social and educational policies were pioneered, the
arts and culture flourished. These were impressive
achievements in just a few short years, but time
was too short.
The army was a special case. The Social Demo-
crats treated the army high command and the
officers as indispensable pillars of the republic.
They shared as patriotic Germans a false venera-
tion for the gods of yesterday such as Hinden-
burg. There was little excuse for this after the
behaviour of the chief of the army, General Hans
von Seeckt, in the spring of 1920. A right-wing
plot to overthrow the republic, supported by Free
Corps units near Berlin, came to fruition in March
- Led by a General Lüttwitz, the troops
entered Berlin and installed a Prussian bureaucrat,
Wolfgang Kapp, as chancellor. To Ebert’s aston-
ishment, Seeckt refused to defend the govern-
ment, declaring that the ‘Reichswehr does not
shoot on the Reichswehr’. Ebert and the govern-
ment ignominiously fled from Berlin to the safety
of southern Germany. The trade unions ordered a
general strike. In Berlin some civil servants con-
tinued to function, others obeyed the govern-
ment’s call and refused to work. While there was
no military opposition to Kapp’s seizure of power,
the country was industrially paralysed, and few
people would positively cooperate, though the
army continued to remain ‘neutral’. Nevertheless,
Kapp quickly recognised that he could not govern
in such circumstances. A few days after his arrival
in Berlin, he ‘resigned’ and withdrew with his
troops. Ebert returned. The weakness of the Social
Democrats was now shown clearly, for they nei-
ther dismissed the disloyal head of the army, nor
attempted to remove from the service of the
republic those who had disobeyed the govern-
ment’s call to strike. The affair was dismissed. But
the extremists on the right did not abandon their
war against the republic of ‘traitors’.
Why did the army not back the right-wing
insurrectionists like Kapp? It clearly was not for
love of the republic, or of the Social Democrats.
The republic was necessary to deal with the
Allies, who were in occupation of the Rhineland.
The French still enjoyed overwhelming military
strength and could occupy parts of Germany at
will, as they did in 1920, 1921 and 1923. Seeckt
and the army high command knew that the
French would certainly not stand idly by if the
legal democratic German government were over-
thrown by the generals. That would be the signal
for intervention. It was therefore as unrealistic to
support a man like Kapp as it would have been to
bring the kaiser back.
Besides attempted coups and violence from left
and right, every German was affected by the
unprecedented experience of hyperinflation. The
murder in June 1922 by a young nationalist of
the ‘Jew’ Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau
undermined internal and foreign confidence in
the political stability of Weimar Germany with
inevitably disastrous consequences for Germany’s
financial standing as well. The final blow to
German financial stability was delivered by the
Germans themselves.
It was due not to reparations payments made
by Germany but to the decision of the govern-
ment to organise passive resistance when the
French, in response partly to the threatened polit-
ical disintegration of Weimar Germany and eva-
sion of reparations, occupied the Ruhr in January- The consequent industrial standstill in the
Ruhr and the relief paid by the government to the
Germans who had no income now could be met
only by printing more money since the govern-
ment was reluctant to increase taxation sufficiently
to meet the bill. By the autumn of 1923 paper
money was practically worthless. A tram ticket
cost millions of marks. All goods, including food,
became scarce. No one wanted paper money that
might lose half its value in a day. Somehow people
survived with ingenuity. The pensioner and the
weakest members of society suffered the most.
Unemployment soared. Only those who had
property and understood how to manipulate
credit became rich. Industrialists like Hugo
Stinnes amassed factories and mines paid for in
worthless currency. The inflation left an indelible
impression.
The middle classes saw their modest accumu-
lation of wealth, saved from the war years, being
lost. The long-term consequences of the war were
now really felt. And more and more people were
saying that it was all the fault of the republic, both
the lost war and the lost money. The general