Fateful Hours: The Collapse of the Weimar Republic

by Volker Ullrich, Jefferson Chase (Translator)

From the New York Times best-selling historian, the riveting story of the Weimar Republic—a fledgling democracy beset by chaos and extremism—and its dissolution into the Third Reich.


Democracies are fragile. Freedoms that seem secure can be lost. Few historical periods illustrate this as clearly as the Weimar Republic. Fateful Hours tells one of the greatest dramas in world the failure of Germany’s first democracy, culminating in the horrific rise of the Third Reich.


The Weimar Republic was born under an inauspicious star. Germany resoundingly lost the First World War and was hobbled by harsh conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Continual crises—hyperinflation, violence, and political instability—shook the republic, only letting up during a brief period of stability in the 1920s. But the first German democracy was not always destined for failure. Historian Volker Ullrich proves that there were many opportunities to lay the tracks differently, from the founding phase through Hitler’s election in 1933. Ultimately, the republic’s fate depended on the choices of individuals. Thus, this history carries an urgent It is up to us whether democracy lives or dies.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Germany, Politics, European History, Audiobook

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 11, 2025

About the author

Volker Ullrich was born in Celle. He studied history, literature, philosophy and education at the University of Hamburg. From 1966 to 1969 he was assistant to the Hamburg’s Egmont Zechlin Chair. He graduated in 1975 after a dissertation on the Hamburg labour movement of the early 20th Century, after which he worked as a Hamburg school teacher. He was, for a time, a lecturer in politics at the Lüneburg University, and in 1988 he became a research fellow at Hamburg’s Foundation for 20th-century Social History. Since 1990 Ullrich has been the head of the political section of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit.
Ullrich has published articles and books on 19th- and 20th-century history. In 1996 he reviewed the thesis postulated in Daniel Goldhagen’s book Hitler's Willing Executioners that provoked fresh debate among historians.
In 1992 he was awarded the Alfred Kerr Prize for literary criticism, and, in 2008, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Jena.

Reviews

[Alain Acevedo]

tengo una sensación de contrariedad tras terminar este libro porque, por una parte, lo he leído rapidísimo y me ha interesado mucho pero, por otra, creo que trata un tema complejo desde una perspectiva tan simple que, en realidad, no me parece que contribuya demasiado arrojar luz sobre un periodo histórico del que, además, se ha escrito tanto

me parece una crónica espectacular, escrita por un veterano periodista para ser devorada por los lectores. creo que cumple su objetivo de explicar cómo los movimientos en la alta política contribuyeron a que Hitler alcanzara el poder y, por ello, contribuye a defender de forma efectiva la tesis del autor que, en sus propias palabras, se puede resumir en que "lo único que la ciencia histórica puede decir con certeza sobre el futuro es que será diferente de como se lo imaginan las personas del presente. todo depende de manera decisiva de cómo actúen determinadas personas en situaciones concretas". y creo que justo esta última frase resume bien mi problema con el libro

creo que entender la historia como una sucesión de acontecimientos políticos protagonizados por grandes personajes que parecen actuar como si se encontraran aislados del contexto social, político y económico en el que operan nos aboca a no entender nada sobre el pasado de las sociedades que habitamos. en este libro, no se menciona ni una sola vez el nombre de mussolini, no se dedica media página a explicar la estructura económica de la alemania de entreguerras, no se habla del día a día de los ciudadanos de la república de weimar, no se hace el mínimo esfuerzo por exponer cómo funcionaban los sindicatos o los medios de comunicación. no hay nada de sociología electoral, nada de filosofía política que ayude a entender por qué spd y kpd siempre estuvieron enfrentados, nada sobre las razones por las cuales el sistema institucional en el que se mueven los personajes que desfilan por estas páginas fue diseñado como fue diseñado. los protagonistas toman decisiones como si flotaran en el éter y sus procesos decisorios no se vieran influidos por tendencias económicas, sociales y políticas que se encontraban presentes también en otros Estados europeos de la década de 1920 y donde las cosas no sucedieron tal y como lo hicieron en alemania

creo que el libro es víctima de una concepción simplista del devenir histórico que funciona desde el punto de vista cognitivo como lo hace la creencia en grandes conspiraciones globales que ayudan a explicar el mundo: un pequeño grupo de personas tiene el destino de la humanidad en sus manos y de sus decisiones depende qué va a ser de nosotros. creo que la realidad es mucho más compleja que esto y, si bien existieron en weimar y en la actualidad individuos en el sector industrial o el mundo político con gran poder personal, es imprescindible prestar atención al contexto en el que tomaban sus decisiones para entender por qué las cosas sucedieron como sucedieron

hay otros libros muy centrados en los movimientos de la alta política que sí me gustan y creo que aportan al debate historiográfico sobre los acontecimientos que tratan (se me ocurre kristina spohr en después del muro-sobre el fin de la guerra fría- o serhii plokhy en el último imperio -sobre la disolución de la unión soviética). debido a todos los aspectos que menciono que creo que deja sin tratar, no me termina de quedar claro qué aporta este al estudio de la caída de la república de weimar que no se conociera ya, porque tampoco consulta ninguna fuente novedosa ni ofrece una interpretación que no se lleve repitiendo unas cuantas décadas

me lo he pasado bien leyéndolo pero me deja sabor de boca raro porque creo que ha sido más por haber pasado por él buscándole puntos débiles que por haberme retado o enseñado cosas que no supiera. en fin, no está mal pero creo que hay libros sobre este periodo que ayudan bastante más a entender que este

[Maxi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ganz hervorragendes Buch, das zwar sachlich aber dennoch spannend die Zeit der Weimarer Republik hin zum Dritten Reich skizziert und dabei keine Akteure außer Acht lässt. Es ist weniger nur eine Erklärung zur Entstehung des Dritten Reiches, sondern zeichnet vielmehr ein wirklich umfassendes Bild der politischen Entwicklungen in der Weimarer Republik. Wirklich lesenswert.

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a history of the events leading to the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. It is written by Volker Ulrich, an exceptional historian and the author of a two volume Hitler biography.

Why this book and why now? If one follows current events and has read some history, it is not difficult to run into news accounts and attempts at explanation of a drift among traditional democracies towards greater authoritarian rule. The US in the second Trump administration features prominently in these, although there have been developments in Eastern and Western Europe. An obvious question is what history has to offer in potential explanations for these developments. The European totalitarians of the 1920s and 1930s are clear targets of attention and of these none is more prominent than Hitler. So it should not be surprising that a distinguished scholar and the Nazi era would produce a book raises questions about whether the Nazi dictatorship was a necessary development or whether it could have been averted, or at least developed differently, had event proceeded in different ways. Ullrich convincingly shows that the rise of Hitler to power - and all that followed from that - was by no means assured and it was possible that the Weimar Republic’s collapse was not necessary but could have been forestalled have events gone different ways.

But wait a second! What is one to make of this analysis? The history is well known - this is one of the most studied periods of modern history and many of the facts seem clear. The key to evaluating this effort is not the facts themselves but the “what if?” Judgments that go with them. How to evaluate analysis based on hypotheticals like these?

The problem for me is that these hypotheticals - these little changes in events that might have changed the more macro outcomes - did not happen. Not only that - but the chains of different events that might have shifted outcomes also did not happen. This is not just my claim but it is built into the arguments being offered by assumption.

So what? What is the problem with arguing from “What if”? If the few events that I was focusing on did happen to change, it is very likely (at least to me) that other events would have also changed. Social reality is highly interconnected (networked?). How many other events would change and which ones? Who knows? If I don’t know which events would changes along with the events I was focusing on, how to I know what the overall result of my “do over “ would be?

In behavioral decision research this is sometimes referred to as the “simulation heuristic”. The typical example for this involves missing some scheduled event. Suppose I am trying to catch a 9am flight. Getting ready for travel and driving to the airport are complex and time-consuming. So I get delayed and end up arriving at the airport at 11am. Once I get there, however, I find out that my plane had been delayed and only finally took off at 10:45am -just before I arrived. Once I realized that, it would not take much prompting for me to start calculating how things might have been different if I had only left a little earlier, taken a different route, driven faster, and the like. All of this has nothing to do with my missed plane and is more plausibly understood as a mind game that I play to make sense out of my frustration at missing the plane. The problem is that I am very capable of ginning up hypotheticals but am unable to have any of them compete for attention with what actually happened. It sure sounds good, but how does my mental invention get beyond the hypothetical?

That is the same problem I have with “what if” history. For the “Fateful Hours”, Ullrich has done a fine job at explaining the implications of a series of decisions points in the Weimar Republic spanning the entire length of the republic. That is the reason for my rating. This made for much better explanation but still does not get around the facts that Hitler came to power in January 1933.

Besides, whatever the links between Weimar contingencies and Hitler, I am much less clear of the implications for this analysis as it applies to the second Trump administration. That analysis will depend on events that have yet to happen and logics that are as yet unclear.

I still recommend the book.

[Yannic · Rating 2 out of 5]

Das Vorwort scheint reine Verkaufsstrategie zu sein. Die durchaus spannende Frage, warum die Weimarer Republik scheitert, wird nicht beantwortet. Chronologisch und mit vielen Daten und noch mehr Namen wird die Geschichte der Weimarer Republik abgespult. Da ist nichts Neues oder Interessantes dabei.

[Claudio Riquelme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muy aclarador sobre el período, fácil de leer. Se aprende como una democracia se puede perder con consecuencias muy graves y transformarse en tragedia ( segunda guerra mundial)
El 60% corresponde al relato y el 40% final es de las notas bibliográficas, por que parece muy bien documentado.

[Andreas Kühnel · Rating 3 out of 5]

An und für sich mag ich Ullrichs Schreibstil und die Art und Weise, wie er oft trockene geschichtliche Inhalte in einem beinahe romanhaftem Stil vermittelt. Das gelingt ihm in diesem Buch ebenfalls sehr überzeugend. Andererseits widmet er sich hier auch einem sehr gut erforschten Thema, sodass der Erkenntnis-Mehrwert, kennt man sich hier aus, eher bescheiden ausfällt. Was mich am meisten stört, ist die Tatsache, dass Ullrich im Vorwort verkündet, die Gründe für das Scheitern der Weimarer Republik mit der heutigen politischen Lage zu vergleichen, was er jedoch am Schluss gerade mal in einen einzigen Absatz verpackt. Schade, hier lässt er m.E. sehr viel Ungenutzt. Deshalb die zwei Sterne Abzug. Ansonsten aber ist das Buch, gerade wenn man sich noch nicht so sehr in dieser Zeitepoche auskennt, ein sehr empfehlenswertes.

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the New York Times best-selling historian, the riveting story of the Weimar Republic—a fledgling democracy beset by chaos and extremism—and its dissolution into the Third Reich.

Democracies are fragile. Freedoms that seem secure can be lost. Few historical events illustrate this as vividly as the failure of the Weimar Republic. Germany’s first democracy endured for fourteen tumultuous years and culminated with the horrific rise of the Third Reich. As one commentator wrote in July 1933: Hitler had “won the game with little effort. . . . All he had to do was huff and puff—and the edifice of German politics collapsed like a house of cards.” But this tragedy was not inevitable.

In Fateful Hours, award-winning historian Volker Ullrich chronicles the captivating story of the Republic, capturing a nation and its people teetering on the abyss. Born from the ashes of the First World War, the fledgling democracy was saddled with debt and political instability from its beginning. In its early years, a relentless chain of crises—hyperinflation, foreign invasion, and upheaval from the right and left—shook the republic, only letting up during a brief period of stability in the 1920s. Social and cultural norms were upended. Political murder was the order of the day. Yet despite all the challenges, the Weimar Republic was not destined for its ignoble end.

Drawing on letters, memoirs, newspaper articles, and other sources, Ullrich charts the many failed alternatives and missed opportunities that contributed to German democracy’s collapse. In an immersive style that takes us to the heart of political power, Ullrich argues that, right up until January 1933, history was open. There was no shortage of opportunities to stop the slide into fascism. Just as in the present, it is up to us whether democracy lives or dies.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This is a complicated subject...how a democracy dies...and, as a result, a complex read. There were a lot of moving parts to the death of the Weimar Republic. It was not inevitable, a foregone conclusion; the economic disasters wrought by the vengeful Treaty of Versailles were even surmountable, as proved by Hjalmar Scacht; given the authority to control hyperinflation, he did so by staying outside the control of the politicians. The personalities, in other words, of the players in the government were largely to blame for that very government's demise.

A hearty share of the blame for the fall was on the Communist Party's plate. Their strong base of disaffected workers and sailors, reeling economically from the kaiser's stupid management of the economy in the war,was frittered away in insistence on Purity and perfect adherence to untested (and, it would turn out, unwise) Soviet policies. This resulted in an uncompromising, self-destructive inflexibility. Doom in politics is always inflexibility. Their rigidity and refusal to support a more center-left candidate led to Paul von Hindenburg, an old-line reactionary, being elected president in 1925.

Quite simply, the destruction of the Weimar Republic was inevitable then. Right-wing ultranationalist parties had a friend in high office, one who refused to countenance the suppression of their terrorism.
Army veterans and the moneyed classes weren't innocent in the fall of the republic. Anger and hatred at the vicious Treaty of Versailles' immiseration of millions of ordinary Germans made a fertile breeding ground for paramilitaries, for well-funded but ineptly led coups against the government, and for the ultimate rise of Hitler and his National Socialist party. (You clocked that last word, right? The post-WWII US rebranded them as "Nazis" because can't have anything remotely resembling socialism getting attention.) The greedy classes were delighted to fund Hitler, in no small part because Hjalmar Schacht...the one banker who succeeded in reducing war reparations payments...was a hero among them and he said to. Sadly, all those "wise heads, leadership material" men wildly miscalculated their influence over Adolf and Co. They were never more than opportunistically interested in Hitler's plans. Rearming Germany was, to them, a way to make immense profits; the war that followed was suicidal on economic terms.

Democracy is fragile. It is always under attack from within by authoritarians, because they can make more money and get their sick fantasy high-control rocks off. The Nazi book-burnings are branded, in the US at least, as burnings of Jewish and dangerous books.

Jewish, for sure; the "dangerous" books, the ones that were "polluting German youth," were Magnus Hirschfeld's works in the Institute for Sexual Science. Weird how you were never taught that, isn't it. And isn't it just so coincidental that the current scum in power are ramping up the rhetoric against sexual and ethnic minorities. Book burning, before some annoying little twidgee says a word, looks a lot worse to people than banning, so they have learned some lessons...but the effect is the same.

A timely read. Not comfortable, not easy, but very very much a book for these times.

And the future, if we can claw one out of "Their" hands.

[Juancho Vizcaino · Rating 5 out of 5]

“ El triunfo de Hitler no fue de ningún modo un “accidente” de la historia alemana, como se afirmó durante mucho tiempo, pero tampoco fue el resultado inevitable o forzoso de la crisis estatal de Weimar. Incluso a finales de enero de 1933 existían todavía dos opciones para mantenerlo alejado del poder: Hindenburg podía o bien haber mantenido a Schleicher en funciones en su cargo si el Parlamento emitía contra él un voto de censura, o bien haberle ofrecido al canciller, lo que ya había concedido en principio a Papen, es decir, disolver el parlamento y posponer las nuevas elecciones más allá del plazo constitucional de sesenta días. Esta solución habría desembocado en una dictadura militar apenas disimulada, pero las probabilidades de ganar de este modo un poco de tiempo hasta que la situación económica hubiera mejorado visiblemente no eran malas.
Que en tales circunstancias Hitler osara movilizar a la SA para dar un contragolpe y envolverla en un enfrentamiento con las fuerzas armadas parece algo muy dudoso. La postura de Hindenburg fue decisiva. Se había dejado convencer por Papen y otros consejeros de que un gabinete de concentración nacional, en el que Hitler pudiera ser al mismo tiempo “rodeado” y “domesticado” gracias a la mayor presencia de ministros conservadores, constituía la menos arriesgada de las alternativas. No pasaría mucho tiempo hasta que se advirtiera que esta suposición había sido una peligrosa ilusión”

[Xaver Dettling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eine grandiose und konzise Darstellung der politischen Geschichte der Weimarer Republik. Zentrale Schlüsselereignisse, wie die Ausrufung der parl. Demokratie, die Einflussnahme der extremen Rechten und deren zahlreichen Attentate auf politische Exponentinnen und Exponenten, wirtschaftliche Aufschwünge und Schwierigkeiten, die Machtergreifung Hitlers sind nur einige Beispiele für eine fundierte Verflechtung der Geschichte der Weimarer Republik, welches ein breites Panorama in die politisch sehr wacklige und brüchige Zeit gibt.

[Uwe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gewohnte Qualität eines erfahrenen Autors.
Spannend zu lesen, reich an Erkenntnissen.
Eine wichtige Lektüre, um die Situation der Deutschen in der Welt zu verstehen und wie es zu den folgenden Katastrophen kam.
Absolut empfehlenswert.

Der Satz zum Bezug auf die aktuelle politische Situation sei ihm (oder dem Verlag) verziehen, auch wenn er grober Unfug ist. Dafür das Buch zu verdanken, halte ich für sehr übertrieben.

[Jose Luis · Rating 4 out of 5]

excelente libro acerca de lo q ocurrió en alemania desde el fin del a1era guerra hasta la asunción de Hitler como canciller. mucho mas politico q social explica en detalle como los distintos partidos politicos los distintos dirigentes desde la derecha hasta la izquierda fueron cometiendo errores q facilitaron y mucho la llegada de Hitler. El último error fue la subestimacion de hitler

[David C Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve liked Ullrich’s studies of Germany, especially his bio of Hitler. This examination of the political machinations of Hitler’s seizure of power is less compelling because the narrative is well known, indeed it’s been covered by Ulrich himself. Still a useful cautionary tale, especially these days.

[Dan Caramidariu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gutes, lesenswertes Buch!

[Angel · Rating 5 out of 5]

En mi opinión, un relato magnífico, fruto de toda una vida estudiando una época tan controvertida.

[Gerardo Roca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Diría que quizá está pensado para lectores alemanes que estudiaron sobre Weimar en el colegio y que ven la historia como una sucesión de estrategias políticas y resultados electorales. La República Alemana, presentada desde su fundación (con apenas mención a su origen) hasta el ascenso de Hitler al poder, centrado en la visión política por encima de todo.

Para mi gusto, ya que va a centrarse en ese aspecto, hubiera agradecido más facilidades para seguir el funcionamiento de un sistema político añejo y lejano. Dada la ensalada de siglas que se asume que nos hemos memorizado tras su primera mención y la relevancia de la figura del Presidente de la República tal como se definió en la constitución de Weimar, os puede ser muy útil (para mí lo fueron) estos recursos: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi... y https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_...

Dicho esto, si estás dispuesto a aprender 'por fuera del libro' al mismo tiempo que lees, no está mal escrito. Bueno, salvo por el vicio de hacer flashfowards al arrancar cada capítulo, pero eso quiero creer que fue exigencia de su editor.