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Who Killed Weimar Democracy Essay

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Who Killed Weimar Democracy Essay
Who killed Weimar democracy? It is hard to access a simple answer to this question because there are many factors which led to that. Beginning with the hard situation of Germany after the First World War, going through reigns of chancellors, ending on the president and Hitler’s high political skills. However in my essay I would like to mainly concentrate on the role of chancellors: Burning, Papen, Schleicher and the president Hindenburg. I will try to estimate in turn whether these four persons deliberately undermined Weimer democracy or helped Hitler by their choices.

Bruning was appointed a chancellor in very hard time for Germany. After the First World War Germany was in a weak position and in addition it had to pay reparations. Heinrich …show more content…
As far as I am concerned his reign was a complete disaster from its beginning. He formed a non-party government of ‘national concentration’ which consisted of the elite. None of the members were in Reichstag. It was supposed to be a more presidential government and Papen naively wanted to gain support from the Nazis. So the only way to rule was using the presidential decrees. His next horrible move was overthrowing democratic government in Prussia. It was a further disaster to the Weimar democracy and great help for Hitler as a chancellor to achieve the power faster by inheriting the Prussian state and overthrowing other states governments. Subsequent fatal decision was to call a new election in which Weimar regime completely loose, but extremists mainly Nazis gained about 40% of the votes. Because of this fact Hindenburg decided to dissolve the Reichstag after one day and planned with Papen not to call a new one, but it could cause a civil war. Next election weakened the position of Nazis a little but did not improve anything for Papen. The last desperate move Papen could make was to conclude a deal with Hitler and persuade Hindenburg to replace next chancellor Schliecher with Hitler and in return become
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