1. The 1920s: Part of a “Thirty Years’ War” or the “Recovery of Europe”?  1919: Germans establish the Weimar Republic.  April 1921: German reparations bill set at 132 billion gold marks (52% for France, 22% for Britain, 10% for Italy)  1922: Germany recognizes USSR in Treaty of Rapallo.  Jan-Nov 1923: Germany defaults on war reparations, and France occupies the Ruhr Industrial District.  1924: The Dawes Plan creates a system to pay war reparations and encourages U.S. loans to Germany.  1925/26: The Treaty of Locarno leads to German entry into the League of Nations.  1929/30: The Young Plan lightens the reparations burden, and France evacuates the Rhineland.

2. In early November 1918, Prince Max of Baden appealed to Friedrich Ebert of the SPD to become Chancellor, prevent a Communist revolution, and safeguard national unity.

3. Communist insurgents in Berlin, January 1919

4. The “Free Corps” crushed the Reds in the name of Ebert

5. League for Combating Bolshevism: “BOLSHEVISM BRINGS WAR, UNEMPLOYMENT, AND HUNGER,” January 1919

6. “Workers, burghers, farmers, soldiers of every German tribe: Unite in the National Assembly!” Parties supporting the Weimar Republic won over 75% of the vote in January 1919

7. The first women elected to a German parliament (Weimar, 1919)

8. THE WEIMAR COALITION SUFFERED MASSIVE ELECTORAL LOSSES IN JUNE 1920 YearKPDUSPD SPD Soc. Dem. DDP Demo -cratic Center (RC) DVP (Nat. Lib.) DNVP (nation -alist) 1919---7.737.918.619.74.410.3 19202.117.921.78.317.813.915.1

9. German Chancellor Joseph Wirth confers with Soviet Foreign Minister Georgy Chicherin at Rapallo, April 1922 German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, after signing the Treaty of Rapallo

10. A shy Soviet observer (on left) at the German Reichswehr summer maneuvers of 1927

11. “The Stab in the Back” (Nazi magazine cover, 1924): Radical nationalists assassinated Rathenau in July 1922

12. The Boulevards of Paris, 11 November 1918

13. French troops enter Strasbourg, 29 November 1918

14. French Military Cemetery at Verdun, with “Ossuary” built from 1920 to 1932

15. The Ossuary of Verdun

16. In December 1920 a majority of French Socialists affiliated with the Comintern “How can I vote against Bolshevism?” (French nationalist campaign poster, 1919

17. In January 1923 Premier Raymond Poincaré ordered the occupation of the Ruhr

18. The French seized coal and steel in lieu of war reparations

19. President Ebert visits the Ruhr to encourage “passive resistance”

20. Germany’s hyper-inflation: A small businessman picks up cash for his weekly payroll, early summer, 1923 Weighing currency to determine its value, late summer, 1923

21. Target used by “Black Reichswehr” volunteers in 1923 who engaged in “active resistance”

22. Alfred Rosenberg and Adolf Hitler review marching Stormtroopers in Munich, 4 November 1923

23. Nazi Stormtroopers outside Munich City Hall, 9 November 1923

24. Postcard of Hitler in Landsberg Prison (1924), where he dictated Mein Kampf

25. Gustav Stresemann made peace with France as Chancellor (Aug.- Nov. 1923) and Foreign Minister (1923-29). The U.S. banker Charles Dawes devised a new reparations plan in 1924….

26. Charles Dawes founded the largest bank in Illinois, served several Republican Presidents, and won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1925 Opel was the first German company to mass produce cars on an assembly line. GM bought it in 1929

27. INTER-ALLIED WAR DEBTS IN 1919 (in millions of dollars, see P.M.H. Bell, p. 22) John Maynard Keynes proposed in 1920 that all war debts and reparations be cancelled, but the U.S. government did not even consider debt forgiveness until 1931.

28. When Ebert died in 1925, Germans elected Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg as President of the Weimar Republic

29. Gustav Stresemann & Aristide Briand, Co-Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for signing the Treaty of Locarno in 1925

30. Stresemann addresses the General Assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva, September 1926

31. French Communists & nationalists both rejected Locarno (pro- and anti-communist posters from 1927 target Briand)

32. The Young Plan, signed in Paris in June 1929, inspired a referendum campaign by German rightists “You must slave away unto the third generation!”

33. Stresemann defends the Young Plan in a turbulent Reichstag session, 1929

34. “The Rhine is Free!” (1930) “The Steel Helmet on the Rhine” (October 1930)

35. UNEMPLOYMENT RATES, 1928-1933: The DVP and SPD clashed over whether to raise taxes or slash jobless benefits (The French figures are doubtless understated.)

36. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS (1919-1940)