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, finally accepted his appointment as the first Reich President of Germany with 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 blamed it for Germany's defeat in the First Great War. 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.

Brief 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 economy was collapsed due to the Great 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, and anti-capitalism. The Nazi Party being known for its discipline organizational norm that held by the party members and reflected through by the members' 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 an alternative revolutionary 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.

Decline
By 1931, Reich President Wilhelm Marx formed the Grand Coalition government of SDP-Centre-DNVP-DVP under Otto Braun of SDP. The policy of Economics Minister Heinrich Brüning failed to solve the Germany's economic crisis and Germany now was faced a bankruptcy. German government was no longer a parliamentary one and President Marx constitutionally used his power based on the Weimar Constitution by ruled through decrees in order to maintain the shaking pro-republic coalition over the instability.

The KPD criticized the Grand Coalition government for its authoritarian nature and portrayed the Republic not longer supported nor sided with the German working class, while the NSDAP accused the Grand Coalition government only to be retaining the power of traditional aristocrats and industrialists within the German state when at the same time alienated the position of working class and middle class. Both of the Communist's Roter Frontkämpferbund (RFB) and the Nazi's Sturmabteilung (SA) involved in the street riots, demanded for President Marx and the Grand Coalition government resignation in late 1931.

German presidential elections on March 13 and April 10, 1932 saw a public support already shifted toward the NSDAP and the KPD with an unexpected victory for the independent candidate, former Minister of Defence Gustav Noske, who received 51,7% of votes, defeated the incumbent Wilhelm Marx and Communist candidate, Ernst Thälmann. Despite being independent and formerly a member of the Social Democratic Party, Noske nomination was supported by the NSDAP and several military officers. Noske defended his nomination for preventing the possible coup by the German Reichswehr which no longer supported the Republic that he believed will lead Germany into a civil war.

Braun and the Grand Coalition quickly alerted by this situation. Braun decided to dissolve the Reichstag on April 19, 1932, hoped for the stable majority of pro-republican parties can be fulfilled. However, the election backfired the attempt of the Grand Coalition for save the republican government as the NSDAP now received a plurality by gained the 39,13% of votes. Franz Seldte, who among other conservatives that deserted from the DNVP and sided with the NSDAP, was appointed as the Reich Chancellor in May 6, 1932. The KPD that gained the 21.58% of votes and became the second largest party in the Reichstag, refused a request from the SDP and the DNVP to form a new Grand Coalition government with Thälmann as Reich Chancellor. As a result, by mid 1932, there was no majority party in the Reichstag that supported the continuation of the Republic.

Finale
As the government began to move toward authoritarianism, the uprisings and the riots were started to stage by the KPD and its paramilitary, the RFB, against Seldte government and the NSDAP between December 1932 and January 1933. One of those was occurred in January 1, 1933, known as "Bloody New Year of 1933".

As the condition worsened, Reich President Noske declared the state of emergency against "the Communist terror" by January 2, 1933. The NSDAP argued this situation as the loss of public order, especially from the working class. Seldte's military conservative-leaned government considered being intolerable anymore and the NSDAP passed the vote of no confidence over the government. In fact, the NSDAP was tried to consolidate a total power against the Prussian traditional military caste and the conservative nationalists that could became the potential opposition to the NSDAP's revolutionary programs. Seldte resigned on January 3, 1933 and Gregor Strasser appointed as new Reich Chancellor.

Strasser government secretly organized young officers in the Reichswehr to support the Nazi revolutionary views. This young officers was also joined the NSDAP and served as the basis for future German armed forces. That was young Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of NSDAP security service, who was responsible for the Nazi intelligence within the Reichswehr ranks.

The series of murders to high ranking German political figures, famously known as the Summer of Terror, began to sweep up the country from April to June 1933. Leading politicians of the social democrats, the communists, and the anti-Nazi conservatives were kidnapped at the night and murdered by Heydrich's agents. Among those murdered politicians are former Chancellor Gustav Ritter von Kahr (who had suppressed the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923); former Minister of Defense Wilhelm Groener; and prominent Communist politician, Ernst Thälmann.

Sergei Kirov, who became the Soviet leader at that time, was fully aware and about Thälmann's assassination, but his choice for did nothing with the Nazis created an impression that the Soviet Union firstly wanted to stir Germany, then the Central Europe at whole, into a political instability by "sacrifice" Thälmann and the German Communist Party, that indirectly made the USSR participated in the NSDAP's rise to power.