits

(The French figures are doubtless understated.)

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS (1919-1940)