A Short History of the Weimar Republic by Colin Storer (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Short History of the Weimar Republic by Colin Storer Brendan Fay A Short History of the Weimar Republic. By Colin Storer. New York: I. B. Taurus, 2013. Pp. vii + 237. Paper £12.99. ISBN 978-1780761763 In this concise and highly readable new book, Colin Storer sets himself the task of offering readers in one volume a short history of Weimar Germany and some of the key debates that have emerged out of recent historiography—no mean feat given the tens of thousands of books that have and continue to appear on Weimar and its contested legacy. But if there is a unifying theme that runs through these pages, it is Storer’s effort to overturn elements of the “doom and gloom” orthodox historiography that so often viewed Weimar “as little more than a precursor to Hitler” (1). Rather, Storer highlights the real promise and achievements of the period characteristic of more recent scholarship. By situating his study in a comparative international framework, Storer is able to show that Germany was hardly alone in the challenges it faced, and the Republic far more durable than historians have given it credit for being. Following a succinct survey of German history from the Thirty Years’ War to the end of World War I, the core of the book is organized around four chapters devoted, in turn, to domestic politics, the economy, foreign policy, and Weimar culture. This core is bookended by chapters that examine the years of crisis that both inaugurated and ended the Republic’s short fourteen-year existence. In chapter two, as in much of the rest of the book, Storer adopts a narrative mode, recounting key political episodes of interwar German history from the Kapp and Beer Hall Putsches to the Dawes and Young Plans. Storer does an admirable job of addressing continuities with the Kaiserreich and registering the shattering effect that World War I had—and, in some cases, did not have—on Weimar politics and culture. While the political parties of the moderate Left, Right, and Center were, in the main, carried over from the imperial period, the Russian Revolution and defeat in war created new radical parties on the extremes that did much to disrupt and ultimately destroy the consensus and stability so crucial to Weimar democracy. Here, as throughout the book, Storer is careful to show that Weimar was not a doomed society and avoids looking at 1920s developments with foreknowledge of [End Page 434] what was to come. The much-maligned Article 48, for example—which granted the Chancellor emergency powers and was pivotal in the Nazis consolidation of power after 1933—fulfilled its intended role during Weimar’s early years of crisis and instability. As Storer emphasizes, it was invoked under Friedrich Ebert no less than sixty-three times to great effect during the Ruhr crisis. Storer is likewise critical of an older historiography that underlined Germans’ lack of interest in politics or resigned commitment to the Republic in the form of the Vernunftrepublikaner. Indeed, the 60–80 percent voter turnout over the course of the period would be the envy of many modern liberal democracies, and the political violence of the kind visited upon ministers Walter Rathenau and Matthias Erzberger in Weimar’s early years provoked both outrage among most Germans and shows of support for the fledgling Republic. In chapters three and four, devoted to Weimar economic and foreign policy respectively, Storer likewise steers a nuanced course that neither dismisses the real crises that plagued interwar German society nor suggests the Republic’s collapse as a foregone conclusion. Inflation was not unique to Germany after the war. Britain, Italy, France, and other victorious powers experienced similarly painful, if less severe, episodes of economic instability. By 1924, with the introduction of the Rentenmark, the government was in the end able to weather the storm and stabilize the currency. To be sure, fractious divisions lingered over how best to throw off the shackles of the hated Versailles Treaty; however, the government’s inability to overcome these challenges was not a simple matter of German intransigence. The Allied victors remained sharply divided themselves; and the vacillating foreign policy of successive Weimar...