Weimar World

Weimar World
1920

March 13: Reichstag member Wolfgang Kapp makes an impassioned speech on the floor of the Reichstag protesting the end of pay to Freikorps members. He warns that many more actions like this could lead to a nationwide Putsch.

March 14: Central Schleswig votes over 80% in favor of reunification with Germany.

March 20: A DAP sympathizer within the Reichswehr blows the whistle on up and comer within the party, Adolf Hitler, who is revealed to be a Reichswehr spy.

March 31: Alleged Reichswehr spy Adolf Hitler mustered out of the Reichswehr, and is reported to return to his native Austria.

April 10: Government stops paying Freikorps units.

May 9: Hitler joins the Heimwehr in Austria.

June 20: Elections for the Reichstag results in significant gains for the DVP and DNVP, minor loses for the SPD. Chancellor Gustav Bauer (SPD) forms a new coalition government and reorganizes the cabinet; making Gustav Stresemann (DVP) Foreign Minister.

August 11: National Disarmament Law takes effect; disbanded civil guards.

1921

January 16: Aristide Briand becomes Prime Minister of France, begins shortly thereafter discussions with German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann regarding reparations.

March 21: Plebiscite held in Upper Silesia. They vote to remain part of Germany.

May 3: Polish forces under Wojciech Korfantry invade Upper Silesia.

May 4: Stresemann gets Briand’s France to enforce the rule of law in Upper Silesia; the Poles are required to leave.

July 1: Tentative agreement is reached for more favorable reparation payments by Germany, mostly due to the growing respect between Briand and Stresemann.

July 11: DAP under Anton Drexler votes to join Julius Streicher’s DSP.

1922

January 15: Stresemann secures loans to German government, allowing the Reichsmark to be fixed to a gold standard. April 16: Treaty of Rapallo signed between Germany and the Soviet Union. Both countries renounce all territorial and financial claims against the other.

July 21: High inflation begins in Austria. The gold standard based German Reichsmark is little affected.

October 27: Benito Mussolini establishes his Fascist dictatorship in Italy.

1923

March 13: Adolf Hitler, inspired by the example of Benito Mussolini, starts a more political wing of the Heimwehr, centered on the Pan-Germanic faction of the paramilitary group.

June 3: After new elections for the Reichstag, Gustav Stresemann becomes Chancellor of a center-right coalition government. He retains the portfolio of Foreign Minister.

1924

February 28: Reichspresident Friedrich Ebert makes the first visit of a German head of state to Great Britain since the war.

November 22: Strasser wing of DSP goes into rebellion over Streicher’s leadership.

December 1: The Locarno Treaties are signed in London, in which the former Entente and the new European states secure the post-war territorial settlement and normalize their relations with Germany.

1925

January 14: Germany joins the League of Nations and becomes the fifth permanent Council member.

September 10: Germany successfully lobbies for a referendum in the Memel region, and they vote in favor of reunification with Germany.

October 3: The Nobel Committee announces that the Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded to Austen Chamberlain, Aristide Briand, and Gustav Stresemann for the Locarno treaty.

1926

April 24: Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Berlin Treaty, pledging neutrality in case of an attack on the other by a third party. June 3: Friedrich Ebert narrowly wins re-election on the second ballot when the right rallies from a poor showing in the first round by drafting General Paul von Hindenburg as their candidate in the second round.

1927

June 3: General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck is made Army Chief of Staff.

November 9: Chancellor Stresemann concludes Treaty of Munich with Czechoslovakia formally recognizing the border between Germany and Czechoslovakia in return for concessions to the German minority in the Sudetenland, including recognition of German as an official language of Czechoslovakia and a minimum number of spots in the Czech cabinet for ethnic Germans.

1928

October 24: Chancellor Gustav Stresemann dies of a massive heart attack. Hermann Müller forms grand coalition government and replaces him as Chancellor.

1929

December 10: The "Black Tuesday" - a collapse of the stock exchange in New York City starts a world economic collapse and results in the Great Depression.

1930

June 30: Chancellor Hermann Müller leaves office when his own party (SPD) abandons the coalition. A center right coalition forms with Zentrum party leader Heinrich Brüning as chancellor.

1931

June 1: Three million unemployed reported in Germany.

June 20: Herbert Hoover puts a moratorium on reparations.

August 11: The Austrian Kreditanstalt collapses. September 13: The German bank crisis occurs.

September 20: Alfred Hugenberg made leader of DNVP by narrow margin.

October 11: Attempts to form a coalition between DNVP, Stahlhelm, DSP, and the Strasser splinter group fail. The DNVP decides to stay in the government for the time being.

1932

March 5: Julius Streicher, leader of the DSP, is arrested on charges of obscenity and perversion charges. The high profile trial stretches through much of 1932, and is a nadir for the far right.

April 20: Darkhorse candidate Carl Friedrich Goerdeler successfully challenges Alfred Hugenberg for leadership of the DNVP. He vows that the DNVP will stay the course with the current government.

1933

April 10: Friedrich Ebert loses badly in the second round of elections against center right consensus candidate and war hero Reichswehr Chief of Staff Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. In his concession speech, Ebert calls for a peaceful transition of power, which by and large happens.

August 7: DNVP leader Goerdeler becomes Chancellor of Germany.

October 23: A letter from Ludwig Erhard regarding economic reform so impresses Chancellor Goerdeler that he brings the man onto his staff as an advisor.

1934

March 21: Adolf Hitler’s Heimwehr faction instigates a civil war after refusing to join Engelbert Dolfuss’s Fatherland Front (the clerical faction of the Heimwehr joins the Fatherland Front, but is in the minority due to the recruitment efforts of the Charismatic Hitler). Several extremist volunteers from both Germany and Czechoslovakia swarm over the border to join the conflict in the early days. Socialists in Vienna take advantage of the chaos and take over the capitol, but can’t make progress very far from the city. With the onset of the Austrian Civil War, Albert Einstein leaves Austria, immigrating to Germany.

May 5: The League of Nations declares a weapons embargo of all sides in the Austrian Civil War, which is promptly violated by both the Soviets and Italians. The Italians are secretly sending aid to both the the Hitler and Dolfuss factions.

July 2: Former General Paul von Hindenburg dies, and Germany is thrown into a state of mourning that rivals the one after the death of Chancellor Stresemann.

August 13: President Lettow-Vorbeck ceremonially breaks ground on the newest rail line in Germany, one proposed to carry speed steam locomotives across the length and breadth of Germany. The railways are part of the revitalization package of Chancellor Goerdeler.

1935

January 13: The Saar region votes over 90% to reunite with Germany.

May 20: Under pressure from Great Britain and with worsening economic problems, France acquiesces to "limited" German rearmament. Afterward, the rapid ‘development’ of the Reichswehr makes previous German covert rearming apparent, but the Great Powers turn a blind eye to this.

August 30: A token military force enters the Rhineland. The French government proclaims this as a great diplomatic victory, as the German force is not even strong enough to defend the Rhineland, posting no threat to France. The German government points to this as the full restoration of German sovereignty and the return of Germany as a full member of the international family of nations.

October 3: Italian troops invade Abyssinia.

November 13: While the Austrian civil war has so far accomplished little except leading to the glorious deaths in battle of several notable extremists of the age, Hitler makes a bold radio speech from an undisclosed location, calling for the unification of all Germans in Germany and Czechoslovakia with Austria. The speech is only heard in the local area of the broadcast, however.

1936

May 30: Italy annexes Abyssinia after a year long war which includes the use of mustard gas. By the end of June, after League condemnation of the annexation, Italy leaves the League of Nations.

July 10: The Spanish Civil War begins.

September 1: "Red" Vienna falls to a Fatherland Front attack, but Hitler’s faction then attacks the exsanguinated forces of Dolfuss; the city will be a divided war-zone for the rest of the conflict.

September 20: Germany and the West, fed up with the chaos in Austria and now civil war in Spain, agree to German military intervention in Austria. With the knock-out of the Socialists from the war, French Prime Minister Leon Blum sees little reason to hinder a republican Germany from intervening, as the success of either of the remaining two factions would be undesirable. German troops stream over the border and are by and large greeted as saviors by the war weary Austrians. To further reassure France and the United Kingdom, as well as to cement growing relations, Germany and Czechoslovakia sign a mutual defense treaty on the same day.

October 21: Rather than surrendering, Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his hideout in the mountains. Nearly all forces of both Fatherland Front and Heimwehr have surrendered to the rapidly advancing Germans, often without a single shot being fired. The few die-hard units are quickly dispatched by the Reichswehr. Dolfuss retires from politics.

December 9: After a few months of diplomacy, Italy acquiesces to German occupation and a vote on a reunion (the "Anschluss") after the German government agrees to recognize the possession of the South Tyrol by Italy.

1937

February 14: The Austrians hold a referendum overwhelmingly supporting unification with Germany. Though the Treaty of Saint Germaine forbade Austria from political or economic union with Germany, the Reich points out that they were not party to that agreement, and the Austrian government had essentially ceased to exist. World sentiment favors the unification.

April 12: Italy and Hungary form a mutual defense pact, called the Rome-Budapest Axis by Mussolini.

July 24: Germany proposes in the League of Nations a referendum on Danzig and the Polish Corridor. Poland opposes the idea.

August 20: Poland’s president, Ignacy Moscicki, thinking he could win a referendum that includes both the Kashubian populated Polish corridor and the German Danzig, and noting that a significant portion of the Reichswehr would still be in Austria, gambles and announces his willingness for the vote to happen, but that it must occur by mid September. Germany agrees.

September 15: The Polish Corridor referendum, though fraught with fraud on both sides, shows a majority in favor of unification with the German Reich.

September 16: When the result of the referendum starts to become known, Poland repudiates it as rigged and begins to move troops into the region as a "stabilizing measure". However, within hours of the Polish actions, heavy German troop movement is reported all along the border with Germany, many being identified as troops believed to be in Austria; even the Czechs appear to be mobilizing. Fearing a general invasion is about to occur, Marshal Edward Rydz-?migly begins to redeploy troops to hold off a large scale attack and to protect the capitol and key industrial centers.