The unsuccessful birth of a republic
On November 9, 1918, Scheedmann proclaimed the establishment of the German Republic on the balcony of the Reichstag, and with the consent of the Berlin Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, the Social Democratic Party and the Independent Socialist Party formed a provisional **, and appointed six people's commissars for internal affairs, military affairs, foreign affairs, colonialism, finance, and social revival. Liebknecht, the left-wing representative of the Socialist Party of Independence and leader of the Spartak League, confronted this by proclaiming the establishment of the "German Free Socialist Republic" on the balcony of the Imperial Palace.
On December 16, the German National Congress of Workers and Soldiers opened in Berlin, and Liebknecht and the Spartak Regiment intended to follow the precedent of the October Revolution to overthrow the "bourgeois parliament", establish the proletariat, disband the army, and establish the Red Guards, but their proposal ended in 400The overwhelming majority of 12 was vetoed by the workers-soldier deputies. On December 23, left-wing sailors who were on temporary guard duty in Berlin suddenly launched a riot in the name of "asking for wages", and Xuan was extinguished. On December 30, the Spartacist regiment was reorganized into the "Communist Workers' Party of Germany" and the Revolutionary Committee was formed. On January 5 of the following year, due to the dismissal of the Berlin police chief, who supported the left, the Revolutionary Committee decided to go to war against the provisional **. Over the next few weeks, the left and right flanks fought in Berlin, with the Spartacists, the Workers' Red Guards, and the Left Sailors on one side, and the Temporans, Loyalists, and Veterans on the other, each holding a part of the city, until the uprising was suppressed on 11 January, when the "Freikorps" formed by the Minister of War General Nosk marched into Berlin. On 15 January, the Communist headquarters was occupied, and Libconesi and Rosa Luxemburg were subsequently killed. Albert then moved the National Assembly to Weimar, the hometown of Goethe and Schiller, and on February 10 passed the Provisional Statute of the German Republic in lieu of the constitution, and the German Republic was named after the small city, which was later known as the "Weimar Republic".
On March 3, 1919, Berliners gathered again in front of the Brandenburg Gate to welcome back the legendary heroes of German East Africa, General Paul Leto-Forbeck, and Governor Heinrich Schneer. They persisted in guerrilla warfare in East Africa for five years, and successively fought in Tanganyika, the Great Lakes region, Rhodesia, and the Central African plateau, becoming legendary heroes of Germany.
The Treaty of Versailles in June 1919 was a great disagreement with the hopes of the Germans, and the Allies wanted to put Germany in a position of no return, so they inflicted cruel punishment on their country and people, so the Germans were disappointed and resentful, and became angry with the new republic**, and conspiracy groups to overthrow ** and restore the monarchy were one after another, among which Dr. Karp, General Ludendorff and General Lütwitz were all important figures. In January 1920, 50,000 German troops stranded in the Baltic countries returned to Germany, just as the republic** began to disband the army according to the Treaty of Versailles. On March 10, Lütwitz met with ** and put forward the demand that the army should not be disbanded and that ** be directly elected by the people, and the Minister of Defense Noske present had a heated debate with him, and finally Nosk angrily exclaimed: "If you threaten with force, I should resist with a general strike!"On the 12th, the 2nd Navy Brigade ("Earhart Brigade"), under the provisional command of Captain Earhart, attacked Berlin, and they raised the black, white, and red flag of the imperial era at the Brandenburg Gate, and Nosk's troops responded to the news, and at dawn on the 13th, ** and the cabinet fled from Berlin and took refuge in Stuttgart via Dresden, and Berlin fell into the hands of the rebels. The rebels elected Frederick, the second son of the deposed Emperor William, as the prime minister, and Prince Max of Baden as the prime minister, but both of them sternly refused, so Karp made himself prime minister.
* When Chancellor Powell sent a message to the nation calling for a general strike against the coup, the German workers were obedient to the trade unions, which were led by the Social Democrats, and they obeyed the orders of the German workers and began to strike on March 14. For a time, the water, electricity, gas, trams, and railways in Berlin were all cut off, commerce, industry, and services were all paralyzed, and the southern states of Germany also supported each other with strikes, and Dr. Karp saw that the general situation was not good, and fled to Sweden by plane on March 17, and the reactionary ** collapsed, and the right-wing army involved in the coup d'état was finally subdued, and ** and the cabinet returned to Berlin on March 23.
Incredibly, the coup leaders Karp, Lüttwitz and Earhart were all acquitted. The "Earhart Brigade" was eventually disbanded along with the rest of the Freikorps, and Earhart formed the "C Regiment" (the "C" is the beginning of the word "Governor"), whose political program included anti-Semitism, the ** Party, and the overthrow of the Weimar Constitution, financed by large landowners and capitalists, with its headquarters in Munich and branches throughout Germany, Austria and Hungary, and by 1922 its membership had grown to 180,000. The "C Regiment" used assassination as a means to create 339 political cases, assassinating the representatives of the signatories of the Versailles Peace Treaty, Elzberg, and Captain Rathenau, and Albert, Scheedman, Prime Minister Wilt, and Defense Minister General Sickert were also on its assassination list. After the assassination of Rathenau, the "C Group" was ordered to be disbanded, and most of its members moved to a small and unknown political party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or "Nazi Party". Other far-right secret societies such as the "Deutsche Travel Institute", the "Bavarian Patriotic Soldiers", the "Munich Steel Helmets", etc., eventually joined the group.
The twenties of the twentieth century were a time of social turmoil in Germany, especially inflation, which was the most devastating to the people. In 1913 the German gold reserve was 117 billion gold marks, issued banknotes 2600 million marks, and the banknote circulation rose to 22 by the time of the defeat in 1918200 million (**Reserve 2.)26.2 billion gold marks). In January 1921, the Allies finally drew up a list of war reparations, demanding 226 billion marks in reparations from Germany (the amount was reduced to 132 billion marks at the end of March), and inflation was out of control at the end of 1922: at the end of 1922, Germany's gold reserves were 100.5 billion gold marks, issued banknotes 1280100 million marks, after which the issuance of banknotes rose geometrically, in May 1923 it was 856.4 billion, in August it was 66,320 billion, at the end of October it reached 249,6823,000 billion, and by the end of 1923 the German banknote circulation had increased to 496,507,425,000 million marks (about 5 trillion yuan, while the ** reserve was only 0.).46.7 billion gold marks). Bundles of beautifully printed banknotes (the Germans did not even give up their meticulous work, and the anti-counterfeiting equipment for these banknotes was readily available, and the cost was higher than their face value) became toys for children, and the life savings of countless middle-class German families were wiped out. They eventually turned to either the Communist Party or sought solace from the right-wing parties that called for the "abolition of the Treaty of Versailles" and the "punishment of November sinners." Many families had to cook on fires from old newspapers, on which housewives poured water in order to be "more resistant to burning". The depression and famine led to one of the most sensational crimes of the post-war period in Berlin: a butcher shop owner who lured young people who came to Berlin to find work near the train station, tricked them into killing them in their own homes, and then made all kinds of sausages and bacon for the hungry citizens at a low price**.
On the other side of hunger, Berlin in the 20s was also a strange world. With the recovery of the German economy, the city finally experienced economic prosperity after 1924, entering the so-called "** art age", accompanied by a variety of new ideas and new art. In the suburb of Babelsberg, the army studio, funded by General Ludendorff during World War I, developed into the "Cosmos Cinema Joint Stock Company", where masterpieces from film history such as "Dr. Calgary's Chamber of Secrets", "Metropolis" and "Blue Angel" were filmed. With dignitaries feasting all night at the Adlon Hotel, the bustling city of Kurttistraße in the up-and-coming commercial hub, champagne, drugs, jazz, cabaret shows, cross-dressing clubs, gay *** and all sorts of other pleasures and indulgences, for some, life in Berlin in the '20s was "a long party......The abyss of human sin".
The Brandenburg Gate was once again the backdrop for one of the few celebrations of the Weimar Republic: on May 11, 1925, the new Paul von Hindenburg passed under the gate: the King of Afghanistan visited Berlin in 1928, and in 1929 the King of Egypt King Fouad passed under the gate: the newly built large airship "Count Zeppelin" ...... over Berlin
In 1928, Gustav Hartmann, an old German farmer nicknamed "Iron Gustav", drove a horse-drawn carriage from Berlin to Paris and then returned the same way as a sign of his blessing for the "great friendship between Germany and France". The friendship was forged between French Foreign Minister Briand and German Foreign Minister Streesmann, for which the two were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But the friendship was as fragile as the health of its founder: in October 1929, Streismmann's coffin passed through the Brandenburg Gate, and hundreds of thousands of Berliners crowded around Pariser Platz and Unter den Linden. A few days later, on October 24, 1929, Wall Street** suddenly collapsed, plunging the capitalist world into unprecedented turmoil and depression.
Since the establishment of the Weimar Republic, Germany has established a responsible cabinet system, but due to the large number of small parties, no political party has obtained more than half of the parliament, so it has to form a coalition cabinet by a number of parties with similar political views.
It was not until 1930 that Brüning, the Catholic Party, established a great coalition of the right wing, which was firmly established. However, at this time, the power of the Great Depression in the United States had already spread to Europe, German exports had fallen, unemployment had soared, and the amount of new relief amounted to as much as 700 million marks, plus the war reparations of 400 million marks and the interest on the public debt of 500 million marks for that year, the difference between income and expenditure was so great that it had to ask Hindenburg to fulfill Article 48 of the Constitution, "When it is hindered, it may exercise extraordinary measures and cease some or all of the rights of the people stipulated in the Constitution", and asked Hindenburg to authorize the announcement of an increase in tobacco, sugar, and sugar in the name of an "emergency order". Kerosene and other taxes, increase the municipal tax, increase the amount of property tax and land tax, reduce the salary of civil servants by 8%, and tax the celibate. Brüning's plan to raise taxes was attacked by a coalition of right-wing elements such as the Nazi Party and the ultra-left German Communist Party in the Reichstag, so he had to announce the dissolution of the Reichstag and hold parliamentary elections. The KPD brought down the Brüning cabinet, but opened the way for the Nazis to come to power: in the parliamentary elections on 14 September, the Nazis won 107 seats, second only to the Social Democrats with 143 seats, making it the second largest party in Germany.
In the spring of 1932, Hindenburg's seven-year term was about to expire, and in the subsequent elections, Hindenburg was re-elected, but Hitler was only more than 500,000 votes less than him. On May 30, the Brüning cabinet collapsed, and because Hitler insisted that the Nazi Party "form a cabinet or not", Hindenburg finally designated the right-wing athlete of the ** party Papen as chancellor. Two months later, in the German parliamentary elections, the Nazi Party became the largest party in Germany with 230 seats, and Hermann Goering became president of the Reichstag.
The Papen cabinet was also boycotted by the Nazis and the Communist Party, and resigned on November 7, and the Minister of Defense, the conspirator General Schleicher known as the "Cardinal" (a close friend of Hindenburg's son, often compared to the Bishop of Richelieu of France), was appointed as the new Prime Minister. Schleicher resigned on 28 January 1933 and served only 56 days, the shortest-lived term in Germany, with the exception of Prince Max of Baden at the end of 1918, which was the shortest-lived term in Germany. On January 30, 1933, Hindenburg ordered Hitler to form a cabinet, thus opening the darkest page in German history.
On the afternoon of 30 January, the road leading south from Parisplatz to Wilhelmplatz was crowded, and in the evening, the Brandenburg Gate was illuminated by the torches of hundreds of thousands of Nazi marchers celebrating the seizure of power, the drums "tom" and "tom" roared at the pace of the march, the torches raised by the people merged into an endless river of fire, the flags held high became a sea of flags, and the Nazis sweating with their faces sang the Nazi party song "Song of Horst Wessel" to the rhythmic beat of the drums The first line, a thick song from the throats of the Nazis, merged into a rolling thunderous ......
The 85-year-old ** was dragged by Hitler to stand on the balcony of the ** Mansion and watch the procession for hours, and in the Kaiserhof Hotel opposite the Chancellery (which the Nazis rented for the party headquarters and Hitler's residence in Berlin), Goebbels wrote that his perception at that time was "like a dream......Hundreds of thousands of torches lit up the sky, and hundreds of thousands of people passed in front of the old ** and the young prime minister, saluting loudly, expressing their infinite joy and passionate ......However, the ** pictures taken that night were dark and "not spectacular enough". For the sake of propaganda, Goebbels took the opportunity of filming Hans Westmar (a biopic of Horst Wessel) to reshoot a number of torchlight processions** in the summer of that year.
At about 9 p.m. on February 27, 1933, the sky north of the Brandenburg Gate was illuminated by a fire that was brighter than the Nazi Torchlight Parade, and pedestrians stopped in amazement: the Reichstag building, which Kaiser Wilhelm II called "waste", was already **, and tongues of fire erupted from the windows on the first and second floors, licking the building's siding, furniture, drapery and floor. Due to the intensity of the fire and the high temperature, the heavy lead-glass dome of the Capitol also collapsed after a dull **, leaving only the remains of the steel frame. The arsonist, a young Dutchman named Lubet, who had been a member of the Communist Party and later believed in a**ism and "means", said in a transcript at the police station that the arson was to "arouse a communist uprising" in Germany. * Later, the speaker of the Reichstag Goering, who arrived from the Prussian Ministry of the Interior (just diagonally opposite the Reichstag), shouted excitedly: "This is the beginning of the communist uprising!"”
What followed was a farce of farce, the absurdity of which could only be matched by the Moscow trial a few years later. Göring, who was also Prussian Minister of the Interior (the Nazi Party also had a majority in the Prussian local elections) and thus controlled the state's police forces, announced to the nation early the next morning that "the establishment of the Reichstag arson was a signal for the Communists to launch a nationwide insurrection on the basis of secret Communist documents seized by the police (the 'secret documents' were not published" were not published), and on the same day a state of emergency was issued to Quasi-Hindenburg** to "protect*** and dispatched police to arrest members of the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party, and other left-wing organizations. On March 1, Goering vigorously denounced the cruelty of the "Communist conspiracy......" in a national broadcastAccording to the evidence recovered from the headquarters of the Communist Party in Berlin, the Communist Party will organize violent groups, in addition to burning the Reichstag building, holding a large-scale riot, and wantonly looting, and planning to destroy transportation offices and poison tap water. **It is not excessive to impose severe sanctions on such acts that endanger the country!By March 3, more than 10,000 Communist Party members** had disappeared, been tortured, or killed across Germany. In the March 5 parliamentary elections, the Nazi Party's hyped terrorist propaganda paid off: under the strict supervision of the police and commandos, the Nazi Party won 288 seats, its allies the National Power Party won 52 seats, and the People's Party won 7 seats. On March 12, Hindenburg issued a decree stating that "from now until the new national flag is formulated and promulgated, the black, white, red and tricolor flag of the imperial era will be hoisted side by side with the swastika." The national flag in the imperial era is enough to make the people recall the glory of the German nation in the past, and the 10,000-character flag is a symbol of the rejuvenation of the German nation. "The people of Li cannot see the country with their eyes, and they cannot touch the country with their hands, so the only person who represents the country is the national flag, so the national flag is of great significance. The black, red and gold tricolor of the Weimar Republic, which was flown by German nationalists during the Revolution of 1848 and is now abandoned, is proof of the great changes that the German state will take place after Hitler's rule.
On March 21, the opening ceremony of the new Reichstag was held in the Potsdam Garrison Church, in order to please the old Hindenburg, the person who missed the imperial government the most, Hitler specially chose the day when the first Reichstag of the German Empire was held in 1871.
On the night of May 10, 1933, the Nazi party clubs had another "feat" that shocked the world: all "non-German", "hurtful national spirit", propaganda communism, Marxism-Leninism, anonism, decadent, and pornographic publications were all purged from German bookstores, schools, and libraries, and some of the most representative "poisonous weeds" were selected from them. It was loaded into trucks, lit by pine torches and paraded through the streets to the rhythmic drumbeat of the stormtroopers, before being thrown into a fire in the square in front of the Deutsche Staatsoper and burned. Goebbels proudly declared: "From now on, the soul of the German people will be awakened." This flame not only illuminates the focus of the old era, but also the coming of a great new era." The cultural domination of Germany began, followed by the Nazification of the country.
According to the "Law on the Elimination of the Suffering of the People and the State" enacted by Congress on March 23 (ie"and the "Centralization of the State Act" of April 7, in which Hitler abolished the traditional autonomy of the German states, dissolved the parliaments of the states other than Prussia and the three Free Hanseatic Cities, and formed a new parliament according to the proportional number of seats in the German Reichstag. The Nazis then banned the trade unions and dissolved all other parties, from the old rival Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party to the former ally National Party, declaring the Nazi Party the only legal political party in Germany. However, it was not until the "Great Qing Party" in June of the following year that Hitler consolidated his absolute power among the 67 million Germans.
Of the more than 60 million Germans, less than 1 3 had previously voted for HitlerNow the remaining 2 3 people can no longer snort under the threat of concentration camps, guns and axes. At least a few hundred of those killed on June 30, 1934, were not political enemies of the Nazis or anti-Hitler, including Schleicher, a sorcerer whose wife was killed by a bullet for "mistakenness." Even the two sons of the deposed Emperor Wilhelm were dragged to court by Goering for a hearing for "attempting to restore the monarchy".
To be continued).