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“Conservative revolution” as an attempt to return Germany to its own “special path” of development after the defeat in the First World War

After the defeat in World War I, Germany found itself in a rather difficult situation – the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty provided for not only exorbitant reparations (in order to make payments on schedule for 30 years, Germany had to annually transfer to the winners an amount three times the annual gross national product), but and territorial concessions, “decolonization” and army reductions.

Germany was losing an eighth of the territory with a population of 7,3 million people (10% of the pre-war population). The constitution of the Weimar Republic was drawn up on the principle of imitation: the election of the president by the people, as in the United States, an unrestricted vote of no confidence in parliament, as in England (with the difference that Germany did not have the historically established English two-party system), there were elements of plebiscitary democracy, which is characteristic of France.

As the historian Oleg Plenkov writes, the development of Germany since 1870 gave the Germans reasons to be convinced of their moral, scientific and spiritual superiority, since during this period there was amazing progress in all spheres of the country’s life, Germany was the most dynamic country of European civilization. The Treaty of Versailles called this past into question, offering instead democracy, liberalism, parliamentarism, “self-determination”, the League of Nations – and all this looked like a desecration of national dignity, a mockery of the victors [1].

The self-consciousness of German nationally minded people after the defeat in the First World War was infringed – the Germans had to abandon their former political principles in favor of the principles of the victors [2]. This was unbearable for the self-consciousness that had experienced painful humiliation – “rehabilitation” could only consist in completely tearing Germany away from the West and returning to its own path. This is what the “conservative revolution” tried to do in theoretical terms. In this work, we will try to answer the questions – what was the phenomenon of the “conservative revolution”, what political positions did he adhere to, and how much did this trend influence Nazism.

The phenomenon of the “conservative revolution”

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (topwar.ru)

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