Did no one who lived through the Weimar Republic of 1918-33 see what was coming, asks Victor Sebestyen in his impressive new book. The politicians, the intellectuals, the foreign visitors who converged on Berlin in the wake of the first world war all wrote about the anti-Semitism and violence they witnessed, but virtually no one perceived where Germany was heading until it was too late. A great deal has been written about the Weimar years, much of it in hindsight; but Sebestyen, the author of bestselling books on Hungary and Russia, sets out to relate events as they unfold – to tell the story as it happened. The result is a fascinating portrait of how frighteningly easy it is for a democracy to crumble.

Unified only in 1871, Germany was an autocratic, rapidly industrialising Prussian-dominated monarchy when it entered the first world war. After its military defeat, a very reluctant Kaiser was forced to abdicate, leaving in place a coalition, crafted in the city of Weimar, under the small, stout, unimpressive but decent President Friedrich Ebert. A new constitution enshrined important civil rights but, fatally, handed presidents the power to rule by decree. Censorship was lifted, resulting in an explosion of cultural experiments, and the new Germany became the first major nation to give women the vote. Homosexuality was recognised. The transfer of power proved peaceful: ‘No French savagery, no Russian communist excess,’ wrote Thomas Mann. Before long, Berlin was publishing 149 newspapers, far more than any other city in the world.

But with the new freedoms came polarisation between extremes of left and right. A revolt of the Spartacists, later rebranded the German Communist party, was crushed and its leading heroes, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, murdered. Reactionary demobilised soldiers, the Freikorps, emerged as ‘unruly and untamed adventurers’. The Versailles Treaty – excellently described by Sebestyen in all its humiliations and discords – left in place an undying German conviction that the country had been shamefully treated and wrongly blamed as the sole instigator of the war. Stiff reparations, and the seizure of the Ruhr industrial belt by the French when they were not........

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