Question about the Weimar Republic and molly-coddling of Oregon protesters

[dairydog91]

8. Kind of.

The NSDAP (and the Steel Helmets, and the Freikorps) were frequently coddled. The Freikorps especially because it served as an extension of Germany's *limited* post-war military.

On the other hand, the Weimar Republic did have hate speech laws which were sometimes enforced. The problem was that their enforcement against a couple prominent Nazis (I think Hitler himself may have been tried at one point) didn't do much except provide martyrs for the Nazi cause. Germany was such an explosive powderkeg that it may have been doomed to go off at some point. If memory serves, it had gone through a major growth pulse in the late 1800s, going from "a" European power to "the" continental European power. Huge growth in industrialization and scientific progress, formation of massive industrial powerhouses like Siemens. Also blatant horse-trading politics and corruption, especially by the huge firms. By WW1 it was also a huge ground power, though decidedly second banana to Great Britain in terms of naval power. After WW1 the country was humiliated and economically wounded. The military had fallen apart and the Freikorps functioned as a sort of paramilitary extension. The economy was often awful. There was horrendous inflation in the years immediately after the war and the Great Depression pretty much killed the credibility of the Weimar Republic.