The insufficiency of Versailles: Germany 1930
Do we really recall the conditions necessary for evil to get a foothold?
A popular idea is that the Treaty of Versailles led to the rise of the Nazis. The problem is that nearly every major German party, including those which were pro democracy, spent time attacking, denouncing or attempting to evade the terms of the treaty. Simply put, being anti-Versailles settlement did not make the National Socialist German Workers Party, unique or special.
The explanation seems credible but alone the explanation is not enough. That’s what we call a necessary but not sufficient condition. It is a condition you need to make an outcome possible or plausible but alone does not guarantee it will happen.
Germany in the 1920s had been a country defeated and one in denial that it was beaten on the battlefield. The Weimar Republic was Germany’s first national experiment with liberal style democracy, but it was fragile from the start. The Allies forced Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles, accept blame for the war, and pay crushing reparations. To meet those bills, the government printed money. Lots of money. In 1923, inflation spiraled so badly that middle-class savings vanished overnight.
Poof. Gone in smoke.
This is where we get the idea of people hauling stacks of banknotes to the bakery and still going hungry. Later, American loans gave Germany a pathway for some stability. But that was just redirecting the debt.
Politically, Weimar was as secure as it was going to be. Liberals had to use the power they had. The republic faced enemies from both the far left and the far right. Yet even in the middle of crisis, there was a kind of revolution in German culture. Berlin became a messy laboratory of art, architecture, and theater. Too messy for many.
Conservatives called it decadence, proof that democracy had corrupted national values. The resulting cultural divide mirrored the larger political one: those who saw promise in modernity, and those who longed for a strong hand to restore “order.” But what was meant by modernity was mixed, because for the Communists, Marx —who was German— represented the future of society. Not everyone who opposed Weimar wanted to go back to the old imperial regime. In fact its most fervent enemies were themselves, factions searching for a new German beginning, they were alternative revolutionaries. Like the Nazis. Like the Communists.
However, due to help from engaged Americans, by the end of the decade, Weimar looked more stable.
In the 1928 federal elections to the German parliament, the Reichstag, the Nazis got only 800K votes and came in 9th place, winning only
