Do you know about the Weimar Republic? You should it was taught in schools before the Revisionist Progressive Movement and the Weather Underground became teachers in our society. The Weathermen were TERRORIST and STILL ARE!
Weimar Republic
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The Weimar Republic (
Weimarer Republik (help·info), IPA: [ˈvaɪmaʁɐ ʁepuˈbliːk]) is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government. It was named after Weimar, the city where the constitutional assembly took place. Its official name was Deutsches Reich (sometimes translated as German Empire, but Reich can also mean realm or federal level of government), however, and it was usually known in English simply as Germany. Following World War I, the republic emerged from the German Revolution in November 1918. In 1919, a national assembly convened in Weimar, where a new constitution for the German Reich was written. It was adopted on 11 August. Germany's period of liberal democracy lapsed in the early 1930s, leading to the ascent of the NSDAP and Adolf Hitler in 1933. Although the constitution of 1919 was never officially repealed, the legal measures taken by the Nazi government in February and March 1933, commonly known as Gleichschaltung ("coordination") meant that the government could legislate contrary to the constitution. The constitution became irrelevant; thus, 1933 is usually seen as the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Hitler's Third Reich.
In its 14 years, the Weimar Republic was faced with numerous problems, including hyperinflation, political extremists on the left and the right and their paramilitaries, and hostility from the victors of World War I. However, it overcame many discriminatory regulations of the Treaty of Versailles, reformed the currency, unified tax politics and the railway system.
Name
The name Weimar Republic was never used officially during its existence. Despite its political form, the new republic was still known as Deutsches Reich in German. This phrase was commonly translated into English as German Empire, although the German word Reich has a broader range of connotations than the English "empire", so the name is most often translated to the German Reich in English. The English word "realm" captures broadly the same meaning. The common short form remained Germany.
November Revolution
In October 1918, the constitution of the German Empire was reformed to introduce a parliamentary system similar to the British, but this soon became obsolete.[citation needed] On 29 October, rebellion broke out in Kiel among sailors. There, sailors, soldiers and workers began electing worker and soldier councils (Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte) modeled after the soviets of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The revolution spread throughout Germany, and participants seized military and civil powers in individual cities. In contrast to Russia one year earlier, the councils were controlled by social democrats, not communists. Nevertheless, the rebellion caused great fear in the establishment and in the middle classes because of the Soviet Russia connotation of the councils. The country seemed to be on the verge of a communist revolution. On 7 November, the revolution had reached Munich, causing King Ludwig III of Bavaria to flee.
At the time, the traditional political representation of the working class, the Social Democratic Party was divided: a faction that called for immediate peace negotiations and leaned towards a socialist system had founded the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) in 1917. In order not to lose their influence, the remaining Majority Social Democrats (MSPD), who supported the war efforts and a parliamentary system, decided to put themselves at the front of the movement, and on 7 November, demanded that Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicate. When he refused, Prince Max of Baden simply announced that he had done so and frantically attempted to establish a regency under another member of the House of Hohenzollern. On 9 November 1918, the German Republic was proclaimed by MSPD member Philipp Scheidemann at the Reichstag building in Berlin, to the fury of Friedrich Ebert, the leader of the MSPD, who thought that the question of monarchy or republic should be answered by a national assembly. Two hours later a Free Socialist Republic was proclaimed, two kilometres away, at the Berliner Stadtschloss. The proclamation was issued by Karl Liebknecht, co-leader (with Rosa Luxemburg) of the communist Spartakusbund, which had allied itself with the USPD in 1917.
Philipp Scheidemann talking from a window of the
Reich Chancellery building to the people, November 9, 1918
On 9 November, in a legally questionable act, Reichskanzler Prince Max of Baden transferred his powers to Friedrich Ebert, who, shattered by the monarchy's fall, reluctantly accepted. It was apparent, however, that this act would not satisfy Liebknecht and his followers, so a day later, a coalition government called "Council of People's Commissioners" (Rat der Volksbeauftragten) was established, consisting of three MSPD and three USPD members. Led by Ebert for the MSPD and Hugo Haase for the USPD it sought to act as collective head of state. Although the new government was confirmed by the Berlin worker and soldier council, it was opposed by the Spartacist League. Ebert called for a National Congress of Councils, which took place from 16 December to 20 December 1918, and in which the MSPD had the majority. Thus Ebert managed to enforce quick elections for a National Assembly to produce a constitution for a parliamentary system, marginalizing the movement that called for a socialist republic (see below).
On 11 November, an armistice was signed at Compiègne by German representatives. It effectively ended military operations between the Allies and Germany. It amounted to German demilitarization, without any concessions by the Allies; the naval blockade would continue until complete peace terms were agreed.
From November 1918-January 1919, Germany was governed by the Council of People's Commissioners. It issued a large number of decrees which were confined to certain spheres: the eight-hour workday, domestic labour reform, agricultural labour reform, right of civil-service associations, local municipality social welfare relief (split between Reich and States) and important national health insurance, re-instatement of demobilised workers, protection from arbitrary dismissal with appeal as a right, regulated wage agreement, and universal suffrage from 20 years of age in all types of elections—local and national.
To ensure that his fledgling government was able to maintain control over the country, Ebert made an agreement with the OHL (supreme army command), now led by Ludendorff's successor General Wilhelm Groener. The 'Ebert-Groener pact' stipulated that the government would not attempt to reform the army so long as the army swore to protect the state. On the one hand, this agreement symbolised the acceptance of the new government by the military, assuaging concern among the middle classes; on the other hand, it was thought contrary to working-class interests by left wing social democrats and communists, and was also opposed by the far right who believed democracy would make Germany weaker. The new Reichswehr armed forces, limited by the Treaty of Versailles to 100,000 army soldiers and 15,000 sailors, remained fully under the control of the German officer class despite its nominal re-organisation.
As in other countries, it came to the permanent split in the social democratic movement, into the democratic SPD and the Communists.[citation needed] There was no revolution because the rightwing of the socialist movement, led by Ebert and Scheideman, supported the republic which they had brought into being. Combined action on the part of the socialists was not possible without action from the millions of workers who stood midway between the parliamentarians and the revolutionaries who supported the workers' councils. The likelihood of the conservative army and the extreme left fighting a civil war was made acute by widespread confusion.
The split in the social democratic movement became final after Ebert called upon the OHL for troops to put down another Berlin army mutiny on 23 November 1918, in which soldiers had captured the city's garrison commander and closed off the Reichskanzlei where the Council of People's Commissioners was situated. The ensuing street fighting was brutal with several dead and injured on both sides. This caused the left wing to call for a split with the MSPD which, in their view, had joined with the anti-communist military to suppress the revolution. Thus, the USPD left the Council of People's Commissioners after only seven weeks. In December, the split deepened when the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was formed out of a number of radical left-wing groups, including the left wing of the USPD and the Spartacist League group.
In January, the Spartacist League and others in the streets of Berlin made more armed attempts to establish communism, known as the Spartacist uprising. Those attempts were put down by paramilitary Freikorps units consisting of volunteer soldiers. Bloody street fights culminated in the beating and shooting deaths of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht after their arrests on 15 January. With the affirmation of Ebert, those responsible were not tried before a court martial, leading to lenient sentences, which made Ebert unpopular among radical leftists.
Official postcard of the National Assembly.
The National Assembly elections took place on 19 January 1919. In this time, the radical left-wing parties, including the USPD and KPD, were barely able to get themselves organized, leading to a solid majority of seats for the MSPD moderate forces. To avoid the ongoing fights in Berlin, the National Assembly convened in the city of Weimar, giving the future Republic its unofficial name. The Weimar Constitution created a republic under a parliamentary republic system with the Reichstag elected by proportional representation. The democratic parties obtained a solid 80% of the vote.
During the debates in Weimar, fighting continued. A Soviet republic was declared in Munich, but was quickly put down by Freikorps and remnants of the regular army. The fall of the Munich Soviet Republic to these units, many of which were situated on the extreme right, resulted in the growth of far-right movements and organizations in Bavaria, including Organisation Consul, the NSDAP, and societies of exiled Russian Monarchists. Sporadic fighting continued to flare up around the country. In eastern provinces, forces loyal to Germany's fallen Monarchy fought the republic, while militias of Polish nationalists fought for independence: Great Poland Uprising in Provinz Posen and three Silesian Uprisings in Upper Silesia.
[edit] Treaty of Versailles
The permanent economic crisis was a result of lost pre-war industrial exports, the loss of supplies in raw materials and foodstuffs from Alsace-Lorraine, Polish districts and the colonies, along with worsening debt balances and reparations payments. Military-industrial activity had almost ceased, although controlled demobilisation kept unemployment at around one million. The fact that the Allies continued to blockade Germany until after the Treaty of Versailles did not help matters, either.
The allies permitted only low import levels of goods that most Germans could not afford. After four years of war and famine, many German workers were exhausted, physically impaired and discouraged. Millions were disenchanted with capitalism and hoping for a new era. Meanwhile the currency depreciated.
The German peace delegation in France signed the Treaty of Versailles accepting mass reductions of the German military, substantial war reparations payments, and the controversial "War Guilt Clause". Adolf Hitler later blamed the republic and its democracy for the oppressive terms of this treaty. The Republic's first Reichspräsident ("Reich President"), Friedrich Ebert of the SPD, signed the new German constitution into law on 11 August 1919. It is important to note that Hitler used the shame that pervaded the German conscious regarding this treaty, and specifically the "War Guilt" clause, to catapult Germany into World War II.
The new post-World War I Germany, stripped of all colonies, became 13.3% smaller in its European territory than its imperial predecessor.
[edit] Years of crisis (1919–1923)
1923-issue 50 million mark banknote. Worth approximately $1 US when printed, this sum would have been worth approximately $12 million, nine years earlier. The note was practically worthless a few weeks later because of continued inflation.
The Republic was soon under attack from both left- and right-wing sources. The radical left accused the ruling Social Democrats of having betrayed the ideals of the workers' movement by preventing a communist revolution. Various right-wing sources opposed any democratic system, preferring an authoritarian state like the 1871 Empire. To further undermine the Republic's credibility, some right-wingers (especially certain members of the former officer corps) also blamed an alleged conspiracy of Socialists and Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I.
For the next five years, Germany's large cities suffered political violence between left-wing and right-wing groups, both of which committed violence and murder against innocent civilians and against each other, resulting in many deaths. The worst of the violence was between right-wing paramilitaries called the Freikorps and pro-Communist militias called the Red Guards, both of which admitted ex-soldiers into their ranks.
The first challenge to the Weimar Republic came when a group of communists and anarchists took over the Bavarian government in Munich and declared the creation of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. The communist rebel state was put down one month later when Freikorps units were brought in to fight the leftist rebels.
The Kapp Putsch took place on 13 March 1920: a group of 5000 Freikorps troops gained control of Berlin and installed Wolfgang Kapp (a right-wing journalist) as chancellor. The national government fled to Stuttgart and called for a general strike. While Kapp's vacillating nature did not help matters, the strike crippled Germany's ravaged economy and the Kapp government collapsed after only four days on 17 March.
Inspired by the general strikes, a communist uprising began in the Ruhr region when 50,000 people formed a "Red Army" and took control of the province. The regular army and the Freikorps ended the uprising on their own authority. Other communist rebellions were put down in March 1921 in Saxony and Hamburg.
In 1922, Germany signed the secret Treaty of Rapallo with the Soviet Union, which allowed Germany to train military personnel in exchange for giving Russia military technology. This was against the Treaty of Versailles, which limited Germany to 100,000 soldiers and no conscription, naval forces of 15,000 men, twelve destroyers, six battleships, and six cruisers, no submarines or aircraft. But Russia had pulled out of World War I against the Germans as a result of the 1917 Russian Revolution, and was looked down upon by the League of Nations. Thus Germany seized the chance to make an ally. Walther Rathenau, the Jewish Foreign Minister who signed the treaty, was assassinated two months later by two ultra-nationalist army officers.
By 1923, the Republic claimed it could no longer afford the reparations payments required by the Versailles Treaty, and the government defaulted on some payments. In response, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr region, Germany's most productive industrial region at the time, taking control of most mining and manufacturing companies in January 1923. Strikes were called, and passive resistance was encouraged. These strikes lasted eight months, further damaging the economy and increasing the expense of imports. The strike prevented goods from being produced. This infuriated the French, who began to kill and exile protestors in the region.
1 Million Mark notes, used as note paper, October 1923
Since striking workers were paid benefits by the state, much additional currency was printed, fueling a period of hyperinflation. The 1920s German inflation started when Germany had no goods with which to trade. The government printed money to deal with the crisis; this allowed Germany to pay war loans and reparations with worthless marks, and helped formerly great industrialists to pay back their own loans. This also led to pay raises for workers and for businessmen who wanted to profit from it. Circulation of money rocketed, and soon the Germans discovered their money was worthless. The value of the Papiermark had declined from 4.2 per US dollar at the outbreak of World War I to 1 million per dollar by August 1923. This led to further criticism of the Republic. On 15 November 1923, a new currency, the Rentenmark, was introduced at the rate of 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) Papiermark for one Rentenmark, an action known as a monetary reset. At that time, one U.S. dollar was equal to 4.2 Rentenmark. Reparation payments resumed, and the Ruhr was returned to Germany under the Locarno Pact, which defined a border between Germany, France and Belgium.
Further pressure from the right came in 1923 with the Beer Hall Putsch, also called the Munich Putsch, staged by Adolf Hitler in Munich. In 1920, the German Workers' Party had become the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), nicknamed the Nazi Party, and would become a driving force in the collapse of Weimar. Hitler was named chairman of the party in July 1921. On 8 November 1923, the Kampfbund, in a pact with Erich Ludendorff, took over a meeting by Bavarian prime minister Gustav von Kahr at a beer hall in Munich. Ludendorff and Hitler declared a new government, planning to take control of Munich the following day. The 3,000 rebels were thwarted by 100 policemen. Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for high treason, a minimum sentence for the charge. In the event, he served less than eight months in a comfortable cell before his release on the 20th of December 1924. While in jail, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf which laid out his ideas and future policies. Hitler now decided to focus on legal methods of gaining power.
[edit] Golden Era (1923–1929)
Gustav Stresemann was Reichskanzler for 100 days in 1923, and served as foreign minister from 1923–1929, a period of relative stability for the Weimar Republic, known in Germany as Goldene Zwanziger ("Golden Twenties"). Prominent features of this period were a decrease in civil unrest and improved economic conditions.
During his time as Chancellor, Streseman worked to restore order in Germany by using the Freikorps, made up of former soldiers, to quell various rebellions that had sprung up, particularly the Spartacist uprising. Once civil stability had been restored, Streseman could set about stabilising the German currency, which would promote confidence in the German economy and help the recovery that was so ardently needed for the German nation to keep up with their reparation repayments, while at the same time feeding and supplying the nation.
Stresemann's first move as foreign minister was to issue a new currency, the Rentenmark, to halt the extreme hyperinflation crippling German society and the economy. It was successful because Stresemann refused to issue more currency, the cause of the inflationary spiral. Furthermore, the currency was based on land, and restored confidence in the economy. Once the economy as stabilised, Streeseman could set about putting a permanent courrency in place, called the 'Reichmark' (1924) which again contributed to the growing level of international confidence in the German economy.
Christmas broadcast of
Wilhelm Marx in December 1923. Marx was the longest serving chancellor of the republic.
In order to help Germany keep up with her reparation repayments, the Dawes Plan (1924) was created. This was an agreement between American banks and the German government in which the American banks lent money to Germany to help it pay reparations. Other foreign achievements were the evacuation of the Ruhr in 1925 and the 1925 Treaty of Berlin, which reinforced the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 and improved relations between the USSR and Germany. In 1926, 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. Germany's western borders were stabilized in international agreements. However, this progress was funded by overseas loans, increasing the nation's debts, while overall trade decreased and unemployment rose. Stresemann's reforms did not relieve the underlying weaknesses of Weimar but gave the appearance of a stable democracy.The growing dependence on American finance proved dangerous as Germany was one of the worst hit nations in the Wall Street Crash (1929).
Roaring twenties in Berlin hotel
Esplanade, 1926
The 1920s saw a massive cultural revival in Germany. Innovative street theatre brought plays to the public, the cabaret scene and jazz band became very popular. According to the cliché, modern young women were americanised, wearing makeup, short hair, smoking and breaking with traditional mores. A new type of architecture taught at 'Bauhaus' schools, and Art reflected the new ideas of the time, with artists such as George Grosz being fined for defaming the military and for blasphemy.
Not everyone, however, was happy with the changes taking place in Weimar culture. Many of the older generations felt that Germany was losing her traditional values by adopting popular styles from abroad, particularly the USA. Hollywood popularised American film, while New York became the global capital of fashion. Germany was more susceptible to Americanisation, because of the close economic links brought about by the Dawes plan.
In 1929, four years after receiving the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize, Stresemann died of a heart attack at the age of 51. This event marked the end of the "Golden Era" of the Weimar Republic. Read More Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic
Now look at the "Weather Underground" and who and where they are today!
Weather Underground (organization)
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Weatherman
Or Weather Underground Organization |
"Our signature was...letters of explanation....
Each letter had a logo hand-drawn
across the page...." — BILL AYERS[1] |
| Formation | 1969 – c. 1977 |
| Type | Revolutionary communist |
| Location | United States |
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization (abbreviated WUO), was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)[2] composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their supporters. Their goal was to create a clandestine revolutionary party for the violent overthrow of the US government and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat.[3]
With leadership whose revolutionary positions were characterized by Black separatist rhetoric,[2] the group conducted a campaign of bombings through the mid-1970s, including aiding the jailbreak and escape of Timothy Leary. The "Days of Rage", their first public demonstration on October 8, 1969, was a riot in Chicago timed to coincide with the trial of the Chicago Seven. In 1970 the group issued a "Declaration of a State of War" against the United States government, under the name "Weather Underground Organization" (WUO). The bombing attacks mostly targeted government buildings, along with several banks. Most were preceded by evacuation warnings, along with communiqués identifying the particular matter that the attack was intended to protest. For the bombing of the United States Capitol on March 1, 1971, they issued a communiqué saying it was "in protest of the US invasion of Laos." For the bombing of the Pentagon on May 19, 1972, they stated it was "in retaliation for the US bombing raid in Hanoi." For the January 29, 1975 bombing of the United States Department of State Building, they stated it was "in response to escalation in Vietnam."[4]
The Weathermen grew out of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) faction of SDS. It took its name from the lyric "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", from the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows was the title of a position paper they distributed at an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969. This founding document called for a "white fighting force" to be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other radical movements[5] to achieve "the destruction of US imperialism and achieve a classless world: world communism."[6]
The Weathermen largely disintegrated after the United States reached a peace accord in Vietnam in 1973, which saw the general decline of the New Left.
- 1 Background and formation
- 2 Major Activities and Suspected activities
- 2.1 Haymarket Police Memorial bombing October 7, 1969
- 2.2 "Days of Rage" October 9, 1969
- 2.3 Flint War Council, December 27–31, 1969
- 2.4 Park Place Police Station bombing, February 1970
- 2.5 New York City, Judge Murtagh arson attacks, February 1970
- 2.6 Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, March 1970
- 2.7 Declaration of a State of War, May 1970
- 2.8 June 1970 NYC Police Bombing
- 2.9 Federal Grand Jury Indicts 13 Weathermen Leaders
- 2.10 Timothy Leary prison break, September 1970
- 2.11 FBI's Most Wanted List, October 1970
- 2.12 Pentagon Bombing, 1972
- 2.13 Charges Dropped, 1973
- 2.14 Prairie Fire 1974
- 2.15 COINTELPRO
- 3 Dissolution 1977 - 1981
- 4 Coalitions with non-WUO members
- 5 Legacy
- 6 See also
- 7 References
- 8 Further reading
- 9 External links and further reading
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/weatherunderground/film.html
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In October 1969, hundreds of young people wielding lead pipes and clad in football helmets marched through an upscale Chicago shopping district, pummeling parked cars and smashing shop windows. Thus began the “Days of Rage,” the first demonstration of the Weathermen, later known as the Weather Underground. Outraged by the Vietnam War and racism in America, this group of former student radicals waged a low-level war against the United States government through much of the 1970s, bombing the Capitol building, breaking Timothy Leary out of prison and finally evading the FBI by going into hiding. In THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND, former Weathermen including Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd and David Gilbert speak frankly about the idealist passions and trajectories that transformed them from college activists into the FBI’s Most Wanted. The Weather Underground emerged when Dohrn and a group of fellow University of Chicago students split with the campus-run Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, because they disagreed with the SDS’s peaceful protest tactics against the Vietnam War. Dubbing itself the Weathermen, this new organization took its name from a line in Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”—“you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”—and within months had set off bombs at the National Guard headquarters and set in motion plans to bomb targets across the country that it considered emblematic of the worldwide violence sanctioned by the U.S. government. Using extensive archival material such as photographs, film footage and FBI documents, THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND chronicles the Weathermen’s public rise and fall and offers a rare insider look into the group’s private conflicts. Fueled by righteous anger, these white, middle-class students were also widely criticized for their controversial—some say misguided—politics. As former SDS president Todd Gitlin says: ''Like Bonnie and Clyde, many of them were attractive personally. They were into youth, exuberance, sex, drugs. They wanted action.” Ultimately, the Weathermen's carefully organized, clandestine network managed to successfully dodge the FBI for years, although the group's members would eventually reemerge to life in a country that was dramatically different than the one they had hoped their efforts would inspire. As an exploration of the Weathermen in the context of other social movements of the time, the film also features rare footage and interviews with former SDS members and the Black Panthers, further examining the U.S. government's suppression of dissent during the 1960s and 1970s. Looking back at their years underground, former Weather Underground members paint a compelling portrait of troubled times, revolutionary times and the forces that drove their resistance home. | |