Fateful Hours
The Collapse of the Weimar Republic
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
From the New York Times best-selling historian, the riveting story of the Weimar Republic—a fledgling democracy beset by chaos and extremism—and its dissolution into the Third Reich.
Democracies are fragile. Freedoms that seem secure can be lost. Few historical events illustrate this as vividly as the failure of the Weimar Republic. Germany’s first democracy endured for fourteen tumultuous years and culminated with the horrific rise of the Third Reich. As one commentator wrote in July 1933: Hitler had “won the game with little effort. . . . All he had to do was huff and puff—and the edifice of German politics collapsed like a house of cards.” But this tragedy was not inevitable.
In Fateful Hours, award-winning historian Volker Ullrich chronicles the captivating story of the Republic, capturing a nation and its people teetering on the abyss. Born from the ashes of the First World War, the fledgling democracy was saddled with debt and political instability from its beginning. In its early years, a relentless chain of crises—hyperinflation, foreign invasion, and upheaval from the right and left—shook the republic, only letting up during a brief period of stability in the 1920s. Social and cultural norms were upended. Political murder was the order of the day. Yet despite all the challenges, the Weimar Republic was not destined for its ignoble end.
Drawing on letters, memoirs, newspaper articles, and other sources, 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. There was no shortage of opportunities to stop the slide into fascism. Just as in the present, it is up to us whether democracy lives or dies.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
