People use the term “Weimar Republic” to refer to a period in German history between 1919 and 1933 when the government was a democratic republic governed by a constitution that was laid out in the German city of Weimar. Technically, the Weimar Constitution lasted until 1945, when the German government was formally dissolved in the wake of the Second World War, but most people date the end of the Weimar Republic to 1933, when Adolf Hitler took control and the constitution became effectively meaningless under his Third Reich.
Under the Weimar Constitution, Germany was divided into 19 states. All citizens had the right to vote, electing members of the Reichstag or German Parliament along with the President. The President in turn appointed a chancellor and an assortment of cabinet members. As many historians have noted, on paper, the Weimar Constitution was a brilliant document, and Germany under the Weimar Republic was a true democracy.
However, even from the start, the Weimar Republic was deeply troubled. When the constitution was first established, many Germans were highly suspicious of the new government, and extremists on the left and right rejected the authority of the Weimar Republic, undermining its effectiveness. While the government was theoretically a coalition comprised of numerous political parties, it was beset on all sides, making it difficult to assert its authority.
In addition to being in political trouble from the beginning, the Weimar Republic also faced serious financial challenges. Inflation in Germany skyrocketed in the 1920s, and at one point, six million Germans were unemployed. Citizens grew increasingly restless and angry, and Adolf Hitler took advantage of this once he was sworn in as Chancellor on 30 January 1933. Less than a month later, the Reichstag building was gutted by a fire of mysterious origin, and Hitler effectively took control, suppressing opposition political parties under the guide of public safety and turning the Weimar Republic into a dictatorship.
After WWI, the economic impact of the Treaty of Versailles was crushing. Germany lost 13% of their territory, 10% of her population, 15% of arable land, 75% of iron and 68% of zinc ore, 26% of her coal resources, the entire Alsatian potash and textile industries, and the communications system built around Alsace-Lorraine and Upper Silesia. Huge amounts of ships and shipping facilities and of railway rolling-stock were delivered to the Allies.
All this was more important than the reparations payments imposed by the treaty, although the latter attracted greater attention. This was because of the link made in the treaty between reparations and the so-called ''war-guilt'' clause. Article 231 bothered the Germans more than any other. The amount of reparations fixed in 1921 was estimated by J. M. Keynes to exceed by three times Germany's ability to pay. In order to pay this, they borrowed money from the United States of America, which at the time had the best economy and was giving out many loans. The government had a huge lack of organization and if affected the country economically, causing hyperinflation and money shortages. The prices were rising, but people didn’t have the money to spend on necessities.
As a result of hyperinflation, there was news accounts of individuals suffering from a compulsion called zero stroke, a condition where the person has a "desire to write endless rows of (zeros) and engage in computations more involved than the most difficult problems in logarithms."
Although the inflation ended with the introduction of the Rentenmark and the Weimar Republic continued for a decade afterwards, hyperinflation is widely believed to have contributed to the Nazi takeover of Germany and Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Adolf Hitler himself in his book, Mein Kampf, makes many references to the German debt and the negative consequences that brought about the inevitability of "National Socialism". The inflation also raised doubts about the competence of liberal institutions, especially amongst a middle class who had held cash savings and bonds. It also produced resentment of bankers and speculators, whom the government and press blamed for the inflation. Many of them were Jews, and some Germans called the hyperinflated Weimar banknotes Jew Confetti.
Here is a link to a time line of the Weimer Period: http://dmorgan.web.wesleyan.edu/materials/weimar.htm
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