Germany, 1918–1939

After the revolution of November 1918 Germany was proclaimed a republic, and a democratic constitution was adopted at Weimar on 31 July 1919. The republic lived under heavy burdens – the Treaty of Versailles, reparations and economic strain: in 1923 France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr and the currency collapsed (hyperinflation). The Dawes Plan of 1924 revived the economy through foreign loans, and a period of relative stability began in the mid-1920s. The world economic crisis from 1929 brought millions of unemployed; the National Socialists (NSDAP) under Adolf Hitler, using nationalist, anti-Versailles and antisemitic slogans, became the largest party in the 1932 elections. On 30 January 1933 President Hindenburg appointed Hitler Reich Chancellor; within months the opposition was suppressed, parties banned and democratic rights abolished, and in 1934 Hitler combined the offices of president and chancellor as “Führer”. Discriminatory laws against Jews (the Nuremberg Laws of 1935) were introduced, rearmament accelerated, Austria was annexed in 1938, Czechoslovakia was dismembered in 1939, and the attack on Poland on 1 September 1939 began the Second World War.