Book contents
- Weimar’s Long Shadow
- Weimar’s Long Shadow
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Note on Bauhaus Font and the Cover Design
- 1 Why Weimar?
- 2 An Unheroic but Understandable Failure
- 3 Bonn’s Weimar
- 4 The Paradigmatic Example of Weimar and Postwar Political Science
- 5 Swedish Social Democracy and Weimar
- 6 Our Past, Weimar’s Present
- 7 Weimar on the Potomac?
- 8 Shadows of Babylon and Shreds of Artificial Silk
- 9 Militant Democracy
- 10 Weimar and Modernity
- Index
2 - An Unheroic but Understandable Failure
German Social Democrats and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2024
- Weimar’s Long Shadow
- Weimar’s Long Shadow
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Note on Bauhaus Font and the Cover Design
- 1 Why Weimar?
- 2 An Unheroic but Understandable Failure
- 3 Bonn’s Weimar
- 4 The Paradigmatic Example of Weimar and Postwar Political Science
- 5 Swedish Social Democracy and Weimar
- 6 Our Past, Weimar’s Present
- 7 Weimar on the Potomac?
- 8 Shadows of Babylon and Shreds of Artificial Silk
- 9 Militant Democracy
- 10 Weimar and Modernity
- Index
Summary
This chapter analyzes why the SPD failed to stop the collapse of the Weimar Republic and whether it could have averted this outcome, discusses the lessons that German Social Democrats drew from this failure, and assesses to what extent the history of Weimar democracy and its collapse is relevant for analyzing the threat or reality of democratic breakdown in the contemporary world. The SPD leadership decided not to initiate any direct protest action to oppose the Nazi takeover. The chapter argues that any such action, if it had been undertaken, would very likely have been crushed and proven ineffective. There is no imminent threat of democratic breakdown in contemporary Germany or Western Europe. However, the Nazi takeover was the culmination of a process of executive aggrandizement that characterizes many contemporary cases of democratic decline and breakdown. Champions of democracy must combat this process from the outset – before it is too late.
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- Weimar's Long Shadow , pp. 25 - 48Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024