Between the Wars: The Fall of Democracies Worksheet

Recall: What was the number and popular name of the Versailles clause that forced Germany to accept sole blame for World War I?

Article 231, also known as the War Guilt Clause.

Calculation: If Germany's peacetime army was 800,000 soldiers in 1914 and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles limited it to 100,000, what percentage of the army was cut?

87.5 percent (700,000 soldiers removed from an initial 800,000).

Cause and Effect: How did the American stock market crash in October 1929 directly cause banks and factories to collapse in Germany?

Under the 1924 Dawes Plan, Germany relied on short-term American bank loans. When Wall Street crashed, US banks recalled those loans, causing German banks to fail, industrial production to drop roughly 40 percent, and unemployment to climb above six million.

Constitutional Mechanism: Identify Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution and explain how Chancellor Brüning used it between 1930 and 1932.

Article 48 allowed the president to issue emergency decrees without parliamentary consent. When the Reichstag deadlocked over budget cuts, Brüning bypassed parliament entirely, passing 66 presidential decrees in 1932 while the Reichstag passed only five regular laws.

Concept Comparison: Contrast an authoritarian dictatorship with a totalitarian regime regarding the individual's role in society.

An authoritarian regime demands political obedience but leaves private life, faith, and parts of the economy alone. A totalitarian regime seeks complete control over every public and private domain, requiring active ideological devotion and viewing the individual as entirely subordinate to the collective state, race, or class.

Chronology: Place these four events in correct chronological order: (A) Passing of the Enabling Act, (B) Wall Street Crash, (C) Appointment of Hitler as Chancellor, (D) Signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

Order: D (June 1919), B (October 1929), C (January 30, 1933), A (March 23, 1933).

Source Evaluation: Read the statement: 'Weimar democracy fell solely because of the 1929 economic collapse.' Write two arguments that support this view, and two arguments showing that Weimar was already undermined by constitutional flaws and political myths before 1929.

Arguments supporting economic cause: Unemployment passed six million by 1932, and the Nazi vote jumped from 2.6 percent in 1928 to 37.3 percent in July 1932 after mass joblessness began. Arguments showing prior weakness: The stab-in-the-back myth and Versailles guilt clause had delegitimized the republic since 1919, while proportional representation without a threshold and reliance on Article 48 created persistent political instability long before the crash.