... poses an interesting question. If the Treaty of Versailles failed to adequately resolve outstanding problems at the end of the First World War, could its creation - the Weimar Republic - have avoided collapse and thus prevented Hitler from seizing power and bringing war to Europe in 1939? Historians have disagreed on this issue. On one hand, historians such as Eschenburg have argued that the idealistic and improvised structure of the Weimar constitution meant that the Republic was doomed before it begun. The constitution was born out of defeat and imposed on Germany. This was Germany's first experience of democracy. 2 On the other hand, other historians such as Bracher, Buchheim and Mann, focus on the wider political, economical and social context of the Weimar Republic. They agree that the Weimar Republic's collapse did not look promising from the outset, but that mismanagement combined with severe economic depression and political ...

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