Schusterman - Not Very Pleased

As a citizen of Germany I feel like I can speak on behalf of everyone by saying that the state of our country is horrible, but the Weimar Government is not completely to blame. My life is falling apart, I have no job, my money is worthless, and I have no option but to put some of the blame on the current rulers. I started to get frustrated when two days after the Weimar Government came into rule they pulled us out of World War I(2). On November 11th they signed the Armistice(2), but the war was clearly not over! Even the opposing side knew that, although the U.S. was gaining in on us, we still had a lot of fight left in us but we were forced to give up. This is why we have all began to call the government the "November Criminals." On the other hand, I have to be fair and say that they had a tough choice to make and the citizens, including myself, would have been displeased even if we did stay in the war because the U.S. would have raided our country. Pulling out of the war was controversial, but what irked me the most was that we were forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles which included the War Guilt Clause, which made us admit that we were in fault for the entire war(2). I know that the Weimar Government was not allowed to go there and speak on our country's behalf, but they still could have done something! Doing anything would have been better than just accepting all of the terms that caused us to pay 33 billion dollars to the Allies, cap all of our armed forces to 100,000, and give up our land(2). We were forced to give Alsace-Lorraine back to France, we also lost parts of Poland, but that is the least of it because in total we lost 100% of our pre-war colonies92)! While it does show that the Weimar Government was weak for not being able to keep even several of the colonies we had won under Weltpolitik, it is also not their fault because failure to agree to any of these terms would have lead to the entire country being raided. Also, I think it seems fair that these countries get their land back because we did take it from them for no reason. Not only did we lose our colonies but we also lost 80% of our pre-war fleet, 48% of all iron production, 16% of all coal production, 13% of our 1914 territory, and 12% of our population (not too mention how much our nationalism has decreased)(2)! After the Treaty was signed though we definitely became an international pariah, and all of us can feel the embarrassment. We are immensely struggling to find jobs or keep the ones we have and the inflation is not helping that. I sell oranges on the corner of the street by my house and due to the inflation I hardly have any customers anymore because our money is worthless, the price of living has sky rocketed, and anyone who even wants a single bag of oranges has to bring the payment for it in a wheelbarrow. The inflation is the complete fault of the Weimar Government's for irresponsibly dealing with the debt we had to pay for the war reparations. It was an unrealistic amount of money that we were supposed to pay, but simply printing more money to the point where our German mark is worth nothing is no way for a government to handle an economic crisis. The U.S. is acting so graciously right now by implementing the Dawes Plan, in which our war reparations payment is reduced but will increase over time as our economy gets better(3). They also gave us a new currency called the Reichsmark that will hopefully be worth more than our current mark(3). Now under the Young Plan the final amount we have to pay has been set to 29 million which we have to pay over the next 58 years(3). If the U.S. would not have come in to help us out I would have had to move because I am becoming very poor and I feel very uneasy about what poor decisions the Weimar Government will make next.

Over all, I do not detest the Weimar Government because any government in their position would have been faced with very hard decisions to make. They can not be blamed for the war reparations we were faced with because if we didn't face them than worse things would have happened such as an invasion in our country, but they can be blamed for trying to completely change our country in two days without anyone's support. All citizens, myself included, have harsh feelings towards the Weimar Government for the state of our country today and the political instability, but if it was another government that had taken over when they did we would all still feel the same way.

1 - Sourcework: The Crisis of 1923
2 - Belk Notes
3 - www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/id/100933.htm