Weimar Republic (Cherry, Plum, and Chrysanthemum)

The Weimar Republic is the name used to refer Germany under federal parliamentary democratic republican government that replaced the German Empire, an imperial constitutional government, between 1919 and 1933 until being replaced by the totalitarian regime of the Third Reich. "Weimar" is the name of city in Germany where the republican constitution was promulgated.

Revolution
When the defeat of German Empire was inevitable at the final stage of World War I, the country saw an increasing opposition against the war, especially from German Left that demanded an end to the war. The wave of revolutions swept throughout Germany between 1918 and 1919 where the social democrats took over the power in every individual cities.

On November 9, 1918, the Republic establishment was proclaimed by member of the Social Democratic Party, Philipp Scheidemann, at the Reichstag building in Berlin as the anticipation for more left-leaned republican proclamation by leader of the Spartacist League, Karl Liebknecht, that followed two hours later. Despite being disagree with Scheidemann's proclamation, Friedrich Ebert, the leader of the SDP, was accepted his appointment as the first Reich President of Germany while Scheidemann as new Chancellor.

An armistice was signed by Germany and the Allies on November 11, 1918 and officially ended the World War I. Provisional republican government introduced a variety of social reforms and universal suffrage for all types of elections in Germany.

Newly-elected German National Assembly met in the city of Weimar in 1919 and drafted the Weimar Constitution that established Germany as a federal, parliamentary democratic republic.

The Treaty of Versailles that signed in Paris on June 28, 1919 resulted to mass reduction of German military and loss of some of former territories of the German Empire, much to dismay from German ultranationalists, monarchists and conservatives.

National crisis
The post-WW-I Germany was faced with some financial difficulties. Young republican government faced hyperinflation that badly hit the country's economy. Unemployment rate was increased significantly and the workers began to calling for strikes. Economic turbulence created a political instability where the extreme political movements both from the right and the left arose in response for the condition that Germany had suffered.

The radical left, especially the Communist Party of Germany, accused the republican government under the Social Democrats for betraying the ideal of the workers' revolutionary movement and turned its eye of justice blind to German right-wingers that sought for the restoration of monarchy. A left-wing workers' uprising began in the Ruhr region on March 1920 when 50,000 people formed a "Red Army" and took control of the province. The rebels were campaigning for an extension of the plans to nationalise major industries and supported the national government. The Ruhr Uprising staged in response to the Kapp Putsch of March 13, 1920 by the German right-wingers.

On other side, the radical right opposed the republican establishment and its supporters, especially the Socialists, that they viewed betraying Germany during the World War I and led to Germany's defeat. Among them was the National Socialist movement which arose among angry young veterans in the early 1920s; they rejected the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, the Weimar Constitution, and democracy in general. They called for a revival of the Aryan race and blamed the Jews for Germany's troubles.

The Beer Hall Putsch, that dubbed as the Munich Revolution of 1923 during the Third Reich era, staged by the National Socialist German Workers' Party under Adolf Hitler in Munich in November 8, 1923. Inspired by Benito Mussolini's successful March on Rome in Italy, the putsch attempted to seize power in Munich. The putsch itself was a failure and some of its participants was executed, including its leader, Adolf Hitler, who was hailed as a martyr by later Nazis.

The NSDAP was banned, although with support of the nationalist Völkisch-Social Bloc (German: Völkisch-Sozialer Block), it was continued to operate under the name of the "German Party" (German: Deutsche Partei or DP) from 1924 to 1926, until Gregor Strasser re-established the NSDAP party, and reorganised the party's structure in 1926.

Relative Stability
The government of Reich Chancellor Gustav Stresemann that served between August and November 1923 marked a decrease of political stability and growing economy in Germany. New currency was introduced and foreign loan from the United States' banks was intensified. Germany was admitted to the League of Nations as a permanent member, improving her international standing and giving her the ability to veto League of Nations legislation. However, this progress was funded by overseas loans, increasing the nation's debts, while overall trade increased and unemployment fell.

Cultural renaissance grew significantly during this period and many artists started to try out new and modern ideas that highly influenced German literature, music, dance, cinema, and theatre at that time. Artists in Berlin were influenced by other contemporary progressive cultural movements, such as the Impressionist and Expressionist painters in Paris, as well as the Cubists. Likewise, American progressive architects were admired. Many of the new buildings built during this era followed a straight-lined, geometrical style.

The death of Stresemann from heart attack and the crash of New York Stock Exchange stocks in 1929 brought an abrupt end for the brief period of relative stability in Germany and the country quickly facing the Great Depression, where the unemployment increased rapidly and the extreme political unrest grew out of control.

Great Depression
Germany's Weimar Republic was hit hard by the depression, as American loans to help rebuild the German economy now stopped. As the situation worsened, political system began turned toward extremism. The political organisation of National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) that previously banned following the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923 was re-established by Gregor Strasser and Joseph Goebbels. Strasser reunified the Völkisch Party members with old Nazi supporters in the south and reorganised the party's structure, both in its regional formation and its vertical management hierarchy. The Nazi Party became a strictly centralist organization with the party's own control machinery and high capability for propaganda.

Without a strong leadership that left vacuum by Adolf Hitler's death, Strasser and Goebbels reshaping the Nazi Party into more democratic political organisation based on a comradely, communal and cooperative effort from all party members to formulate a winning programme.

Strasser's outstanding organizational skill helped the NSDAP to make a big step from a marginal South Germany-based party to a nationwide mass party, appealing to the lower classes and their tendency towards socialism. Its membership increased from about 27,000 in 1925 to more than 800,000 in 1931. Gregor, his brother Otto, and Joseph Goebbels organized the party into an anti-capitalist social revolutionary organization that at the same time was also strongly anti-Semitic and anti-Communist.

Strasser and Goebels also set up the unique political and ideological characters of the Nazi Party: revolutionary, anti-Semitic, anti-monarchist, anti-parliamentarism, ultra-nationalistic, Pan-Germanic, socialistic, and pro-workers' rights. The Nazi Party being known for had a highly discipline organizational norm held by the party members and reflected through their loyalty toward the party leadership and party organisation as stated by Strasser: "Ein Partei, ein Ja!" ("One Party, one Yes!"), that later modified as political slogan of totalitarian regime of the Third Reich as "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Ja!" ("One People, one Reich, one Yes!")

The success of plebiscite to expropriate the princely estates in 1926 was due to the supports that threw by the Communists and the National Socialists. Two conflicting organisations campaigned for the expropriation, without compensation, of the landholdings of the German princes. The plebiscite elevated the Nazi Party's esteem among the working class as a revolutionary alternative movement for the radical left Communist Party of Germany (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD). At the wake of Great Depression, the NSDAP began to competing with the KPD for the votes and loyalties of the unemployed people and the industrial workers.

The Reichstag general elections in 1930 saw a significant electoral votes gain to the Nazis. The Nazi Party gained 20.3% of the votes and gained 177 of the 577 seats in the Reichstag. Other political organisations increasingly uncomfortable by the Nazi electoral result. Street violence by the Nazi, conservative, Communist, and even, social democrat paramilitaries was a common sight in a period between the 1930 election and Nazi's rise to power. Germany was succumbed into chaos and political uncertainty by schism between each political parties.