Page 63 - Understanding NCERT Histroy 09th

l Socialists, Catholics and Democrats who supported the Weimar Republic, were mockingly
called the ‘November criminals’.

l The First World War left a deep imprint on European society and polity.
l Democracy was indeed a young and fragile idea which could not survive the instabilities
Goyal Brothers Prakashan
of interwar Europe.

1.2 Political Radicalism and Economic Crises
l The birth of Weimar Republic’s coincided with the revolutionary uprising of the Spartacist
League on the pattern of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
l The Weimar Republic crushed the uprising with the help of a war veterans organisation
called Free Corps. Communists and Socialists became enemies.

l Political radicalisation was only heightened by the economic crisis of 1923.
l Germany had fought the war largely on loans and had to pay war reparations in gold.
Germany refused to pay, and the French occupied its leading industrial area, Ruhr, to
claim their coal.
l The image of Germans carrying cartloads of currency notes to buy a loaf of bread was
widely publicised, evoking worldwide sympathy.
l This crisis came to be known as hyperinflation, a situation when prices rise phenomenally
high.
l Eventually the USA introduced the Dawes Plan, which reworked the terms of reparation
to ease the financial burden on Germans.

1.3 The Years of Depression
l The years between 1924 and 1928 saw some stability. The support of short-term loans
was withdrawn when the Wall Street Exchange crashed in 1929.
l The Great Economic Depression started, and over the next three years, between 1929
and 1932, the national income of the USA fell by half.
l The economy of Germany was the worst hit. Workers became jobless and went on streets
with placards saying, ‘Willing to do any work’. Youths indulged themselves in criminal
activities.

l The middle class and small businessmen were filled with the fear of proletarianisation,
anxiety of being reduced to the ranks of the working class or unemployed.
l Politically also, the Weimar Republic was fragile. The Weimar Constitution, due to some
inherent defects, made it unstable and vulnerable to dictatorship.
l One inherent defect was proportional representation. Another defect was Article 48,
which gave the President the powers to impose emergency, suspend civil rights and rule
by decree.
l The crisis could not be managed and people lost confidence in parliamentary system.

2. HITLER’S RISE TO POWER
l Hilter rose to power. He was born in 1889 in Austria and spent his youth in poverty.
In the First World War, he enrolled in the army, acted as a messenger in the war front,
became a corporal, and earned medals for bravery.

H-54 History Class IX