The signing of the Treaty of Versailles on the twenty second of June in 1919, would forever psychologically be associated with the long term bitterness and humiliation of the German public towards the German democracy. The civilian government who agreed to the terms of the treaty, which saw German suffer a deduction in their army, forced to pay high reparations, deduction of land and population were after known as the “November Criminals. However factors such as nationalism, the democratic Constitution, lack of democratic tradition within Germany society, pushes from the extreme left, the army and pushes from the extreme right saw the German republic gradually weaken until it lost all credibility.
The Treaty of Versailles in a Germans point of had been a harsh peace settlement, taking away their sovereign powers and freedoms as a nation. The long-term effects of the signing of the Treaty were felt across all classes across Germany, they had to blame something or someone for the clauses of the treaty, which they had agreed to. So they resorted to blaming the concept that had been foreign to them; the civilian government and the new democracy. This would make the Weimar republic to be forever associated with military defeat and international humiliation. Nationalists and political forces of the extreme right and left used the emotionalism of the treaty in propaganda to attack all remaining credibility of the Weimar republic. After the signing of the treaty, Germans found it very hard to have any real emotional loyalty to a political system that had appeared to have failed them. The economic effects of the treaty required Germany to pay compensation for all damage done to the civilian population by the Allied and Associated power. The reparations in total came to 132 000 million gold marks which was equivalent to $US 32 billion. Germany had no real hope of paying the