Political Issues In Germany Essay

Political issues within Germany were, to a large extent, responsible for the collapse of the Weimar regime in 1933. Weimar Germany was a nation of instability at the end of the 1st World War, and the democratic regime imposed by the Treaty of Versailles was seen as an embarrassment to the German people. Despite William L. Shire's description of the Weimar constitution being "on paper, the most liberal and democratic document … the twentieth century had ever seen", the Weimar democracy was a system of governance that was "born with a hole in its heart" The political climate of Weimar Germany was extremely unstable as a result of a provision within its constitution, Article 22, which called for proportional representation in German elections.

In imposing the Treaty, the victorious Allies designed the agreement in order to attempt to solve the 'problem' of Germany. Instead of cultivating a partnership with Germany and given them little cause for resentment, the Allies chose to almost virtually eliminate Germany's ability to revive itself in the future. The Treaty of Versailles extremely crippled the productive capacity of Germany by annexing 13% of its territory, including the region of Alsace-Lorraine, the industrial heartland of Germany, and the resource-rich Saar Basin, which provided Germany with its

Despite being hailed as the best democratic system in the world, the Weimar Republic was tragically "born with a hole in its heart" and as a result of the fact that "against [its] enemies, the constitution gave no protection," it was merely an Allied-designed experiment that was quintessentially doomed to fail. As such, it is highly evident that political issues were, to an massive extent, the foremost reason for the collapse of the Weimar regime in