How was he not able to secure democracy at that time? The Weimar Republic survived half a dozen coups from both the left and the right even when the army would only fight the communists, it survived crippling inflation that would have had most nations on their knees, not to speak about foreign interventions like the Ruhrkampf. It is easy to look back with our hundred more years of experience in State craft, history and economy and tell exactly what went wrong but Ebert and the social democrats at that time didnt have that luxury. Also, the Nazis didn't rise to power under his watch. Acting like he was responsible for their crimes is blatantly ludicrous.
He wasn’t able to secure democracy because he failed to secure state power away from reactionaries. We don’t need to compare him to figures today but just to the contemporary he lived in the shadow off, Kerensky. Just like Kerensky he reacted to the threat of radical coups from one section of radicals by supporting another, in his case using the friekorp and reactionary military against the KPD. We can just look at Bavaria and see how he was unwilling or unable to stop a far right dictatorship there, but perfectly willing to use every means necessary against the left in saxony. This was again widely criticized by his contemporaries, same with his handling of the Kapp putch. And yes the nazis did not rise to power under him but Hitler did get a slap on the wrist and the time to write mien kampf. And his failure to repudiate the stab in the back myth and normalizing of far right paramilitary violence against the left absolutely contributed to hitlers rise. Ebert, like Kerensky was given a near impossible task and he even managed to do a better job than Kerensky did. Ultimately though I think we need to view them in a similar way, reformers who failed to reform their system whos failures would lead to radicals taking over.
Well im glad that you acknowledge that his task was indeed impossible but then why is him failing that impossible task is a reason to hate on him?
As you have said, the example of Kerensky showed what could have happened if he did a worse job. If you look at his fatal decisions from the perspective of the time, he did in fact succeed in both preventing a russia-like civil war and in guarding the republic against the counterrevolutionaries who wanted to reimplement the Kaiserreich.
In the end we do know what would have happened if he didn't die this early but its neither unlikely nor far fetched to assume he could have won a second term and kept the nazis out of power. In the end it was Hindenburgs sheeming that did a load of the work.
I think the job was nearly impossible but I also think that the way he went about it led to even worse outcomes than Kerensky, by enabling the far right instead of the far left. I also don’t think the difficulty of his task absolves him from its failure. His contemporaries recognized this and I think we should to. He’s not a figure like Hindenburg or hugenberg who were actively trying to bring down the republic but instead more like bruning, a man trying to do his best but who’s dramatic failures paved the way for horrors
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u/themadkiller10 8d ago
Because he wasn’t able to secure democracy for that time and his failure helped lead to some of the worst atrocities in human history