there have been a lot of comparisons of now to Wiemar Germany, and while some are vaguely accurate, most comparisons of now to Wiemar are incredibly stupid, so here's a short history--

So WW1 ends, and the German generals are getting really worried. Since the late 19th century, the Socialist Party had been getting roughly 40% of the vote in the weak parliament in Germany, and the Socialist party in Germany was the largest in the world. Add this to the Bolshevik victory in Russia, and the autocrats (which is basically what Germany had become during the war, a military autocracy, not dissimilar to the military autocracies that ruled Brazil) were worried that, with the failure of the German military to swing a victory given the loss of life (on average, every family had lost 1 member), they would have a revolution the moment that the war was over.

This got even worse when the admiralty, who realized that they had been massive !@#$%*^ throughout the war and hadn't even tried to fight the British blockade, decided to have a last attack to make sure that the government wouldn't screw them over forever at war's end. The sailors were all '$%&@ no!' and took over the city. Beyond this, the workers in Munich declared a Soviet republic, leading the Socialist party leaders as well as the autocrats to go 'OH!@#$'. The autocrats realized that unless they gave the people some deal of power they would be in a communist republic soon enough. So they did what was probably, until then, one of the biggest dick moves in German history--they gave the parliament power the moment the peace negotiations started.

The peace negotiations ended up having Germany pay ridiculous amounts of reparations, and when Germany wouldn't pay, France occupied the Rhineland. Germany ended up paying the reparations via hyperinflation on their part. On the streets, people who had foreign currency ended up making small empires for themselves, while millions lost their wealth. This led to increased voting for the socialists in the short term.

The Weimar coalition, the coalition of the Liberals, Christian Center, and Social democrats, was a very strong one before the war, and the 3 parties had a super-majority during most of the Kaiserreich. However, during the political instability of the immediate post-war years, the Social Democrats (the head of the coalition with almost 40% of the vote), were reduced to using rightist paramilitaries to defend their government from Communist revolutionaries. The paramilitaries gained a great deal of strength during these years by employing veterans, and gained a lot of military experience in suppressing dissent. From the end of the war in 1919 to 1923, there was 1 major attempt by the communists to gain power per year. Beyond this, there were many assassinations of socialist leaders by rightists, which were panned by the right-dominated courts.

In 1923, however, the Socialist Stressemann became prime minister, and his deflationary policies, while they led to a recession in the short term and led to his resigning as prime minister only 100 days later, ended up creating the Golden Era of Wiemar, lasting from '25-'29. The huge, 6 year recession ended up making Germany an amazing place to invest in (though Germany was always an amazing place to invest in--before WW1 they were issuing more patents then the rest of the world combined. The large focus on education, helped by Einstein being the only real hero Germany had after the war, helped this again.), leading to cheap loans and a huge rush in economic strength. This led, in turn, to an amazing cultural revolution in all of the arts--from Brecht's Baal and Threepenny Opera to the works of Fritz Lang to new art forms, both in the experimental and commercial wings (advertisements became large in Weimar). These cultural giants moved en masse to America when Hitler came to power, leading to New York's assumption of the title as 'center of the world'.

However, while the massive explosion in art was definitely real, the economic growth was built on sand. The cheap loans stopped coming in after the stock market crashed, leaving Germany to yet again go into a deep depression. This, combined with renewed fear of the creation of a socialist republic, led to the universal move to the right in the German polity. However it's important to note that during the '33 election only 40% voted for the Nazis. While a supermajority voted for the Rightist coalition, even during the 3rd Reich, a minority were Nazi party members.

So, what are the similarities between Wiemar Germany and modern day America? There are radical elements in America, but they aren't even vaguely as radical or as violent as they were in Germany. In the end, Wiemar was a product of the Kaiserreich, while America wasn't.

You spelt Weimar wrong. Thanks for the post as well, it's a nice change and something interesting to read.

I apologize, spellcheck spelled Wiemar wrong.

You did it again.

For future reference, in German, ie is 'ee' and ei is 'eye'.

Wait, cheap loans aren't a strong way to build the economy?

!@#$... someone get me the president on the line, we've been doing this wrong for years!

Briefly, I would say that the similarities between modern America and Weimar Germany are no greater than modern America and any other randomly chosen post-18th century nation, because there are so few meaningful similarities.

For the record, two separate paths can lead to the same destination.

Not really though, in politics. The only examples I can think of off the top of my head where a country with a history of political stability fell into dictatorship, it was because the CIA was involved.

Which country was that? Was it by any chance...AMERICA?

Chile, but you're close. Uruguay is in a similar situation but I don't really know about them, though they were stable and democratic up until the 70's. I honestly really can't think of a situation where a country that had been stably democratic for years turned into an autocracy.

Athens perhaps?

May I suggest a bit less swearing? And then O-I is filter evading btw.

Society destroying plagues tend to have an adverse effect on political stability.

I was more thinking after the Peloponnesian War and the rather unpleasant conditions imposed by Sparta. But I suppose that doesn't count either.

No, you may not, because that's my writing style. I try to make my posts as easy as possible to read, and 'got the political classes in a harrumph' would sound stupid.



I wouldn't class anything before Rome as something close to a democracy, because they hadn't established a precedent of minority rights or of rule of law, which was shown by the death of Socrates. Rome fell apart over centuries due to the haphazard way it expanded and also due to the huge amounts of poor they had, but for a good period of time they were an actual democracy.

Out of curiosity and not contention, what are your sources?

Personally I find it a turn down for a well written piece. But it is your choice and I will respect it.

I still miss some pieces of the puzzle to make a good judgment on the subject, but I now think the can't be compared with each other at all.

Hilter and the Rise of the Third Reich, Wikipedia (for the basest statistics), but mostly an amazing book that came out recently called "Weimar Germany--Promise and Tragedy". Though it's not the best political history (only 3 chapters in a 300 page book), it goes over all of German society at the time--how it was to live in Berlin, what the culture was like, what sexuality was like, etc.

Oh, sorry to give an angry response, I thought you were being moralistic. However, it wouldn't be a shock to someone who reads my posts to see me cursing in the middle of a history post.

And yeah, the only way the two could become comparable is if tea baggers started killing people on the far left.

We have a decent way to go before we get close to willingly surrendering our freedoms to a dictator. But it's definitely a possibility, and I have the disturbing feeling that most of us won't really know until it is way too late.

The entire time I was reading this I was thinking "This is the most reasonable and educated thing that Alreck Martens guy has written yet, I'm honestly impressed"

Then I saw it was actually you, not him. Halloween is over people!

Very well written though.

Since when isn't a direct democracy a democracy? It's certainly more democratic (by it's definition!) than what we practice today.

Eh, Athens is considered the first direct democracy, no? How isn't it? Also, I would actually purport Rome to be an example that you seek. Rome was indeed a democracy but that democracy fell due to internal conflict and instability to emerge as an imperial power, no?

It was a direct democracy for anyone who wasn't a woman, slave, freed slave, non-native or debtor anyway.

Rich white guys.

Our modern definition of democracy (in order to avoid an undue focus on elections) is--

-Majority rule
-Minority rights
-Under a rule of law

So, I would personally define Rome as the first example of this, given that they established things like lawyers and tribunes and all of that. However I would agree that they did eventually collapse due to internal stress, leading to the rather easy conclusion that it's hard to have a functioning democracy with an uneducated lower class that is living entirely in poverty.

Rome wasn't a democracy... at least I wouldn't call it that. Perhaps an incredibly limited democracy. While the plebeian assembly could make laws for the entire Republic the only people allowed to address the assembly were magistrates, and no one besides them could speak. Any of the ten Tribunes could veto a measure passed by the plebeian assembly as well, which allowed the rich to hamper the attempts of radical reforming figures among the Tribunes to address plebeian concerns. Indeed, whenever a Tribune attempted to use the potential power of the plebeian assembly to address the concerns of the poor, and in some cases the Roman state as a whole, he was killed (I don't think there are any exceptions).

Magistrates other than the Tribunes were elected not by the plebeian assembly but by the centuriate assembly, which was dominated by the wealthy- landless citizens (proletari) for instance were all enrolled into a single voting block when there were... 16 in total?

For most of the history of the Republic decisions were made by the Senate, which then ensured they were approved in the plebeian assembly. The Senate also exercised a traditional prerogative over a number of things... one of which I remember was the rather important matter of foreign affairs. One the occasion when a Tribune attempted to intervene in this arena he was accused of grasping for kingship and murdered.

Not what I would call a democracy.

On the topic, I think there are practically no parallels between Weimar and the US (which I imagine is the comparison). Could someone please explain to me, preferable someone who isn't a raving lunatic who believes that Obama is a socialist, what the context of this comparison supposedly is?

Unless the US just lost a global war, underwent a failed worker's revolution and the state apparatus is under threat from communists on the left and a discontented and desperate middle class on the right, I think such comparisons rather off.

The reason that I made the OP was firstly to clear up the idea that the US is in any way like Weimar, and secondly to make a short post that explains Weimar's history, which is something that few people know but a lot of people refer to.

Sorry, I realize that. But is this a comparison that is frequently being made in the US? And what is the basis for the comparison?

Either Obama or them rednecks is gunna gets them our freedoms!

In all honesty, I have seen comparisons made. Though those making the comparisons tend to focus more in the 31-37 range to illustrate thier points.

Yeah, and that's the point I was making. By '33, the story was over, or rather it was already predictable. Though in the final election there was a 20% vote for the leftists, they had become so galvanized as to be a nonforce. By '31, it was easy to see where it was going to turn up though there was still the possibility of a liberal democracy holding up.

But to say that we're becoming like Nazi germany and then to use examples of Nazi Germany is to say 'oh look, we're going to become like Rome because we have a general who conquered a lot of territory!"

I consider the comparisons to be interesting. And in certain ways, fairly apt. But, folks do forget one thing, for the most part. And that is the American spirit that would put up with it for only so long before the backlash began. Unlike Europe, we do not have the same history of serfdom, etc. Not sure if you get what I am trying to say, I am not a professor, or teacher type.

The modern definition is stupid. As I say whenever it gets brought up those qualities make a good democracy but they aren't integral. For millenia the definition was fixed and only (relatively) recently was it changed to adapt to the nations that called themselves democracies. It's ridiculous to compare Ancient Athens with modern liberal democracies and say that because it's different it wasn't a democracy.

lol

Because Europe's never had revolutions, trade unions, socialists, communists and liberal democracies, right? America isn't some special enclave of perfection ... don't forget that you were discriminating against blacks long after Germany was discriminating against Jews.

Is the US like the Weimar republic? Well, not really, any more than it's like any other supposedly democratic state from the last 100 years. But I wouldn't be so confident in your ability to avoid autocracy – a bunch of government executive powers and ignoring of rules on surveillance came through in the last years of Bush, and no-one batted an eyelid. The suppression of 'anti-American' views since 9/11 was at times reminiscent of 1984 – you have enough of an uneducated mob that the backlash would be kept down until it was too late if you are complacent about it.

(I'm not just having a bash at the US here, it's the same in the UK, starting with the Terrorist Act 2000, and nowadays you can be arrested for 'possessing materials useful to terrorism'. In general, western electorates are not sufficiently informed about, bothered by or both, the erosion of their civil liberties.)

You aren't facing a real threat from communists, but you have a right wing media mob who are trying to convince you that you are, and you have a real risk of heading to the far right and a Christian pseudo-theocracy.

Will we end up with another Hitler? It's unlikely, he was a megalomaniac lunatic, and had the power to give himself more power (a common problem in immature democracies in Africa and South America), and eugenics was mainstream science across Europe and America at the time. But Hitler without the massacres? That's not particularly unlikely, particularly in the US or former Eastern bloc countries which are leaning to the right to start with.

Oh, I love Weimar Germany! Studied it all last year, was a great topic!


Though, just to be anally retentive, Stresemann wasn't a socialist; he was a liberal-nationalist of the DVP (Deutsche Volks-Partei - a more conservative forerunner of today's FDP).

And his policies during his brief tenure as Chancellor were anything but deflationary. Hyperinflationary, yes.

This was as a result of the passive resistence to the French occupation of the Ruhr in 1923 - the French thought the Germans hadn't been keeping up their reparations payments, and decided to occupy German factories in the Ruhr (which they were entitled to do under the Versailles Treaty). But the workers were told to go on strike by the government, so that the French would get nothing, get the message and leave. This didn't work out as planned, as now Germany was producing relatively little, collecting no taxes from the industrial Ruhr but still paying the employees dole money because they were out of work. So the German government decided to print money off to pay the workers, resulting in hyperinflation. On the wall in front of me is a 20 billion Papiermark note from October 1923; at the time you would have needed 5 of those to buy a loaf of bread!

Though Heinrich Bruning, the later Zentrum (Catholic Centre Party - forerunner of today's CDU) chancellor deployed deflationary measures in the middle of the Great Depression - cutting expenditure on all fronts - which almost worked from an economist's standpoint, but sociologically were a horrific failure, as the German people suffered terribly and were more willing to pitch their support towards the anti-establishment parties, the KDP and the rather more infamous NSDAP. By late 1932 these two parties held over half the seats in the Reichstag, making democratic government impossible.


Whilst it is interesting to compare the then with now, there are far too many factors which are not present now. We don't have a Hindenburg in charge; we don't have an anti-democratic President who can do absolutely anything he wants by decree. That's the key, the president was allowed to pass any law he wanted because of there being a clause in the Weimar constitution (Article 48) which allowed him to do so. There are other layers, such as there not being such a fragmented party political system. Also, big businesses put their money behind the main two parties, whereas in Weimar Germany they were more inclined towards the ultra-conservative DNVP and later on the Nazis. There are many more factors which can be thown in but I think I've rambled long enough!

Ah, sorry allen, the Stresemann thing was me remembering facts that I used for an essay. Who was the guy who issued the rentenmark then?

No bother, as I said, just being anally retentive!


The rentenmark was set up in the closing stages of Stresemann's time as Chancellor at the end of 1923, but it was really the work of Hjalmar Schacht, head of the Reichsbank, which brought it in and helped end hyperinflation. Unfortunately Schacht's rigid adherence to the gold standard in the following years (understandable considering how not sticking to it had led to an unholy mess!) meant that the German exports and the economy as a whole weren't as competitive as they could have been, which limited economic growth considerably. Although the Dawes Plan of 1924 also helped the recovery, it ultimately built the economy on foundations of sand, as the Dawes plan encouraged short term US loans -which were put into long term projects by the government - and investment in Germany which were both hauled out with the Wall Street crash, which is probs why Germany was among the worst sufferers of the Great Depression.

Still, inflation had been rising since the start of WWI, so I think the Weimar republic gets slaughtered maybe a bit too much for something that had been lain on their doorstep by the previous lot. Albeit not improved much by them up until 1924 either!


Although as Foreign minister, Stresemann was quite the tank of sorts, he constantly outflanked the France and the Eastern European nations with his pragmatic diplomatic dealings. Quite an interesting dude.