To what extent did the Weimar recover after 1923?

POSITIVES

• Artists flourished.
• Trade unions and industrial workers did well in these years.
• New styles of architecture and design.
• Big business and big landowners did well in these years.
• Exciting and new films.
• German cinema produced stars like Marlene Dietrich.
• Germany was admitted into the League of Nations in 1926.
• Hitler’s Nazi Party achieved less than 3 per cent in the 1928 election.
• In the Locarno Treaty (1925) Germany promised not to try to change Germany’s borders with France and Belgium.
• In 1928 German industry finally reached the same levels of production as in 1913.
• Parties which supported democracy (e.g. the Social Democrats) did well in elections in the years 1924–1928.
• Stresemann was a more skilful politician than Ebert.
• The Dawes Plan spread out reparations payments over a longer time period, which reduced the strain on Germany’s economy.
• US loans of about 800 million marks poured into German industry, helping its recovery.
• The Young Plan (1929) lightened the reparations bill and led to the final removal of foreign troops from Germany.

NEGATIVES

• Hindenburg was elected President in 1926 – an opponent of the Republic!
• Many middle-class Germans found that other groups like industrial workers did better than them.
• Many small farmers suffered from overproduction – low prices and lack of demand for their food.
• Nationalist Germans attacked Stresemann for signing the Locarno Pact and joining the League.
• Nazis and Communists built up youth wings and local branch organisations during these years.
• Small shopkeepers saw their businesses squeezed by large department stores.
• Some Germans felt that new aspects of art, culture and city life represented a moral decline.
• The US loans could be called in at any time.