The Early German States

The Celts are the first recorded peoples of the territory now known as Germany but, between 1000 BC and 100 BC, Scandinavian tribes gradually migrated from the north and conquered them. These northern people then settled the territory between the Elbe and Oder rivers and turned to agrarian pursuits. In the 1st century BC, the area comprised an estimated 4 million people and land had become a scarce commodity. Because of this overpopulation, several tribes in the region began to emigrate including the Visigoths to Spain, the Vandals to North Africa, and the Angles and Saxons to England. Other tribes such as the Teutons and Cimbri were defeated and destroyed.

Between 12 BC and AD 16, the Romans tried to conquer the Germanic tribes but only a small portion of southwestern Germany came under their control. Unlike most of the territory to the west which did fall at the hands of the Roman legions, the Germanic tribes of central Europe maintained their traditional ways and remained unaffected by much of the Roman influence.

By the third century AD, the Germanic tribe known as the Franks rose to prominence in the northwest of Germany near the lower and middle Rhine Valley. They were identified by writers of the day as the Salians, Ripuarians and Chatti, and are believed to have shared the same language and many laws. In 358, the Salian Franks assumed control of Toxandria, the region skirting the modern French - Belgian border.

Around the year 500, the first great leader of the Franks, Clovis, (reign 481-511) established the Merovingian dynasty which lasted until 751. Its territory extended from the Atlantic Ocean to Bavaria (German: Bayern, modern day state in south-central Germany) and Thuringia (German: Thuringen, east-central Germany now the state of Lander) in the east. Clovis converted to Christianity and began to sponsor the activities of missionaries in the eastern reaches of his realm.

In the 8th century, the Merovingian dynasty began to decline and one of its royal officials, Charles Martel, (768-814) established a new line of Frankish kings. Better known as Charlemagne, he quickly established dominance over more central European lands including Bavaria in the east and Saxony, between the Rhine and Elbe rivers (present German state of Lower Saxony or Niedersachsen). Charlemagne also conquered parts of Italy and Spain and in the year 800, when the pope crowned him emperor, he was recognized as master of a revived Roman Empire in the West.

After Charlemagne's death, civil wars erupted that lasted until 870 when two Frankish kingdoms emerged, that of the West Franks, France, and that of the East Franks, Germany. It was also at about this time that the Vikings and Magyars (Hungarians, originally from the northeastern Europe near the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers) conducted their invasions. Central government broke down and most of the German people fell under the feudal influence of local nobles.

In 876, Charles III (839-88), emperor of the East Franks, inherited the kingdom of Swabia (southwestern Germany, present German states of Baden-Wurttemberg and Bavaria). Three years later, on the resignation of his sick brother Carloman, he became king of Italy. The following year (882), he gained Saxony from the death of another brother; and the deaths of the West Frankish kings Louis III (882) and Carloman (884) gave him France.

The last Carolingian king of the East Franks was Louis the Child (reign 899-911). On his death , Lotharingia (Lorraine) was the only East Frankish duchy to transfer its allegiance to the Carolingian king of the West Franks. The dukes of the other four duchies, Bavaria, Franconia (central Germany, northern modern day state of Bavaria), Saxony, and Swabia who initially elected the duke of Franconia king of Germany as Conrad I. In 919, however, they turned their allegiance to Saxony who they believed to be better able to defend them against the Magyars.

The first two Saxon kings, Henry I and his son Otto I, did not let down their new supporters. They defeated the Magyars and expanded into eastern Europe. Central authority was re-established and in 962 Otto established the Roman Empire. (In the 12th century it was renamed the Holy Roman Empire.) It reflected the belief of that day that just as all Christians be united under One Holy Catholic Church, they also should be united in secular affairs under one ultimate leader. The pope's consent, however, was required for ascension to the throne.

Saxon hold on the crown had given way to Salian kings by the 11th century causing a series of power struggles between the German crown and the church in Rome. Known as the 'Investiture Controversy', it prevailed until 1122 when the Church regained some of its lost powers and the process of feudalization in Germany was accelerated. Throughout this period, the Hohenstaufen family supported the Salian kings and were ultimately rewarded with the throne in 1138. The Hohenstaufen dynasty prevailed for over a hundred years and during this time gained the French province of Burgundy and most of Italy. After their reign, a series of local princes from different dynasties gained the crown and feudalism regained its hold on the people.

In 1338, Louis IV of Bavaria rallied the support of the German princes to elect an emperor without necessitating the pope's consent. Charles IV (reign 1347-78) of the house of Luxemburg, formally acknowledged the principle of elective monarchy with the 'Golden Bull' of 1356. This document served as a constitution for the Holy Roman Empire and defined seven electors, one each from the regions of Mainz and Trier in southwestern Germany, Cologne, Saxony, Brandenburg (Berlin region), the Rhine, and Bohemia in the modern day Czech Republic.

From 1438 until 1806 when it dissolved, the Austrian dynasty of Habsburgs ruled the Holy Roman Empire.

The only exception was from 1740-1745. Through marriages, Burgundy, the Low Countries, Spain, and much of Italy all came under the Habsburg rule. Discontent continued between local princes and the central authority. With the aim of alleviating the rift, in 1500, Maximilian I instituted an imperial governing council known as the Reichsrat which included several of the prominent princes. It did not evolve into an effective governing body, however, and Germany remained fragmented.

Evolution of the Modern German State

The 16th century brought about the age known as the Reformation which marked a rebirth of biblical beliefs and practices, known as Protestantism, throughout Europe. At Wittenberg in 1517 , theologian Martin Luther (1483-1546), led a revolt and posted his 95 theses condemning the sale of indulgences and abuses by the Roman Catholic church. The movement quickly spread and Lutheranism, as it came to be known, was even adopted by many of the regional princes. Their conversion was often more motivated by their desires to weaken the established church and gain access to church properties and rights of taxation. The struggles continued throughout the 1600s and Lutheranism and its new counterpart, Calvinism, steadily gained popularity throughout Germany despite the existance of a Catholic emperor.

The Protesnant movement grew throughout the first half of the 16th century which led to political divisions and ultimately war. By the agreement known as the Peace of Augsburg, in 1555 a settlement had been struck which effectively recognized Lutheranism as the religion of most of northern and central Germany. Over the coming decades however, Lutheranism and Calvinism (a rival Protestant sect) continued to expand throughout the German states, much to the chargrin of the Catholic emperors, particularly the Habsburdgs who still hoped to to unify Germany as as unified state. The rift between the Catholics and Protestants eventually erupted into a series of wars collectively known as the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). After all the conflict though, Germany remained overwhelmingly divided as collection of more than 300 virtually sovereign.

In 1618 the leadership of Brandenburg achieved rule of Prussia by way of inheritance. Brandenburg - Prussia later gaind territory by the peace agreement following the Thirty Yeras War. In the 18th century, as a result of the peace settlements following the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) and the Seven Years' War (1756-63), it also gained parts of Austria and Poland. When King Frederick William II (reign 1740-86) died, Prussia (including Brandenburg) and Austria, still ruled by the Habsburg dynasty were the dominant German states.

During the latter part of the 18th and early part of the 19th centuries, European attention was diverted to the aggressions of Napoleon Boneparte and the French. As a result of the French Revolution (1789-99) and the Napoleonic wars (1803-15), Germany was conquered by the French and the Holy Roman Empire dissolved. As it commonly the case, it was this outside aggression that brought about a sense of nationalism and a rejeuvinated desire for German unity. Led by Prussian military might, their victorious War of Liberation against the French in 1813 brought a new arrangement by the Congress of Vienna. This treaty restored most of the major princes while at the same time establishing a loose confederation of about three dozen from the original three hundred.

Beginning in 1845 there was a series of European crop failures that led to a general economic depression across the continent. The resultant unrest spurred a series of revolutions to break out in 1848. Beginning in Paris, the strife quickly spread to other areas. To settle the crisis in Germany, several concessions were granted to the individual states and representatives were elected to the newly formed Frankfurt Parliament to unite the region. Divisions persisted however and the effort was stalled the following year.

In 1862, Prussia's Otto Von Bismark once again took up the cause of German unification. Following wars with the Danish (1864) and Austrians (1866), he formed the North German Confederation unifying the northern states under Prussian dominance. During the war with the French in 1870-71 the southern German states agreed to join the federation, and on Jan. 18, 1871, the Prussian king William I was crowned emperor of the new German Reich at Versailles.

Imperial Germany (1871-1918)

Bismarck fastened an appropriately authoritarian political structure on the newly formed nation. The German Empire retained the constitution he had created for the North German Confederation. It provided for a democratically elected parliament, the Reichstag, but granted it only the limited powers of fiscal appropriation and debate. Germany was organized on a federal basis, with certain powers reserved to the states. But in the national government, real power lay with the Prussian king, who was also the German emperor (Kaiser), and his advisors. As long as William I ruled (until 1888), his chancellor, Bismarck, was given his way on virtually every issue.

Bismarck's Rule

In order to manipulate the Reichstag, Bismarck formed coalitions of parties that were based at least as much on opposition to real or imagined internal enemies as on concrete political issues. At first he allied with his former foes, the liberals, to encourage the growth of industrial and commercial capitalism in Germany. Simultaneously, he fought the large Roman Catholic minority and its political arm, the Center party, as enemies of the new state. This campaign, known as the Kulturkampf, produced only short-term benefits since the Catholics, assisted by some non-Catholics, resisted doggedly. Bismarck ended the Kulturkampf in 1878 only because he wanted to run Germany with the help of new partners, the conservatives. He had concluded that the best way to deal with a severe economic depression was to protect German industry and agriculture with tariffs, a policy more acceptable to conservative than to liberal minds. The enemy, too, changed. This time it was Germany's mildly Marxist party, the Social Democratic party (SPD), that represented the growing industrial working class. In the 1880s, Bismarck had the SPD outlawed as subversive and tried to win over the German workers with the world's first comprehensive social security system. However, he was no more successful in suppressing the socialists than he had been with the Catholics. By 1890 he had lost control of the Reichstag and was contemplating the use of force to overturn the constitution when the new emperor compelled him to resign. Bismarck's foreign policy was far sounder than his domestic politics. Convinced that Germany had all the territory it needed, he promoted European stability by isolating France and diverting its attention to colonial expansion overseas. He won important allies for Germany by the Triple Alliance with Austria and Italy (1882) and the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia (1887). He endorsed a policy of German colonial expansion only belatedly and halfheartedly, and then mainly to secure support for his domestic policies from nationalists and from industrial and commercial interests.

William II's Policies

William I was succeeded briefly by his son Frederick III and then by his grandson William II (r. 1888-1918). The young William appreciated neither Bismarck's assumption that only Bismarck could govern Germany nor his heavy-handed attempts to bludgeon minorities into submission. After forcing the Iron Chancellor to retire (1890), the new emperor attempted to dominate German politics himself even though he did not possess the intelligence and emotional stability necessary to do so. William seriously attempted to conciliate the German working class, dropping the anti-socialist laws and extending the social security system. But he would not make concessions to the idea of political democracy, stubbornly resisting demands by the SPD and middle-class liberals for reform of Prussia's old, undemocratic constitution and for the granting of real powers to the Reichstag. The growth of reform sentiment and outrage over William's frequent blunders produced all the ingredients for a constitutional confrontation on the eve of World War I.

Not the least of the reformers' complaints concerned William II's inept foreign policy, in which he was guided by the foreign office official Friedrich von Holstein and by Bernhard von Bulow, who became foreign secretary in 1897 and chancellor in 1900. Unsure of his ability to maintain alliances with both Russia and Austria in view of their rivalry in the Balkans, the emperor opted for Austria and let the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia lapse in 1890. Four years later, France concluded an alliance with Russia. Then, instead of behaving with appropriate caution, William followed the advice of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz in launching a naval arms race with Britain. He also plunged into colonial adventures and thus further antagonized both Britain and France. By 1909, when Bulow was succeeded as chancellor by the more sober Theobald von Bethman-Hollweg, Germany had only one reliable ally, Austria-Hungary. These serious flaws were less apparent at the time than they might otherwise have been because of imperial Germany's dazzling economic, scientific, and cultural achievements. Encouraged by government subventions and the close collaboration of bankers and industrialists, Germany experienced most of its economic growth between 1870 and 1910. Although German industrialization had gotten underway long after Britain's, by 1910 German steel production was more than twice that of Britain. German science and technology, supported by a sophisticated university system, came to be regarded as the world's best. At the same time, the early novels of Thomas Mann, the late romantic music of Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss, and the apocalyptic philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche helped maintain Germany's reputation as a major cultural center.

World War I

These signs of vitality suggested that Germany might peacefully have solved its political and social problems over a period of time. However, its defeat in World War I denied it that possibility. Excessively eager to support its ally Austria in a dispute with Russia over Serbia, Germany helped precipitate war in 1914 by sending an ultimatum to Russia and, when it was rejected, declaring war on both Russia and France, in accordance with the rigid war plan devised by Alfred von Schlieffen. Most Germans, even the SPD, supported the war effort at first, but their mood began to change when no swift victory could be won and terrible food shortages developed. Increasing numbers of them wondered whether the government was more interested in conquests than in a fair peace treaty. When, in November 1918, it was obvious that Germany had to sue for peace, the German people rose in revolt against their leaders. Even the German generals pressed for the emperor's abdication. William went into exile in the Netherlands, and the Social Democrats took over the government, proclaimed a republic, and brought the war to an end.

Weimar and Nazi Germany (1918-45)

It is one of the great tragedies of modern history that Germany's first encounter with democratic government was associated with defeat and misery. The Social Democrats, accepting the support of the army in order to maintain order, suppressed several Communist revolts, including the regime of Kurt Eesner in Bavaria. Early in 1919 a freely elected constituent assembly met in Weimar to write a constitution giving direct governing power to the Reichstag. SPD leader Friedrich Ebert was named president of the new Weimar Republic, and Philipp Scheidemann formed a coalition government of the SPD, the Center party, and a liberal group. This government soon resigned rather than sign the Treaty of Versailles, the vindictive settlement imposed by the Paris Peace Conference. However, Germany really had no choice. In June 1919 the Weimar Assembly voted to comply with the treaty, which deprived Germany of large amounts of land, people, and natural resources and forced it to pay enormous reparations.

Crisis and Recovery

The attempt to root parliamentary democracy in Germany was beset from the beginning by grave problems. There were so many political parties - at least six major and many more minor ones - that it was hard to form stable coalitions for effective government. Militant minorities - the Communists on the far left and monarchists and racists on the opposite extreme - sometimes resorted to force in efforts to overturn the republic. Notable among these efforts was the Munich Putsch of 1923, in which the tiny National Socialist party led by Adolf Hitler made a somewhat farcical attempt to seize power in Bavaria. The continuing unrest made the national government even more dependent on the basically conservative army. The year 1923 was one of major crisis. The payment of reparations, in both cash and kind, had placed an enormous strain on a country already bankrupted by more than four years of war. As inflation had mounted Germany had suspended payment in 1922, provoking the French to occupy the Ruhr area in January 1923. Workers in Ruhr mines and factories resisted by striking, but such resistance contributed to inflation, which brought on economic collapse. The situation was saved in November 1923 when the ablest of Germany's republican politicians, Gustav Stressmann, introduced a new currency and improved Germany's relations with the western nations, paving the way for foreign loans and a more reasonable schedule of reparations payments.

During the later 1920s, therefore, the German economy revived, and politics settled down. Also, during those years, a remarkable avant-garde culture blossomed in Germany, extending from the epic theater of Bertolt Brecht, to the Bauhaus school of functional art and architecture, to the relativity physics of Albert Einstein, and to the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger.

This new Germany was cut down in its infancy by the onset of the depression of the 1930S and the Nazi seizure of power. Depression conditions once more radicalized politics and so divided the parties in the Reichstag that parliamentary government became all but impossible. From 1930 on, government functioned by emergency decree. The Communists profited briefly from this radicalization, but the main beneficiary was Hitler's National Socialist, or Nazi, party, which had the twin attractions of appearing to offer radical solutions to economic problems while upholding patriotic values. By 1932 it was the largest party in the Reichstag. The following year President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor after allowing himself to be convinced by generals and right-wing politicians that only the Nazi leader could restore order in Germany and that he could be controlled.

Nazi Dictatorship

Most Germans who supported Hitler during his rise to power did so out of desperation, scarcely knowing what he planned to do. They received much more than they had bargained for. After half-persuading, half-coercing the Reichstag to grant him absolute power, Hitler lost no time in founding a totalitarian state, known unofficially as the Third Reich - supposedly in the tradition of the Holy Roman Empire and the unified German Empire set up by Bismarck. When confronted by demands from Storm Trooper (SA) leader Ernst Roehm and others for a second revolution that would make good on Nazi claims to socialist ideals, Hitler purged Roehm and his associates on the weekend of June 30, 1934. Four years later, he forced out two of the top generals on trumped-up charges in order to assure himself of full control of the expanding German armed forces. Thanks to a ruthless secret police (the Gestapo) and a concentration camp system under the direction of SS (Schutzstaffel) leader Heinrich Himmler, known enemies of Nazism were put away and potential ones terrorized. Hitler's virulent racism gave rise to a cruel system of anti-Semitism. The Nuremberg Laws of September 1935, which deprived Jews of most civil rights, were supplemented by other measures designed to rid Germany of Jews. These measures were to culminate in a policy of deliberate extermination during World War II, taking the lives of approximately 6 million European Jews. More immediately, however, a concerted state program of ending unemployment with public works projects and a restoration of business confidence produced remarkable economic recovery in Germany. Joseph Goebbels's efficient propaganda ministry controlled the media to assure that Hitler would be viewed as a genius and Nazi Germany as the best of all possible worlds. Given this combination of coercion, achievement, and thought control, it is perhaps not surprising that there was little resistance, aside from limited opposition from some elements in the churches and the army.

World War II

Hitler's foreign policy goals were determined by his belief that Germany was overpopulated and needed to conquer Europe in order to secure Lebensraum (living space) in Poland and Russia. Concealing his real goals before 1939, he hoodwinked Europe's diplomats into appeasing him with concessions - as at the Munich Conference of 1938. The 1936 remilitarization of the Rhineland, from which troops had been banned by the Versailles treaty; the annexation of Austria (the so-called Anschluss) in 1938; and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1938-39 were all accomplished without effective interference by the other European powers.

When Britain and France finally declared war (Sept. 3, 1939) after the German invasion of Poland, Hitler found himself involved in war on a much larger scale than he had expected and for which Germany was not adequately prepared. A series of initially successful Blitzkriege (lightning campaigns) against Poland (1939), western Europe (1940), and the USSR (1941) made him temporary master of most of Europe. But, unable to destroy Britain and Russia, Hitler found himself confronted by an overwhelmingly powerful enemy coalition, including (after December 1941) the United States. Germany's main European ally, Fascist Italy, soon collapsed, and its Asian ally, Japan, fought an essentially independent war. The German collapse began in mid-1944 when the Allies invaded France and strategic bombing began to reduce German armament production. When Hitler committed suicide in Berlin in April 1945, Germany was largely in ruins and at the mercy of the countries it had ravaged. (See WORLD WAR II.)

Germany since 1945

The victorious Allies managed to agree to give most of eastern Germany to Poland and the USSR, to divide what was left into four zones of occupation, and to try the major Nazi war criminals before an International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. However, they could not agree on whether or how to reunite the four occupied zones. As Cold War tensions grew, stimulated in part by the German situation itself, the temporary dividing line between the Soviet zone in the east and the British, French, and U.S. zones in the west hardened into a permanent boundary. In 1949, shortly after the Western powers permitted their zones to unite and restore parliamentary democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Soviets installed a puppet regime of German Communists in the east, creating the German Democratic Republic.

West Germany

Any possibility that the USSR might have permitted the reunification of a neutral Germany in the 1950s, as it did in Austria, was thwarted by Konrad Adenauer, West Germany's chancellor (prime minister) from 1949 to 1963. Head of the conservative Christian Democratic party, Adenauer was deeply suspicious of Soviet intentions and preferred the closest possible ties with Western Europe and the United States. He guided the Federal republic of Germany into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1955, and into the process of Western European integration that culminated in the formation of the European Economic Community in 1958. Claiming that only West Germany represented the true wishes of all the German people, Adenauer refused to recognize the Soviet-dominated German Democratic Republic or maintain diplomatic relations with any country that did. The West German chancellor skillfully exploited cold war tensions in order to win sovereignty and the right to rearm for his country.

Adenauer's government also brought about an impressive economic recovery with a modified form of free-enterprise capitalism. Businesses and industries were largely private, but high taxes helped pay for rebuilding programs and an impressive network of social services. Economic recovery enabled West Germany to provide a home for more than ten million ethnic German refugees who in 1945 had fled from Soviet armies or been expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other Eastern European countries. The West German constitution functioned smoothly under Adenauer, convincing many Germans that parliamentary democracy was compatible with order and prosperity. The constitution banned neo-Nazi parties, and it denied representation in the Bundestag (legislature) to parties that gained less than five percent of the vote in elections, which discouraged extremist groups of all kinds. A "codetermination" law passed in 1951 provided workplace democracy by giving employees a share in the management of large concerns. Although Adenauer was committed to preserving the democratic order, his personal authoritarian style in dealing with his colleagues led to his ouster in 1963. His conservative policies were carried on by two Christian Democratic successors, Ludwig Erhard, who was chancellor from 1963 to 1966, and Kurt Georg Kiesinger (1966-69).

The Bundestag elections of 1969 signaled a significant turn in West German politics. For the first time, the Social Democrats were able to form a government. After having been excluded from power for many years, the SPD had abandoned its advocacy of Marxist economics and German neutrality, chosen an attractive leader in West Berlin's mayor Willy Brandt, and accepted junior partnership in Kiesinger's government to prove it was a moderate party capable of governing in the interest of all Germans. Although Brandt became chancellor in 1969, he was restrained from making important domestic changes by the SPD's coalition partner, the more conservative Free Democratic party.

Brandt's chief innovation was his Ostpolitik, or policy toward West Germany's eastern neighbors. Abandoning claims to territories lost to Poland and the USSR, the Federal Republic signed treaties with both countries recognizing the new borders established at the end of World War II. Another treaty with East Germany amounted to reciprocal recognition of the two German states. In the short term, Brandt's Ostpolitik promoted a relaxation of tensions in Central Europe that enabled West Germans to visit friends and relatives in the East and both Germanies to enter the United Nations. In the long term that relaxation made German reunification a possibility.

The discovery of an East German spy in Willy Brandt's administration led him to resign in 1974 in favor of fellow Social Democrat Helmut Schmidt. Schmidt continued to pursue moderate domestic policies and Ostpolitik, as did the Christian Democrats when they returned to power under Helmut Kohl in 1982. As was true in most other European parliamentary democracies, no great gulf separated the leading parties in West German political life. Neither the Christian Democrats nor the Social Democrats wanted to jeopardize the Federal Republic's booming capitalist economy, its improving relations with its eastern neighbors, and its acceptance as a leading partner in the European Community and the Western alliance. With this postwar revival of free political life came renewed cultural creativity. The novels of Heinrich BOLL and Gunter Grass, the films of Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, and Volker Schlondorff, and the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen won worldwide recognition.

East Germany

The German Democratic Republic experienced a more difficult history. Economically exploited by the Soviet Union throughout its existence, East Germany's highly centralized and repressive Communist system always lagged behind West Germany. The unpopular dictator Walter Ulbricht was dependent on the Soviet occupation army and used it to quell a popular uprising in 1953. In 1961 the flight of hundreds of thousands of his best workers from East to West Berlin forced Ulbricht to erect the Berlin Wall in an attempt to stem the flow of outward migration. Things did not improve when Erich Honecker succeeded Ulbricht in 1971. Pressures for change were felt only in 1989, when reforms in Poland, Hungary, and the Soviet Union encouraged more than 200,000 East Germans to emigrate to the West via Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and many more to demonstrate for democratic reforms at home. With the USSR no longer willing to intervene and save it, the Communist government collapsed and the Berlin Wall was opened in November 1989. This paved the way for the unification of the two German states under the West German constitution on Oct. 3, 1990. The costs of bringing the faltering economy of East Germany in line with the West promised to be enormous, but the great prosperity of the former West Germany gave cause for optimism on that score. For the first time since 1933, the German people lived together in freedom and unity, this time under conditions that were vastly more favorable than those that had prevailed under the Weimar Republic.