Monarchy was finished after 1918, with a majority of Germans opposing it the chances for a revival were minimal all the time.  The "Kapp-Putsch" shows this quite well.  [XXXttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapp_Putsch] 

 

What made the Weimar Republic fail was mainly the economy.  Even the Nazis did only play a major role in the last years of the first German Republic.  Additionally as already mentioned, there was only about a third of political parties aiming at the stabilisation of Democracy, while the left and right were busy at destabilising the system.  The right in favor of Monarchy, the Communists and parts of the Social Democracy for Communist Revolution or a "Räterepublik"  - Soviet Republic with "worker - peasant - soldier" commitees running the state.

I have read Konrad Heiden's "Der Fuhrer". Heiden was a master story teller which made the book a fascinating one.

It has been a while since I read it but I came away from the book's depiction of the way Hitler became chancellor with the impression that it was the weakness of the parliamentary system when a coalition government becomes necessary that doomed the Weimar Republic. This, of course, being in the context of a serious competition between multiple parties which are distinguished by wanting to overturn the republic.

 

 

 

 

Even though the Kaiser had turned the people pretty much against the monarchy, a constitutional monarchy may have saved them a lot of sorrow.

 

A royal family with a good reputation and representing the best of German culture and tradition - the soul of the German people so to speak may have been a steadying influence.

 

It is beginning to look as though we could use something like that here and now.

The continuation of German monarchy after WW1 would not have mattered much, insofar as the rise of Nazism is concerned.  We have to delve into the minds of the German elites at that time.  Aristocrats, military caste, and industrialists all had one trait in common:  Contempt for the Weimar Republic and the Social Democrats.  The fact that the Social Democrats did not side with the Communists (and instead supported in crushing the latter) did not count in the minds of these three elitist groups.  Another farce was the way the armistice was signed.  The Social Democrats were the ones most opposed to the humiliation of signing the armistice; by contrast, the military caste was the most eager.  Finally, in the second half of WW1, the German monarch turned into nothing more than a rubber-stamp as a cynical duo of Ludendorff and Hindenburg were actually in charge.  In other words, they have already set a precedent in which the monarch was a nonentity.  Replace Ludendorff & Hindenburg with Hitler -- would a 'Bohemian corporal' like Hitler show the same degree of respect towards the monarch like these two generals did?  Highly doubtful.

Gee. This sounds so discouraging.

But given that Germany had a popularly elected parliamentary body and given that any overnent would need the good will of the people under the Weimar constitution, would not a monarch as head of state, such as in Britain, have resulted in a more stable political party situation?

I have heard that Great Britain was headed for a revolution at least as bad as the French Revolution.

 

But before that could happen, Great Britain was swept by the Great Awakening which started in British colonial America with George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards and then crossed the Atlantic. John Westley traveled to America and later in England became involved with the Methodist movement which was an evangelical one.

 

On the other hand France had no Great Awakening.

 

Also, France's Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes which had protected the French Hugenots who were French Protestants. Many Hugenots fled France taking their energy and work ethic with them. I have heard that the resulting financial lassitude in France contributed a century or so later to the French Revolution.

 

IIRC, one sidelight on Great Britain has to do with the role of Christian dissenters (kind of like evangelicals I guess) in the industrial revolution which started in Great Britain. It seems that these people were barred from the most prosperous and prestigeous professions on account of their not being Church of England. But they applied their energy and imagination to the building of factories and mills at the dawn of the industrial revolution and many acquired wealth and prestige that way.