ntrolled politically, and was forced to sign an agreement to pay war reparations. The amount Germany was assigned was staggering; certainly any country trying to form a new government after a devastating war would not be able to keep up with such debt (Craig 424-432). This was later to prove significant in the breakdown of Weimar.
As with many countries after war, Germany in 1918 was vulnerable to revolutionary activity. During the next few years, Germany was indeed plagued with revolutionary activity, mostly from the communist left. By mid-1919, however, German republican loyalists had brutally murdered many of the socialist leaders, and after the signing of Versailles, Germany found itself a bit more stable. The revolution, unsuccessful as it was, did provide Germany with a Republic and an armistice. In this face of adversity, the new Weimar government promised reform, and looked as if it would be far more egalitarian than its Imperial predecessor (Halperin 112-125).
The chronology of the Weimar Republic may be broken down into three sections. The first, Weimar's origin and consolidation, lay roughly from 1918/19 to 1923. From 1924 to 1929 there was relative stabilization with seeds of disaster, and from 1929 to 1933 the Republic was in the downhill process of disintegration and destruction (Kolb).
Some have seen the foundation of Weimar as more o
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