If Germany currently feels like a blur of parties, crises and unfamiliar words, start here. This page teaches the basic story before asking you to judge it.

One section is enough for today. Complete its small task and stop when your concentration runs out.

First, check that this is your course

Exam board: AQA

Option: 2O — Democracy and Nazism: Germany, 1918–1945

Assessment: Component 2 depth study: 2 hours 30 minutes, 80 marks and 40% of the A-level. Section A tests primary sources; Section B contains essays.

If your code is different, check with your teacher. Germany courses often share events but cover different years.

Step 1: Understand Germany in 1918

Germany entered the First World War as an empire ruled by Kaiser Wilhelm II. A Kaiser was a German emperor. Germany also had an elected parliament, but the Kaiser and his appointed government held great power.

By autumn 1918, Germany was losing the war. Soldiers and civilians had suffered casualties, shortages and exhaustion. Military leaders accepted that an armistice was necessary. Sailors mutinied, unrest spread and the Kaiser abdicated. Germany became a republic—a state without a hereditary monarch.

The new government signed the armistice ending the fighting. This allowed anti-democratic opponents to claim falsely that politicians had betrayed an unbeaten army. The new republic therefore began amid defeat, revolution and arguments about who was to blame.

Your small task: Complete three sentences: “Before November 1918 Germany was…” “The Kaiser abdicated because…” “The new republic began with the problem of…”

You can stop here. You now understand that democracy was created during defeat and upheaval, not in calm conditions.

Step 2: Meet the Weimar Republic

The new political system is called the Weimar Republic because the assembly that wrote its constitution met in Weimar. A constitution sets out how a state is governed. Germany now had an elected Reichstag, a president and a chancellor who led the government.

The constitution gave adult men and women the vote and protected civil rights. Proportional representation gave parties seats broadly matching their share of votes. This represented voters fairly but usually produced coalitions, governments formed by several parties. Coalition disagreement could make stable government difficult.

The president had important powers. Article 48 allowed emergency decrees. This could help during crisis, but it also created a way to govern without normal parliamentary agreement. The constitution was democratic, yet powerful people in the army, courts, civil service and business did not all become committed democrats.

Your small task: Make two columns labelled “democratic strengths” and “possible weaknesses.” Add two facts to each.

Step 3: Peace, violence and economic crisis, 1919–1923

The Treaty of Versailles blamed Germany and its allies for war losses, imposed reparations, reduced Germany’s armed forces and removed territory. Reparations were payments demanded for wartime damage. Many Germans saw the settlement as humiliating, and opponents blamed the republic for accepting it.

The government faced threats from the left and right. Some Communists wanted a revolution like Russia’s. Right-wing opponents included nationalists who rejected democracy. The Kapp Putsch attempted to seize power in 1920, while Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party attempted the Munich Putsch in 1923. Both failed, but political violence revealed weak loyalty to democracy.

When Germany fell behind with reparations, French and Belgian forces occupied the Ruhr in 1923. The government supported passive resistance and printed money to meet costs. Prices rose with extraordinary speed in hyperinflation. Savings became worthless and wages struggled to keep up, although some borrowers benefited by repaying debts with devalued money.

Your small task: Draw a chain: reparations dispute → Ruhr occupation → passive resistance and money printing → hyperinflation → unequal social effects.

You can stop here. If you can explain why the republic survived but did not win universal trust, you have learned its early crisis.

Step 4: Recovery with weaknesses, 1924–1928

Gustav Stresemann helped end passive resistance and stabilise the currency. The Dawes Plan reorganised reparations and brought American loans. Industry recovered, and Germany improved its international position through agreements such as Locarno and membership of the League of Nations.

These years also saw energetic modern culture in film, art, architecture, theatre and music. Welfare provision developed and some urban Germans experienced improving living standards. This is why the period is sometimes called a “Golden Age.”

The label can mislead. Agriculture struggled, unemployment did not disappear and recovery depended heavily on American credit. Political extremes lost support but did not vanish. President Hindenburg and many conservative elites accepted the republic without fully embracing democratic values.

Your small task: Finish both sentences: “Recovery was real because…” and “Recovery was fragile because…” Use two facts in each answer.

Step 5: Depression and the collapse of democracy, 1929–1933

The Wall Street Crash led American lenders to withdraw money. German businesses failed and unemployment rose dramatically. Governments disagreed about taxes, spending and welfare. From 1930, chancellors relied increasingly on presidential emergency decrees rather than stable Reichstag majorities.

The Nazis promised national revival, jobs, strong leadership and destruction of the Versailles settlement. Their propaganda changed for different audiences. The party also used disciplined organisation and the violence and spectacle of the SA. Communists gained support too, frightening conservative and middle-class voters.

Hitler did not win a majority of German votes. Conservative politicians around Hindenburg believed they could appoint him chancellor and control him. Intrigue involving Papen and Schleicher ended with Hitler’s appointment on 30 January 1933.

After the Reichstag Fire, emergency measures restricted civil liberties and helped crush Communist opposition. The Enabling Act allowed Hitler’s government to make laws without the Reichstag. By March 1933, democratic government had been destroyed through a mixture of electoral support, elite decisions, coercion and legal change.

Your small task: Write one cause under each heading: economic crisis, weaknesses in government, Nazi appeal, conservative decisions and repression.

Step 6: Hitler builds a dictatorship, 1933–1934

The Nazis removed rival parties, trade unions and independent organisations in a process called coordination, or Gleichschaltung. Germany became a one-party state. Regional governments and public institutions were brought under Nazi control.

The SA’s size and ambitions worried army leaders and conservative supporters. During the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934, Hitler ordered the killing of SA leader Ernst Röhm and other real or alleged opponents. The murders reassured the army and showed that the regime would use violence outside normal law.

When Hindenburg died in August, Hitler combined presidential and chancellorial authority and required the armed forces to swear loyalty to him personally. His title became Führer, meaning leader.

Your small task: Create a four-stage chain: remove organisations → destroy rivals → win army support → combine offices.

You can stop here. You can now distinguish Hitler’s appointment from the later construction of dictatorship.

Step 7: How Nazi control worked, 1933–1939

The SS and Gestapo pursued enemies, while courts punished political offences. Concentration camps imprisoned opponents and people excluded from the Nazi national community. Terror mattered, but the police relied partly on information and denunciations from the public.

Propaganda presented Hitler as Germany’s saviour and used radio, rallies, film and controlled newspapers. Censorship restricted competing ideas. The regime also attracted genuine support through promises of order, national strength, employment and the rejection of Versailles.

Economic policy reduced recorded unemployment through public works, rearmament and military expansion. Workers lost independent trade unions and freedom to bargain. Wages, working hours and access to consumer goods did not improve equally. Rearmament prepared Germany for war and created economic pressures.

Nazi social policy tried to form a Volksgemeinschaft, or national community. Young people were directed towards Nazi organisations, women were encouraged towards motherhood while economic need also drew them into work, and churches faced pressure and interference. Benefits and belonging were conditional on political and racial acceptance.

Your small task: Make four headings—terror, propaganda, economy and society. Under each write one method and one limitation.

Step 8: The racial state

Nazi ideology claimed that humanity was divided into unequal biological races. It falsely presented “Aryans” as superior and defined Jews as a racial enemy. Antisemitism means prejudice, hostility or discrimination against Jewish people.

The regime also persecuted Roma and Sinti people, disabled people, gay men, people labelled “asocial,” and some religious minorities. Policy was not one unchanging plan: exclusion and violence became more radical over time.

Jewish people faced the 1933 boycott, removal from professions and the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which stripped citizenship and prohibited marriage or sexual relations between Jews and people classified as German. During Kristallnacht in November 1938, synagogues and businesses were attacked, people were killed and thousands of Jewish men were imprisoned.

War brought occupation of millions more people. Jews were confined in ghettos and deported; mobile killing units called Einsatzgruppen carried out mass shootings after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Nazi racial persecution moved towards systematic mass murder.

Your small task: Draw a four-step escalation line: exclusion → loss of rights → organised violence → wartime mass killing. Add one example from this section to each stage.

Step 9: War, genocide and collapse, 1939–1945

War changed daily life through rationing, propaganda, bombing and mobilisation. Early victories strengthened confidence, but later defeat brought longer hours, destruction and falling morale. Albert Speer reorganised armaments production, while the regime increasingly used forced labour and prisoners of war.

The Holocaust was the systematic murder of approximately six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. The Wannsee Conference of 1942 coordinated the “Final Solution,” but mass murder had already begun. Killing centres, shootings, starvation, forced labour and deportation formed parts of the genocide. Millions of other victims were also murdered through Nazi racial and occupation policies.

Opposition existed but remained divided and dangerous. The White Rose students distributed anti-Nazi leaflets. Some church figures criticised policies. Army officers attempted to kill Hitler in the July 1944 bomb plot. None removed the regime, and reprisals were brutal.

Germany surrendered in May 1945. Cities were devastated, the state collapsed and Allied forces occupied the country. Nazi dictatorship had produced aggressive war, genocide and destruction on a vast scale.

Your small task: Write three sentences: one about civilians, one about genocide and one about opposition. Use facts only from this section.

You can stop here. If you can retell the journey from a new republic to dictatorship, war and collapse, you have the basic course story.

Step 10: Six anchor dates

1. 1918 — war defeat and revolution ended the German Empire.
2. 1919 — the Weimar Constitution and Treaty of Versailles shaped the new republic.
3. 1923 — Ruhr occupation and hyperinflation produced crisis.
4. 1929 — the Depression began destroying recovery and political stability.
5. 1933 — Hitler became chancellor and democracy was dismantled.
6. 1939 — Germany began the European war that ended in defeat in 1945.

Your small task: Cover the list and retell the sequence. Correct only what you missed.

Step 11: Build towards sources and essays

A primary source comes from or close to the period. Ask who produced it, for which audience, in what circumstances and what its content reveals. Use knowledge to test its value; do not dismiss a source simply because it is propaganda.

For essays, answer the exact question, support the answer with selected evidence, explain what the evidence proves and consider a different factor before judging.

Writing Better History Answers

What this page does not yet cover

This primer is not the complete specification. You still need detailed teaching on the constitution, parties, elections and coalitions; every uprising and economic policy; Stresemann’s diplomacy; Weimar culture; the Nazi movement and elite intrigue; the machinery and limits of terror; Schacht, Göring and industrial elites; workers, women, youth and churches; every persecuted group; the radicalisation of antisemitic policy; wartime society and economy; resistance; and debates about consent, coercion and totalitarian control.

Your next 30 minutes

1. Minutes 0–10: read “Understand Germany in 1918” and complete its three sentences.
2. Minutes 10–20: read “Meet the Weimar Republic” and make the two columns.
3. Minutes 20–27: explain why the constitution could be both democratic and vulnerable.
4. Minutes 27–30: say: “The republic began in difficult conditions because…”
5. Stop. Do not continue to Versailles today unless you want to.

If Weimar Germany now has a clear starting point, that is enough for one session.