Germany 1890–1945: overview

This period study covers the full arc of German history from the Wilhelmine Empire through the Weimar Republic to the Nazi dictatorship and the Second World War. It asks fundamental questions about how democracy can fail and how a society can be mobilised for mass atrocity.

The three phases

1. Wilhelmine Germany 1890–1919

Kaiser Wilhelm II ruled a state that was industrially powerful but politically autocratic. The Reichstag had limited power; the Kaiser appointed the Chancellor. Germany's economic growth was spectacular but its politics were brittle. The First World War brought defeat, starvation, mutiny, and revolution. The "stab in the back" myth — the false claim that Germany's army was betrayed by socialists and Jews — was born from the political manoeuvres of generals who pushed civilians to sign the armistice.

2. The Weimar Republic 1919–1933

The Weimar Constitution was democratic but fatally compromised: proportional representation produced unstable coalition governments; Article 48 gave the President emergency powers that bypassed parliament; the humiliation of Versailles delegitimised the new republic from the start. The republic faced extremist violence from left (Spartacist uprising 1919) and right (Kapp Putsch 1920, Munich Putsch 1923). The hyperinflation of 1923 and the Great Depression from 1929 destroyed middle-class savings and created mass unemployment. By January 1933, Hitler was Chancellor.

3. The Nazi dictatorship 1933–1945

Hitler's consolidation of power was rapid: the Reichstag Fire (February 1933); the Enabling Act (March 1933); the Night of the Long Knives (June 1934); Hindenburg's death (August 1934) making Hitler Führer. The Nazi state used propaganda, the police state (SS, Gestapo), economic recovery (rearmament, public works), and racial ideology to maintain control. The persecution of Jews intensified from the Nuremberg Laws (1935) through Kristallnacht (1938) to the Final Solution — the systematic genocide of approximately six million Jews and millions of others in death camps.

Key skills examined

• Source analysis: provenance (who, when, why?); what can and cannot be inferred.
• Causation and consequence: why did the Weimar Republic fail? What enabled Hitler's rise?
• Change and continuity: what changed in German life 1933–1939?
• Turning-point questions: was 1933 a turning point in German history?