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"Germany was perhaps the most civilised nation in the world in the 1920s." Hmmm... define civilised. In the 1920s Germany was devastated after losing WWI, on t
by arbuge 14y ago
"Germany was perhaps the most civilised nation in the world in the 1920s."
Hmmm... define civilised. In the 1920s Germany was devastated after losing WWI, on the hook for gazillions of war repayments under the Versailles treaty, and experiencing some of the worst inflation ever seen in a developed country. It took something like a wheelbarrow full of Deutschemarks back then to buy a loaf of bread.
- yk 14y agoActually Weimar Germany is a lot more complex than usually presented. To adress your points: 1.) Germany was not devastated by WWI, in fact the fighting did take place outside of Germany. 2.) The Versailles treaty was large enough to serve as a nazi-propaganda tool, but not large enough to stifle the economy. 3.) The hyperinflation was in 1923, in the other years Germany had generally high, but not that high inflation. ( Something like 5 - 8 % ) In addition the Weimar republic worked culturally quite well, it won about half of the nobel prices in physics and chemistry between 1918 and 1933 [1], had the Bauhaus [2] a very influential school of design and represents with Authors like Thomas Mann and Berthold Brecht an important period of German literature. On the other hand, the political system was never widely accepted, the judicial system was completely dysfunctional and the entire thing was never far away from a coup or a civil war. ( Not to mention that it ended catastrophically. ) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus