IB History Failure of Weimar Germany and Adolf Hitler's Rise and Consolidation of Power Key Definitions

Hitler's failed attempt to seize power in Munich on November 8-9, 1923. On the night of November 8, Hitler interrupted a meeting in the Bürgerbräukeller beer hall and declared a "national revolution." He attempted to force key Bavarian officials (State Commissioner Gustav von Kahr, General Otto von Lossow, and Colonel Hans Ritter von Seisser) to support a march on Berlin. The next day, Hitler and around 3,000 Nazis marched through Munich but were stopped by police at the Feldherrnhalle. 16 Nazis and 4 police officers were killed. Hitler was arrested, tried for treason, and sentenced to five years in prison (he served nine months in Landsberg). In prison he dictated Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess. The failure of the Putsch convinced Hitler to pursue power through legal electoral means rather than force.

An international agreement brokered by American banker Charles Dawes and accepted by Germany, France, and Britain in August 1924. It restructured Germany's reparations payments by introducing a new schedule of annual payments that began at low levels and increased gradually. More importantly, it arranged substantial American loans to Germany, which allowed the German economy to recover and pay reparations. The Dawes Plan ended the immediate Ruhr crisis and inaugurated the "Golden Twenties" of relative Weimar stability. However, it left Germany dependent on American capital, which flowed out rapidly when the Great Depression began in 1929.

German for "stab-in-the-back legend." The myth, widely circulated among German nationalists after 1918, that the German army had not been defeated militarily in the First World War but had been "stabbed in the back" by internal enemies, particularly socialists, communists, and Jews, who had undermined the war effort from within. The legend was a fabrication: the German army had genuinely been defeated in the field by the autumn of 1918. But the myth was politically powerful and was exploited by the right, especially by Hitler, to delegitimize the Weimar Republic and blame Germany's humiliation on minority groups.

The 1933 law that allowed Hitler to pass legislation without the Reichstag's approval for four years, effectively ending parliamentary democracy in Germany and establishing the legal basis for dictatorship.

A series of agreements signed at Locarno, Switzerland in October 1925, negotiated by Germany's Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann, France's Aristide Briand, and Britain's Austen Chamberlain. The most important was the Rhineland Pact, by which Germany, France, Belgium, Britain, and Italy mutually guaranteed the western European borders established by the Treaty of Versailles. Germany also agreed to arbitration for disputes with its eastern neighbors (Poland and Czechoslovakia), though these eastern borders were not guaranteed in the same way. The Locarno Treaties represented Germany's reintegration into the international community and led to Stresemann and Briand winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.

The purge of 30 June to 2 July 1934 in which Hitler ordered the murder of SA leader Ernst Röhm and other perceived rivals. It eliminated the SA as a political threat and secured the loyalty of the army.

An emergency decree issued on 28 February 1933 after the Reichstag fire, suspending civil liberties including freedom of speech, press, and assembly. It allowed the Nazis to arrest political opponents without trial.