Reasons For The Republic's Failure
The reasons for the Weimar Republic's collapse are the subject of continuing debate. It may have been doomed from the beginning since even moderates disliked it and extremists on both the left and right loathed it. Germany had limited democratic traditions and Weimar democracy was widely seen as chaotic. And since Weimar politicians had been blamed for the Dolchstoßlegende ("Stab-in-the-back myth")—a then-widely believed theory that Germany's surrender in World War I had been the unnecessary act of traitors—the popular legitimacy of the government was on shaky ground.
No single reason can explain the failure of the Weimar Republic. The most commonly asserted causes can be grouped into three categories: economic problems, institutional problems and the roles of specific individuals.
Read more about this topic: Weimar Republic
Famous quotes containing the words reasons for the, reasons for, reasons, republic and/or failure:
“One of the many reasons for the bewildering and tragic character of human existence is the fact that social organization is at once necessary and fatal. Men are forever creating such organizations for their own convenience and forever finding themselves the victims of their home-made monsters.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“It seems to me that we have to draw the line in sibling rivalry whenever rivalry goes out of bounds into destructive behavior of a physical or verbal kind. The principle needs to be this: Whatever the reasons for your feelings you will have to find civilized solutions.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Adolescents, for all their self-involvement, are emerging from the self-centeredness of childhood. Their perception of other people has more depth. They are better equipped at appreciating others’ reasons for action, or the basis of others’ emotions. But this maturity functions in a piecemeal fashion. They show more understanding of their friends, but not of their teachers.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“It could be clearly proved that by a practical nullification [by the South] of the Fifteenth Amendment the Republicans have for several years been deprived of a majority in both the House and Senate. The failure of the South to faithfully observe the Fifteenth Amendment is the cause of the failure of all efforts towards complete pacification. It is on this hook that the bloody shirt now hangs.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)