Eric D. Weitz. 2007. Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 432 pages. ISBN13: 978-0-691-01695-5 (cloth) $29.95.

When we think of Weimar Germany, many unforgettable images come to mind: Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings in "The Blue Angel," scenes from "The Threepenny Opera," the caricatures of George Grosz, the breathtaking photographs of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Above all, however, we have the indelible impression of a modern democracy in decay, beset by enemies from both the Left and the Right, of a 14-year prelude to Hitler. In Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, Eric D. Weitz recapitulates in clear and compelling prose the Weimar Republic's troubled history which dated back to the time of its inception.

He presents a comprehensive account of the social, political, and economic forces and factors which contributed to its demise. Among these factors were the prevailing and pernicious view that democracy had been foisted upon Germany by foreigners, Social Democrats, and Jews; the traumatic effects on the German normative order of the 1923 hyperinflation and of the 1929 U.S. stock market crash; the omnipresent threat of either a communist or of a Nazi-instigated revolution; and massive unemployment and loss of confidence in the German government by both the middle and the working class.

According to Weitz, Weimar Germany's political history may be divided into roughly three periods, in which two eras of crisis encapsulated a third five-year period of relative stability. He goes on to specify that "[i]n each phase, a particular political configuration dominated and offered its own version of order and progress. In 1918-23 it was the Left and [C]enter; 1924-29, largely the [C]enter Right; 1930-33, the authoritarian Right. The first two, at least, demonstrated Weimar's promise, the last Weimar's pathologies. Each phase ended amid a combined catastrophic economic and political crisis. Each political configuration, in the end, failed;...