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The Weimar Republic Offers a Warning About Political Violence

October 23, 2025
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The Weimar Republic Offers a Warning About Political Violence
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Last month, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed, shot while speaking at Utah Valley University. In August, a shooter attacked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shattering its “blast-resistant” glass with 180 bullets. In June, former Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot to death in their home by a man posing as a police officer. Earlier that day, the same man attacked Minnesota state senator John Hoffman and his wife. In April, the Pennsylvania governor’s residence was set ablaze. In March, the headquarters of the New Mexico Republican Party was set on fire.

The United States has long had a gun violence problem unique to the developed world. Since 2020, there have been over 500 mass shootings every year in the United States, and a 2022 study found that among 36 developed countries, the United States accounted for 76% of mass shootings since 2000. Despite these widespread shootings, commentators have long marveled that political violence remained relatively rare. Yet the spate of politically motivated violence this year suggests that we may have reached an “inflection point,” as former President Barack Obama recently claimed, as more and more Americans with access to lethal weapons turn to violence in order to achieve what they cannot at the ballot box.

Condemning Kirk’s assassination, Obama described these attacks as threats to “the central premise of our democratic system,” namely that “we have to be able to disagree and have sometimes really contentious debates without resorting to violence.” This has been a common refrain in recent weeks. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued a proclamation asserting that political violence would cause “irreparable moral decay” to the “Nation’s very soul.” The wounded Minnesota state senator John Hoffmann put it starkly: “political violence endangers our lives and democracy.”

These voices from across the political spectrum are not wrong about the corrosive effects of political violence. We need look no further than the Weimar Republic, which remains one of the most salient cases of democratic collapse in the 20th century. Its rise and fall reveal just how damaging political violence can be to democratic institutions—especially when politicians take no action to prevent it.

Read More: The Killing of Charlie Kirk and the Political Violence Haunting America

The Weimar Republic, Germany’s first experiment with democracy, had a violent birth and equally violent death. It arose out of the German revolution of 1918 in the final days of the First World War. Beginning as a sailors’ mutiny in the port city of Kiel, the revolution spread by train. Soldiers and workers replaced town and state governments with revolutionary councils in bloodless uprisings, and an interim cabinet of center-left ministers took power after the Kaiser was shoved off his throne on November 9, 1918. But as divisions yawned between moderate Social Democrats and more radical communists, the revolution turned bloody.

Free corps of demobilized soldiers began violently disbanding revolutionary governments around the country. In January 1919, disillusioned communists attempted their own violent revolution, today known as the Spartacist Uprising. Although it was forcefully put down, Berlin remained dangerous. When an elected National Assembly convened the following month to draft a new constitution, it did so in Weimar, a storied university town far from the violence of the capital.

By the mid-1920s, political violence had ebbed, as pro-republican political leaders got a handle on the country’s dire economic condition and joined hands in condemning acts of violence. Although these years boasted relative prosperity and stability, the Weimar Republic always had its enemies. These ranged from the aristocratic elite who dominated the military and bureaucracy and yearned for a return to monarchy, to communists who sought proletarian rule, to the National Socialists who wanted to establish a right-wing dictatorship.

These enemies of the Republic never forgot the its violent birth. Demobilized soldiers flocked to the paramilitary organizations that all major parties maintained, from the Nazi Stormtroopers (SA) to the conservative Steel Helmet League to the communists’ Red Front Fighters’ Association. In response, even moderate parties created paramilitary self-defense leagues, such as the Reich Banner Black-Red-Gold, associated with the Social Democratic Party.

The onset of the Great Depression, which hit Germany’s fragile economy harder than most, heralded a rapid rise in street brawls among these groups. As these altercations turned more violent, some parties, particularly the communists and the Nazis, turned to politically-motivated assassinations and reprisal killings. Although both groups enjoyed only marginal support in the golden years of the Republic, the crisis of the early 1930s led droves of disillusioned voters into the arms of these parties offering radical solutions.

The leaders of the communist and Nazi parties—both hostile to Germany’s democratic institutions, albeit for different reasons—understood, or intuited, that political violence could erode democracy itself. The Nazis were able to use political violence to gain voters: even as they engaged in violence against Social Democratic and communist groups, they portrayed themselves their victims. The party promised that, if granted power, it would put an end to the violence, arrest criminals, and sweep leftist forces from Germany’s streets—a promise fulfilled by Hitler when he came to power the next year. The violence reached such a fever pitch that in April 1932, the federal government banned the SA through an emergency decree.

But what first sounded the Republic’s death knell, before Hitler ever became Chancellor, were unscrupulous politicians hostile to the Republic, who were willing to use political violence to do away with democratic institutions. German elites, particularly the aristocrats who dominated the country’s military, industry, and bureaucracy, loathed the Weimar Republic. They saw the Nazi party as an instrument they could wield to do away with democracy and entrench their own power, while also foiling the designs of the communist party.

These interests coalesced around the person of Franz von Papen, who was appointed Chancellor in June 1932. Because parliament was riven among pro-democracy parties, the communists, and the Nazis, Papen was able to govern by emergency decree But parliament could still topple his government with a vote of no confidence, and thus Papen needed the parliamentary parties not to actively oppose him. He secured such acquiescence from Adolf Hitler by promising to allow the SA ban to lapse, giving the Nazi paramilitary the freedom of the streets once more.

Read More: How Hitler Used Democracy to Take Power

Two weeks later, Papen followed through on his promise, and the Stormtroopers again began parading openly in Germany’s cities. Masters of provocation, the Nazi paramilitaries often marched through left-wing neighborhoods, hoping for violent altercations. These brawls further eroded democratic norms, while driving voters away from left-wing and moderate parties who seemed helpless to halt them. Communists and Nazis clashed over the following weeks, killing and injuring hundreds.

Then, on July 17, SA members paraded through Altona, a working-class borough outside of Hamburg. Confronted by communist crowds, the afternoon dissolved into bloody street fighting. By evening, some 18 people lay dead. Quickly named “Blood Sunday,” the battle became an excuse for Papen’s government to usurp democratic governance.

Altona belonged to the federal state of Prussia, which governed around two-thirds of Germany’s population and land. Decreeing that the state’s democratically-elected, centrist government was incapable of ensuring public safety, Papen dissolved it. He appointed commissioners to take its place, putting Prussia’s massive police force in the hands of federal politicians.

This Prussian coup d’etat marked the true end of democracy in Germany, months before Hitler was appointed Chancellor. And it was possible only because of the unchecked violence that had come to characterize Weimar politics.

The destruction of the Weimar Republic encapsulates the danger that political violence poses to any self-governing people. Assassinations, coups, and street brawls may be symptoms of democratic decay—but they can also be an intentional strategy wielded by democracy’s enemies. Political violence weakens trust in the state and makes voters more willing to turn to politicians who claim they will restore order by any means necessary—even if those same politicians are the ones stoking the violence in the first place.

The United States remains a country in which political violence is still rare. But we are at a turning point, one at which each citizen, each politician, each institution must stand up and be counted. It is incumbent upon all of us to disavow violence and to ensure that political disagreement is resolved through free elections and free expression and not from the barrel of a gun.

Samuel Huneke is a historian of modern Germany and associate professor of history at George Mason University.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

The post The Weimar Republic Offers a Warning About Political Violence appeared first on TIME.

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