Page "Events preceding World War II in Europe" Paragraph 3

The Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, blamed Germany's ruined economy on the harshness of the Versailles Treaty, on faults of democracy, and on the stab-in-the-back legend.

In Germany, as in post-Austro-Hungarian Austria, citizens recalled the pre-war years under autocratic rule as prosperous but the post-war years under weak democratic rule as chaotic and economically disastrous.

The situation was further aggravated by the worldwide economic depression that followed the Wall Street crash in 1929.

Left-wing and right-wing anti-democratic parties in the Reichstag ( the German parliament ) obstructed parliamentary work, while different cabinets resorted to government by the special emergency powers of the Weimar constitution.

This enabled the president and Cabinet to bypass the Parliament.