- After World War I, Germany faced chaos and revolution, leading to the establishment of the Weimar Republic
- The Weimar Republic was a democratic nation with universal suffrage
- Economic turmoil and political instability led to the rise of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler's appointment as Chancellor
- Hitler established a dictatorship, implemented policies of forced labor and extermination, and led Germany into World War II
- The war ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany, its occupation, and the trials of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg
- Germany was divided into the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, remaining divided until 1990

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This episode of Ten Minute History (like a documentary, only shorter) covers Germany from the end of the First World War to the end of the World War 2. The first half deals with the establishment of the Weimar Republic, its wider problems and the rise of the Nazis. The second half covers how the Third Reich was administered and its fall during the Second World War.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tenminhistory

Ten Minute History is a series of short, ten minute animated narrative documentaries that are designed as revision refreshers or simple introductions to a topic. Please note that these are not meant to be comprehensive and there's a lot of stuff I couldn't fit into the episodes that I would have liked to. Thank you for watching, though, it's always appreciated.

Also, I said Treblinka wrong, sorry.

1918 and the First World War is finally over.

As punishment for losing, Germany's 2 wartime allies, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, were carved up shortly afterwards.

The pressures of defeat plunged Germany into chaos and as a result the Kaiser abdicated.

Revolution and counter-revolution were the order of the day and in the small town of Weimar, Berlin was too dangerous, the Weimar Republic was declared.

The next year the Allies signed the Treaty of Versailles which dictated the terms of Allied victory.

This territory was lost and the Rhineland was occupied by the Allies.

Germany further had to reduce its military massively, pay war reparations and also had to accept almost full responsibility for the war's outbreak.

So this new Weimar Republic is 1 of the most democratic nations in the world at that point.

Suffrage was granted to everyone over the age of 20, including women.

The German people could vote on 2 aspects of the national government.

Every 7 years they voted on a president who presided over the German Parliament, the Reichstag.

Every 4 years people would vote for political parties in national elections for the Reichstag via a system known as proportional representation, whereby the percentage of votes nationally dictated the percentage of seats in the Reichstag.

The president could call elections whenever he felt and also had the important job of appointing the Chancellor who ran the government and could propose laws.

These laws had to be passed by a majority vote in the Reichstag and since no party ever got 50% of the seats that meant the parties would have to cooperate.

No, Democracy did not guarantee harmony and there was numerous attempts at revolutions such as the quickly aborted Socialist Republic of Bavaria and the 1920 revolution led by Dr Wolfgang Capp.

Capp seized Berlin and the German army refused to attack him because there was a strong belief that Germany had only lost the war due to political betrayal.

Capps Revolution was only ended by a general strike which ground the country to a halt.

This turmoil did not help the German economy and eventually Germany missed a war payment.

The French wished to punish the Germans for this whereas the British wanted leniency.

The French government decided that if the Germans would not pay them then they'd simply take the money instead and in 1923 the French occupied the heavily industrialized region of the Ruhr.

The reason for this was that German reparations could be paid in raw materials, many of which were produced there.

Another way that German reparations could be paid was in foreign currencies which were paid for by printing more paper marks.

This created the hyperinflation that the Weimar Republic is famous for.

For example, in January 1923 a loaf of bread cost 163 marks and in early November in 1923 the same loaf of bread cost over 75 billion marks.

In November 1923, another attempted revolution occurred in Munich, led by a certain Adolf Hitler and undertaken by the SA, the military arm of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, better known as the Nazi Party.

This revolution failed when other nationalist politicians refused to help Hitler and the army was called in.

Hitler was wounded and arrested shortly afterwards.

It was in prison that Hitler dictated his autobiography Mein Kampf, which became the bedrock of Nazi ideology.

All of this would make it seem like the Weimar Republic was about to immediately collapse, but it managed to survive thanks to the intervention of 2 specific individuals, Gustav Stressemann, who helped to repair relations with France, and Charles Dawes, an American who would later become vice president, who helped to relieve some of Germany's economic problems.

Germany's repayments were lowered, the French agreed to leave the Ruhr, and America agreed to loan Germany money which created a strong economic link between the 2 countries.

So then the Great Depression struck, tanking the US economy and dragging Germany's down with it.

Paul von Hindenburg, the president of Germany at the time, failed to get the Reichstag to agree on a response, or anything.

As a result, he had to invoke Article 48 which allowed the President to pass laws without the approval of the Reichstag in times of emergency.

The biggest problem with Article 48 was that there was no definition of an emergency meaning it was open to abuse.

The German people turned to different political parties to fix the problems.

Some chose Communism whereas others placed their faith in the National Socialists.

The Nazis believed that the German-speaking peoples should be united in a single state.

They argued that Communists and the Jews were the enemies of the German people and as such had to be removed.

The Nazis were popular because they wished to disregard the Treaty of Versailles, which many Germans considered insulting.

They also wished to limit any foreign involvement in German affairs by limiting the rights and numbers of foreigners in Germany.

Another reason was people's anger with the continuing economic crises which they were desperate to end.

A series of elections led to a massive increase in the number of seats held by the Nazis and by 1932 they were the largest party by far.

After continuously coming first Hitler asked President Hindenburg to be made Chancellor which he refused several times because they were worried that Hitler would overthrow the government.

Yet eventually after the Nazis continuous victories and elections Hindenburg agreed to give him the job in January 1933.

So Hitler immediately began working to overthrow the government.

A fire started in the Reichstag by a young Dutch communist was used by Hitler to paint all communists as the enemies of Germany.

Hindenburg, under pressure from Hitler, issued the Reichstag fire decree and the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which suspended many civil liberties and made Hitler the de facto dictator of Germany.

These were passed mainly because the opposing communist parties were outlawed and that the vote was being held in a building filled with armed members of the SA.

Over the next few months Hitler established the secret police, the Gestapo, in order to help shore up his position.

He outlawed trade unions as they were seen as breeding grounds for communists, and in July he abolished all other political parties.

In 1934 Hitler ordered the SS, another paramilitary group, and the Gestapo to eliminate his enemies, which included the head of the SA Ernst Ruhm in an event known as the Night of the Long Knives.

This was mainly because Hitler felt that the SA was the only force that could stop him.

Shortly after this purge, President Hindenburg died and Hitler assumed the role of president as well as that of the Chancellor.

He declared himself the Fuhrer of Germany and using Article 48 created a single party dictatorship.

The lives of Germans changed massively under the new Nazi regime.

The media was brought under the control of Joseph Goebbels, the minister for propaganda.

Heinrich Himmler was placed in command of the Gestapo and the SS, who were ordered to crack down on anyone who disagreed with the Nazi government.

Germans, for the most part, accepted having less freedoms in return for a higher standard of living and because the Nazis had ended the chaos from the decade before they took power.

The Nazi government established the German Labour Front which was like a trade union except without the representation.

The Nazis also established the Strength Through Joy program which was designed to keep workers happy.

It even helped to reduce class barriers by making vacations, clubs, cinemas and other recreational activities open to people outside of the upper classes.

Its most popular creation was the People's Car, better known as the Volkswagen, which further bridged the class divide since it could be paid for in installments.

In 1936 Hermann Göring was put in charge of the economy beginning the four-year plan which was supposed to make Germany entirely self-sufficient within 4 years.

Unemployment virtually disappeared, conscription was instated and major public works were undertaken, most famously the Autobahn and the Berlin Olympic Games.

The most important part of the four-year plan was that it saw the beginning of German rearmament, which was a violation of the Treaty of Versailles.

Hitler's plan to unify the German people picked up towards the end of the 30s.

In 1938, after some double dealing, threats and the referendum, German troops marched into Austria and Hitler announced its annexation.

After negotiations with the British and the French, it was agreed that Germany would annex the ethnically German Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.

Germany soon afterwards occupied half of it, which wasn't agreed.

The Lithuanians then caved into Hitler's demands for this territory.

The British and the French, afraid of a new major war in Europe, did nothing to deter Hitler from seizing more and more territory or re-arming which served only to embolden him.

An agreement was then made between Germany and the Soviet Union to divide Poland and on September 1st 1939 the Germans invaded and 2 weeks later the Soviets would do the same, beginning the Second World War.

France and Britain had an agreement with Poland and declared war on Germany, although Germany would quickly overrun France.

In 1941 the Germans invaded the Soviet Union shortly before declaring war on the United States.

The Germans were initially very successful and by 1943 the Third Reich looked like this.

The Allies, particularly the British and the United States, began bombing campaigns against German cities, most notably Cologne, Hamburg and of course, Dresden.

These attacks were designed to destroy German factories and infrastructure as well as frighten the Germans into submission.

The German economy didn't change drastically at the beginning of the war since Germany had already been producing arms for many years.

1 major difference between Germany and the Allies was that Germany was very reluctant to have women working in the factories, which ultimately lowered the number of available workers and frontline soldiers.

In the conquered territories, the Nazis implemented a policy of forced labour.

In Poland, many women were forced to work farmlands to produce food, whilst men worked in factories.

Many Jewish people, alongside anyone else considered undesirable, were used for slave labour to produce weapons, some of which they sabotaged.

Throughout Europe the Jewish populations were rounded up and placed into concentration camps.

The original purpose of these camps was not extermination but forced labor, although they all had horrendous mortality rates.

Before and throughout the war the Nazis had attempted to decide on what they would do with the Jewish population of Europe.

At first the Nazis wished to deport them and in fact some were sent to Palestine.

It wasn't until 1942 that the camps began to explicitly exterminate prisoners or that specialised extermination camps were opened.

The best known camps being Auschwitz and Toblinka, where over 1.5 million people were killed between them.

Throughout the Holocaust, it is believed that roughly 5.5 million Jews were killed alongside roughly the same amount of Poles and Soviet prisoners.

Gypsies, those with mental and physical disabilities, as well as homosexuals, were also exterminated alongside them.

Having failed to conquer the Soviet Union, the tide of the war changed against the Nazis and the Soviets managed to force them all the way back into Germany, liberating many of the concentration camps on the way.

At the same time, the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, amongst others, invaded Western Europe and together they managed to push the Nazis back into Germany as well.

Most of the German high command, including Hitler, committed suicide in April 1945 and Germany surrendered in May, thus ending the Third Reich and the Nazi regime.

Germany was occupied and the surviving Nazi leaders were put on trial at Nuremberg, where many were sentenced to death.

After its surrender, Germany and Berlin were split into occupied zones and both began the process of denazification.

The Allied occupation zones were soon combined into the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet occupied zones became the German Democratic Republic, known as West and East Germany respectively.

They would remain divided until 1990 at the end of the Cold War.

Ultimately, the legacy of Nazi Germany is complex.

The Nazis, whilst committing unimaginable crimes, managed to reinvigorate Germany and build it into a military powerhouse.

The Nazis brought about immense suffering across the European continent and their actions reduced many countries, including Germany itself, to ruins.

The consequences of Nazism are still being examined because frankly it's still too soon to know exactly what they are.

I hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching.


Speaker 0: 1918 and the First World War is finally over. As punishment for losing, Germany's 2 wartime allies, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, were carved up shortly afterwards. The pressures of defeat plunged Germany into chaos and as a result the Kaiser abdicated. Revolution and counter-revolution were the order of the day and in the small town of Weimar, Berlin was too dangerous, the Weimar Republic was declared. The next year the Allies signed the Treaty of Versailles which dictated the terms of Allied victory.

This territory was lost and the Rhineland was occupied by the Allies. Germany further had to reduce its military massively, pay war reparations and also had to accept almost full responsibility for the war's outbreak. So this new Weimar Republic is 1 of the most democratic nations in the world at that point. Suffrage was granted to everyone over the age of 20, including women. The German people could vote on 2 aspects of the national government.

Every 7 years they voted on a president who presided over the German Parliament, the Reichstag. Every 4 years people would vote for political parties in national elections for the Reichstag via a system known as proportional representation, whereby the percentage of votes nationally dictated the percentage of seats in the Reichstag. The president could call elections whenever he felt and also had the important job of appointing the Chancellor who ran the government and could propose laws. These laws had to be passed by a majority vote in the Reichstag and since no party ever got 50% of the seats that meant the parties would have to cooperate. No, Democracy did not guarantee harmony and there was numerous attempts at revolutions such as the quickly aborted Socialist Republic of Bavaria and the 1920 revolution led by Dr Wolfgang Capp.

Capp seized Berlin and the German army refused to attack him because there was a strong belief that Germany had only lost the war due to political betrayal. Capps Revolution was only ended by a general strike which ground the country to a halt. This turmoil did not help the German economy and eventually Germany missed a war payment. The French wished to punish the Germans for this whereas the British wanted leniency. The French government decided that if the Germans would not pay them then they'd simply take the money instead and in 1923 the French occupied the heavily industrialized region of the Ruhr.

The reason for this was that German reparations could be paid in raw materials, many of which were produced there. Another way that German reparations could be paid was in foreign currencies which were paid for by printing more paper marks. This created the hyperinflation that the Weimar Republic is famous for. For example, in January 1923 a loaf of bread cost 163 marks and in early November in 1923 the same loaf of bread cost over 75 billion marks. In November 1923, another attempted revolution occurred in Munich, led by a certain Adolf Hitler and undertaken by the SA, the military arm of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, better known as the Nazi Party.

This revolution failed when other nationalist politicians refused to help Hitler and the army was called in. Hitler was wounded and arrested shortly afterwards. It was in prison that Hitler dictated his autobiography Mein Kampf, which became the bedrock of Nazi ideology. All of this would make it seem like the Weimar Republic was about to immediately collapse, but it managed to survive thanks to the intervention of 2 specific individuals, Gustav Stressemann, who helped to repair relations with France, and Charles Dawes, an American who would later become vice president, who helped to relieve some of Germany's economic problems. Germany's repayments were lowered, the French agreed to leave the Ruhr, and America agreed to loan Germany money which created a strong economic link between the 2 countries.

So then the Great Depression struck, tanking the US economy and dragging Germany's down with it. Paul von Hindenburg, the president of Germany at the time, failed to get the Reichstag to agree on a response, or anything. As a result, he had to invoke Article 48 which allowed the President to pass laws without the approval of the Reichstag in times of emergency. The biggest problem with Article 48 was that there was no definition of an emergency meaning it was open to abuse. The German people turned to different political parties to fix the problems.

Some chose Communism whereas others placed their faith in the National Socialists. The Nazis believed that the German-speaking peoples should be united in a single state. They argued that Communists and the Jews were the enemies of the German people and as such had to be removed. The Nazis were popular because they wished to disregard the Treaty of Versailles, which many Germans considered insulting. They also wished to limit any foreign involvement in German affairs by limiting the rights and numbers of foreigners in Germany.

Another reason was people's anger with the continuing economic crises which they were desperate to end. A series of elections led to a massive increase in the number of seats held by the Nazis and by 1932 they were the largest party by far. After continuously coming first Hitler asked President Hindenburg to be made Chancellor which he refused several times because they were worried that Hitler would overthrow the government. Yet eventually after the Nazis continuous victories and elections Hindenburg agreed to give him the job in January 1933. So Hitler immediately began working to overthrow the government.

A fire started in the Reichstag by a young Dutch communist was used by Hitler to paint all communists as the enemies of Germany. Hindenburg, under pressure from Hitler, issued the Reichstag fire decree and the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which suspended many civil liberties and made Hitler the de facto dictator of Germany. These were passed mainly because the opposing communist parties were outlawed and that the vote was being held in a building filled with armed members of the SA. Over the next few months Hitler established the secret police, the Gestapo, in order to help shore up his position. He outlawed trade unions as they were seen as breeding grounds for communists, and in July he abolished all other political parties.

In 1934 Hitler ordered the SS, another paramilitary group, and the Gestapo to eliminate his enemies, which included the head of the SA Ernst Ruhm in an event known as the Night of the Long Knives. This was mainly because Hitler felt that the SA was the only force that could stop him. Shortly after this purge, President Hindenburg died and Hitler assumed the role of president as well as that of the Chancellor. He declared himself the Fuhrer of Germany and using Article 48 created a single party dictatorship. The lives of Germans changed massively under the new Nazi regime.

The media was brought under the control of Joseph Goebbels, the minister for propaganda. Heinrich Himmler was placed in command of the Gestapo and the SS, who were ordered to crack down on anyone who disagreed with the Nazi government. Germans, for the most part, accepted having less freedoms in return for a higher standard of living and because the Nazis had ended the chaos from the decade before they took power. The Nazi government established the German Labour Front which was like a trade union except without the representation. The Nazis also established the Strength Through Joy program which was designed to keep workers happy.

It even helped to reduce class barriers by making vacations, clubs, cinemas and other recreational activities open to people outside of the upper classes. Its most popular creation was the People's Car, better known as the Volkswagen, which further bridged the class divide since it could be paid for in installments. In 1936 Hermann Göring was put in charge of the economy beginning the four-year plan which was supposed to make Germany entirely self-sufficient within 4 years. Unemployment virtually disappeared, conscription was instated and major public works were undertaken, most famously the Autobahn and the Berlin Olympic Games. The most important part of the four-year plan was that it saw the beginning of German rearmament, which was a violation of the Treaty of Versailles.

Hitler's plan to unify the German people picked up towards the end of the 30s. In 1938, after some double dealing, threats and the referendum, German troops marched into Austria and Hitler announced its annexation. After negotiations with the British and the French, it was agreed that Germany would annex the ethnically German Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Germany soon afterwards occupied half of it, which wasn't agreed. The Lithuanians then caved into Hitler's demands for this territory.

The British and the French, afraid of a new major war in Europe, did nothing to deter Hitler from seizing more and more territory or re-arming which served only to embolden him. An agreement was then made between Germany and the Soviet Union to divide Poland and on September 1st 1939 the Germans invaded and 2 weeks later the Soviets would do the same, beginning the Second World War. France and Britain had an agreement with Poland and declared war on Germany, although Germany would quickly overrun France. In 1941 the Germans invaded the Soviet Union shortly before declaring war on the United States. 2 very bad ideas.

The Germans were initially very successful and by 1943 the Third Reich looked like this. The Allies, particularly the British and the United States, began bombing campaigns against German cities, most notably Cologne, Hamburg and of course, Dresden. These attacks were designed to destroy German factories and infrastructure as well as frighten the Germans into submission. The German economy didn't change drastically at the beginning of the war since Germany had already been producing arms for many years. 1 major difference between Germany and the Allies was that Germany was very reluctant to have women working in the factories, which ultimately lowered the number of available workers and frontline soldiers.

In the conquered territories, the Nazis implemented a policy of forced labour. In Poland, many women were forced to work farmlands to produce food, whilst men worked in factories. Many Jewish people, alongside anyone else considered undesirable, were used for slave labour to produce weapons, some of which they sabotaged. Throughout Europe the Jewish populations were rounded up and placed into concentration camps. The original purpose of these camps was not extermination but forced labor, although they all had horrendous mortality rates.

Before and throughout the war the Nazis had attempted to decide on what they would do with the Jewish population of Europe. At first the Nazis wished to deport them and in fact some were sent to Palestine. It wasn't until 1942 that the camps began to explicitly exterminate prisoners or that specialised extermination camps were opened. The best known camps being Auschwitz and Toblinka, where over 1.5 million people were killed between them. Throughout the Holocaust, it is believed that roughly 5.5 million Jews were killed alongside roughly the same amount of Poles and Soviet prisoners.

Gypsies, those with mental and physical disabilities, as well as homosexuals, were also exterminated alongside them. Having failed to conquer the Soviet Union, the tide of the war changed against the Nazis and the Soviets managed to force them all the way back into Germany, liberating many of the concentration camps on the way. At the same time, the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, amongst others, invaded Western Europe and together they managed to push the Nazis back into Germany as well. Most of the German high command, including Hitler, committed suicide in April 1945 and Germany surrendered in May, thus ending the Third Reich and the Nazi regime. Germany was occupied and the surviving Nazi leaders were put on trial at Nuremberg, where many were sentenced to death.

After its surrender, Germany and Berlin were split into occupied zones and both began the process of denazification. The Allied occupation zones were soon combined into the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet occupied zones became the German Democratic Republic, known as West and East Germany respectively. They would remain divided until 1990 at the end of the Cold War. Ultimately, the legacy of Nazi Germany is complex. The Nazis, whilst committing unimaginable crimes, managed to reinvigorate Germany and build it into a military powerhouse.

The Nazis brought about immense suffering across the European continent and their actions reduced many countries, including Germany itself, to ruins. The consequences of Nazism are still being examined because frankly it's still too soon to know exactly what they are. I hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching.

Was the Weimar Republic doomed to failure?  Why or Why not? 

Respond to this based on the previous answer: Yes, because it was created in a time where strict restrictions were being placed on Germany, due to it's loss of the first World War.  The other reason for the republic being doomed from the beginning was the implementation of the Treaty of Versailles.

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Ten Minute History - The Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany (Short Documentary)