How Did The German Army Influence The Weimar Republic

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Assess the influence of the German Army and paramilitary groups on the success and failures of the Weimar Republic:
The German Army has extended a great influence over the Weimar Republic as one of the most power institutions in the country, providing essential defense against revolutionary communist forces and parliamentary groups including the Freikorps in the early era of the democracy. The German army aided in preventing numerous communist uprising successes against the government. Controversially, their strong nationalist right-wing tendencies prevented them from launching an attack on right-wing assaults. Seeckt’s accession to Defense minister shifted the German Army’s (Reichswehr) role from chiefly strategic to chiefly political, thus …show more content…
Many of the political groups within the Republic had utilised these parliamentary groups to protect their party gatherings and disrupt the marches and meetings of their opposition. They didn’t, however, hold the significant influence that the Reichswehr had over the Republic as they were tied to different groups while the Army maintained its own power. By the end of WW1, the German Army managed to survive defeat without damage to their status in German Society. Although army leaders including General Ludendorff had advised surrender, it was the newly formed Republic that was held responsible for signing the Armistice and the TOV, in turn being positioned as a betrayer to the army who not only gained nothing, but whose people were forced to pay compensation for a war in which they had already lost so much. The German Public, unable to understand its sudden defeat, took the Republic to blame. The army was therefore able to escape the responsibility, leading to the formation of the ‘Dolchtoss Legende’ (stab in the back). Historian John Wheeler-Bennett identifies this as the birth of the stab-in-the-back Legend, suggesting that it saw the new democracy undermined from the
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