Legend of Weimar Republic

Weimar Republic

The Legend of the Weimar Republic

The buildup to the Weimar Republic is a fascinating time in world history. The primary reason for this is that it is an international story more than just a German one. Every country that was involved in the conflict of World Was I was also involved in what happened in Germany following the war, and in what occurred in the next twenty years. The texts from which this research was taken look at the Republic from different angles and with different agendas. Peukert writes short essays about critical periods, and Weitz follows the more traditional historical chronology. This essay looks at the founding of the Weimar Republic from the vantage point of these two authors.

In his interpretation of the events that led up to the Weimar Republic, Peukert talks about how authors in the past have dealt with the subject. He says that the subject is too large for a compact book because there were so many critical events during that time. He says that his approach is to write a more in-depth book about specific happenings. These essays are written to a public that has little understanding of what actually happened behind the scenes of the government at this time.

Weitz is a historian who hopes to engage his audience by looking at how fringe groups were affected by governmental decisions during ad following World War I. He begins by talking about how conditions for the people of Germany deteriorated during the war, and how a once proud institution (the army) was not as revered as it had been by the end of the war. The initial problem is that people did not receive the promised boon that the government had promised them as a result of the War. The government had given reasons why Germany needed to fight the allied countries, and the people accepted what was said. However, people began to be skeptical when the war did not progress as it should have. One of the groups that was hit the hardest by the war was the women. They had been forced into service in factories, but they still could not feed their families. Every good was for the soldiers first and for the rest of the population second. Bread had to be filled with ingredients such as "bean flour and sometimes sawdust" (Weitz 9). The author also talks about something called the turnip winter during which people had to subsist on this one food source. Weitz quotes one citizen as relating that "during the war, [he] remembered eating turnips for breakfast, unpacking the school lunch his mother had sent him to find turnips, and going home to a dinner of still more turnips" (9).