Page "1920 in Germany" Paragraph 11

Now to consider the general political situation in the country at the beginning of 1920, it may be remembered that from the time of the revolution until the end of 1919 the Liberal and Radical parties in combination with the so-called Majority Social Democratic Party had held power continuously, and had been strikingly confirmed in their position by the general election held in January 1919.

The chief point of interest in the general election had been the close correspondence of the results with those that used to be obtained in the elections for the old Reichstag in the time of the Empire.

On February 11, 1919, the new parliament elected Friedrich Ebert as president of the German republic.

Philipp Scheidemann acted as minister-president during the first half of 1919, but at the time of the signing of the treaty of peace in June he was succeeded by Gustav Bauer, one of the best-known leaders of the Majority Social Democratic Party, who had not been a member of Scheidemann's government.

The government persevered but the ministry and the parties which supported them were placed in an unstable and very difficult position.

The government had to face the extreme hostility of the conservative party on the one side, who had been opposed from the beginning to the new republican institutions.

On the other they faced the extreme revolutionaries on the other side, who, for entirely different reasons, had been opposed to the submission to the Entente, and desired an alliance with the Bolshevik forces of the Soviet Union.

During 1919 the government had been placed in greater difficulties by the parties of the left than by the parties of the right, and the extreme Socialists had made several unsuccessful attempts at armed insurrection.

The reactionary groups were also capable of making serious trouble for the government.