‘Weimar Republic was progressive’ is a propaganda take by Germany to make them feel like the nazis happened in isolation. Your understanding of the Weimar Republic isn’t materialist. Rather than talk about quantum mechanics which had no impact on the workers, you could talk about how the SPD killed Karl and Rosa and wiping out communists to make sure that there was no chance of a workers state. And look what it led to… So anyway I would say I’m not being hard on the Weimar Republic
I am not saying Weimar was absolutely progressive, just by German standards. In German history, the 1920s Weimar state wasn’t exceptional in its hatred of communism and its infiltration by fascists in the military and the secret service. However, I think the difference is that communists were a greater threat to the system than ever before or since, and they managed to achieve things in Weimar which wouldn’t be thinkable in Western Germany until many decades after the Nazis: In terms of labour, workers in the Weimar republic had won the right to only work five 8-hour-days a week, a right that wasn’t won back in the West until 1994, the same year in which homosexuality was relegalised (which was legal in Weimar to begin with). In terms of religion, the Reichskonkordat established between the Catholic church and the Nazis is still valid to this day, which is why German pupils still are forced to attend religious education, the church can still levy its own taxes, and church properties still enjoy special protection.
‘Weimar Republic was progressive’ is a propaganda take by Germany to make them feel like the nazis happened in isolation. Your understanding of the Weimar Republic isn’t materialist. Rather than talk about quantum mechanics which had no impact on the workers, you could talk about how the SPD killed Karl and Rosa and wiping out communists to make sure that there was no chance of a workers state. And look what it led to… So anyway I would say I’m not being hard on the Weimar Republic
I am not saying Weimar was absolutely progressive, just by German standards. In German history, the 1920s Weimar state wasn’t exceptional in its hatred of communism and its infiltration by fascists in the military and the secret service. However, I think the difference is that communists were a greater threat to the system than ever before or since, and they managed to achieve things in Weimar which wouldn’t be thinkable in Western Germany until many decades after the Nazis: In terms of labour, workers in the Weimar republic had won the right to only work five 8-hour-days a week, a right that wasn’t won back in the West until 1994, the same year in which homosexuality was relegalised (which was legal in Weimar to begin with). In terms of religion, the Reichskonkordat established between the Catholic church and the Nazis is still valid to this day, which is why German pupils still are forced to attend religious education, the church can still levy its own taxes, and church properties still enjoy special protection.