#weimer republic

[contemplatingoutlander]

"Hitler had campaigned on the promise of draining the 'parliamentarian swamp'—den parlamentarischen Sumpf."

--Timothy W. Ryback, The Atlantic, Jan. 8, 2025

Ninety-two years ago this month, on Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes. The minutes, as we will see, mattered. [...] Joseph Goebbels, who was present that day as a National Socialist Reichstag delegate [when the Reischstag voted to give Hitler dictatorial powers], would later marvel that the National Socialists had succeeded in dismantling a federated constitutional republic entirely through constitutional means. Seven years earlier, in 1926, after being elected to the Reichstag as one of the first 12 National Socialist delegates, Goebbels had been similarly struck: He was surprised to discover that he and these 11 other men (including Hermann Göring and Hans Frank), seated in a single row on the periphery of a plenary hall in their brown uniforms with swastika armbands, had—even as self-declared enemies of the Weimar Republic—been accorded free first-class train travel and subsidized meals, along with the capacity to disrupt, obstruct, and paralyze democratic structures and processes at will. “The big joke on democracy,” he observed, “is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its own destruction.” [emphasis added]

Although I don't believe that Trump is a Hitler, he is a fascist, and he (as well as members of his future administration like Project 2025's Russell Voight) seem to be drawing lessons about how to quickly consolidate power for Trump's second administration from other countries' previous & current fascist/authoritarian governments.

This is a terrifying article, because there are so many echoes of Hitler in the strategies that Trump has suggested he might use here in America, including "draining the swamp" by replacing civil servants with partisans, viewing opposition parties as the "enemy" (and in Hitler's case declaring some of them illegal), using the legal system against political enemies, dismantling the opposition media, attacking academia, scapegoating certain groups of people, considering using the military against civilian protests/"unrest," giving immunity to police who use lethal force, and consolidating power in the executive branch.

This is a gift 🎁 link, so there is no paywall. I encourage you to read the entire article

[edited]

[carsonjonesfiance]

Every time I read this paragraph about Ernst Thalmann, leader of the German Communist Party, in the latter days of the Weimer Republic I feel like staring into the camera like I’m on The Office.

[mylifenoir]

I've come late to the German series, Babylon Berlin. I can't praise it enough. This is incredible, stylish storytelling. It's flash and substance. This is better Television than Hollywood has ever produced. Once again, Netflix connects its customers to great content being produced around the world.

Babylon Berlin is set in 1929 Berlin, during the decline of the Weimer Republic and the rise of National Socialism. It depicts that grime and despair hiding beneath the glitzy hedonism of the Roaring Twenties.

[warsofasoiaf]

Do you think the weimer republic could have sorted it's issues and survived? Or did it have too many factors against it? I feel even if hitler never comes to power there would have been another right wing group like the old prussian militarists to fill the gap, but if it had avoided some of the bad economic choices (like endlessly printing money to pay for versailles) it could have survived as well. It seems it could really have gone either way?

I actually discussed that in my podcast series on the Weimar Republic on @boiledleather. Essentially, what could have been done to forestall the rise of Adolf Hitler, and what would the shape of Germany had been. Kurt von Schleicher could potentially have had an aristocratic German state, which would still have probably caused problems on its eastern border, that's one route. Bruhning not trying to crash the government with intentionally bad economic policy and the government utilizing the Schwartz-Rot-Guld to beat down the SA and the Rotkampferbund was another, which would have been similar to France in the 1930's with open street brawling. Stresemann not dying might have also seen a successful coalition of parties and used sensible economic policies to help weather the Depression, possibly using Argentina and the UK to help replace lost US funding - it'd be a hard slog until about 1933-35ish.

While the mistruths about exactly who could have stopped Hitler when is one of my all-time pet peeves of bad history, there were ways that it could be written that is both realistic and sensible.

Thanks for the question, Cat.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[boghermit]

Weimer Republic ass egg prices

[elanorfmpimedia]

Otto dix

Otto Dix is an artist that lived through both world wars, and whose are was shaped by the conflicts.

He was a German painter who was highly critical of the Weimer republic, when Nazi's came into power he was denounced and fired from his job at an academy, forced to draw inoffensive landscapes

While his art criticising his leaders was often Satirical, his work about the conflicts were gritty, black and white, and haunting.

[philgennuso]

Tales From The Weimer Republic Eva's Story #1

Eva In The Weimer Republic by Phil Gennuso Arts Eva beautiful Evaso lovely so youngriding once across Old Berlinduring those hectic destructive times And now in New Yorkon the underground subwaysholding on for dear lifewith a smile a prayerand a hand over her heart Eva dear Evaso young and preciousyearning for peacestill searchingfor her lost…

[contemplatingoutlander]

Trump’s hardcore base is motivated by social grievances that are known to give rise to violence. Political scientists have repeatedly found that ethnic violence is particularly likely when a privileged portion of society sees power slipping into the hands of a group that hadn’t previously held it — as has been happening in the United States for years. A backlash to social change is probably the single biggest reason behind both Trump’s political rise and the rash of white supremacist terrorism starting in the late 2010s, like the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018, the attack on an El Paso Walmart frequented by Latinos in 2019, or the 2022 massacre of supermarket shoppers in a Black area of Buffalo.

Trump's Brownshirts

Trump is using impulsive, violent people on the far right, in much the same way that Hitler did in his rise to power during the Weimer Republic. Hitler's violent paramilitary organization was called the Sturmabteilung or SA (a.k.a. Brownshirts).

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

SA, in the German Nazi Party, a paramilitary organization whose methods of violent intimidation played a key role in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. The SA was founded in Munich by Hitler in 1921 out of various roughneck elements that had attached themselves to the fledgling Nazi movement. It drew its early membership largely from the Freikorps (Free Corps), armed freebooter groups, made up largely of ex-soldiers, that battled leftists in the streets in the early days of the Weimar Republic. Outfitted in brown uniforms after the fashion of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Blackshirts in Italy, the SA men protected party meetings, marched in Nazi rallies, and physically assaulted political opponents. [color emphasis added]

Sounds like the dozen or so right-wing extremist/paramilitary groups who took part in the Jan. 6th insurrection (e.g., Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, Boogaloo, etc.).

In the past few years, these groups have been also showing up to intimidate people at school board and town council meetings as well as Drag Queen Story Hours at libraries. They don't even have to say anything. Their presence is intimidating, especially if they are armed.

Trump tells us who he is all the time. During the Sept. 29, 2020 presidential debate Trump told us a lot when he said:

“Proud Boys — stand back and stand by.”

The Proud Boys reportedly "celebrated" after Trump said that--because they knew exactly what he meant.

Trump has no qualms about indirectly siccing these far-right paramilitary groups, as well as angry, violent individuals on the American people and those in his own political party who don't support him.

In this regard, Trump is following the fascist playbook.

______________ NOTE: The two photos in this post were modified from their original sources.

The insidious way violence is changing American politics — and shaping the 2024 election.

[hellodelraybabe]

My Roman Empire list (as a person who identifies as a woman):

Taylor Swift

The Library of Alexandria

Space in general

The Weimer Republic/WWII

The Cuban Missile Crisis

The fall of the USSR/ Vladimir Putin

The Chernobyl Nuclear Accident

Ancient Greece

Hozier

Adding on my newest one:

• my boyfriend Jacob with his glasses on

[obsidian-sphere]

Girls of Weimar Berlin by Barbara Ulrich, 1927.

[rainydaypaperback]

A MODERN DANCE OF DEATH - by Frans Fiedler- German Weimer Republic

A weird and wonderful album of life's dance with sex, love and death by the eccentric photographer Franz Fiedler (1885-1956). which shows a nude woman with a skeleton in various erotic poses. The preceding text, tells about death who is a fool and her playmate. A wonderful and in every sense of the world unique album, made against the backdrop of unstable Weimar republic, in which hedonism, sex and fear where indeed intimated companions. Fiedler won at the 1911 world exhibition in Turin the first prize and had another exhibition in Prague in 1913. He belonged to the circle of Jaroslav Hašek and Egon Erwin Kisch and in 1916 married Erna Hauswald in Dresden where he occupied astudio at Sedanstraße 7. From 1919, he began to work with a 9×12 folding camera and in 1924 became one of the first professional photographers to use a Leica. After expanding his studio in 1925, he took part in the exhibition "Film und Foto" in Stuttgart. The outstanding publication on the city of Dresden, conceived in the spirit of Die Neue Sachlichkeit, is one of the first illustrated works created according to the new principles of photography. It marks a turning point in his work. Fiedler's studio was destroyed on 13 February 1945. All that was left was a box with photographs for an exhibition which was deposited with his family in Moravia. After 1945 he did not have his own studio and earned a living in the GDR as author of books on photography. Anneliese Kretschmer, Dortmund, is one of his pupils.

[zuko-always-lies]

The postwar Fire Nation is primed for a “stab in the back myth,” which wouldn’t even be totally a myth. The Fire Nation was on the verge of victory, and only lost due to a handful of traitors(Zuko, Iroh, Piandao, Jeong Jeong), one of which who proclaimed himself Firelord in the aftermath. The level of anger and resentment which develops in the postwar Fire Nation is likely to exceed anything the Weimer Republic experienced(at the very least the Weimer Republic had strong social bases in the SPD and the Centre Party. Zuko’s regime has nothing).

[preacherpollard]

THE DIFFERENCE OF MORE THAN A YEAR

THE DIFFERENCE OF MORE THAN A YEAR

Neal Pollard

Have you ever researched famous people born on your birthday? I have. I share a birthday with Babe Ruth, Bob Marley, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Queen Anne, Isidor Strauss, J.E.B. Stuart, Tom Brokaw, and, of course, a great many others. Two of the more fascinating, by contrast, were born a year apart. The one born in 1911 was a man. The one born in 1912 was a woman. He was an American patriot and…

[djohnhopper]

FAVOURITE SINGERS: Lotte Lenya.

I have been a fan of Berthold Brecht, Kurt Weill, and Lotte Lenya, since I was a late teenager. I loved that huge burst of creative energy that was the Weimer Republic, snuffed out by the clinical madness of the nazis. And as to the voice of Lotte Lenya - perfect. Others have sung Brecht/Weill, but no one quite like Lotte Lenya. Her singing Surabaya Johnny has to be a real, all-time favourite.

[andthentheywilleatthestars]

Sucks that a lot of the people that were hurt the most by the Knot also depended on it for their existence. I wanted to see Hanno Tauber get to live his best Weimer Republic twink life