Intro Quiz: How democratic was the Weimar Constitution?

Video: How democratic was the Weimar Constitution?

﻿Hi guys, and welcome to today's lesson. I'm Mr. McNally and I will be delivering a series of lessons on the Weimar and Nazi Germany unit. So far you have looked at the creation of the German state and the Russian Revolution in 1970. The next set of lessons are going to look at Germany in the years 1980 to 1923. Today's lesson we'll looking how democratic was the Weimar constitution. All you will need for today's lesson is a pen and paper and to remove any distractions for the duration of the lesson. Please pause the video now and take a moment to get yourself ready for the lesson. Perhaps move to a quiet space if possible. Once you are ready, resume the video and let the lesson begin. Today, we are going to explore the following topics. What caused the German Revolution and the origin strengths and weaknesses of the Weimar constitution. As you can see, there will be several tasks for you to complete throughout the lesson. And there will be pause points at each task so you have the time to work through them. The lesson will also end with an exit quiz, which will be based on what you have learned so far in this lesson. So what caused the German Revolution? Firstly, you will need to know what the word revolution means. As the sideshows a revolution is the overthrow of a political system or government by force and the setting up of a new government in its place. In this case, we will be looking at why the German people wanted to get rid of the Kaiser that King and place him with a new government. The impact of World War I played a huge factor in the German revolution. The German Army suffered for many casualties. Almost 2,000,000 soldiers died, and 55% of all troops were either injured or killed. The people blame the Kaiser for getting Germany involved in the war, and believed his poor leadership was to blame for Germany's likely defeat in the war. Another reason why the German revolution happened was due to food shortages. The British placed a naval blockade on Germany, which prevented any food supplies from being imported into the country. As a result, Germany did not have enough food to feed its population. Over 750,000 Germans died due to starvation. This did not just affect the soldiers, it's also affected women, children and the elderly. And the workers were also unhappy with the conditions in Germany. They had to work longer hours and struggle to afford food with that wages. And with the conditions, many workers went on strike and refuse to carry out their work. This happened in numerous cities such as in Munich and Stuttgart. The final straw for the Kaiser was losing support of his military, fed up with how the war was progressing and don't happen with his leadership, part of the Army and Navy started to mutiny. This means they refuse to follow orders from their commanders. This Germany was still fighting in World War I at the time. This made the case of walking competent as a leader. As you can see the kaiser wants support of various social groups in Germany. This included the military, workers and ordinary citizens combined. This made his position as Monique on tenable. So now it's time for the first task of the lesson. I would like you to explain one reason why the German Revolution happened? You can use the writing frame to help structure your answer if needed. Please can you now pause the video and complete the task. Once you are finished, you can resume the lesson. Welcome back and here is a model answer to the question you have just answered. Please give yourself a few seconds to read through this answer. You will notice that the writing frame has been used and it has given a clear reason in this case food shortages as to why the revolution happened. The answer has then gone on to explain how the food shortages led to the revolution. There is a clear link to contextual knowledge by mentioning the fact that over 750,000 people starved to death. Don't worry if your answer does not look the exact same as this, there are other answers you could have had. You could have mentioned that Germany's poor performance in World War I led to the revolution of the Kaiser of losing support of his people also caused a revolution. A huge well done to those who got the answer correct. We now know why people wanted with the Kaiser. But what happened next, I'd like to point out that in this photograph, you can see Kaiser Wilhelm II, the German were up until this point in history. On the 9th November 1980, the Kaiser Wilhelm II agree to abdicate, give up his throne. This was due to the intense pressure put on him from the government ministers in the army. Knowing that he had very little support left in Germany, the Kaiser abdicated and fled to Holland. The application if the Kaiser left the political vacuum in Germany, who was now going to lead the country. Extreme political parties, like the communists wanted to seize power and moderate political groups, the Social Democratic Party or the SPD, wanted to make Germany more democratic. They did not want to be ruled by a single person and believed that the people should choose their leaders, the SPD knew they have to work quicker if they wanted to keep the extreme groups out of power. They quickly set up a new republic under the leadership of Friedrich Ebert. He rapidly set about gaining the support of the army in order to fight off the extreme groups. One of the first acts of this new republic was to put an end to World War I facing defeat and suffering economic and social Ebert wanted to negotiate a peace settlement. On the 11th of November 1918 Ebert representative Mateus pittsburgher signed the armistice. This was the form of agreement between Germany and the allies to end World War I. However, this was a move which will delay to go on to cause the republic huge problems. It is now time to complete the second task of the lesson. Using the information from the previous slide, write down each of the following statements and decide whether they are true or false. Please can you now pause the video and complete the task. Once you are finished. You can resume the lesson and we will go through the answers. Welcome back and here are the answers to the task. Number one is false. The armistice was signed on the 11th of November 1918. Number two is also false. It was the communist who were the extreme political party who wanted to abolish private ownership of land. And three is true. Friedrich Ebert did help to form the Weimar Constitution. He was a key player in that. Coming down with Ebert. He knew that if the new Republic was to succeed, it would need to gain the support of those who oppose the Kaiser. He gained the support of the military by promising not to reform the army. He also allowed officers to keep their existing ranks. This provided him with military support against any internal rivals. He gained support of the businesses by promising not to confiscate any land or factories. He also claimed that he wouldn't privatised any industries. This meant that the business owners could keep their lands, they could keep their profits and they could stay welfare. This would help the economy continue to function and provide multiple jobs to the working class. Finally, he gained the support from the workers by allowing civil servants to keep their jobs, civil servants of people who work for the government and help the government function and carry out its roles. He also promised to bring in an eight hour working day in a move to try and reduce the amount of strikes happening and to alleviate the concerns of the workers. This was important because it made the government run smoothly and provided the country with the resources that it needed. It's now time for task three. And using the information from the previous slide and your own knowledge, I would like you to finish off the following sentences. Please pause the video and complete the task. Once you are finished, you can resume the lesson. Welcome back and here are the answers to the previous task. So number one, gaining support from the military was important for the Weimar Republic because it made them militarily stronger in the face of any potential violent rebellions. The Republic now have the means to protect itself. Businesses supported the Republic because they hated the idea of communism spreading into Germany. The Republic allowed private enterprise, which allowed the business owners to keep their factories on wealth. Supporting the Weimar Republic prevented communism from taking over. If anybody got answers along those lines, a big well done. So under the guidance of Ebert, Germany announced that there would be a series of elections to form a National Assembly. This assembly would then create a new constitution for Germany. Essentially, this is a new set of laws the country would have to follow. On the 31st of July, a new constitution was agreed in the city of Weimar. This became known as the Weimar constitution of the Weimar Republic. The head of the Weimar Republic was the president. They were the lead by the people every seven years, but played no part in the day to day running of the country. However, the president did appoint the chancellor, and the president could use something called article 48, which would allow him to pass emergency powers in times of crisis, which means he could pass laws and bypass the Reich stag. So we could pass laws without their permission. The government was made up of the chancellor and the cabinet. The chancellor was the head of the government, who appointed ministers and was in charge of the day to day running of the government, like a modern day Prime Minister. The cabinet was made up of elected officials, and they were the most important ministers in the country. They would help them the country and make key decisions alongside the chancellor. parliament was made up of two houses, the Reichstag and Reichstrat. The Reichtag control taxation, and was the more powerful of the two houses. Its members were elected every four years. The Reichstrat were also elected every four years, however they represented the individual regions of Germany. An important thing to note here is that all men and women above the age of 21 were eligible to vote. This was more democratic than the United Kingdom at the time. So let's look at the strengths and the weaknesses of the new Weimar constitution. The first strength is that it was a democratic system. The voting age was reduced from 25 to 21 and for the first time all women were able to vote. This meant that a larger portion of the population were actively involved politics. Proportional representation was the public system used in the Weimar Republic. This allowed smaller parties to gain seats in the Reichstag as every party was allocated one seat for every 60,000 votes they received in the elections. So rather than it just been dominated by two or three big political parties, this allowed the smaller fringe parties to gain a couple of seats in the parliament. There was also a number of checks and balances. The Constitution ensured that no one person or group could hold too much power. The chancellor had to act on behalf of parliament, and could be removed by the presidents over if necessary. Likewise, the president was appointed by the people and wasn't really involved in the day to day running of the country. So there were checks to stop any one individual from becoming too powerful. Despite the strength though, there was also a number of considerable weaknesses for the Weimar constitution. The first being that many of the time ended up in coalition governments, I should say many of the elections ended up with coalition governments. Proportional representation meant that many small parties win seats, but this comes at the expense of the bigger parties. And many of the bigger parties, they ought to gain a majority and they often have to form a coalition and share power with another group of another political party to run the country. This led to a weakness in times of crisis, as we've no clear single party government. It made it difficult for swift decisions to be made. But another thing we need to factor in here is that the Weimar Constitution is based on division and violence. This is the aftermath of World War I, this is a time where Germany is in deep, deep trouble. And nobody at the beginning of the war actually wanted this. So the legacy of the Weimar Republic is always going to be tired with defeat in World War I and division within the country. In a moment, you are going to answer the following five questions. Number one, why did the Kaiser abdicates? Number two, how was the Weimar Republic democratic? Three, how did Ebert gain support for the Weimar Republic? Four, what powers did the president have? And Five and the challenge question, how did the system of proportional representation hinder the Weimar Republic? Please pause the lesson now and use the worksheet to answer the questions. Once you are finished, you can resume the lesson and we will go through the answers. Welcome back, and we'll quickly go through these answers. And let's see how many you got correct. So number one, how was the Weimar Republic democratic? The following are all acceptable answers. So the Weimar Republic was democratic because both women and men over the age of 21 could vote. The system of proportional representation was used, which meant small parties were represented in parliament and it prevented individual people from becoming too powerful. Well done if you've got any of those and even bigger well done if you got two or three of those in your answer. Question number two, what powers did the presidents have? So the following is what a good answer should look like. The president was the head of the Weimar Republic, and had the power to appoint the chancellor. This meant that the chancellor who was in charge of running the country did not have complete power. If a Chancellor tried to rule in an unconstitutional manner, the president was able to remove that. The president was also able to use article 48, which granted him emergency powers to pass laws without the agreement of the Reichstag. This was useful in times of war or crises. Again, a massive well done to anyone who answered along those lines. Question three. Why did the Kaiser abdicate? The Kaiser abdicated because he lost support from his military and the general public. The German neither you turn it on multiple occasions, such as Kiel, showing that they would not follow his orders, without the support of his military the Kaiser could not win World War I, or prevent any internal rebellions from happening. In addition, the workers went on strike proving that the Kaiser could not rule his country. Now your answer doesn't have to be word for word, but if you look at the two bullet points, they're the things which the good answer should include, so was in support from his military and not be unable to rule his country. Question four, how did Ebert gain support for the Weimar Republic? Either gain support for the Weimar Republic by getting his potential opposition groups on his side, he did this by appealing to the army, workers and businesses, who then supported the Republic. Ebert got the army on his side by promising not to reform them and allowing officers to keep their rank. With the support of the army, the Weimar Republic was in a position to fight off any potential rebellion and stay in power. Again, answers don't have to be word for word, but as long as you've got something in your answer about him getting those opposition groups on the side, maybe give an example from the army or businesses and how we did that, that will get you some good marks. I'm moving on to the final question. How did the system of proportional representation hinder the Weimar Republic. The system of proportional representation hindered the Weimar Republic, as it caused a lack of strong leadership, which the country needed after World War I. This is because lots of small political parties gain seats in the Reichtag, which prevented the bigger parties from gaining a majority. As a result, coalition governments were formed, but the party shared in power did not agree with each other. This meant that there was a lack of political action from parliament. I want to say a massive well done on completing today's lesson, you were introduced to a lot of information and most of it would have been brand new to you. Fantastic wording has been achieved today. If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak. Next lesson, we'll be looking at the Treaty of Versailles and the impact it had on the Weimar Republic. I look forward to seeing you again.

Worksheet: How democratic was the Weimar Constitution?

Exit Quiz: How democratic was the Weimar Constitution?

Completed: How democratic was the Weimar Constitution?

In this lesson students will learn about the German surrender of WW1 and the origins of the Weimar Republic. Students will assess the strengths and weaknesses of the newly formed Weimar Constitution.

History

Y11 History

Key Stage 4

Year 11

How democratic was the Weimar Constitution?

Weimar and Nazi Germany, 1919-1939

UNIT

The German Reich, 1871-1918

The Russian Revolution, 1917

Why did the German people feel stabbed in the back?

Why was there a rise in political extremism in Germany after WW1?

Why was 1923 known as a year of crisis?

How did Germany recover its economy in the years 1924-29?

How did Germany improve their international relations, 1924-29?

Were the 1920s a golden age for all Germans?

How far had the Weimar Republic recovered by 1929?

Why was the year 1929 a significant turning point for Germany?

The early development of the Nazi Party: what did Hitler believe in?

Who were the SA and what was their role?

What was the Munich Putsch?

What were the consequences of the Munich Putsch?

What were the Nazi Party strategies during the lean years?

Why were the Nazi Party so successful after 1929?

How did political developments in 1932 result in Hitler becoming Chancellor in January 1933?

History

How democratic was the Weimar Constitution?

Introductory Quiz

Video

Worksheet

Final Quiz

Lesson Complete