By the end of the war, Germany had been impacted in many ways and they also viewed others differently. They were impacted socially, economically, and politically. After the war Germany began to see women as a necessary asset to society.
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| Women in the workforce |
During the
war, the percentage of women in the workforce had risen thirty-seven percent,
which was a massive rise in the time period. After the war ended, the
percentage of women didn’t decline too much because they were seen as playing a
significant role in the German economy. The reaction from many of the Germans
to the ending of the war also had a huge impact on the German society. Many of
the German soldiers were under the impression that they had not lost the war
and that the army had been cheated, where Hitler later phrased this thinking as
“The Stab in the back.” Many of the Germans were looking for people to blame
because of the impression that the Germans had not lost the war. Because of all
this blame being placed on so many different people, others started to look to
the new Government, which leads me a compelling section of the book. The part
in the reading that intrigued me the most was when it states that not until a
year before the ending of the war were there any serious food shortages that
existed, due to the fact that the occupied countries were stripped of their
resources. The war intensified the tendencies of the totalitarian state,
bringing with it a militarization public life, increasing organization of the
formerly private sphere, and social leveling. The government began to
understand how to exploit envy and class differences for its own purposes when
rationing was introduced (Schulze, 270). I found this interesting because now a
days all we see is differences in class and the way people live because they either
have no way of getting a job or the ability to get out of the routine of living
paycheck to paycheck and then you have the ones who have so much money they
don’t know what to do with it. Before and during the war everyone was
considered one and that was probably one of the reasons that placing blame on
one another was so easy, but that blame turned into intolerance and many people
wanted a new Government, which resulted in the understanding of class
difference and intense social leveling.
Post war generated a lot of suspicion
throughout Germany. The first President of the Weimar Republic worked hard to
try and win the support of the elite soldiers because he wanted their support
in order to maximize the stability of the new republic. In return of the support
from the army, they needed the support of the President if they were to survive
as a significant political power in the years following the peace settlement.
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| Friedrich Ebert, President of Weimar Republic |
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| German states during the Weimar Republic period |
As far as the economical impact because of the war, Germany suffered terribly.
Industrial output fell by over forty percent and in some cases machinery was
considered obsolete. The economy also suffered from raw material shortages and
the Germans found it difficult to purchase raw material in any case because the
international community shunned them as a consequence of the war. The political
impact of the war was the most obvious area of change and because the Kaiser
was forced into abdication, it left a power vacuum that was filled by the
Weimar Republic. Due to the war Germany had been extremely isolated and to add
to the many consequences of the war, Germany lost lives of many.
Word Count: 614
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