Fateful Hours
The Collapse of the Weimar Republic
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Beschreibung des Verlags
Democracies are fragile. Freedoms that seem secure can be lost. Few historical events illustrate this as vividly as the failure of the Weimar Republic.
Fateful Hours tells one of the greatest dramas in world history: the failure of Germany's first democracy, culminating in the horrific rise of the Third Reich.
But this tragedy was not inevitable. In this gripping new book, celebrated historian Volker Ullrich charts the many failed alternatives and missed opportunities that contributed to German democracy's collapse. In an immersive style that takes us to the heart of political power, Ullrich argues that, right up until January 1933, history was open - just as in the present, it is up to us whether democracy lives or dies.
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Ideological extremism and shortsighted political intrigue eroded German democracy and paved the way for Hitler's ascension, according to this intricate study. Historian Ullrich (Germany 1923) argues that the Weimar Republic, which struggled through communist insurrections, right-wing terror campaigns, hyperinflation, and the Great Depression, was done in less by these upheavals than by dysfunctional and toxic political factors. These included the Weimar constitution itself, which granted the president undemocratic powers like dissolving the legislature and ruling by emergency decree; the government's leniency toward far-right extremists; and the refusal of Germany's Communist Party to cooperate with the moderate left. Ullrich shrewdly analyzes a succession of incidents that nudged the Republic toward the abyss: the Communists' refusal to support the center-left candidate, for example, guaranteed the election of reactionary Paul von Hindenburg as president in 1925; and the refusal of both right and left to compromise on unemployment insurance reform brought down a coalition government and inaugurated a string of Hindenburg-appointed minority cabinets that ruled by decree (as Hitler would). Throughout, Ullrich emphasizes the contingency of events, the importance of individual decisions, and the failings of statesmen who put short-term expedience or doctrinal purity ahead of the greater good. The result is a resonant and sobering cautionary tale of how a democracy can die.
