Weimar Constitution

The pope denounced the violent persecution of Catholic priests by the government and called out the government for violating its promises to the church.

So the current Constitution of Mexico of 1917 is the first such document in the world to set out social rights, serving as a model for the Weimar Constitution of 1919 Germany and the Russian Constitution of 1918.

Mexico's 1917 Constitution contained many anti-Catholic amendments that restricted religious freedom.

The Mexican Constitution was made even more anti-clerical and anti-Catholic in the period from 1934 to 1946 when an amendment mandating, quote, socialist education was put into effect and amended into the new, into the 1917 Constitution.

And the German revolution of 1918 to '19 was a rough time for many German nobles, uh, like the Schirachs.

So they lose their noble titles under the Weimar Constitution.

They no longer have privileged access to royal courts.

Their domestic servants and farm workers get uppity.

This was when Hitler's trying to network with the social elites and knock off some of the rough edges of the National Socialist movement's reputation.

So in October 1925, Hitler attended a performance at the German National Theatre in Weimar.

This is where, as it happens, the Weimar Constitution had been debated in 1919, and also where, uh, Karl von Schirach still had his VIP box.

So Schirach found Hitler peculiar and interesting and invited him back to the family villa for tea.

It created a parliamentary system with a president, but the real power was vested in the chancellor and the Reichstag, the new parliament.

A key feature of the Weimar Constitution was proportional representation, which meant that even small parties could win seats in the Reichstag.

This was a very fair system, but it also had a major downside.

It made it very difficult for any single party to gain a majority, which led to a constant succession of fragile coalition governments.

And then after a hundred clauses, they got to defining some human rights.

And I said to them, well, I think you might have this backwards, because the old Weimar Constitution...

No, they didn't.

No, no, the old Weimar Constitution, the Weimar Republic Constitution, was exactly like that.

So they started with the organization of the state and tacked on some human rights afterwards.

And German historians and lawyers, constitutional lawyers... have now basically agreed that that was one of the reasons why it was so easy for the Nazis to take over.

He's pretending like the Constitution doesn't exist.

And this is part of a theory, a political theory of how one overturns a democracy that that was articulated earliest on by a guy named Carl Schmitt, who was a political theorist who became beloved of the Nazis because he said, the way that you get rid of democracy And mind you, he was looking at the Weimar Constitution.

But the theory applies even to the United States Constitution, although they're very different constitutions, is that you declare emergencies, that you say things are sort of outside the realm of normalcy.

And because of that, the person who can claim the emergencies and grab power because of that becomes the power in the country and becomes the dictator.

You know, um, the constitution of 1888, which had been drafted, uh, you know, with high hopes of parliamentarians, but it never really been implemented.

Um, it basically, uh, it, uh, it basically looks something like the Weimar Constitution, um, in terms of, uh, you know, the power of, uh, the power of the parliamentary majority.

Um, it was renamed the constitution in 1903.

Uh, you know, the, uh, the, the belief was that, like, you know, the, the problem of the, of, of, of dynastic rivalry was resolved, you know, uh, not, not just, you know, not, not just because Alexander and Draga were killed and not just because, you know, power had been returned to the, you know, to the people.

In the dock, Hitler railed against his own prosecution in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, his attempt to violently overthrow Germany's democratically elected Weimar Republic.

As Tim Ryback describes in his book, 53 Days, How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy, Hitler cited the Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's successful defiance of Prussian law, fuming, quote, How was Bismarck described by everyone in the opposition press? As a violator of the Constitution, as a traitor.

Had Bismarck failed, Hitler said, he would have been tried for treason.

Instead, he was a hero.

You know, Hitler comes in in a suit and tie, not his brown shirt uniform with a swastika armband.

and is very respectful of the court and the judge, but does not hesitate to put forward his political position, which is, and he starts lecturing, it's interesting because he lectures the judge on the German constitution.

So Hitler knew his game, and he reminds the judge that Article 1 of the Weimar Constitution states that the government is an expression of the will of the German people.

Hitler's point is, when I have a majority of the vote, a majority of the electorate, we will enter government representing the will of the people, and we will pour it meaning he was going to turn the country into a dictatorship through legal process, which was an astonishing admission in court.

That's a sinister quote.

I mean, what do you make of that? Were there fundamental weaknesses in the Weimar Constitution and the Weimar democracy that made it vulnerable to this?

I mean, there are certain dimensions to the structure of the Weimar Constitution that people point to as having led to this, to Hitler's ability to do this.

I think the main fault of the Weimar Constitution, but I think any constitution, is that the Constitution was designed to protect the state from the Constitutional Republic from assaults from the exterior.

but not to be undermined from within.

So there are certain articles in the Weimar Constitution that were abused and exploited, but more significantly, it was the ability of its basically functioning as a Trojan horse to enter the government and then destroy it from within.

Thank you.

Yes?