Weimar Republic

The Weimar Republic was Germany's first constitutional republic, a semi-presidential system in the fourteen-year experiment from 9 November 1918 to 1933 that called itself the German Reich and took its nickname, coined by Hitler in 1929, from the Weimar assembly that wrote its constitution. Born in defeat and revolution, the Empire having sued the Allies for peace, with the Kaiser fled and the armistice of 11 November days old, it inherited hunger, mutiny and impossible reparations. Its early years sank into hyperinflation, political murder and two attempted coups by contending paramilitaries while the great powers kept it isolated, friendless and of reduced standing. By 1924 money and politics steadied: Locarno in 1925 recognized the Versailles borders and normalized them, Germany entered the League of Nations, and the republic enjoyed a few republican years. Then the Depression struck, Hindenburg ruled by emergency chancellors Bruening, Papen and Schleicher, unemployment soared, and the republic ended in 1933.