The Coming of the Third Reich

After the overthrow of the Kaiser and other German royals, the political vacuum was filled by the Council of People’s Delegates, led by a Social Democrat, Friedrich Ebert. They organized democratic elections for a Constituent Assembly in 1919. Because the Constituent Assembly met in the town of Weimar, the new republic became known as the Weimar Republic. The constitution drafted by the Constituent Assembly was based on Bismarck’s constitution with a Reich President elected by popular vote replacing the Kaiser.

Under Article 48 of the new constitution, the Reich President also had “extensive emergency powers” which would allow him to call upon the army to stop unrest and “rule by decree” (80). As the first Reich President, Ebert used this power to veto the results of several regional elections and to justify the executions of rebels in the Red Army. There were “no proper provisions for the ultimate reassertion of power by the legislature” (80). Ebert did not purge the military of monarchist and far-right officers. Despite that, Ebert was often ridiculed in the right-wing press.

After Ebert’s death in 1925, the conservative World War I general Paul von Hindenburg was elected president. Richard J. Evans describes Hindenburg as “a man who had no faith in democratic institutions and no intention of defending them from their enemies” (83).