The fate of democracy in the Weimar Republic is the source of no small amount of debate within modern German historiography. Certain factors, however, can be generally agreed upon as contributing to the less than robust state of Weimar democracy in the run up to Hitler’s rise to power. Among these, the ones that seem most relevant to your questions as asked are the role of democratic/republican institutions in the German states prior to the creation of the Weimar Republic as well as the relationship between those institutions and the German people.

As is so often the case, it may be useful to begin with Napoleon, or rather, the aftermath of Napoleon’s conquest in Germany. While a Louis may have returned to the throne in France, neither there nor across Central Europe could the French Revolution and the reign of Napoleon be fully undone. The ideas and ideals championed by revolutionaries had spread to cities across the continent, and while the borders drawn at Vienna left France largely as it was before the war, the map of Germany was forever changed. These and other factors (especially economic factors) contributed to the revolutions that engulfed Europe in 1848. Students, liberals, workers, farmers, and others came together in states across the continent, unified more by their opposition to the status quo than any common vision for the future. In the German states this led to the National Assembly in Frankfurt, where much was debated and little accomplished. Unable to agree on much, and unable to convince the Prussian king to accept what he called a crown from the gutter, the representatives at Frankfurt ultimately disbanded after counter revolutionary forces restored control across the German states.

The assembly had been unable to accomplish much, and as it debated it had certainly not had any significant impact on the day to day lives of Germans. In its wake, many German states, including Prussia, created representative bodies to give their governments the appearance of democratic input without truly altering the nature of politics. Prussia carried this over into the new, unified German state created in 1871.

The “representative” government of this new Germany was nothing of the sort. For one thing, not every vote was created equal — rather, land ownership and other factors weighted things towards those the wealthy elite. More importantly, the Reichstag only truly had power over the purse. In addition, new elections could be called whenever the government wanted. This led to a situation in which the parties in opposition had no real experience in governing, nor in compromise — there was no power to exercise, and thus no reason to sacrifice principles for pragmatism. To do so would only alienate the constituents who supported you. As such, parties were relatively extreme in their rhetoric and inflexible. They appealed to their constituents, and drew them into a party-centric world of social events and camaraderie.

When the new German Republic was created at the end of World War I, a great deal changed. But not everything. The same political parties remained, for instance, and leading them the same politicians. And although the new constitution granted this Reichstag real power, it did nothing to change the fact that these politicians had leaned how to operate in a very different political reality.

The constitution itself created structural weaknesses, or at least the potential for them. While a nation with strong democratic traditions may have navigated them, the new Weimar Republic struggled with them — a proportional system the allowed a proliferation of tiny parties, for instance. With little in the way of compromise, coalition governments failed. And failed in a postwar context where many people needed the government to function more than ever. Indeed, the period after World War I saw new demands on government, not just in terms of whose interests they represented but what kinds of services they provided.

It didn’t help that there was distrust. What had democracy and representative government ever really accomplished beyond debate and rabble rousing? Germans had practiced democracy, sure, but to what end? The democratic culture that emerged in Germany and produced parties and all the trappings, but had little to show in terms of results. Indeed, Bismarck had wisely coopted the most important social programs of the left, providing a safety net for workers and retirees. These were things the government had provided, while stories claimed liberals and Democrats had only provided for Germany’s defeat in World War I, the so-called stab in the back. When, in this context, the new Reichstag seemed unable to accomplish anything, and kept holding new elections when coalitions failed, it would be easy to lose any faith one might have had in democracy. Especially in light of economic conditions — things were bad enough immediately after the war, with chaos in the streets, but when hyperinflation arrived in 1923, they got much worse. People still had jobs, but what they didn’t have was enough money to buy bread. Especially hard hit were widows and other pensioners, anybody on a fixed income.

In that context, the promise of a government that worked at all was highly appealing, and support drained away from the coalition of parties that tried to work within the constraints of the new Weimar constitution and to those on the left and the right that sought to replace it with something new.

-Margaret Anderson, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany -Jeffery Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich