In an article at Project Syndicate Harold James lists eight lessons to be learned from Germany’s experience with the disastrous Weimar Republic. His list includes:
Fifth, a political culture in which leaders demonize their opponents erodes democracy. In the Weimar Republic, that pattern began before the Nazis became a significant force.
and
Eighth, incumbents can survive by buying off a discontented populace for some time, but not forever. In the Weimar era, the German state provided generous municipal housing, local government services, agricultural and industrial subsidies, and a large civil service; but it financed those outlays with debt.
To his list I’d add two more. The U. S. should never have entered World War I. Our entry allowed the victorious Allies to impose damaging terms on the vanquished Germany and those terms are among the factors that led to the critical loss of confidence in the Weimar government. The second is that just as Germany should not have financed its war effort with debt so the Weimar Republic should not have financed its ambitious social programs with debt.
I will be devil’s advocate and say maybe too much credit (blame)? is given to the US.
The proximate cause of German defeat was the home front where revolution broke out; and that was due to near starvation from the British naval blockade. Keeping America out of the war would not feed Germany.
If anything; what was a mistake was the US sold the 14 points – that there could be “generous†terms for Germany – when its contribution to victory was relatively small that it could not dictate terms. Not to belittle sacrifice, but Canada and Australia combined lost as many soldiers as the US.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties.
The biggest weakness of the Weimar Republic was a substantial portion it’s populace never accepted its legitimacy.
If the US had stayed out of the Great War Germany would have won, France’s armed forces had recently experienced several mutinies which limited them to defensive efforts only and the British Imperial forces alone would have insufficient to stop the last German offensive. In the aftermath of a German victory the Bolshevik revolution probably would have been crushed by a combination of German and ‘White’ reactionist efforts (which actually happened in Finland and the Baltic states), resulting in continental Europe being completely dominated by Germany. Germany in addition to inheriting the ‘Great Game’ from Russia re India and redoubling its shipbuilding efforts to end British supremacy at sea would have learned something unpleasant from its victory; the military solution is the first and best solution to a geopolitical problem. And one mustn’t forget Germany had possessions in China and the South Seas which would have been returned after the war and that Japan who had conquered them would have been on the losing side. Where that would have gone I don’t know, but one possibility would have been another Great War occurring a decade or two after the first one featuring the extant naval powers (Great Britain, Japan, USA) versus the rising one (Germany). All this is speculative fiction and entertaining in an abstract way, but the point I am making is that I sincerely doubt that there would have been a lasting peace resulting from a German victory in 1918, and the following decades might have been as bloody if not more so than they actually were (minus the huge bloodletting of the Russian civil war and the absence of the concentration camps of the 1940’s).
You mean unlike now?
I’m skeptical that Germany would have won outright. I think it’s more likely that some settlement would have been reached that gave Germany better terms than it was ultimately saddled with.
I don’t see how Germany avoids total defeat unless they avoid a 2 front war; which really means avoid going to war altogether.
Even Germany’s own generals in 1914 after failing to win a quick victory in France and that it become a war of attrition realized the odds were against Germany.
The treaty of Brest Litvorsk meant the French and British were not going to settle for status quo ante.